Finding Albion

[...] a lot of English myths and symbols often don’t feel very English at all. St George, the nation’s patron saint, for example, is a Turkish hero with Palestinian roots, who never set foot in England. And the stories of King Arthur and his round table, now some of the better-known myths in Britain, were adapted from Welsh stories; it’s only in more recent times that he’s become a symbol of English identity. And then there’s the St George’s cross, which, beloved as it is by far-right nationalists as a symbol of ‘indigenous’ Englishness, was, in fact, borrowed from the Italian republic of Genoa, which used it as its flag several centuries before England did (the English actually paid the Genoans a yearly tax for the privilege of adopting the flag up until the eighteenth century). We have the oak, which seems like an older symbol, and is connected to the landscape, but far more ubiquitous are the rose (a symbol of the Tudor monarchy), cups of tea (a product of the British Empire), the Barbary lion (originally from North Africa), football, red phone boxes, Beefeaters and Big Ben.

[...] ‘forest’ was originally a legal term introduced to Britain by William the Conqueror, used to designate private hunting areas for the Norman monarch and aristocracy to protect the ‘noble’ animals of the chase, like deer and wild boar, and the vegetation that sustained them. The Norman invader also introduced a series of ‘Forest Laws’, which prohibited ‘commoners’ from accessing these royal hunting grounds and were punishable with fines, imprisonment, mutilation or death. The local population was no longer allowed to raise fences to protect their crops, use timber from the woodland to build houses or to hunt game to feed their families – all of which had been seen as natural rights under Anglo-Saxon law. As you can imagine, these laws were extremely unpopular with the peasantry. They reflected the new, elite Norman power over the British landscape and its people [...]

There’s a reason that communal celebrations are often targeted by authoritarian regimes, whether in colonial Trinidad or Puritan England. These simple gatherings are about more than just fun; joy and festivity have a propulsive force, and can be a vital ingredient for activism. When we’re lonely, isolated and anxious, we are far less likely to stand together and fight for our rights. Organising festivities that are free and open for all, gathering on the streets in outlandish outfits, singing together and parading to merry tunes – just like the masqueraders at the early Caribbean carnivals who mocked their oppressors with their costumes and dances – draws upon the quietly subversive power of ‘whimsy’, a mischievous unruliness that refuses to conform or to be beaten down.