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

[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.