Floating down to Camelot

Whereas I was born in England to an English mother and a Scottish father, have a Scottish name, moved to Scotland at 9 months, moved to England again at 4 and now live on an island where many of the inhabitants seem to think the rest of Britain is another universe, let alone another country. ALthough I feel far more English than anything else, I always put "British," since it feels disloyal to the Scottish side of my family not to.

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And, indeed, I did.

If it was on the BBC news website, I also gave them a pasting for the new dumbed down website design.

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I was on the letters page of the Magazine section. Since they kept saying in bold at the top that they were asking for my opinion of the Magazine Monitor Blog, it made it rather hard to answer lots of the questions, since they weren't really relevant, or else were issues that weren't unique to that section. Then, at the end, it asked me if I'd been confining my answers to the section they'd asked me about, or if I'd actually been talking about the whole site. I found it all rather frustrating.

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thecatsamuel.livejournal.com

I told them about the dumbing down - the local news stories seem aimed at the hard of thinking and it's deeply annoying.

My father is second-generation Irish (and Catholic) and my mother second-generation Swedish (and Lutheran) but I think of myself as English. It's so much simpler.

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I'm actually half German, though there is a touch of Swedish in there too.

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Actually, you know, it is very unlikely that he was a white Anglo-Saxon. All the genetic data seems to suggest that the population of England is pretty much that that settled here after the last Ice Age, coming up from the refuge in the Basque country - and that the Anglo Saxon invasion was that of an elite who imposed their culture, rather than lots and lots of invaders who drove the [Celtic, except they weren't] inhabitants into Wales and Cornwall.

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True. I think you can also say the same about the Celts to anyone who proudly proclaims their Celtic ancestry. We (as in native British) are for the most part all the same race.

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Though those same genetic studies suggest that, indeed, the peoples of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Brittany and Cornwall were actually populated from a different refuge at the end of the Ice Age, and came up from Spain - though they are unrelated to the so-called 'Celtic' Hallstatt culture of central Europe.

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Ooh, I didn't know that. (Or possibly I did once, but have forgotten it - I've read that book 'Tribes' which is about that sort of thing.)

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The Origins of the British, by Stephen Oppenheimer, is the only book I've read on the subject. It comes to the conclusions that

lil_shepherd mentions.

I wish all this stuff had been around when I did the Anglo-Saxons at Oxford. I read loads of works by historians arguing madly about issues of continuity vs. radical change at the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions, but none of this genetic evidence was available back then. (Or, at least, didn't appear in any of the books my tutor told me to read.)

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The genetic evidence for this sort of thing often seems to go against the conventional wisdom (which is fun I think). There's a brilliant book by Tudor Parfitt (I forget the name of the book) in which he investigates the story of a southern African tribe called the Lemba who despite appearing to all intents and purposes to be just like any other black southern African tribe, reckon they are Jewish. He traces their story and tries to work out where they might have come from (they were supposedly the architects of Great Zimbabwe for example). For the most part it's fun but sounds like the sort of work that people like Graham Hancock put together (they even had the Ark of the Covenant at one time allegedly) by multiplying together a succession of 80% probable events to get an extremely improbable end result.

Then right at the end, he gets the DNA results back from the genetics lab. Turns out that those Lemba descended from their hereditary priest caste have the same genetic markers as Jews descended from the Jewish hereditary priest caste, and that yes, in all probability, the Lemba were descended from Jews.

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lizarfau.livejournal.com

I'm still a UK citizen, so I'm still entitled to vote. However, I have chosen not to (just as I do at British elections).

However, I am ENGLISH. Not British.

And I'd like to see independence for England. ;)

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In those questions, I'd probably tick British; a mongrel identity suits me quite well. I acquired UK citizenship having lived here for long enough, originally being a Jerseyman by birth (which led to some interesting discussions when having to declare 'country of birth' for various US officials). My dad's side of the family were a mix of Scots transplanted to the south coast of England in the nineteenth century, and old south-coast stock; my mum's family fled central Europe in the inter-War period and were a thoroughgoing mix of central European nationalities.

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You know, I never thought of that, but as the Channel Islands aren't British, or even, really part of the UK (and have their own relationship with the EC), it must be very confusing for the rest of the world.

