Grant Woodward: Alan Bennett gets to the truth of our national trait – hypocrisy

So when someone with the Leeds-born playwright’s knack for putting his finger on the very essence of Englishness suggests that the one thing the nation excels at is hypocrisy, it would be churlish to ignore him. In fact, despite our protestations to the contrary, isn’t this something, deep down, that we already know?

You only have to look at our biggest institutions to see that hypocrisy is ingrained in our national identity.

The Church of England has been loudly championing the introduction of a Living Wage of £7.85 an hour.

Yet curiously it doesn’t think this should apply to its own employees, some of whom only get the minimum wage of £6.50 instead.

This, of course, is the noble institution which waged war on payday loan sharks – only for it to be revealed that it had shares in Wonga. Fingers crossed they’ve checked their records for any of those dodgy Swiss HSBC accounts.

When it comes to those who govern us, of course, we have long since stopped being astonished not only by their reluctance to practice what they preach but their refusal to even accept that their sermonising should apply to them.

We tried our best to get ourselves worked up when former foreign secretaries Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw were filmed with reporters posing as representatives of a wealthy Chinese firm who wanted to buy their influence and contacts, but in most quarters the sting was greeted with a weary shrug.

The pair insist they’ve done nothing against the rules – which just goes to show how morally bankrupt those rules are. Charging up to £8,000 a day 
for access to contacts 
and leverage built up over the course of a career that’s been funded by taxpayers earning a fraction of that each month stinks to high heaven.

Just the other week, Government regulator Ofgem was lecturing us “plebs” about taking packed lunches to work so we could afford our fuel bills.

Meanwhile, politicians are taking advantage of the positions we put them in to rake in fortunes we couldn’t even dream of. Remember though, we’re all in this together.

That’s not to say, I’m afraid, that the rest of us are immune to indulging in a spot of hypocrisy ourselves.

We love the English countryside, but are the worst fly-tippers in western Europe. Local authorities dealt with a total of 852,000 incidents of illegal dumping last year, up a fifth from the previous 12 months.

It seems we show our pride for this green and pleasant land by doing our best to cover it in household waste.

The English language is another source of pride for the country that gave Shakespeare to the world, but we think it gives us the right to resist learning other languages.

Our schools must bear some culpability, persisting in 
teaching French when Mandarin would be far more beneficial in a world where China is now a major business player.

And when foreigners do converse with us in English 
they often do so with more articulacy and a far greater breadth of vocabulary than the majority of native speakers can muster.

As a nation we apparently crave success and claim to celebrate it, yet at the same 
time we are masters of the Tall Poppy Syndrome whereby someone who does well is 
swiftly cut down to size.

It starts at school, where children wishing to excel often find themselves being bullied 
as a “swot”.

We lament the death of the traditional high street and loss of independent shops but continue taking our custom to the nearest supermarket.

We express concern for the plight of dairy farmers, but wouldn’t want to see the cost 
of our pint of semi-skimmed milk go up.

We talk about giving people a Living Wage, but moan if we have to pay a decent price for something.

We’re desperate to see the value of our homes go up, then complain that our children cannot afford to get a foot on the property ladder.

Far from being a traitor to his fellow Englishman, Alan Bennett should be applauded for coming clean on our behalf.

And there is at least one crumb of comfort – he didn’t exempt himself from the same charge.

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