Otras implicancias o efectos

Discussing white safety and who can be deemed English or British requires clarification of what these terms mean. Historically, the English have found it difficult to engage with their Englishness, mainly because there are more than one constructions of England to engage with: Anglo-British England, Little England, English England and Cosmopolitan England (Bryant, 2003). Bryant

(ibid.: 398) continues that the English have found it easier to identify with the Britishness and in the process ‘have denied themselves many of the signs of Englishness one might otherwise have expected. Very many firms, state organisations and voluntary associations have been called British, national or, […] royal’. Kumar (2000) gives a detailed description as to why the English have always suffered with their national identity. As he points out the English have always remained an enigma, both to themselves and the outsiders. ‘One of the reasons for the fog that surrounds this question is the persistent denial that there is such thing as ‘English nationalism’. Other nations have nationalism; the English, it has been conventional to say, have patriotism’ (ibid.: 576). However, Kumar suggests that the very denial of English nationalism, speaks of its actual existence. Despite the English congratulating themselves for not being afflicted by this terrible pathology, it can be argued that they have what Kumar describes as ‘imperial nationalism’; which carries the stamp of the imperial past even when the empire has gone. A reason for this, claims Kumar, is that:

The English, as the wealthiest, most numerous, and most powerful group within the United Kingdom, were aware of the need to restrain their claims and to mute assertions of ethnic identity, among themselves no less than among other ethnicities in the Kingdom. […] If you are clearly in charge, you do not need to beat the drum or blow the bugle too loudly. To do so in fact would be to threaten the very basis of that commanding position, by reminding other groups of their inferiority and perhaps provoking them to do something about it.’ (ibid.: 589- 90).

McCrone (2002: 313) echoes that by saying that the idea of being English is ‘something which is often assumed and rarely discussed as ‘there is the fear that if it is highlighted too much it might disrupt the fragile balance between the

different territories in the area’.

Linda Colley in her seminal work on the British (2003) suggests that the British forged a nation above all by war with the French. She argues that Britons from Wales, Scotland or England had to unite themselves collectively against the hostile Other; having Protestantism at the epicentre of their identity. This collective identity has a contingent character, based on social and territorial boundaries. Therefore, this distinction from the Other was also against the colonial people they conquered, those people ‘manifestly alien in terms of culture, religion and colour (Colley, 2003: 5). Colley concludes that people decide who they are by reference to who they are not: ‘This was how it was with the British after 1707. They came to define themselves as a single people not because of any political or cultural consensus at home, but rather in reaction to the Other beyond their shores’ (ibid.: 6). Colley very accurately predicted how difficult the British have found being associated with the federal nature of the European Union, and as such, distinct identifications with the English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish would ensure; something which has been observed with the vote for leaving the EU and the subsequent discussions of devolution. Colls (2002) extends this argument by saying that avoiding big land wars, the invincibility of the navy and the minor regards for race claims of Celts, gave the English a sense of a composite Anglo-Saxon identity, primarily identified by whiteness.

The significance of the terms ‘British’ and ‘English’ have also been highly contested. As Tyler (2012: 99) suggests ‘This slippage in language between ‘English’ to describe food produced in the countryside, and ‘British’ mobilised to signify the national appeal of curry, illustrates the racially inclusive constitution of the idea of Britishness within English vernacular – but the racially exclusive, bounded and Whitened constitution of Englishness’. As Sherwood (2013) discusses divisions of Britishness/Englishness hold everlasting interest and debate. For example, the 2012 London Olympics raised the question of ‘plastic’ Britishness, for those not born in the country. However, as Sherwood notes the indistinct definitions of the two words start from a long time ago.

