Englishness. Who gets to win life's lottery?

This is my idea of England and responds to a podcast where Konstantin Kison and Fraser Nelson, a Russian and a Scot, discussed how you get to be English

It starts with a discussion between a Scotsman and a Russian who, in a wider conversation about the effect of immigration, touch on the nature of Englishness and specifically whether or not Englishness is an ethnicity. The two positions are clearly set out with the Russian saying that, of course, English is an ethnicity while the Scot insists that, no, Englishness is simply a fortune of birth.

“Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life”

So spoke Cecil Rhodes although, as was often the case, Rhodes conflates British and English in that way so irritating to the Scots and Welsh. But is being English a matter of blood - or DNA as we’d more likely say these days? Are the English only those men and women, I am one, who can trace their ancestry in England back into the mists of time or is being English about something more than just an accident of genetic heritage?

Take of English earth as much

As either hand may rightly clutch.

In the taking of it breathe

Prayer for all who lie beneath.

Not the great nor well-bespoke,

But the mere uncounted folk

Of whose life and death is none

Report or lamentation.

Lay that earth upon thy heart,

And thy sickness shall depart!

Kipling is one of the great poets of England, ‘Puck of Pook's Hill’ and ‘Rewards and Fairies’ are less well known than his ‘Barrack Room Ballads’ or ‘The Jungle Book’ but he tells a story of England’s origins and, of course, how people become English, how Sir Richard Dalyngridge, a Norman, became English:

I had my horse, my shield and banner,

And a boy's heart, so whole and free;

But now I sing in another manner -

But now England hath taken me!

England isn’t the DNA of its inhabitants, for all that this matters, England is the land, the sea around us, the songs of old, and the idea that ancient generations shaped the finest place on earth. People who love this land, its heritage, its stories, its music and its beer, these are the English. It isn’t mere blood, there are brown men in turbans whose grandfathers lived in the Punjab who are more English than some men with all the right DNA and grand ancestors buried beneath stone crosses.

It isn’t that, as our Scotsman argued, you become English merely by being born in England but that you become English because the towns, moors, farms, the history and myth, are yours. My brother-in-law is a Scot, proudly wearing kilts, celebrating hogmanay, whisky and Burn’s Night - his name is Coppola. My wife is English, born here, raised here and attached to the place just like other natives - her name is Toledano. The idea that being English is just about ethnicity - blood, race to use more basic, even anglo-saxon, terms - is simply untrue. Like Sir Richard we become English because of love and attachment, because it is our identity and our culture. To boil it down to DNA adopts the manner of that nineteenth century scientific racism that spawned so much evil.

Instead we should, if we want to save England, begin first with the land itself because it was shaped by the people who went before. Unlike other lands, there is no part of England not shaped by the people who lived there. Even the wildest of wuthering moor contains man’s mark often going back to times before history and much of our land remains kempt, orderly, almost suburban. Although this attachment does, on occasion, lead to an obsession with heritage it reminds us that men shaped old England and today’s English will shape the future England, we hope for the better.

Second, England is our culture, the everyday mores, habits and attitudes of ordinary people. England is the pub, the country walk, the semi and the country house. England is sandcastles, village cricket and piling into a tea shop to dodge the rain. England is thinking London is great, but just for a visit. And England is social diffidence, summer galas perhaps with a donkey derby, and vaguely remembering the words at the carol service when the city lights get switched on. England is standing at the bar waiting to be served, it is talking about the weather, and it is feeding the ducks at the park. England is football rivalry, rugby dinners and village halls. England is a thousand things that we only notice when they aren’t there and that we rush to do when we land again after a trip abroad. England is a nice cup of tea and a sit down.

If these things, and many others like duck races, morris dancing and building societies, matter to you and their loss would hurt then, in my book, you get to call yourself English. I’m not bothered about your DNA, the colour of your skin or whether you’re a Hindu, Muslim, Jew or Catholic, if you love the place we call England and want to preserve these good things and help make a glorious nation, then you are English. If you want to change our culture and undermine our heritage and the idea of England, whether your ancestors were here in the dark ages or you arrived at Heathrow six weeks ago, you are not English and I’d rather you left for somewhere else.

The conversation between the Russian and the Scotsman, both living in England, shows that the idea of England and Englishness is important. Their conversation refers to cheering for England at football and to a different sense of identity where what you look like matters more than it should. But by focusing on accidents of birth and ideas of ethnicity, Konstantin and Fraser miss that being English is far more about culture and identifying with that culture than it is about finessing matters of race or birth. If you love England and English things and want to keep our connection with the shape of the land, the old but untidy nature of our towns, with food, drink and festivals then you are most of the way to being English. If you respect that Christianity is one of the things that shaped England and that this matters. If you see the great and good things the English did, from ending slavery to giving the world capitalism, then you are welcome - join the English family. As a very famous Englishman said:

“There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is England"

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