Chippy tea and going for a walk: Exploring Englishness

The test of whether the culture lives, however, is that we can through an almost imperceptible series of behavioural signs, tics and actions recognise a fellow English man or woman

I’ve been giving some thought to the idea of England and Englishness. Partly this is because it became topical when Tory leadership hopeful, Robert Jenrick, talked about his English identity. And, since Jenrick did this, the usual collection of centrist dads popped up to explain that there is, actually, no such thing as being English because we borrowed, stole or ripped off our culture from somewhere else. It is perhaps ironic that Orwell’s observation about English intellectuals is now an established part of our culture to the extent that the person pretending (on ex-twitter) to be a cat living in Downing Street relates the view that, as orwell said:

“...it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings.”

Culture is a many-layered thing. Here in England we lay claim to European culture, the music of Beethoven, Gothic architecture, Dutch art and Rossini’s opera. And, for the English, such an outward facing people, peeling back the layers to find Englishness can prove difficult. Those eager to explain why the English are so great usually choose to produce lists: Shakespeare, Newton, Turner, Churchill and so on. But these, while reminding us of the massive contribution to the world’s culture made by the English, probably don’t capture that Englishness either. Everywhere has produced writers, scientists, artists and statesmen, so while England has produced a lot of them (and they make us proud), this doesn’t describe our culture, merely aspects of our history.

Culture is, most commonly, seen as those things we don’t learn at school but absorb from the behaviour, social mores and actions of those we grow up around. Which means, of course, that everywhere has a culture that we can point to and describe as something typical of people from that place. But this culture isn’t unchanging and adapts over time as a result of external cultural influences, social change and, for want of a better word, civilisation. This is why music, visual art, dress and language are such common themes in the manifestation of cultural identity. Such things pre-date (or so we, perhaps mistakenly, believe) our culture’s meeting with the outside world so represent a sort of pure culture. If, however, we accept the definition of culture above, then culture is not a matter of nature but of nurture. Mowgli is a wolf.

This is the hour of pride and power,

Talon and tush and claw.

Oh, hear the call!—Good hunting all

‘This is how we do it here’. We’ve all heard this a few times and it is a statement about culture. It could be what time you have your evening meal (and even what you call that meal), how the beer is served, the temperature of water for making tea or superstitions attached to birth, marriage and death. How these traditions came about is, in almost every case, lost to us but this doesn’t detract from their importance. And it doesn’t matter that, maybe, the source of something is elsewhere; Christ being a Jew from Nazareth doesn’t really make the Church of England less English any more than wearing an English business suit makes the Emperor of Japan less Japanese.

The sneering intellectuals embarrassed by Englishness are, for example, very quick to remind those talking about English culture that fish and chips were a 19th century invention of Jewish hawkers in London. But the thing with fish and chips isn’t food but the idea of a ‘chippy tea’, a treat to reward ourselves after a hard week’s work. And this, while now associated with fish and chips, becomes an aspect of culture that still applies if the treat is McDonalds, a pizza or a curry. Culture is as much why, when and where we eat food as it is the food itself.

Everywhere in the world there are people who take a walk for pleasure. Whether it’s an evening passeggiata in Taormina, a hike in one of Canada’s national parks or an amble along the promenade at Biarritz. But the English go for a walk. Do the Bilbo Baggins thing and pick up a stick, put on some sensible shoes and walk out of the front door. Of course, Bilbo ended up in the wilderness, something that England doesn’t have. Everywhere in England is kempt, shaped by the hand of man. There are no trails but rather 140,000 miles of free to use public footpath that meander around fields and woods, cross streams on rickety bridges or carefully placed stones, and showcase damp, ferny corners or dry, sheep-chewed hillsides.

The English countryside - ‘oh, it is so green’ we exclaim as we look at our rainy island from the seat in the plane back from some warmer place - informs our culture because, unlike other countrysides elsewhere, it is accessible, managed and safe (at least in its lack of large and dangerous creatures). Even near neighbours, Scotland and Wales, retain some untracked wilderness, places shaped by nature rather than agriculture. While other places see the countryside as something to be held back, guarded against and driven through, the English perceive the countryside as an amenity. So we go for a walk from our suburban life into a tidy, organised version of nature.

England is not unique in being suburban in nature. More than half the population of the USA and France also live in suburbia but England relishes the idea. Or at least the England of allotment gardens, National Trust memberships and Sunday lunch at the pub. This is the England sitting in a tea shop looking out at a rainy market town and saying cheerily that ‘the rain will stop soon and we can walk up to look at the lake’. Or maybe just potter round the little square filled with gift shops, second hand booksellers, bakers that call themselves a delicatessen, and more tea shops. This is England and, as my wife’s cousin would have said at least a dozen times by now, ‘this is lovely’.

