Uneasy being English: The significance of class for English national sentiments

Introduction

A key debating point within scholarship on national identity in Britain since the mid-1990s has been the implications of the ‘English question’ (Bryant, 2008): whether an English nationalism will emerge post devolution, and which direction, progressive or regressive, this nationalism will take. Devolution and constitutional change, it is argued, have left the English with a political void. As Scotland and Wales are now politically represented nations, albeit only to certain degrees, so England, without such representation, is defined by its absence from these developments. This is a predicament widely discussed within scholarship, and in public and media commentaries.

Many of the early post-devolution commentaries claimed that an English nationalist backlash was on the verge of mobilisation (for examples see Weight, 1999; Cox, 2002). Aughey (2010), for example, identifies the different sets of ‘anxieties’ around the political position of England within post-devolution Britain, as they have been espoused by journalists, political commentators and writers on both the political left and right over the last decade and more. Yet neither the statistical (see Curtice, 2009) nor qualitative (Condor, 2010) evidence provides much support for the claim of an English nationalist backlash. As Mandler (2006: 338) has concluded: ‘Despite repeated assertions that grass-roots interests in English national identity is strong and growing, there is as yet little evidence of it.’ Rather, the defining feature of the English question today appears to be the relative absence of an English nationalism, and of a demand for devolved government, at the popular level. As Bond et al. (2010) state, ‘this contrast between popular perspectives and the views of some elite nationalist figures is fundamental to the limited nature of any English “backlash”’. Curtice (2009) and Condor (2010), drawing respectively on quantitative and qualitative data, both appear to doubt the significance of devolution for the mobilisation of an English nationalism. Curtice’s (2009) own conclusions are that ‘the devolved institutions are no more likely now to be thought to have made a difference (either way) than was the case in 2000, just 12 months after their creation’ (2009: 15). As Curtice continues, ‘it is difficult to argue that there has been a systematic increase in English nationalist sentiment’ (2009: 17) and that the ‘apparent initial trend in 1999 towards feeling more English and less British has not been sustained’ (2009: 19). In as much as we have witnessed a greater tendency to define oneself as English over British, we can also point to a general propensity amongst the populace to reflexively disengage and distance themselves from the very notions of being English, British or anything else (Condor, 2010).

It can be argued that a focus on devolution as a trigger for the development of English national identity, at least for ordinary citizens, is misplaced. Whether or not prompted by devolution, the contemporary landscape of English identity has become problematic. This is most striking in relation to the flying of the St George’s flag, in both nature and scale, on sporting and cultural occasions. There was a time when the Westminster government would have been concerned to emphasise its Britishness, and to not emphasise its Englishness, in order to discursively incorporate Scotland and Wales. Downplaying Englishness appears to be less of a concern for the current Prime Minister, David Cameron, in his own endorsement of the English flag. But there are also reasons to doubt whether flying the English flag on sporting and holiday occasions amounts to a mobilisation of English nationalist sentiment (see Abell et al., 2007) or that it is, in any case, transferable into attitudes towards English devolution or other political aspirations.

In this article I try to understand contemporary sentiments towards being English (and British) less in terms of the responses to political devolution and more in terms of the relationship between Englishness and class. I want to explore how an unequal or hierarchical social order forms part of people’s sentiments towards being English and British. To do this I will draw on qualitative interviews carried out with members of the ethnic majority in England. I wish to examine sentiments of unease towards being English as particularly prominent amongst middle-class people and to demonstrate how their orientation to Englishness can reflect their class position. Before turning to these data, I will consider further the associations between English nationalism, class and the British class system.

English nationalism, class and the absence of social equality

The class and imperial dimensions of Englishness gain their most explicit articulation within Tom Nairn’s The Break Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-nationalism. Nairn’s thesis specifically locates the problem of English nationalism with reference to the English class system, and of its location within British imperialism. For Nairn, it is the inability of an English nationalism to separate itself from this hierarchical system that explains the absence of ‘a normal nationalist sentiment’ amongst the English:

A peculiar repression and truncation of Englishness was inseparable from the structure of British imperialism, and this is one explanation of the salience of racism in recent English politics. The growth of a far right axed on questions of race and immigration is in fact a comment on the absence of a normal nationalist sentiment, rather than an expression of nationalism … The very strength of those bases means that it is harder for system-directed resentment and loss of allegiance to find tolerable expression.

