14 replies to this topic

[KingSaeward]

I'm not alone in feeling English, not British. But that has nothing to do with racism or Ukip

Englishness is not the preserve of the right

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  • Suzanne Moore
    
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 January 2012 19.59 GMT
    
  • Article history

PJ Harvey … 'I live and die through England, it leaves a sadness'. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex

'My mother was half-English and I am half-English too," sings Billy Bragg on England, Half English. He has more idea about what he is than I do. My father was American, my grandad Cherokee, my mother adopted, so really I don't know. She had olive skin and black hair. Jewish? Italian? English? It didn't matter, anyway. Everyone always said how much I looked like my grandma. People see what they want to see. Or perhaps I really did look like her, though we had no genetic connection. Perhaps love runs thicker than blood. That's what I felt.
Lately, though, I feel very English, if such a feeling exists. That's right: English, not British. I see England speaking of itself once more and I am not surprised. Old and new Englishness abounds and it is not connected with racism or with Ukip. But it will be if it cannot be heard.
On the day the verdicts of the Lawrence trial came in, the BBC, in trying to explore "race relations" (a term way past its sell-by date in every sense), referred to last summer's riots as "the English riots". Did my heart swell with new-found patriotism? Not exactly. But the Scots, Welsh and Irish did not riot. Then people online started talking about the English Defence League's reaction to the Lawrence verdict. What was highlighted on many of the threads was the obvious disarray and ignorance of the EDL. We have been told it is in decline, yet I would not be so complacent about that when suspect groupings such as Casuals United are going strong. The last time I wrote about how the EDL were aping the language of inclusivity, I was automatically accused of being racist, as if to look at such material is to endorse it. But seeing, for instance, Ted Hughes's poetry co-opted by the EDL is indeed unsettling. This attempted rebranding of the far-right has not been a success, but it is early to dismiss it as a total failure.
This is why it matters that we talk about Englishness, and now even more so in our post-European "isolation". Again, there have been parallel worlds: one in which we are all assumed to be pro-European EasyJetters, the other where the majority are uneasy about what "Europe" means. It is hardly small-minded to worry about democratic accountability or to simply observe; those of us with family in Ireland watched the European money flow into that country, and then flow out again.
The anti-Europeanism that upsets the bien pensants is pragmatic. But if we pull back from Europe, will we look further inwards? Devolution means a shoring up of some identities, while others are in flux. The kind of nationalism that Billy Bragg talks of is a patriotism of radical Englishness, of class solidarity and anti-racism.
This speaks to me. When I was very young and travelling in India, I had arranged to meet a friend in a huge city and she found me simply by going to the cheapest flop houses and looking through their books. When she saw a name with "English" and not "UK" beside it in the nationality box she knew it was me, for even then I could not bear the term United Kingdom. She laughed at me a lot, because her father knew something about Englishness: he was EP Thompson, author of The Making of the English Working Class.
If my clinging to Englishness was making a statement about class, then I came home to a place where Britishness had become the default for anyone who wanted to say something, or perhaps nothing, about race. Thus, many people identify themselves as Black-British rather than, say, Sikh-Scots. This hybrid works if the centre can hold. But the centre has shifted. Englishness is not the preserve of the right. The cultural canaries sing. Thus Jez Butterworth writes Jerusalem and PJ Harvey has been singing of her connection to the white chalk of Dorset and now to the blood and bones of England itself. "I live and die through England, it leaves a sadness." Her England is of the past and the future; the dead of the Empire's wars are not denied. Then, of course, Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu, AKA Tinie Tempah, does Englishness in a totally different way. "Yeah, they say hello, they say ola and they say bonjour" leads to the very funny "I've been to Southampton but I've never been to Scunthorpe."
The scuppering of Englishness as any kind of ethnically pure or white identity is happening: listen to the way kids talk. The problems come when Britishness, or Europeanism, feels enforced rather than organic. This is often what people are really complaining about when they say multi-culturalism has "failed".
This loss is replaced by Englishness as nostalgia. Orwell, always the reference point, got most things right. But he described the essential qualities of Englishness as "gentleness" and "privateness". He clearly hadn't seen Big Brother.
Some say anxiety about Englishness can lead us only backwards; others say look to it for its anti-establishment credentials. And I would. It could be more than anti-Catholicism and morris dancing. We could have greater expectations. My loyalty is to no flag and no king, and I fully understand why many prefer the term British. But where I live, where I hear so many tongues and see so many faces, where many worlds collide, where I may be a citizen and as awkward as I like, is actually England.

http://www.guardian....h-is-not-racism

Doesn't this make you want to puke?

