St Paul's Cathedral enveloped in smoke during the Blitz is a potent symbol of English resilience (Source: here)
Here is a good question to ask someone if you want to understand their culture: what is the greatest virtue among your people? The greatest virtue in English culture is undoubtedly resilience. It is celebrated everywhere. In the steadfast loyalty of fans of crappy football teams. In the clapping for nurses at the height of covid. In Diana’s struggle against the royal family. In the grim determination to “get on with Brexit” despite its obvious failures. Not a day passes without a reminder of English stoicism during the Blitz.
As befits a great cultural virtue, English resilience has its fair share of martyrs. English resilience reaches its heroic pinnacle in the glorious dead – Gordon’s sacrifice at Khartoum, the slaughter of Redcoats at Isandlwana, and Scott’s icy death on the South Pole.
Short of dying, overcoming adversity against the odds will do nicely too. After all, nothing screams resilience, determination, and resourcefulness more than a victorious underdog. England loves the underdog. One of the most famous underdogs is King Henry V and his exhausted and vastly outnumbered English forces, who emerged victorious against the French at the Battle of Agincourt. Think of the heroes of Rorke’s Drift. And snatching victory from the jaws of defeat on the beaches of Dunkirk.
Resiliency and underdogs are ubiquitous in English popular culture. Susan Boyle became all England’s heroin when she rose to stardom in the 2009 ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ competition. Better still, turn on the radio and you will soon hear one of countless upbeat and defiant English songs written about resilience. Tubthumping by Burnley band Chumbawanba is a great example:
“I get knocked down
But I get up again
You are never gonna keep me down”
(Source: YouTube)
The spirit of the underdog also features prominently on English screens. Movies like ‘Brassed Off’ about striking miners under Thatcher and ‘The Full Monty’ about laid-off steel workers in Sheffield are all about the underdog. So often accompanied by humour, the underdog spirit lives on in the happy-go-lucky cheeky optimism of ‘Lovely Jubbly’ Del Boy.
Resilience and the underdog are worshipped in sports. Eddie the Eagle became an instant hero when he soared to glory at the 1988 Winter Olympics. So did a young Manchester United team when it turned the tables on favourites Bayern Munich in the Champions League final in 1999. Liverpool did the same by defeating of AC Milan in 2005, from 3-0 down. Think also of Leicester City’s Premiership title in 2016. And the countless ‘giant killers’ of the FA Cup. Towering above them all: England’s footballers overcoming the mighty Germans to win the 1966 World Cup.
Eddie the Eagle (Source: here)
England’s love for the underdog is so deep that occasionally it graciously extends itself to underdogs from rival cultures, such as the American race horse Seabiscuit and unseeded Boris Becker when he won Wimbledon at the age of 17. It was clearly no accident when Rishi Sunak portrayed himself as an underdog in his bid to become prime minister in 2022 (See here)
Of course, there is nothing uniquely English about celebrating virtues. All cultures do. The Japanese worship perfection. The highest virtue in Scandinavia is equality. In America, it is success. One thing, however, sets the English resilience apart from the virtues of other cultures, namely that resilience is a conditional virtue, meaning it only makes sense if there is something to be resilient against. Or to put it more bluntly, English resilience only makes sense if life is a bit crap.
Which it generally is. Resilience emerged as the highest virtue in England specifically because life has been for a long time and remains to this day a struggle for many people. In fact, the perception of life as a long, bitter struggle is so pervasive in England that politicians long ago developed highly sophisticated ways to exploit this perception through finely honed myths that purport to ‘explain’ why English life is so hard.
The two big political parties of England – Labour on the left and the Conservatives on the right – have each developed their own myths. Labour’s myth is that life is hard in England because of the class system. At first sight, this seems reasonable. After all, England has been riven with class divisions for hundreds of years and unlike, say, France, England never had revolution to get rid of the problem.
The legacy of England’s class system is obvious for anyone to see. Perhaps its most conspicuous manifestation is the de facto two-party political system, which pits a party that traditionally represented workers against another party that historically represented landowners and capitalists. The House of Commons, unlike most other parliaments, seats the two main parties not in a semi-circle, but on benches in direct opposition to each other. Echoes of the class system ring from in the House of Lords, whose members to this day remain unelected, with new life peers appointed only by the powerful.
Opposing benches in the House of Commons (Source: here)
England’s school and university systems also reflect the class system, with expensive private schools for the privileged and poorly funded schools of lower quality for lesser people. The healthcare system in England is similarly divided into an expensive, high-quality private system and a struggling National Health Service (NHS). Even sports are class-riven with Rugby for the upper classes and football for workers. People’s choices of professions, how they speak the English language, and geography itself are affected by class; Derby and Sevenoaks are as different as Portugal and Sweden.
Yet, it is important to differentiate between the visible legacies of the class system and the legal and administrative structures that once propped up the class system. Few if any of the latter remain. Today, in principle, anyone from any layer of English society can advance to any position they want through hard work and a bit of luck.
