On being English...

I stopped being British - except in the formal sense of Britain being my country - the day someone decided that a twee little song written by Roy Williamson in the 1960s was the Scottish 'anthem'. It's not that I have anything against 'Flower of Scotland' as a song but that the sentiment it displays to me as an Englishman is "not welcome here".

We've been here a long time us English - the basis of the laws, language and culture came here with the Saxons. In my county of Kent we still remember this, marking the place of the Saxon - English - cathedral beneath the grander Norman cathedral in Rochester. And despite the best efforts of subsequent know-alls, the essence of English common-sense remains. The idea that law is enforced, adjudicated and administered by our peers not those who claim superiority still clings on - the magistrate, the jury and the common law remain at the heart of our legal system. The place is ours not theirs - although sometimes they forget.

There still seems a reluctance among our betters - judges, civil servants, broadcasters, writers - to accept the idea of England. To allow us to claim it as our heritage and birthright. And their weapon of anti-English choice is racism. We must not lay claim to Englishness since it excludes the children of immigrants - as if Englishness was ever a thing of blood. Such people suggest that, since half of London's population is now non-white (whatever that may actually mean), it is no longer an English city.

But when I meet a fellow Englishman, I do not ask for a genealogy - for proof of his Englishness. All I ask is that he is from here - and that being "from here" matters to him. I don't care whether he was born in a Punjabi village or a Turkish slum, I care only that he cares about England. And that he will make his contribution to our history.

That history isn't one of kings and prime ministers, nobles and castles, bishops and judges but one of people - farmers, millers, brewers, travellers, singers, writers. Of craftsmen and creators. It is a story of the men who built the cathedral not the bishop who commanded it built. It isn't that we know the names of these Englishmen. It's true their names are in the graveyards, we can read the generations there, but it matters more that their work carved England - the stories, the songs, the myths. And that these Englishmen still carve that story - not in words or paintings but in all our lives, in the culture that envelops us and cares for us.

And those who think being English is about race do all us English people an injustice - whether it's some ghastly snob of a Guardian writer or some badly tattooed thug from the EDL. And not just today's generation but a hundred generations whose love of this place made it so wonderful. Those people who laid out the fields, built the roads, dredged the rivers, constructed the harbours - who shaped our place and who still shape that place today. And who remember - for whatever reason, the people who helped, not in an off-hand way but prominently and significantly:

Maybe, most of the time, we walk past this remembering - not giving it heed or attention. But sometimes, either because we're asked or because we've taken that moment to stand and stare, we notice. A little chink of our ordinary past shows itself. And we smile, perhaps get a tear or breathe deeply in our remembering. But we are shown again what it is to be English - why the place matters.

And - as Cloke says to George in "An Habitation Enforced" - it all takes time and care:

"All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp'ry job of it; and by the time the young master's married it'll have to be done again. Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we've ever drawed. You put 'em in an' it's off your mind or good an' all. T'other way--I don't say it ain't right, I'm only just sayin' what I think--but t'other way, he'll no sooner be married than we'll lave it all to do again. You've no call to regard my words, but you can't get out of that."

I suppose that being English is a state of mind, a feeling that the place fits like an old coat. One where you know its history - how the green stain got there, where you caught the sleeve on the thorn bush, how you lost your purse in the lining. And when you put it on, it just feels right. You don't need twenty generations in the village to feel like this -oh, it helps - just English mud on your boots and a moment to look around you.

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Home: the idea of England

The Leeds-Liverpool Canal, Bingley

What is the answer to the question that Channel 4 put to Ed Miliband - "in what way are you English?"

Like Ed Miliband, I can give the answer that I was born in England and have lived here all my life. But that doesn't really answer the question - as Ed Miliband discovered! Nor does the talk of vague 'values' cut the mustard - Ed Miliband talked of stoicism and the term "mustn't grumble" but that is no more a definition of Englishness than saying that the Irish like a song. It's true but not sufficiently distinguishing.

The problem is that, if you have to try and explain what it means to be English - especially as a politician being interviewed - you fall into the trap that it has any rational explanation. There is not set of characteristics, values or features that define Englishness - as a moments thought would tell you. The grizzled ex-miner from Sunderland has little in common with the shiny-faced public school boy from Winchester except that both will likely tell you they're proud to be English. The farmer's wife from Devon shares little with the girl of the tube but both will say they're English.

It is in here that we might find the tricksy definition that Ed Miliband was seeking - England and Englishness is defined by its importance to us, we the English make England. Just as the neighbourhood in which we live - village, suburb, street - is important to us, just as the place we're from is important, the nation is important. We are comfortable with the idea of England and it needs no explanation. It's the sense that a little charm can make your throat tighten and your eyes moisten - not a jingoistic pride but a feeling of rightness, comfort, of being at home:

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!

For sure, England is about tradition, heritage, old ale and new cider. Absolutely, England is about the towns and the roads, the shared history pounded into those places by our ancestors. Of course England is about achievements, things built and seas sailed. But England is more than that, it is our place of comfort, our familiar, our home. It is not Britain -that is for monarchs, prime ministers, it is a thing of empires or governments and a grand thing too. England is where our boots mark the soil, it is the thing that makes our hearts sing. It is home.

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So does Ed Miliband really like morris dancing?

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Today Ed Miliband, for reasons known only to those who advise him, has come over all English:

We in the Labour Party have been too reluctant to talk about England in recent years. We’ve concentrated on shaping a new politics for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. But some people in England felt Labour’s attention had turned away.

That something was holding us back from celebrating England too. That we were too nervous to talk of English pride and English character. Connecting it to the kind of nationalism that left us ill at ease.

I am pleased for Mr Miliband. Outside the Labour Party people have never stopped talking about England, have never been "too nervous" to talk of English pride and English character. We smile - with an element of rueful nostalgia - at the old Cecil Rhodes quote:

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

It's true, of course, but no longer in the manner that Rhodes meant it. After all, England is unsurpassingly gorgeous in both its scenery, its heritage and, on a good day, its people.  To live here is a prize worth grasping and to protect the idea of Englishness is a fight worth fighting.

I fear that Ed Miliband's Englishness is somewhat wafer thin but hope it isn't. I wonder whether we're seeing a theme - first raised in Ed's slightly worrying and protectionist, 'Blue Labour' period - of invoking nationalist sentiments, of seeking to capture the idea of English nationhood without changing the substance of English grievance.

No doubt this Englishness won't run to liking morris dancing, folk music or free speech. It will be a card played once or twice - ahead of a major football tournament in which England are competing, for example - to snaffle a little of that working class nationalism that, in truth, Ed Miliband and all around him despise.

So no Ed Miliband doesn't really like morris dancing. His Englishness is worn too lightly for that.

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