England

We won a cricket match! There is, after all, something to be proud about. The national sport of an English summer has triumphed once again. There was a time when that would have been taken for granted, but now much has changed.

I turned on the TV to see Sven, our English football manager (that's Sweden for you) watching Chelsea play Tottenham Hotspur at football. That's one of our national games in the winter, although you'll all know that rugby is so much better. Why he was watching the game was difficult to understand, there were hardly any English, or even British, players on the field. The rest of the world does it better than us - so we spend our money on foreign players, and they take our money back to their countries.

This weekend seees the Notting Hill Carnival, hailed by the organisers as a triumph for multiculturalism, and they are right. It is great to see people from some many different backgrounds enjoying themselves.

The ethnic variety will not contain anything English; the clog dancers, Morris Men, English folk bands and the rest will be missing. Perhaps they shouldn't be there, for the English have had the guilt of their forefathers thrust down their throats, even though their ancestors had no real control over their own destinies. These strange people are part of our tradition, one that stretches further back than the celebration of carnival. Importantly they are part of our land, our culture, and have been part of our very being and substance for centuries.

There are wider issues at stake. It's not just a bunch of silly men with bells around their ankles waving white handkerchiefs. It is about being English.

The English are the most oppressed people in the world. For centuries we have been subjugated by our lords and masters. Ordered to work the land, go to war, give up our lives at the whim of the controlling elite. We even failed to organise a revolution that lasted.

How many children are now taught of the Enclosure Acts, when huge tracts of common land where appropriated, taken away from the people, without any compensation? That simple question raises huge issues about anyone's right to own land. How can you own something that you cannot move? For centuries the peasants had rights; to graze their livestock, feed pigs on beech mast, to cultivate for their home use, and to walk across the land. The Enclosure Acts removed those rights.

England's green and pleasant land?

Come back, I know you're there - somewhere.