SF0192 The Mythology of England

SF0192 The Mythology of England

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I was inspired to compose this episode on watching Adam Curtis’s new analysis of England’s backward-looking curse in his new series, Shifty. The songs in this episode provide a complementary playlist in some ways to that documentary.

When the second world war ended there was genuine optimism, despite the fact the country was basically broke, that a new England could rise again from the wreckage. Some of that optimism was channelled into the new towns – places like Milton Keynes and Harlow.

We’ve got the parks, we’ve got the shops

We’ve got the factories that give us jobs …

We put the houses amongst the trees

We’ve got all the modern civic amenities

Pram Town, Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern

Then by the late ‘sixties a wistfulness had set in for what the “white heat of technology” had perceptually destroyed:

We are the office block persecution affinity
God save little shops, china cups, and virginity
We are the skyscraper condemnation affiliates
God save Tudor houses, antique tables, and billiards

The Village Green Preservation Society, The Kinks

By 1977 though many were still gamely waving Union Jacks …

Virginia Wade was winning our hearts
She made us want to live
Vicious and his brothers
Were trying to set us free
But much more than this to you and me
This was the Silver Jubilee

Born in the UK, Badly Drawn Boy

 …others were far from happy …

God save the queen

She ain’t no human being

There is no future

In England’s dreaming

God Save The Queen, The Sex Pistols

For people of colour, England was far from welcoming:

Inglan is a bitch
Dere’s no escapin it
Inglan is a bitch
Dere’s no runnin’ whey fram it

Inglan Is A Bitch, Linton Kwesi Johnson

And by the early ‘eighties things had not improved:

O’er grassy dale, and lowland scree
Come see, come hear, the English Scheme
The lower-class want brass, bad chests, scrounge fags
The clever ones tend to emigrate

English Scheme, The Fall

Then by the 21^st century the past was being reimagined not as a golden age but as a nightmare:

Here’s to old England

Currant buns, the bulldog breed

God bless Enoch Powell

Rickets and TB.

Here’s to Old England, Luke Haines

For people of colour, things were getting, if anything, worse, with grim forces coalescing:

“Send those bloody strangers back from where they came”
Does that mean me too…?
Or my mother in her small red coat, stepping off the boat
Doing jobs you’re too damn lazy to…

English, Nerina Pallot

As always, some people saw the funny side in the quaint mundanity of English life:

Same old Hampstead, Ken Hom Wok Set
Dead Sea bath salts, jog-proof iPod
Iron Age hill fort, long term roadworks
High tide bird watch, B&Q Homebase

Upon Westminster Bridge, Half Man Half Biscuit

While others managed to identify a timeless England, not tied to hidebound concepts of patriotism or jingoism, but in something more substantive – the land itself:

For England is not flag or empire, it is not money, it is not blood
It’s limestone gorge and granite fell, it’s Wealden in clay and Severn mud
Blackbirds singing from the may tree, lark ascending through the scales
Robin watching from your spade and English earth beneath your nails

A Place Called England, The Young Uns

The nature of what makes England England, whether we should be proud or ashamed of it, whether there is “no future” or whether the sunny uplands Churchill promised will come into view once again is a subject for endless debate. At the very least it’s provided us with some great tunes.