Negotiating English identity: Englishness,Britishness and the future of the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT. The current interest in Englishness and English national identity, spurred partly by parliamentary devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, has been accompanied by calls for an English parliament and even the promotion of a robust English nationalism. This article argues that this is a mistaken direction for the English. English traditions have been non‐national and even supra‐national. English identities have been especially bound up with Britain and Britishness. An England without Britain is hard to conceive, and would be impolitic to pursue. Survey evidence shows continuing Britishness among the English, with scant support for an English parliament or English independence. The expressions of English nationalism remain relatively muted. ‘England for the English’ is neither a realistic nor a sensible strategy.     

‘Too old a country … too long accustomed to regard her life as one and indivisible’: England and the Speaker’s Conference on Devolution

The Conference on Devolution, 1919–1920 has been a little studied event in Britain’s constitutional history. However, recent analysis has shed new light on this little studied moment in British constitutional history. Building on Evans (2015), this article focuses on the Conference’s deliberations on the units that would be represented by devolution (i.e. whether devolution would be on national or regional lines) to provide further evidence that the division between intra-parliamentary and directly elected devolution was a cleavage that cut through the entirety of the Conference’s work, as opposed to simply being a source of disagreement at the end of its proceedings. As this debate essentially focused on how England should be governed post-devolution, this article also sheds further light on the history of ‘the English Question’.     

Devolution and Parliamentary Representation: The Case of the Scotland and Wales Bill, 1976–7

For as long as devolution has been debated in the UK, there has been fierce discussion as to the representation of the would‐be affected areas at Westminster. That this has been the case is a consequence of Westminster's dual remit as both a state‐wide and a sub‐state legislature. While this dual remit was relatively straightforward when applied to all nations of the UK, it does, however, raise serious questions about the equality of MPs at Westminster in the face of asymmetric devolution that would carve out parliament's remit in some, but not all, parts of the UK. These questions bedevilled Gladstone's Irish Home Rule Bills in the late 19th century and have been a recurrent feature of debate following New Labour's devolution programme in the late 1990s, culminating in the adoption of a system of ‘English Votes for English Laws’ by the house of commons in October 2015. This article looks at this issue through the lens of the ill‐fated Scotland and Wales Bill introduced by the Callaghan government in 1976. It explores the roots of the bill and how, and why, the idea of referring the question of territorial representation, post‐devolution, to a Speaker's conference, came to secure the initial support of cabinet as the best answer to this problem, and why the government swiftly changed its mind. Parliamentary statecraft considerations served to push a Speaker's conference onto the institutional agenda, before ultimately dooming it to failure.     

Indifference towards national identity: what young adults think about being English and British*

ABSTRACT. National identity should be sharply distinguished from nationalism. People speak by reference to a general and assumed membership of a country, and routine markers of behaviour and style may exhibit this sense of membership. This matter‐of‐fact acceptance of ‘national’ membership does not guarantee enthusiasm for the ‘nation’ and it cannot be taken as a signal of nationalism, banal or otherwise. While theoretical statements and assumptions often suggest that national identity is fundamental to individuals in contemporary societies, empirical investigation of people talking about national identity uncovers some broad strands of indifference and hostility towards national identity in general, and towards British and English identities in particular. This may reflect young adults' wish not to appear ‘nationalist’ just as many would wish not to appear racist. But the level of apathy and antagonism towards national identity among young adults suggests that we ought to reconsider any assumption that national identity is ‘normally’ a powerful and important marker, embraced with enthusiasm.     

Is Britain European?

To ask ‘Is Britain European?’ is to engage in a particularly difficult area of the always elusive business of Identity Studies. The very nature and future viability of Britain have recently been subject to extensive questioning. Meanwhile, one can distinguish at least six politically relevant senses of the term ‘European’. Britain was never as exceptional as was suggested by the traditional story of British exceptionalism told by the ‘Island Story’ school of historians. Moreover, it has become much less insular over the past sixty years. The question is whether the process has been Europeanization, Americanization or simply globalization. There is considerable evidence that the country's ties to what Churchill called 'the English‐speaking peoples' are still as strong as those to continental Europe. In fact, both sets of ties have become stronger. But these identities are not exclusive. Britain has always been a place of multiple over‐lapping identities: English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish, as well as British, European and transoceanic. That Britain's European identity is bound to remain only a partial identity does not mean it has to be a shallow one. If Britain is to be a full and effective participant in Europe it has to deepen its European identity, to develop something of the normative, idealistic sense of being European which is second nature to most continental Europeans engaged in these debates.     

