There’s a generation now, here on the island, which grew up entre deux guerre, as there was in the 1930s: after the Cold War, and before the Pervasive War, looking for a new way out of the old years. Towards the end of the 20th century — sold New Labour, sold Cool Britannia. Pop culture. Y2K the biggest fear. Borrowed cool (and not just the Wallpaper* elite).
But the Millennium didn’t end the 20th century, any more than January 1 1900 was the start of it. C20 got off to either a very early start (Alan Moore’s take on Jack the Ripper), or a very late one (the Russian Revolution or the Great War). The 21st century started September 11 2001.
And suddenly, marketing-driven Cool Britannia ill fits the mood of the times. Unease about our ‘special relationship’ with America, and drifting differences with Europe. There’s a war going on, and we’ve felt the shuddering end of something around us: the inconclusive, embarrassed retreat of the 1990s into history. Where did Now go? Weren’t we young and sexy and almost part of the New Empire — or was it almost reconciled with Old Europe? And now, the Pervasive War.
Britain knows how to deal with war: retreat into Englishness. Not Britishness, now soiled with the tar of New Labour’s brush, but Englishness — the old ways, but in the new way refined. Tokens: taking what we learned in the 90s — design fetishism, euro-cool, how to spend, and applying it to our own heritage. Think Real Ale vs Premium Bottled Lager, think St John’s elitist Puritanism vs. 90s fusion cuisine. Think Burberry. Winning the Rugby, not the football. The Surveilled Society vs. the Nanny State. Bridget Riley. Henry Moore. Upmarket Bed and Breakfasts vs. boutique hotels. We aren’t wannabe Parisians or New Yorkers. Living in New England, keeping our heads down but not quite in the sand.
esprit de zeitgeist
Caveat: I’m not saying I feel a part of this as a trend (other than eating at St. John whenever possible!), but I think its what I’m seeing happening at the moment, and no-one seems to be talking about it…
Agree with the observation but not some of the supporting factors.
The English are bereft of national identity. We gave it away in order to manufacture the concept of Britishness.
The idea of Britishness is an imperial idea used first to subdue the ‘home’ nations from 1800 and latterly to build an Empire.
Disaffection with Britishness is not a result of New Labour shenanigans but far more deep rooted.
The English are only just starting to regain a sense of national identity under the flag of St George – a more benign symbol than the blood covered union jack.
What we want now is a national anthem for this new sense of national identity.
GSOGQ is British imperial anthem that is wholly inappropriate for England as is the stinking pile of constitutional guano that it refers to.
Time for an English Republic.
Seems that Britishness was indeed originally a useful construct though the use of which the nation could define others (e.g. the Irish), as inferior by their difference. And having, as Richard says, given away Englishness for the sake of such a tool, now in the strange position where Englishness has a hollow at the heart of it, unlike, say devolved, resurgent being-Welsh or being-Scottish…
So I find the collapse of the new Britishness interesting… and ditto the feeling that the Enlgish may be trying to rediscover/reinvent what Englishness is…