Watching the English

by Kate Fox

Fair play A national quasi-religious obsession. Much of English morality is essentially about fair play. Although we may often fail to live up to this ideal, breaches of the fair-play principle provoke more righteous indignation than any other sin. English ‘fair play’ is not a rigidly or unrealistically egalitarian concept – we accept that there will be winners and losers, but feel that everyone should be given a fair chance, providing they observe the rules (the unwritten social rules, I mean, not necessarily the official/legal ones, which may often be dismissed as ‘unfair’) and don’t cheat or shirk their responsibilities. Fair play is an underlying theme in most aspects of our unwritten etiquette, not just the games and sports with which it is most famously associated: queuing is all about fair play; round-buying, table manners, ‘orderly disorder’, driving etiquette, flirting codes, business etiquette, polite egalitarianism, etc. are all influenced by this principle. Polite egalitarianism is hypocritical, concerned with the appearance of fairness, the concealment of embarrassing inequalities and inequities – but at least we care enough about these things to be embarrassed. Our penchant for compromise, our constant balancing and weighing up of ‘on the one hand’ and ‘on the other hand’ – often seen as woolliness, perhaps more kindly as tolerance – are a product of fair play + moderation. Our tendency to support the underdog – and to be wary of too much success – is also ab...