by Ross Owen 

To paraphrase Will Rogers, the British never met a queue they didn’t like.  And in Britain it does seem that it is part of their DNA, writes Ross Owen.

In America, people stand “in line”(or if you are from New York, “on line”) for special events such as the Super Bowl, the World Series, or Barbra Streisand’s annual farewell concert.  But with the growth of internet booking, even these lines are disappearing.  Lining up or queuing, as the British like to call it, while not unknown in other parts of the world, is not common practice in most aspects of social life. A visit to Italy is proof of that.

But like so many other things, the British are unique in their queuing habits.  The origins of this special relationship between standing in line and the British are lost in the mists of time, but they have been queuing since 1837 when the meaning of this French word is first recorded in English. Borrowing something so dear to their hearts from the French, for whom the British have great antipathy, is truly ironic.

Looking at queuing rationally, it can be seen as a civilized way to distribute something in a fair and orderly way.  First come, first serve as it were. And so it follows that one of the most antisocial acts, perhaps just below murder, is queue jumping.  Try and jump a queue and the normally phlegmatic British become incandescent with British style rage. Not for them violent “queue rage”.  Rather remarks to embarrass the interloper such as, “actually I think there is a queue here”, or rather more forcefully, “sorry there is a queue here”, or bringing out the big guns, “the end of the queue is over there mate.”  Sadly this doesn’t always work as in a bus queue.

Foreigners who are not used to queuing and push their way on the bus , as they don’t speak English, are immune to these insults.  This of course confirms the British view that the rest of world are uncivilized, to be pitied as much as scorned.

In the old Soviet Union, if people saw a queue they would join it, even if they didn’t know what it was for, because it could be for shoes, meat or anything else in short supply.  But this doesn’t explain the British need to queue, even when unnecessary.  One can observe a queue forming before the doors open of a cinema or a supermarket when there are only five or six people waiting to get in.

The usual style of queuing for a shop such as a butcher or bakery is to do it outside in the rain while one customer is being served inside.  Once a few friends and I were waiting for some other friends to turn up.  We happened to be standing in front of a delicatessen which was clearly empty.  After a few minutes of standing there we noticed there was a queue forming behind us, even though the shop was devoid of customers.  In the past when cinemas had three or four different price tickets, each price would have it’s own queue-outside the cinema.  Thus the pleasure of queuing was combined with a clear illustration of the British class system at work.

There is a psychological dimension to all this. Being in a queue makes people feel secure because they know their place.  And those brought up in unheated bedrooms and cold baths can enjoy a queue with masochistic pleasure .  Furthermore, what else can better turn a feeling of being a loser by joining and being last, to increasing euphoria as more people join behind?  This allows you to feel both superior and pity as you look down the queue at these unfortunate souls.  And once the queue starts moving you get to the head feeling smug, the reward for being virtuous and playing the game fairly.

There are a few queues which truly bring out the Dunkirk spirit of queuing.  Wimbledon, the last night of the Prom concerts, or Harrods’ sale are some of the best examples.  Here queuers arrive days before the event, equipped with sleeping bags, flasks of tea, and a mutual camaraderie of suffering for sport or art or bargain hunting.  Old acquaintances are renewed, new ones born, with the common masochistic theme of enjoying all this suffering and deprivation. Stories are swapped, boasting about the hardships of queues they have been in … “I remember being in one for three weeks, the weather was freezing, I ran out of tea ….”

Perhaps the journalist Victor Lewis-Smith sums it up best, describing a restaurant that doesn’t take bookings thus causing long queues. “…. the management enjoys making us wait, knowing that the British have long considered inefficiency to be a sure sign of excellence, and will therefore gratefully embrace any opportunity to join a queue”.

Pardon me, I have to go and join the queue for Chelsea football tickets.