St George was 30 toes excessive and, other than the lengthy, purple tunic, gray helmet and furry purple plume, he seemed like a Byzantine Jesus. He rolled on wheels alongside the excessive avenue and at his toes – at his casters – was a sq. of drummers wearing the similar, beating tambourines, skins and claves in a single mighty, rallying rhythm. Trailing behind them had been nymphs, dignitaries, fairies and worthies. There was Miss Ramsgate, proudly sashed, adopted by a trio of rival Ramsgate “princesses”. There was a powerful inexperienced dragon, held up by three robust lads with backpack harnesses. The solar was excessive; the sky clear.
As we handed, males in barbershop chairs swivelled to stare. Even the seagulls turned a beady eye from the chimney pots. But the rear of the parade was much less positive of itself. At the again was one other 30ft determine of broadly Cappadocian origin, however wearing white, with a flowery headdress. His id was tougher to make clear. “I think it’s meant to be Jesus,” a little bit man in a peasant costume had squeakily informed me. It’s one thing to do with a spring pageant, one other lady stated. “It’s the Ukrainian St George!” one man, dressed as a tree, laughed at me. “It’s not St George,” stated Nadia, a refugee from Ukraine.
It’s a Sunday afternoon in Ramsgate, one among a number of cities that cluster on that breezy blister of land on England’s south-eastern heel. And I’m in the center of a textbook St George’s Day parade, mingling dedication and confusion. I counted solely two St George’s Crosses (higher referred to as England flags), which was odd, as a result of in different elements of the nation I’ve handed by means of in latest months (Bexley, Romford), I’ve seen a substantial amount of them, painted throughout mini-roundabouts. Just three years in the past, the Economist declared English nationalism “a conspiracy of male writers, desperate to combine their love of football with a degree in English literature”. Where had been the requires an English parliament, the paper merrily requested. Well, as of late, YouTubers police the ethnicity of Rishi Sunak, and housing estates are robed with purple crosses. An Englishness with very totally different calls for has come to fill the void – and right here is an Englishness of a sanctioned, semi-official type marching forth to fulfill it.
The day had begun peacefully. The city was nonetheless once I arrived, with nobody but making the most of the presents marketed in a number of pubs for “continental lager” at £3 a pint. One man wafted a metallic detector on the uncrowded seaside and a flock of wind generators circled silently on the blue horizon. Only the 90 most devoted filed in to the church – a church named for St George, the Martyr – for the 11am St George’s Day service.
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In true Church of England spirit, St George’s was doing its utmost to maintain tempo with the up to date, and half succeeding. Reverend Paul Worledge was miked up, and backed by a PowerPoint presentation, whereas the nave was hung with prints from an area artist, together with a fearsome Viking knight who seemed to be modelled on one among the Hemsworth siblings. And whereas we roared out “Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven”, a few of the hymns had been of disconcertingly latest composition, with consequently sloppy lyricism: “My Lord is faster than a rocket/Can see more than a telescope/Is bigger than the universe as well”.
But Rev Worledge was kindly and authentically tonsured and knew the names of his congregants. I used to be impressed by the pointedness of his sermon. First, he informed us the story of the Roman St George, his efforts to guard Christians and his execution by Diocletian. Then, summoning the St George’s Cross on his PowerPoint, he mentioned how in the previous 12 months the English flag had change into a threatening image, utilized by the far proper to intimidate outsiders. Nevertheless, he stated, it’s the flag of our nation. We ought to discover our nationwide virtues inside it. Under Worledge’s route, a small boy, one among the youthful worshippers, crammed in every of the flag’s clean quadrants with 4 values each “English” and “Christian”: braveness, grace, service and “spirit-filled”. Later, on A5 printouts of the flag, we wrote our personal prayer into every field.
After the service, on the church steps, we had been confronted by a troupe of mummers, right here to offer us the different, dragon-slaying St George. The group seemed credibly medieval, and the script, written in pointless couplets, was hilarious. (Dragon: “Marrow from your bones I’ll squeeze, I’ll suck your blood up by degrees!”) But the whole lot proceeded cheerfully sufficient. To medieval piping and the slap of a tambourine, George (a lady in an England rugby shirt with a colander on her head) boxed the dragon with a pair of oven gloves. When the dragon fell, all of us cheered, and the locals liked the joke a couple of rival knight being revived with “Kentish ale”. To the sound of hole coconuts, George rode off into the sundown.
I needed to know the way the individuals who had been watching felt about St George and England. I chatted to Willow and Lucy, two of Worledge’s congregants. They had been acutely aware of how English symbolry had change into politicised in latest months. There hadn’t been many flags in the city’s centre (Worledge stated it was worse “towards Margate”), however there have been extra on its edges; Willow had seen one neighbour arguing with one other about flying their flag. “I want to be proud of my country,” Lucy stated, although she feared the St George’s Cross had change into a “marker of xenophobia”. But, she stated, the vital factor about St George was his internationalism, that he was the “patron saint of lots of places”.
“Pride in Place” is a new Whitehall initiative for regional regeneration, and a canny bureaucrat had determined that the day’s celebrations made an ideal peg for its Ramsgate launch. After the parade had turned to march again up the excessive avenue – and we had been fed home made soup and sausage rolls – we gathered again in the church, a powerful crowd of two or 300. It was an viewers able to do good; after they had been requested in the event that they presently did any native volunteering, about half of individuals in the room raised a hand. Ramsgate is getting £20m over ten years to fund clear and secure streets, alternatives for the younger, look after the outdated. We heard about the programmes which have already obtained cash: special-needs assist companies, native filmmakers, a new Ramsgate arts journal.
After the presentation, I grabbed the native MP, Polly Billington. She’d been on the parade, clutching a charity-cheque-sized poster for Pride in Place. A former particular adviser to Ed Miliband, she appeared anxious I’d ask her about vetting or Olly Robbins, so I caught to the softball of the English query. She stated the vital factor about St George is “he is somebody that the English chose to be their saint” and that “he comes from somewhere else”. I requested whether or not programmes like Pride in Place would deal with the considerations of these flying the St George’s Cross over the previous few months. “Forgive me – I’ve been fighting fascism since the late Seventies,” she stated instantly. “There have been people who have been using the flag in various ways almost all of my life.”
The Electoral Calculus provides Billington a 16 per cent probability of profitable her seat at the subsequent election, and Reform 74 per cent. “Fascism” or not, it’s unattainable to not see English nationalism as the main power in Britain’s political ructions, a nationalism that has burst the bottle of officialised folklore. The marketing campaign for a St George’s financial institution vacation proclaims this post-national banality: “St George’s Day is a cultural celebration when everyone in England can recognise the one thing we have in common – we all live in the same country.” But whereas there’s an England for whom that’s sufficient – not least in Ramsgate – there’s one other, one which sees English nationhood not whilst one thing to be celebrated, however proclaimed, outlined and enforced.
[Further reading: Who’s afraid of Olly Robbins?]
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This article seems in the 22 Apr 2026 difficulty of the New Statesman, All alone
