[LINK] "The peculiar coin of English nationalism"

[rfmcdonald]

Writer Anthony Barnett has a long essay at Open Democracy about English identity in the wake of the Scottish referendum, and its relationship to British identity.

[A] great cry of pain arises from the Brits, including from the hearts and souls of many of my friends and compatriots south of the border. For them, the idea of Scotland ‘leaving’, never before taken seriously, is enraging. The mere thought of it—let alone the thought of becoming English—fills them not with the thrill of self-determination but with despair.

[. . .]

There is no doubting the sincerity of this lucidly expressed feeling. But it is very strange. Why would [Martin] Wolf lose part of himself? Why should he and Tom Holland and many, many others in England suffer such a dramatic amputation, all the more painful for being internal, as a consequence of less than ten per cent of the UK peacefully choosing to govern themselves in so far as they can? They would not feel the same way if Northern Ireland voted to leave, as the Good Friday Agreement explicitly permits. So it is not about part of the UK deciding its own fate.

A clue shouts out from Wolf’s description of Englishness as “ethnic” (meaning a racial identity that excludes him) whilst contemporary Britishness is “civic”. For him and many others to become English is experienced as a threat, even though it is their actual nationality, for Britishness is multi-national and you cannot be ‘just’ British. The strain in Wolf’s observation can be seen more clearly if you start from the fact that Scottishness is civic: the Scottish parliament represents a multi-faith, multi-ethnic, open society, whether the vote is Yes or No. The Yes campaign invites everyone to join it. If the Scottishness is civic and also part of being British how come Englishness is ethnic? Why is it racial while Scottishness and Welshness are not?

I am British and have embraced the fact of my Englishness, and found that England too is a civic, tolerant, anti-fascist country that I am proud to call my own. I came to this realisation thanks to the Scottish experience, which I have been following closely over two decades. For me it is an emancipation: not a loss but a gain. However, there is no doubting that Holland and Wolf express the majority experience. It is not just an opinion or even a profound sentimental attachment to Britishness that they fear to lose, it is an internal part of themselves that feels threatened.

The pain of this is not going to be healed by a ‘No’ vote, however relieved they may be. They can see perfectly well that Scotland would vote ‘Yes’ if the English offered to help diminish the risks, not threaten to increase them. This week’s pre-referendum editorial in the Economist bewailing the prospect of a Yes vote included this extraordinary sentence: “The rump of Britain would be diminished in every international forum: why should anyone heed a country whose own people shun it?”