[KingSaeward]

Top comment with 250-odd likes:

The term ‘British’ doesn’t represent an ethnicity. It doesn’t represent an identity. And neither does it represent a culture.
Perhaps it never did.
Virtually anyone can call themselves ‘British’. After all, at one time, almost a third of the world was ‘British’.
That’s why the term “British” is so useful to multiculturalists.
However, I don’t think that anyone can call themselves ‘English’. I’d argue that in order to do so, one ought to be ethnically English or, in cases such as mine, culturally so.
The reason we’re seeing more and more people referring to themselves as English is because mass immigration, multiculturalism and cultural equivalence have made the term ‘British’ utterly meaningless.
In parts of England, there are whole communities of British people who communicate in foreign languages, practice foreign cultures and dress in foreign ethnic garb. And they’re as British as anyone. But are they English?
Once the Union breaks up, the term British will be obsolete. You can see how this will create problems for multiculturalism.

[Oath-Bearer]

another attempt by lefties to blur the truth and bring more decent patriots round to their twisted way of thinking!

[Searu man]

"Orwell, always the reference point, got most things right. But he described the essential qualities of Englishness as "gentleness" and "privateness". He clearly hadn't seen Big Brother."

Is this supposed to be ironic? I can't believe she doesn't know where "Big Brother" came from.....surely? Then again, nothing would surprise me nowadays.

[Andy]

What is happening is an attempt to undermine what it means to be English.

British was once a definable identity and culture........unfortunately because it was mostly defined by we English many English confused themselves into thinking themselves as British first and foremost.
After decades of mass immigration British is no longer a definable identity.  It is everyone and anyone.

As such many English who considered themselves British found themselves in a group without identity, 'I am British' they would say, but so would Abdul, Wang and Umgowi!

So those Britains slowly awoke to the fact theat they were actually English and came to join us who had always called ourselves English.

Then the civic idiots like Billy Bragg, decided he didnt like that, he belives we English should be as inclusive as the former British.  He doesnt consider that those non English he claims are English always have a non inclusive fall back identity whereas his actions would leave we English with no identity.
His is a view of destruction not of inclusion.  The destruction of the English just as his type destroyed Britishness.

Now anyone can claim they are English, but they will always come up against us, the true English.  We are the mirror that makes them look what they are, not English.

When they visit other countries they will be asked their identity and questioned how they are English!
Whereas I will be recognised as English without question.

Even in Britain I couldnt claim to be what I am not.  I will always be considered as English.

These non English can say 'Im English' and people may say 'OK' but inside we all know that both people are just playing politics.

English is not a 'cultural identity' I cannot throw a boomarang and claim to be an Aborigini, I couldnt wear clogs and claim to be Dutch, eating a curry doesnt make me Asian just as born and bred in England doesnt make those people English.

English is a racial and cultural group.  A group is a collection of people that identifies itself through specific ideals, visual sighns, speech etc if you dont look and act part of the group and have to convince the group you are a memeber of that group then no matter what anyone says....your not part of that group.   Sorry, not.

[Mr West]

there was another article I remember reading by another left wing media tosser, an Asian one to be specific..
He was triyng to coil the term "british not English" by justifying they mean the same thing along the lines of, Where you were born is what you are.

Here it is, read it in disgust.

http://www.guardian....hnic-minorities

He also claims, we're proud of people like Amir Khan and we're proud of a multi-racial society. Englishness has changed we must accept aht, apprantly.

bollocks to that and to him... Bollocks also to those left wing anti-english hate spewing liberals that agree with him.

