Can English people explain how they feel about this?

[Green215]

As an English person, do you hold resentment towards any country based on historical grievances like war, invasion, famine, colonialism etc? If so, which; if not, why?

The reason I ask is because I’ve always found it odd how the English tend to be the only people in the world who do not hold such grievances.

Irish people are always complaining about British colonialism; many Scots and Welsh likewise complain about England on a historical basis; Greeks and Turks complain about one another; Africans, Indians, Arabs etc complain about European colonialism and American invasions; China complains about Japanese atrocities and vice versa; Russia complains about German atrocities; post-Soviet states complain about Russian occupation; France and Germany complain about one another; America often complains about the Revolution; Canada complains about the War of 1812; Mexico and Latin American countries and Caribbean countries complain about American invasions or interference or colonialism; some Australians resent British rule etc.

But, rarely do English people demand reparations or sing “rebel songs” or complain about historical grievances. Why?

I could understand if maybe some English people resented Germany due to the two world balls or resented America for things like the Suez crisis and the funding of the IRA. And truth be told, I have come across some English people that are like that. But, they are very few compared to the other peoples I described.

I understand that this is sort of an academic question, but I wanted to come on this forum to ask ordinary English people how they felt and I hope you can give some honest answers rather than sarcastic responses or not answering the question properly.

Are you Scottish? Did you get to vote whether we become independent under one set of criteria, only for that criteria to change?

Do you think the English should be able to vote on becoming independent from Scotland?

Yes, of course, if they want to becone independent we'd welcome it.

And if more English people vote to be unified with Scotland than Scottish people vote to be independent what happens then?

The point is that we don’t always get to vote on things that impact our lives. Sometimes things change after we’ve voted.

We can’t just keep repeating the Scottish referendum every five or ten years.

This is an inflammatory and unhelpful thing to say. But there may be a kernel of truth underlying it. I would note the following population figures:
NI: approx 1.928m
Wales: approx 3.2m
Scotland: approx 5.6m
Population of the UK: approx 69.23m (these figures are from the governments' own figures, for the most recent year I could fine, which was 2024 for all apart from Wales where they were 2023).

So that means that something like 84.5% of the population of the UK live in England. Is it that unreasonable that the resources (including time) available are in the majority focussed on the place where the majority of the population lives? I'm not sure what the division of time, money, news coverage etc is, however, if it's roughly in line with that divide, why would that be unreasonable?

Some may say that it would be more reasonable to look at tax contribution. The figures for that are the following:
Wales: 2.7% of non-savings/non-dividend income
Scotland: 8% of total revenue
Northern Ireland: 2.1% of total revenue. (Again these figures come from either .gov.uk or from the nations' own government websites).

The Institute for Government said (in 2021):

"Breaking away from the UK would leave Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland facing sizeable fiscal deficits.
...
[In 2018/19] ... each person in England on average benefitted from public spending worth £91 more than the taxes they paid: in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the figures were £2,543, £4,412 and £5,118, respectively.
... "
(see the introduction to the report here: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/fiscal-position-scotland-wales-northern-ireland)
The report itself is interesting reading, but is old (from 2021) so that the position may have changed (for example up to 2013/14 Scotland contributed more per head of population because of the North Sea oil taxes raised), but the point is this, the majority of the people live in England, the majority of the money is raised in England (both in relative and absolute terms) and so is it that unreasonable or indeed surprising that the UK is rather "England-centric".

It's not unfairness, it's not prejudice, it's just force of numbers.

I pointed this out to someone recently. We were on holiday in a former British colony. Another tourist from Taiwan said to me, she had always wondered how the British felt, visiting former colonies.

I told her, DH and I are both descended from poor factory workers and agricultural labourers during the Industrial Revolution. While the way, the people, who went round taking over other countries (ie the white British aristocracy) treated the local people was appalling, they didn’t treat the poor white British, including children working in their factories, coal mines and chimneys at home much better.

It’s beyond me, why people think poor factory workers, who didn’t even have the vote, had any part in the decision making about foreign invasions?