‘Englishness was a nineteenth-century term and a continuing nineteenth-century concern. […] many [commentators] emulate Nassau Senior by ‘using the word England as a concise appellation for the nation inhabiting the British islands’ (ibid.: 4). It was during the times of the British Empire where the national identity had come to be formed vis-à-vis the Imperial Other. It was, at the time, part of the national identity to be considered a coloniser (ibid.). Even though such identifications are not used in the national rhetoric, it can be argued that they play a role in how they shape ideas of nationhood: both through attempts to distance the national identity of the atrocities which can be associated with colonisers but also with attempts to establish a different identity after decades of such an identification. With the expansion of the Empire over a fifth of the world, it was London (in England) which was the epicentre of this vast landscape, which probably led to Englishness being used almost interchangeably with Britishness. Sherwood continues that the current debate on Englishness probably began with the essays on the English written by George Orwell, around the time of the Second World War, such as England, your England and The Lion and Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius. These discussions carried on to the 1980s and 1990s with the ‘apparently relentless globalizing, Americanizing or Europeanizing forces’ (Mandler in Sherwood ibid.: 5).

As Condor et al. (2006: 125) suggest ‘The construct of Britishness, whether in its imperial or domestic guise, has long been associated with celebratory accounts of British ‘unity in diversity’, which was treated as morally and politically superior to the cultural or racial essentialisms understood to characterize ‘Continental’ forms of nationalism’. Clark comments on the positive aspects of this fluidity, since the pattern of identification in the British Isles showcased the

resilience of a diverse and plural system of identities, rather than the rigidity but final shattering of a unitary one. This produced a polity with strengths and weaknesses: although it could not mobilize an

ethnically homogeneous 'people', it had the strength of accommodating regional differences in a system which imposed on England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales no novel, abstract formula (2000: 275).

This also meant that people expressed a sense of patriotism through civic duty and not as an attachment to a cultural, ethnic, and religious unity of people (Condor, 2000). National identity, as a result, came to be expressed through cultural texts like national newspapers or national television or radio. In their totality, however, there has been a tendency to avoid self-categorisation with any particular national identity (ibid.). This also meant that Englishness required a historical pedigree and indigeneity, whereas Britishness did not (Connor 2006). This has led to a general concern with showing a prejudiced ‘interested’ perspective which might be associated with chauvinistic nationalism.

Cohen (1995) discusses that the opacity of who is British is showcased through the various Acts that have been passed over the years, and the numerous nationality statuses they have represented. Cohen continues that ‘the boundaries of ‘British nationality, identity and citizenship are only very imprecisely drawn and understood’ and very often defined by elite popular understandings (ibid.: 1). This complex national and social identity, then, needs to be redefined continuously through interactions with what it is not. However, as Cohen (ibid.) suggests ‘these frontiers can be crossed at several points of access and linkage, but they also may constitute a formidable barrier to integration and the development of a pluralist society. The more open the frontier, the higher the levels of tolerance and association, the more closed the higher the levels of xenophobia’. This can also be seen through whose linguistic ability is valourised by the state and the requirements of who might be considered truly integrated – integration habitually taken as more achievable by those who can speak English (Macedo & Bartolomé 2014).

The discourse around British Values might at times resemble what Edward Said termed ‘Orientalism’. The Middle East and China were described as a big lump of people and cultures, who deep down wanted to be like the West, which gave the bodies there an indistinguishable character. For them to be understood by the West they needed to adopt the values of the West: democracy, capitalism and secularism or Christianity (Lary 2006). The backwardness could only be rectified with Western values being given to them. This reasoning is not new – empires were built on the assumption that barbarians (those foreign sounding and looking Others) needed to be civilised. Through the same assumption, the British Empire was built and sustained for so long. The same rhetoric is given to the incorporation of British Values in the teaching at schools and citizenship tests that migrants are required to take in order to be accepted in the mainstream culture. The implication is that ‘their’ culture is not good enough; it leads to extremism and other behaviours which undermine the well- being of the ‘native’ people. It could be argued that this notion that a culture is more valuable than others is not only relevant to those from other countries or cultures, but can also apply to people within, as for example, the urban poor who have come to occupy positions of lesser value based on their raced and classed identities, with both concepts being discussed below.