What England Means To Me by W.Gruff

Englander 1 · 17-12-2007, 09:35 PM

December 16, 2007
William Gruff | What England means to me

To start as I mean to go on I can do no better than to state unequivocally that I am an Englishman and England is my homeland because it is the homeland of the English; a homeland that is now all too obviously under attack. In an age in which all sorts of peoples and ‘minorities’ are aggressively, even violently, asserting their ‘inalienable’ rights to a homeland it is ironic that the English are being systematically stripped of theirs.

It is often said that ‘Britain’ has a long history of welcoming migrants but this is untrue, and demonstrably so. Until the end of the Second World War ‘Britain’ never suffered the levels of migration that have typified the immigration to England of the last sixty years. Before the act of union England occasionally received (what by modern standards were relatively small) groups of refugees, not migrants. Genuine migration was generally limited to individuals, sometimes accompanied by their families. Those who came en masse were usually fleeing some tyranny or another. England offered tolerance and safety and that is why they came but English culture ensured that the recently arrived were eventually assimilated into the mainstream of English society, and English law did not act to inhibit the process with a mass of destructively authoritarian and entirely counter-productive legislation intended only to stifle the complaints of the indigenous population. Following union, migration to Britain generally conformed to the same pattern though immigrants rarely settled elsewhere than England. The Irish migrations cannot reasonably be considered as immigration since Ireland, even before union in 1801, was a possession of the British crown (‘by the Grace of God, King of England, Ireland and France‘). The Irish, my mother‘s father amongst them, were simply subjects moving within a United Kingdom of which they were very much a part, even if unwilling. They were not immigrants, a fact which is too often gainsaid. If the largest group of migrants used as justification for large scale immigration were not actually immigrants what other large group that arrived in the United Kingdom before the Empire Windrush sailed on its portentous tide can be described as immigrants? Regardless of their numbers, the Jews who fled the pogroms in eastern Europe were refugees, not migrants.

The truth is that mass migration is a very recent phenomenon in Britain, from which England has suffered disproportionately, and the result is that England is now far more ethnically fragmented than the little nations of the union. Indeed, so fragmented is England that it has been claimed that there is effectively now no England, the peoples of what was England, the argument runs, are too ethnically ‘diverse‘, too disparate, for anything as ‘narrow’ as Englishness to embrace them, and Englishness far too restrictive for them to embrace. There is now, we are told, only a ‘Britain of the nations and regions’ and only a nebulous Britishness as the less than certain catalyst for an equally nebulous British civic nationalism. Unfortunately for those unionists peddling such pernicious Anglophobic nonsense in a risible attempt to prop up a union that is now perilously close to its inevitable collapse, three considerations militate against the concept of Britishness.

The first is that one size most certainly does not fit all, which consideration was explicitly the motivating force behind the calls for devolution, which has proved, apropos of Britishness, that nothing that can, like Humpty Dumpty’s words, mean precisely what anyone wants it to mean (nothing more and nothing less), for no longer than as long as they want it to mean that, can possibly mean anything meaningful to anyone. Britishness is now meaningless.

The second is that a civic nationalism that is not informed by ethnic nationalism is superficial at best. It works well enough while things are going well only because nothing has gone wrong but when civilisation decays, as from time to time it does, ethnic considerations will to the fore, as from time to time they do, often in most uncivilised ways. Ultimately, civic nationalism is about nothing more than civic responsibility, which grows from a sense of shared interests (i.e. returns on civic investment), whether or not those sharing interests share values. Shared values ensure that those who do not share as much as they would in the returns on civic investment continue to feel that their disproportionate contribution and sacrifice are worthwhile. The notion that one can co-exist with others with whom one has no shared values when the returns on civic investment are so obviously disproportionate is predicated entirely on the entirely baseless notion that civic nationalism is nothing less than overarching and ignores any consideration of ethnic nationalism as anything more than destructive.

The third is that devolution has ensured that Britain is now well past its sell-by date and when Britain goes the people of England, all of them, no matter whence they came, must face the fact that England is, de facto, a nation state again and while it is the homeland of the English, England is now home to many others who are not English; who live amongst us as of British right; who do not wish to be English and are under no obligation to be so, and who may positively, even murderously, dislike us.

Britain has changed England in ways that have not affected or afflicted the little nations of the union, and though some of the damage can be repaired, generally there is no going back. England is now home to people who are not English and do not want nor wish to be. The challenge for the English is: How do the English incorporate those in England for whom even civic nationalism has little appeal into an all encompassing ethnic nationalism. How do we make our country one in which England means as much to those who are not English as it does to me?

