Enemies within
Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much as the person who wrote its online headline, ‘Scotland knows the power of a common enemy. We English don’t’ (18 April). It is true that ‘the wish to be the underdog’ is a defining urge of our age, even in relatively prosperous polities such as Scotland and Catalonia. But Parris is wrong when he claims that the closest the English come to the ‘Braveheart feeling’ is in their collective memory of the second world war. If only that were true. Would any other country make so little of its crucial role in the defeat of the most evil ideology the world has known? Celebrations of the 70th anniversary this May are especially low-key, considering that it is the last time any substantial gathering of former combatants will be possible.
Instead, the historical moment that seems to define Englishness is the first world war. Witness the crowds flocking to the Tower of London last November to see the installation of poppies. But no common enemy of the English is evoked by the myth; certainly not Germany, which is widely admired. Despite the efforts of so many historians, the ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ thesis of class war, of young working-class men sent over the top by toffs, is still the one that defines England’s past. We English, it appears, need to be victims as much as anyone else — but we find the enemy at home.
Paul Lay
London N5
Remember the Herero
Sir: While I hesitate to question the infallibility of either Matthew Parris or the Pope, I would challenge their description of the Armenian genocide as being the first of the 20th century (18 April).
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