h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When I was in the Scouts, we did a St George's day parade. To a nice tirade of abuse and pelting of water bombs from the local asian minority. Fantastic isn't it.

Funny, we never had anything like that, and two of the towns I've marched in have a whacking great Asian community.

I think pride in a jingoistic sense, and a sense of identity, are two rather different things. I'm not conscious of being proud (or conversely, ashamed) of being English, although I definitely have a very English identity. But it's just an accident of birth when all's said and done.

Noggin

Well I got bored and quit before I got to scouts, but yes there was a St. George's Day parade. The local Asian community is a large proportion of the population where I live, and they never bothered us, some of them who were in cubs/scouts/whatever even had to join in.

But all in all it was always incredibly boring.

What groups are proud of being English; the BNP, the Daily Mail and boozed up football holigans. not exactly ringing endorsements for being proud of your country.

I think a problem is that English patriotism is heavily linked into our colonialist past, where we went round taking over other countries, destroying their cultures and imposing our rules and religion with an iron fist.

Or maybe the idea of patriotism is just becoming more and more irevelent in a more internationally linked world.

Just out of interest how is patriotism viewed in Germany?

I suppose that depends on where you live. Try having a St. George's Day parade, complete with the flag and rose, through parts of London, Leicester, Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester and see who raises an objection.

I have been told that cosmopolitan, multi-cultural societies are stronger, more vibrant and more interesting. However I also see that in the case of Britain it's usually the pre-existing society that has to be multi-cultural and, at least from what I have had experience of, arriving cultures are not required to integrate in any significant manner.

But pointing this out, that integration and multiculturalism is supposed to be a two-way street, is normally seen as a racist comment.

Those are all negative representations of English patriotism. As a positive one, may I offer up English Rugby fans?

In recent decades there have been movements promoting rights for various groups: women, blacks, gays, disabled people and so on. Then you hear women saying things like "I'm proud to be a woman" and people saying they're proud to be black or talking about gay pride - oh, and people who are proud to be working class. It makes me wonder if pride is something that's used to get people geed up to fight against their oppression. Then again, you sometimes might hear a woman say she's proud of her breasts. That seems a peculiar use of the word. Maybe the word 'pride' is like the word 'love' and covers a lot of different things, not very well defined. Maybe people resort to pride when they're under pressure to feel ashamed or inadequate about something that they can't help and in any case, is not something they should feel ashamed of or inadequate about.

Regarding the 'accident of birth' argument, there are, I think, two ways of interpreting it. One is that 'I' could have been born anywhere; but the assertion that 'I' could have had different parents does not incline me to believe that I should have no especial love of, and bear no especial responsibility to, my family. Alternatively, one can assume that 'I' am a product of the circumstances of my birth (since no person could have been born under different circumstances such that that person was I), but that it is merely a neutral fact that such a thing occurred. The value which I place upon the life which I am so fortunate as to have in the United Kingdom is, however, greater than is compatible with the concluding assertion of the second view.

"I think a problem is that English patriotism is heavily linked into our colonialist past, where we went round taking over other countries, destroying their cultures and imposing our rules and religion with an iron fist."

True, true.

We're not the only ones. Anyone notice the Spanish feeling Post-Empire Guilt over what they did to South America?
Anyone notice France being concerned about their Imperial past? Or Germany? Even Belgium had a hand in Africa.

So when do we get to stop being sorry for having had an Empire? Any Italians out there feeling guilty for having ancestors that destroyed native cultures and imposed their own religions?

Having been born and raised in Northern Ireland I've always had a slighly dichotic approach to what is "my nation". And first hand experience of the hatred and violence that results when there is such a strong clash of cultural identities makes me view any sort of "patriotism" with suspicion....

That said, now that I live abroad I align myself much more to the Irish ex-pat community. That could be because they just have much more fun!

But I also thoroughly enjoy being part of a multi-cultural environment where there is genuine respect for other parts of the community.

(PS we all hate the French much more than we hate the English)

There's lot of truth in that, shorn. It's a reaction to something perceived as a stigma, usually when it shouldn't be. Perhaps we should make some distinction between pride as vanity, and pride as self esteem?

Noggin

At the tender age of nineteen, being consequently too young to remember anything before the Eighties (and those memories are not political), I am sometimes irked by the suggestion that British attitudes are based primarily on our post-imperial status. The British Empire is a part of my cultural background, yes, but so is the Roman Empire. The U.K. is a far more complex and multi-layered nation than some commentaries suggest.

Incidentally, am I the only one to have got the impression that some members of the political classes gain a sort of puritan-like satisfaction from wallowing in post-imperial guilt? Or is it just my paranoid imagination?

"how is patriotism viewed in germany?"
believe me, we know our past, and we're being as diplomatic as we can, apart from some faux-pas by the politicians that happen anywhere. maybe it wouldn't be that bad if we started having a view for ourselves again, luckily (I feel) that has happened in the not taking part in attacking Iraq. but all in all there is a DEEP mistrust in anything patriotic. I'm sorry to say that there evolves an anti-american position, I'm very careful about these comments, but a lot of people say that things that come from the usa can't be good. I mean there is a point to Bush behaving...don't know how to say it, stupid?, but I'm afraid things always get generalized about that, like the whole country to be behind him, which evidently is not the fact.

"Incidentally, am I the only one to have got the impression that some members of the political classes gain a sort of puritan-like satisfaction from wallowing in post-imperial guilt? Or is it just my paranoid imagination? "

I don't think it's your imagination.
The same thing happens in the USA, only here it's White Middle Class folks being guilty over slavery and the foul treatment of the Native Americans.

Having thought about it, the only time when i actually have an sense of english patriotism is when our team go over seas to beat the foreigners (hello australlians )
But seriously apart from that id consider myself more irish, as my grand parents came from ireland (bar one, my nanna on my mums side)

yeah sports...
probably the only time I have ever seen someone hanging a german flag out of the window when we were "football-vice-world-champions" in 2002.

*The Welsh are sheepshaggers, the Scots a bunch of whingers, the Irish are bogtrotters* I wonder what that makes the English .........

The usual allegations are of frigidity and masochism, so possibly 'paradoxical'. Although the human race in general could probably claim that one.