Talk of ‘Englishness’ as a cultural identity annoys me, particularly when it’s used to justify strengthening ‘England’ as an administrative region, and even more particularly when it’s used to lobby for an English parliament. I’ve finally managed to put my finger on why.
Many bits of the administrative region called England – London, Cornwall, Yorkshire, Newcastle-and-surroundings, Manchester-and-surroundings, Scouseland-and-surroundings and Cumbria, for starters – all have regional identities that are far stronger than any ‘English’ identity.
Now, there *is* a common identity shared by people in rural areas in the southeastern, southcentral and midlandish bits of the administrative region of England. This is the one focused on killing foxes, hating the French, resenting clever people, drinking real ale, attending village fetes, ogling old maids on bicycles, etc.
This generally gets classed as ‘Englishness’, because it doesn’t have a real name – but it isn’t. There are far more people in the administrative region called England who loathe this concept of ‘Englishness’ than there are people who follow it. As a result, an English Parliament would be a pointless waste of time and money. It wouldn’t help the rural-southerners who want it, because they’re in a small-ish minority. And none of the other groups in it have any more in common with each other than they do with the Scots or the Welsh.
Instead, let’s set up proper regional parliaments, with serious powers on the level of the Scottish Executive. Let’s have a Cornish one, a Merseyside one, a Greater Manchester one, a Lancashire-and-Cumberland one and a Yorkshire one. Let’s give the Welsh a proper parliament rather than a rubber-stamping body. Let’s put the London Assembly properly in charge of Greater London. And let the industrial Midlands do whatever they like, too.
The Little Ing-er-lund-ers could have a Rural Southern Not London parliament of their own, too. For all I care, they can use it to bring back birching for anyone who measures things in centimetres, while abolishing public transport and speed cameras, and legalising hunting the French with hounds. As long as the fuckers don’t have any say in what happens in the administrative region called England’s civilised bits…
This is the one focused on killing foxes, hating the French, resenting clever people, drinking real ale, attending village fetes, ogling old maids on bicycles, etc.
Drinking real ale is a splendid activity. I agree the rest of the above are dreadful, though.
People seem "English" enough durning sporting competitions like the World Cup.
If anything, it is the regional identities that are over-emphasised. When people were asked to vote for regional assemblies, they weren’t interested.
Re real ale: I agree, but not to the exclusion of Leffe, Duvel, Pilsner and Paulaner.
Re sport: yes, but we also have exactly the same sentiments towards British athletes in other sports, implying that the distinct ‘English’ identity doesn’t really exist. In some ways, I wish we had British footy and rugby teams: both because we’d win more often, and because it’d bolster our actual country’s actual cohesiveness.
Re regional assemblies: I’m pretty sure that’s because they a) were bollocks talking shops with no power and b) didn’t represent the regional identities that people actually have.
But the regional identities themselves are woolly and ambiguous, so they never will be easy to represent.
On this "regional assembly" idea (in generality, not the specific suggestion Prescott had): what would you expect their powers to be? Why would they be better/different than councils? Would they set differential taxes? Manage health-care, schools etc. in a truly autonomous way?
The problem I see here is that if, say, we have different levels of VAT, then you’d end up with the absurd situation of many people being able to drive down to road and buy things more cheaply. It’s what leads to complaints about "postcode lotteries". To me, Britain is too homogeneous in population density to avoid causing lots of people to believe that "the grass is greener a few miles away" (probably with some justification).
If, then, public support would basically not allow the assemblies to have much power, then why bother to have them at all: councils have a small amount of power and are useful beaucracies for organising local services already.
I used to think the same thing about Englishness until I spent thirteen years living in other countries and realised that there is something to it after all. Difficult to put one’s finger on, though.
As for these regional parliaments, isn’t it a bit expensive to create new local governmental bodies when we could just give the existing ones greater powers? I reckon we’d see a lot of progress if we just cut off all transfer of funds from central to local government, so that there were a genuine link between the council tax people pay and what they get in return.
Terrible idea. Local government is always much more venial and incompetent than central government. Look at the complete shower we have ruling over us now; where the hell are we meant to get another thousand competent adminstrators from?
> Local government is always much more venial and incompetent than central government.
Very true. I reckon one of the reasons for that is that there’s no real power in local government, so politicians just view it as a step up to national government, so they either (a) are good at their jobs and move to Westminster or (b) are shite and stay where they are. Give much greater powers to lcoal government and you’d start to see that change. It already happened, to some extent, with the London Mayoralty.
Once again I agrre with S2. What on Earth has happened to me?
I am of the opinion that empowered local government is the way to a more democratic society – in that the arguments and agendas of people will have a greater impact on government than allowed the large scale democracy which necessarily (as a consequence of the number of people in the ‘demos’) involves, ‘here are the arguments and agendas, you can choose from this list’.
