A strange malaise came across me before the opening game of the UEFA Euro 2020 Championship (hosted in 2021 because of the global pandemic) had even kicked off. I wasn’t at all interested in the tournament and especially in England. The place of my birth.
This is seismic for me since the love of football is part of my DNA and the English team did, until very recently, embody my sense of national identity.
Photo by Mitch Rosen on Unsplash
Yet now I feel as though my sense of Englishness has been hijacked. And it’s utterly depressing.
I always thought of being English as synonymous with being British. The only occasion altering this status quo would be England playing as an individual nation. I feel an emotional attachment to all four nations of the United Kingdom which I always felt was an enduring element of being quintessentially British. Proud but subtle. Inclusive and dynamic.
I never felt compelled to be draped in a Union Flag or dress like the caricature John Bull, depicted in the title picture.
Our own version of Uncle Sam was, in my opinion, a beautiful antidote to any inkling that Brits may be possessed of too much self-importance. Indeed, the creation of this imaginary figure in the late eighteenth century by John Arbuthnot, a Scottish born scientist, doctor, and political commentator, was dripping in satire. He was taking the piss! And good on him too. That’s how I thought us Brits looked upon ourselves. A nation state that never did get completely up its own backside and if things got a trifle pompous or loud, we would simply change the subject. For fucks sake, we even invented the line “More tea vicar?” as the ultimate safety valve!
From historical texts I have gleaned that even at the height of the British Empire in 1922, creating the largest empire the world had ever seen, covering around a quarter of the Earth’s land surface, and ruling over 458 million people, there was no requirement to be overtly pretentious. Sure, many of the elite liked to have rather stupendous headgear, often with feathers attached, but there was no compulsion to have a Union flag draped across every wall in an Englishman’s castle.
But today in the post BREXIT landscape, presently the Brits who reside in Northern Ireland face the real possibility of being unable to eat a British Banger and the Brits in Scotland would be happier, the present polling suggests, in a Union with a bunch of other continental European Countries, whilst Welsh farmers openly fear the recently announced trade deal with Australia. And the English? Typified by our Government who are not a parody of John Bull but have now morphed into this fictional character.
I feel utterly confused as to what my national identity is. I know what I would like it to be – and I miss it terribly.
This worries me a lot.
And as I ponder this issue, I will simply sit this tournament out.
© Ian Kirke 2021
Main photo, John Bull, Google open source images