Respect for rules and the tea-time of the British soul

My friend Bob Patterson from Kansas has kindly sent me a cartoon that sums up the British sense of order.

It’s true that the British are marked by a terrible respect of rules and conventions. I’ve noticed it in myself.

For years I never wore seatbelts in cars. I just didn’t like them. Then it became a legal obligation. The very next car trip, I conscientiously buckled up and have done so ever since.

Similarly, in the days when not all hotel rooms had hairdryers, I carried a small one with me. Mine had ‘do not wrap cable round dryer’ printed on the side and I carefully followed the injunction, though I resented it, knowing that it was making the job longer and harder. One of the reasons I’m glad to have adopted a much shorter hairstyle is that it makes a hairdryer unnecessary, and lets me avoid this existential tussle with my conscience.

Of course, the British don’t always obey the rules. Last year’s looting in various English cities proved the point. But the level of shock that those events generated testifies to how exceptional they are.

Respect for rules may be an amusing and even endearing characteristic of the British. Sometimes however it becomes depressing. We’ve just emerged from a long weekend the government decreed to celebrate the Queen’s diamond jubilee. A few hundred republicans demonstrated against the event; a million took part in London alone.

That’s fine. There isn’t so much to celebrate in life that one should turn down the opportunity for a good party. It’s just sad that it has to take this form. All these royal pageants are opportunities for people who owe their status to birth or wealth (and often both) to disport themselves for the adulation of others. It’s always us watching them.

And what about the person at the centre? I’m constantly told the Queen does a great job, but what is that job? Keeping her mouth shut on politics? She certainly does that well. Unfortunately, politics also requires people who open their mouths and occasionally take difficult decisions. Those people we call politicians and we generally loathe them. But they’re the ones with the real job.

The other side of her work is to head the royal family. There her record is lamentable. She forced her sister Margaret to abandon a love match and into a miserable marriage that ended in acrimony. Both her daughter Anne and her son Andrew had failed marriages. Most spectacularly of all, she drove her son and heir Charles away from the love of his life (who’s back with him now, as it happens) and into a marriage with a fairy-tale princess, and we know how badly that ended.

Indeed, if there was one point where the British seemed to have lost all faith in the Queen, it was following the death of Princess Diana. The depth of sorrow that followed that event was surprising; what’s galling is how quickly it’s been forgotten.

But it isn’t just because she’s done so little to merit all this deference that I’m unhappy about it, it’s because the attitude spills over into real politics. The British tend to be obsequious to those they see as ‘betters’ even though, when we inspect their behaviour, we find there’s nothing superior about it. 


Take David Cameron and George Osborne, our present Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer. They’re running one of the most incompetent and least compassionate of governments in living memory. 

Following the 2008 crash, the worst since the great depression, Labour had Britain back to growth by the end of 2009; Cameron and Osborne have taken us back into recession and it looks like being a long one. They’ve done that despite harsh measures against the most vulnerable in society: the sick, the handicapped, the old, the poor.

They’re phenomenally wealthy, they were born to privilege – Eton, Oxford, open doors at top levels of the economy – and have never had to strive for anything. One of the most common criticisms of them from people who know them is that they’re lazy – they’ve never had to work hard so they haven’t developed the habit.

But that high birth, that privilege are to a great number of people the very characteristics that qualify them for high office, as if it were their birthright.

That all fits with the inclination to take the royal family so seriously. In turn, the fixation with royalty seems closely associated with our excessive respect for rules. That’s funny when it makes it impossible to wrap a cord around a hairdryer; it’s less amusing when it leads to handing political power over to a pair of self-centred dilettantes.


Still, I can’t go on. It’s time for tea. I’ve got to leave you. Don't want to be late getting my cuppa ready.

Not proud of my prejudices

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s refreshing to have your prejudices challenged.

British Society has two great pillars, Church and State, and I’m not particularly fond of either. They’re still heavily intertwined over here where the Queen remains head of the Church of England. Other more enlightened countries have gone to some lengths to keep the State apart from the Church, as in France (where secularism is practically a state religion) or the US (which seems on occasion to regret the fact).

It’s not that I have anything especially against the Church of England. I’m just not convinced by two great arguments advanced for faith in general: that they bring consolation to individuals and communities together. The problem with the first assertion is that ‘because it makes me feel better’ has never struck me as the most persuasive argument for the truth of any proposition. As for the second, it seems to me that as soon as religion has built a community, it defines anyone outside it as ‘other’, and ‘other’ quickly degenerates into ‘wrong’ and ‘wrong’ in turn into ‘heretic’ or ‘unbeliever.’ That strikes me as far too close to persecution, hardly an activity for which humankind special motivation.

But then along comes someone like Giles Fraser. He was Canon Chancellor at St Paul’s, but resigned when it looked as though the cathedral authorities were going to evict the ‘Occupy’ protestors from outside their front door. He reckoned that he could imagine Christ being born in that camp. After a brief period out of work, he’s about to start a new appointment, not as a Dean or Bishop (although he was apparently on the right sort of shortlists), but as a vicar of an Inner London parish with some of the toughest social difficulties in the country.

I feel almost obliged to go and hear him preach. Fortunately, he’s going to be writing a regular column in The Guardian so I can be entertained and edified without having to do anything that drastic.

So much for the Church. What about the State and its great symbol, the Royal Family? Surely I can indulge my comfortable view that they're without redeeming features? But no sooner do I reassure myself on that point, than along they come and redeem themselves a bit. On a royal trip to Copenhagen, the Prince of Wales and Camilla had themselves introduced to Sofie Gråbøl, star of the extraordinary Danish series The Killing. And then they paid a visit to the set.

Sofie, in one her trademark jumpers, giving another to Camilla

It’s appalling, isn’t it? The two series of The Killing have provided some of the best TV I’ve seen in years. And some of the Royals like it too? Ghastly. I may have to concede that they have some taste.

At least it was Camilla who persuaded Charles to watch with her. She’s not a real royal at all but just married into the family (which in passing suggests that her good taste is perhaps not that reliable when we get out of the realm of TV series). She had to fight to get into the family, against the vehement opposition of the Queen. It was that paragon of parenting skills who initially managed not only to push Camilla out of the way but to move Diana in instead, and didn’t that work out well?

So at least I can console myself with the thought that my agreement with Camilla over a TV series isn’t really a concession to an authentic royal. Which is a relief. Because though it’s refreshing to challenge one’s prejudices, it’s also tiring. Nice to be able relax back into some simplistic preconceptions.