Stephen Ladyman
Toast and marmalade. Fried breakfasts with bread dipped in bacon fat. Rainy holidays in seaside towns with penny arcades on every street. Green fields. Berries growing in hedgerows. Beer tasting of hops. Lying in at the weekend. Steaming hot tea when something goes wrong. Steaming hot tea when something goes right. Steaming hot tea just when its time for a cup of steaming hot tea.
Getting sunburned at a cricket match. Losing to Australia. Knowing that they took it more seriously than we did and we could have won if we wanted to. Screaming yourself hoarse at a football match. Losing the penalty shootout. Scraping through the qualification stage of the next competition but immediately believing we are favourites to win.
Orderly queues at bus stops. Seeing a doctor when you need one and not worrying about the cost. Sending the kids to school and not worrying about the cost. Putting food on the table day in and day out.
Moaning about the weather. Moaning about the Council. Moaning about the Government. Saying what you think is right and wrong. Saying it in pubs. Saying it in schools. Saying it in shops and workplaces. Saying it on the radio, on the TV and in newspapers. Saying it to the powerful. Saying it and not being thrown in gaol.
Voting. Winning the election and doing something about the things that don’t work. Losing the election and taking defeat with good grace. Power changing hands without a shot being fired or a brick thrown.
Knowing that there is more to the world than just England. Knowing there are more people in the world than just the English. Visiting them. Learning from them. Coming home.
Not taking ourselves too seriously. Being serious when someone has to be. Honouring heroes. Teaching a new generation of heroes what is right and wrong.
Standing up for fair play. Standing up for a principle. Standing up when others kneel down.
Stephen Ladyman is the Labour MP for South Thanet
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That’s Stephen’s carreer with New Labour down the pan then,he said”England”.
Tally
21 Nov 07 at 6:16 am
Poland was partitioned in the 18th Century between Austria, Prussia and Russia and ceased to exist politically until 1919 but the Poles never forgot that they were Poles. It was only when our British government decided to partition England that I realised that I was English and that we English must stand up for and reclaim our country. You sometimes never know what you miss until you are in danger of losing it. After our family, our nation is the strongest bond.
Though born and brought up in a small town in England, I grew up knowing that I was partly Scottish - my father was a patriotic Scotsman (there is of course no other kind). I was first taken to Scotland, in the cab of a lorry, when I could barely stand. My father humorously claimed that the air was different as soon as one crossed the border. When very small, my sister and I could count up to ten in Gaelic and the first song we learnt was in Gaelic. Even at school, we had a dashing Scots teacher who made sure that, for little English boys, we were unusually well-informed about Robert the Bruce and his battle axe, William Wallace and his two-handed sword and of course the Battle of Bannockburn. My father was a piper as well as a Gaelic speaker. When we were older my sister and I did our homework in the living room to the tremendous sound of pipes as my father and his friend patrolled round the room practising their tunes. Indoors, the volume of sound made by two pipers was impressive and it did wonders for our powers of concentration. Later still, my father made me promise that if he had the misfortune to die in England I would ship his body back to Scotland for burial. Incidentally, in all my visits to Scotland I never met the “mean” Scotsman of legend. On the contrary, my Scottish relations and their friends, though not at all well off, almost overwhelmed us with their hospitality and generosity. Although was very proud of being a Scot, my father was nevertheless not at all anti-English. He worked in England for 30 years. The English had always made him welcome and treated him well, he told me, and he had no complaints at all.
I was of course aware that my mother and her relations were English and that they saw things rather differently. They seemed a lot more relaxed in their Englishness, as befits the majority indigenous population. In those days many English towns still celebrated St George;s Day, a celebration that is now happily returning, and so we joined in both English and Scottish events. I cannot recall when I realised that I was in fact English but I always enjoyed having one foot in Scotland as a “second country”, one whose culture and people I liked enormously. We lived in Luton, a town that had grown from immigration - first in the 19th century when labourers moved in from the surrounding countryside to join in the straw plait trade and hat manufacturing; then in the early 20th century from all over the Britain and Ireland for jobs in motor manufacturing, engineering and building; later still from the middle of the 20th century from the West Indies, India and Pakistan. Perhaps this is why I am never taken for an Englishman - I have been mistaken for an Italian (in France), an Irishman (on the ferry to Dun Laoghaire), a member of the Romany people (at university), an Austrian (in Germany), a Norwegian (in Norway and by a Norwegian taxi-driver!) - except in Scotland, where I am immediately diagnosed as an Englishman. In those days there was no serious trouble in Luton between the immigrant groups. The Irish fought the most, but among themselves and only with fists.
Englishness as I grew up was thus taken for granted. People said England when they meant Britain. That annoyed the Scots as did post boxes in Scotland bearing the legend EIIR. Then suddenly, around the year 2000, England ceased to exist. It disappeared from EU maps. Following the creation of national assemblies which provided devolution to Scotland and Wales, the British government announced (quietly so that few noticed) that England was to be divided into regions. Over 1000 years of national history was to be set aside in favour of recent, meaningless regions which, apart from Yorkshire, lacked any cultural or historic identity. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister explained that this was because England was “too big” to fit in with the Labour government’s idea of the United Kingdom. It became official policy to refer to the “nations and regions of Britain”. The British government poured money into promoting and researching regional assemblies. All regions were to be offered a referendum. Then as the English began to resist, the first round of referendums was restricted to the North East, the North West and Yorkshire. Finally, the North-East was selected for the first referendum. The British government clearly hoped to achieve a “domino” affect but lost by 78% to 22%. The British government has not given up. Ministers have been appointed “to represent the Government” in each of the so-called regions. It has become official policy to call England “Britain”. The Prime Minister, Mr Brown, has announced that “Britishness”, whatever that is, will be taught in English schools but not in Welsh or Scottish schools. He says “this country” (not England) when he refers to health, education and transport in England. Supermarkets flag up Scottish and Welsh produce with their national flags while English produce bears only the Union flag. Henry VIII is described as a British king.
