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The emptiness of ‘British values’ It's impossible to forge a national identity without a common history

The catchy song was written by schoolchildren (Credit: CARL COURT/AFP via Getty)

The catchy song was written by schoolchildren (Credit: CARL COURT/AFP via Getty)


June 25, 2021   6 mins

“We are Britain and we have one dream to unite all people in one Great Team”. So declares the One Britain One Nation campaign, the group behind today’s catchily named OBON (One Britain, One Nation) Day. To mark this date of national unity children are encouraged to clap for front line workers and sing a patriotic song that features the stirring chorus:

“Strong Britain, Great Nation
Strong Britain, Great Nation
Strong Britain, Great Nation
Strong Britain, Great Na-a-a-tion”

The lyrics do rather make it sound like it could have been an anthem from some Balkan or central Asian country which has repeatedly suffered military humiliation over the past centuries. (Although to be fair, it was written by a group of primary school children so I don’t want to get too Simon Cowell about the whole thing.)

Since OBON day got the support of the Department for Education, the idea of children singing the country’s praise attracted the usual measured response. Some compared it to North Korea, while others, inevitably, reached for the only historical analogy that every Tory initiative reminds them of. “One country? Sounds like EIN REICH, Read this article on ‘14 signs of an upcoming fascist takeover’.” One Scottish nationalist MP compared it to Soviet imperialism in the Baltic.

There were few fans, and just as Orwell observed that Britain could never become fascist because we laughed at military parades, so today we could never become nationalists because any official attempt at unity would make everyone cringe.

Sure “Strong Britain, Great Nation” is not quite “La Marseillaise”, but then the cynics are hardly sympathetic. In particular, I have little sympathy for complacent ageing liberals who guffaw that such things are “Not British”; a lot of things that happen in this country might once have appeared very un-British, and you didn’t do anything to stop those. Times change.

Indeed, our historic lack of flag-waving reflects the confidence that comes from having an ancient political history, the kingdom of England being almost 1100 years old; it comes from being a country which until the mid-20th century had little racial diversity and no memory of foreign rule. A country like that didn’t need its schoolchildren to sing about the dream of unity; it went without saying.

Multicultural countries in contrast need to shout about what they have in common, which is why the United States made such an effort to enforce a secular national faith, making children salute the flag and forcing poor southern European immigrants to deny the obvious superiority of football and instead pretend to enjoy America’s incomprehensibly boring national sports. Multicultural Britain needs to do something similar, rather than relying on ancient cynicism and irony.

Unlike most modern patriotic movements, which tend to be funded by big Quaker organisations like the Joseph Rowntree Trust, OBON is authentically grassroots, organised by a Yorkshireman called Kas Singh, who arrived in Britain at the age of six and rose to become a police inspector.

With the unjaded patriotism often found in immigrants, Singh aims “to create a spirit of inclusion with a collective purpose and a common future where we all seek to eliminate hatred, intolerance and discrimination of any kind so that all our people can feel and develop a strong and shared sense of belonging in order to showcase their pride, passion and love for our great nation”.

Rather than being a Tory creation and a sign of the upcoming fAsCiST taKEoVER, One Britain, One Nation dates to the later Blair era, when the idea of teaching “British Values” in order to unite the nation was first proposed. It had became a government concern when it became clear in the early 2000s that significant numbers of second generation Pakistani and Bangladeshi Britons held views well outside the mainstream on gay rights, anti-Semitism, terrorism and the role of sharia. What was most concerning was that the younger, British-born generation often seemed to have more hardline opinions than their parents, a reversal of the expected pattern of assimilation.

Yet the whole idea faced contradictions right from the start, namely that Britain was still in the midst of a cultural revolution that was completely overhauling its own values. The most obvious absurdity was the claim that gay rights were linked to British Values. It was only in living memory that Iran was more tolerant towards same-sex couples than Britain, while France and Italy legalised same-sex relations over a century before us.

True, the Sixties might seem a long time away, but some schools even list “combatting transphobia” as a core British value, something that wouldn’t even make sense to someone during the Blair era. Last year British home cinema channels began issuing trigger warnings before films, stating that they reflected the values of their time — including films made in 2019. How can such a society teach values when its own values evolve more quickly than Covid?

