An English Tradition? The History and Significance of Fair Play
Jonathan Duke-Evans
OUP, £35, 464 pages
An English Tradition? is Jonathan Duke-Evans’s literary debut. It sets out to identify the origins of the notion of “fair play” and determine whether it is, in fact, an essential aspect of English and/or British national character. The author does not aim to debunk the idea, but rather contends that “there is indeed in British culture a deep layer of attitudes and customs which are grouped together under the heading of fair play”. The book is leavened throughout with the lightness of touch and wry humour of an escaped academic and career civil servant; it succeeds in every respect.
Duke-Evans opens by noting that fair play (often claimed to be a product of the 18th and 19th centuries, when organised sport took off) was already being used in its modern sense by Shakespeare’s time, if not earlier. It was first attributed to English identity by Daniel Defoe in 1705. It is not lost on the author that this proverbial national attribute appears hand-in-hand both with a sense of irony and accusations of “perfidious Albion” by Britain’s enemies. Indeed, in the English literary tradition, all of these traits are regarded as complementary within the ambiguous trope of the cunning yet sympathetic trickster, but even so it would be “no easy task” for the historian to show that Britain has been “conspicuously self-serving and contemptuous of international norms” in comparison to any of its rivals.
From here, the author examines the six key facets of fair play including: not seeking advantage by cheating (the core meaning), respecting people’s entitlements, sporting courtesy, sporting chance, sympathy for the underdog, and refusing to snitch on peers to the authorities. Taken together, these principles require a mutual recognition of the moral equality of persons and, in practical terms, this must be enforced through fair rules and the prevention of mismatches.
Rooted deep within our apish biology, this package recurs in different formulations and strengths time and again throughout classical history, from Homeric honour-culture through regulated Olympic sport and the ideal of bona fides in Roman literature. From there, it is invigorated by Germanic tribal notions of heroism, the moral revolution triggered by Christian ethics, and the tempering of warrior bravery with chivalric selflessness and gentlemanliness. Such are the Western cultural ingredients of the underlying concept; Duke-Evans then turns to the uniquely English recipe that managed to combine them into something truly exceptional.
With some ambiguous appearances in English poetry from the early 15th century, the phrase “fair play” had acquired its modern connotations and entered into common usage by the Elizabethan era. The Tudors deployed it liberally across class boundaries to discuss everything from fighting and cards through tennis and religious disputes. During the 17th century, “four fundamentals” of English life entrenched the concept in the national psyche.
The notion of fair play fostered cross-class solidarity by binding the elites to a sense of reciprocity and imbuing their subordinates with enough self-respect to preclude abject subjection. The common law too, however brutal and corrupt, still came to embody enough fair play for the lower orders to embrace it as “theirs” and an “English birthright”. The Church of England came to frown on misrepresenting opponents and to pride itself on occupying the middle ground “between the phrenzy of Platonik visions and the Lethargick Ignorance of Popish Dreams”.
The expectation of fair play began to ripple outwards through the 19th and 20th centuries to each new popular sport and to previously excluded groups: women, slaves and eventually subject peoples living under the British Empire. Although notions of honour and chivalry existed in other countries and traditions, the saturation and cascade effects of fair play in Britain were – and remain – particularly distinct. Thus, Duke-Evans rightly concludes, fair play “is indeed an instance of British exceptionalism” – and never has it been more needed.
Dr Patrick Nash is the author of British Islam and English Law (CUP, 2022)
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