(2003: 67–68)

Among the masses – separated from the intellectuals by the specific abyss of English class – it has too often taken the form of racist populism … Once divorced from the powerful liberalism from-above that previously regulated it, it displays obvious affinities with the old fantasies of the white man’s blood and genetic aptitude for civilisation.

(2003: 68)

As stated, the relationship between elite figures and ‘the people’ is central to how national movements gain support at the popular level. Yet, crucially, in England, the political class, owing to specific political developments, never needed to turn to the populace in order to develop collective notions of the nation beyond its own class. This is not to say that the working classes, or other classes, did not develop their own ideas of English–British national identity, only that the content of theirs would be differentiated from those promoted by the ruling class. Joanna Bourke (1994) provides a discussion of the contrast between national identity as an idea propagated by elites and as understood through the lived experiences of working-class people in East London. Bourke (1994: 171) does indeed illustrate the classlessness of patriotism in relation to empire, church, monarchy and war. The classlessness (seeing oneself as part of a unified nation) derives from working-class people’s sense of participation in these events (e.g. the coronation, schooling, World War Two). Whilst classlessness is secure within the home and their established community institutions, it is less secure outside of these spaces – in the home counties, or in the media – in which the working classes are constructed as ‘a race apart’. ¹

For sure, Nairn’s writings on nationalism have been subject to much criticism, not least because’ of the perception that he is himself speaking as a Scottish nationalist. The association of Englishness with a ruling class (territorially located in the home counties of South East England) is one commonly articulated from the Celtic fringe (Hechter, 1975; Williams, 2003). Writing in the mid to late 1970s, it might be only too expected that Nairn should give so much explicit attention to the competing ideologies of class and nation. For Nairn, England needs a socio-political revolution to create a basis for ‘classlessness’, necessary for an inclusive English nationalism. In the contemporary era we might want to put this differently. That is, there is an absence of an ‘equal’ sense of national membership in England. As I will demonstrate below, the absence of a social equality of Englishness presents itself empirically in a number of ways. It would include an association of Englishness and being English with a dominant class (e.g. with the ruling or upper class, with imperialism or with ‘posh people’). Kumar’s (2010: 481) view of English cultural nationalism, for example, appears in agreement with Nairn’s when he states: ‘it excludes too many groups to make it serviceable for a national identity, and as the basis of an English nationalism it is almost bound to be reactionary.’ The absence of a sense of equal membership would also refer to the exclusion of the working classes from definitions of English national identity, but also to the exclusion of ‘ethnic others’ from categorisations of Englishness (Mann, 2011).

English identity, class and the liberal elite

Despite the changed position of England since the devolution, there remain specific commonplaces of Englishness – of class, imperialism, exclusivity and xenophobia – that limit the extent to which majority people identify with ‘English’ as a collective category. For certain commentators, these ‘illiberal’ associations of Englishness are symptomatic of a failure amongst liberal and left-wing intelligentsia to take ownership of English identity (see Ascherson, 1996, 2005; Cox, 2002). The ‘liberal elite’, ‘liberals’, ‘multiculturalists’ – distinguished from the ordinary people – are commonly presented and criticised, on both the political right and left, for their unease towards an English nationalism. Ascherson (1996), for example, comments on the tendency of ‘university educated liberals’ to prefer British and to reject English, in how they come to define themselves:

I believe it was the huge expansion of higher education in the 1960s, rather than the nationalist surges in Scotland and Wales during the 1970s, which encouraged it. The English began to use the term ‘British’ to describe not only the other inhabitants of the multinational state – but themselves. It was not just that the political and media classes grew aware (led by the BBC) of how irritated Scottish and Welsh audiences became when they were called English. The change went further; the term ‘English’ began to acquire a vaguely improper, even negative flavour to English ears. It implied not only obtuseness to the sensibilities of others, but a right wing nationalist self-assertion (‘There’ll always be an England!’) which was best left to football hooligans or Prom audiences. Before political correctness was even heard of, Englishness became politically incorrect.

