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In Search of England's St. George

© Stuart Buchanan MacWatt

We Jocks, Micks and Taffies from the Celtic heartlands of Scotland, Ireland and Wales know how to celebrate. As expatriates in England or elsewhere we vaunt our national roots by celebrating our Saint's Day with pageantry and a noisy patriotism. The Irish in particular have transformed St.Patrick's Day into a quasi-public holiday wherever there are enough Guinness drinkers to support an Irish pub. Paddy's Day Parades and festivities bring downtown New York, Montreal, Melbourne, Birmingham and now even London to a joyful halt and hangover.

WE Scots have transfered our most noisy celebrations from the Day of Andrew the Saint to the Night of Robert Burns the Poet, but that is a historical quirk. Forbidden to celebrate our Saint's Day by frowning Reformation Fathers, we simply transfered our celebratory energies to another appropriate figure to express our nationhood and wallow in our clan tribalism while we guzzle haggis and whisky to the sound of bagpipes; an unholy mix that is not for the fainthearted or weak of stomach.

But what of the English and their warrior saint and dragon slayer, St George? His Day lies on April 23rd. But where are the city parades? On St. George's Day there will be no joyful throngs of merry Englishmen waving cricket bats, stiff upper lips a'quiver, as they promenade down Main Street behind a prancing troupe of Morris Dancers with bells on their boots. England celebrates no public holiday for St. George. There will be no pause other than the obligatory tea breaks in the Whitehall Corridors of Power; no Carnival through town and city streets, no colorful civic procession led by His Worship, The Lord Mayor of the City of London to Divine Service at St. Paul's Cathedral and thereafter to the nearest George and Dragon Pub for a pint of Best English Bitter. The nine-starred blue and yellow Euro flag of Brussels will flutter from Government buildings on May 6th, (Europe Day), but the Cross of St. George will be noticeably absent from those august flagpoles on April 23rd.

This year Ken Livingstone, Greater London's elected Mayor, allocated public funds to launch a St. Patrick's Day Parade in London from Westminster Cathedral to Trafalgar Square. When invited to sponsor a similar event for England's patron saint he denounced veneration of St. George as being politically incorrect. The trouble with St. George, he appeared to be suggesting, was that his flag and image has been hijacked by racist hooligans of the National Front, England's would-be Ku Klux Klan.

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