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It's confusing enough to people in the UK sometimes! It isn't helped by the fact that the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man, are often counted as part of the British Isles even though they aren't geographically such. My six-year-old daughter is thoroughly confused by my attempts to explain the various terms to her. I am perhaps hampered by my aversion to describing Wales and Northern Ireland as countries.

When I applied for my US Social Security Number (needed for every official purpose over there), the lady in the office was fascinated by the distinctions. We were pleasantly surprised when "Jersey" came up on her computer as a possible Country Of Birth.

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wellinghall.livejournal.com

Surely the Isle of Man is geographically part of the British Isles?

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Yes, you're quite right. You see, I confused myself!

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Is it any wonder that furriners don't understand all this, when we who live here are so often confused? :-) When we were in Mudeford, in Dorset, there were lots of small boat operators offering day trips to the Isle of Wight. From the fact that they all prominently stated that no passport was required, I can only imagine that people frequently assumed otherwise. I doubt there are hordes of foreign tourists in Mudeford, so it's probably mostly British people making this mistake.

Although the Isles of Man and Wight are classed along with Calais in Kingmaker, as isolated places that can't even be reached by news of peasant revolts. :-)

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When I was at school, there was a geography teacher who, on every single school trip that went into England, came around the bus asking to see the pupils' passports. Every single trip. Of course nobody ever fell for it, because the very same teacher used to tell us the story in lessons at every opportunity of the one time one of his pupils did fall for it.

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squonk79.livejournal.com

I say English, because i'm not Scottish or Welsh as far as i know!

And i've always had a horrible feeling that Britain really is just England plus two countries we bullied into it.

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When I was young, the difference betwen English and British was drilled into me very hard. My Dad gets quite cross when English people use "British" when they actually mean "English," and vice versa - a mistake that I doubt many Scottish or Welsh people make. I once spent a good while attempting to explain to some people at work why a book on Henry VIII was English history and therefore classed under 942, whereas a book on the reign of Queen Victoria was British history and classed as 941. They couldn't understand the difference.

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I am also thoroughly confused as to when Britain/British does or doesn't include Northern Ireland. It depends entirely on context, it seems.

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Indeed. I dithered for a while about whether to include "Irish" in my poll. I'd initially excluded it, since I thought that it was "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland," which implies that Northern Ireland isn't part of Britain. And then there is of course all the politics involved, by which some people in Northern Ireland would doubtless proudly declare themselves to be British, whereas others would furiously deny it. I decided to evade the issue by confining myself to England, Scotland and Wales, and hope that no-one shouted at me for missing out Northern Ireland.

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Great Britain is the main island, the British Isles includes Ireland and all the smaller island, geographically speaking. Northern Ireland is therefore part of the British Isles (as is the Republic!) but not of Great Britain.

Edit: and British, as a Nationality, includes people who are citizens of the dependencies, though not the Commonwealth. That is why the people of Gibraltar talk about 'remaining British'.

Edited Date: 2010-08-27 11:07 am (UTC)

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Yes, that's my understanding. The United Kingdom of Great Britain was formed by the Acts of Union of 1707, but Ireland was kept subordinate. After the Act of Union with Ireland in 1800, the combined kingdom was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. And then of course most of the Irish buggered off in 1922, leaving the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I have argued at work that JOLF UK should actually call itself JOLF GB since the Belfast office is actually part of the Irish firm. Nobody agreed with me.

There was never an equivalent 'Act of Union' (i.e. passed in both parliaments) with Wales since Wales was simply conquered by England. Welsh law still applied for some time after the conquest until Henry VIII formally annexed Wales. Someone who was Welsh was (at least constitutionally) English since Wales was part of England. This was clarified by the Wales and berwick Act of 1746 which made it clear that 'England' included Wales (and also Berwick-upon-Tweed). The constitutional status of Wales has been muddied by recent developments like the Welsh Assembly.

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Thanks - I wasn't as clear on the Welsh bit as I suppose I should be.

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I wonder if the Northern Irish get upset about the fact that the UK's Olympic Team is called "Team GB" rather than "Team UK"? And why is that, anyway?

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Talking of Berwick, I noticed when we were there a few months ago that although it's in England, its football team plays in the Scottish league, and that the regiment that used to be based there was a Scottish one. So Wales isn't the only complicated place around. ;-)

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Re your edit: Interesting. I don't think that many Channel Islanders would self-identify as British, even though they definitely have British Nationality!

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If you think that's complicated, don't try to get into the question of whether Cornwall is part of England or not.

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