Watching the English

by Kate Fox

  The lower-middles might even hang a flat, often tree-shaped, scented dangly-thing from their rear-view mirror to counteract any doggy smells, or indeed any smells. Their houses also tend to be full of air-fresheners, loo-fresheners, carpet-fresheners and other deodorisers – as are those of the middle-middle class, but the middle-middles know that hanging scented tree-things or any other dangly objects from your rear-view mirror is lower class. In fact, you will not see any decorative objects anywhere in cars belonging to the middle-middle and higher social ranks. Nodding dogs on the back shelf, Garfields clinging to windows and other cutesy animal motifs are lower-middle and working-class indicators, as are bumper-stickers and windscreen-stickers informing you of the car’s occupants’ taste in holiday destinations and leisure activities. There are only two exceptions to the no-sticker rule, and these are virtuous animal-charity stickers and smugly safety-conscious ‘Baby on Board’ notices, which you will see on the rear windscreens of both lower-middle and middle-middle cars – although the middle-middle notices are less likely to sport the logo of a nappy-manufacturer. (A few borderline upper-middles may also display ‘Baby on Board’ signs, but they are sneered at by the majority of upper-middles, particularly the intelligentsia.)

  Electronics Rules

  Your social class may also be judged on the amount of electronic gadgetry in your car – the rule of thumb being that the more you festoon the interior with all the latest ‘In Vehicle Infotainment’, or IVI, as it is now called, the lower your position on the social scale. Most cars now have at least a radio and a CD player, so these don’t count, and satnav and hands-free mobile-phone systems are also becoming too ubiquitous to function as class indicators. But cars tricked out with too many high-tech luxuries – such as video screens built into seat-backs, games consoles, back-massagers and chilled drinks cabinets – are regarded as vulgar and ostentatious, and only driven by flashy nouveaux-riches. This applies especially if the car in question is one of those mammoth tank-like SUVs.

  The Mobile Castle Rule

  I mentioned at the beginning of this section that the ‘personal-territory’ factor is an important element of our relationship with the car. When Ford described their 1949 model as ‘a living-room on wheels’, they were cleverly appealing to a deep-seated human need for a sense of territory and security. This aspect of car psychology is a cross-cultural universal, but it is of particular significance to the English because of our obsession with our homes, which is in turn related to our pathological preoccupation with privacy.

  An Englishman’s home is his castle, and when an Englishman takes to the road in his car, a part of his castle goes with him. We have seen that on public transport, the English go to great lengths to maintain an illusion of privacy: we try to pretend that the strangers surrounding us simply do not exist, and assiduously avoid any contact or interaction with them. In our mobile castles, this self-delusion becomes much easier: rather than an invisible ‘bubble’ of standoffishness, we are enclosed in a real, solid shield of metal and glass. We can pretend not only that we are alone, but also that we are at home.

  The Ostrich Rule

  This illusion of privacy results in some rather strange and decidedly un-English behaviour. Like ostriches with their heads in the sand, English people in their cars seem to believe that they are invisible. You will see drivers picking their noses, scratching themselves in intimate places, singing and ‘bopping’ along to music on their radios, having screaming rows with their partners, kissing and fondling – things that most of us would normally only do in the privacy of our own homes, all performed in full view of dozens of other drivers and pedestrians, who may often be only a few feet away.

  The sense of home-like security and invulnerability provided by our mobile castles also encourages some more offensive forms of disinhibition. Even normally fairly polite English people find themselves making rude gestures and mouthing insults and threats at other road users from the safety of their cars – in many cases saying things we would never dare to say outside this protective shield.

  Road-rage and the ‘Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used To Be’ Rule

  Despite these lapses, most foreign visitors acknowledge that the English are, generally speaking, remarkably courteous drivers. In fact, many visitors are surprised, and often rather amused, to read the now regular diatribes in British newspapers about how we are suffering from an ‘epidemic’ of ‘road rage’. ‘Have these people never been abroad?’ asked one incredulous, well-travelled tourist. ‘Don’t they realise how polite and well-behaved English drivers are, compared to just about anywhere else in the world?’

