As long term readers know I'm a Unionist. I believe that the concept of Englishness is false and the break up the Union would be a slap in the face to hundreds of years of history. My feelings were reaffirmed today in a strange roundabout way...
I went to Nottingham. Nottingham is about as different from London and Kent as is Scotland or Wales. They speak with a funny accent and have strange shops and listen to weird radio stations (Trent FM???). This whole obsession some people have with being English just seems so misplaced to me... what on Earth do I have in common with the people of Nottingham? Not much...
That's what I love about the UK... it's bloody diverse and only thing that holds us together is the fact we all live on the same group of islands. We work well together, even if we don't always get along.
The concept of England going it alone is based on the idea that there is such a thing as an "English" person, and that the "English" share a culture. But I say there is isn't. I'm Kentish. The people from Yorkshire are proud to be from Yorkshire. The people from Cornwall are Cornish. We all have different cultures, different ways of speaking and different outlooks on life.
So if England ever did gain it's independence from the Union, I'd be the first person calling for Kent to secede. Because if we are going to base our country on the concept of a "shared culture" rather than on a geographical reality (us all living on the same group of islands) then I want to be in a country with all the Kentish Men and Men of Kent not in "England" a place with too many cultures to count.
3 comments:
Oh your new blog certainly gives us something to get our teeth into.
I don't like to come across as being negative and disagreeable but....
surely if you're born in England you're English.
The Scottish, Welsh and Irish don't say they're British do they? I mean I don't cling to the fact that I'm English until my fingertips bleed, but there is some history involved here which can't be ignored.
If we try to lump too many people in the same group it's like national genocide, and there aren't really any long-term benefits, only ever-increasing misery and rootless cosmopolitan greyness.
James
That's the point. The English want to lump everyone in the area they refer to as England as being pretty much the same. This is wrong. We need to accept that within England there is a vast difference between cultuarl groups. And if we accept this then I see no reason for us to choose nationalism (the promotion of one culture over another) over Unionism (the acceptance of our different cultures and ways of life brought together under one flag)>
Thanks Jae, I agree with what you've said.
By the way this is James from http://hobbitlife.livejournal.com
Shameless plug.
For some reason I'm being linked to a blogger account I didn't even know I had.
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