Britishness

[poliphilo]

I've been meaning to write about "Britishness" for weeks. It's an idea the politicians are pushing. And I just can't get my head round it.

For instance they'd like to establish a Bank Holiday to be known as Britain Day on which we all get to sit down and think about how jolly it is to be British.

It takes me back to school- not my real school but the fictitious Mr Chipsy public school most of us carry round in our heads. The politicians are the prefects and it's their job to drum up some of that good old school spirit thats been so sorely lacking of late. We've been behaving like duffers and we need to show how frightfully keen we are or.... or what?  Are they going to make us run round the lower field in full kit if we don't ?

Gordon Brown- our soon to be unelected dear leader- has been talking up the flag. He'd like us to get all pledge-of -alliegancy about it-  just like you Americans. 

(Which shows how out of touch he is with the public mood. I'm sorry, you guys, but American militarism isn't exactly flavour of the month right now)

And why does he want us saluting the flag? I guess because it would make his job easier. A tight knit body of rah-rah-rahing patriots is so much easier to boss around.

They're losing their grip- the politicians are- and they're panicking.

Britishness is a modern invention. It dates from the yoking together of the kingdoms of England and Scotland by Act of Union in 1707. The Union was  a useful and at times popular creation that enabled us to run an empire and fight world wars but now it's falling apart.  I don't know why exactly but it's clearly part of a worldwide trend and too deep to be rectified by political speechifying. Large political units are breaking up into their constituent parts all over the globe.  Goodbye European empires, goodbye USSSR, goodbye Yugoslavia, goodbye Iraq....

Thankfully we Brits are experiencing it as a peaceful process.

So what is Britishness? I don't know. I think of redcoat soldiers- some of them in skirts- fighting the paynim. Not very helpful or contemporary. What else do we all have in common?  Erm.....

I'm English. When I go to Scotland I feel like I'm crossing into a foreign country- as foreign as France or the USA. The politics are different, the culture is different, the religion is different, the food is different, the geography and climate and architecture are different.  And that's clearly how the Scots see things too. They're the junior partner in the Union and chippy about it. They just had an election which put the Nationalists in power in Edinburgh- leaving the Scottish Labour MPs in Westminster (including the soon to be unelected dear leader- no wonder he's anxious) looking rawly exposed and faintly illegitimate.

I don't know what the future holds, but I know a worn-out idea when I see one and Britishness has flies buzzing all round it.

Comments

[jfs.livejournal.com]

At this point, I'll hand over to Billy Bragg.

[quote]
Take down the Union Jack, it clashes with the sunset
And put it in the attic with the emperors old clothes
When did it fall apart? Sometime in the 80s
When the Great and the Good gave way to the greedy and the mean
Britain isn’t cool you know, its really not that great
It's not a proper country, it doesn’t even have a patron saint
It's just an economic union that’s passed its sell-by date
[/quote]

You can't force people to pledge allegiance ... (I can't even spell it without going and checking ...) - because allegiance in the way that the US pledge means it is a joining and a giving - it's willingly subsuming yourself to the cause of something greater. And that can't be forced, can't be demanded. At best, it can be negotiated. But mostly, allegiance is a gift of love from the individual to the group.

It's not for nothing that patriotism comes from the Latin / Greek for father.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Wow - I really messed up my HTML there :-)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I like Billy Bragg.

Britain is a small country and England is very much smaller. I think it's time we gave up our nostalgia for empire and settled for being the small European nation we are.

Flags are so not the future.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

I agree with most of what you say - and I live in Wales, which you haven't mentioned, so perhaps fogot about.
On the other hand, I know quite a number of English 30 + people who don't agree with us, and have applied for US or Australian nationality, because they feel that we've lost something in the way of "allegiance to the flag".
So this might get him some support.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I left Wales out of the equation because the relationship between Wales and England is so much less clear cut. Wales was never a kingdom the way England and Scotland were/are. Would a separate Wales be a viable nation the way Scotland so clearly would? I just don't know.

So basically I'm pleading ignorance here.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I could see Wales actually splitting further into Gwynnedd and Deheubarth (Very roughly, North and South Wales).

[richenda.livejournal.com]

>>>I could see Wales actually splitting further into Gwynnedd and Deheubarth (Very roughly, North and South Wales

So would I have predicted that, about 20 years ago, but that divide is decreasing. Not only is there now a hugely improved rail service between Cardiff and Bangor, but you can fly from Cardiff to Anglesey. It remains to be seen how viable that will be, but it wouldn't have been thought of before the "new" road was built across Anglesey, and before the recent increase in housing refurbishment on the island. (The huge snag is the twice-daily bottle-neck at Britannia Bridge, but that can be avoided by careful timing.)

[jfs.livejournal.com]

All good points - I grew up in Shropshire, leaving there 20 years ago, and at that time, the easiest way to get from Cardiff to Bangor by far was through Shrewsbury, either by train or by road.

