There is a strong case for agreeing with Winston Churchill that the Second World War was this country’s ‘finest hour’. He was talking about Britain and the British Empire, but the values of that Empire were the values that the English like to think they invented. To my mind the war and its aftermath are the last time when the English had a clear and positive sense of themselves. It was reflected back in films like In Which We Serve, Noel Coward’s fictionalised account of the sinking of HMS Kelly. It is an ordered, hierarchical sort of place in which the war is an inconvenience we put up with, a chaste, self-denying country in which women know their place and children go quietly to bed. ‘Don’t make a fuss’ the wives say to one another during an air raid ‘we’ll have a cup of tea in a minute’; as the Chief Petty Officer leaves home his mother asks when he’ll be ashore again.
‘All depends on Hitler’ he says
‘Well who does he think he is?’ responds the mother to which his cheery reply is ‘that’s the spirit’.
In Which We Serve was unashamedly propaganda for a people facing the possible extinction of their culture, which is the reason why it is so illuminating. It shows us how the English like to think of themselves. The picture we get from this and many other similar films is of a stoic, homely, quiet, disciplined, self-denying, kindly, honourable and dignified people who would much rather be tending their gardens than defending the world from fascist tyranny – but if they must well....let’s get on with it.
I’ve lived all my life in the England that emerged from the shadow of Hitler and am happy to confess an admiration for the place as it seemed to be then, despite its small mindedness, hypocrisy and prejudice. It fell into a war that it had repeatedly been promised would be avoided, because of the spinelessness of the French and their partners, and in so doing it found itself picking up the bill for the rescue operation whilst those it saved turned their back on it – it also advanced its fall from world eminence by decades.
The revisionists tell us that much of the British achievement in that war was not what it seemed or was reported at the time. Certainly the British have clung onto heroic illusions about the war, the favourite ones being the Little Ships at Dunkirk, the victory of the Few in the Battle of Britain and the courage of Londoners and other city dwellers in the Blitz. OK, the role of the Little Ships has been exaggerated, the Battle of Britain was lost by Hitler’s misjudgement as much as by the heroism of our fighter pilots. The Blitz was stopped by the courage and determination of Bomber Command whose ruthless retaliatory raids on Germany caused Hitler to lose the stomach for it. It is also demonstrably wrong that the British won the war alone, the Americans provided the leverage and the British ended up paying the bill for that until the mid 60’s; but the fact remains we did stand alone in the summer of 1940 and had we not done so we and the rest of Europe would still be in the grip of the Nazis today. Had we not had the great benefit of geography, perhaps like the rest of Europe this country would have found willing executioners to do the Nazi bidding. But geography matters; it makes people who they are.
There have been many attempts to explain what the Second World War did to Britain, what is undoubtedly true is that in that titanic struggle the English had the clearer idea of what they stood for and, therefore, who they were. It was nothing like Hitler’s pride in his Fatherland it was something smaller more personal and I think more quietly powerful.
Take David Lean’s 1945 tale of forbidden love, Brief Encounter. The couple meet in a railway station tearoom where she is waiting for a train (steam of course) home from a days shopping. A speck of coal dirt gets caught in her eye and, without a word of introduction the gallant local doctor steps forward and removes it. The following 80 minutes of this beautifully made film show their deepening love and the guilt each feels about it. Trevor Howard’s tall strong frame, fine nose, strong jaw, Celia Johnson’s retroussé nose and clear eyes seem to embody the English. They belong to the infinitely respectable middle class in which strangulated scheme of things ‘levly gels’ wish only to be ‘relly heppy’.
The doctor begins his seduction with the classic English gambit of commenting on the weather, a few moments later he mentions music; ‘my husband’s not musical’, she says ‘Good for him’ says the doctor. Good for him? Why is it good for him? Makes it sound like he’s done something really brave admitting his lack of musicality; it is Good for him of course because it recognises a God ordained right to be a philistine and the rectitude of people who please themselves in their own home – a very English trait indeed. As Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto comes and goes in the background their love unfolds measured out in cups of tea. Celia Johnson’s husband is the kind of man who calls his wife old girl, at one point she muses ‘ I believe we’d all be different if we lived in a sunny climate, then we shouldn’t be so withdrawn and shy and difficult’. Being English she feels no animosity towards her husband who she sees as ‘kindly and emotional’. Trevor Howard is also trapped in a dry marriage but doesn’t express any animosity towards his wife and children. The two of them are in the force of passions they can barely control; ‘we must be sensible’ is heard several times ‘if we control ourselves there is still time’.