  ‘You call this “road rage”?’ said another. ‘You want to see road rage, go to America, go to France, go to Greece – hell, go anywhere but England! What you people call “road rage” is just normal driving.’

  ‘This is so typically English,’ an Anglophile but perceptive immigrant friend told me. ‘You have a few incidents where a couple of drivers lose their temper and start hitting each other, and immediately it is a big national issue, it is a new dangerous disease sweeping the country, it is not safe to go out, the roads are full of violent maniacs . . . It makes me laugh. The English are the most fair and courteous drivers in the world, but you are always so determined to believe that the country is going to rack and ruin.’

  He has a point. The English do suffer from a sort of ‘nostalgia isn’t what it used to be’ syndrome. The belief that the country is going to the dogs, that things are not what they were, that some cherished bastion or emblem of Englishness (such as the pub, queuing, sportsmanship, the monarchy, courtesy, or even nostalgia itself) is dead or dying, seems to be endemic.

  The truth about ‘road rage’ is that humans are territorial animals, and the car, as a ‘home on wheels’, is a special kind of territory, so our defensive reactions are aroused when we perceive that this territory is being threatened. So-called ‘road rage’ is therefore, not surprisingly, a universal phenomenon, and for all the sensationalist headlines, English manifestations of this universal human trait tend to be rather less common, and rather less violent, than in most other countries.

  I am always somewhat wary of making such positive statements about the English, and tend to overload them with endless hesitant qualifiers, as I know from experience that praising the English – whether in published work or in ordinary conversation – invariably provokes much more argument and controversy than criticising them. When I make critical or even damning remarks about some aspect of English culture or behaviour, English people invariably nod gloomily in agreement, sometimes even providing supporting examples from their own experience. But praise, however mild and anxiously qualified, is always challenged: I am accused of wearing rose-tinted spectacles, and bombarded with counter-examples – everyone has some anecdote or statistic that contradicts my observations and proves that the English are really quite an awful and unpleasant lot.78

  This is partly because social scientists are supposed to study problems (deviance, dysfunction, disorder, delinquency and other bad things beginning with D), and I am breaking the unwritten rules of my own profession by insisting on studying nice things instead. But that does not explain why it is only the determinedly unpatriotic English who object to my more positive findings about them. When I am interviewed by foreign journalists, or just chatting to tourists, visitors and immigrants, they are always quite happy to acknowledge that the English have some pleasant and even admirable qualities. The English themselves just cannot seem to accept this – at the merest hint of a compliment, they become sceptical, stroppy and argumentative. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I cannot alter my findings just to appease all these Eeyorish grouches and doom-mongers, so they will just have to swallow the odd bit of well-deserved praise.

  Courtesy Rules

  I will now stick my neck out and say that, apart from occasional territorial lapses, English drivers are quite rightly renowned for their orderly, sensible, courteous conduct. My foreign in
formants noticed well-mannered customs and practices that most of us take for granted: that you never have to wait too long before someone lets you out of a side-road or driveway, and that you are always thanked when you let someone else out; that almost all drivers keep a respectful distance from the car in front of them and do not ‘tailgate’, flash their headlights or lean on their horns when they wish to overtake; that on single-track roads, or streets lined with cars on both sides making them effectively single-track, people are remarkably considerate about pulling in to let each other pass, and almost always raise a hand in thanks; that drivers stop for pedestrians at zebra crossings, even when the pedestrians are still standing waiting on the pavement and have not set foot on the crossing (I met one tourist who found this so astonishing that he kept repeating the experiment, marvelling at the fact that he could single-handedly bring streams of traffic to a deferential halt, without the aid of red lights or stop-signs); that horn-honking is regarded as rude, and only used in emergencies or special circumstances, as a warning, not as an all-purpose means of communication or emotional outlet, as it is elsewhere in Europe and most other parts of the world. Even if you fail to notice that the traffic lights have changed to green, the English drivers behind you will often hesitate for a few moments, hoping you will move off of your own accord, before giving a small, almost apologetic ‘beep’ to draw your attention to the green light.

