How will you celebrate British Day?

The fact that this would mean an extra four bank holidays had no bearing at all on this thinking, oh no, not at all.

http://www.agonybooth.com/hudson_hawk/hudson_hawk_056.jpg

http://www.unison.ie/images_papers/news/41/11790/pictures/326460.jpg

Despite the response the last time I started a thread about "English" patriotism, this makes me deeply, deeply nervous. Perhaps it was his comments about "the British version of the Fourth of July" because I always found the Fourth of July one of the more awful things about the US.

Also, why Remembrance Day? What has that day to do with Britain? If they *insist* on doing it, why not pick a day that has more to do with something we would be better celebrating? Something more... well, British. The Anniversary of the Battle of Hastings? The signing of the Magna Carta? The Act of Union with Scotland?

Plenty of non-white Britons feel this way.

But anyway, I do actually think "British Day" is a stupid idea and that the British, en masse, will just not go for it. And even if it's trying to reclaim nationalism back from yobs and bigots, those are the only people who will end up celebrating it. Sigh.

Plenty of non-white Britons feel this way.

Or maybe they feel ethnicity first, British second. My lot are relatively recent immigrants (c.100 years) and that's how I feel sometimes. It changes daily I guess. But we must Pin It Down for survey and census and database cos otherwise the country will collapse.

Magna carta is English though xpost

My family are Scots, but they were colonials, and spent so long administering Africa, India, Singapore, that they, instead of going "native" (though doubtless, bits did rub off on us) they responded by becoming "more British than that British".

I was born in England - does that make me English? But raised, in another country, by a family who were still clinging onto their (colonial) British identity. So yes, I feel more "British" than I feel English or American or certainly Scottish. But it is an identity that was formed in opposition to other cultures, rather than an positive identity.

My family are Scots, but they were colonials, and spent so long administering Africa, India, Singapore, that, instead of going "native" (though doubtless, bits did rub off on us) they responded by becoming "more British than theBritish".

Well, yes, that's why I thought it would be more appropriate to celebrate some political gain like the Magna Carta. (Yes, I know that's only English, but something like that.)

This construction implies that "ethnicity" is solely something to do with the non-British aspects of one's identity. Britishness is an ethnicity as well as a nationality, or it can be if that's the way you feel about yourself.

As for Britishness - I'm definitely English first. Britain doesn't actually mean anything at all to me, at least so far as how I feel towards it. We might as well have an EU Day.

x-post

If ethnicity is anything to do with race, then very few people in Britain, and least of all in England, can point to any meaningful, distinct ethnic roots; we're such a mixture. Which is a good thing, imo.

(I think someone's already said all that, sorry)

If you're looking for something, Britishness is about NOT having an identity - people with loads of different backgrounds/ethnicities/cultures can be called British. This is a good thing, and I suppose worth celebrating. I think we can celebrate it once most people accept that it's a good thing - maybe?

Putting it on Rememberance Day would be a rubbish idea, tho.

I don't think ethnicity is about race. It's about a shared cultural space, taking in the way people eat, work, speak, marry, their music, their TV, the whole shebang. On that definition, then the Scots and the English share a hell of a lot, and to a large degree inhabit a common cultural space that is different to that of the French, Germans, etc.

I will celebrate by organising a fleet of criminals to be repatriated to the mother country via sailboat voyage.

Plenty of nations came about through "political constructs". Are you going to say no Italians are allowed to feel Italian, no Belgians are allowed to feel Belgian, just because their country boundaries are relatively recent and politically constructed? Not everyone has to feel that way, most don't, but you can't go around denying people's rights to self-definining their ethnicity. If someone feels both black and British then that's what their ethnicity is. You can't say: "No, you must feel black and *English*" or "No, you must feel black ethnically - British is only your nationality".

eth·nic
1. Of or relating to a sizable group of people sharing a common and distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage.

You really don't think people on this island share a common and distinctive heritage?

Some of the talk here comes close to conflating ethnicity with race, and an unrealistically narrow concept of race, at that.