Not Quite an Insider—A Scottish Perspective on a Future Coronation

Abstract

Post devolution, Scotland is ‘a bit different’, but how does that relate to a coronation? A Scottish sense of exclusion from the English establishment's assumptions of UK dominance might be a way into developing forms that are more widely inclusive. In this article, two distinctively Scottish models—of sovereignty and of being a national church—are offered as bases for exploring the shape of a coronation that tries to express who we all are. The theological understanding of sovereignty which was a key contribution from the churches to the debate on devolution sees the sovereignty of God entrusted to the community of the realm, and entrusted by that community to whatever institutions they deem appropriate; this might be a starting point for planning a coronation. The self-understanding of the Church of Scotland as a national church cherishing its independence from state control and with less ‘stake’ in the monarchy might prompt a different church-state relationship to be expressed in a coronation.     

'TEXAS (WHEN I DIE)': NATIONAL IDENTITY AND IMAGES OF PLACE IN CANADIAN COUNTRY MUSIC BROADCASTS

As a nation linguistically and regionally fragmented, Canada faces unique problems of national unity and identity. The truth of Northrop Frye's observation that ‘Canada has passed from a pre-national to a post-national phase without ever having become a nation’ is illustrated by the trauma of partially sloughing the trappings of colonial status in 1982, 115 years after attaining de facto independence in 1867. National identity in Canada rests precariously on the shoulders of its peoples, for the fabric of national consciousness spun from myths and images is still being woven by its literati, bureaucrats, and politicians. Not only does Canada have a small population and, as Mackenzie King put it, ‘too much geography,’ but the country is bordered by a culturally aggressive and dynamic English-speaking nation outnumbering it by more than ten to one. If English Canadians are to formulate a distinctive cultural identity, to create their own images and myths of place, to come imaginatively into contact with the country, and to answer the fundamental question of ‘Where is Here?,’ they must do so on their own terms, not in a cultural vacuum but in a milieu protected in some measure from the onrush of values, attitudes, and beliefs emanating from beyond the borders of Canada.     

National identity,devolution and secession in Canada,Britain and Spain*

ABSTRACT. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it examines whether devolution fosters the rise of dual identities – regional and national. Second, it considers whether devolution encourages secession or, on the contrary, it stands as a successful strategy in accommodating intra‐state national diversity. The article is divided into three parts. First it examines the changing attitudes towards Quebec's demands for recognition adopted by the Canadian government from the 1960s to the present. It starts by analysing the rise of Quebec nationalism in the 1960s and the efforts of the Canadian government to accommodate its demands within the federation. It then moves on to consider the radically new conception of Canadian unity and identity embraced by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and its immediate impact upon Quebec. The paper argues that Trudeau's ‘nation‐building’ strategy represented a retreat from the pro‐accommodation policies set in place to respond to the findings of the 1963 Royal Commission on Biculturalism & Bilingualism (known as the B&B Commission). Trudeau's definition of Canada as a bilingual and multicultural nation whose ten provinces should receive equal treatment alienated a significant number of Quebeckers. After Trudeau, various attempts were made to accommodate Quebec's demand to be recognised as a ‘distinct society’– Meech Lake Accord, Charlottetown Agreement. Their failure strengthened Quebec separatists, who obtained 49.4 per cent of the vote in the 1995 Referendum. Hence, initial attempts to accommodate Quebec in the 1960s were replaced by a recurrent confrontation between Canada's and Quebec's separate nation‐building strategies. Second, the article explores whether devolution fosters the emergence of dual identities – regional and national – within a single nation‐state. At this point, recent data on regional and national identity in Canada are presented and compared with data measuring similar variables in Spain and Britain. The three modern liberal democracies considered here include territorially circumscribed national minorities – nations without states ( Guibernau 1999 ) – endowed with a strong sense of identity based upon the belief in a common ethnic origin and a sense of shared ethnohistory – Quebec, Catalonia, the Basque Country and Scotland. Third, the article examines whether devolution feeds separatism by assessing support levels for current devolution arrangements in Canada, Spain and Britain. The article concludes by examining the reasons which might contribute to replacing separatist demands with a desire for greater devolution.     