  The standard driver’s ‘thank you’ signal – a raised hand, or sometimes just a minimal raised index-finger, with the hand still on the steering wheel – is an infinitely more common sight among English drivers than any rude gestures. We use headlight-flashes primarily to say, ‘I’m letting you pull out ahead of me,’ or ‘You go first’, or to warn another driver of some danger or problem, or to say ‘Thank you’, not as a ‘Get out of my way’ signal. Some of us also use an alternating-indicator ‘wave’ to say ‘Thank you’ to a driver behind us for letting us pass.

  Drivers in many countries no doubt feel as hampered as the English by the limited range of messages that can be conveyed with hand-signals and headlight- or indicator-flashes, but a study by my SIRC colleagues showed that there is one word that English drivers experience the most intense frustration at not being able to communicate to other drivers. That word is ‘sorry’. ‘Sorry’ (or, more specifically, ‘Oops, sorry!’) is the message English drivers would most like to express, but for which there is no standard signal or gesture, as we’ve rather foolishly used up all the possible ones with our umpteen different ways of saying ‘thank you’. When we inadvertently commit some error and impinge upon, confuse or inconvenience another driver, we often use the raised-hand ‘thank you’ gesture as a makeshift ‘sorry’, but this is ambiguous and unsatisfactory. We almost invariably say or silently mouth ‘sorry’ in such circumstances, and adopt a cringing posture and pained expression, even when we know the other driver can’t possibly hear or see us.

  I am not saying that English drivers are paragons of automotive virtue, or somehow magically endowed with any more saintly forbearance than other nations, just that we have rules and customs that prescribe a certain degree of restraint and courtesy. When frustrated or angry, English drivers are inclined to shout insults at each other just like anyone else, and the language used is no less colourful, but we mostly tend to do this from behind closed windows, rather than winding them down or getting out and ‘making a scene’. If someone does lose their temper to the point of stand-up ranting and raving, or physically threatening behaviour, this is a noteworthy incident, deplored and tutted over in indignant tones for days, cited as evidence of a ‘road-rage epidemic’, a decline in moral standards, etc. – not, as it would be almost anywhere else, an annoying but relatively unremarkable event.

  Fair-play Rules

  English driving behaviour can be seen as an extension of our queuing behaviour, in that the same principles of fairness and good manners apply. As with queuing, people do ‘cheat’, but breaches of automotive fair-play rules provoke the same righteous indignation as pedestrian queue-jumping. Like pedestrian queuers, drivers are acutely aware of ‘potential’ cheats, and will, for example, inch forward in a pointed manner, with suspicious sideways glances, closing gaps to thwart another driver who appears to be considering an opportunistic manoeuvre, while carefully avoiding eye contact.

  When the turn-off lane on a motorway or other main road is moving very slowly, some unscrupulous drivers will ‘cheat’ by zipping down the outside, faster-moving lanes and then trying to edge back into the turn-off lane at a later point. This is tantamount to queue-jumping, but the only punishment such sinners receive is much the same barrage of scowls, filthy looks and muttered insults that faces pedestrian queue-jumpers – perhaps with the addition of a few irate or obscene gestures, almost always performed from behind the safety of closed windows. The horn is rarely used in such cases, there being an unwritten rule to the effect that honking and beeping ‘in anger’ should be reserved for admonishing driving behaviour that is potentially dangerous, rather than just deeply immoral.

  These tactics seem to be somewhat less effective at maintaining fair play among drivers than among pedestrians, because there is less potential for embarrassment. In the security of their mobile castles, with the ability to escape quickly from disapproving looks or angry gestures, the English are less vulnerable to these rather subtle deterrents and sanctions, and thus more inclined to break the fair-play rules. It is worth noting, however, that although queue-jumping and other opportunistic behaviours are more common among drivers than among pedestrians, only a small minority of drivers break the rules: the majority of English drivers, most of the time, ‘play fair’.