But we would have been occupied if we hadn't fought back.
I think your post is truly disrespectful to the half a million British people who died in WW2 and almost a million (mainly young men) in WW1

Indeed, and had the war gone a bit more his way, Hitler surely would have invaded the UK. The Germans had very detailed plans to do so.

Operation Sea Lion

And I’m not sure “getting off lightly” really sums up the Blitz

But, rarely do English people demand reparations or sing “rebel songs”

Why on earth would English people have rebel songs? Rebel against who exactly? When someone tells the English they are no longer allowed speak English they can write some rebel songs.

People are much more accepting of war related deaths than other grievances. I think all European countries are quite forgiving actually, very much including English people in that.

We got off lightly because we defended ourselves. How asnine to imply that we were lucky. No we weren’t starved like the Dutch or asked to round up our Jewish population. We didn’t have resources that Nazis wanted.

They are tracking it. Click, click.

I don't disagree with you that the Irish have from time to had a rough hand from the English.

But I take issue with your "eradication of culture" point. All cultures are eradicated; that is because they change and develop. British or English (or Indian, Congolese, American etc) culture in 2025 is not what it was in 1950, when it was not what it was in 1875. There might be a point that your cultural change was forced, but one of the nice things about this is that throughout history whether conqueror or conquered the cultures do influence each other to produce different cultures that have more in common.

I can never understand:
(i) people who complain about culture (or indeed language) changing; that is just what it does (not eradication of language, but again, the English don't speak or write like Victorians or Chaucer did); and
(ii) those who get miffed when other people adopt and adapt aspects of their culture. I appreciate that many find "cultural appropriation" problematic, but again, I think that is a natural part of cultures coming into contact with (and sometimes conflict with) each other; we are all likely to adopt aspects of the cultures we come across to our own usage if we like them (favourite English dish has for years been one based on food from the Indian sub-continent, for example).

And I don't think this stems from being from the "oppressing" nation. Like many, I am from peasant stock (in England and Scandinavia). I had grandparents who fought in WWII, but I wasn't raised hearing about the horrors of the Normans (who had been oppressing the local populace for more than 900 years by that point 🙄), or the unpleasantness of the Germans, Japanese or other Axis powers. It comes from being raised by people who - despite their own horrendous experiences and personal views based on those experiences - never taught me anything other than that the events in question were complex, political, could be viewed from more than one side and that there weren't "good guys" and "bad guys" just people who do bad things and good things.

I was born in the early 1980s - 36 years after WWII ended. The Good Friday Agreement was entered into in 1998 - 27 years ago. The Loughgall Ambush (killing eight IRA members and a civilian) was carried out by the British Army in 1987 - 38 years ago. Crimes or potential crimes like the Loughgall Ambush are still being investigated. If children born today are still being told they should hate the English, I think that is very sad. The English-Irish "issue" is largely historic. That absolutely does not mean that it should be forgotten, but it would be nice to think that reasonable people would consider that it is, perhaps, now time for the animosity to begin to subside.

I suspect I am going to be lambasted for this view and I accept it is just that - one view. But it would be great if rather than immediately lambasting me you could try to think why someone might hold that view, other than that they are an Imperialist wanker, because I do think that there are other reasons, even if you disagree with them.

There’s a big difference between forced change and organic change though 🤔

We talk about WW2 a lot but, because our side won there's less resentment/grievance

Some of Welsh/Scottish complaints is banter. Some is based on more resent issues - that water dam in Wales, Ireland/NI I'll treatment etc. OR it's to do with unfairness over how money's distributed. Scottish people resentful that more money is sent to England, Welsh resentment about transport inequality. But you also get regional resentment in England about that. The idea that the North gets less funding for funding than London (HS2). Or other areas resentful that Manchester is gobling up regional funding.

Historic grievance against individuals just because they are English/wherever is stupid. Especially within the UK because we move around a lot. So I'm English but half my ancestors migrated from Ireland, the other half from Wales, Scotland, England. If I was American I could get misty eyed about how my ancestors had to leave "the old country" due to English persecution. But because my family have lived in England for generations and I have English ancestors and feel English that would be weird. Equally lots of Welsh coal miners came from English stock who came for the coal.
But that grand narrative of ancestral oppression and overcoming with residual grievance does seem more common in America than UK people living in the UK.