Four English ‘Bohemians’ Manqués: A Short-Term Resident,a Lost Opportunity,One to Do Without,and a Case of Confused Antecedents

Abstract

The article reflects the author’s longstanding interest in the appearance in the English lexicon of items emanating from the Bohemian/Czech environment, including the incidence of the very word Bohemian/bohemian. It discusses four cases where ‘Bohemian’ does not feature, though might well do so. These are: one bird name, the waxwing, once the ‘Bohemian waxwing’, which name survives only in American English because of the local need to distinguish the bird from another in the family; one spring flower, the early star-of-Bethlehem, restricted in Britain to a single site on the Welsh border, which could, on the basis of its Latin name, Gagea bohemica, have become the ‘Bohemian star-of-Bethlehem’; one pernicious hybrid knotweed, Reynoutria × bohemica, which has no common English name, but was identified and named in Bohemia, and would be potentially nameable geographically as ‘Bohemian knotweed’, like one of its parents, the Japanese knotweed; and one modest vegetable, the swede, which owes its name to a perceived origin in Sweden, though it is conjectured that during or after the Thirty Years’ War it was first taken to Sweden from Bohemia and so might have become analogously the ‘bohemian’. The article contains other conjectures as to the items’ origins and explores the history of their naming in Czech and German as well as English.     

The ‘Dividual Androgyne’ and Me: a Personal Affair

In the 25 years since Marilyn Strathern published The Gender of the Gift (1988) its signature concepts of the ‘dividual androgyne’ and ‘sociality’ have received almost no criticism in the anthropological literature and are now widely accepted as true. The ‘dividual’ is considered to be ‘a new, non‐unitary model of embodiment and … one of the most important theoretical accomplishments to emerge from Melanesian ethnography in the latter part of the 20^th Century’ despite the fact that it erases affect, agency, identity and other essential features of human beings (Lipset 2008). The present critique of Strathern's concept of the androgynous ‘dividual’ challenges its legitimacy as a Melanesian or any other ‘premodern’ form of personhood and suggests that it expresses the wish of academic feminists in the 1970s and 1980s to locate an indigenous model for androgyny and to characterise patriarchy, misogyny and sexual segregation as peculiarly Western. The article explores aspects of Gimi myth, ritual and exchange which Strathern claims helped her to formulate the concept of the ‘dividual’ (especially those surrounding men's sacred bamboo flutes) and concludes that she mistook a virulently anti‐female ideology – including a fantasy in which men may subsume or incorporate certain aspects of female anatomy – for benign accommodation between the sexes. The ‘dividual’ does not correspond to social reality among the Gimi and paradoxically affirms Lévi‐Strauss' classic demonstration in the Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949) that ‘the gender of the gift’ is invariably female.     

National identity: banal,personal and embedded

ABSTRACT. This article examines the theoretical problem of understanding the relationship between personal and social dimensions of national identity. It does this by relating ethnographic data collected during a study of a merger between a Scottish and an English bank to three conceptual frameworks. First, it considers Michael Billig's thesis of ‘banal nationalism’. Then it addresses Anthony P. Cohen's concept of ‘personal nationalism’. Finally, it adapts a conception of the relationship between personal and social identity found in the recent work of Derek Layder. Based on this it argues that national identities, like all identities, are rendered salient for persons when they seem to address personal issues of power over one's life, and that the various social organisational settings through which people realise control over their lives (in this case, the bank) are thus crucial contexts for understanding people's attachments to identities, national and otherwise.     

Between Kant and Machiavelli: EU foreign policy priorities in the 2010s

The entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty invites and enables Europe to develop elements of a common foreign policy. Europe should resist the tendency of listing all issues calling for attention, and be aware that it will have to address three agendas, not just one. The first agenda is the Kantian one of universal causes. While it remains essential to European identity, it presents Europe with limited opportunities for success in the 2010s as could be seen at the 2009 Climate Summit in Copenhagen. The ‘Alliance’ agenda remains essential on the security front and would benefit from a transatlantic effort at rejuvenation on the economic one. Last but not least, the ‘Machiavellian’ agenda reflects what most countries would define as their ‘normal’ foreign policy. It calls for Europe to influence key aspects of the world order in the absence of universal causes or common values. While Europe's ‘Machiavellian’ experience is limited to trade policy, developing a capacity to address this third agenda in a manner that places its common interests first and reinforces its identity will be Europe's central foreign policy challenge in the 2010s. A key part of the Machiavellian agenda presently revolves around relations with Ukraine, Turkey and the Russian Federation, three countries essential to Europe's energy security that are unlikely to change their foreign policy stance faced with EU soft power. Stressing that foreign policy is about ‘us’ and ‘them’, the article looks at what could be a genuine European foreign policy vis‐à‐vis each of these interdependent countries, beginning with energy and a more self‐interested approach to enlargement. The European public space is political in nature, as majority voting and mutual recognition imply that citizens accept ‘foreigners’ as legitimate legislators. At a time when the European integration process has become more hesitant and the political dimension of European integration tends to be derided or assumed away, admitting Turkey or Ukraine as members would change Europe more than it would change these countries. Foreign policy cannot be reduced to making Europe itself the prize of the relationship. What objectives Europe sets for itself in its dealing with Ukraine, Turkey and Russia will test whether it is ready for a fully‐fledged foreign policy or whether the invocation of ‘Europe’ is merely a convenient instrument for entities other than ‘Europe’.     

