St. George

Now I consider myself as a patriotic Englishman, this doesn’t mean I epitomise Scrooge’s humbug nature to taxes, the poor or immigrants whilst downing gallons of German lager and spouting that our country is better than everybody else’s because of  a certain man’s left foot, nor does it mean that I do not appreciate the culture and arts of other countries and create my own version of rounder’s played  in a so-called ‘world series’ of which my country fields the only teams. It means that I am proud to be part of a country who has invented everything from Gravity (technically true) to Computers and has given us a culture of the arts spanning from Beowulf to Delius (if you don’t know who he is, keep reading) and is one of the only country’s in the world to have reinstated the monarchy after ridding ourselves of that tyrant Cromwell.

However, when this argument is rallied forth in the battle of patron saint’s days, when it is used as a rapier to fence off the international importance of St Patrick’s Day, and national importance of St Andrew’s day  and parries and spars to stamp through the importance of giving England a national St George’s Day, the same old arguments are given. The first of these is that we as a nation are racist, to which I retort with the obscene eloquence that is unbefitting of this righteous magazine. England and latterly Britain is probably the least racist country there has ever been, we are a mongrelled mixing pot of identities who hold the accolade for being the first country to completely abolish slavery and being the stalwart defender of freedom against fascism and Nazi’s who, if you didn’t know, we put a stop to using what is effectively now the Territorial Army. Yes, some nutter may of made a certain speech about blood and rivers but have you actually read the lyrics of the French National Anthem, have you seen the over-zealous requirements to even holiday in America and I won’t even mention General Franco of Spain.

It is the consensus, and rightly so, that everybody who is legally living in England is English, no matter what creed or other national identities you might have. So why are bodies of authority telling us that we can’t celebrate our dragon-slaying patron saint with a day of frivolities because they believe that someone who has foreign heritage cannot think for themselves and either celebrate his/her English identity or use their well earned right to protest. In my eyes the ignorance of the bodies of authority are causing racism by creating divides in our multi-cultural society and allowing those bandwagon-hopping Daily Mail readers a platform which tarnishes the reputation of this magnificent country.

A second common argument used against this debate is that we do not have the national identity and culture found in places such as Ireland and Scotland. Well, if Guinness can  create a national identity out of stout, I’m sure I can out of a fable. For those of you who don’t know the legend of St George (or Georgie-boy to his mates) or think he was a junkie who got  dark-age narcotic-like hits out of slaying dragons, let me transport you to Ye Olde Times to tell you the story of when George was travelling to Lybia, where incidentally he met a poor hermit who told him that a Dragon was ravishing the land and demanding to eat a fair maiden a day which had left just the Egyptian king’s daughter as the last living maiden and the next victim of the Dragon. George was not having this, so after a few consolatory words, he rode to the Dragon and jabbed his spear at his scales in the hope he would slay the Dragon. Instead his spear shattered, leaving George defenceless and currently falling from his horse. He landed and rolled under a fortunately placed magic orange tree which protected him from the Dragon’s poison and, recovered, he set out to bare knuckle box the dragon to death. The Dragon meanwhile spat poison at him, splitting his armour in two which made Georgie mad, so he unsheathed his sword and pierced the Dragon under his scale-less wing, killing him, and then preceded not to shout ‘Who are yah, Who are yah!’

Pretty fable – yes – but more importantly an allegory for summing up all the English national identity. The will to not give in, the scope to succeed against all odds and the defence of innocents all sound like stereotypical English traits to me. These are and until recently, where we seem to have lost our way, have always been the virtues which make the English, English. And as for culture, I can’t think of another country where they are so engrossed in the culture of others, that they are ignorant of their own ripe and fertile arts. How many of us have actually read Dickens, Chaucer and Marvell (the poet not the comics), watched the products of Peter Brook, David Lean and Shakespeare  (Lord knows he wasn’t meant to be studied in stuffy classrooms), appreciated the works of Brunel, Darwin and Hawking and listened  to the music of Edward Elgar, Benjamin Britten and Fredrick Delius. Our culture and heritage is here, and if we embraced it rather than straddling other countries such as America’s we would not be viewed through the worlds microscope, as drunken, rude and arrogant.