I take dsquared’s point – local government is filled with incompetents. But we can’t change this unless we hand more power to local government, encouraging people to really care who their representatives are. We’d also need to take the power away from the party machines that have produced these incompetents, so I’d bring in the single transferrable vote (NOT PR) to allow, say, even loyal Labour people to vote for the competent independent rather than the arse-kissing official candidate, without a fear that a split-vote will let in, say, the Tories. And vice-versa.
John – good to see Cumbria identified as something distinct as opposed to blandly English (I suspect that the ‘England their England’ you identify is as much an abstracted territory of class & mindset as a set of geographical boundaries). Desirable as it is I don’t see any of this happening without Westminster first being forced to reverse the flow of power into the centre & giving a putative regional assembly some genuine power. Genuine authority will only come from competent non-venal representation & depends on this happening first.
So you are having trouble with defining Englishness. Anybody care to give me a definition of Welshness (little Walesunders) or Scottish (little Scotlunders) or even French (little Frenchers)? That might help to come up with a definition of Englishness!
How about 2 assemblies in Wales? North Wales Assembly and a South Wales Assembly to cope with different languages (English and Welsh), and other cultural differences.
There is an English nation.
There are English people.
There is an English identity.
The people who try and argue otherwise are usually:
1. Scottish
2. Welsh
3. In favour of regionalisation
England has been screwed over by devolution. I can walk around the street I live on and every few houses I will see a Cross of St George in a window or on a car. To say that there is no English identity is just plain wrong and shows an ignorance of the whole issue.
I agree. I think it’s disgusting that people aren’t allowed to display the George Cross. It’s political correctness gone mad.
"I can walk around the street I live on and every few houses I will see a Cross of St George"
A fiver says you live in a southern non-London rural/suburban town, which was the whole point of my article. That may be *your* identity. It’s not an *English* identity, since it doesn’t apply across most of the administrative region known as England.
St George’s Day was celebrated right through out England,
and is set to grow year on year. If you want to define Englishness let’s start with what we don’t do. We don’t burn peoples houses down like the Welsh, We don’t hold sectarian marches like the Scots and Northern Irish and we don’t blow people up like the Irish.
I am still waiting for the CRE to accuse the parliaments of Scotland and Wales of institutional racism. There are no asians in their politics, and no English people either.
This government is promoting Blod and Boden nationalism in those two countries and England has to pay for it.
The sooner we off load Scotland and Wales the better.
John,
Millions of football fans disagree with you on this one.
Don’t know about the Welsh, but the Scots certainly don’t argue that there’s no such thing as Englishness. Quite the opposite. There are loads of English in Scotland, which makes the difference between Englishness and Scottishness plain and obvious to all.
The people who argue that there’s no such thing as Englishness are usually bloody Londoners, who are unrepresentative of the country as a whole, and who tend to think that that’s a reason for discounting England, rather than for discounting London.
> I am still waiting for the CRE to accuse the parliaments of Scotland and Wales of institutional racism. There are no asians in their politics
Don’t know about the Parliament, but a large faction of the Glasgow Labour Party certainly needs to be looked at.
Pedantic point re sports: Great Britain (Rugby League), British and Irish Lions (Rugby Union).
Of course there are arguments about the selection policy in these teams, so it doesn’t prove much.
I just been to Yorkshire for a few days. Lovely part of England. There were lots of English flags flying.
We must be differently sensitive to these flags. You see them everywhere up here and I see them as exceptional.
JOHN B
What nationality are you? Are you a champagne socialist and a new labour fanatik? Come on what are you JOHN B?
I assume you’re a jock of the "socialist" variety! You are definitely not true English. If it is the latter, your views are irrelevant.
I am reminded by the above post of a rugby dinner I went to many years ago in the Valleys, where ale had been consumed and an expat Englishman stood up to address us all. I remember his words verbatim:
"Listen you Welsh cunts. You think you live in God’s own fucking country, but you don’t. England is God’s own country and I’m proud to English. I was born English, I will die English and wherever I live, even in Wales, I will always be English".
I remember his words verbatim because of the little voice that drifted round the table in the embarrassed silence which followed:
"Not much bloody ambition, has he?"
Jimmy: I’m a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I was born and grew up in various, southern bits of the administrative region known as England (all of which would be in Torystan), although I’ve now found civilisation.
I dislike New Labour, like champagne, and share some but not all of the socialist movement’s goals.
John,
Your insistence that England is merely an administrative region is silly. It’s what is known as a "nation". You must have heard of them, surely. Pointing out that Swabes are extremely different to Berliners doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as Germanness, or possibly Germanity, or that Germany is a mere administrative region.
