Many people who aren’t part of any Right Wing Nationalist political group describe themselves as English because they are proud to be so.
Ironically on government forms where you can describe yourself as Welsh, Scots etc. you cant describe yourself as English thanks to the P.C. brigade.
In spite of this many people still do so in official telephone conversations as a ground roots protest and the official at the other end sighs and fills in "British "on the form.
Although English Nationalism is a fringe and far-right movement, Scottish Nationalism (and, come to that, Welsh Nationalism) is neither. As things stand in British politics at the moment, there is a real chance that Scotland might attempt to secede from the UK, and even that they might be successful. Wales might not follow very far behind. As Scotland and Wales tend to elect a much greater proportion of Labour Party candidates, and a correspondingly lower proportion of Conservatives to Parliament than does England, this would lead to a large and long-lasting Conservative majority in the Westminster Parliament (although Scotland and Wales would probably become effectively socialist states). The English supporters of the Labour Party obviously do not welcome this prospect. It seems possible that Jukes, as a Labour supporter, had this possibility in mind, and wished to make a point (even though it would be opaque to an American audience) about the indivisibility of the UK: we are not English, Scottish, Welsh or (Northern) Irish, we are all British.
(I am sure that most British Conservatives are as much or even more horrified by the prospect of the break up of the UK as are English Labour supporters, although for rather different reasons.)
I think you are confusing the English nationalists and the “English Defence League”.
English nationalists are people from all political persuations who basically want English-only votes for issues that affect only England, some also want to readjust the national budget to favour England more, or Scotland/Wales less.
The EDL on the other hand, well, they fly the flag alot, but aren’t really English nationalist in any big way, they are basically a group who loves brawling with Muslims, they say they are only anti-Islamist, or Anti-Sharia, but really, they are extremely anti-Muslim. They aren’t actually racist, but that’s just because brown, white or black skin is equally pleasant to punch for these hooligans.
He is correct in a sense, he was being asked a question about something happening in Britain, and the interviewer used a term which wasn’t correct. It was a news item relevant to the whole nation, not England in particular.
It’s much more of a thing a Scot or a Welshman would bring up because they are not from the country, so its unusual for an Englishman to bring the issue up. But its railing against the generically used term of England to refer to the nation of Britain. Perhaps he sees that the overall nation of Britain is under threat from independence movements and has made the correction. In some ways, this being done more would actually placate the sort who want to break up the nation…
There hasn’t been a nation of England, or indeed Scotland, since 1707 when the countries merged into Britain. I’ve corrected Englishmen on the incorrect terms of ‘English passport’ and ‘Queen of England’, they don’t exist. Due to some historical reasons, the Football (Soccer) teams represent the individual component countries, but I think this is unusual (you don’t see the likes of the Flemish football team, and the Wallonia football team). In Olympic games, its the British team which enters.
Aah, I think this gets to the nub of it. It’s VERY common in the US media to refer to ‘England’ when they are talking about the UK, so presumably he was correcting him for this.
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He is correct in a sense, he was being asked a question about something happening in Britain, and the interviewer used a term which wasn’t correct. It was a news item relevant to the whole nation, not England in particular.
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I got a different impression, listening to it. It seemed to me that the interviewer was leading up to mentioning Shakespeare, who I guess he sees as quintessentially English, hence his use of “England”, although I don’t know why he enunciated it in the way that he did.
It’s almost like Peter Jukes was just waiting for a chance to correct someone for misusing “England”, except the guy didn’t misuse it.
This is not correct. There hasn’t been a Kingdom of England since then. There hasn’t been an independent sovereign state of England since then. But the nation of England still exists. And the country of England still exists.
But, indeed, Garfield neither used nor implied any of these terms. He said, “You happen to be from England.”
And England not only still exists as a nation and a country, but it still exists as a place that someone could be from, as indeed, Jukes is from there.
There’s no nation of Britain. There’s the United Kingdom Of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that contains four nations. However, as is often a source of confusion the UK is often referred to as Great Britain or just Britain even when including the little piece of this island that isn’t in Britain but is in the UK.
Yes, I didn’t want to get down the road of distinction of Britain vs Northern Ireland and spread into the Irish nationalism, you’ll get two different answers as whether a native Northern Irish person is British.
When I say Britain I mean UK+NI, its the general term of the country, rather than the name of the passport. However, the government in Westminster (generally termed the British government) rules over the UK and Northern Ireland, though in general it really favours England, and the harsh truth, largely London’s economic interests. That doesn’t mean its the English government or indeed the London government
I think the confusion has arisen from the use of the word ‘nation’ in the sense of a single unitary ‘nation state’, which is not synonymous with ‘country’.
Growing up in the 1980s I was always “British”. There was no point saying I was English because Britain was England. Wales didn’t exist and Scotland was Scotland, but that was different. Englander was the kind of thing that Nazi soldiers came out with in old Commando war comics. Even now English feels oddly pedantic. Imagine calling Harrison Ford “Chicago actor Harrison Ford”. It would be true, but he’s so much more than that. He belongs to all of America, in fact he belongs to the whole world. He’s just Harrison Ford, living creature of the universe.
There is a stereotype in Britain of American holidaymakers describing all British people as English, and assuming that everybody personally knows Paul McCartney, because he’s from England as well. It’s jarring because although New York is a state in the US, England is Britain, or at least it was when I was young. I imagine that this kind of attitude still exists, although in polite company you’re supposed to pretend that Scotland and Wales are proper countries with their own governments and politicians and so on. When they close the borders, how are they going to do whatever it is that England currently does for them, eh? Who’s going to… (long pause) manage their financial services and… arrange for the outsourcing of their industrial capacity? I’ll just go on the internet and find out what England does, shouldn’t take long. (looks) Not sure, but there’s no way that Scotland and Wales could get along without it, whatever it is.
It still feels odd when Wikipedia (for example) describes Led Zeppelin (for example) as an English rock band - I can understand describing Soft Machine (for example) as an English rock band, because they were quintessentially Canterbury - that’s a town in Kent, England - but Led Zeppelin were more than that. They spoke for the whole nation. Which was England.
The English nationalists mentioned up the thread are more complex; there’s a strand of people who resent Scottish MPs being able to influence English government policies without English MPs being able to influence Scottish policies, and there’s also a strand of people who resent mass immigration from abroad - but these people are really British nationalists, as they don’t have a problem with mass immigration from Scotland. Or, if they do, it’s not a major part of their gripe. There aren’t all that many people in Scotland, anyway.
“The word “England” appears nowhere on the U.K. passport of an Englishman.”
Mine has lots of stuff about British nationals and the United Kingdom, and my nationality is “British Citizen” because England is Britain. The very first words on the cover are EUROPEAN UNION, though.
“Which state would be more annoying to use instead of America?”
I’ve always thought that a trip to two states equals a trip to America. E.g. a holiday in Florida is a holiday in Florida, but a holiday in Florida with a stop-off in New York is a holiday in America. A trip to New York city by itself is a trip to New York; a trip to New York city with an outing to the Niagra falls is almost a trip to America. From a British perspective the US equals New York, Los Angeles, possibly San Francisco, and Florida. Just like in Judge Dredd. The middle bits are… no-one goes there. Radioactive wasteland with broken war robots and gangs of feral muties.
True, but most foreigners do that. Even in Europe, people routinely refer to England when they actually mean Britain as a whole.
The fact of the matter is that the internal make-up of the UK is complicated, and it’s not too surprising that foreigners fall back on nearly-correct shorthand. It was quite common in Britain to refer to the USSR as “Russia”, after all, even among people who knew the difference.
