Winston Churchill was aware that any mention of England was simply not acceptable.Since the 1970s there has been assiduously cultivated amongst the academic elite and media class, a habit of public belittlement of England and the English. For a country who has produced so many Nobel Prize winners in every field of human concern, and has culturally influenced the modern world more than any other, there is an astonishing lack of national identity.
writes Oliver Haiste in an otherwise excellent article about the modern day plight of England. But the anti-England/English ethos actually pre-dates the 1970s.
"There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is ENGLAND" - WINSTON CHURCHILL, 1874-1965.
So, when did it all begin, and just what's with this tendency to make out that EVERYTHING, good or bad, began in the 1970s? Time and time again, we examine the true facts and find them different.
And of course there is the famous Orwell quote from 1941:
ReplyDelete"England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God save the King than of stealing from a poor box."
Thank you Secret Person, as I have been trying to find that Orwell quote for some time now. Serendipity.
ReplyDeleteNo worries Ginro, its from an essay called 'the Lion and the Unicorn', which is a bizarre patriotic socialist call to arms written during the war. I don't agree with everything in it (the necessity of strong government in war time being an argument for socialism, for example), but he correctly knocks down the intellectuals who support the Russian communists.
ReplyDeleteHowever re-reading it earlier I think his point about England was actually about Britain. You know how England was often used to mean Britain back in the day, and he even admits it himself! Now of course the situation is reversed.
However the Scots and Welsh have opted out of British Empire guilt be re-inventing themselves as the first colonies of an English empire, and leave the English carrying the can of this 'intellectual' (I use inverted commas as their is nothing clever about it) self-loathing and post-imperial guilt.