FAO all Celts

Mexico86 · FAO all Celts

All Scots, Irish and Welsh, post in the other thread got me thinking.

If England are playing in a tournament and their game has no influence on the progress of your nation, do you support them because they are the neighbouring country or not because they are England?

If not what is it about England that makes them so repugnant to you that you cannot bear to see them win?

I say this as the great grandson of a 42nd highland regiment soldier who served in India during the wars and in WW2. I am proud of my Scottish roots but I think that some of the hatred from the Celts is irrational and in some ways immature.

PS. For the record I supported Ireland in the WC of 1994.

Myles

I only support Ireland and Juve, so i wouldn't support any other country or club.

There would probably be clubs that i'd prefer that they lose whenever they play, but it doesn't apply to national teams for me.

I couldn't really care if England win or lose as i don't follow the EPL so i wouldn't have a passing interest in the performance of their players so i don't care if they win, and i don't care if they lose because i've managed to get over the 800 years of occupation

I'd watch the Italy games because i'd be interested to see how the Serie A players are getting on, also if Italy win then Juve have more champions, but i'd consider that as following Italy's progress, rather than supporting them.

Obviously the majority of football supporters in Ireland watch the EPL, i'd say between those people who want England to win and those who want them to always lose, is split in favour of the latter.

Jay would have a better idea of the supporters in Northern Ireland, but wanting England to lose is probably governed by whether you have a nationalist or unionist leaning, but i wouldn't know for sure

Sir George

Given that we're effectively cheering on one set of multi-millionaires to beat another set of multi-millionaires in a game involving kicking a bit of leather around for an hour and a half, I'm not sure maturity and rationality or lack thereof comes into choice of which team we're cheering on. Rationality excuses himself and heads swiftly for the exit as soon as the telly is switched on the nerves start tingling. It doesn't matter who people support or why.

As a proud Englishman, (whatever the eff that means) I can safely say that I harbour no ambition whatever on behalf of thugs like Terry or Gerrard or misogynist scumbags such as Ferdinand and Lampard to win any football matches let alone world cup finals.

So I suggest you support who you like and don't worry too much at all about which team other people are supporting.

pengedragon

i wouldnt support them because i'm not english, thats as far as it goes really

no hate involved, it is pretty funny when they go out though after the usual "we can do it this time" stuff

Markieboy

It's very complicated, Mexico86, and it's not something that many English people understand even slightly. I don't understand it fully myself but I'll try to put across what I know as clearly and concisely as possible. I haven’t read the posts to which you refer so bear with me if I’m going over old ground.

I’m Scottish, of Irish Catholic descent. My passport is a British one and I tend to vote for unionist political parties, but I’m loathe to describe myself as British. I support the Scottish national team and don’t support England. That’s not to say I watch every England game willing on the opposition. I don’t often watch full England matches unless in major tournaments. Even then I’m fairly dispassionate until England get near the semis, then I like to see them lose. I have English family and English friends, so I don’t consider myself anti-English (oh god, that sounds crass).

Enough about me! Essentially, there are two aspects of this, England’s domination of Britain and football as a symbol of national identity.

England has been the dominant country in the British Isles since the middle ages. Essentially, and without putting too fine a point on it, the English conquered Wales (formally under King Edward I) and Ireland (formally under Henry VIII). Several English kings attempted to do the same in Scotland, at times gaining de facto control over Scotland (as under Edward I).

Since 1707 the British government, parliament and monarchy have all resided in London. So England has been the seat of British sovereignty. The term British became so interchangeable with English that it was accepted throughout Britain, the British Empire and beyond. Even Bonar Law, the Canadian born son of an Ulster-Scotsman and a Scotswoman described himself as Prime Minister of England. By the turn of the 19th Century it became as natural to refer to Britain as England as it is now to refer to the Netherlands as Holland. It was only with the rise of independence movements throughout the world and the fall of the British Empire that the terms England and Britain became partially separated. It’s still prevalent in other countries. The French seem to describe anything English or British as ‘Anglais’.

The English themselves have been a part of this imagining of Britain as Greater England. In 1966 when England won the world cup, the flags that were waved were union flags rather than St George's crosses. Even now, English fans chant "two world wars, one world cup" at the Germans, as if it was the same entity that claimed victory in all three of those events. There is also an England v Argentina rivalry, fuelled as much by events in 1982 as of 1986.

It goes beyond football, of course, and always has done. Horatio Nelson’s famous quote “England expects that every man will do his duty” was made during the Battle of Trafalgar when Nelson was in charge of the British Navy. When John Major said in 1993 “fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers” he was really talking about England. We’ve got dog lovers up here but warm beer is purely accidental, the suburbs are grey and decidedly vincible and there are only five cricket grounds - all of which are a gross misuse of public space.

