Caledonia, Cambria and Hibemia 5 page

50 4Identity

Men and women

Generally speaking, British people invest about the same amount of their identity in their gender as people in other parts of northern Europe do. On the one hand, society no longer overtly endorses differences in the public and social roles of men and women, and it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex. On the other hand, people still (often unconsciously) expect a fairly large number of differences in everyday behaviour and domestic roles.

In terms of everyday habits and mannerisms, British society prob­ably expects a sharper difference between the sexes than most other European societies do. For example, it is still far more acceptable for a man to look untidy and scruffy than it is for a woman; and it is still far more acceptable for a woman to display emotions and be demon-strably friendly than it is for a man to do so.

As far as roles are concerned, most people assume that a family's financial situation is not just the responsibility of the man. On the other hand, they would still normally complement the woman, not the man, on a beautifully decorated or well-kept house. Everyday care of the children is still seen as mainly the woman's responsibility. Although almost as many women have jobs as men, nearly half of the jobs done by women are part-time. In fact, the majority of mothers with children under the age of twelve either have no job or work only during school hours. Men certainly take a more active domestic role than they did forty years ago. Some things, however, never seem to change. A comparison of child-rearing habits of the 1980s and the 1980s showed that the proportion of men who never changed a baby's nappy had remained the same (40%)!

In general, the sharpest distinction between the expected roles and behaviour of the two sexes is found in the lower and upper classes. The distinction is far less clear among the middle classes, but it is still there.

At the public level there are contradictions. Britain was one of the first European countries to have a woman Prime Minister and a woman chairperson of debate in its Parliament. However, in the early nineties, only about 5% of MPs were women, only 20% of lawyers in Britain were women, less than 10% of accountants were women and there was one female consultant brain surgeon in the whole country (see also chapter 15).

At the 1997 election the proportion of women MPs increased sharply (to 18%) and nearly every institution in the country has opened its doors to women now. One of the last to do so was the Anglican Church, which, after much debate, decided in favour of the ordination of women priests in 1993. However, there are a few institutions which, at the time of writing, still don't accept female members - for example, the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London, an association for graduates of these two universities.

Religious and political identity

In comparison with some other European countries, and with the J one notable exception of Northern Ireland (see below), neither religion nor politics is an important part of people's social identity in modern Britain. This is partly because the two do not, as they do in some other countries, go together in any significant way.

Of course, there are many people who regard themselves as ' belonging to this or that church or party. Some people among the '» minority who are regular churchgoers and the very small minority who are active members of political parties feel this sense of belonging strongly and deeply. It may form a very important part of their own idea of themselves as individuals. But even for these people it plays little part in determining other aspects of their lives such as where they work, which trade union they belong to, who their friends are or who they would like their neighbours to be. For the vast majority of parents in the country (some ethnic groups excepted), the religion or voting habits of their future son-in-law's or daughter-in-law's family are of only passing interest and rarely the major cause of objection to the proposed marriage.

Social and everyday contacts

British people give a relatively high value to the everyday personal contacts that they make. Some writers on Britain have talked about the British desire to 'belong', and it is certainly true that the pub, or the working man's club, or the numerous other clubs devoted to various sports and pastimes play a very important part in many people's lives. In these places people forge contacts with other people who share some of the same interests and attitudes. For many people these contacts are an important part of their social identity. Another factor is work. Many people make their social contacts through work and, partly as a result of this, the profession or skill which they practise is also an important aspect of their sense of identity. However, since British people do not spend more of their free time out of the house than most other Europeans do, these means of self-identifica­tion should not be over-emphasized.

Identity in Northern Ireland

In this part of the UK, the pattern of identity and loyalty outlined above does not apply. Here, ethnicity, family, politics and religion are all inter-related, and social class has a comparatively minor role in establishing identity. Northern Ireland is a polarized society where most people are born into, and stay in, one or other of the two communities for the whole of their lives.