(This has been floating up hugely in therapy, I didn't think it made a difference, but it's at the core of a lot of my sense of alienation.)

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I'm Jewish, some of my ancestors fled here from pogroms, my maternal grandmother fled Germany in 1938 I think (just in time, anyway – she was born in London but lived in Frankfurt) and lots of bits of the family were killed – so I was brought up in an environment where people didn't feel entirely safe. However remote the possibility of British society persecuting Jews seems, it was equally remote in pre-Nazi Germany and seemed not impossible in pre-war Britain. I'm very happy to live here and I know I'm lucky to be in a relatively open democratic society, but my parents and grandparents always had their bags packed in readiness, figuratively, and it rubbed off a little on to me.

Most Italians still feel very strongly Piedmontese, Sicilian, Venetian, Abruzzese etc, and consider their Italianness to often be a negative construct (northerners abhorring the financial drain that is the south, southerners abhorring the corrupt, superior north etc), because of the strength of regional identity in a country that was only united 140 years ago.

The Welsh have been sulking about it for well over 700 years now, though, so maybe it shouldn't be the basis of a national celebration?

I don't feel very Indian at all. I've hardly been there, and I'm not involved with any kind of Parsee community over here. Neither is my dad. I want to go there with him. I do feel that pull. I'm pleased I'm half-Parsee (I'm saying that rather than Indian, I guess cause I think thats how the Parsees more often define themselves). I like how distinctive it makes me. Yes, in a way I feel proud. It's always funny feeling proud for things that you didn't have any role in bringing about, but yes, I do.

I primarily think of myself as English, but living in Scotland I hardly feel like it's a very different culture, so yes I'm British almost as much, though there's something a bit ugly about the word. Makes me think of "Britpop" or Americans and Aussies saying "a Brit" and . A bit uncouth. And I feel like a Londoner. And yes, sometimes I think there's something in me that understands Indian mannerisms and stuff. Maybe I'm imagining it, or maybe it's from watching my grandmother when small, or my dad do Indian acting or playing about with doing routines to amuse us.

Parsees originally come from Persia, and I did feel a swell of pride recently when reading the British Museum director talk about how noble the Persian empire was. I'll take anything.

I can't help but wonder if there isn't some morose 'It's grim down south'-esque meme that's been played out in Italy over the years the same way it has here (but in reverse).

This is a crosspost but I can't remember what to...

I'm with Henry on the "more Bank Holidays = good" thing though.

I still don't understand what definition of ethnicity you're using that precludes Britishness being one. I'll accept that Englishness is a more commonly adopted one, but I don't see the "technical" distinction. There are more things that unite Britons culturally than divide them.

Yes, I know. But the word is "most". Some Italians are happy to consider themselves Italian and that's OK. That's my point. Kate seemed to be saying that just because most people don't feel a certain way, no one can.

i suppose it was intended in a 'germans are soooo efficient' way.

It does, though, because "Britain" (unlike "Great Britain") is the official abbreviation for "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".

eth·nic
1. Of or relating to a sizable group of people sharing a common and distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage.

Racial? Nope, Without even going into more recent immigrants, it's a mixed bag of Celtic, Saxon, and Scandinavian

National? Nope, at least 4 distinct nationalities.

Religious? Oh, you've got to be kidding me.

Linguistic? That's about it. And English (not British, note) is based on a ... oh, what's the word? Not a Pidgin, but a mixture of two languages anyway. Not to mention the growing numbers of Welsh, Scots, Cornish, etc. who are trying to reclaim their own particular tongues.

Cultural? Now that's an even more nebulous concept than ethnicity.

Someone was saying that an Englishman and a Scot had more in common than a Texan and someone from Maine... actually 1) I'm not sure that's true, and 2) Texans identify themselves as Texans first, and Americans second, most of the time - they were the only state to have ever been a separate country, and have never quite forgotten it.

Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say with all that. I just dislike the idea of this "British" identity being stamped on us from above as some kind of political exercise. *Especially* with this whole "Fourth of July" thing used as a blueprint. The Fourth of July, apart from the BBQs, mostly makes me want to VOMIT.

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I didn't think it was an official abbreviation, Alba, so much as a mistaken conflation of the two entities.

That's why it's the United Kingdom of Great Britain *AND* Northern Ireland.

Racial? Nope (for the same reasons you gave)

National? Nope. Fill out visa forms immigration and you're BRITISH not ENGLISH

Religious? Nope (for the same reasons you gave)

Linguistic? Plenty of non-English speakers

Cultural?

Now that's an even more nebulous concept than ethnicity.

The most important one though, I'd say.

The British Isles is a geographical term that does include all of Ireland.

uk = that plus n. ireland (and maybe isle of man?)

british isles = plus s. ireland

britain = up for debate.

"Britain" as a geographical entity does not include Northern Ireland (though "the British Isles" does) - though the United Kingdom does.

So which of these geographical or political entities are we referring to when we say "British"?

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Yeah, I think we can all agree on the key point here, which is that Gordon Brown was talking shite.

I agree. If you're British you just KNOW that you're better than the Americans, French etc. You don't need some special day to convince yourself of the fact.

Part of my idea of Britishness involves aversion to the idea of vulgarly waving one's flag for a national day. It's just not... cricket.

Well, yes, OTM.

i shd really know this shit.

maybe it is if you're an english. as a welsh living in england i feel way more british than welsh. my mum is an english though, which may have something to do with it i guess.

if they're gonna give us another bank holiday, please bring it on. also please do it sometime in mid-to-late september, perhaps the third monday? so it's still warm enough to go in the sea. doing it on remembrance day is a completely stupid idea - remembrance day is not about celebrating, it's about remembering something awful in an effort to make sure it doesn't happen again. you don't want boors charging around drunk in two-foot-tall furry hats on a day like that, which is inevitably what would happen.

I rather like the term "the Atlantic Archipelago". It doesn't get used much.

Archaeologists, particularly Iron Age ones, will often use "insular" as an alternative to "British" that also includes all of Ireland.

Anyway, how can they use Islands of the North Atlantic, because surely that would include also the Faroe Islands and perhaps even Iceland! (Though maybe Iceland would rather be British than Scandinavian?) ;-)

At least "Islands of the North Atlantic" isn't as vague as "Insular", which is now the standard term in British and Irish archaeology.

And the right to sentence people to death, send them the case to the UK and have it commuted to life, yeah?

(when the original legalisation law was passed, Northern Ireland still had its own parliament and government)

xpost: Sorry, Kate. I know we did. I am an incorrigible pedant, though.

Actually, if it doesn't even include all the bitty islands around Britain, the UK is a bit rubbish, isn't it?

There are plenty of little bitty islands that *are* included - the Scillies, Orkney, Shetland, the Flannan Isles, North Rona, Sula Sgeir...

xpost: Nah, St Helena is still there. I think it was Tristan da Cunha that was evacuated in the 60s due to an eruption, but most of the residents moved back after a while.

(Sorry, I found St. Helena on my big World Map shower curtain the other day, and was surprised by how far away it, was, but I guess they were taking no chances with old Boney, eh? Where was Elba, anyway?)

The CIA Factbook lists "dependent areas" of the UK as:

Anguilla, Bermuda, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man, Montserrat, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena & Ascension, South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands, Turks & Caicos Islands .

Elba's in the Med, a short sail from Tuscany.

Only a few hundred metres from the coast of Italy at that.

Tristan de Cunha, apparently.

http://users.erols.com/jcalder/SUPERLATIVESV2.html

"Located 3600 km (2,237 statute miles) west of continental Chile and 2075 km (1290 statute miles) east of Pitcairn Island, it is the most isolated inhabited island in the world."

I know this because there was an article in the current issue of BEER, the official newspaper of the Campaign for Real Ale [is not joke].

xpost: Bah. Maybe not.