Meet the English

The flag of St George
now reclaimed for England

The English are not Scots, Welsh or Northern Irish (Ulster). The four nationalities together make up the British which isn't the same as being English.

English people are born, unsurprisingly, in England or of English parents.

The English flag is the flag of St George. Unfortunately, it has been adopted by extreme right wing fascist groups in this country but many English people, who don't share their extremists beliefs, are trying to reclaim it for the English and England in general. This was helped by sporting events like the football (soccer) World Cup when the English flag was used extensively by supporters of the English team and, since then, other sporting events where England has competed in its own right rather than as part of Great Britain or the UK.

"Even crushed against his brother in the Tube the average Englishman pretends desperately that he is alone." Germaine Greer

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English people appear to many other nationalities to be reserved and humourless. This is far from the truth. You have to be aware that English humour is based on self deprecation and irony.

English humour can be quite surreal, just think of Monty Python or The Goons. Then there is the humour based on eccentricity found in Fawlty Towers or the quieter observational comedy of The Office. The slapstick, risqué humour of Benny Hill, while still enjoyed by some people, although never universally popular, is now old-fashioned.

On a personal level, a lot of humour between people is based on insults. When an English person calls you "A daft old bat", you must realise they are not being rude but affectionate! They are polite to people they don't know or don't like. Indeed, the less they like somebody, the more icily polite many English people become. They only insult their friends.

The other very popular form of humour is the 'wind-up' or the 'leg pull'. This consists of telling somebody something which is totally untrue and getting them to believe it. A wind-up can go on for hours, days, weeks or months. My best wind-up was when I told my best friend that her daughter and I were getting her a little dog for Christmas. This was in July.and I said I was telling her because I didn't think it was good for a dog to be a surprise present.

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At first she didn't believe me because we all knew she didn't want a dog. I was staying with her for a long weekend and I kept it up for the whole time. When I saw her again, about a month later, I still said we were getting her a dog. I dragged her into a pet shop and pointed out things she'd need to buy. I even tried to talk her into buying a dog bed (I'd have given her the money back later). By this time she was getting worried. The next time I visited was in November and by this time I'd told her daughter about the wind-up and she joined in. When the daughter's husband arrived, we quickly told him about it without my friend hearing so when she appealed to him to reassure her it was a wind-up, he played along saying to us "I thought you weren't going to tell her. I thought it was supposed to be a surprise."

We got our come-uppance, you'll be pleased to know. My friend started looking at dogs and dog equipment. We came to realise that she was going to be disappointed if she didn't get a dog. We spent days phoning up breeders of Cavalier King Charles spaniels until we found one who had a puppy available just after Christmas. We took my friend to see it straightaway and it was love at first sight. It cost me and her daughter quite a lot of money to buy but, five years later, my friend is so happy with her little dog.

The moral of the story is that a wind-up can come back and bite the person who does the winding up!

"If an Englishman gets run down by a truck he apologizes to the truck."

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Very few English people show much patriotism. You won't see anybody putting their hand on their heart when the National Anthem is played. In fact, in cinemas (movie theatres) there used to be a stampede for the exit when a movie finished to avoid having to stand for the National Anthem which was once played at the end of every evening.

Overt patriotism is seem as embarrassing at best and a sign of incipient madness at worse. Much brandishing of either the flag of St George or the Union flag (Union Jack) is associated with British or English fascist groups.

You might say "What about the singing of Land and Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia at the Last Night of the Proms?" It is true that people take the opportunity to roar out these patriotic songs at full volume whilst waving either Union Jacks or flags of St George (the English flag). This is done in the spirit of fun not patriotism. That's why nobody minds that there are nationals of other countries waving their own flags. It adds to the general party atmosphere.

Even though the English aren't overtly patriotic and will moan and complain long and hard about all aspects of the country, they won't like it when people of other nationalities join in even to agree!

English people are quite pleased to be portrayed as unemotional with a stiff upper a lip.

Don't believe it! The English are a very emotional people. That's why they take to the streets to riot when the government upsets them. Throughout the centuries, the English have rioted to express their displeasure.

A tragic demonstration took place in 1819 on St Peter's Field, Manchester, in the north west of England. A crowd of about 60,000 to 80,000 gathered to protest about the Corn Laws (they kept the price of corn high) and the lack of voting rights. Local magistrates panicked and sent in the cavalry who charged into the crowd with sabres drawn. Fifteen people were killed and hundreds injured. It was given the name the Peterloo Massacre - a reference to the Battle of Waterloo, four years earlier.

In recent years, one of the biggest riots I can remember was in Central London, around Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, was a demonstration against the Poll Tax - a tax that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was forcing through Parliament. It was the eventual cause of her downfall. The demonstration was violent, cars and other vehicles were damaged and set on fire and shop windows broken.

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Remember too the scenes of grief in the week following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Even in the first couple of hours after her death was announced, before the grieving had become widespread, ordinary people were leaving flowers outside her home at Kensington Palace and crying openly. On the day of her funeral, most businesses, big and small remained closed as a mark of love and respect. Many of them had notices saying something like "Closed out of respect for our Queen of Hearts."

At the same time as people were grieving for Diana, they were angry with the rest of the Royal Family, particularly the Queen, for the perceived lack of respect they showed towards the dead princess. That's why the Queen bowed her head as the coffin went past - an action that would normally have been unthinkable from the sovereign. A big gesture was needed, though, because it was the first time I can remember that large numbers of people were talking openly and angrily about the behaviour of the Queen.

While rioting and public grief are not unique to the English, they don't fit in with the stereotypical English character.

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Although there are devout religious people here in England and many of them are English, this is not a particularly religious country. Very few people attend church on a regular basis. The vast majority of people only go for what we call 'hatches, matches and dispatches' that is christenings, weddings and funerals.

