Some reflections on what it means to be English.

 

The English are known for their stupidity and hypocrisy. They're also known for being suspicious or impervious to new ideas. They also value eccentricity and like having hobbies such as Morris dancing, stamp collecting, boozing, fishing and pigeon racing. Napoleon, thought that the English were a 'perfidious' race of people and a nation of shopkeepers.

Thankfully, I can't think that a country like England, could produce an Adolf Hitler or a Benito Mussolini. We're really not a nation of power worshippers or power lovers, nor do we treat anybody in a uniform, like a tin God. George Orwell said that soldiers don't goose-step in England, because they're afraid that people will laugh at them. Yet, Oswald Mosley, had his British Union of Fascists, dressed up in the garb of Italian fascists giving the Nazi salute, as they marched through the streets of London, singing the Horst-Wessel Lied, the anthem of the German Nazi Party. It never seemed to occur to Mosley, how unpatriotic this would appear in the eyes of many English people.

At one time, the English didn't like standing armies, policemen, factories, or government's telling them how to live their lives. There was no such thing as gun laws in Victorian England or a drugs policy. In Liberal England, elections were generally riotous and expensive affairs, because electors had to be bribed. Politicians on the hustings often had dead cats and insults thrown at them. Politics, was far more honest in those days of rotten and pocket boroughs, because everybody knew that it was bent. The Duke of Portland's government of 1807-9, abjured the labels 'Whig' and 'Tory' altogether, and simply called themselves, "the friends of Mr. Pitt."

We've had would-be dictators in Britain and there are English people who are sympathetic to Fascism and the Nazis. But, both Oswald Mosley (BUF) and John Tyndale (NF), sounded like Shakespearean actors when they spoke. There was something rather clownish and ridiculous about both of them.

The English aren't really a political people because they generally dislike politics and politicians. They basically don't trust the bastards and think that they're in politics to line their own pockets, and they're right.

The American, Bill Bryson, makes some very interesting observations about the English and the English way of life, in his books. Goethe, said that the English were 'complete men', even when they being 'complete fools'. The American, Ralph Waldo Emerson, felt than "no nation was ever so rich in able men" (as England), but added that they had a "saving stupidity." I think we can learn a lot from what foreigners think and say about us.