England & Englishness - The Stateless State of the Nation

The political scene across the British archipelago has not been as complex nor fractious as it is now since universal suffrage giving (almost) all adults (over 21 years old) the vote irrespective of sex, income or property ownership finally became law in 1928. 

One problem we have here is an identity issue, who are we? 

This question is less problematic for our Celtic neighbours, the national identities of the Scots, or Welsh is better defined than that of the English.

In Northern Ireland at the opposite end of the spectrum rigid national and cultural identities have at times in its history threatened to tear the place apart. 

We all have multiple nationalities we are citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the UK), we are also British and also separately English, (Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish). 

Then there is the mythology that imagines Great Britain is some ancient land whose history reaches back into the mists of time, the land of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and all that, this is largely a construct of Hollywood and Britain's own popular culture and fiction throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Great Britain loosely came into being with the arrival of James Stuart as king of Scotland and England in 1603 and whose court was in London.

The concept and actuality of Great Britain wasn't completely formalised until the Acts of Union cemented Scottish accession to rule from London in 1707.

The United Kingdom itself didn't come about until 1801 when the island of Ireland was absorbed into the union which is where it remained until 1922.

Some argue that plain old Britain without the Great refers only to England and Wales. The union of these countries can be said to have taken place when a Welsh dynasty the Tudors descended from Prince Rhys ap Tewdwr, that ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including the Lordship of Ireland, later the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1485 until 1603. 

During that Tudor period, the Principality of Wales came to an end as a legally defined territory and was formally annexed to England with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542.

Today England is by far the most populous of the countries that comprise the British Isles with about 84% of the population of the United Kingdom living here. The name England comes from the Anglo-Saxon Engla-Land or land of the Angles, the Germanic peoples who started to populate southern Britain in the 5th century AD.

It is I think an interesting fact in the face of officially sanctioned xenophobia giving  rise over the last few years to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) an extreme right-wing coalition of conservative Eurosceptics, neo-fascists and readers of tabloid newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Sun, who would I think be deeply shocked and offended to discover the simple fact that England was actually originally created by immigrants.

Not only was England established by immigrants, but its language is a mongrel tongue comprising of loanwords borrowed from many different donor languages and constructed on a framework of archaic Germanic roots.

England is a construct of incomers after the Romans departed Britannia, they were mostly economic migrants and settlers coveting the fertile lands of the south and east of the British mainland, some of whom had first arrived as mercenaries and auxiliaries of the now gone Romans and they just stayed and settled down here.

However, the ethnic makeup was already a mix of Romano British, Brythonic and various other ethnicities some of whom first arrived with the Romans between 55 BC until 450AD when they finally left British shores to address the crisis at home. The Celtic nations to the west and north including Picts, Scots, Welsh, Cornish and Irish and to the southwest the Bretons also had a presence in what was to become England. 

In the southeast the Belgae from what is now northern France and Belgium had a significant foothold in Kent. Waves of subsequent immigration has enriched the cultural canvas upon which the idea of England has been painted and added complex patterns to the tapestry of English life, and all that from well before the word go as well!

Add into the pot the Danes and we see a truly diverse population in the territory that became England even before its actual existence as a distinct national entity.  The Anglo-Saxons had seven minor kingdoms (the Heptarchy) that with the exception of Wessex, were all devastated and eventually overrun by Viking incursions and by the establishment of Danelaw during the period sometimes referred to as the Dark Ages roughly between the years of 500 and 850AD.

The Scandinavian languages of the Danelaw areas and the Viking invaders brought about the first lexical enrichment of the proto-English language's Anglo-Frisian base, so English is not only a hotch-potch of other languages mostly from the Indo-European family but, during the 7th and 8th centuries it comprised of at least four distinct dialects, which were the founding pillars of the language we are using here to communicate now.

    Northumbrian in Northumbria, north of the Humber

    Mercian in the Kingdom of Mercia

    West Saxon in the Kingdom of Wessex

    Kentish in Kent

From these small linguistic acorns great linguistic oaks really did grow. English currently has about 300 million native speakers worldwide and is the official or co-official language of 45 different countries. Around another 300 million people are using English as a second language and somewhere in the region of 100 million people who use English as a foreign language in the world today.

England's 19 Days of Freedom

England was founded when The English lands were again unified in the 10th century in a reconquest completed by King Athelstan in 927. Although the Norse threat did not go away and was not roundly defeated by the Saxons until the Battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September 1066. It is one of English history's supreme ironies that very soon after the final defeat of the Viking armies, followed the defeat of the recently victorious Anglo-Saxon army and King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, from whence began the Norman Conquest, just 19 days after the decisive defeat of the Norsemen at Stamford Bridge.

Since those times England and the English have been under the control of a succession of non-English dynasties, the Normans, the Frankish House of Anjou (the Angevins), the Anglo-French Plantagenet dynasty, the Welsh House of Tudor, the Scottish Stuart dynasty, the Dutch House of Orange, the German Hanoverians including the thoroughly German pedigree of the current incumbent of the British throne, HRH Queen Elizabeth II.