Yes, but just as children in Wales/Ireland were punished for speaking in their mother tongue, so children in Cheshire were caned for speaking in their dialect. In Ireland or India for example there is a whole history of violence on top of that cultural suppression. But if you talk about in organic cultural suppression alone, it affected groups within the UK. And has a lot to do with class/region as well as nation.

There's a paradox about the British empire. In that people in Britain benefitted and still benef from the history of extraction of resources from the empire. But alongside benefitting from that exploitation, British working classes and rural culture suffered as a result of things like enclosure, the industrial revolution, land use changing. All of which was able to be funded because the people doing it were making money in the Carribbean or the British empire. I think you can talk about the negative impacts of enclosure etc without ignoring/negating the fact that terrible things were done overseas and the UK economy benefitted. But it often is presented as a binary when it isn't.

When the Allies planned the D day landings and invasion of Europe, they realised that the size of the operation was so enormous, that Sealion could never have worked.

Hitler would surely have invaded the UK?

Did you actually read all of the article you linked to?

Bloody Normans. Only saying like....

I think it’s because historically we were very powerful? So tended to often be on the winning side of things. No collective grudges to harbour.

Hard to stay mad at Germany for the war as they are so remorseful - plus we won. Yes other European nations have some annoying characteristics we like to laugh at but it’s not hatred. If I dig deep all I can come up with is Argentina for that hand ball.

I think we have been very privileged in this country.

I quite agree. Our history of Romans, Vikings, Normans or whatever is many, many centuries in the past. We have been an extremely powerful country for a very long time, doing more than our fair sure of colonising others.

We're lucky, so many don't seem to realise that. For all our problems, recession etc (which we have had many times before), we're a heck of a lot better than many and have much for which to be thankful. I certainly am.

Love this thread! "They invaded us, colonised us, took away our culture" - They've done that several times in history 'Anglo-Saxons'?, or George the first?. More recently it's been cars, football trainers, and (surprisingly), supermarkets.
"Oh wait, no they didn’t." - they did try though.

And on WW1 - the Germans were responsible for that war starting.

But to what you said... "At the end of WW1, we flexed our muscles and made it clear we were in charge. It paved the way for Hitler to take power and led to world war 2. If we hadn't been so unnecessarily hard on them with the Treaty of Versailles, it’s likely WW2 would never have happened. We definitely did them dirty."

The UK was in the middle of the Allies positions at Versailles (according to Margaret MacMillan). The French were the hawks. A young JM Keynes was with the British govt there and wrote a book about the dangers of 'punishing' Germany (The Economic Consequences of the War).

WW2 was always going to happen once Hitler got in power. Germany today thanks Britain for saving them from themselves.

Btw - nobody's mentioned Argentina yet?

“it’s likely WW2 would never have happened. We definitely did them dirty.”

Are you going to blame the English for the holocaust too?

"sadly I think that statement sums up the views of English people. We’re told from an early age that we’re vile horrible people who’ve committed relentless atrocities throughout history, and we should be ashamed of ourselves for simply existing."

Hyperbole, especially the last clause.

"We’ve got to hang our heads in shame for the slave trade, despite it being over 200 years ago, and despite England abolishing it before many other countries. We have to hate ourselves for having colonies, despite France, Spain, Portugal and others having colonies that they never seem to express shame over."

Not hang our heads in shame but recognise that it was a reality. Other countries are having conversations about it (a grade of the social maturity of the country). The UK is in many ways a leader in this conversation.

"I think this constant state of enforced disgrace is one of the reasons people are fighting back and being tempted by horrible characters like Farage."

Who do you think is enforcing this state? What does Farage have to do with it?

If we hadn't wanted to be part of WW1 and WW2 we could have stayed out. We did want to be part of them because we saw how it threatened our essential security. The UK has never accepted the idea of one nation having control of the Channel coast, especially the Scheldt Estuary in Belgium.