What British Values tended to mean, and this wasn’t exactly an accident, was liberal or progressive values, ideas that plenty of people of all backgrounds might feel completely alien to them. Beyond that the things they emphasise — tolerance and respect — are worthy, and something we’d like to teach our children, but they’re not particularly British.

But the main problem with all these programmes is that this is not how nations are forged. Countries don’t have values, they have characteristics, which can also change; before the 18th century the English were famous for their melancholy, while since then they have been characterised by their sense of humour (and very low suicide rate).

A country’s characteristics are a product of what does make a nation — a history, and a common narrative. And here, at least, the idea of writing a song is closer to the mark than previous attempts. Nations are stories that have been told about a people, often a story of struggle. The first thing that nation-builders do, after trying to enforce a common language, is to create a narrative history; in France, which before the Revolution was a hugely diverse place in which only 10% of people spoke French, this was far more deliberate. “Our ancestors, the Gauls” was a policy of unification to a group of people who spoke 55 different languages.

In Italy, where statesman Massimo d’Azeglio famously said that L’Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli italiani — “now we have created Italy, we must create Italians” — a conscious attempt was made to turn the medieval Tuscan poets into national bards. Italian nationalists saw that if Italy were to become a nation, it needed a Shakespeare, a storyteller who helped write English identity.

Irish nationalism owed huge amounts to song, in particular rousing tales of heroic military defeat at the hands of the English, such as “The Rising of the Moon”. In opposition to this, Ulster Loyalist identity was passed down through tunes such as “Green Grassy Slopes of the Boyne”, tales of defiance and courage. You don’t have to have a favoured tribe in that interminable conflict to find these anthems rousing, because that human desire to love the homeland, and to make sacrifices for it, is universal.

Similarly Scottish nationalism has been hugely spurred by narrative, in particular Braveheart, a film that did more to promote national identity than a million campaign groups, and, arguably, the folk music of The Corries. (Nationalists always have better song than unionists, I’m afraid.)

If the rulers of multicultural Britain wish to forge a nation, then songs and stories are far more powerful than ideas about values. The problem is that liberal democracies tend to be weak at nation-building, because the principles of consensus and tolerance do not provide the oxytocin necessary for group solidarity. That hormonal high is only triggered by a sense of out-group threat, and the subsequent desire to defend — and make sacrifices.

A few years back an anti-extremism programme for schools instructed teachers to watch out for Muslim boys who expressed a belief in dying for what they believed in or defending their honour by force if necessary. These weren’t “terrorist values”, though, they were the same urges that inspired every nation-builder in ours and everyone else’s history.

That programme wasn’t aimed at fostering patriotism, it was aimed at crushing any potential forms of patriotism that conflicted with the state. There was no alternative offered, but then it’s hard to build a common narrative because the different peoples of Britain in 2021 don’t really have a common history. What little they do share is often unhappy and exploitative — and cannot possibly be taught in a way that satisfies everyone. That explains the meteoric rise to prominence of Mary Seacole, a woman who lived an extraordinary life but has become a bizarrely overly-important historical figure in schools. All history is about the age in which it is written, and so it is with Seacole, the Jamaican-born nurse who has become a 21st-century construction.

Alternatively, there is the desperate and inane idea of “progressive history”, featuring a parade of losers from the Levellers to the Chartists. But if a 14-year-old in a London comprehensive isn’t inspired by Nelson bleeding to death after destroying the French fleet with massive cannons, do you really think listening to Tony Benn talking about the Putney Debates is going to do it?

Historical narrative is limited by nature — collectively we can only remember a few stories at a time, which is what people forget about when they complain that they weren’t taught at school about the Benin Empire or the history of French colonial rule in Gabon. There is only a limited amount of history that can be taught in schools, yet still it’s noticeable that the organisers behind OBON Day seem to have chosen a completely random date. They could have shifted it by just a week or so to coincide with Magna Carta Day, a genuinely central event in our national history, and one that shaped who we are.

