Introduction
If you are English, you’ve been airbrushed. It’s a polite form of erasure. The UK governments don’t know how many of you there are, where you live, or what you want. This is true for the governments in Westmonster, Holyrood and Cardiff.
I believe it stems from the problems associated with Britishness and the status of immigrant populations. The United Kingdom was created by act parliament, namely the 1801 Act of Union. For immigrants or descendant of immigrants, being British means that you are a citizen of that union, but not of any of its constituent parts, namely England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. ‘British’ is an entirely political identity, and for the English the idea of being British subsumed their national identity. That was not the case for the Scots, Irish or Welsh, but there were so many English that these minorities were in danger of being subsumed themselves.
This worked well for a while, but then mass immigration happened and British citizenship was granted to millions of people who were not Scots, Welsh, Irish or English. Where do most of these new non-native British British citizens live? Why in England of course. These new British citizens needed to feel at home, and might feel uncomfortable living in someone else’s homeland (England), so society played down the idea that the English were a people and played up the idea that England was a place, a place in fact for anyone.
Many people, who are pro-immigration, would deny the existence of the English as a people, and promote the idea that anyone can become English, by living in England or being born in England. The English are in fact an ethnic group and you don’t acquire your ethnicity through any geographic process. Being born in China won’t make you Chinese, and if you subsequently move to Africa, you don’t become black as a consequence either.
The descendants of immigrants will acquire the ethnicity of their adopted countries through a process of assimilation and intermarriage. That takes generations.
What is an Ethnic group
An ethnic group is one which group members have or share most, if not all, of the following; a common language, a shared ancestry and a homeland, a distinct diet, often a religion, and which has its own culture, laws and customs. Let’s look at those then.
The English
Language – that’s easy, it’s English with an English accent
Ancestry -We are of mixed Celtic and Germanic stock. The Celts were from the island of Britain and our Germanic ancestors came from a small contiguous area straddling Denmark (Angles and Jutes), northwest Germany (Saxons) and the northern part of the Netherlands.
Homeland – our homeland is England, a country created from the integration of our Germanic/Celtic ancestors and the mergers of seven Anglo Saxon kingdoms. England as a kingdom was created as such by King Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great, in the 10th century.
Diet – roast dinners, fish and chips, dunking biscuits, soft boiled and scrambled eggs, tea drinking, Full English Breakfasts, beer, cider etc
Religion – Christian, even if only culturally so, and mostly Protestant
Laws – English Common Law, still running after a thousand years, Parliament
Culture – Music, monarchy, country pursuits, pubs, sport (football, rugby and cricket), stately homes and the countryside, apologising, queueing and so on.
The DNA record
There have been various studies made of the make-up of the English DNA. It should be pointed out that the Celts and Saxons had a common ancestor too, and that the two groups were only separated by a few thousand years of history. DNA-wise we’re quite alike. The studies show that we are mixed entirely with Celtic DNS dominating slightly in the West and South West and the east being more Germanic. That means that as a people, we are unique to this island. We don’t come from somewhere else, and our nation was created here.
Office for National Statistics
It will be noted that the Office for National Statistics counts population numbers, but goes some length in order to avoid mentioning the English. It sees “White British” as an ethnic group, and the English, Scots, Irish, Welsh, and gypsies are all subsets of that group. I’m not sure that’s how we see ourselves.
The ONS doesn’t seem very keen on collecting or publishing data on the English. Bing’s AI Co Pilot isn’t too ken on the question either:
The ONS SAYS “In 2021, the “White: English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British” ethnic group remained the largest ethnic group, accounting for 74.4% (44.4 million) of the overall population in England and Wales. “ Chat GPT4 estimated that 85% of that 74% were actually English. That takes the English down to around 62% of the population of England. We’ll be an “oppressive” ethnic minority in about ten years at this pace. Chat GPT 4 says a “few decades”. No wonder they don’t want to talk about it.
Is Scotland Institutionally Racist?