Myths of ancestry

This article examines the national significance of fifth‐century BC Greek sculpture and especially the so‐called Elgin Marbles. It examines the significance of these archaeological remains not for the Greek nation but for the British, and specifically the English, nation during the nineteenth century. The national significance of fifth‐century BC Greek art lies in its incorporation into nineteenth‐century debates concerning the identity of the English nation. At a time when physical appearance or race was accepted as an important and, indeed, determining component of the ‘self’ and a measure of collective belonging, Greek sculpture, which was primarily figural in its subject‐matter, came to be seen as an image of the English ‘self’. The belief in the Greek identity of the English caused a Greek revival in English life and art. In life, this revival took the form of care for the body and the imitation of the athletic practices of Greek youth through the practice of sport in English school and university education. It was thus that nineteenth‐century English youth turned itself into a work of art.     

‘In gente Britanniarum,sicut quaedam nostratum testatur historia …’: national identity and perceptions of the past in John of Salisbury's Policraticus

This article examines the construction of national identity in John of Salisbury's Policraticus (c.1159). This well-known treatise has not been included in recent discussions of identities in medieval Britain. The focal point of the analysis is the author's contradictory representations of Britones. John of Salisbury emphasised the distinction and hostility between the Britons/Welsh and the English; at the same time, he claimed that the ancient Britons (Brennius and his companions-in-arms from Geoffrey of Monmouth's De gestis Britonum) were ‘compatriots’ and ‘ancestors’ of the ‘contemporary’ inhabitants of the English kingdom. Comparison with other twelfth-century texts reveals specific features of the model of national identity traced in the Policraticus: the appropriation not only of the British past, but also of the British name and identity, and the imagining of a unified people of Britain. This culminated in the invention of the unique term gens Britanniarum, which nevertheless did not exclude the ‘English’ as an alternative or even interchangeable name. The article discusses political agendas behind John of Salisbury's use of the language of ‘Britishness’, most importantly, support for the pan-British ambitions of the archbishops of Canterbury. The example of the Policraticus, with its combination of both conventional and original elements, nuances our understanding of how and for what ideological purposes national identity might have been constructed in twelfth-century England.     

The University of South Africa (Unisa) 1918–1948: the first transition,from colonial to segregationist institution

This article traces the first of what would become several significant transitions in the evolution of the University of South Africa (Unisa); that from University of the Cape of Good Hope (UCGH), an institution with a distinct English tradition loosely based on the ‘liberal’ constitution of the Cape Colony, to a more segregationist Afrikaner-dominated university by 1946. This was largely shaped by national politics, in particular the rise of Afrikaner nationalism, in the 1920s and 30s. Not only did Unisa become captive to Afrikaner forces, it also was strongly infiltrated by the Broederbond, which had as one of its objectives the holding of key positions in higher education in South Africa. In addition, issues of race now became a growing ‘problem’ as Unisa sought to fulfil its mandate to provide higher education for ‘non-Europeans’ in an era of segregation. However, it would be a distortion to portray this transition fom a simple binary perspective. There was ambivalence about the ‘liberalism’ of the UCGH that reflected the pressures for a new racial order at the Cape. Similarly, the extent of Broederbond influence at Unisa (and over national politics) should not be over-emphasised. Somewhat paradoxically, Unisa continued to accommodate nodes of liberal thinking within the institution, and in the 1960s resisted state attempts to be drawn into a scheme to construct an Afrikaans-only university in Johannesburg. Nevertheless, the essential conservatism and political acquiescence of the university to apartheid meant that the requirement to transform Unisa in the democratic era was all the more painful and complex.     