Jimmy Beggar,
You are a fucking idiot who can’t use the word "latter" properly. I lived in Scotland for eleven years, and never once met a Scot who would claim that there’s no such thing as Englishness. If they denied that, how would they know who to hate? The only people who ever deny Englishness are the English, particularly bloody Londoners.
Actually, the only bad thing about the Scots is the way they carry a giant chip on their collective shoulder about the English. It’s a character fault amongst otherwise great people. It’s very sad to see that some of the English have started to adopt this ridiculous paranoia.
It is irrelevant what you think. There will be an English parliament AGAIN, then we’ll become independent of you. Simple as that. All the plastic scum can go live in fucking bonny "scot"land for all I care just as long as they’re no where near England.
You’re so amateur. How old are you? You talk shite and think because you waffle that people are conned by it. Ha! ha! Dream on. That is why there are now political parties representing ENGLAND and ENGLAND’S interests. I have to thank you because without shit like you about we probably wouldnt have awoken. So yeah thanks for being such purile, lying, deceitful, COMMIE WANNABEE, pinko sacks of shit. Well done!
Typical yellow belly scum. WHAT’S YOUR NATIONALITY? Oh youre too gutless to say. Oh well, typical wimp ah?
I couldnt give a fuck that you lived in "scot"land. So fucking what you cunt? You should have fucking stayed there.
LIKE I SAID, YOUR VIEWS DONT COUNT.
ENGERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRLAND FOREVER SHITHEADS.
Btw alex salmond has sold out "scot"land ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! The "scottish nationalist" sitting at westminster ENGERLAND’S PARLIAMENT AHA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!
Get that up yer bastards
That is why there are now political parties representing ENGLAND and ENGLAND’S interests.
Name one that isn’t just taking the piss.
I am just a septic, after all, so maybe I can be forgiven for not understanding the idea of English independence from Scotland. Would that be like the continental US throwing off the yoke of Alaskan and Hawaiian tyranny? Like dumping Puerto Rican rum, or bootleg DVDs from the Philippines, into Boston Harbor?
ENGERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRLAND FOREVER
I wouldn’t say forever. Perhaps for the rest of your lifetime, but I hold out hope for a cure in the long term.
I’m not simply playing dumb to mock Jimmy. Is this the sort of thing he means by "There will be an English parliament AGAIN, then we’ll become independent of you"?
First time I’ve been called a commie, or even a COMMIE. Blimey.
Oh be quiet. If you dont show your hand then people cant know what you are. They can only guess.
Of course I realise that being nice and sending abusive e-mails is going to get NO results. The scumbags just laugh and squirm and go off on another path.
I will ask you a question? What do YOU think is going to happen when people have nothing left to steal? New labour and their masters look like they’re going to make sure that happens. Seriously, do you think peoople are just going to wear that? I don’t! New labour or should I say the EU/nwo order are taxing the elderly’s pensions. How do you think that makes people feel?
I wouldn’t say forever. Perhaps for the rest of your lifetime, but I hold out hope for a cure in the long term.
The nano-second that happens is the nano-second the nitty gritty starts!!!
> If you dont show your hand then people cant know what you are.
When people do show their hand, but you don’t bother looking at it, you just make yourself look stupid.
Stop talking like a child. I asked John B what nationality he was; you never answered. Actually, I have asked several questions. Nobody has answered them.
"Listen you Welsh cunts. You think you live in God’s own fucking country, but you don’t. England is God’s own country and I’m proud to English. I was born English, I will die English and wherever I live, even in Wales, I will always be English".
Blah blah blah Always the same shite from youse carpet bagger beggars. I wonder what it feels like being born parasites!
I said above that I was a citizen of the UK and that I was born and grew up in England.
(I have some friends who can teach remedial English comprehension – drop me an email if you’re interested…)
> Stop talking like a child.
This from a man who adds conviction to his writing by holding down keys and using caps lock.
> I asked John B what nationality he was; you never answered.
I asked my wife what she wanted for dinner earlier. You never answered.
I asked John B what nationality he was; you never answered.
I was being deliberately sarcastic. I meant
you all have the same mentality. I do know what past and present tense are. Of course you dont seem to know that stalinism IS also the past rofl
What do you think of Blair standing up and saying "we" wont let them beat us??? "we" Tony? So when is YOUR kid going to join up and fight then you CUNT?
I’ve just come across this post again, I forgot about it. To clarify, no I don’t live in the South. I live in Telford, Shropshire – supposedly part of the West Midlands region but in reality nothing to do with the Midlands.
Bugger. While Shropshire fits into my stereotype of Southern Rural/Smalltown England, Telford clearly isn’t geographically in the South. Let me know the charity of your choice and I’ll bung them a fiver.
"Let me know the charity of your choice and I’ll bung them a fiver"
Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID).