United Kingdom - understand-culture

Admiral Byng

On 14 March 1757, Admiral John Byng was shot by a firing squad at Portsmouth. He had arrived at Minorca with too few ships, fought an indecisive battle, and failed to save the island from the French. He was the first and last British admiral to be sentenced to death. The government may have sought a scapegoat.

Voltaire satirized the execution in his novel Candide. Candide watches an admiral shot at Portsmouth and is told that in this country it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, pour encourager les autres, to encourage the others.

The Westland Affair

In January 1986, the Trade and Industry Secretary, Leon Brittan, resigned over the Westland affair. He had authorized the leaking of a letter from the Solicitor General that accused his cabinet colleague Michael Heseltine of inaccuracies. At the time, Brittan said he had misunderstood Margaret Thatcher’s wishes.

In April 1989, on the television program The Thatcher Factor, he said he had acted on the “express” instructions of Charles Powell and Bernard Ingham, Thatcher’s two senior advisers.

Letting the Side Down

Many common British phrases describe what colleagues owe one another.

To do one’s bit: To do a fair share of the shared work.

To pull one’s weight: To work as hard as the others. A colleague who is not pulling his weight is criticized behind his back, not to his face.

To let the side down: To fail the group through one’s own behavior.

It’s your round: It is your turn to buy drinks for the group.

To send someone to Coventry: To stop speaking to someone as a punishment.

Telling Tales

British English has a rich vocabulary for a person who reports others to those in authority. None of it is kind.

To tell tales: To report someone’s wrongdoing to a teacher or a boss.

A sneak: A child who tells tales.

A grass: An informer. To grass someone up is to report that person, usually to the police.

A jobsworth: An official who enforces small rules for their own sake. The word comes from “more than my job’s worth.”

The White Feather

On 30 August 1914, at the start of the First World War, Admiral Charles Penrose Fitzgerald organized a group of thirty women in Folkestone to hand out white feathers, a sign of cowardice, to any men who were not in uniform. The group became known as the Order of the White Feather.

The Spirit of Cricket

In July 2023, in an Ashes Test at Lord’s, the England batter Jonny Bairstow ducked under the last ball of an over. Thinking the ball was dead, he left his crease. The Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey had already underarmed the ball at the stumps, and Bairstow was given out stumped. The crowd jeered the Australians.

In the Long Room, members of the MCC confronted the Australian players. The club suspended three members and later said their conduct “fell well below the behaviour expected from our members.” The Laws of Cricket open with a preamble on the Spirit of Cricket. It states: “The major responsibility for ensuring fair play rests with the captains.”

Pairing

In the House of Commons, an MP who cannot attend a vote can be paired with an opponent, who agrees not to vote either. The arrangement is not a rule of the House. It is an agreement between members.

In July 2018, Jo Swinson, on maternity leave, was paired with Brandon Lewis. Lewis voted anyway in divisions on the Trade Bill. Reports said the Chief Whip, Julian Smith, had asked five Conservative MPs to break their pairs, and Lewis was the only one who did. Lewis and Smith both apologized. Prime Minister Theresa May called it “an honest mistake made by the whips in fast-moving circumstances.” Swinson rejected that explanation.

Scabs

During the miners’ strike of 1984 and 1985, miners who kept working were called scabs. Some had their cars smashed and their homes vandalized. To the miners on strike, crossing the picket line was “a betrayal of the movement.”

Forty years later, the Nottingham Post wrote that the strike had “left deep scars in communities, none more so than in the Nottinghamshire coalfield.”

Tom Brown’s School Days

Thomas Arnold was headmaster of Rugby School from 1828 to 1841. Under his system, sixth-form pupils were given powers over every part of the school.

Thomas Hughes, who was a pupil at Rugby from 1834 to 1842, described this world in Tom Brown’s School Days, published in 1857. The novel features Arnold, and it influenced the genre of British school novels.

Good Chaps

Much of the British constitution is not written down. It depends on what is known as the “good chap theory of government.” As Prospect magazine put it: “We have long assumed that those who rise to high office will be ‘good chaps,’ who understand the rules and choose to observe them.”