Counter blast

James Joyce said he was the servant of two empires, Roman and British. Joyce was an Irishman, but he could have been speaking for England. June 16 is known the world over as Bloomsday, after a character from Joyce's novel, Ulysses. April 23 is less renowned as St George's day. Surely the English, one of Scotland's largest ethnic minorities, should celebrate their saint's day in a positive and public way? The Irish have St Patrick's day parades all over the world, while we Scots have Tartan day, St Andrew's day and Burns night, so our English community ought to have its own visible patronal festival, as loud and proud as the Last Night of the Proms.

Yet anti-English feeling remains a barrier to such celebration - and Anglophobia isn't confined to foreigners. When I asked a couple of English colleagues how they would be celebrating today they stated baldly that it was an embarrassment best left to skinheads.

What is it about English nationalism that raises temperatures and eyebrows? Why is it moored in negative stereotypes? When I was a wee boy, my impression of England hovered between Bobby Moore and Roger Moore. I thought the patron saint of England was Simon Templar, and St George, knight of the red cross, was merely patron saint of first aid. My mistake was understandable for English nationality has defied definition and description, and for good historical reasons.

St George died a martyr more than 1700 years ago, in 303, and the feast day of St George was a holy day of obligation for English Catholics for many years. Richard the Lionheart wore the red cross during the crusades. After the Reformation, a Protestant England found it hard to come to terms with its national hero. When Henry VIII declared England's independence from the Holy Roman Empire, an older Englishness was exiled and estranged.

In the 70 years between the Reformation and the Union with Scotland that resulted from James VI's accession as the first king of Britain, England enjoyed a lifetime of self-determination. Since then, she has gorged herself on other identities, consuming cultures with consummate ease while staying empty inside. Caught between two empires, Roman and British, England endures an absence of identity. It overcompensates by depriving other nations of theirs. Who can draw a map of England, as opposed to a map of Britain? The geography of empire gets in the way. Name the English national costume? Or pastime? Morris (Minor) dancing? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

It's only in recent years that English critics such as Julian Wolfreys and Anthony Easthope have begun to ask about England without resorting to "by jingoism" of one kind or another. In April 1993, speaking on Europe, John Major articulated his idea of what it means to be English, invoking a classless society marked by "long shadows on the county [cricket] grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers". Hardly stirring stuff. St George's emblematic X is crossed with the Y-fronts of St Michael's.

St George fares far better abroad. In the USA, he became the patron saint of scouting in 1955, when the National Catholic Committee on Scouting decided the chivalric code of England's premier knight was the perfect blueprint for scout's honour. Dragooned into service by Protestant imperialists such as Edmund Spenser in the 1590s, signed up by the Catholic scouts of America in the 1950s, Oor Geordie is a strangely ambiguous figure. As the years drag on, Paddy's day and St Andrew's day get bigger and better, but nobody speaks cheerfully of downing pints of Old Trousers Ale on "Geo's Day".

Marx was right, a nation that enslaves another can never itself be free. We need a whole new geo-politics, one which allows England to affirm it's identities without dissing others. In a brilliant poem entitled Translating The English, 1989, Glaswegian Carol Ann Duffy puts her finger on England's uncertainty, and pokes fun at its odd mix of self-loathing and fear of others, against an embarrassing wealth in terms of cultures and customs.

Scotland is England's oldest enemy and ally, and today, as Easter Sunday falls on gorgeous George's day, we should cry with pride: "Come awa', ma wee Geordie!" Those of a more retiring nature can join with the Catholic scouts of America, bless themselves, and say: "Dib, dib, dib, daub, daub, daub, alright already!"

Willy Maley is the patron saint of patronising and Professor of English Literature, Glasgow University

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