All for St George

Seeing Vox pops of small groups of older men dressed in faux armour being asked the question ‘What does St George’s Day mean to you?’ elicits the usual responses. If distilled, our brave warriors express indignation, worry and an inability to understand that today’s UK is a different place to the unreality they hold close to their hearts.

The UK now is of differing nationalities, racial types, religious persuasions. The old order is broken, the weather has changed, we are all – for the most part – poorer and feeling under siege. Faced with an invasion of Turks, rivers of blood, funny-sounding foreigners it came as a shock to the liberal-minded that little-England raised the drawbridge and sought isolation in a confusing world.

The irony that St George was himself born of a Palestinian mother and a Turkish father is lost on our battle-weary troops. What’s at stake here is the notion of nationhood, and this is where it gets interesting.

I was brought up in a London suburb, schooled at a Catholic primary and then a Catholic secondary modern. Maps of the world were still mostly coloured pink in defiance of the inescapable fact that these countries had long since shrugged off empire. We had God on our side, the Queen and rank upon rank of serious men and women in the Lords and Commons who knew what was best for us. To be English (which is what British still means) was to be exceptional. Rulers of half the globe, bringing civilisation to the savages. Tea and crumpet, Christmas and holly. Did those feet in ancient times?

Here’s the thing – scratch away the fake gold paint that comprises English culture and whatever’s left has been eaten by moths. Anything truly remarkable or world-beating is in the past – hence the almost universal yearning to return to a world that never really existed. A land where a policeman could be asked the time or the way home without fear of being tasered or worse. A land where politicians stood for ideals not corruption. A land where rivers flowed freely and weren’t poisoned with shit. A land where the King stood for dignity and tradition, not petulance and absurdity. Even God has lost his way – his priests more interested in earthly delights than believing in a spiritual nirvana to come.

I have lived in Scotland for half my life and that gives me a wider view of the differences between our nations. An Irish musician once told me a joke – ‘What’s the difference between the English and a tub of yoghurt?’ The answer was ‘the culture’s still alive in the yoghurt’. I disagreed of course, ‘we have Morris Dancing’, I said. It wasn’t a convincing riposte. Scotland has never really been taken in by the empire narrative, is comfortable in its tartan. In short, Scotland remains outward-looking and welcoming of new people, ideas and cultures – absorbing the lot and still retaining Scottishness. This constant state of renewal is essential to a nation’s health, otherwise we face senility and decline.

I sympathise with the faux St George warriors, clutching their beer bottles with the same desperation they hold onto an increasingly nebulous idea of Englishness. It’s not surprising they want to lash out. Someone has stolen something they hold dear, even if they’d be hard-pressed to articulate what, and the usual suspects are cynically put up for blame by right-wing agitators. The immigrants, the Jews or Muslims, the LGBT, the sick and disabled. Parallels with recent history stare us in the face but one thing history teaches us is that history never teaches us.

It’s not just the UK suffering growing pains. The whole world is undergoing similar difficulties, and with climate breakdown this will only become a lot worse. Theresa May, onetime UK PM, quoted in 2016 ‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.’ She is the product of a middle-class English upbringing, unwisely pinning her flag to the mast of the Titanic. What are we if we are not all citizens of the world?

St George has new dragons to fight. They wear suits, talk earnestly to camera and lie with every fibre of their being to wreak havoc and war. They seek to repress, control, spread hate and fear between people. They have no care for the world they leave behind, nor for the children set to inhabit the spoil heaps of their selfish ill-gotten gains. You can turn to God, to the King, to Parliament – none of whom will fight this battle for you. These dragons are cunning though, their scales line the eyes of the people – blinding them to who’s really taken their quality of life and diminished them.

When the scales fall, as one day they surely must, St George will sit up and take notice. When that day comes, I’m all for St George.