Foundation and Empire
So, it's St George's day. This goes largely unremarked, other than by the
occasional pub bore or angry young man with an England flag on his van.
It's the date we might have our national day, if we were to have one. Other
countries do; usually marking independence day, or the day of some great
reform of state. The moment when the country was brought into existence by
gunshot or signature. In some places it's all over the street maps, just
to make sure you can't forget it. The same is not true of the UK, or Great
Britain, or England. We're built in layers and by stages, like the
medieval-on-Norman-on-Roman construction of York minster. We can't look back
and find a date with a clear dividing line when we can say, "From then,
England". Perhaps 1066, but it's problematic to have a national day
celebrating the invasion and conquest of your country.
Speaking of problematic things, our history presents a problem as well. We can't do the day to day continuous construction of the concept of the country on its history, as we keep tripping over discarded moral horrors and abandoned foolish ventures. We need a clean break, a foundation myth to narrate us into coherence again. However, we're also institutionally suspicious of official efforts to do this kind of nation-building, as they tend to produce the sort of tone-deaf bland earnestness of the Olympics and the Millenium Dome, or further back the wave of Modernist town planning now so widely hated. We like our reactionary incrementalism, it keeps things as they were, in the good old days. Therein lies the problem; in as much as there is a collective vision of the country, it faces backwards into Avalon, noted for its lack of wind farms and nonwhite people.
There is something very close to a refounding myth, or at least a rebuilding one, surrounding World War 2. There we locate "our finest hour", but also the foundation of the NHS and national state education. Egalitarianism was brought to the country at gunpoint, and it almost stuck. Could this be the basis for a more comfortable national solidarity? Perhaps, but there's nobody to make that case any more. All three parties are in favour of privatisation of public institutions, and against the idea of competent public administration per se. There is no universal leadership, just a series of ever more finely tailored marketing messages to ever narrower demographics. The Olympics is managing to unite people in the national pastime: complaining. Not complaining to anyone in particular, or any kind of organised complaining, nor the sort of complaining that might prevent it, nor rallying round an alternative; mere complaint, without form and void. Not for nothing do the Australians call us "whinging".
Speaking of problematic things, our history presents a problem as well. We can't do the day to day continuous construction of the concept of the country on its history, as we keep tripping over discarded moral horrors and abandoned foolish ventures. We need a clean break, a foundation myth to narrate us into coherence again. However, we're also institutionally suspicious of official efforts to do this kind of nation-building, as they tend to produce the sort of tone-deaf bland earnestness of the Olympics and the Millenium Dome, or further back the wave of Modernist town planning now so widely hated. We like our reactionary incrementalism, it keeps things as they were, in the good old days. Therein lies the problem; in as much as there is a collective vision of the country, it faces backwards into Avalon, noted for its lack of wind farms and nonwhite people.
There is something very close to a refounding myth, or at least a rebuilding one, surrounding World War 2. There we locate "our finest hour", but also the foundation of the NHS and national state education. Egalitarianism was brought to the country at gunpoint, and it almost stuck. Could this be the basis for a more comfortable national solidarity? Perhaps, but there's nobody to make that case any more. All three parties are in favour of privatisation of public institutions, and against the idea of competent public administration per se. There is no universal leadership, just a series of ever more finely tailored marketing messages to ever narrower demographics. The Olympics is managing to unite people in the national pastime: complaining. Not complaining to anyone in particular, or any kind of organised complaining, nor the sort of complaining that might prevent it, nor rallying round an alternative; mere complaint, without form and void. Not for nothing do the Australians call us "whinging".