The largest ethnic minority in Scotland are the English. It’s a little known fact, because the Jocks are trying to hide us, and airbrush us out. The last Scottish census for example records its Asian and Polish minorities, but not the English. The word “English” is the leper of the lexicon as far as Scottish government statisticians are concerned. It grudgingly concedes that 10% of its population was born in England, but can’t bring itself to classify them as English. Look below. No English:
Nativism
Nativism is the idea that a country belongs to the natives, rather than to people who might like to live or work there. Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, talks disparagingly of nativism, and has even claimed that London was built by immigrants. If only he were to speak so highly of the English!
https://x.com/SadiqKhan/status/1227615796421111808
In June 2023 London’s mayor called for more immigration into England:
As the English population goes into steady decline, Khan calls for more immigration to replace them. He sees no need for the English to be part of his diversity mix. Remember this from August 2023:
The English aren’t real Londoners, not in his London anyway.
They don’t like us
It’s not just the flag of St George they don’t like, but our culture too. They call us nativists and Gammons, Little Englanders, White Supremacists and other words to hide the one simple fact, that they are prejudiced against the English and all that we stand for. This prejudice is called ‘Anglophobia’.
“Anglophobia Is Rooted In Racism And Is A Type Of Racism That Targets Expressions Of Englishness Or Perceived Englishness.”
The proposed definition of Anglophobia can be illustrated by a range of guidelines and examples rather than a list of essential features, which we feel would confine a prescriptiveness to its understanding to the detriment of contextual and fluid factors which continue to inform and shape manifestations of Anglophobia.
Contemporary examples of Anglophobia in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in encounters between religions and non-religions in the public sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:
Calling for, aiding, instigating or justifying the killing or harming of English people in the name of a racist/ fascist/nationalist ideology, or an extremist view of religion.
• Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about English people as such, or of the English as a collective group, such as, especially but not exclusively, conspiracies about English dominance in politics, government or other societal institutions; the myth of English identity having a unique propensity for imperialism or racism, and claims of a demographic ‘threat’ posed by the English or of an ‘English dominance’.
• Accusing the English as a group, or as individuals of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single English person or group of English individuals, or even for acts committed by non-English.
• Accusing the English as a group, or English speaking states, of inventing or exaggerating Anglophobia, ethnic cleansing or genocide perpetrated against the English.
• Denying English populations the right to self determination e.g., by having a capital that’s not English
• Applying double standards by requiring of English behaviours that are not expected or demanded of any other groups in society, eg making English people apologise for the actions of American policemen
• Using the symbols and images associated with classic Anglophobia (e.g. English people being Gammons, claims of White Privilege, or subjugating minority groups under their rule) to characterize the English as being ‘racists’, inherently violent or incapable of living harmoniously in plural societies.
Blaming English people for the existence of slavery, and demanding that they apologise for it.
History
I thought I’d bore you with a minority opinion as to why we’re called the English. Firstly you will note that it’s pronounced ‘ing’ and not ‘eng’or ‘ang’, and I’ll tell you why.
At the time of the Romans the Ingaevones were a Germanic cultural group living in the Northern Germania along the North Sea coast in the areas of Jutland, Holstein, and Frisia in classical antiquity. Tribes in this area included the Angles, Frisii, Saxons, and Jutes.
Tacitus recorded the inhabitants of Germania, noting that they comprised three groups or supertribes, known as the Ingaevones (or Ingvaeones, according to Pliny), Herminones, and Istvaeones. According to Pliny, the Ingaevones were in the north, and they included the Cimbri, Teutoni, Saxoni, Angli, and Chauci.
Stripped of its Latin grammatical endings, they become the Ingwine, “friends of Ing” familiar from Beowulf, where the Danish king Hrothgar is “Lord of the Ingwine”. The “Inglings” were the sons of Ing. Ing also appears in the set of verses composed about the 9th century and printed under the title The Old English Rune Poem in 1705.
On the continent they formed part of the confederacy known as the ‘friends of Ing’, and in the new lands they migrated to in the 5th and 6th centuries.
The Frisii are important to us because modern day Frisian as spoken in north west Germany and in northern Netherlands is closer to English than either German, Dutch or Danish. A few years ago Eddie Izzard travelled to Frisia to buy a cow, speaking only in Old English, He and the Frisian farmer, who spoke no English at all, were though able to understand each other enough to complete the transaction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeC1yAaWG34
The Frisian word for ‘England’ is ‘Ingelân’. So you can see where this is going. We’re not named after the Angles, but the Ingles.
