St George’s Day & English Identity: exploration and celebration
This project has been joint funded by Lancashire and Cumbria County Councils as part of their support to schools in their duty to promote community cohesion.
It is founded on the following beliefs and principles:
- There is a need for young people to explore their identities through their sense of belonging to a particular place, but also to recognise that they also share a national identity – that of being English and/or living in England.
- The population of England is and always has been very diverse in terms of class, gender, location, employment, religious beliefs, ethnicity, colour etc. There are as many ways of being English as there are people in England.
- As people living in England we share many aspects of cultural identity through language, citizenship, popular culture, history, local/national rituals and events etc., but our experience of them is unique and individual.
- Locality and community are important factors in defining one’s experience of England . The England of the east end of London is very different to that of a small village in Northumbria ; as is a mill town in Lancashire to a market town in Northamptonshire. An exploration of the nature of different localities will help to illustrate the diversity and complexity of English identities as well as exploring the similarities.
- The local and national heritage of the majority ethnic group in England – the white English population – is a key factor in understanding the country as it is today. White English people should be able to celebrate aspects of their English identities and not feel ashamed of who they are.
- There are, and always have been, many English people who do not belong to the majority ethnic group. Their English identities are just as valid and they should not feel that they cannot claim to be English because they are not white or because they have family roots in other parts of the world.
- The diversity of experiences of England within any ethnic group, including the white group, needs to be emphasised. There is no single homogenous English identity and there never has been.
- While it is interesting to explore Englishness in terms of more abstract concepts like values and attitudes there are inherent dangers of then assuming that these values and attitudes are unique to England and that they are universally held in England.
- The project treats the concept of St George in a way that considers a wide range of the ideas which have been associated with this figure over the past 17 centuries. The project is not concerned in anything more than a tangential way with the question of whether or not there was a historical person who can be equated with St George; rather, it is the layers of meanings which have been associated with this figure under his various names and identities which are of interest.
- Many English people today have a narrow understanding of St George that relates largely to his use as a figure of empire in the early twentieth century: this is a reading that is often found to be uncomfortable, with overtones of racism and jingoism. The project does not seek to deny that he has been used in this way, but it attempts to contextualise this usage as merely one of many, rather than the ‘correct’ or ‘only’ way to view him. The project thus highlights a number of ways that St George has been understood, particularly in English culture from the medieval period onwards and also elsewhere in Europe. Crucially, attention is given to ways that St George and his analogues have been used in traditions other than Western European Christianity, especially strands within Islam. In this way the project aims to encourage an evaluation of the potential of St George as an inclusive symbol of Englishness, embodying a wide range of meanings which can allow a diverse range of people to feel that he can form a positive symbol of our nation and its values.
Denise Dent, Lancashire County Council
Sara Nobili, Cumbria County Council
Dr Samantha Riches