Future governments are going to have to wrestle with this issue, to teach a new idea of Britishness for a new nation. Songs are not a bad start, sneering aside, but they need to tell us something more meaningful if they’re going to move us. They need to tell a story, of heroic failure and victory, of hope for the future, and the nation united in wanting to win. It’s just a shame that we can’t use the obvious, but sadly too English, choice: “Three Lions”.


Ed West’s book Tory Boy is published by Constable

edwest

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Tom Lewis
Tom Lewis
3 years ago

It’ so ironic, it almost beggars belief, one could wail, gnash one’s teeth and stamp up and down with despair. The one thing that could have united this country, was the Empire. Instead of using it as a building block, to forge a new sense of community, a common heritage, it has been traduced and reviled and used to sow dissent and bitterness. Sure, the British Empire was far from perfect, it was no different from any other collective human endeavour, self serving, but for all of it’s contradictions, it did tie, people from all across the globe to a common purpose, for which not a few were prepared to sacrifice their lives. When immigration, became a thing, after the Second World War, many of those initial travellers came to the UK on the back of that shared connection, that forged identity ( My first father-in-law to name but one).
No countries history is perfect, every single one will contain episodes of murder, destruction, greed, exploitation, and Britain, or the British Empire, was no different in that regard, but like all emergent countries it then set about trying to forge a common unifying identity, and not entirely without success. I truly despair, that supposedly clever people, with their own agendas, cannot recognise this simple truth. They seek to unite by destroying the very ties that bind, the very reason that drew people, from all over the world, here in the first place.
And no, I will not apologise, for thinking that the British Empire was not an entirely bad thing (I enjoy Flashman, far to much for that).

Last edited 3 years ago by Tom Lewis
John Riordan
John Riordan
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Lewis

The British Empire ended the legal institution of slavery, a reality that had existed since the dawn of human history. That people don’t know this when they start banging on about the evils of the UK’s imperial past borders upon obscenely stupid.

Last edited 3 years ago by John Riordan
Hugh Eveleigh
Hugh Eveleigh
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Lewis

I am with you Mr Lewis. The British Empire was far more ‘good’ than ‘bad’ and yes we both know that the standards expected were not always upheld and there were some very bad episodes. But we have left elements of our parliamentary system, justice, administration, ‘rights’, protection of the weak etc for many countries to use as building blocks for their own development. The Commonwealth of Nations is a sort of testament to that.
Disparaging Empire is a silly academic diversionary cul-de-sac. It’s a part of our history which we should look back on as a time when we gave practical foundational help to what eventually became emergent nations and states. Yes, it was based on increasing our wealth and clout as a nation but so many administrators in the late eighteenth and ninenteenth centuries held high principles based on fairness and good will and that meant improving the lot of the native inhabitants where we settled. Sometimes the system failed but these were exceptional instances to what was a straight-forward determination to govern fairly and equably.
King George III wrote an instruction to his newly appointed Governor of New South Wales, Captain Arthur Philip, to ‘treat the natives fairly’ and to ensure that they were not unnecessarily troubled.The humanity was central to the thinking and that is, overall, what we should be proud of.

Sam McLean
Sam McLean
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh Eveleigh

King George III wrote an instruction to his newly appointed Governor of New South Wales, Captain Arthur Philip, to ‘treat the natives fairly’ and to ensure that they were not unnecessarily troubled. The humanity was central to the thinking and that is, overall, what we should be proud of.

That you chose this particular straw to grasp shows a remarkable ignorance of how Aborigines have been treated. I suppose we did treat them fairly, until what they wanted confilcted with what we wanted. Then we started shooting them.

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
3 years ago

I used to believe in the importance of ‘values’ for the post-Christian west. Now, when every corporation and organisation spouts its monolithic ‘values’ to close dissenters down, I see them as a trojan horse for DIE (Diversity/Inclusion/Equity). DIE is a totalising ideology which, up to a couple of years ago, I would have called un-British.

Tom Krehbiel
Tom Krehbiel
3 years ago
Reply to  Judy Englander

You can still call them un-British, Judy. I know, I call many progressive memes un-American, such as the blatant disregard for our First Amendment that is involved in de-platforming.