Better internal communications (and I very much count roads in that) can be a massively important part of forging an identity.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

>>>>>>20 years ago, and at that time, the easiest way to get from Cardiff to Bangor by far was through Shrewsbury, either by train or by road.

Been there - done that - during a heatwave, no refreshments, and with weekend engineering (not) in progress, so the train crawled all the way.
No longer!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But those would be really tiny nations, wouldn't they?

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Yup.

Isn't there some sociological theory that the natural size for a tribe is about 125 - 150? After that, you start losing the ability to know everyone by name.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Not that I disapprove of tiny nations, you understand.

In the modern world a very small nation has to have a gimmick I think- like no income tax or money-laundering facilities.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

>>>>>Would a separate Wales be a viable nation the way Scotland so clearly would? I just don't know.

I think that it is becoming more likely. I might have been more doubtful about that a decade ago. It's too early to tell whether and when it might achieve financial autonomy (if that's the right term - I'm not an economist or financier - but isn't that true of Scotland too?

In point of fact, I think that part of the social/national strength of wales is that it was never a kingdom. All its princedoms came about by acclaim and conquest, so you could argue that it discovered parliamentarianism centuries before England did. Whether that's a good thing is a large part of this discussion, yes?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I guess Scotland has North Sea oil. Also it used to be a separate nation. If you can do it once, you can do it again.

I'm largely ignorant of Welsh history- I know my Mabinogion and my Shakespeare (Owen Glendower) and that's about it.

There's less of a sense of there being a border between England and Wales, I think. Hay on Wye is technically in Wales but feels like any other English West country town.

You travel West and you feel you're entering "Celtic" lands, but that sense of otherness (I speak as a Londoner) is as strong in the South-Western counties of England as it is in Wales.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

>>>>>>that sense of otherness (I speak as a Londoner) is as strong in the South-Western counties of England as it is in Wales.

I haven't spent enough time in the South Western counties to comment on that, and I don't know their history (except "twenty thousand Cornishmen will know the reason why" and I don't know its context). Do those counties have such well recorded princedoms as Wales has?
Apart from the improved transport I've mentioned, there is also the fact that I've heard people in South Wales say that they wish that Welsh was spoken as much in South Wales as in Caernarfon and on Anglesey
I don't think that would have been said 20 years ago.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think England has been established within its present boundaries since the Norman Conquest- and for some time before it. My Saxon history is scrappy and I don't know exactly how and when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms coalesced into a single England. Was that the work of Alfred the Great? I'll have to look it up.

Before then you have a period when the whole island was "Celtic" and parcelled out between warlords- kings, princes, whatever- and the modern nations had yet to emerge.

Until quite recently the Cornish had a language of their own- but I believe it has died out.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

>>>>Before then you have a period when the whole island was "Celtic" and parcelled out between warlords- kings, princes, whatever- and the modern nations had yet to emerge.
Until quite recently the Cornish had a language of their own- but I believe it has died out

Apologies. I didn't make myself clear. I meant to ask more specifically, whether the South West had as well documented a history of princedom as Wales had when it fell to England in 1282/83.
I realize that the Cornish had a language, but I'm cautious about assuming that languages have died out. I have a vivid memory of an incident in the 1950s when someone remarked that nobody now spoke Welsh, and was treated to an indignant harangue in fluent Welsh!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"I meant to ask more specifically, whether the South West had as well documented a history of princedom as Wales had when it fell to England in 1282/83."

The answer- quite simply- is no.

According to a website I've just consulted, Cornish died out as a spoken language in the 1890s. There are now efforts being made to revive it.

[oakmouse]

Cornish did die out but has been revived a bit; some 400 people now speak it, and there's a distance-learning program to allow people to learn it. My husband's learning it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's excellent.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There's shared history, too, I suppose- which includes in the case of the English and the Scots long centuries of emnity.

I think small nations are a good idea- on the principle that the more local a government is the more answerable it is to its people- but I would also like to see the small nations "glued" into much larger confederations.

My choice for my own country would be for the UK to be dissolved, but for its constituent nations to be fully integrated members of a federal Europe.

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

Whatever 'Britishness' is, I'm sure it doesn't involve having a national day. Tea, cricket, steam engines, and world maps coloured pink, with a glorious permanence of nostalgia and, like Bagpuss, a bit frayed at the seams - that's Britishness, isn't it?

I find it difficult to distinguish it from 'Englishness': to me, they are de facto the same, but I guess that's because 'Britain' (the UK) is effectively a takeover by England of the rest (more or less) of the British Isles.

Brown seems to have a thing for 'Britishness': I presume it serves two purposes - to attack the prospect of Scottish independence (which would make his premiership untenable) and to keep the Tories (more or less the English National Party, whatever Cameron might say) at bay.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

None of the traditional icons of Britishness really connects with who we are today. Modern Britain is urban, post-imperial, multicultural- a nation in transition. I don't think we honestly know who or what we are- and I'm not sure it matters.