From this perspective, ‘English’ is associated with right-wing sensibilities, and ‘British’ with an inclusive national project concerned with social citizenship, the welfare state and the expansion of higher education. It is the benefits that the post-war aspiring working and middle classes received from this expansion that explains the favouring of British over English in how they describe themselves. Concomitantly, these so-called ‘political and media classes’ commonly regard English identity as politically mistaken:

There is an emerging Englishness which is still thought to be slightly incorrect … sadly, the English intelligentsia, or the liberal English middle class, which ought to be leading political developments, ought to be taking over this emerging feeling saying yes, let’s make a democratic, tolerant, forward-looking nation is just sitting back and saying: ‘English nationalism, awful, horrible, leave it to the yobs’.

(Ascherson, 2005; italics added)

And, similarly, by David Cox (2002):

Betrayal by their own leaders has further tried the patience of the English. England’s left-wing elite wishes it was Irish; it hates its fellow countrymen for their stubborn refusal to embrace ideological correctness. Thus, Ken Livingstone ordered London to celebrate St Patrick’s Day, but has forbidden it to celebrate St George’s. Meanwhile, the Blairite elite wishes it was Italian; it despises its countrymen for their vulgarity and stroppiness. Thus, Tony Blair hopes to break England into pieces and to scatter them to the wind for ever in a Europe of the regions.

(Cox, 2002; italics added)

Empirical analysis

In what follows I report on qualitative interview data collected for the ‘nation, class and ressentiment’ project, which formed part of the Leverhulme Programme on Migration and Citizenship. In total, this project involved the collection of 140 qualitative interviews over two periods. This includes 100 interviews with ethnic majority respondents carried out between 2004 and 2006 across three different localities in the west of England – a multiethnic urban neighbourhood; a nearly all-white working-class estate on the edge of a city; and a small rural town (for detailed descriptions of methods, sample and research sites see Fenton and Mann, 2011; Mann, 2011). A second set of 40 qualitative interviews with ethnic majority respondents were subsequently carried out in 2008 at a fourth research site – a middle-class neighbourhood in an urban area in the south of England. ² By targeting people living in different types of localities we were able to achieve variation within the sample along the lines of social class, age and local experience of ethnic diversity.

In each of the interviews a specific qualitative strategy was adopted, which involved talking to people about a wide range of topics before proceeding to ask more direct questions about ‘being English’, ‘British’ or anything else. For the purposes of this article, I focus on responses drawn from individual cases in which themes of class form part of how people talk about English and British, and on responses in which explicit associations are made between class and Englishness. This will involve primarily, although not exclusively, drawing on interviews with white middle-class respondents across each of the research sites. From what has been said thus far, it can be argued that unease towards being English will be more prominent amongst middle-class people (e.g. amongst professionals in education or public sector organisations). In what follows, therefore, I provide examples of the principal ways in which the connections between class and being English present themselves within people’s talk.

Change and social decline in England

I start the empirical account with Linda, a solicitor who was born in 1951.

Researcher: What do you remember most about the country growing up?

Interviewee: [Pause] I remember it as a class-based society. A real sense of us and them. There were at least two Englands. But it was also about being part of Great Britain. The morale in the country. We were proud of the country whether you called it England or Great Britain. They were very much interchangeable for me. I wouldn’t bat an eyelid if someone called me English or British, I am equally happy with both. But I feel we were part of this thing with the Union Jack, we were connected in that sense with the Scottish, Welsh and Irish. We were all part of Great Britain. One heard of Britain being a model for other countries so you thought if it is a model then it can’t be bad. But there was also this sense of divide between the classes, the rich and the poor, the kind of deference in society and respect towards professions. I think now young people are much more outspoken and express themselves more.

In the above extract, Linda makes an explicit reference to class when asked about memories of the country, locating this at a particular period in which empire and Great Britain were still prevalent ideas. Asked to describe memories of the country growing up, Linda refers to a ‘class-based society’, ‘a real sense of us and them’ and ‘two Englands’. This reflects the notion of class as a way of understanding England (see Colley, 1986). Yet, alongside class division, is a horizontal sense of national identity and pride (‘we were part of this thing with the Union Jack we were connected in that sense’, with ‘Great Britain’ and ‘Britain as a model’). Linda emphasises a sense of collective participation being part of Britain, but that this is undermined by class division. On one hand, Linda states that the distinction between ‘English and ‘British’ has little relevance to her and are ‘interchangeable’ (this is similar to Bryant’s (2003: 396) construction of ‘Anglo-British’). At the same time, being English in particular has become increasingly problematic:

Researcher: Do you see yourself as English British or what?