To the extent that the English class system is alive and well today, it is therefore mainly alive and well in the minds of the English. The best proof that English class structures no longer constitute a binding constraint on socio-economic advancement is the success of the many immigrants, who come to England to study and pursue careers. They are clearly not part of the English upper classes, yet many of them become spectacularly successful, achieving great things in the entertainment industry, hospitality, banking, finance, universities, sports, and industry.
Now consider the Tories, who nurture their own myths to explain why life is so difficult in England. The Tory argument is that life is tough mainly because England is under constant threat from mighty and barbaric enemies abroad, although the Tories are also quick to point out that the English are more than a match to any foreign enemy. As historian Robert Saunders puts it, the Tory myth is the…
“…the story of "plucky little Britain", standing with its back to the wall in the face of overpowering odds. It's the story of the underdog, hopelessly outnumbered but somehow finding a way through. It's the story of Dunkirk: the fishing smacks & pleasure boats that defied the Nazi war machine. It's Sir Francis Drake, singeing the beards of the mighty Spanish Empire. It's the lonely soldier on the coast, undaunted as the skies darken beneath the shadow of the Luftwaffe.”
(Source: here)
The Tory myth is extremely powerful. The marshall spirit is so ingrained in most English people that it is taboo even to mention cuts in military spending. The military is almost never called into question, regardless of its conduct, which is by no means spotless.
You cannot criticise them (Source: here)
The military is held in such high regard due to the myth of constant foreign threats. And the English fall for this ruse over and over again. Its latest manifestation, which underpins the recently approved Rwanda Refugee Rendition policy, is that refugees – of all people – are now deadly foreign enemies.
Before refugees threatened England’s very survival, it was Russians at the gates. Before that, the Europeans were the baddies (ultimately leading to Brexit). Going back further, the enemies were variously Saddam Hussain with his (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction, Slobodan Milosevich and Serbia in the Bosnian conflict, Argentina in the Falklands war, the Mau Mau rebels of Kenya, Nasser of the Suez, and Gandhi of India. The prize for biggest baddy of them all, however, goes to Germany. Going back even further, there was Napoleon, the Normans, the Vikings, and the Romans. English resilience has always demanded a struggle and England’s many formidable foreign enemies never fail to deliver, at least in the minds of the English.
Tory mythology about foreign enemies is largely fictional. Like Labour’s myth about class, the Tory myth mostly lacks basis in reality. In fact, English history at least as far back as the Norman Conquest has mostly featured England as the aggressor nation, threatening and conquering others. As Robert Saunders notes, the reality is that England…
“…was not some "plucky", "swashbuckling" little chap, punching above its weight. It was a military and economic titan, with the largest fleet on earth, total dominance of global trade, the world's reserve currency & the biggest empire in history.”
(Source: here)
Why the need for these myths? The reason why political parties in England nurture myths is that they confer great benefits onto the partied. For one, myths are a reliable source of explanations for English misery, with the added benefit that they are also readily digested by a miserable electorate dying to be reminded of resilience and past glories.
Even more importantly, the myths enable the political establishment to detract attention from England’s real problems, which, as a result, are left to fester, condemning England to long-term decline. Decline in turn creates more misery and therefore even more opportunity to wallow in virtuous resilience.
There is a vicious cycle in motion here in which misery encourages resilience, which then incentives politicians to invent myths that in effect prevent the real issues from being addressed, so that misery deepens even further, which then encourages yet more virtuous resilience, and so forth.
At the heart of this vicious cycle lies England’s most fundamental problem: political neglect. Politicians on both sides of spectrum consistently and deliberately fail to deliver proper solutions to the country’s problems, fobbing off voters with myths instead.
And let us not pretend that there are no problems in England. The country is beset with serious economic challenges, including Brexit, low productivity, income inequality, the collapse of public services, etc. Political neglect is particularly manifest in the public sector, which is more directly under political control than any other sector of the economy. England’s health system is imploding with record waiting lists and mental healthcare in complete free-fall. The transport infrastructure is falling apart. Untreated sewage pours into rivers and onto beaches. The criminal justice system reduces neither crime rates nor re-offending rates. The police force is unable to cope, and the armed forces are still better suited for far flung imperialist adventures than defending England.
NHS waiting list (Source: here)
What will change things for the better in England? Not a set of specific fixes. Instead, root and branch political reform is required. Political neglect is a direct consequence of the first-past-the-post electoral system, which guarantees that politicians focus on rivals instead of issues. Until the political system changes, there will never be fundamental improvement in England (see here).
Resilience is a virtue. No question. However, in England’s case resilience is also a tragedy. For far too long, the English have allowed their admiration of resilience to become a source of manipulation through myths of class struggle and wartime heroics spun as distractions to permit a predatory political elite to take turns in power without ever having to deliver real improvement for the country. Later this year, the English will once again go to the ballot box to vote in a general election. They will, as always, be presented with the appearance of choice. And, as in the past, the choice will be pure deception. The only game in town remains the same as it has ever always been: to screw over England’s resilient, but gullible pleb.
The End