Britannist

Britannist

Brief edited extract from the Scotland on Sunday article on the link in the first posting to this thread:

"Anti-English bigotry in Scotland is on a par with sectarianism and should not be tolerated as part of a "healthy society," according to the leader of the Kirk. The Rt Rev Sheilagh Kesting warns that anti-English attitudes are stoking growing anti-Scottish resentment south of the Border. Kesting revealed she experienced anti-English sentiment during her childhood in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. She said: "I grew up in the north-west, in a part of Scotland where English people tended to settle and there was an antipathy towards them. They weren't altogether welcomed."

Britannist

Andrew Constantine

Britannist

Interesting article and thank you for sharing it.

But note the almost complete absence of the word "British". The article is about Scots, and English and English who live in Scotland (who are often pro-Scotland's independence).

So I put a - still somewhat hypothetical - question to you: when all who live in Scotland, Wales and NI call themselves Scottish, Welsh or Irish etc - would you not agree that it's time you and others stop calling yourself British?

It seems to me that "British" is now just another name for English...and I prefer the original English word!

Now Britannist, I admire your way with words and you can defend an entrenched and (in my view) wrong position very well, but be candid on this one please!

Kind regards, Andrew

__________________
Andrew Constantine says: The EU is a French-German racket and is incompatible with democracy. An independent England will quit the EU forthwith.

Free England Party - Independence for England
http://www.freeengland.com

Signatory to The English Claim of Right
http://englishclaimofright.com

cassie

When the word 'nation' is defined as being (for example) "a large group of people sharing the same culture, language or history and inhabiting a particular territory" how can being British citizenship be regarded being nationality?

Leaving aside all the Mohamed-come-latelys and Lech Wałęsas who speak no English and have their own cultural practices, 'Britishness' is only being taught in England's schools, whilst both Scotland and Wales claim to have their own separate identities and cultures. If Britishness needs to be taught in England, surely it needs also to be taught in Scotland and Wales ~ perhaps even more so?

Scotland has its own legal system and both Scotch and Scottish Gaelic are being promoted solely in Scotland. Indeed, there are a number of initiatives which will have the effect of diminishing what is shared in Britain despite Broon's claims to the contrary.

So many things are described as 'British' when the largest component by far is English, thus depriving England and the English the recognition they are due. The so called British Army is a case in point! Notice how all those Servicemen being welcomed home in recent weeks in Scotland are invariably greeted with a profusion of Scottish flags with nary a Union Jack to be seen whilst, in marked contrast, Service personnel being being welcomed in England are greeted with Union Jacks with hardly a single English flag in evidence!

I observe that gobby Murray is playing in his latest French tennis tournament (in Marseilles?) decked out in Scottish symbols ~ nothing British to be seen there then!

The English have been and are being very much short changed; the cumulative effect is very insulting!


_______________________

Britannist

Thank you for your kind comments Andrew and for your response to the article I linked through to in the first posting to this thread.

Just for the benefit of new readers I would point out that we share the objective of ending the status quo whereby England is held down deliberately by the anti-English UK Labour regime in power and denied her own Parliament and the right to self-determination. You believe that the UK is finished (or should be formally dissolved) - I support maintenance of the Union of the UK as long as England gets equality within it with other parts of the UK (i.e. the same devolved powers for England which Scotland has had since 1999). but we both agree that the disgraceful status quo (where English people get less UK public money per head of population than each Scot in Scotland does and where Scottish constituency MPs are voting in the Commons on English matters with English constituency MPs not being allowed to do the same back) must end.

Regarding your question (quoted above), Andrew, about Britishness.

You want me to be candid: I have to admit that the overwhelming majority of Scottish people in Scotland now appear to regard themselves as Scottish first and British second (with little reference from many of them to Britishness at all). I first noticed this apparent trend in the late 1970's when Scotland did well in the World (football) Cup competition and the football stadium where the Scottish team was playing was full of blue and white Scottish (Saltire) flags with not a Union Jack (UK Flag) to be seen anywhere. When the English football team played in the late 1970's most of the flags waved by England supporters were UK Union Jacks.

As you know, Andrew, the fact that the majority of Scottish people in Scotland use the term British infrequently (or not at all) - is backed up by opinion poll research. Only a minority of Scottish people in Scotland seem to be calling themselves British at all either when they are in the UK or when they are abroad. However - I haven't come across one Scot (apart from members of the europhile anti-UK Scottish so-called 'National' Party who has said s/he wants to give up his/her British Passport. I would suggest that in a referendum in Scotland on Scotland's future in the UK a big majority of those who do not use the term British to describe themselves would still vote to remain a full part of the British nation state and to keep their UK passports.

I would add that I think the word British is used frequently in Wales and Northern Ireland (except by the minority of anti-UK separatists).