Interviewee: I don’t really see myself as either. The British–English thing has always merged into one for me. It is only very recently that it has become an issue and you have to watch what you say. English has now got tainted by the national front and it’s a negative thing now to say you are proud of being English. You have to be careful what you say in case it is misconstrued. If anything there is a shame and embarrassment that we compare unfavourably. When our people go on holiday they have a reputation for being lager louts and getting drunk. Football matches overseas. There is that shame and embarrassment that people don’t behave very well. So I don’t think there is the same pride as there used to be. But I think there is some pride in our multicultural society.

There is a sense of being squeezed out. I don’t feel this personally, but I am aware of people who feel they can’t be English because we have been so focused on other cultures, you can’t be English anymore. I am aware that some people feel you can’t be proud of being English because it is seen as nationalism and the roots of the gas chamber is when you start being nationalistic. To be English, it has gone a bit tainted in many ways with the National Front. The English flag is something you are ashamed of. I haven’t felt that personally though, but I am aware that some people do. The Welsh and Scottish are encouraged to be themselves, but with the English it is almost like it has been tainted. And we are seeing the English flag so much more. Strange.

Rosemary, born in 1937, draws out further the transformation of Englishness from exhibiting greatness to shame and embarrassment:

Researcher: Do you see yourself as English, British or what?

Interviewee: I feel English I think, I don’t feel any other nationality, but the England I grew up with is very different. I remember we had it drummed into us that we were English and we should be proud and that we are a leading nation. Being English nowadays, it is not only because we have people coming in from abroad that makes me negative, it’s because I can look back when things were different, people didn’t drop littler all over the place, we didn’t have take-away and pizza boxes in the hedge and fast food clutter. People didn’t do it. When I think of English nowadays I immediately think of litter, and football hooliganism, ruffians, it gives the country a bad name.

As with Linda, Rosemary describes a shift from being proud of England as a leading nation to being ashamed of being English. Whilst referring to football hooligans, ruffians, Rosemary’s main emphasis is upon social decline in terms of untidiness, litter and social behaviour. Jim, a retail shop owner born in 1950, provides a similar account of social transformation concerning the decline of empire, but also notices a resurgence of English nationalism focused on English football support:

Researcher: Do you recall a sense of national identity when growing up?

Interviewee: Yes because you were part of it. Britain had an empire. Its role in the world was second to the US but Britain was an important player and we were a country with huge responsibilities. But then I grew up through the period of time when the empire was effectively given away and dissolved and nationality was almost forgotten about. But it strikes me that the energy is returning. Coming back from France once we pitched up at the port to board the ferry and we saw these English, you know these English supporters in their St George shirts and you know these fat, slightly blonde people, vaguely rotund and slightly obese, bright red. The problem is that they think they are the English [his emphasis]. They are what you associate with England today. The idea of being English now is about these poor deluded characters who don’t really understand where they come from and are fundamentally flawed.

Linda, Rosemary and Jim each draw contrasts between the contemporary landscape of English identity and their own memories of growing up in England. There are common themes in their accounts of change and of transformed notions of being English and British. These centre on a shift in the location of Englishness, from associations with Great Britain, empire, pride and social order to associations with football, alcohol consumption and social disorder. As Dennis, an information technology consultant born in 1947, considers:

If I wanted to be, to demonstrate my English side, I would feel like I wouldn’t really be allowed to be; a twerp with a bald head with a union jack and dog on a chain and all that stereotype.

