The English Vs. the British Vs. the Rest of the World: That Old Chestnut

It is the way our media present us to the world. The editor only has so much space for copy; the readers only have so much attention span. We invented the Beatles and the Stones? A glossier Sunday magazine may have the point made somewhere that really, the Beatles and Stones reinvented England. Even then, we were divided.

Carnaby Street did not set the trend; they responded to demand, the demand for a new idea. Vivienne Westwood, The Who, Princess Margaret, David Bailey and so on, reinvented a new England in the 1960s. It is long gone, many are dead. Oasis and the Spice girls? They failed to reinvent England in any way but highlighted how tolerant the English are to change, however trite. People from a working class background can still succeed here.

No, the English have moved on and divided themselves up like the splitting cells of the amoeba that is our nationality. For convenience, the cool Englishman is James Bond. He has a Tux, the girls, an Aston Martin or BMW, a mission to preserve all the above. The story is funded by Americans and Hollywood; the man himself can be Irish, Scottish or English but oddly never allowed a Welsh, Cockney or Birmingham accent which would not seem right somehow. He’ll do; if that’s what Johnny Foreigner wants, he’ll do just fine.

Meanwhile our country abounds with comic stereotypes. To listen to us you would think all our truck drivers are fat, double bypass eaters of bacon and eggs in greasy spoon cafes. Did you know all Scotsman are kilt wearing alcoholics with dour-in-the-day and almost Latin-in-the-evening temperaments? The Irish are simple peasants unless they get educated whereupon they become authors, poets or comedians? The Welsh sing and act; if they are any good, they end up in Las Vegas or Hollywood – which now means they are ‘Chav’ and therefore, in poor taste. There may be some truth here but you would need a gap year visit to track them down.

The worst thing the British do is fail to insist on a proper government; an expensive laziness. We gave all our cash to entrepreneurs, big business and lazy shiftless work-shy people. We had oil once. We spent it down the pub and lent it to the wrong people who in turn spent it in bars and didn’t keep up with their mortgage payments. The Germans and the Chinese sneer at us for poor money management. Funny they didn’t mind us buying their BMWs, Audis and Porsches; their computers, laptops, DVD players and flat screen TVs. We invented most of these things and gave the blue prints away.

The English? Who is typically English? Do they care? They point out a man in a bowler hat and an umbrella to you. ‘Like him,’ they say but you may never see the English man look wonderingly at you and cast a doleful eye at his associates. They say he can count his friends on one hand. So many?

A last word on imperialism. This defines the English as against the Brit. When Britain does something well, we all cheer. When the subject of Empire comes up, all of a sudden the Welsh were busy mining coal for the Imperial Fleet; the Scots were wiping their hands on an oily rag in the engine room of a tramp steamer off Argentina and the Irish mutter about Cromwell, King Billy and potatoes. We cannot win. It is a good job we won already.