The answer is, of course, that we don’t. We make it absolutely clear, by our words and our deeds, that we hold England so dear that we will defend what our forefathers defended so that we may hand on to our children and their children what was handed on to us. When others can see that England is so precious, they will value it too.

William Gruff is the pen name of the blogger behind Pox Anglorum

Englishman · 29-12-2007, 09:28 PM

Civic nationalism is no way forward for England at all.

Just look what New Labour's British civic identity has done to Britian...
It is now a mish mash of no identity and is a very dangerous place.

The EDP only offer the same civic experiment as New Labour has given Britian, which to me has already ended in murder, cultural and ethnic cleansing of the English mainly.

C_steam · 30-12-2007, 10:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Englander 1

William Gruff is the pen name of the blogger behind Pox Anglorum

is his middle name 'goat'?

crac · 05-01-2008, 12:25 PM

I enjoyed all that twaddle you wrote, thanks Will.
If people are confused about what is English it's because they havn't tried to be clear about it !!
You can be if you want to, read about our history, what happened and compare that with other places and what happened there.
It's a simple matter we the English do things this way because thats what we want and others do things differently because thats what they want.
But we'll have to get rid of bad disrespectfull to Englishness, laws and governing authorities thats for sure and never again allow any government from anyone who isn't prepared to treat governing England as a duty to do it the right way for England and not any other way.
Sure lets be generous lets make it a law to give 10% of what ever we produce to directly benefit others in sensible practical ways including allowing immigration, but thats it, it's generosity and English Christian compassion and care and we do it because we want to because it supports our values to be this way and for no other reasons or theories like multi culture or some other ********.
Thats what i think???

crac · 07-01-2008, 01:16 AM

I'd like to see laws that would deter insulting our national cultural heritage or bringing it into disrepute, as most other countries sensibly have.

But whether there are or not i think that all decent English people have a resposibility and a right to hold on to and protect their heritage in non violent ways. Proper civilised ways, which is what this country is all about.

crac · 07-01-2008, 12:49 PM

I don't mean some kind of draconian punishments for insignificant things like people having different views, but if it's a deliberate attempt to defile national symbols or a public rubbishing by high profile figures or even a deliberate and highly visible piece of nastyness against the essential English values or character and it's done by a guest in this country or an indigenous inhabitant then it should be countered and considered unacceptable.

It brings up the whole area of censorship of course but reasonable people will agree that some kind of reasonable line has to be drawn.

Yes we English have a tremendous sense of humour and we like to laugh but..

Westcountryman · 07-01-2008, 09:38 PM

What the hell, laws against 'defiling' national symbols and heritage? 'Nastiness' against 'essential English values'? Is that a joke? That's not the English way!

Unless your vision for England is this?

What the hell happened to freedom loving, modest English people? Where did all these nutters come from?

cassie · 07-01-2008, 11:56 PM

One of the most important things that English folk and their allies can do is to persistently attack at every opportunity the phrase 'nations and regions' when used in conjunction with 'Britain' until it becomes utterly discredited! We can reinforce this by asking how many regions there are in Scotland and Wales.

We must reach a position in which Britain is regarded as comprising nations! Any questions of regions in Britain must be dealt with separately. We must make it clear beyond doubt that references to (for example) 'the nations and regions of Britain' are offensive to most English people.

________________________________

cassie · 08-01-2008, 12:50 AM

Some of the very many examples of the notion of 'nations and regions' being inculcated by both being persistently and comprehensively juxtaposed together:

Nations and Regions - Skillset

BBC News | Britain's nations and regions

The Nations and Regions Research Programme This one is a University of Edinburgh website! Surprise, surprise!

UCL - Department of Political Science - The Constitution Unit [/b] This is the UCL website for the Government's propaganda unit operated by New (Scottish) Labour's mouthpiece Robert Hazell posing as an impartial, objective commentator.

Department for Culture Media and Sport - b) uk-wide games

UNA-UK Nations, regions and branches: United Nations Association- UK Note the reference to solely three nations with red blobs!

BBC - Press Office - Jane Root Television from the Nations and Regions Conference

Michael Grade speech to Ofcom Nations and Regions Conference

Get the picture?

Englander 1 · 08-01-2008, 12:55 AM

Well pointed out that man!

