Something Saintly...

What's more English than a Turkish Knight and a fire-breathing, flying lizard? St. George, that paragon on English feistiness, is also the Patron Saint of countries such as Canada, Montenegro, Palestine, Portugal, Russia and Serbia. Yet the dragon slayer still stands as a catalyst for expressing quintessential Englishness.

For the first time ever, under instruction from a Scot as dour as an Oatcake, the St. George's Cross will today fly alongside the Union Jack at Number 10 and other parliamentary buildings.

Pubs are said to be going crazy for the celebrations of St. George, and the cynics have been out in force, berating the efforts as commercial pursuits as they languidly sip their pineapple juice. Apparently, sales of 'St. George's Day packs' - whatever they are - have risen 50% on last year and, for the first time ever, are outselling St. Patrick's Day packs. So put away your novelty sized inflatable Guiness glass - it wasn't funny on March 17th.

Of course pubs see it as a commercial opportunity; the smoking ban has taken its toll, ol' eyebrows has already whacked four pence on the price of a pint and there shall be no rush to the bar when Euro 2008 kicks off without the lion-hearted, barrell-chested England team. They need to recoup their losses somewhere down the line.

But this initiave needn't be exclusive to patriotism. The fact that you're going to make a profit from other people's onece-a-year national pride doesn't make you any less of a patriot - it makes you a businessman.

Some bosses have answered unofficial calls to make St. George's Day a national holiday, giving their beleaguered work forces a chance to forget their sorrows for one day, and then sit unproductively remembering them the next.

The whole new and seemingly more zealous approach to St. George's Day is, to me, indicative of the attempt to force national pride into the public's consciousness. Just as, miraculously, everyone has an Irish cousin on St. Paddy's night, so people will go out today and be extra specially English. They will lose at cricket. They will wait patiently, but not happily, for a train. They will ride on horseback into battle with the uncivilised Scots over the wall. Well, maybe not that one.

I have a slight contention with Brian Patten - who was commissioned by English Heritage to write a St George's Day poem - who asserted that, "There is no country more beautiful than England in April". He obviously didn't get the steamed-up 73 bus to work this morning.

Whether or not this token Englishness is a sentiment felt sufficiently strongly to necessitate the writing of a poem (a medium which the OED describes as a piece of structured writing "to express an intensely imaginative interpretation of the subject,") is a debate for another time. What it does show is that we are incapable of spontaneously taking pride in Englishness.

English Heritage has produced a booklet advising people how to celebrate St. George's Day. We've already covered how to be cynical about the whole, corporately orchestrated day. We know how to go out and get foolishly drunk in the name of a country, we do that every St. Patrick's Day. Pray, what other ways are there to celebrate, O most English trust?

The advent of the European Union has apparently residually damaged the notion of Englishness, and people, sniff, are becoming less comfortable with the fact they were born, unrequested in between Berwick-Upon-Tweed and the English Channel. Furthermore, perpetuated by the misappropriation of English sympathy by the horrid BNP, the image of the English patriot is less an Edwardian fop than a Northern skinhead.

The idea of a 'national identity' commonly felt across such a varied and changable demographic is ludicrous. If you are proud of your roots - which anyone without the surname 'Hitler' usually is - then you should hold their values close to you in everday life. These will form what type of person you are naturally and ancestrally. There is, however, no need to go and proclaim them to everyone who didn't ask.

Spouting yobbishly, "Yeah, I'm English and bloody proud mate. We won the war," isn't being English, it's being a cock. Any number of migrants, who may well consider themselves English but whose heritage comes from elsewhere can be just as party to a sense of belonging to a country. This is really where pride in a nation comes from.

What is great, and what should be celebrated about England can be seen and experienced on the other 364 days there are a year. While the motivation behind the big St. George's day push, and the Government's encouragement of national identity is admirable in that it essentially gets us to act with greater respect and social tolerance, it shouldn't force the issue.

If you are proud of being English, then great, but be proud everyday and put up with this country's numerous shortcomings in the English style of grinning and bearing it. England isn't as great as it seems on St. George's day, but if this token day helps us to remember what is good about it, then let's all have a drink for the Turkish knight who made his fortune selling bacon. Let's drink to St. George!