England, My Love

I imagined, in writing this post, I would start with a list of things I cherish about England, but many important ones, such as: the NHS, the BBC, our democratic system, our cities, our railways, our universities and the management of our countryside all need improvement in one way or another.  The urge to improve your country is a patriotic one, but there’s not much I can do about all of those!

When I talk of love for England, most of the time, I mean a conflicted sense of attachment, as you might feel towards a difficult family member.  Every so often, something will happen to remind you of that attachment.

I feel it when I hear inaccurate criticism.  In France, the other country where I have spent most time, many people imagine Britain (or l’Angleterre, as most call it) has privatised healthcare and little or no welfare support.  When I explain that most healthcare is free for all, some don’t believe me. 

I feel it when British people start running the country down, saying how wonderful it would be to move somewhere else, where they imagine everything to be so much better.  (Bizarrely, I have heard it said with no irony: because there are too many foreigners here.)  

Sometimes, at unexpected moments, I do experience something more intense: on a hilltop, on a lane lined with wildflowers or on the coast path, as I did when I took that photograph at the top of this site, somewhere in South Devon in Springtime.  I have spent most of my life with England, my love, and watched the impact of time on both of us.  I have seen more spectacular places, but to me she will always remain the most beautiful one.

I feel it occasionally when listening to, or watching, English folk music, when a chord or a few words can touch a sense of belonging that I don’t fully understand.  I don’t like militarism, and I sometimes think I have heard, read and watched more than enough about the two world wars, but I have felt it, nonetheless, when reading the poetry of Wilfred Owen or standing beneath the monument to the missing at Thiepval.

Patriotism is sometimes defined as a love of your country and its people.  That is a bit more complicated.  Whoever you are, wherever you live, I am sure that some of your fellow citizens will frustrate or annoy you, and like me, you may have people of different nationalities who are dear to you.  Travel and experience of life have taught me that, cultural differences aside, you will find the same range of personalities everywhere. 

So, I regard my country’s people like a fractious bunch of neighbours: whether we like each other or not, we have to find some way to get along, and in extremis, we must look out for each other.  ‘We’ means everyone living here, whether British or not.  (Patriotism of the land, rather than patriotism of the blood – I will come back to that later.)

I have lived in some very different places in several English regions: suburbs, villages, a national park and in more recent years, a multi-cultural city centre.  Each of those has given me a different perspective, strengthening and diversifying my sense of belonging.  Until recently, I felt that different communities living peacefully together were, with some exceptions, a national success story.  The everyday racism I remember, sometimes directed against my friends, in the 1970s and 1980s, declined during my lifetime.  While inter-communal violence periodically tore other countries apart, things were improving here.  But those gains are now at risk, from culture wars, populist politics, disinformation online, echo chambers, and the resurgence of the far-right.  Patriotism in this situation, is a still voice, calling on all of us to resist the forces that would drive us apart.