On one side of the divide are people whose ancestors came from lowland Scotland or England. They are self-consciously Protestant and want Northern Ireland to remain in the UK. On the other side

Being British 5 3

are people whose ancestors were native Irish. They are self-con­sciously Catholic and would like Northern Ireland to become part of

the Irish Republic.

Although the two communities live side-by-side, their lives are almost entirely segregated. They live in different housing estates, listen to different radio and television programmes, register with different doctors, have prescriptions made up by chemists of their own denominations, march to commemorate different anniversaries and read different newspapers. Their children go to different schools, so that those who go on to university often find themselves mixing with people from the 'other' community for the first time in their lives. For the majority who do not go to university, merely talking to somebody from the other community is a rare event.

In this atmosphere, marrying a member of the other community is traditionally regarded with horror, and has sometimes even resulted in the deaths of the Romeos and Juliets concerned (as punish­ment for the 'betrayal' of their people). The extremes of these hard­line attitudes are gradually softening. It should also be noted that they apply to a much lesser extent among the middle-classes. It is illustrative of this that while in football, a mainly working-class sport, Northern Ireland and the Republic have separate teams, in rugby, a more

middle-class sport, there is only one team for the whole of Ireland, in which Protestants from the north play alongside Catholics from the south with no sign of disharmony whatsoever.

Being British

Last of all, a few words about British identity and loyalty. How import­ant is it to British people that they are British? Do they feel they 'belong' to Britain?

Perhaps because of the long tradition of a clear separation between the individual and the state, British people, although many of them feel proud to be British, are not normally actively patriotic. They often feel uncomfortable if, in conversation with somebody from another country, that person refers to 'you' where 'you' means Britain or the British government. They are individualistic and do not like to feel that they are personally representing their country.

During the last quarter of the twentieth century there was a dramatic and severe loss of confidence in British public institutions (see chapter 6). Nearly one third of the people questioned in an opinion poll in the early 1990s said that they could think of nothing about Britain to be proud of. In addition, almost half said that they would emigrate if they could - suggesting a low degree of attachment to the country. This decrease in confidence was accompanied by a change in the previous rather patronizing attitude to foreigners and foreign ways. In the days of empire, foreigners were often con­sidered amusing, even interesting, but not really to be taken seriously. These days, many foreign ways of doing things are admired (although perhaps a bit resentfully) and there is a greater openness to foreign influences.

Along with this openness, however, goes a sense of vulnerability, so that patriotism often takes a rather defensive form. For instance, there are worries about the loss of British identity in the European Union (see chapter 12). This is perhaps why the British cling so obstinately to certain distinctive ways of doing things, such as driving on the left and using different systems of measurement (see chapter 5-).

It is in this climate of opinion that the dramatic increase in support for the government during the Falklands/Malvinas War in 1982 must be interpreted (see chapter i 2). Here was a rare modern occasion for the British people to be actively patriotic. Many of them felt that here, for once, Britain was doing something right and doing it effectively!

The modern British are not really chauvinistic. Open hostility to people from other countries is very rare. If there is any chauvinism at all, it expresses itself through ignorance. Most British people know remarkably little about Europe and who lives there. The popular image of Europe seems to be that it is something to do with the French. An entry in the Radio Times can serve as an example. This is a very popular

Questions and suggestions ss

magazine which gives details of all the week's radio and television programmes. In April 1994 it subtitled its introduction to a pro­gramme which previewed that year's entries for the Eurovision Song Contest as 'tips for Ie top'. Notice the 'Ie'. It is an indication of the apparently widespread assumption that Europe is a place where everybody speaks French.

The British continue to be very bad about learning other peoples' languages. Fluency in any European language other than English is generally regarded as exotic. But there is nothing defensive or deliber­ate about this attitude. The British do not refuse to speak other languages. They are just lazy.

QUESTIONS

1 In the early years of the twentieth century, the playwright and social commentator George Bernard Shaw remarked that an Englishman only had to open his mouth to make some other Englishman despise him. What was he talking about? Would he say the same thing today?