The class associations of Englishness

At several points, the respondents above associate being English with a so-called ‘underclass’. The empirical instances of this include references to yobs, louts and the poor. In exploring these associations further, we find instances in which respondents look not only downwards to the underclass, but also upwards towards the upper classes and aristocracy. In many cases, we find these ‘bi-directional’ associations between Englishness and class forming part of the same passage of text. Marie, a secondary school teacher born in 1975, illustrates this tendency to look to both the upper classes and the underclass when talking about Englishness:

I would probably say English but I would not want to say English because that implies royalty-based nationalism. ‘I am English’ [Marie mimics a ‘posh English accent’]. I think it has become much more problematic. To say you feel English now means you have to immediately disclaim its negative associations. You have to say ‘I am not a British bulldog wearing a skinhead’, you know. To say you are English has negative connotations. It is only okay to say you are English during the football. I know there is a shame and embarrassment now attached to English where you aren’t allowed to say or be proud of it. But growing up you could more. Well you less had to justify Englishness or Britishness or celebrate anything. Where as now you have to think well how does that effect people who don’t want to celebrate x y z, you know.

Asked to talk about her own sense of national identity, Marie immediately refers to English as implying royalty. She also indicates this by mimicking a ‘posh’ English accent. Because of this association she is reluctant to describe herself as English. The second aspect for Marie is that English can have negative associations –for its association not only with the upper classes but also with the far right (‘British bulldog wearing a skinhead’). Although younger than the respondents described thus far, Marie is able to refer to a time growing up in which Englishness was less problematic. Mark, born in 1970, makes similar associations between Englishness and class, switching between the upper and lower classes:

Researcher: Do you see yourself as English, British or what?

Interviewee: British, I suppose, but I think there is a bit of a difference. I mean the English to me is you are the English gentleman, you are refined, you are well educated, you are a bit pompous; but British, it’s a bit of that but its more working class, isn’t it, to be British – it’s more everyone. Like I think the Queen’s English.

Researcher: So when you think of Englishness what comes to mind?

Interviewee: Pompous twats [sic] [laugh], the pommy bastards [sic] wining and that but then you’ve got the other extreme which is the English with the flags and that football, so yeah, yobs basically; I mean perhaps if you ask somebody in Portugal, a Portuguese person, who do they think the English are or describe the English to me or Englishness to me, then you might say well they all drink beer like football and cause loads of fights, you know.

It can be argued that these particular associations between Englishness and class reflect the respondent’s own class backgrounds. Previous research into everyday class experience has shown how people engage in various kinds of ‘othering’ in order to define their own identities (see Savage et al., 2001; Southerton, 2002). In our cases, to overidentify with being English would threaten the claim to an egalitarian outlook upon societal membership.

Englishness as exclusive

Carl, born in 1948, is a clinical psychologist. He was born in England. Both his parents were also born in England, but three of his four grandparents were Jewish and born outside Britain. He has lived in various parts of England.

I don’t feel English, but I do feel British. I associate with Britishness.

Researcher: What do you see as being the main difference? Why British rather than English?

Interviewee: Because British seems to me to allow for the mongrel nature of many of us, including me. English implies a family that you can trace back through the generations living in England and to a particular place. It is interesting actually, it is very skewed. But in a way English implies to me the upper classes, which is silly because there are English lower classes, but to me that is the image of what English is.

In the above extract, Carl favours an association with British over English. This is because he interprets British as an inclusive category whereas he associates English with descent. English, Carl argues, also has class associations with the upper classes. Julia, born in 1957, is a development manager for a housing association. Julia was born in England but soon after moved to Wales, where her father’s family is from, before moving to back England when she was 6 years old. She has lived and worked in different places across the south of England.

Researcher: Do you see yourself as English, British or what?

Interviewee: Confused I would say. Because I see myself as being British, and having that British concept is important. I am always a bit as to whether it is the birth of parents so my father’s family are from Wales. But my mother’s parents, if it is by birth, were English. And I was born in England, but then quickly moved to Wales, so part of me is actually inclined to say I am Welsh. But for the vast, vast majority of my life I have lived in England, South England. So I think of myself as either British or Welsh, but don’t like to think of myself as English.

Researcher: Can I ask why that is?

Interviewee: [Long pause] I suppose part of it, well, England doesn’t have that good a press. The image of it, the connotations with the national front, the football stereotype. I think I have always thought it is good to be Welsh, but I was born in England. I have pretty much always lived in England. I think England doesn’t have a good press and there isn’t any plus about it, but maybe to some extent it is kind of the norm, so it is nice to be different, so it is nice to be Scottish, Irish, Welsh, you know.