Probably, the majority of people believe in God and most put down the Church of England as their religious denomination. However, attendance at church services has fallen so low that some churches have been closed and it's hard for those that remain open to raise enough money to maintain the buildings. Most seem to have appeals for money for their roofs, towers, bells, etc. In some parishes, one clergyman now has to take services at a three or four different churches on a rota basis because it's no longer cost-effective to pay for clergy to take services at the same time in all churches in the same parish.

Of course not all English people are Christian, they are Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist and many other religions as well.

"The British Empire was created as a by-product of generations of desperate Englishmen roaming the world in search of a decent meal."
Bill Marsano

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If you've seen drunken English football fans rioting and fighting when following the England team or their local football club, you might get the impression that the country is full of drunken louts. If you visit an English town centre on a Friday or Saturday evening, you might get the same impression.

There is no doubt that some people here have a problem with alcohol. Binge drinking, predominantly amongst young people, is a major issue. At the weekends, around midnight, young men and women can be seen totally the worse for drink. They are falling, stumbling and vomiting. Sometimes fights break out and the police make many arrests.

We are not a nation of drunkards, though. Many of us barely touch alcohol from one month to the next and feel no need to get drunk to have a good time. The vast majority of people are only social drinkers, perhaps having a glass of wine with a meal, or a pint of beer sitting outside a pub on a sunny afternoon.

Today, many pubs are more famous for their excellent food and attract customers to eat rather than drink. The main problems come with the very large city centre pubs where young people congregate.

The minimum legal age to buy alcoholic drinks is 18 and the law has been strengthened bringing in severe penalties for publicans who serve anybody under that age with alcohol. All premises where alcohol is sold have to have a licence and publicans can lose their licences.

There are also severe penalties for anybody stopped driving a car and found to be over the legal limit for alchohol in the blood. Police can stop a driver if they have cause to suspect he or she has been drinking. It is an offence not to co-operate and take a breath test and, if it shows the driver is over the limit, to refuse to give a sample of blood or urine to confirm the breath test result.

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The main spectator sports in England are football (soccer), rugby and cricket.

Football
The television is usually awash with football matches during the season. It used to be that no football matches were played between 1st May and 31st August. Now it's only the month of June when most matches are forbidden. Football is truly our national sport.

It is almost never called soccer here in England. In the USA it's called soccer to differentiate it from their own game which we call American football so we don't suffer any confusion.

Top football stars earn enormous amounts of money and become international stars - perhaps the most famous is David Beckham.

It's just hard luck for those of us who aren't football fans because we just have to tolerate the English passion for the sport.

For more information, visit the Football Association's site.

Rugby

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Not as popular as football, rugby still attracts a large following particularly in the south-west and north of England as well as Wales and Scotland.

It is a much more dangerous game than football too. Players don't use the amount of body protection used by American football players and many have been injured. Rugby players can usually be identified by their broken noses, cauliflower ears and other injuries. Some players have died or been permanently paralysed while playing the game but that isn't very common nowadays.

Rugby was developed at the public school of the same name (public schools in England are, in fact, very expensive fee paying schools that attract children of the wealthiest families). The game still has a more upper class image than the more working class image of football. That is deceptive, though, because both games are enjoyed right across the class spectrum.

There are two kinds of rugby with somewhat different rules, they are rugby union and rugby league.

You can get more information about rugby union on the International Rugby Board website and about rugby league on the site of almost the same name.

Cricket

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Cricket is a difficult game for foreigners who haven't been brought up with it to understand, to put it mildly. It seems very slow as matches can last up to five days and then end in a draw. There has been a move to speed up the game with more one day games where a draw is much harder to accomplish.

For cricket afficionados, the five day game can be very thrilling indeed. The England cricket team has had its problems over many years but in 2005 it won the Ashes - a traditional series of games played against Australia which England hadn't won for 18 years. All of us who watched the final match which England needed to win the Ashes, can testify that it was nail biting stuff. In the end, with England ahead, bad light stopped play. When this happened, Australians spectators donned their sunglasses while English fans put up umbrellas and put on their raincoats. It was all very good-natured and quite amusing, especially as England won, not only the match but the Ashes.

People who don't understand cricket ask what sort of game stops for lunch, tea, bad light and bad weather? Of course the answer is a civilised one!

The main cricket playing nations are England, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, Pakistan, Barbados and other Caribbean countries.

This is a humorous description of the rules of cricket:

"When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out, he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who are all out all the time, and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game."

If you want to find out about the real rules or more information, visit the MCC's website.

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Perhaps we English are best known for our system of social class. At one time, it was of supreme importance.

At the top were royalty and then dukes, lords, earls and other assorted nobility. Beneath them were very wealthy people who had made their money in trade or industry. These were despised by the upper classes, the nobility. Then came professional people like doctors and clergymen, then white collar workers, next were the working class and then the poorest - the underclass.

World War I disrupted and helped to break down the class system. The deaths of so many men in the trenches and conscription caused a shortage of labour during the war which, because of the dead and severely wounded, continued when the war ended. It led to a rise in wages for ordinary people and more mobility of labour.

Additionally, the nobility suffered as their fortunes declined. They had to marry into the wealthy families of industrialists and trades people.

The Second World War continued the process which has speeded up since the 1960s and all the social changes seen then and in the following decades.

It's not true to say the class system is completely dead in England. It still continues but is less important. People can still be judged by their accent, the clothes they wear and how they hold their knives and forks, silly as this may seem. However, with the children of wealthy families routinely being sent to the expensive public schools, it is no longer possible to tell whether their families are in industry or trade just from the way they speak. Indeed, many of these young people assume a more working class accent as it is more fashionable.

Although social class divisions still exist, they are no longer very important and most visitors will see little trace of them.