Peter LR
Peter LR
3 years ago

I really liked the Manchester Commonwealth Games when ‘Land of hope and glory’ was used as the English anthem. The music is classy and inspiring; the words do recollect what Britain has always represented. I heard the OBON song – dumbed down like a Eurovision entry: nul points!

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

You are dissing the creative efforts of UK schoolchildren – sacrilege! Whatever next? You’ll be criticising the NHS soon at this rate!

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
3 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

May be some one could have suggested a theme, something along the lines of tomorrow belonging to them perhaps

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
3 years ago

That’s a thought – we boomers sold that pup to the millennials, it might work with the subsequent generations…

Tom Krehbiel
Tom Krehbiel
3 years ago

That was satire, correct – or are you unaware of a German song popular during the Third Reich about “tomorrow belongs to me”?

Last edited 3 years ago by Tom Krehbiel
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Krehbiel

That’s the thing about satire, you never know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDuHXTG3uyY

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
3 years ago

Also it was written by John Kander and Fred Ebb (2 of the chosen people) for the film Cabaret in 1972

Chelcie Morris
Chelcie Morris
3 years ago

I don’t understand why ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ can’t be used for this? It inspires hope, belonging and was written by a talented poet and not some random school children. Why are our standards so low? Maybe we should start with that.

Louise Kirk
Louise Kirk
3 years ago
Reply to  Chelcie Morris

Please see our new Relationships/PSHE/character education call it what you will programme for primary schools at http://www.alivetotheworld.com. (See comment below). I’ve always worked on the basis that’s it’s not enough to protest. One has to produce the good alternative and here it is. We even have an exercise getting children to colour in the Union Jack while understanding how it comes from the flags of Ss George, Andrew and Patrick – not forgetting our friends the Welsh whose colourful dragon all the children can colour in. Have a look at the website. So much more in there. Anything anyone can do to advertise it abroad greatly welcomed.

Last edited 3 years ago by Louise Kirk
Louise Kirk
Louise Kirk
3 years ago
Reply to  Louise Kirk

The website is so new I’ve given you the wrong name! It’s http://www.alivetotheworld.co.uk. That’s better.

Michael James
Michael James
3 years ago

Orwell was right about the British laughing at militaristic posturing, but he also saw the dangers of totalitarian newspeak and doublethink and wrote Nineteen Eighty Four to warn us. How ironic that plenty of young ‘educated’ Brits now act as if that novel is a guide to the conduct of public affairs.

Last edited 3 years ago by Michael James
John Riordan
John Riordan
3 years ago

“What British Values tended to mean, and this wasn’t exactly an accident, was liberal or progressive values, ideas that plenty of people of all backgrounds might feel completely alien to them. Beyond that the things they emphasise — tolerance and respect — are worthy, and something we’d like to teach our children, but they’re not particularly British.”

They’re not particularly Liberal or Progressive either. Wokeism is the latest iteration of Progress within Liberalism, and it’s the diametric opposite of tolerant and respectful.

Last edited 3 years ago by John Riordan
Peter Francis
Peter Francis
3 years ago

The Swiss have an admirable level of civic nationalism, partly facilitated by having four official languages. They have one tune for their national hymn, but the lyrics in the different languages express different sentiments. The German lyrics are like advertising copy for the Swiss Tourist Board, whereas the French lyrics read like a version of our footy chant “. If you think you’re hard enough, come and take a chance . . .”.  (My knowledge of Italian and Romansh are too limited for me to attempt translations.)
This demonstrates that, as long as the tune is the same, a country does not have to sing from the same hymn sheet.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter Francis

Great idea. ‘God Save The Team’ does it for sport.

Last edited 3 years ago by Chris Wheatley
Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago

I have long thought that our national anthem should be updated to reflect what is mostly sung as our anthem, namely, “‘Ere We Go”.
For the benefit of non-British commenters the tune is “Stars And Stripes Forever”, and the anthem is very easy to remember, because it would have only four verses. In each verse the same word is repeated throughout, thus:

Verse 1

‘Ere we go, ‘ere we go, ‘ere we go,

‘Ere we go, ‘ere we go, ‘ere we go-o,

‘Ere we go, ‘ere we go, ‘ere we go,

‘Ere we go-o, ere we go.