Steve Knightley’s song ‘Roots’, talks about how the English lost connection with where they came from:

“And everyone stares at a great big screen

Overpaid soccer stars, prancing teens

Australian soap, American rap

Estuary English, baseball caps

And we learn to be ashamed before we walk

Of the way we look, and the way we talk

Without our stories or our songs

How will we know where we come from?

I′ve lost St. George in the Union Jack

It's my flag too and I want it back”

This is a different message of Englishness. Knightley wrote the song after Kim Howells, then Arts Minister, said that “the idea of listening to three Somerset folk singers sounds like hell” but the idea runs deeper because the music of our ancestors is lost to most of the English.

The stories of England are still there if you look for them but have, like so much else that is English, become via Hollywood almost disconnected properties. If we poke around in the leaf litter, we will find boggarts and brownies, piskies and jack-in-the-green. There are still wassails, morrismen and maypoles. But, except as quaint reminders, these things no longer feature much in our cultural lives. Where they remain they are cherished now but elsewhere we have reinvented - or simply just invented - traditions. From the wonderful Whit Walks in Saddleworth through innumerable scarecrow festivals to teams racing uphill to the Dog and Gun in Oxenhope carrying a bale of straw. There are duck races, easter egg hunts, cheese rolling and santa races. 

One of the reasons why these questions of culture arise is because, as French sociologist Oliver Roy suggests, culture is dying.

“Roy believes that a range of abstract and apparently unstoppable forces—globalization, neoliberalism, postmodernism, individualism, secularism, the Internet, and so on—are undermining culture by rendering it “transparent,” turning our cultural practices into “a collection of tokens” to be traded and displayed. Culture used to be something we did for its own sake; now we do it to position ourselves vis-à-vis other people. For Roy, this means that it’s dying.”

If we set this observation alongside Steve Knightley’s song or even Robert Jenrick’s bemoaning of how English identity is being lost, we can see why the question of culture has become political, why we now have a term ‘culture wars’ and why Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni can draw on Roger Scruton’s idea of oikophobia - fear of home - to argue for a more robust defence of western values, the idea of nation and simple patriotism. On the anti-culture side of the barricade the response to these ideas is, depending on who is speaking, dismissal (‘Englishness is what it is because of imports and immigration’) or condemnation of the speaker as far-right, fascist or otherwise dangerous.

Culture, in the sense understood by a social anthropologist, is not dying out but the manifestations of culture - food, dress, song, dance - are being appropriated in the interests of performance, often by people who consider themselves absolutely respectful of others’ culture. It is perhaps the saving grace of Englishness that these classic reflections of culture are either lost or, like the business suit, so internationalised as to no longer reflect our culture. The only English folk songs many of us hear are those dumped into a medley by Ralph Vaughan-Williams or spun into a jolly fantasy by Henry Wood. Englishness is perhaps best witnessed in a tea shop or Wetherspoons, places where people are behaving ‘for their own sake’ rather than as some sort of performance. 

“Instead we got the village knitting circle chattering over the clack of their needles. Other tables have the local childminder teaching her charges how to behave in a café and an elderly couple enjoying a cup of coffee and, depending on the time of day, toast, cake or scones. Once a week a bunch of mums (you know they are mums because that’s what they talk about) sit there celebrating Friday with pizza and a glass of fizz. English café culture is, well, English. And, judging by the seemingly endless capacity for new cafés, we are loving it. Ladies will ring up their friends and meet for gossip over coffee or, if the time is right, a glass of rosé. Groups of older men and women with those short-cropped, grey haircuts unique to keen hikers will arrive to fuss over seating while gesticulating with those now essential walking poles as they remove several layers of waterproof clothing. The gents in the party will, seeing a bottle of beer on the drinks menu, relax knowing that they are going to enjoy a pint after all while their wives get the option (“well if you’re having a beer, Gerald…”) of a drink as well.”

England is a fine place. And most English people, in that understated manner of the English,do rather love the place. But, because we are living in that culture, asking us to define it or explain it becomes like asking a fish to describe water. The test of whether the culture lives, however, is that we can through an almost imperceptible series of behavioural signs, tics and actions recognise a fellow English man or woman. Probably because they’ll be loudly explaining how French, Italian or Chinese culture, cuisine, music or dress is so much better!