For Julia, the concept of British is important. This may be because it allows for the ‘confusion’ that she refers to with regard to her own background. Being English, on the other hand, refers more narrowly to descent. Hence, despite having spent the majority of her life in England, she does not like to think of herself as English. This is justified further by the connotations between English and xenophobia. Finally, Jean, born in 1946, is a city councillor for the Labour party. She was born in England, but her parents were born in Austria.

Researcher: Do you see yourself as English, British or what?

Interviewee: Not English because I think you need to be born in England to feel English. And I was born in England. But I was born after the war to non-English parents. My parents were from Austria. But I do feel British. I always say I am British because I can see the wider British Isles, not just England. And I have lived in other countries too so I have a wider British perspective. But I am also a citizen of the world, a European, so I am not very rigid. It is interesting. Some of the pubs in [area of the city] celebrate St George’s Day in a very jingoistic way and try to eat roast beef or something, and put up the red and white flag and they are ever so proudly English. But it’s mixed up with BNP and racism and with a very anti-foreign attitude. I am also very distrustful of any kind of jingoism because so often it is combined with xenophobia and British nationalism and BNP and national front and so on. I am terribly worried about that, so I do have a problem with the flags.

Concluding thoughts

I began this paper by noting the significance that has been attached to political devolution as a framework for researching contemporary English national identities. In attempting to think beyond, or rather before, devolution, I returned to Tom Nairn’s earlier writings on the problem of English nationalism, which he considers to suffer from the absence of a ‘semblance of classlessness’ as a ‘mobilising myth’. Building on this argument, I developed the idea of English national identity as problematised by an absence of social equality. I then tried to demonstrate this empirically, identifying some key ways in which ethnic majority people’s responses to being English and British betray an unequal sense of national membership. Through qualitative data, I presented examples of the different ways in which categories of English and Englishness are intertwined with class and social inequality. In many instances we find direct and explicit associations made between English, Englishness and class. These took form in two principal ways: on one hand, English is associated upwards with the upper classes (such as with royalty, posh people or the English gentlemen); on the other, English is associated downwards with a so-called underclass (with hooligans, louts, behaviour abroad, social decline and so on). For the respondents described here, this produces unease towards English national populism. The fact that respondents in these instances make such polarised associations with Englishness – with the upper classes and yet also with ‘yobs’ – should draw our attention to the broader connections between English national identity and class. Both the decline in social deference to the upper classes and an increase in contempt for the poor are examples of change in discourse and attitude towards class (Sayer, 2005: 170). What is significant for this article is how these changes in sentiments about class are also important to how people talk about and identify with being English.

Alongside these explicit class associations is a perception of English and Englishness as an exclusive category in which respondents draw a distinction between being English and their own mixed national heritage. As I have referred to, there are ways in which Britishness, at times, has symbolised classlessness, for example with regard to the social citizenship of the welfare state and the expansion of education, with participation in the Second World War and empire, and with its incorporation of regional difference. For these reasons, the category British may be preferred to English as grounded in an imagined, if not actual, aspiration to social inclusion. I have shown elsewhere (Mann, 2011) how people define the category of English in opposition to multiculture and, in contrast, how the category British is seen to house such diversity. Following Kumar (2010: 469), ‘an England without Britain is hard to conceive, and would be impolitic to pursue’.

The conclusions should draw our attention to the need for comparative research on the construction of national identities at the ordinary level. The absence of an ‘equal’ sense of national membership in England could be contrasted to that found in Australia (‘mates’) and the USA (‘we are all Americans’). This egalitarianism is evident in the ‘mateism’, and anti-elitism, of Australian identity (Kapferer, 1986). Russel Ward’s (1958) influential account of the Australian people refers to the egalitarian origins of Australian national identity in the outlook of an ordinary Australian worker, who is loyal to ‘his mates’ as a higher virtue. A counter example would be the imperialism of Russian nationalism during the Soviet period. As with Nairn’s England, the ‘Soviet state did not encourage horizontal ties between members of society’ (Tolz, 1998: 1004; see Kumar, 2000 for similarities drawn between English and Russian nationalisms). Of course, as comparative cases they are no less socially stratified societies. But they do have a certain equality of regard that is absent in England. ³ Here, Anderson’s (1983) account of the nation as an imagined community makes the crucial point by distinguishing imagined equality and material inequality:

it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.

(1983: 7)