17-12-2007, 09:35 PM	#1 (permalink)
Englander 1 Member Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: WARWICKSHIRE Posts: 390 Party: English Democrats	What England Means To Me by W.Gruff December 16, 2007 William Gruff \| What England means to me To start as I mean to go on I can do no better than to state unequivocally that I am an Englishman and England is my homeland because it is the homeland of the English; a homeland that is now all too obviously under attack. In an age in which all sorts of peoples and ‘minorities’ are aggressively, even violently, asserting their ‘inalienable’ rights to a homeland it is ironic that the English are being systematically stripped of theirs. It is often said that ‘Britain’ has a long history of welcoming migrants but this is untrue, and demonstrably so. Until the end of the Second World War ‘Britain’ never suffered the levels of migration that have typified the immigration to England of the last sixty years. Before the act of union England occasionally received (what by modern standards were relatively small) groups of refugees, not migrants. Genuine migration was generally limited to individuals, sometimes accompanied by their families. Those who came en masse were usually fleeing some tyranny or another. England offered tolerance and safety and that is why they came but English culture ensured that the recently arrived were eventually assimilated into the mainstream of English society, and English law did not act to inhibit the process with a mass of destructively authoritarian and entirely counter-productive legislation intended only to stifle the complaints of the indigenous population. Following union, migration to Britain generally conformed to the same pattern though immigrants rarely settled elsewhere than England. The Irish migrations cannot reasonably be considered as immigration since Ireland, even before union in 1801, was a possession of the British crown (‘by the Grace of God, King of England, Ireland and France‘). The Irish, my mother‘s father amongst them, were simply subjects moving within a United Kingdom of which they were very much a part, even if unwilling. They were not immigrants, a fact which is too often gainsaid. If the largest group of migrants used as justification for large scale immigration were not actually immigrants what other large group that arrived in the United Kingdom before the Empire Windrush sailed on its portentous tide can be described as immigrants? Regardless of their numbers, the Jews who fled the pogroms in eastern Europe were refugees, not migrants. The truth is that mass migration is a very recent phenomenon in Britain, from which England has suffered disproportionately, and the result is that England is now far more ethnically fragmented than the little nations of the union. Indeed, so fragmented is England that it has been claimed that there is effectively now no England, the peoples of what was England, the argument runs, are too ethnically ‘diverse‘, too disparate, for anything as ‘narrow’ as Englishness to embrace them, and Englishness far too restrictive for them to embrace. There is now, we are told, only a ‘Britain of the nations and regions’ and only a nebulous Britishness as the less than certain catalyst for an equally nebulous British civic nationalism. Unfortunately for those unionists peddling such pernicious Anglophobic nonsense in a risible attempt to prop up a union that is now perilously close to its inevitable collapse, three considerations militate against the concept of Britishness. The first is that one size most certainly does not fit all, which consideration was explicitly the motivating force behind the calls for devolution, which has proved, apropos of Britishness, that nothing that can, like Humpty Dumpty’s words, mean precisely what anyone wants it to mean (nothing more and nothing less), for no longer than as long as they want it to mean that, can possibly mean anything meaningful to anyone. Britishness is now meaningless. The second is that a civic nationalism that is not informed by ethnic nationalism is superficial at best. It works well enough while things are going well only because nothing has gone wrong but when civilisation decays, as from time to time it does, ethnic considerations will to the fore, as from time to time they do, often in most uncivilised ways. Ultimately, civic nationalism is about nothing more than civic responsibility, which grows from a sense of shared interests (i.e. returns on civic investment), whether or not those sharing interests share values. Shared values ensure that those who do not share as much as they would in the returns on civic investment continue to feel that their disproportionate contribution and sacrifice are worthwhile. The notion that one can co-exist with others with whom one has no shared values when the returns on civic investment are so obviously disproportionate is predicated entirely on the entirely baseless notion that civic nationalism is nothing less than overarching and ignores any consideration of ethnic nationalism as anything more than destructive. The third is that devolution has ensured that Britain is now well past its sell-by date and when Britain goes the people of England, all of them, no matter whence they came, must face the fact that England is, de facto, a nation state again and while it is the homeland of the English, England is now home to many others who are not English; who live amongst us as of British right; who do not wish to be English and are under no obligation to be so, and who may positively, even murderously, dislike us. Britain has changed England in ways that have not affected or afflicted the little nations of the union, and though some of the damage can be repaired, generally there is no going back. England is now home to people who are not English and do not want nor wish to be. The challenge for the English is: How do the English incorporate those in England for whom even civic nationalism has little appeal into an all encompassing ethnic nationalism. How do we make our country one in which England means as much to those who are not English as it does to me? The answer is, of course, that we don’t. We make it absolutely clear, by our words and our deeds, that we hold England so dear that we will defend what our forefathers defended so that we may hand on to our children and their children what was handed on to us. When others can see that England is so precious, they will value it too. William Gruff is the pen name of the blogger behind Pox Anglorum __________________ "There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is ENGLAND." - Sir Winston Churchill

