On St George's Day, I'm proud to be a young Englishman - no matter what the establishment trying to destroy our identity says: CHARLIE DOWNES

Daily Mail​

23-04-2025

Ever since I was a boy, I have had the privilege of being immersed in English culture. Whether they realised it or not, my parents gave me the most English childhood imaginable.
I grew up in rural Kent and went to a Church of England primary school founded centuries before I was born. Next to it stands a Saxon church more than a thousand years old. Weekends were spent exploring castles, gardens and stately homes; watching Shakespeare at a small local theatre; and holidaying in Cornwall and Sussex, where we enjoyed long walks through fields and ancient woods, picnics on the beach, roast dinners in pubs older than the United States, and tea and scones in quaint tearooms.
On the way home, we listened to The Beatles and Oasis. In the evening we watched Fawlty Towers and Alan Partridge, and before bed my father read me The Wind In The Willows and The Lord Of The Rings. And when it came to manners, my parents were positively Victorian.
I could not have asked for a better upbringing – and today, on St George's Day, I hope that I can one day give my own children the gift of an English childhood.
Until my late teens, I didn't think there was anything particularly remarkable about any of this. It was all I had ever known – it was just England. It was just home. It was only at university that I came to realise that the very notion of this country – everything I love, everything I am – has been under sustained assault by the elites of academia, media and government since before I was born.
I remember a professor claiming that anyone flying a St George's Cross was likely a racist – and my peers agreed. It was insulting, given I had that very flag hanging on my bedroom wall. On another occasion, I dared to suggest that migrants living in England ought to have the basic courtesy to learn our language, for which I was castigated by peers and professors alike. It wasn't a debate, it was a Maoist struggle session, in which I played the part of the heretic.
This was the early 2020s – a time during which the dual forces of Covid and Black Lives Matter had sent the West into a moral frenzy. Like every other institution, my university prostrated itself before the student body, grovelling in apology for the supposed presence of 'institutional racism' and vowing to challenge 'unconscious bias' and 'systemic inequality'.
Yet, it seemed to me that the only tangible form of 'institutional racism' was shown towards the English, given that students and professors alike would regularly engage in Anglophobia without even a hint of repercussions.
Meanwhile, I spent my free time doing what I have always done: exploring this great country. Visiting Royal Parks and rural pubs, reading Kipling and Burke, listening to Elgar and Parry. I went into every nearby church and felt the centuries of feet that had stood there before mine. I came to realise that it is no small gift to have been born an Englishman – that my rich childhood had only been possible because of the toil and sacrifice of my ancestors, who were responsible for creating one of the greatest civilisations the world has ever known. Slowly, the salience of my English identity rose.
And I am not alone. Though the number of people identifying as English in the 2021 census dropped dramatically compared with 2011, there is a growing contingent of Generation Z who are embracing their English identity – and it is not hard to see why.
Since at least the 1960s, Britain – like the rest of the West – has undergone a moral revolution. The triumph of liberal democracy over mid-century fascism elevated individual freedom to the position of ultimate good, and the culture began to attack everything that imposed duty and constraint: family, church and nation. In their place came consumerism, self-expression and identity politics – culminating in the ideology now known as 'woke'. With every traditional source of meaning dismantled, is it any wonder so many young people feel adrift?
We are told to find our truth in personal autonomy. But this has not led to fulfilment – only to anxiety, loneliness and despair. Generation Z are the ultimate victims of this worldview – and as we face cultural dissolution, economic collapse and political disenfranchisement, fundamental questions resurface: Who are we? Why are we here? What, now, must be done?
We are discovering that it is in those values that mainstream culture has tried to discredit – family, community, nation, faith and duty – where the answers are to be found. And among these, the nation is hated most – especially England. Why? Because it exposes the lie at the heart of liberal ideology. Ordinary people are not interested in abstract liberation. We want stability, purpose and a home where we feel we belong – in other words, we want England.
And why wouldn't we? Everything about this country is beautiful – the countryside, the architecture, the humour, the music, the food, the history, the language, the people. This beauty did not come from nowhere – it is the product of my people, the English.
Yet the institutions tasked with preserving this inheritance are now committed to its destruction. English culture, because of its global influence, has become invisible to many – its ubiquity mistaken for neutrality. Worse still, our elite's pathological modesty has turned into shame. Englishness is treated as oppressive – or, worse, non-existent – while every other identity is celebrated. At the same time, we are told that England is just a set of 'values', a place anyone can 'feel' a part of, like some cheap costume.
It is now common for politicians and journalists to accuse Britain of being a two-tier society – but this is false. It is, in fact, a multi-tier one, with the English at the bottom. The Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish are granted devolved parliaments, state recognition and a nominal form of nationalism – but the English? Outside of sporting occasions, power will not even dare speak our name.
Every other group is allowed to organise, lobby and demand attention, while we are told our identity is racist. And while our towns are transformed, our history erased and our daughters groomed, we are told to stay silent.
Some universities teach students that the English no longer exist, while almost a quarter of the public agree that the English flag is a symbol of racism – which just goes to show how effective the anti-English propaganda has been.
Is it any surprise, then, that young people like me – we children of the Blairite education system and the culture wars of the 2010s – are embracing English identity as an act of defiance? If we are going to play the game of identity politics – and we are – then why shouldn't we play to win? Why should we be denied a seat at the table in our own home?
England exists. It is not just an idea. It is this land and all of its children – Alfred and Æthelstan, Eleanor and Elizabeth, Chaucer and Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin, Austen and Orwell, Elgar and Gallagher, you and me.
I am proud to be English, and I will not be lectured to by an establishment that cares nothing for me or my people. We are Englishmen – and today it is time to stand up and act like it.