William Gruff
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
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When I think of migrants - I think of the Romans, the Celts, the Vikings, the Danish, the Saxons, the Normans. These, and recent arrivals, were economic migrants.
Many young French people today are chosing to move to England to launch their careers. These too are economic migrants, even if they only stay for a limited time.
So I would disagree with your first point - I think we do have a history of receiving/welcoming migrants, and indeed it has shaped our nation, for the most part, for the better.
But I do agree with your conclusion which concurs with the French philosophy that is the same: integrate or leave. As an Englishman living in France, I believe it is my duty to do just that - and I would expect immigrants to England to do the same.
That doesn’t preclude our nation from benefitting from the cultures introduced through migration of course; but what we need to instill is a national pride that extends beyond the football field.
Bart Hulley
29 Dec 07 at 8:42 am
Your examples of economic migrants do not support your essential premise.
No one knows when the ‘Celts’ arrived in the British Isles and there is still, I believe, some dispute about whether or not they actually existed as anything other than a Greek construction.
The Romans came as conquerors rather than migrants and were never very numerous here. Roman law and culture were evident more in the ruling British elites than in Romans who may, or may not, have been migrants.
The Adventus Saxonnum is still not understood by people who have devoted decades to its study and no one knows why they came, or even when, or whence. Bede is not the definitive source.
The Danes and Vikings seem to have begun their assault on ‘England’ as opportunistic raiders encouraged over time by factors such as surprise; poor communication and the impossibility of a co-ordinated response; the absence of a unified English polity and the consequent inter-regional warfare, and weak leadership, which preferred a policy of, what must have been, almost ruinous appeasement to a test of wills. Until the Danes, more so than the Vikings, had reduced Englaland (not a typo) to what The English creation myth teaches us was the Isle of Athelney, thus destroying all the other English kingdoms, it was not, apparently, possible for an English leader to begin to weld the separate kingdoms into a single state. I agree that the Danes played a seminal role in the creation of our nation but I disagree with your description of them as ‘economic migrants’. I suspect that those Danes who raided here were the scions of well founded houses, much as those who carved out farms in places like Rhodesia were.
A single English polity was created in the early tenth century from the ruins of Englaland and the Normans came about a century and a half later.
The Normans were not economic migrants, in any sense; most of them were mercenaries, and their masters were simply land holders on the lookout for more land, just as those who carved out farms in places like Rhodesia.
That French youth seek to establish their careers in my country does not invalidate my first point. They are not British and my first point was:
‘ … 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.’
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with their being French and refers only to those who live here and consider themselves British.
Economic migrants have not ’shaped our nation’. Our ancestors did that and economic migrants have come to benefit from the fruits of our ancestors’ sacrifices. The French youth you cite have not come here to improve the country my parents and grandparents fought to preserve for me, and I feel no obligation to hand on to my grand-daughter that which those lately arrived, who do not share (and who may despise) my values, feel most propitious for their advancement to her.
I can make head nor tail of your agreement and disagreement. Either you agree with me, or you don’t.
William Gruff
7 Jan 08 at 7:51 pm
Well in my view ‘Rape and Pillage’ is a form of economic migration - particularly if you stick around after the event. Granted though, whoever stood on the land back then most likely did not actually ‘welcome’ them. So I take your point that I was probably not constructing a terribly good arguement!
But personally I would like to think that the English’s famed ‘tollerance’ (see Christine Berberich’s post) for outsiders comes from the knowledge that our ancestors were most likely migrants of some description. Call them invaders or mercenaries if you will - but these horrid foreigners helped to create the language we call ‘English’ and a nation we now call ‘England’.
In my view modern-day migrants continue to do the much same, whether it is their intention to improve our country or not.
But my final point was - I agree with you that it is up to the migrant to become English, rather than the nation’s duty to bend in every direction to accommodate the migrant.
Commenting can be a dangerous business eh?
Bart Hulley
9 Jan 08 at 4:05 am
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.
This is absurd. You are insisting on the necessity and rightness of passing England into the control of a society specifically non-English, NOT on defending and passing onto our children what we inherited. Don’t paint your cowardice as bravery.
When Asian and African peoples decided their homelands belonged to them and began throwing us out, we did not suddenly decide India or South Africa were more desirable than we had thought, and that we would like to become Sikhs or Zulus — we did the right thing and left. So must they.
That they are even here proves their hostility and racist double-standards, their very presence then, in historical context, justifies our demanding their removal.
joe
7 Mar 08 at 11:40 am
How completely absurd: That they are even here proves their hostility and racist double-standards.
You are saying that my wife is hostile to England and racist. You are a fool.
Gareth Young
7 Mar 08 at 12:54 pm
If you would insist your wife’s right to be here is judged on her individual merits, YOU are hostile to England, and racist, and foolish, for by doing so you remove from the English a moral claim to their homeland based on who they are.
joe
8 Mar 08 at 6:51 am
I haven’t the least idea what you’re thinking, Joe, and I think I’m right in thinking that you haven’t the least idea what I am thinking. Your response seems to be building one non sequitur upon another and the kindest thing I can say is: Try reading my essay again!
As an aside: I’d like to know what ‘historical context’ you refer to.
William Gruff
13 Mar 08 at 4:38 pm