07-01-2008, 09:38 PM	#7 (permalink)
Westcountryman Uber Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: The Westcountry. Posts: 5,922 Party: None	What the hell, laws against 'defiling' national symbols and heritage? 'Nastiness' against 'essential English values'? Is that a joke? That's not the English way! Unless your vision for England is this? What the hell happened to freedom loving, modest English people? Where did all these nutters come from? __________________ Manus haec inimica tyrannis ense petit placidam sub libertate quietam - "This hand of mine, which is hostile to tyrants, seeks by the sword quiet peace under liberty."

08-01-2008, 12:55 AM	#10 (permalink)
Englander 1 Member Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: WARWICKSHIRE Posts: 390 Party: English Democrats	Well pointed out that man! __________________ "There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is ENGLAND." - Sir Winston Churchill

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29-12-2007, 09:28 PM	#2 (permalink)
Englishman Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 221	Civic nationalism is no way forward for England at all. Just look what New Labour's British civic identity has done to Britian... It is now a mish mash of no identity and is a very dangerous place. The EDP only offer the same civic experiment as New Labour has given Britian, which to me has already ended in murder, cultural and ethnic cleansing of the English mainly.

05-01-2008, 12:25 PM	#4 (permalink)
crac Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 126	I enjoyed all that twaddle you wrote, thanks Will. If people are confused about what is English it's because they havn't tried to be clear about it !! You can be if you want to, read about our history, what happened and compare that with other places and what happened there. It's a simple matter we the English do things this way because thats what we want and others do things differently because thats what they want. But we'll have to get rid of bad disrespectfull to Englishness, laws and governing authorities thats for sure and never again allow any government from anyone who isn't prepared to treat governing England as a duty to do it the right way for England and not any other way. Sure lets be generous lets make it a law to give 10% of what ever we produce to directly benefit others in sensible practical ways including allowing immigration, but thats it, it's generosity and English Christian compassion and care and we do it because we want to because it supports our values to be this way and for no other reasons or theories like multi culture or some other ********. Thats what i think???

07-01-2008, 01:16 AM	#5 (permalink)
crac Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 126	I'd like to see laws that would deter insulting our national cultural heritage or bringing it into disrepute, as most other countries sensibly have. But whether there are or not i think that all decent English people have a resposibility and a right to hold on to and protect their heritage in non violent ways. Proper civilised ways, which is what this country is all about.

07-01-2008, 12:49 PM	#6 (permalink)
crac Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 126	I don't mean some kind of draconian punishments for insignificant things like people having different views, but if it's a deliberate attempt to defile national symbols or a public rubbishing by high profile figures or even a deliberate and highly visible piece of nastyness against the essential English values or character and it's done by a guest in this country or an indigenous inhabitant then it should be countered and considered unacceptable. It brings up the whole area of censorship of course but reasonable people will agree that some kind of reasonable line has to be drawn. Yes we English have a tremendous sense of humour and we like to laugh but..

07-01-2008, 11:56 PM	#8 (permalink)
cassie Uber Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 2,852	One of the most important things that English folk and their allies can do is to persistently attack at every opportunity the phrase 'nations and regions' when used in conjunction with 'Britain' until it becomes utterly discredited! We can reinforce this by asking how many regions there are in Scotland and Wales. We must reach a position in which Britain is regarded as comprising nations! Any questions of regions in Britain must be dealt with separately. We must make it clear beyond doubt that references to (for example) 'the nations and regions of Britain' are offensive to most English people. ________________________________

08-01-2008, 12:50 AM	#9 (permalink)
cassie Uber Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 2,852	Some of the very many examples of the notion of 'nations and regions' being inculcated by both being persistently and comprehensively juxtaposed together: Nations and Regions - Skillset BBC News \| Britain's nations and regions The Nations and Regions Research Programme *This one is a University of Edinburgh website! Surprise, surprise!* UCL - Department of Political Science - The Constitution Unit [/b] *This is the UCL website for the Government's propaganda unit operated by New (Scottish) Labour's mouthpiece Robert Hazell posing as an impartial, objective commentator.* Department for Culture Media and Sport - b) uk-wide games UNA-UK Nations, regions and branches: United Nations Association- UK *Note the reference to solely three nations with red blobs!* BBC - Press Office - Jane Root Television from the Nations and Regions Conference Michael Grade speech to Ofcom Nations and Regions Conference Get the picture?