We English are now the “Poles” in partitioned Britain. It has become essential to state and defend our Englishness. Just as Mr Brown knows that he is Scottish and British, so must we English remind everyone that we are English first and foremost. Recently I met up with a school-friend I had not seen for nearly 40 years. “When we were at school, Ian,” he told me, “if anyone asked me, I used to say I was British. Now I reply that I am English.” So must we all. I thought I lived in a democracy, protected by the great statutes - Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, the Declaration of Rights - and the Common Law of England. No longer. We English have never been asked what sort of government we want for our country. Being English means that in the last resort we must stand up for England and defend our liberties. We are told that devolution is the “price we pay” for the Union. If that price includes the partition of England, it is too high. Neither the people of England nor the people of Scotland voted for the Union. I have voted in the past for all three of the Unionist parties. No more. Like any other British colony, England must now demand self-government or independence. For me, Englishness now means something that we must celebrate, reclaim and defend against the insidious creep of the British government.
Ian Campbell
21 Nov 07 at 9:49 am
A lovely contribution by Stephen Ladyman (as befits an MP with such a lovely name). But when did he last find “orderly queues at bus stops”? Not in London, I’m afraid!
But I respectfully disagree with almost everything that Mr Ian Campbell says in his comment above. It seems paradoxical that someone with a Scottish name and evidently strong Scottish connections should be so insistent that we English “must” demand ’self-government or independence’ for England, so hostile to the union of England and Scotland, and so short-sighted as to regard devolution as some kind of partition. I’m as English as most (and apparently more so than Mr Campbell!) but I regard myself as British first and English only second; I value my shared citizenship with the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish; I would regard the secession of any of the four UK nations as a kind of amputation; and my only complaint about devolution (which is manifestly a necessary but not sufficient condition for the preservation and prosperity of the Union) is that it hasn’t been completed by binding the four nations together into a full federation (see discussion of this here).
Brian B.
http://www.barder.com/ephems/
Brian Barder
21 Nov 07 at 11:23 am
Separatism is a last resort as far as I am concerned. But after ten years of asymmetrical devolution that is manifestly unfair to England, and with no sign of a federation along the lines that Brian suggests, it is becoming an increasingly attractive proposition.
When will England be asked? When do we get our say?
Or do we have to threaten with separatism before we are asked? It does appear that nationalist whingeing has its dividends and it would appear that the English are learning lessons from their British counterparts.
With regard to orderly queues I read recently that newly arrived foreign students were being taught how to queue. I remember the article distinctly because anthropologist Kate Fox noted queuing as a very English occupation and mused upon how it irked the English to have these students push in (the students were oblivious to what they were doing, and the English too polite to point out the offence).
Gareth Young
21 Nov 07 at 11:38 am
“Power changing hands without a shot being fired or a brick thrown.”
Oh dear. Who needs to re-take English history?
Charlie Marks
21 Nov 07 at 6:10 pm
Blimey, is Stephen Ladyman, Ron Manager in disguise then?
‘Toast and marmalade. Fried breakfasts with bread dipped in bacon fat. Rainy holidays in seaside towns with penny arcades on every street. Green fields. Berries growing in hedgerows. Beer tasting of hops…. sweated jock straps with oozing linament, chunky centre forwards with bulging hamstrings, oranges and woodbines at half time, harmless horseplay in the showers and brycreemed manes coifurred into mallard ducky shapes’…
Alfie the OK
23 Nov 07 at 9:19 am
You jest but actually Ron Manager is very English. Jumpers for goalposts; small boys dribbling round big boys; rush goalie, stick goalie; stick it to him, Ooo!
Gareth Young
23 Nov 07 at 9:26 am
You know who Ron Manager was based on don’t you?
The late Alec Stock, manager of Luton Town during the early ’70’s.
Alfie the OK
25 Nov 07 at 5:06 pm
Separatism is the last resort for me too, as with Gareth. The form of devolution proposed for England by the British government is, notwithstanding Brian’s objection to the term, partition. England is divided into nine regions, with no minister, First or otherwise, to speak for England. The only debate among the regionalists is how much power should be devolved to each region - even Prescott wasn’t allowed to offer as much as he wanted. Regionalism will only make the ‘post code lottery’ even worse than it is now. England should have national control over its own health, education, police, transport, cultural and other services. The Government’s failure even to ask the people of England what form of government they wish to have is a denial of democracy. Those Unionists who believe that an English Parliament would mean the end of the Union - and not all do take that view - would be able to make that case in a referendum. To rule out a referendum because they might not like the result brings the Union into disrepute. In the 21st century the Union must rest on the consent of the people not on the supremacy of Parliament.
Ian Campbell
18 Jan 08 at 3:52 pm