Wow. Linda Grant, on BBC radio, speaks for a WHOLE city - an English one at that.Linda apparently writes things about such topics "as the clothes on our backs" (hope the shoe on her foot isn't too cumbersome if she makes a habit of sticking her foot in her gob in this manner) and is apparently the daughter of immigrants.
"I don't really think of my self as being English, because my parents were immigrants. I mean, I was born in England but my father wasn't born in England, and we didn't behave as if we were English."
Is it just me, or is there a whole class of incomers here (and they underline their newness constantly and keep themselves rigidly separate from those professing to be English) which, added to the nauseating prattle of longer established English citizens and the Scottish Raj makes the situation in England rather thornier than it might be?
Whilst Scotland and Wales try to overcome those who will cry "Celtic" and produce modern, inclusive, civic national identities, Englishness is still submerged in the Union vaults for reasons suiting the British project. Of course, many people in England are not terribly aware of what Englishness means, it's been gone for so long.
But do the likes of Linda Grant have to add their two penn'orths? We are, after all, told that we need to exercise sensitivity whilst dealing with people of different ethnicities. Does this mean that people like Linda, who choose to disown their own right to Englishness, should go around making sweeping statements or acting as though Englishness is a faintly bad smell under the nose? Doesn't she understand the need not to go around trampling on other people?
-
I'm absolutely 100% English.
-
My background is half-Scots with a dash of German. That's nothing to do with how I feel about my country of birth.
-
I find Linda Grant's attitude highly offensive.
Please engage brain THEN open mouth in future.
The Cross of St George blog has more details here. Scroll down to "Roots Broadcast on Mainstream Radio".
Linda Grant immediately tags those who consider themselves English as being right-wing fascists. She's a bigot of the first order - we must respect her ethnicity, she thinks ours is contemptible. She'll happily put you down as being absolutely hateful as soon as you say you are English. That's the type of person she is. She's a racist.
ReplyDeleteI think that a lot of people who are the children of immigrants think that they aren't English until they actually go to their parents' homeland. I remember that during a holiday in Ireland as a child, a boy asked me if I was from England - a concept I had not considered as I'd not been out of the country before.
ReplyDeleteOne of the problems is the submergence of Englishness under Britishness.
ReplyDeleteBut I do not think that citizens of England should HAVE to feel English. I like the freedom we have here. It's the denigration of Englishness I find difficult.
Linda refers to 'the way it has been co-opted by the far right' - which, a few years ago, was what was said about Britishness. Now Gordon Brown wants us all to feel British because it suits the British project and we must not feel English because we might just start to smell a rat in the devolution wood pile.
Englishness has NOT been "co-opted by the far right". That's simply an image the Government wish to project and I resent my national identity being presented in this way by Linda or anyone else.
It is true the BNP have tried to make hay with the Government's unfair devolution settlement, but they remain a British unionist party. Last time I heard, their leader was Welsh.
Even if the BNP were not British (and despite this, Gordon Brown still touts British as being wonderful), it is not right to consign a whole national identity to the right wing dumper bin and consign those who profess to be that nationality to a life of hostility and ridicule.
It's time these anti-English generalisations and bigotry stopped.
If we start from the premise that everybody deserves equal respect, regardless of colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation or nationality, then the scapegoating and demonisation of Englishness by so-called liberal types seems quite shocking.
ReplyDeleteAs to Englishness being sidelined, read my essay on "What England means to em" - http://whatenglandmeanstome.co.uk/?p=79
ReplyDeleteIt is a bit odd that Brown's going on about "British jobs for British workers", "Britishness", etc. whilst denouncing the BNP.
It's wrong to stereotype nationalities and it's wrong to imply that to be English is to be some kind of fascist. I am a left-winger and quite happy being English. Better a Little England than the bigotted Britain of the BNP and Gordon Brown.