Gordon Brown can go boil his head.

[happydog.livejournal.com]

Rule Brittania is out of bounds/To my mother, my dog and clowns...

When I think of Britishness I inevitably think of music, because a lot of British music has had a serious impact on me, and I really very often think of Ray Davies, "Village Green Preservation Society" and "Arthur: Or, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire." Is that exceptionally lame of me?

[jfs.livejournal.com]

But Ray Davies and the Kinks are very English, not British. Village greens (which need preserving) are not something you get in Wales or Scotland.

[happydog.livejournal.com]

True, true. Davies is very English, not at all Welsh or Scottish - totally different, of course.

I guess what I'm trying to get is a bigger picture. I know what the cliche I have in my mind is, but the reality is somewhat different, which is what I was attempting to say...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, no. Britain has led the world in pop and rock over the last half century. It's probably been our single greatest cultural achievement. Think Britain, think Rock and Roll.

And Ray Davies is a genius.

[currawong.livejournal.com]

I never think of anyone as British ... I see them as English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish. I think they should have their own governments and form a loose association like The Commonwealth. i think that in exchange for constitutional guarantees for the protestant minority, northern ireland should be handed over to Ireland and England should cut and run and let the Irish sort it out.
Of course, her Maj will be a problem ..." ...but I was crained Queen of the United Kingdom, Phillip ...what will happin to the Hice of Windsor? ...it's the thin edge of the wedge"

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I guess we'd revert to things as they were before the Act of Union. From James I to Queen Anne we had two separate kingdoms under one monarch- it seemed to work out all right.

Shades of 1966

[methodius.livejournal.com]

I first went to Britain in 1966.

There was an upsurge of tongue-in-cheek patriotism, and the Union Jack was on everything, from loo seats to tea towels. In the Daily Mirror, "The Perishers" were "Backing Britain". American publications were writing about "Swinging London" and Carnaby Street was the fashion centre of the universe. George, not Gordon, was the Brown in the news, number two to Harold Wilson, but never got the boss's job.

England won the World Cup, but it was celebrated as a British victory. I sewed a Welsh flag on my sleeve, because I regarded the Welsh as an oppressed and downtrodden people, but it was countrercultural and regarded by my English acquaintances as being in bad taste.

Our politicians and businessmen here are trying to stir up similar sentiments with a "Proudly South African" campaign.

But in Britain, how things have changed.

One rarely sees a a Union Jack nowadays. English, and Scottish flags must sell better individually than all the sales of Union Jacks combined. But even back then, it was tongue in cheek. Twenty years later, I visited the US of A, and saw hundreds of suburban houses with flagpoles in the gardens. They would never put it on a toilet seat.

Re: Shades of 1966

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I remember '66....

Back then we used "British" and English" as synonyms. The Scots and the Welsh found it annoying, but it hadn't yet dawned on the English that there was anything offensive about it.

It's remarkable how the Cross of St George has replaced the Union Jack on English streets. It seems to have happened almost overnight. We passed a funeral yesterday and the coffin was draped in the Union flag (I guess the deceased was a soldier) but all the following cars were flying the Cross of St George.

Re: Shades of 1966

[methodius.livejournal.com]

You might find the Britology watch blog interesting.

I stumbled across it when doing a Technorati tag search for xenophobial, since I'd just posted something about that one one of my other blogs, and was curious to find out what other people were saying about it.

Re: Shades of 1966

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is interesting.

Thanks

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

Exceptional analysis of what's going on right now. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The more I think about it, the more I'd like to consign Great Britain to the historical dust heap.

My geo-political identity is British, but my emotional identity is English.

I have been thinking about this for 15 minutes...

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

My geo-political identity is American.
My emotional identity is undiagnosed.

Re: I have been thinking about this for 15 minutes...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

For me it works like this.

I say the word Britain to myself- nothing happens.

I say the word England and my eyes prickle like I was going to weep.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

That's powerful! And what a good way to figure it out! I don't get prickles when I think about the nation, it makes me feel both rabid and lost. But then I think about the people here and I get the prickles.

[mokie]

I'm all for it! I hereby recommend celebrating Britain Day in September, so that America can have a proper two month break between its nationalistic binges.

Green beer for St. Patrick's day in March, Dos Equis for Cinco de Mayo, non-Czech Budweiser for our own Independence Day in July--September would work out perfectly!

Of course, we'd have to invent tea-flavored beer...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Tea-flavoured beer?

No need- all you'd have to do is import some proper English beer- much nicer than that watery stuff you drink- like Theakston's Old Peculiar or Old Speckled Hen.

[mokie]

Then we'd have to admit that the stuff we drink isn't really beer, and that would be too great an assault on our collective male pride.

Erf. That could be a problem. And here I've already started making "Cheerio!" and "Lick me! I'm British!" buttons...