The English Identity Question

Observing the recent liberal phenomenon of deconstructing and belittling a national identity.

A recent debate has been capturing the attention of the media: to ask what it truly means to be English. This debate is far from new. It has been permeating the country’s public conscious for decades, especially as mass immigration forces many of us to confront questions of identity and cultural change. The latest schism on what constitutes English identity all started when Robert Jenrick, the Conservative MP for Newark, who is one of the candidates vying to become the party’s new leader, made the argument that the concept of English as a distinct phenomenon not only certainly exists, but that globalisation and mass immigration both are beginning to undermine and dilute it.

Cue the outrage, as every liberal commentator under the sun felt the need to not only condemn the statement as a form of racial dog-whistling but also belittle and mock the insinuation that English national identity was worthy of preserving. Some, more asininely, even went far enough to argue that English identity didn’t tangibly exist and that the environment many of us exist in is nothing more than the amalgamation of multiple different cultures. The suggestion was that, since traces of other cultures were identifiable in the development of England’s institutions, there was nothing unique about them. If it wasn’t pure to begin with, then change is not just a natural development but a welcome one as well, or so went their argument.

For example, Adil Ray, a renowned journalist who now works as a presenter for the largest morning talk-show in the country, Good Morning Britain, joined the discourse when he mockingly wrote on his public Twitter profile: “Robert Jenrick thinks English identity is under threat. Our language is Germanic, our numbers are Arabic and Indian, our patron saint is Turkish, our royal family has German ancestry, and the church originates from the Middle East.”

It’s easy to dismiss comments like this as nothing more than slander from bad faith actors, but attitudes like this provide a microcosm of the English liberal’s mentality towards culture and sense of national pride. To many of them, downplaying the existence of a coherent English identity helps justify their infatuation with a multicultural society. They rightly acknowledge that if the people of a nation still feel a strong sense of affinity for their ancestors and the homogeneity of their communities, they can never fully accept open borders and all the ‘enrichment’ that brings, so they craft this narrative that England was never defined by its own unique culture and instead was a melting pot to manufacture consent for their worldview.

What is astonishing is how many on the liberal left reacted to Jenrick by trying to proclaim there's no such thing as English identity at all: unless, of course, it's defined as an inherently negative thing, at which point it miraculously springs back into existence only so they can demean it. These of course are the same people who seem to fawn over non-English cultures which, to their mind, 'enrich' our own - thus the insistence that Pakistani and Nigerian identities definitely exist, but English strangely doesn't.

Jenrick’s comments shouldn’t be controversial. The English are a nation with an identifiable history and culture, as real as the Japanese or the Māori. In fact, they predate the latter by over four hundred years. Yet, for some reason, journalists and academics, highly-educated people, most of whom went to prestigious universities, feel the need to dispute the validity of English culture. Maybe for some it’s an opportunity to virtue signal their resentment of their ancestors, a form of self-flagellation all too common amongst the English elite as a way of currying favour with the new Sectarianism of the Left, which punishes and ostracises anyone who feels even an ounce of pride in their ancestral homeland.

This debate comes around all-too-frequently - what is English culture, and what makes it unique? Unfortunately, defenders of English culture often fall back on mere material expressions of English nationhood, such as cricket, or fish and chips. The material expressions of a culture - its food, clothing, pastimes - are no doubt important. They are a tangible example of a national culture in action. But material culture can seem frivolous and is liable to change over time - we've only had fish and chip shops since the 1860s, for example. And, more importantly, they provide the cover for allowing the concept of national identity to be distorted for malicious excuses. Liberals often uses these performative gestures as a way of widening the tent, with the end result of diluting the very real cultural group.

One such performative gesture many liberal equate with traditional ‘Englishness’ is the practice of being polite or welcoming. But this safe, benign list of British values could be applied to just about any culture in the first world. The above definition is inherently safe because it requires no adherence and so there is little substance behind it. Any first-world liberal democracy could claim to exude the exact same list of principles and it would stick because it is the magnolia paint of cultural definitions. If a definition of a specific culture fits a Frenchman the same as an Englishman, such cultural distinctions are ultimately meaningless.

It is precisely because it is a one-size fits all approach that the liberal commentary class prefers it and uses it so abundantly. Benign and all-encompassing definitions require no adherence on how to act or behave or what to uphold and protect. No lines are drawn to say something is too far or distasteful to the people that live in a given area. It demands nothing from the person upholding it as principles. It is toothless and easily ignored. Thus, it cannot work as an instrument for measuring or calculating a person’s national identity.

Nations aren't just defined by what they eat and wear, and nor are they defined by institutions. Nations are best identified by the habits, assumptions, and methods of social arrangement that their members engage with every day.

So, what are the origins of the English nation, and what values and assumptions characterise the English? Perhaps, a brief history lesson is in order. England, unsurprisingly, was founded by the English, descendants of the West Germanic Anglo-Saxons and Celtic Britons ethnic groups. The English are a nation native to England, who speak the English language and share a common history, ancestry and culture. The idea of England as a polity has existed for over a thousand years. Bede, an English monk and scholar, was able to write his history of the English Church & people in the early 8th century - 'the Ecclesiastical History of the English People' - precisely because they were understood as a distinct, coherent group of peoples related by culture, faith and language.

Alfred and his heirs were recognised as kings of the Anglo-Saxons, the English-speaking peoples of Britain, in the late 9th century. The political manifestation of this national community was fully realised in 927 when Athelstan, King of the Anglo-Saxons, conquered York, making him the first Anglo-Saxon ruler of the whole of England.

What we sometimes call 'liberalism' is, in many ways, a framework that aims to give shape to traditional English social habits. Individuated responsibility, the sanctity of contract, consistent enforcement of the law, empiricism and the common law - all characteristic of English culture. Not all of these behaviours are exhibited by all English people. Not all English people exhibit these traits, and not everybody who exhibits these traits is English. But, in an aggregate sense, as a group, the English have tended to exhibit these behaviours more than other groups.

And this is what a nation is: a group who, in the aggregate, share core assumptions about the world, exhibit similar behaviours and modes of arrangement, and who share a common history and culture. To this end, the English are undeniably a nation - and a nation to be proud of.

If self-hating progressive pseuds want to sneer at all this and pretend that our national inheritance is some cringe-worthy pop-culture version of Britishness (at best), that is their prerogative. But to pretend English culture somehow doesn't exist is as absurd as it is contemptible. The people trying to erase an entire nation's 1,000 year history and culture are historically illiterate, quarter-educated philistines who write fact-free blither to provide flimsy ballast for their intellectually contemptible progressive ideology.

Ultimately, the British Left needs to make space for a positive expression of English identity; because in an age when we're all playing the game of identity politics, if the Left wont let the English join in, the far right will. And remember, the Left seems to understand perfectly well how negative depictions of Islam in the West drive young Muslims into the arms of Islamists ("They might not like you, but we do..."); so why do they refuse to apply the same empathy to the English?