There is then a reading of history that says England is a country that was invented by immigrants and ruled by foreigners for the best part of the last thousand years.

Nothing much has changed. In 2014 England has no parliament, no government, and no independent existence of its own. The former Kingdom of England existed from 927 until 1707, so for  a period of 780 years, whereas the United Kingdom has been in existence for about 307 years but is now faltering under the multifaceted pressure of globalisation, regionalism, economic decline and political devolution on the Celtic fringes which has left England completely high and dry.

English nationalism is not as I have attempted to briefly sketch here - a simple matter.

It isn't simple now and it has never been simply a question of racial or ethnic integrity, in that sense the situation in England is much more akin to America than such ethnically homogenous countries as say Japan, or both of the Korea's  at the other extreme.

As DNA studies alone have clearly shown, all notions of race and ethnicity are social constructs but obviously incredibly significant ones, particularly in England at the present time for a whole combination of reasons.

England has had to reinvent itself in the wake of political devolution in the UK since 1999 which has given rise to a Scottish Parliament (which had previously gone into voluntary liquidation in 1707) a Welsh Assembly and a National Assembly for Northern Ireland.

The UK parliament in London comprises of elected representatives from all parts of United Kingdom that are making laws for England over which we the citizens of this country have no control, while the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs have no accountability to anyone for the decisions they make about England alone because they do not apply to their own electorates at home and have no effect upon their popularity with the voters that elect them to Westminster.

The British unwritten constitution resembles something from Alice in Wonderland fully replete with grandiose theatricals, but with no real substance and set against the now imminent prospect of Scottish Independence (or at the very least devolution-max) it is increasingly meaningless and has sadly descended further into the realms of the absurd.

So here are the fundamentals of English nationalism, a concept many right-thinking people shrink away from because of the risk that it might sound a bit fascistic. No such qualms automatically attach to Celtic nationalisms you will note, but when uttered by English nationalists suddenly the terms become suspect?... So, I think we have to be clear about a few things.

First is that English nationalism, if it is to represent the spirit of the nation cannot be anything other than multicultural. All of England's history demands that and it is indelibly inscribed upon the very bedrock of the people as reflected in the origins and the evolution of the English language. It is and must be a nationalism that recognises it co-exists with many other nationalisms and is not afraid to embrace ethnic and cultural diversity in a spirit of mutual respect and tolerance. Its the English way.

Xenophobia is not only unpatriotic but profoundly ahistorical, as the 20th century demonstrated in England and indeed across all of Britain, fascism has been rightly regarded as a rather continental excess of sentimental irrationality.... or if not - just downright evil.

Here is a link to a 2012 pamphlet on English political self-determination called The Dog That Finally Barked; England as an Emerging Political Community a discussion paper published by the Institute for Public Policy Research.

http://www.ippr.org/images/media/files/publication/2012/02/dog-that-finally-barked_englishness_Jan2012_8542.pdf 

England was the First and is Now the Last Colony of the British Empire

The most pressing political issue in England today is the question of Home Rule. It is clear from the experience of the Scots that we will never get anywhere until England has its own parliament which in my view, must be located just about anywhere other than in London. England is very strongly regional, and its regions must be represented fairly in the English parliament which is impossible unless it establishes a seat far away from Westminster and all the trappings of the failed British state.

The English comprise of everyone who lives in England irrespective of cultural or ethnic background and whose interests are bound up with future of the country in Europe and in the world. Our closest political allies are the Scots, Welsh and Irish separatists, it is yet another irony that we are perhaps now more united in our desire to achieve local autonomy than we were as constituents of this outdated imperial throw-back that is the UK today.

The constitutional form of an independent England I would prefer is a republic with greatly devolved powers to the localities, but whatever form  a reinvented England takes, it will have its own interests within the wider European community and on a regional basis so that a direct link between let's say the English West Midlands and the Spanish region of Catalonia would be possible without any direct reference to, or involvement of either Spain or the United Kingdom.

A Europe of confederated regions, or to use EU-speak full blown subsidiarity and devolution of decision making to the most appropriate level, a Europe of the regions of which England will one day have a place. I suggest that this is the model for English nationalism, which is indistinguishable from English regionalism which gives us Geordies, Scousers, Brummies’ and a whole host of other local allegiances, identities and rivalries (especially in sport).

There is a new national agenda for England which has nothing directly to do with Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland nor anywhere else for that matter, whether an independent England would apply to join the British Commonwealth would be a matter for debate and discussion. Of course, it is quite possible that the secession of England from the Union would cause the implosion of the Commonwealth and the fizzling out of any last vestiges of a long-gone empire anyway.

The people of England cannot continue to have no meaningful political voice within Britain and Europe, there is a cultural revolution gaining impetus in this country that has been forced to stop ignoring its own history and culture and to seriously question who are the English and what is England all about?

First Blogged On 9 March 2014