Tom Myatt | Columnist
If you were unfortunate enough two weeks ago to have your radio besieged by my vexatious voice on the Trinity FM University Times broadcast, you will know that I am, in fact, English: a product of the great Cheshire plains, boxed up and shipped across the Irish sea. The sheer quantity of my compatriots attending this institution surprised me to say the least, and my opinion of them is shaky at best. I began by thinking they were a good laugh – a good group of lads. Realising that urinating on the homeless wasn’t my cup of tea, however, (see University Times September 2012) I quickly became apathetic towards the climate-chatting continuity. This indifference diverted into discontent. The concept of ‘Team England’ in our radiant institution is one that my fellow Redcoats will doubtless have heard of, if not left you weeping in the corner with the sheer weight of the societal burden that this tag is accompanied alongside.
If you haven’t come across it, ‘Team England’ is the phrase Trinitonians prescribe to the well-off Brits in Trinity that only seem to associate with their compatriots. This is usually due to tightly-knit elite private school networks: small, over-confident expat cliques of commonwealth overlords. They are easily identified: long Harry Styles-esque hair, Jack Wills all over, including the light brown chinos, and an accent that says “I’m better than you, get over it”. The term is generally reserved, however, for exactly what I am not: the southern, privately (or publicly – I forget which term we use these days) educated, toffish, pipe-smoking, robe-wearing, Indian-oppressing, Zulu-shooting, English people. This minority puts the rest of us in a bad light.
It is true that there is a shocking scarcity of Northerners studying here – I know of only one other. If you envisage England as the harmonious homogenous society that contemporary commentators depict it, then I laugh at you. Stronger than the differences that separate communist and capitalist Korea, England too suffers from longitudinal detachment. This North-South power struggle has been raging on for centuries, and will doubtless culminate in the inevitable deposing of our oppressors. There was no British Empire per say: while the Southern English Empire ruled a quarter of the globe, like the Irish, we were slaving away, living in complete subsistence in infernal industry, ensuring their steady supply of fresh handkerchiefs and morning cups of Earl Grey tea. When we eventually overthrow our masters, I shall ensure that we take pity upon them, in the way only a true Yorkshireman or Cestrian would. Until this time, however, I naturally view my compatriots at Trinity – the vast, vast majority of whom speak with a certain eloquence which immediately suggests they originate from past Wolverhampton – with an air of mistrust and displeasure. Why there are so few Northerners here, I will never know, yet the deluxe British universities appear to suffer from the same shortcoming. A true Trinity Team Englander can only be southern, that is certain, but their monopoly of wealth can’t be indefinite.
On a serious note, regardless of nationality, you will doubtless have noticed that the vast majority of the English here are, in fact, privately educated. We complain at home that as many as half of the Oxbridge lot went there, but the Trinity proportions are far higher than that. This is because the cold and calculated CAO system discriminates against English state-schoolers. An incorrect assumption of 4 A-Levels as opposed to the standard 3-and-a-half that “commoners” do, imposes an effective cap of 515 without the Maths bonus. Had I not been lucky enough to have chosen that abhorred subject, I would not have graced you all with my awkward presence. Yet with 4 A-Levels, and an almost-missed acceptance on to BESS, ask any English lad where he’s from, and you’ll probably hear that he was the Eton idiot, or bottom of the class at Harrow (not that the bottoms of the classes at Harrow haven’t gone on to great things, see Winston Churchill). The decent pupils of these schools went on to Oxford, Cambridge, or even somewhere better than Ireland. What we get is the entrails of the world’s greatest elite school system, leaving individuals who possess that arrogant self-affection, but without the intellectual excellence that excuses it.
It goes without saying that I don’t hate my fellow Limeys exactly. Fish and Chips, the monarchy, and Hugh Grant all get thumbs up from me. The self-declared all-southern, all-rich Anglo-Trinity elite is what grinds my gears. Our former (or in my case, remaining) imperial overlords, in their minds, own the place. 1922, 1936 and 1949 never happened apparently. The oncoming reform of the CAO can really only be welcomed. Thinking we all complete 4 A-Levels in our last year of high school only encourages this culture, and prevents many intelligent people from coming to Trinity. I also call for Home Rule! The Irish got theirs first, and now the only means of emancipating the northern dales, glens and peaks once and for all will be bringing power home to Manchester, or Newcastle or something. But let’s face it, our freedom, much like yours and the potential Scots’, will probably just collapse on us too – the southern economy is just so damn dependable.
