English还是British？足球凸显了一场持久的身份危机

English or British? Football highlights an enduring identity crisis

The English are supposed to be British, but the two are at odds with each other

Jul 12th 2018

“ENGLAND is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.” George Orwell’s perception is just as true today as it was when he wrote it in 1941; for though excitement drowned out more complex feelings during two blissful hours on July 11th when England might have beaten Croatia to go through to the final of the World Cup, one of the facets of Britain’s multi-faceted identity crisis is the ambivalence many English people feel about the flag under which their team plays.

“英格兰也许是唯一一个知识分子为自己的民族感到羞耻的伟大国家。”乔治·奥威尔在1941年写下的观点，如今依然如此；虽然在7月11日幸福的两个钟头，兴奋淹没了更复杂的情感，此时英格兰有可能击败克罗地亚挺近世界杯决赛，英国多重身份认同危机中的一个，是许多英国人为他们的球队效力的国旗感到矛盾。

Football is one of the few vehicles for the expression of Englishness. Unlike Britishness, which is grounded in a state, Englishness has no political institutions. So whereas Britishness is about ideas of citizenship, liberty and democracy, Englishness is rooted in the soil, and a history that stretches way back beyond the formation of the modern state—hence the three-lion arms of the medieval Plantagenet kings on the football team’s shirt.

足球是表达“Englishness”的少数工具之一。与基于国家属性的"Britishness"不同，“Englishness”没有政治制度概念。因此，"Britishness"是关于公民、自由和民主的观念，而“Englishness”则根植于土地，它的历史可以追溯到现代国家的形成——中世纪金雀花王朝的“三狮军团”就印在足球队队服上。

Like so many neglected identities, Englishness is reasserting itself. That started two decades ago, when the Euro ’96 football tournament—in which England played Scotland and fans south of the border dumped the union flag in favour of the St George Cross—coincided with the devolution of power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. “People started to say: 'If they’re them, who am I?’” says John Denham, a former Labour minister who is now director of Winchester University’s Centre for English Identity and Politics. The proportion of people in England describing themselves as primarily English rose, and is now significantly higher than those who describe themselves as primarily British.

就像许多被忽视的身份一样，“Englishness”正在重新显现，这始于20年前，当时的96年欧洲杯足球赛，英格兰队与苏格兰队交手，边境线以南的球迷抛弃了英联邦国旗而选择了圣乔治十字旗，与此同时，权利也下放到苏格兰、威尔士和北爱尔兰。“人们开始说:'如果他们是他们，我是谁?’”前工党大臣、温彻斯特大学英国身份与政治中心主任约翰·丹汉姆说。在英国，描述自己主要是英国人的比例在上升，并明显高于那些认为自己是不列颠的人。

That matters, because of the difference between the two. The “English”, a YouGov survey found, are older and associate England with “history, tradition and pageantry”. Young people and Londoners are more likely to see themselves as British than English, and to regard England as “a diverse place, home to people from many backgrounds”. A small group—7% overall, more of them young, Labour or Lib Dem—were embarrassed to identify as English. “This anti-English fraction is over-represented within the institutions of government, within the leadership of the public sector, within the media, within corporate capitalism and in academia—in short, a large part of what is sometimes called the elite,” said Mr Denham in a recent lecture.

这很重要，因为两者之间的区别。YouGov的一项调查发现，“English”更古老，它把英格兰与“历史、传统和壮观”联系在一起。年轻人和伦敦人更倾向于把自己看成是不列颠人，而不是英国人。他们认为英格兰是一个“多元的地方，来自不同背景的人的家园”。一小部分人(占总数的7%，大部分是年轻人、工党或自民党人)羞于承认自己是英国人。“在政府机构、公共部门、媒体、企业资本主义和学术机构中，这种反“English”占很重的比例——简而言之，这就是所谓的精英中的很大一部分，”德纳姆在最近的一次演讲中表示。

This hostility has its roots in the successful refashioning of Britishness as an outward-looking identity which espouses multiculturalism. Englishness, by contrast, is increasingly regarded as insular and atavistic. The nomenclature of the country’s far-right party neatly illustrates the shift: 20 years ago, the big noise in small-time fascism was the British National Party; now it is the English Defence League.

这种敌意的根源在于成功地将“Britishness”重塑为一种崇尚多元文化的外向型身份。相比之下，"Englishness"越来越被认为是孤立的和过时的。该国极右政党的命名很好地说明了这一转变:20年前，小法西斯主义的主要声音是英国民族党（British National Party）;现在是英国国防联盟（English Defence League）。

It is not just on the fringes of politics that Englishness is making an impact. It showed up in a Labour spat three years ago which would have been baffling to those unversed in the nuances of nationalistic symbolism. While campaigning at a by-election in a poor part of Kent, Emily Thornberry, a London MP and shadow cabinet minister, tweeted a picture of a modest terraced house with a white van and three St George flags in front of it. No explanation was provided, but it was widely understood to say: “OMG! Look at these awful bigots who live in this godforsaken place.” She resigned.

“Englishness”正在产生影响，这不仅仅是在边缘政治上。这一点在三年前工党的一场口角中体现了出来，对于那些不了解民族主义象征意义的细微差别的人来说，这可能会让他们感到困惑。伦敦议员兼影子内阁部长艾米丽·桑贝里在肯特郡的贫困地区参加补选活动时，在推特上发了一张照片，照片上是一栋朴素的阶梯式房屋，门前有一辆白色面包车和三面圣乔治十字国旗。没有提供任何解释，但人们普遍认为:“OMG!”看看这些可怕的顽固分子，他们生活在这个被上帝遗弃的地方。”她辞职了。

Englishness helped the Conservatives win the 2015 election. Their campaign in England exploited fears that if Labour won, it would ally with the Scottish National Party. And Englishness played a big part in the referendum, too: 73% of those who defined themselves as English voted to leave, and 66% of those who defined themselves as British voted to remain.

“Englishness”帮助保守党赢得了2015年的大选。他们在英格兰的竞选活动利用了人们的担忧，即如果工党获胜，它将与苏格兰民族党结盟。“Englishness”在公投中也起了很大的作用:73%的认为自己是英国人的人投了脱欧，而66%认为自己是不列颠人的人投了留下。

The English have, thus, had their revenge on those contemptuous intellectuals, but the hostility has harmed the country. For the two to be reconciled, Mr Denham believes, England must be given a parliament to match those in Britain’s peripheries. And perhaps football will do its bit: it is hard to cheer England’s black, brown and white players, lions proudly displayed on their chests, and insist that Englishness is steeped in racism.

因此，英国人对那些傲慢的知识分子进行了报复，但这种敌意伤害了这个国家。德纳姆认为，要想让这两者和解，英格兰必须得到一个与不列颠相匹配的议会。也许足球也会发挥它的作用:很难让英格兰的黑人、棕色和白人球员欢呼雀跃，狮子骄傲地展示他们的胸部，并坚持说“Englishness”是充满种族主义的。

英文部分选自《经济学人》杂志