In the end despite all the protestations of undying love the romance can never be. He does the decent thing and sets off for a job in South Africa while she returns to her decent but dull husband. The end.
So what does this incredibly popular English film tell us about the English? First ‘we are not put on this earth to enjoy ourselves’, second the importance of a sense of duty: wearing a uniform had been a fact of life for most of the adult population – Trevor Howard had been a Lieutenant in the Royal Corp of Signals, Celia Johnson an auxiliary policewoman – they both knew about sacrificing their careers and lives for the greater good as both had been ‘stars’ before the war and simply faded into being ordinary to help the cause. Most of all the message from the film is that emotions are there to be controlled. It was 1945 but it could just as easily have been 1955 or 1965; the fashions might have changed but the weather would still be damp and the policemen avuncular. It would, despite the post war Welfare State, be a country where everyone knew their place. Delivery carts (driven by men in uniform) still brought milk and bread to the front door. There were things that were done and things that were not done.
One could assume about these people that they were decent, and as industrious as was necessary to meet pretty modest ambitions. They were accustomed to seeing themselves as aggressed against, steady under fire, defiant against an enemy. The image is of British troops at Waterloo withstanding all out assault by the French, or the dome of St Pauls emerging from the smoke and flame of German bombs. They had a deeply held sense of their own rights, yet would proudly say they were ‘not much bothered’ about politics. The abject failure of both far right and far left in General Elections testifies to the profound scepticism of the English to anybody offering a promised land. They were, it’s true, reserved and prone to melancholy. But they were not in any meaningful sense religious, the Church of England being a political invention which had elevated being a ‘good chap’ to something close to canonisation! On those occasions when the state would require them to admit their allegiance they would write ‘C of E’ knowing that this religion would never badger them into regular attendance or try to get them to give all their money to the poor.
In 1951 the People newspaper organised a survey of its readers. For three years Geoffrey Gorer pored over the 11,000 responses and, at the end, concluded that not a lot had changed over the past 150 years. Clearly a vast lawless population had been turned into a law abiding society, a country which had enjoyed dog fights, bear baiting and public hanging was now humanitarian and squeamish but.. “what seems to have remained constant is a great resentment at being overlooked or controlled, a love of freedom; fortitude; a low interest in sexual activity compared with most neighbouring societies; a strong belief in the value of education for the formation of character; consideration and delicacy for the feelings of other people; and a very strong attachment to marriage and the institution of the family.....The English are a truly unified people, more unified I would hazard, than at any previous period in their history. When I was reading with extreme care, the first batch of questionnaires, I found I was constantly making the same notes: ‘What dull lives most of these people lead’ but also ‘what good people these are!’ I should still make the same judgement”
The reason for this unity was obvious enough – the country had just come through a terrible war which had required shared sacrifice. The population of England was still relatively homogeneous, used to accepting the inconvenience of discipline and unaffected by mass immigration. It was still insular, not merely in a physical sense but because the mass media had yet to create the global village.
It is the last time when it was possible to define the English, the nation whose discipline and resolve won the Second World War, that nation who for the last time was asked to organise the world to end the disgusting German and Japanese models of the future and in doing so it let itself slip away.
Now we stand on the edge of another disaster in Europe, this one created by greed and arrogance, but this time the English no longer exist as a breed who can take the lead. Again the Europeans would rather we stayed out and simply gave them our money and perhaps we will, but this will be a pivotal time for the English (not the British) and I hope we make the right decisions, whatever they might be.
I am proud to be English and hope that we do still exist as a breed. I will post other articles as I find the English and I’ll be happy to accept any help in finding this very special and powerful nation of people that the world unwisely turned its back on.
