They are both Postmodern constructs, states without nations. There is not, never has been, and never will (since never can) be a European nation. And there is not, never has been, and never will (since never can) be a Kosovar nation. Nor does anyone in Kosovo even want there to be. They want there to be either a Serbian nation with Kosovo in it, or an Albanian nation with Kosovo in it.
If you read the arguments against union between Scotland and England in the English Parliament in the early 17th century you would conclude that the British state would never be. But it did.
ReplyDeleteRecommend the "Cradle King", the life of James VI and I. Arguments against included that union would extinguish all English laws overnight and that becoming part of a state called Britain was a step backwards as it nodded to the savage Britons of classical times and the Dark ages and thus offensive.
And there is not, never has been, and never will be a British nation...
ReplyDeleteOh, but there is. And you know that there is. You might not want there to be, but that is something else.
ReplyDeleteDavid, Britain is a multi-national state - I know that.
ReplyDeleteIt was created just over 300 years ago, a merger of Scotland and England (Wales being a domain of England, was not officially part of the Union) - prior to this Union, Scotland was a nation-state. Ireland "joined" two hundred years ago, and six of its counties are ultimately controlled by the British state, despite the Northern Ireland executive being in existance now. I could go on, but I think that's enough.
Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_state
It's true though that I don't want there to be a multi-national British state.
The White British ethnic group is by every known measurement a single ethnic group, and I believe it is correct to say that no ethnic minority exists in any one part of the United Kingdom but not in the others.
ReplyDeleteThe common history and culture is significantly greater than in many other places: there was no Germany until 1870, it took television in the 1950s to make the majority of Italians speak Italian, and so forth.
Even in 1922, what were really partioned were the closely related English/Anglo-Irish, Lowland Scots/Scots-Irish, and Gaelic-Irish sub-groups within the United Kingdom, by then a wholly artificial partition in all three cases, since there were huge numbers of Gaelic-Irish in England, Scotland and Wales.
Those in the Irish Free State/Irish Republic (along with those Anglo-Irish and Scots-Irish who remained there, which most felt unable to do - ethnic cleansing, if you will) were excluded from the social democracy created in the United Kingdom after the War.
And they have remained profoundly Catholic while advancing in the professions and in politics, something that has become impossible in what is now the ferociously anti-Catholic culture of the Irish Republic.
The first of these facts has always been well-understood by the Gaelic-Irish in the United Kingdom, and the second is increasingly so.
Those in Scotland have always been among the strongest opponents of separatism, while the ranks of staunchly Unionist Welsh Labour politicians have always included figures like Paul Murphy from that background.
Without the Scots, the Welsh, and those of at least Irish extraction, what Socialism would the English working class ever have enjoyed? Or the Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish working class, come to that? Certainly, separate English and separate Scottish culture both contain elements of profound hostility to such things.
Whereas they are as integral to British culture as the Union itself, the Commonwealth that is the Union's extension (hence the social democracies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand), and the Crown safeguarding both while embodying the principles of parliamentary supremacy (which ahs evolved to depend in turn on universal suffrage) and of the sheer good fortune that confers responsibilities to society as a whole.
I don't believe that nationality is based on race David. Neither do most English people.
ReplyDeleteIndeed they don't. But what WOULD you base English nationality on? And why?
ReplyDeleteWhat would I base it on?
ReplyDeleteBeing a citizen of the Republic of England, naturally!
;-)
But what would be the basis of that, and why?
ReplyDeleteAll those UK subjects in England = future citizens of English state.
ReplyDeleteIt's not too difficult. Nationality would be based on civic, rather than ethnic criteria - why? Because, to the degree it can develop without democratic institutions (an English parliament, for example) - which would be sports, the arts, etc - this is how we have come to imagine English identity.
Who do you mean by "we"?
ReplyDeleteIf by questioning my use of the term "we" you mean to dissociate yourself from viewing English national identity in civic terms...
ReplyDeleteI hope I've explained myself coherently - I do apologise if I'm a little unclear at times.
Why do you disagree with the idea of a civic English nation?
I can't see the basis for it. The Church of England and the sports teams are the only institutional manifestations of Englishness, and even the C of E has Anglicanism internationally as well. Which leaves the sports teams. Not enough. Nowhere near.
ReplyDeleteAnd what of Britishness, why then is it in decline in England?
ReplyDeleteIt isn't. Apart from the sports teams, and the C of E for people who ever think about, every institution that the English think of as English is actually either British or shared with a whole host of other places.
ReplyDeleteEven the C of E falls into that latter category up to a point. And the monarchy does so unambiguously.
Only the sports teams are purely English. And whatever else they might, they are no basis for a state.
Amongst the English, Britishness is in decline. More people identify as English first.
ReplyDeleteThere's no chance of abolishing the devolved institutions - Scotland would probably go for UDI a la Kosovo...
Why not an English parliament?
How many politicians do we really need? Imagine who they would be. Actually, you don't need to imagine. Just look at Holyrood, Cardiff and Stormont.
ReplyDeleteMost English people, possibly all, have no doubt where their Parliament. It reserves the right to enact any legislation it likes for any part of the United Kingdom, and Brown has dropped more than broad enough hints that he intends to get on with doing just that. Let him. Nowhere on earth would recognise a Scottish UDI, and with a Scot as PM in London everyone would just laugh at such a thing.
The English might increasingly say that they are English rather than British, but ask them to name an English institution and everything they could list except the sports teams would actually be either British (Parliament, the Armed Forces, and so on) or more than British (the monarchy, the English language, Anglicanism, cricket). Even the legal system is shared with Wales.
The basis for an English State simply does not exist.
There is an English education system and health service...
ReplyDeleteScottish and Welsh MPs can legislate on both, even though it does not concern their constituents. In the past, this has meant tuition fees being imposed, City Academies being set up, and the marketisation of the NHS...
Exactly the same body could, by exactly the same means, pass these things in relation to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, too. It simply chooses not to. But it could. Which is the point.
ReplyDelete