2 In the 1930s people in middle-class neighbour­hoods often reacted angrily to the building of housing estates for the working class nearby. In one area they even built a wall to separate the two neighbourhoods! This could never happen today. Why not? What has changed?

3 Standard English is used 'naturally' in everyday speech by between 15'% and 30% of the popula­tion in Britain (it depends how you define it). Received pronunciation (RP), again depending

on how you define it, is used in everyday speech by only 3% to 12% of the population. So why is standard English with an RP accent the usual model for people learning British English as a foreign language? What justification can you find for this practice?

4 Do the social classes in your country differenti­ate themselves in the same ways as they do in Britain? Do language, accent, clothes, money, habits and attitudes play the same roles in your country?

5 This chapter considers several factors that can go towards creating a person's sense of identity. Some of these are more important in Britain and some are less important. Are the same factors the important ones in your country?

SUGGESTIONS

• Many BBC television comedy programmes depend for much of their

humour on habits and values determined by social class. Recent examples (which you may be able to get on video) include Only Fools and Horses and Birds of a Feather, both of which portray Cockney values, and Keeping Up Appearances, which makes fun of the pretentiousness of some middle-class people.

• If you are interested in accents and dialects, English Accents and Dialects by Hughes and Trudgill (Edward Arnold) is an academic book with long texts exemplifying the main types of English spoken in Britain. There is an accompanying cassette.

• The Queen and I by Sue Townsend (Mandarin) is fun to read and portrays working class characters humorously contrasted with members of the upper classes (the royal family).

'English') breakfast is a large 'fry-up' (see chapter 20) preceded by cereal with milk and followed by toast, butter and marmalade, all washed down with lots of tea. In fact, only about 10% of the people in Britain actually have this sort of breakfast. Two-thirds have cut out the fry-up and just have the cereal, tea and toast. The rest have even less. What the vast majority of British people have in the mornings is therefore much closer to what they call a 'continental' (i.e. European) breakfast than it is to a 'British' one. The image of the British as a nation of tea-drinkers is another stereotype which is somewhat out of date. It is true that it is still prepared in a distinctive way (strong and with milk), but more coffee than tea is now bought in the country's shops. As for the tradition of afternoon tea with biscuits, scones, sandwiches or cake, this is a minority activity, largely confined to retired people and the leisured upper-middle class (although preserved in tea shops in tourist resorts).

Even when a British habit conforms to the stereotype, the wrong conclusions can sometimes be drawn from it. The supposed British love of queuing is an example. Yes, British people do form queues whenever they are waiting for something, but this does not mean that they enjoy it. In 1992, a survey found that the average wait to pay in a British supermarket was three minutes and twenty-three seconds, and that the average wait to be served in a bank was two minutes and thirty-three seconds. You might think that these times sound very reasonable. But The Sunday Times newspaper did not think so. It referred to these figures as a 'problem'. Some banks now promise to serve their customers 'within two minutes'. It would therefore seem wrong to conclude that their habit of queuing shows that the British are a patient people. Apparently, the British hate having to wait and have less patience than people in many other countries.

English versus British

Because English culture dominates the cultures of the other three nations of the British Isles (see chapter 1), everyday habits, attitudes and values among the peoples of the four nations are very similar. However, they are not identical, and what is often regarded as typic­ally British may in fact be only typically English. This is especially true with regard to one notable characteristic - anti-intellectualism.

Among many people in Britain, there exists a suspicion of intelli­gence, education and 'high culture'. Teachers and academic staff, although respected, do not have as high a status as they do in most other countries. Nobody normally proclaims their academic quali­fications or title to the world at large. No professor would expect, or want, to be addressed as 'Professor' on any but the most formal occa­sion. There are large sections of both the upper and working class in Britain who, traditionally at least, have not encouraged their children to go to university (see chapter 14). This lack of enthusiasm for education is certainly decreasing. Nevertheless, it is still unusual for

58 5 Attitudes

Conservatism 59

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 1908