Just when it seems the Church of England can go no further in
offensive fatuousness, it manages, faithfully, to excel itself yet
again, to the continuing despair of those would-be satirists whose
most absurd and savage inventions cannot hope to compete with the
reality.
The latest exercise in grotesquerie is a call to “rebrand” Saint
George, the Patron Saint of England, in the interests of
culture-war, political correctness and leftism. The proposals are
contained in a paper, “When the Saints Go Marching Out: Redefining
Saint George For A New Era,” created by what is described as an
“Anglican think-tank” Ekklesia, and published in the Church of
England Newspaper.
Simon Barrow, one of the paper’s authors, declares: “It is time
that Saint George was reclaimed from the dragon, from past
associations with racism and the far right, and from images of
arrogant flag-waving.” The fact that Saint George is associated in
popular mythology with slaying a dragon to rescue a maiden seems a
particular cause of offense, possibly because dragons are an
endangered species and a persecuted minority group.
It was apparently Richard the Lionheart who officially claimed
Saint George as England’s Patron Saint in the 12th Century. During
the Crusades an apparition of Saint George is said to have appeared
on the walls of Jerusalem, waving his sword and encouraging the
English on to re-take the holy city for Christendom.
Saint George’s Day was a great celebration for some time after
the victory of Agincourt, but over a long period it gradually fell
out of fashion until a major revival of interest and enthusiasm in
very recent times.
This new interest in Saint George, like all other notions of
patriotism, has increasingly been attracting the ire of the
politically-correct in the great British culture-war. In Norwich
three years ago a magistrate refused to allow the Otter pub to open
on Saint George’s Day, April 23, on the grounds that “St. George’s
Day is not a special day.” The same court did, however, grant a
special license for Chinese New Year, and exemptions are given for
Saint Patrick’s Day around the country as a matter of course.
Politically-correct councils have banned flying Saint George’s flag
on the grounds that it would “send the wrong message.”
In Bath, in 2003, a St. George’s Cross flag, measuring 12 inches
by nine inches, was ordered removed from within an office at a
police station because it could be seen through a window from the
upper deck of double-decker tourist busses. A senior police officer
ordered its removal after a local councilor complained that the
national flag might cause offence to ethnic minorities (no evidence
that it actually did cause such offence was forthcoming). Chief
Inspector Mike Creedy of Bath Police confirmed: “The flag was
removed as a result of a request to staff in view of sensitivity
surrounding the diversity issue.” In response Falklands veteran
Major Martin Tracey hoisted a 4-foot by 3-foot St George’s flag
over the front of his shop in the city centre and scores of other
residents followed suit. There have been countless other incidents
of politically-correct attacks on the flag and its patriotic
associations.
Now Mr. Barrow claims that: “The patron Saint of England should
be rebranded, and Saint George’s Day should become a national day
to celebrate the tradition of dissent.” He believes Saint George
should be re-branded as a “People’s Saint,” rather, perhaps, as the
ineffable Diana was rebranded a “people’s princess” when being a
real princess proved too much for her. Saint George, he fears, has
been hijacked not only by the dragon, but also by “associations
with racism and the far right.” He must be reclaimed from “images
of arrogant flag-waving.”
It was under the flag of Saint George — the red cross on a
white ground of the White Ensign — that the British Navy kept the
Atlantic sea-lanes open in World War II, and made eventual victory
against Nazism in Europe possible. It was under the flag of Saint
George that the converted merchant ship HMS Jervis Bay,
armed with old 6-inch guns, steamed into the 11-inch guns of the
pocket-battleship Admiral Scheer, going to certain death
to buy half an hour for the convoy she was escorting to scatter and
escape. When one of the Scheer’s salvos hit the Jervis
Bay’s bridge, destroying the ensign and blowing off the
Captain’s arm and shoulder, his next order, according to one of the
few survivors rescued later, was to hoist another ensign.
Among the “dissents” Mr. Barrow believes should be celebrated on
Saint George’s Day are: “the pro-democracy Putney Debates, the
equality-seeking Levellers, the anti-slavery abolitionists, the
women’s suffrage movement, conscientious objectors and peacemakers,
anti-racism campaigners, human rights activists and those
struggling against debt and poverty.” An incorrigible,
politically-incorrect, voice whispers that Captain Fogarty Fegen of
HMS Jervis Bay might be a more fitting individual to
connect with St. George.
The pro-Democracy Putney debates? What might they be? In fact
they were held in 1647 between Oliver Cromwell and some other
officers then in the process of establishing a military
dictatorship in England and sects of extremist Puritans, who
apparently thought Cromwell was not going far enough.
Of course, there have been others in the British tradition of
“dissent.” Oswald Mosley, for example, was a dissenter who started
the British Union of Fascists. Or how about the London Tube
bombers? If they were not dissidents, who can claim the title?
Some people, looking at the unfortunate performance of the
British sailors and marines taken prisoner by Iran, Britain’s
strange passivity over the growth of Islamist extremism in London
and over huge increases in crime rates, might say it is actually
more not less of the traditions of both patriotism and
dragon-slaying that Britain needs at present.
C. S. Lewis once wrote of writing for children: “Let them at
least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.” Of these,
Saint George is one of the most primal symbols.