[scouserbob]

The Guardian - speaking up for Englishness! Don't make me laugh. They are, as usual, completely fucking clueless!

[Harold Godwinsson]

The Guardian has no popular acceptance only among the Liberal/Left, Fabians and the Liberal Middle classes, so its spouting off to the converted, the likes of Billy Wog-Lover Bragg, is of that Ilk, its nothing but gibbering off to the Converted brain dead young Middle Class Radicals, that will one day get bored and go back to Daddy's Millions, if Daddy has any Millions left...

The Guardian was created by the Middle Class, for the Middle Class to tell the Middle Class what they want to hear, and not to up set them at their Tea and Toast in the morning, in short, its talking to these types who don't live with the so-called other English (Immigrants) but live in well protected, well kept, private estates far from the problems Multiculturalism has created..

HG

[Harold Godwinsson]

Its simply more sign of the growing fear, and discomfort at the apparent pendulum swing heading towards the Right, its reached its furthest point, from where it can't go any where else but the other way, and is now beginning its swing toward the Right..

The Guardian readers, the Middle Classes, the likes of the Liberal Left, the White Collar Marxists, who brought all this to be, are shitting themselves, its pure Fear, for they know they'll be facing the Gallows for Treason..

Billy 'Wog Lover' Bragg, is only going on about all Inclusive Englishness, because he's married or at least sleeping with a black woman, and with the fall of Britishness, she has no fall back, so he thinks he can make her English........

Its further signs of Fear, and it stinks to high heaven, ain't it great........

[edmundy]

I agree. The left wing commentators are very aware of the rising awakening, that the 'British experiment' is starting to show cracks. The Utlanders feel uneasy when the white folc of this sacred land don't want to labelled with the all-inclusive 'B word'. The State controlled media can harp on all they want about the 'wonderous' Olympic and Jubilee year but the truth is we can hardly breathe through the stench of their bullshit. No English person would write for the Guardian, no matter what fabricated feelings they put down in print,especially not when they begin by mentioning that turd Bragg,the great lover of multi-culture...who lives in 99% white Dorset! Let the traitors continue to spout their confused rantings on Brittania and England,their vague ideas on identity. For we need no instruction,no 'helpful pointers'. We know who we are. And we know who they are.

[Phil]

Just another example of the left/liberal types trying to hijack English Identity because they are shitting bricks about the awakening that is happening. For the last 30 years or so English Identity didn't even exist according to them but now, as more and more English have had enough of the bullshit and are starting to reassert their belief in a unique Ethnic English identity, they are going into overdrive to assert that there is actually an English identity but on their own perverted left wing multi culti bullshit terms.......mongrel nation etc etc. They really do hate the fact that we are an individual ethnic group!

[Witnere]

I will not be told what to think by some collection of heads-up-their-arses trendy liberal wankers. They can pretend they have a new definition of Englishness, all they have in fact is another big pile of meaningless bullshit. And that's all they'll ever be able to produce.

[Steven]

Phil, on 07 January 2012 - 09:38 PM, said:

Just another example of the left/liberal types trying to hijack English Identity ..

They really do hate the fact that we are an individual ethnic group!

Perfectly correct Phil. I've seen how this has developed. Labour's John Denham gave a speech just before last year's General Election and the message he gave near the end was about how they were going to take our identity, just as they'd done with 'British identity'. To hear him talk you'd think his political party owned ethnic identities, like you own stock. Who we are is none of their business, and if they push it far enough we'll be forced to kill them. Our identity is everything, they know it which is why they want it.

Steve

[Woden's Child]

Left wing Englishness? Isn't that something of an oxymoron - with emphasis on the 'moron'.

[Andy]

Its all bollocks.

They know it and we know it.  They just keep playing the game because that is all they know.

We will always exist to tell and show the wannabee's that they are not English.  So they and their media play at 'lets pretend' they are like naughty children with their fingers in their ears talking loudly so they dont have to hear the truth.  Unfortunately for them they have to take their fingers out of their ears eventually and then their bubble bursts.

What wil they do then?

They dont know, and thats why they have their fingers in their ears.