Verse 2.

Eng-er-lund, Eng-er-lund, Eng-er-lund

(etc)

Verse 3

Wem-ber-ley, Wem-ber-ley, Wem-ber-ley

Verse 4

(as vers 1)

Optionally verses 2 and 3 could be left out.
It’s a winner.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

Doesn’t work for Scotland unless you say Scot-ter-land but Wales is definitely short of syllables.
In fact, Wales has the best anthem by far but the words would be a problem for most people.

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

Those countries would drop verse 2.

Mike Doyle
Mike Doyle
3 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

On the matter of re-writing National Anthems, there is this version of the La Marseillaise:
We are the French, we run away
We live to surrender another day
That’s why all French military heroes
Are Women, or, have German Dads.

Howard Gleave
Howard Gleave
3 years ago
Reply to  Mike Doyle

Not bad, but in the interests of scansion, how about amending the last three words to “are total zeros”? Just a thought.

Mike Doyle
Mike Doyle
3 years ago
Reply to  Howard Gleave

It does scan better, but I think the line, as is, echoes both the American observation that due to D-Day, ‘Thousands of French women find out what it’s like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn’t call her “Fraulein.” Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.’ and the English football chant of, “You’re S**t, but your birds are fit!”

Al M
Al M
3 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

I think you might have a sideline in writing for I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
3 years ago

Liberal democracy is just a reststop on the road from nationalism to nihilism.

David B
David B
3 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

Legutko again!

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
3 years ago
Reply to  David B

Which is curious since I am completely irreligious.

Lucille Dunn
Lucille Dunn
3 years ago

I thought the internationally recognised essential British value was fair play? Perhaps we should try and rescue it from the avalanche of BS in which it is drowning

Simon Denis
Simon Denis
3 years ago

The only society which can successfully make “values” the principle of unity is a totalitarian one – and it can only last for as long as subscription to the “values” is enforced. The moment that weakness kicks in, or fatigue, or doubt, the whole thing goes belly-up. Hence the fall of the Soviet Union. The US pretends it is constructed around a constitution, but that constitution is itself a manifestation of the real reason for US unity and identity, the WASP inheritance – now all but squandered – which means the US is heading for dissolution. National integrity relies on inherited culture which in turn depends on demographic stability. When the ties that bind are deeper than “values”, the bitterest rows are sustainable and deadly division kept at bay. After all, what are “values” at the end of the day but fancy, moralising propositions most likely at variance with real experience? And a proposition naturally excites its own opposition in any conscious mind. Any attempt to build a society on words is doomed, either to speedy collapse – “liberal”; or long, increasingly coercive and hysterical enforcement – Marxist / “Woke”.

Crispin Jewitt
Crispin Jewitt
3 years ago

Oh dear. The union flag held by the little girl in the picture is upside-down.

A Spetzari
A Spetzari
3 years ago
Reply to  Crispin Jewitt

To be fair, it’s the person who stuck it on the stick who is to blame. Perhaps she knows hence she is scowling at it slightly

Paul Sorrenti
Paul Sorrenti
3 years ago

Three lions on a shirt
Plus another one on Scotland’s
Wales have got a DRAGON
And Northern Ireland’s is nice too

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago

GB is a truly great country IMO with great people and great potential, and its not even the 1% that spoil it for everyone else its far less than that. There is no place in this country for that tiny %,. To carry on the 1% analogy they are the “filthy few” and include messrs Johnson, Corbin, Witty, Valance and Ferguson. Spain and Portugal are close in joint 2nd to GB in my exp.The best place for those who have no place here is probably somewhere where they have death squads and psychotic cartel bosses. That’ll learn them.

