2026-10-09
In multicultural Britain, what it means to be English, British, Scottish, or Welsh (or anything else) is up for interpretation.
As a native Englishman with a native patronymic surname, I am conflicted as to neither my nationality nor my ethnicity nor my cultural background, so the argument can rage around me and I look on somewhat bemusedly as various people take on sundry contradictory positions by arguing from different perspectives.
We have over centuries (or so our historians tell us) been invaded by or otherwise welcomed in people from overseas who made their home here, and as there were probably very very few people here during the last ice age, it's a racing certainty that we nearly all came from overseas at some time in the past - so it's really question of how long ago did our ancestors arrive?
But not just that. That will probably determine our ethnicity (predominantly white Caucasian) but not our nationality ("Passport please!") nor cultural background, and these can all be different. So English ethnicity may differ from British nationality and likewise from cultural background (especially if we were brought up in some far-flung outpost of Empire).
We just need to define which noun it is to which we are applying the adjective "English". Is that so hard to agree on?!
The primary source of conflict here is cultural backgrounds that are incompatible rather than just different. Plenty of people of different cultural backgrounds have come here and live in harmony with everybody because they like it here and neither want nor need to upset the established population. It's much more profitable for all concerned to work together to achieve matters of common concern than it is to insist that their differences are more important than ours.
Still, it has to be noted that there is, now obviously, a ruling class that seeks to "divide and rule" - to magnify our differences so that we spend our time arguing about those differences rather than holding our ruling class to account for their misrule.
And if we don't have such significant differences already, then they are not above inventing some ... hence Left vs Right, Communist vs Fascist, plucky Ukrainians vs dastardly Russians, Climate Catastrophe, Fake Pandemics, etc.
(You may note some more 'divide and rule' tactics in the linked video ... )
So for balance we present two contrasting arguments about what to do - please follow the links above to check them out.