In those terms Britain was simply the proxy-English nation-state. By the time of the union, England already had something of a rivalry with France, Spain and the Netherlands. This continued and England/Britain was defined by its relations with the other powers of the early modern era, as much as by its domination of Celtic Britain.

Few Scottish and Welsh people have ever bought this image of Britain and England as synonymous. For us Celts the union has been social, culture, economic and political, but it has never been total. We have generally been Scottish and British or Welsh and British, or Manx and British for that matter (I’m shying away from the Irish question here). We have been able to retain distinct identities.

Those identities were founded on what makes Scotland or Wales different from England. For the Welsh that mainly meant the language and its culture, as well as some religious differences. For the Scots, a separate church, legal system and education system - as well as kilts and haggis and all that romantic Victorian-era nonsense - served as points of distinction.

So while English identity was bound up with British identity with other powers in Europe (and later America) as reference points, Celtic identity was defined in terms of difference from England.

Part of that identity is the national football team. As Eric Hobsbawm wrote, “the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.” This is very true of Scotland and Wales where many of the other trappings of the nation state have been missing and where the football teams serve as another point of distinction with England/Britain.

So England is not simply a neighbouring country but the dominant political and cultural behemoth of Britain, from which the Celtic nations have had to fight to defend an individual identity and that part of that fight has been football-related.

What makes England so repugnant? This has a great deal to do with the English national football team as it happens. For all the above about cultural dominance and political control most people in Scotland and Wales are at least pragmatic enough to understand and accept the political realities of the Union and to be on the whole fairly glad of the social and cultural union. However, due to English dominance of the media we have to put up with a great deal of talk about England, which means talk about English sport. And because the people in the media are largely English they usually refer to England as 'we' and 'us'.

It's quite annoying to hear someone who is supposed to represent me - a Scottish, British person - talk about 'them' - the English, British people - as 'us'. The English World Cup win in 1966 seems to be mentioned with annoying regularity, usually segueing into something about 'our' (England's) chances this time. It's all very funny when England fails to live up to unreasonable expectation, of course, but it can be very frustrating to watch for us Celtic Brits.

This talk of '66 and of possible future glories leads to jingoism and sometimes xenophobia in the media and amongst England fans. To be honest there's a little bit of jingoism inherent in any international sporting event, and at least a tiny bit of xenophobia in most countries. What you don't get from Scottish or Welsh fans is organized large-scale violence as seen from England fans, most notably at Lansdowne Road in 1995 and at Euro 2000. Add to that the racist treatment of Germans in the English media before every meeting of those nations. My grandad fought against Nazi Germany, but you won't get the Herald banging on about the war. Somehow we've moved on and England hasn't.

Another thing which the English media does very well is condescend. Knowing that there are non-English British people out there they pay some lip service to the Welsh national team, or occasionally mention a big match in Scotland. Football Focus is a particularly bad for this. It usually involves them 'turning their attentions to' whatever group Scotland are in, rolling out platitudes and banalities for three minutes and eleven seconds before Manish Bhasin rounds it off with some vaguely amusing dig about how shite 'they' (that's us, Scotland) are at football.

Then there's the curious media anomaly of being a British winner but a Scottish loser. The number of times a sportsperson is described as British when winning, but Scottish or Welsh or Northern Irish or Manx when losing, is staggering.

It’s not just the media either. Wanting British representation in its most popular sport at the London Olympics, the British Government pushed very hard to create a unified British national football team. This would have endangered the independence of all four British football associations in world football. England were keen and a deal has been reached where they will represent Britain and call themselves Team GB but not select Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish players. The fact that the Scottish, Welsh and Irish FAs acquiesced is to the compromise is quite possibly a scandal which jeopardizes the independence of the footballing nations, but the point is it was pushed through by the British Government and the English FA. Scottish people would never pretend they were representing Britain unless they had the full support of the English people, especially if it endangered our individual status.

To bring this back to your question, yes, the hatred is immature. There’s something a little bit immature about the feelings engendered by national football teams. All that flag waving and face painting is a bit pathetic. With Scotland, all the references to Braveheart and the Declaration of Arbroath and ‘hating the English’ are frankly nonsense, adhered to in the strictest sense only by the lunatic fringe of Scottish nationalist politics.

I would argue that it isn’t irrational though. It’s a reflection of the identity of nations that are otherwise thwarted and also a reaction to a degree of cultural oppression that is very evident when the English start talking about football.

So in short, you’re not just neighbours and not wanting the success of the English football team is not always hatred and even when it is, it doesn’t extend beyond football. Hope that helps explain a little of what’s going on.

Tangerine Romanista