Last edited 3 years ago by mike otter
Roger Inkpen
Roger Inkpen
3 years ago

One flesh, one bone, one true religion
One voice, one hope, one real decision
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa
Give me one vision, yeah”

A Spetzari
A Spetzari
3 years ago

“Strong Britain, Great Nation

Strong Britain, Great Nation

Strong Britain, Great Nation

Strong Britain, Great Na-a-a-tion”

If you sing this in the style of Dennis Waterman in Little Britain, I could get on board with this…

Geoffrey Simon Hicking
Geoffrey Simon Hicking
3 years ago

If non-european rulers derived their legitimacy from their value as allies of Britain and the Raj, maybe our modern island story should emphasise our value as vassals of the American empire. Just as Jodhpur ruled herself and provided some of the finest (Indian officered) troops in our imperial armies, so to do we provide submarines equally as advanced as America’s efforts. They have sailed side by side against Russian SSKs and SSNs. No other nation can provide that assistance. Nor can any other nation provide the signals intelligence that America depends on. There is no closer alliance in the intelligence world than UKUSA (even within the already tightly knit Five Eyes).
Zareer Masani spoke of an imperial esprit de corps in the armies of the empire. Maybe we should embrace our role as part of the American empire and make clear how important we are to them.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
3 years ago

Sounds about right. Only I do not think the US same view of our significance, not at all

Geoffrey Simon Hicking
Geoffrey Simon Hicking
3 years ago

Plenty of Brits disparaged the princes, with the exception of the military. The British Army was desperate for Indian and Nepalese manpower, and were incredibly grateful for what they got. The admiration of the US military (which is very very real) is all we need. Ignore the silly democrats- they are no different to the complacent liberal imperialists of the late 19th century. Ungrateful and increasingly irrelevant.

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
3 years ago

Was the reference to the JRSST deeply ironic, or a mistake? It has been funding anti British activities for,decades. ( You never know.A Times journalist recently called Glenn Greenwall a conservative journalist).

David GTD
David GTD
3 years ago

We’re all fu**ed!

Nicholas Taylor
Nicholas Taylor
3 years ago

It may still be too early to assess whether the British Empire was a good thing. Like the Ottoman, Roman and earlier empires, it is the imprint left once the centre of power and the history have faded that counts. If positive, this is likely to include some kind of partly real or imagined concept or project that leaves former subjects wealthier in spirit than before. On that basis, despite their predations and brutalities, the Roman and British empires may be thought tilted towards the good, if one overlooks arbitrary borders drawn on maps that are a source of endless trouble. Not so the Ottoman empire or attempts to create copycat empires by other European nations and Japan. Now, what of Britain’s last colony – itself?

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago

This type of article keeps coming along. People in England see that the problem with unity begins in Scotland and Wales. In fact, the problem begins in England – in conversation people struggle with the idea of Britishness not being the same as Englishness.
For total unity, the idea of Englishness has to disappear first because England is dominant in the arrangement but can’t be openly seen to be dominant.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

Excellent point. I’ve never been able to pin down what “Englishness” is, so always defined myself as “British”, or “Northern”, or “Yorkshire”. Those identities always triggered a feeling of belonging for me much more than “English” did.
What would you say was “British” and what “English”?

Peter LR
Peter LR
3 years ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

I have always assumed we English are diffident about our nationality as we have had the larger influence over the British Isles in language, driving, law etc. I’m 3rd generation white immigrant and half-English but feel pretty incorporated. The English identity is maybe humour (Carry On films), self-depreciation, nostalgia (Downton Abbey), inventiveness and Christian humanism (abolished slavery in the 12th century) [off the top of my head]!

Last edited 3 years ago by Peter LR
Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

And this is the problem because everyone else doesn’t get a say in things.

George Stone
George Stone
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

You mean deprecation.

A Spetzari
A Spetzari
3 years ago
Reply to  George Stone

Haha. Yes perhaps too much self-depreciation has led us to this dearth of values

Peter LR
Peter LR
3 years ago
Reply to  George Stone

Yes, George, but maybe a malapropism that works?

Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

The slavery abolition was mostly the Normans.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

I have lived in Wales for 45 years but was born in the north of England. Before moving to Wales I worked in Scotland. I have never seen myself as English!!!