  ROAD RULES AND ENGLISHNESS

  What do these rules tell us about Englishness? The denial rule provides yet another striking example of English social inhibition and embarrassment, and further evidence of our insularity and obsession with privacy. In the last chapter, I suggested that these two tendencies were related: that our excessive need for privacy is at least partly due to our social awkwardness, that ‘home is what the English have instead of social skills’. A rather bold claim, perhaps, but none of the data in this road-rules chapter, which has been concerned with what happens when we venture outside the privacy and security of our homes, has caused me to revise this opinion. Both the denial rule and the mobile-castle rule confirm our inability to deal with the realities of social interaction: we can only cope by practising various forms of self-delusion, pretending either that other people do not exist, or that we are still at home.

  The courtesy rules, both in the public-transport and driving contexts, also remind us of the importance of politeness in English culture, but I think we are now getting closer to a more precise understanding of the subtleties and nuances of English politeness. The identification of England as a predominantly ‘negative-politeness’ culture – concerned mainly with the avoidance of imposition and intrusion – seems to me quite helpful. The important point here is that politeness and courtesy, as practised by the English, have very little to do with friendliness or good nature.

  A pattern seems to be emerging as we examine different aspects of English life and culture, a recurring theme that I think may be crucial to our understanding of the English character. What I am noticing is that there is rarely anything straightforward or direct or transparent about English social interaction. We seem to be congenitally incapable of being frank, clear or assertive. We are always oblique, always playing some complex, convoluted game. When we are not doing things backwards (saying the opposite of what we mean, not introducing ourselves until the end of an encounter, saying sorry when someone bumps into us and other Looking-Glass practices), we are doing them sideways (addressing our indignant mutterings about queue-jumpers to other queuers, and our complaints about delayed trains to other passengers, rather than actually tackling the offenders). Every social situation is fraught with ambiguity, knee-deep in complication, hidden meanings, veiled power-struggles, passi
ve aggression and paranoid confusion. We seem perversely determined to make everything as difficult as possible for ourselves. Why, as one American visitor plaintively asked me, can’t the English just be ‘a bit more direct, you know, a bit more upfront?’ We would, as she pointed out, save ourselves and everybody else a great deal of trouble.

  The problem is, I think, that when we are ‘direct and upfront’, we tend to overdo it, becoming noisy, aggressive, rude and generally insufferable. Whenever I talk to English people about my research on Englishness, and mention that we tend to be inhibited and have lots of rules about politeness, they say, ‘But we’re not inhibited and polite – look at our football hooligans and drunken louts all over the place – we’re loud and obnoxious and a disgrace.’ Leaving aside what this response reveals about our penchant for national self-denigration, I would argue that our inhibited politeness and our loud obnoxiousness are two sides of the same coin. Both tendencies reflect a fundamental and distinctively English form of social dis-ease, a chronic and seemingly incurable inability to engage normally and directly with other human beings. We have developed many ingenious ways of disguising and overcoming this unfortunate disability (‘facilitators’ such as the weather, the pub and taxi-drivers’ rear-view mirrors), but it can never be entirely eradicated.

  Despite our idiopathic social handicaps, we do have some redeeming qualities. Many of the rules examined in this chapter, for example, highlight the immense importance of the concept of ‘fairness’ in English culture. This is not to say that other nations lack such a concept – what is distinctively English is our overwhelming national obsession with ‘fair play’. (In my survey on patriotism, remember, our reputation for fair play came second only to our sense of humour as the quality in which the English take the most pride.)

  Most of the remaining rules in this chapter seem to be concerned with that other great English obsession: class. The car-care rules relating to dirt, tidiness and dogginess indicate a curious but apparently consistent pattern in which we find that the top and bottom ends of the social scale have more in common with each other than either has with the middle ranks. The common factor usually turns out to be some form of disregard for social niceties or a lack of concern about ‘what the neighbours will think’. It occurs to me that this may be why the majority of the more notable and flamboyant English eccentrics tend to come from either the highest or the lowest social classes. There seem to be fewer examples of brazen, colourful eccentricity among the middle-middle or lower-middle classes.