United Kingdom : Origin Story
Some years ago, a friend visited me and asked me if I thought that the decline in Christianity in the UK meant that there was no 'national story' for the country. There are many things that you can pick out of this question, including whether it matters having a national story and also whether anyone other than an English person would refer to anything to do with the UK as 'national' (sorry English people, everyone else thinks that the UK is either three, four or five nations depending on how you count them).
My friend was concerned that if we had no story in common, then we would no longer be bound together as a 'nation'. There was certainly a time when that story revolved around Christianity and certainly culturally Christianity has survived long after church attendance has fallen well below five percent of the population. The irony of measuring anything 'national' by church attendance is that it has largely been immigrants to the UK who have kept churches boosted, especially Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant churches.
I would still maintain that to understand the art, literature and culture of Britain's past then you need to know your Christianity. However, that is not to say that Christianity itself is essential to the country. The Netherlands has an interesting national art museum where the usual parade of religious paintings is absent and there are pictures of wealthy merchants instead (someone had to commission the art). Whether that is a national story or whether it matters if we no longer have it is another question.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland does not have a 'foundation day' in the same way as other countries. There was no revolution that brought it into being and no day where we all thank our glorious founders. We have no Kemel Attaturk to express reverence for and no Presidents Day to celebrate or Bastille Day to mark. We have Saints Days for each of the constituent nations, which the UK government stops devolved governments turning into Bank Holidays. The UK government has introduced 'Armed Forces Day' as a UK-wide day, but I think that I have seen more people attending the climate change demonstrations in Cardiff than the military parades. The closest we come to doing anything together is Remembrance Sunday.
Winston Churchill probably comes closest to a 'national' hero, but in Wales you will still hear him abused as the man who sent the troops into Tonypandy to fire on striking miners. I thought that maybe people had forgotten this, but I was intrigued to hear teenagers in a coding club last year talking about not respecting Churchill for these reasons. There are those who have said that Churchill is unfairly painted as the villain in the story of the Tonypandy riots, but it is worth noting that as late as 1950, Churchill was speaking in Cardiff and was forced to address the issue. There are those who would mention the Bengal Famine as well but this rather proves my point. Even the man who we name so many roads after and build so many statues of is not a 'national' hero.
After talking to my friend all those years ago, I concluded that one of the features of life in the UK since the 1980s has been the decline of those things that we do have in common. By that I do not mean religion, but faith in post-war institutions such as the NHS, the BBC, heavy industry, holidays at the seaside ... well, perhaps I am not making a great list here, but my general impression is one in which our 'national story' was not one that unified people. I am still using the word 'national' in quotes because there are actually quite a few national stories. How many English people know what happened at Bannockburn or why Welsh people are upset about Treweryn? It goes beyond national identity mind you as I remember a friend from Manchester telling me about the Peterloo Massacre, something covered in history classes in Manchester but completely missing from any of my history classes when I was growing up. We have no common agreement on what formed us as a country.
Going back to the second part of my original question, does it matter? I am not sure that it does. I once wrote a blog (not published) about how the British form of nationalism was a lack of nationalism. I know, that had to be written before 2016! There was something though to be said for a country that had no national day, no national military parades and no laws saying that you could not criticise the country's founder. You might say that British nationalism was always there and I would agree with you, but when I taught French teenagers and asked them where their favourite country was, they replied 'France' with an astonishment that I might have thought otherwise. When I asked the same question of British teenagers, they weighed up all the countries from around the world that they had visited or heard about. None of them said the UK.
In more recent years, I have returned to the question and decided that my initial answer was wrong and that my friend was wrong to think that Christianity was the national story of the UK. Now I think that history in the UK started in 1939. Think about it, what do we constantly reference when talking about national identity? A Belgian friend of my mother once said that the British were people who were 'secretly hoping that it would rain, even while they were packing the picnic, so that they can endure it all and talk about the Blitz spirit'. I think that there is a lot in that. What I have realised recently is that this is not just about UKIP putting up pictures of Churchill and spitfires (while ignoring how many were flown by Poles, whose grandchildren they were desperate to deport). This is the touchpoint for everyone.
I am writing this on VE Day in 2020. I remember VE Day in 1995. I was in Durham and I remember seeing a parade of allied flags, including the Irish flag. I pointed out that the Republic of Ireland had been neutral in the Second World War and that the swastika had flown over the German Embassy in Dublin. 5000 Irish volunteers did go to fight but they often faced discrimination if they tried to return to the Republic. Earlier today I saw a garden full of flags of those countries that had lost citizens to the war. There was no Soviet flag or Chinese flag, though they would account for half the dead together. There was no Indian flag, despite the contribution of 'empire troops' to the war effort. The myth of 'England standing alone' is pointed out all over social media today.
Here is the point though. There is no-one saying 'what is this VE day?' on social media. For some, the victory in the Second World War is a chance to reflect on what was lost and the lengths that the UK went to 'win'. Some people acknowledge that the Germans saw the bombing of Dresden as a war crime, some people point out that Winston Churchill spent much of his first year as PM trying to get the Americans involved because he recognised that the British army was no match for the German army, some people understand that the horror of war led to a new organisation of Europe that would prevent ethno-nationalism dragging us into mass conflict again ... in other words, the Second World War is also the touchpoint for those who argue for equality, state intervention and compassion and responsibility in our politics.
Perhaps this is what a 'national story' is really all about. It is something so vague that anyone in a country can put their own interpretation on it. It need not be a question of pride, it can be a moment of horror never to be repeated. Some people will see glory, others will see a reflection on what went wrong. Either way, it is not something anyone feels neutral about.
This is the UK's story. Maybe after 75 years another story will come along, but for the moment this is when the UK began, if not historically then in a lot of people's imaginations.