In England I have noticed increasing numbers of people calling themselves English and not British - a trend which possibly started when Scotland got devolution nine years ago. America's Time Magazine (a few years ago) did a front cover about the "English Tribe" - the feature inside the publication showed the crowd supporting England at the World Cup final in 1966 - a mass of Union Jacks. Next to that picture was one of a more recent football match (in the early part of this decade) in which England was playing - the crowd were waving mostly England St. George flags and not UK Union Jacks.

My own approach to this is - I describe myself as English at home and abroad. My country is England but my nation is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I have always addressed my letters sent abroad "from England/UK". I refuse to use the term "Britain" myself for several reasons: 1. it does not include the "Great" prefix - we are "Great" and the prefix "Great" should be used if the word "Britain" is used 2. if abroad some people might confuse the word "Britain" with Brittany in France. 3. "Britain" is a word which does not make clear if Northern Ireland is a part of it or not whereas as the more Royalist "United Kingdom" does, of course 4. usage of the name UK puts us next to the USA in those international institutions (such as the United Nations) where seating is determined on alphabetic order - if we use "Britain" we end up sitting next to lesser important nations.

It seems to me that the less the Scottish in Scotland are using the word "British" the less the people of England are using it. I was with a UKIP friend driving through a village last year (during an international football competition in which England was playing) and all the flags flying in people's gardens -except one - were English. My UKIP friend (a member of the party) - who I had thought was a staunch UK Unionist - said when I mentioned that a Union Jack was flying in front of one house "That's a bit out of date - it is useless now".

The UK Union Flag is a design classic - a world famous flag which I am sorry to see fall into lesser use. But I read that most flag shops in Scotland aren't stocking or selling any of them now.

I remain in support of the Union of the UK if England can get equality within it (with the other parts of the UK) but awareness of English identity in England is growing after decades of suppression of it - and I welcome this resurgence in Englishness as all English patriots will. If the people of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland can celebrate their history, culture and identity so can we English. And we will - more and more.

Prime Minister Brown's absurd attempt to promote Britishness in England only is a desperate rearguard action by a man in an anti-English party (Labour) which naively and arrogantly failed to see in the middle of the last decade when it was formulating its policy of setting up a rival Parliament to Westminster in Edinburgh that devolution to Scotland and Wales in 1999 would have a knock-on effect in England by reviving English identity and pushing 'the English question' (equality for England within the UK) into the mainstream.

Now the English genie is out of the bottle this man Brown and his party are not going to get it back into the bottle again. The people of England can see that we no longer live in a unitary UK and that Britishness is not being enthusiastically supported by all in the different parts of the British nation.

Due to Labour's botched devolution the unity of the Union of the UK has been damaged. The single nation state UK I felt we should have kept has been weakened and diluted by Labour and the europhile Liberal 'Democrats' - a bunch of political amateurs who thought they could get away with ignoring the huge English part of the British nation when they started to mess around with the constitutional setup of the UK a decade ago.

If England is not given equality with the other parts of the UK then resentment about anti-English Labour's unfair devolution will rise to the point where the majority of voters in England will back ending the Union of the UK altogether - according to one opinion poll about 31% of electors in England (about 11 million people) already want England out of the UK.

That figure will rise substantially if Labour do not drop their anti-English policy rapidly.

Britannist

I consider myself a British subject - we are a Monarchy after all. Although someone explained to me on this forum a couple of months or so ago that some legislation in the 1980's turned us into British 'citizens'. And then, of course, the EEC/EU made us EU 'citizens'.

Britannist

Yes, I agree with you again Cassie: Brown is pushing Britishness in England only. He dare not do it in Scotland where he has his constituency for it might lead to the Scottish 'National' Party (in second place to Labour in many Scottish seats) might try to use it against him to cut into the Labour vote in his constituency.

Brown thinks that by promoting Britishness in England it will deflect attention away from the fact that he is a Scottish constituency MP who not only votes on specifically English matters before the House of Commons but also proposes English legislation - even though he can do neither as regards Scottish domestic matters (which are, of course, dealt with by the rival Parliament to Edinburgh he and his Labour crowd set up in 1999).

Labour is desperate to avoid the establishment of an English Parliament for it knows that it would struggle to get anything close to a majority in it under whichever electoral system were used to vote in its members.

cassie

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

When I use the term 'British citizen', please feel free to interpret that as meaning and being the equivalent of 'British subject'!





___________________

Smidgey

Nationalism, British, English, Scottish, whatever, is always a bad ideology.

I don't want to be part of the collective by virtue of where I was born. Call me what you want, but I am me - not a location.

__________________
How vain is man, who boasts in fight the valour of gigantic might!

-Georg Friedrich Händel