The north of England is vastly different from the south and is, in fact, nearer in humour and character to Wales – self-deprecating, harsh, corner of the mouth rather than full on. To me Englishness means living within a 100 mile radius of London – it means Londonness. Here is the problem, of course. About half of the British population live in this area and they see Englishness and Britishness as the same thing. This makes the far-flung places feel left out of the party. Hence the arrival of independence movements.

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

they see Englishness and Britishness as the same thing

Not sure that’s true. I see myself as English because seeing myself as British sort of implies that I must accept something in common with and vicariously share some aspects of Scottishness. As I see Scotland* as a handouts-dependent complete and utter waste of space and a millstone, I don’t agree that they make up any part of my nationality at all.
I have the same reservation about Northern Ireland, where they bizarrely have a “marching season” to insult each other by commemorating sectarian battles of 300 years ago, and a related one about Welshness. As far as I can see there is no Welsh identity at all. When you think of Scotland you at least think of Ally’s Tartan Army and Trainspotting, but when you think of Wales, does anyone think of anything? Anything at all?
*that of today, not the Scotland of the past – where, if you drew up one list of Scottish inventions and discoveries, and another list of British inventions and discoveries, they’d be almost the same list

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

This is a good answer but you are confirming what I am saying. Effectively, that Englishness doesn’t have room for anything else.

Last edited 3 years ago by Chris Wheatley
Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

I’m more about suggesting that being British and English is like being north American and American. There cannot be many Americans who consider Mexicans, Panamanians and Canadians their compatriates.

Tom Krehbiel
Tom Krehbiel
3 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

Well no, those are separate countries from the US. But as yet Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channels (did I miss anything?) all share the same country with England.

Ron Bo
Ron Bo
3 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

If you visit North Wales you will meet lovely people speaking an ancient language.one feels Wales.Its magical.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  Ron Bo

I am 100% behind Welsh independence but a language is no good for putting food on the table. This idea, that everything depends on a language is what is slowing us down. We need high-paid jobs:- battery producers, the tidal power unit in Swansea, something in the empty space of mid-Wales, technology instead of social science.

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago
Reply to  Ron Bo

I worked in north Wales (well, it was a big chunk of my sales territory) as a graduate and I love the countryside. It is a fabulous place straight out of Tolkien. I am not sure that it adds up to an identity though.

Peter LR
Peter LR
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

Hi Chris, I was born within 100 miles of London and have never identified with it. I’ve been visiting the capital for 50 years and it progressively became less and less the capital of England and more like an international city of the kind you see in dystopian Sci-Fi films. The only things vaguely English are connected to the Monarchy. Now of course it’s become a political playground under the present Mayor.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

I tried replying but for some reason it is ‘waiting for approval’. Time to withdraw from UnHerd, I think.

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
3 years ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Howards End has an interesting debate about this. Little England it used to be called , disparagingly, in the days of the Empire. Belloc,and Chesterton portrayed it very well, as well as E.M. Forster. Germany went through a similar identity crisis during its unification under Bismarck.Highly influential writers wanted,Germany to be more like Switzerland. I must admit I find Englishness very easy to understand, based in its ethereally beautiful countryside, nostalgic anthems and bloody minded people.

Chelcie Morris
Chelcie Morris
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

No, that’s the problem, Englishness has been destroyed to make way for Britishness. The problem isn’t that Englishness is in the way, it’s that Englishness doesn’t exist. We are English, not British, and that is where our focus should be. Britain is a political union, that is all, and the English ties to Britain is what is weakening us because it’s us who are bearing the brunt of it. The Scottish or the Welsh don’t consider themselves British before their national identities so why do we?

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  Chelcie Morris

You are just agreeing with me but using different words. The reason why Britishness does not work is that Englishness gets in the way. That’s what I said.

Richard Parker
Richard Parker
3 years ago

“We are Britain and we have one dream to unite all people in one Great Team”.
The road to Brexit was built and paved with such stuff…

Richard Calhoun
Richard Calhoun
3 years ago

Our diversity is our greatest strength … let’s embrace it!

Ron Bo
Ron Bo
3 years ago

I think the down ticks don’t appreciate irony. Another term I like is diversity and inclusion. Orwellian Newspeak.

David Bell
David Bell
3 years ago

Even better, let’s “celebrate” it!