Reading between the lines: national identity and attitudes to the media in Scotland*

ABSTRACT. The relationship between national identity and how people perceive and consume media is a central but largely untested assumption of studies of nationalism. Using a previously developed classification of identity among English migrants to Scotland, this paper explores associations between how people use the media and how they make sense of their national identity. Compared with Scottish nationals, who tend to adopt a more taken‐for‐granted and uncontentious view of the media, except when they feel that the media presented to them challenge their sense of identity, English migrants find that the agendas of the media in Scotland differ from those they are used to south of the border. Specifically, how they view the media tends to vary according to whether they view themselves as ‘English’, ‘British’ or as ‘becoming Scottish’.     

The Meaning of Things: Kipling’s Formative Journey ‘Home’ in 1889 and the Late Victorian Imperial Tour

The ‘seven years’ hard’ Rudyard Kipling spent as a journalist in north India are generally seen as the making of both his poetic and his politics. But, important as origin, community, identity and ‘my father’s house’ are to Kipling, he should also be seen as a wayfarer of no fixed abode. In 1889 he used his first royalties to return to metropolitan fame by the long way round: Burma, the Straits, Japan, the Pacific and a transcontinental journey past landmarks of his Americanophile boyhood reading. Both distressing and exhilarating, it was a journey that stimulated the productive tension in him between the parochial and the universal. If an upcountry Punjab station had impressed him with the necessity of colonial rule, it was this voyage that engendered his all-embracing imperial vision. If he had honed his eye for ‘local colour’, this trip intimated to him that his metier would lie in culturally translating disparate portions of the empire to one another. Anticipating Baden-Powell’s call to ‘look wider’, vagabonding proved to be an agreeable mode of existence, but metropolitan arrival was to hold its own unforeseen challenges and anxieties. At a time when English writers like Arthur Symons aestheticised their sensation of cultural rootlessness in the figure of the vagabond, Kipling sought to foreground his own vagabondism with a persuasive claim to belonging.     

To Piss in or Piss Out: Gerrard Winstanley and the Radical's Dilemma

Abstract

‘Are we called to be prophets or pragmatists? Voices crying in the wilderness, or whisperers in the corridors of power?’ Radicals in every generation have to face the question. Gerrard Winstanley, ‘True Leveller’ leader and Christian communist, faced it in the English revolution of 1649. Was he a Utopian prophet or an early practitioner of critical engagement? ‘He was sometimes one, sometimes the other, and often both at the same time. As such, he speaks to our postmodern condition, where pragmatism is the life of all.’     

Nationalism and the Internet*

ABSTRACT. The territorial integrity of nations is often taken as the premise for a functioning, unifying national identity. Yet, the economic and technological developments of recent decades have made it necessary to question this assumption. It can no longer be taken for granted that the people who identify with a given nation inhabit the same space, nor can it be assumed that cultural homogenisation takes place at the level of the nation through mass media. When the Internet appeared, many social scientists and commentators predicted that it would threaten the cultural integrity of nations; that the non‐territorial character of the Internet would lead to fragmentation and unprecedented cultural differentiation, making it difficult, eventually impossible, to uphold a collective sense of national identity based on shared images, representations, myths and so on. Although it is too early to draw any conclusions regarding the long‐term effects of the Internet, experiences so far suggest that such predictions were mistaken. In fact, nations thrive in cyberspace, and the Internet has in the space of only a few years become a key technology for keeping nations (and other abstract communities) together. Nations which have lost their territory (such as Afrikaner‐led South Africa), nations which are for political reasons dispersed (such as Tamil Sri Lanka or Kurdistan), nations with large temporary overseas diasporas (such as Scandinavian countries, with their large communities in Spain during winter), or nations where many citizens work abroad temporarily or permanently (such as India or Caribbean island‐states), appear in many sites on the Internet – from online newspapers and magazines to semi‐official information sites and ‘virtual community’ homepages. In a ‘global era’ of movement and deterritorialisation, the Internet is used to strengthen, rather than weaken, national identities.     

From superabilità to transabilità: towards an Italian disability studies

This article discusses recent academic and theoretical approaches to disability in Italy, situating them in relation to Anglo-American disability studies as well as within the Italian academic context, and sketches out the contours of an emergent Italian disability studies. The discussion centres on three terms that have emerged recently in Italy: superabilità (implying both ‘ability to overcome’ and ‘exceptional ability’); diversabilità (being ‘differently abled’); and transabilità (the desire for, or identification with, a disabled body by a non-disabled subject). The article considers the role of narrative in each of these categories, as well as the way that each deals with the question of limits. While discourses in each category construct or confirm a strong disabled identity, the article argues that transabilità might also be understood as the transcendence of identity on the basis of ability. This alternative understanding puts pressure on the question of identity itself and challenges the very need for narrative (re)construction.