Wales versus England: tribalism and grievances
My grandfather took me to my first rugby international, Wales against England, when I was ten years old. Although I was born in Wales, went to boarding school in Wales, and my parents met, lived and married in Wales, my father’s side of the family were English, and I have never made a home for any time in Wales itself. How then, every year when this sporting fixture rolls around, am I suddenly transformed into this die-hard, bordering on fanatical, supporter of a national rugby team with whose nation I only have a bloodline relationship?
The answer is only partly in our tribal instincts as humans – our wanting to belong to and identify with a group of like-minded people. And when I thought hard about it, in the case of Wales playing England (and also with the other Celtic nations, Scotland and Ireland, playing against England), the passion for a win against the English is also sometimes fueled by a sense of deeply held and dimly perceived grievance. An annual and tribal sports tournament allows room for, in this case, conjuring up centuries of accumulated injustices. Half known historical facts – of famines, oppression, unemployment, exploitation – are exhumed to support the positive aggression of the day (“let’s beat the buggers”) with a more visceral and passionate loathing.
I’ve always found this hard to understand. A good friend’s husband is Irish, he hardly knows me, but he hates me. Or rather, he hates everything that he thinks I stand for (ironically, he thinks I’m English) – colonialism, snobbery and every large and small injustice that has ever been visited upon the Irish nation by the British slash English.
Nowadays my allegiances are even more congested – I’m a US citizen and proud Vermonter. Vermont has weathered the COVID storm much better than most States in the US through a combination of sensible policies and sensible, salt-of-the-earth people. But the winter weather has brought plentiful snow to the VT ski resorts and, with that, an equally plentiful number of visitors from nearby States. Our COVID cases spiked to all-time highs in January and February and with it, a growing sense of antipathy towards all visitors being spotted in cars bearing license plates from Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. These folks were obviously not following quarantine regulations, weren’t wearing masks, were being rude to storekeepers and clearly had no clue about navigating a rotary (roundabout). Our frustration with the pandemic was fueled by our willingness to transfer that feeling into a hostility towards another group – of people who are plainly not us.
And so it goes with national politics. Two months into the new administration, it’s weird (and probably premature) to suddenly realize how quiet everyday political life is becoming. When each day doesn’t start with a rant against some statute, nation, group or individual - government seems, well, boring. It’s just a bunch of officials getting on with the business of enacting the policies for which they were elected. And the danger is, of course, that after four years of reestablishing what many people consider the “norms” of this political behavior, there will be a reassertion of divisiveness underpinned by this general sense of grievance. I’m not naïve enough to think that there are no real issues and no grievances – there are many - and that’s what a democratic society is there to tackle.
My hope is that we can focus on these real issues and those real injustices - not the ones we manufacture to fuel our passions and our prejudices.
Now let’s go out on Saturday and smack those English bastards!