I woke up the other morning to a find a load of cheap St George cross flags tied to nearby lampposts with cable ties. They were all half way up, giving the impression that my little corner of Hertfordshire was mourning something, but also wanted to be disrespectful to whichever royal they imagine had died so had gone for the cheapest half-mast salute possible. 

If it was Prince Andrew who had died, maybe that would make sense, but that fucker’s still alive so it wasn’t that.

They stand in stark contrast to the cheerful little line of union flag bunting that was already there outside the chippy.

In related news, a swastika was graffitied near the station, our local MP has used some disgusting and unambiguously racist language and there have been small protests, in part organised by fascist groups, outside a couple of nearby hotels housing refugees.

I find this more than a little unnerving. Not because I personally feel threatened, or because I think this is a lot of people – far right activity on the streets this summer is smaller in numbers than last year. 

What unnerves me is the capitulation of the political class. We now don’t have any mainstream politicians, broadcasters or newspapers who oppose the far right. Our political class is ever more divorced from public opinion. We are moving in an ugly direction. 

That’s incredibly depressing. So rather than impotently complaining about politics, I thought I’d try to counteract the idiot nationalism by talking about English things I really love. 

Usual caveat when talking about country: I’m not implying other nations don’t also do these things well too!

In no particular order, some English things I love:

Heavy Metal

Obviously the origins of heavy metal are not solely English. You don’t get heavy metal without rock n roll and the blues – the influence of Black American guitar players especially Hendrix can’t be overstated. But it was The Kinks who had the first hit songs based on distorted power chords, it was Ozzy Osborne who suggested taking inspiration from horror films and making scary music, Tony Iommi’s riffs that started emphasising the tritone, and (in part) British punk that added the pace and aggression that gave us NWOBHM and later more extreme styles.

My personal favourite English metal band is probably Paradise Lost, who I’ve loved since I was a kid and first heard Icon (I think I heard Icon first. Might have been Shades of God).

Sitcoms

If you’ve been paying attention even slightly to the things I get up to, you’ll know I’m not the most serious of people. Seriousness is childishness, a symptom of not paying attention to the world. A large part of the way I understand the world is via sitcoms. Whether it’s the character comedy and mucking about with scifi of Red Dwarf, the the delight of Blackadder’s comic antihero, or the sheer foul-mouthed poetry of The Thick Of It*, I do love our sitcoms.

(* is The Thick Of It English? I mean it’s directed by a Scot and the most famous character is played by a Scot so maybe I’m being a bit cheeky claiming it. But it’s also inspired heavily by Yes Minister, which I also adore and about Westminster which is dominated by England to a fault in the view of many. I dunno. I like it, so I’m having it).

London

I bloody love London. It’s huge and messy and wonderful. Yeah, there are shit bits and yeah despite having a load of rich people in it, it is actually once again the poorest bit of the country after housing costs. I don’t care, it’s also wonderful. A genuine melting pot where people from all over mix together in one of the most successful multicultural societies ever to exist. There are people with every accent, every skin colour, and they all start restaurants, open bars and come together to cook up this wonderful place called London*.

There’s a trend amongst the far right extremists to denigrate London, to imagine it as dangerous and foreign. It ain’t. London is England. Not the whole of it, granted, but more than one in ten of us live in that ridiculous town. It’s the most English thing there is and it’s wonderful.

(*Okay, not all of them. I am still struck by an experience I had when we were living in a flat above an estate agents in Crystal Palace. We went for a long walk on a sunny day and ended up in a park in Dulwich. The people there, were not like everyone else. They did not mix. They wore red trousers and had names like Jasper and Araminta. The rich in London don’t really mix. They have always refused to integrate)

What’s the point of all this then?

There’s a small group of scary people who are itching for a fight. They’ve got loud cheerleaders in the press and for reasons I don’t understand both the Labour party and the BBC have decided never to oppose them. I don’t think these people can ever truly gain power here, but they can do an awful lot of damage and there’s no way they should get to call themselves English. You want to daub a flag everywhere? You want to wave the George Cross? A flag that’s only been used regularly in this country since a football tournament in the mid 90s? When our actual national flag is the union jack? And you don’t want to wave them proudly out in the open, but instead sneak around in the middle of the night, putting them at half mast on lampposts when no-one can see you do it.

I can’t think of anything less English.