We can all take pride in England’s great achievement
THE flag of St George is flying high. A wave of joyous patriotism is sweeping across the land, inspired by the heroic progress of the England team in the World Cup. Combined with the heatwave, the advance into the semi-finals has brought a warm glow to the nation.
All the fashionable commentary about a divided, despondent post-Brexit Britain has been replaced by a new mood of confidence and optimism. Footballing success has acted as a vehicle for unity in a way that no political or other cultural force could ever achieve.
The magnificent performance of Gareth Southgate’s squad has also made a mockery of the progressive theory that national pride, particularly in England, is an instrument for bigotry. That attitude, common among the metropolitan elite, was highlighted recently by Kehinde Andrews of Birmingham University who described the flag of St George as “perhaps the primary symbol of racism in this country”.
But, as the present World Cup demonstrates, the exact opposite is true. Pride in England has helped to promote solidarity.
The red cross of St George, displayed by England supporters of all races and origins, has been a healer rather than a divider, while the open-air screenings of the World Cup matches in front of huge, happy crowds have done far more for social cohesion than all edicts of equality campaigners.
GARETH Southgate, whose calm, assured leadership has been so crucial to England, reinforced this point when he spoke in interviews of both the “togetherness” and “diversity” of his squad. He is absolutely right for 11 of his 23 players are black or mixed-race. Yet never in modern times has an England football team exhibited such a collective spirit.
The side’s determination and self-sacrifice were on full display in the victory over Sweden on Saturday, which attracted a phenomenal television audience. Like most of the nation, I was enthralled. But, as a longstanding England fan, I am in a peculiar position for I am not English at all.
I was born in Northern Ireland, living most of my early life near Belfast at the height of the Troubles. Yet I always identified with England and felt a sense of kinship with the great country across the Irish Sea.
That attitude was heightened during childhood family visits to England when I marvelled at its rich heritage, its landscape, its exciting urban bustle and its obvious tolerance, so different from the dour sectarianism of Ulster.
The strongest expression of unorthodox allegiance came through my support for England teams. I can measure out sections of my own life’s narrative by references to the performances of England in football and cricket. I shed tears of joy over England’s recapture of the Ashes against Australia in 2005 and tears of anguish when England went out on penalties to Germany in both the World Cup of 1990 and the European Championship of 1996.
My devotion to England was such that in my very first job after I graduated from university, as a clerk in the Belfast Housing Executive, I was nicknamed “Limey”. The soubriquet was not entirely friendly. There has always been a schizophrenic attitude in much of Northern Ireland towards England, where a unionist desire to keep the constitutional link is mixed with an often venomous hostility.
My passionate Anglophilia meant that it was inevitable I should move to England when I had the chance in the mid1980s. In one way I felt I was coming home to a land I loved. But soon, through my involvement in Labour politics in north London, I came across another version of anti-English feeling, this time ideological rather than tribal.
George Orwell, a true English patriot, famously wrote in 1941 that “England is the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality”. I saw that outlook all the time from activists who had contempt for Englishness, which they regarded as a form of oppression.
It is a view that remains powerful on the Left. The noisy polemicist Paul Mason wrote in 2015 that “as an English person I would like to declare: I do not want to be English”.
During the present World Cup, Left-wing music editor Michael Hann wrote: “God I hate the England football team,” adding that he felt one look at the squad “represented the strongest possible argument for burning the national flag”.
IESCAPED such selfloathing by leaving Labour activism in the mid-1990s to become a writer. In this new profession I had further scope to express my Anglo-sporting commitment by producing biographies of a number of English icons including Geoff Boycott, the Charlton brothers and the 1966 World Cupwinning manager Sir Alf Ramsey.
In his modesty, decency, tactical awareness and natural authority, Southgate increasingly resembles Sir Alf. Like him Southgate is also a quintessential English gentleman, down to his self-deprecation and fondness for waistcoats. On Saturday after the win over Sweden, he said in the authentic voice of an Englishman that what he really wanted was “a pint of bitter”.
In the coming week Southgate and his team have a chance to emulate the achievement of 1966. And the nation will be cheering itself hoarse in this quest for glory.
‘Like Sir Alf, Gareth is an English gentleman’
Leo McKinstry’s Sir Alf is published by HarperSport.