Who is English?

[mids2019]

I see reform have started a debate about the meaning of being English which has stirred a few feathers. To my mind anyone who is born in the country is English..

I would say moving to a country does not necessarily make you a national of a country e.g. if I moved the South of Spain as a retired I don't know if could reasonably call my self Spanish but children of English people definitely could.

One thing that is worth debate is how you frame heritage and is this important? For instance would 2nd.generation immigrants from India would want to be referred as English but if Indian oriigin? Is there an actual desire for people of foreign heritage to maintain a part of their identity connected to their country of family origin for cultural reason?

Very few of the Reform/Restore/Brexit mob would actually have a clear English DNA result. How many of them know that is evident from the fact that they seem to think they are completely "uncontaminated" by any foreign blood at all!
Amazing really, all that history of warring....

I can trace back to the Conquest but I have done a DNA ancestry test and we all travelled along The Silk Road to get here.

Nationalism is really for the feeble minded with no sense of real history.

Indeed.

The irony is that 'Farage' is likely to be a French Huguenot name. So, people who fled France on small boats and came to England via Kent.

So a group of nations that are all near each other and have a shared history linguistically, historically and culturally?

Just try walking into a pub in Wales,Scotland or Ireland and say you lot are all mongrels and don't have an identity. See how it goes down.

And @Greenseawitch

Oh we can celebrate them ourselves and we do but dare to say we are proud to be English. Unable to say I love being English without being read the riot act!! Not allowed to to fly our own countries flag, but it’s fine to fly the Welsh or Scottish flag?! How the fuck is that ok? Imagine going to the US and telling them you and can’t fly your flag or you’ll be seen as racist… they’d laugh you out if the country, tell you to fuck right off and make sure you can never return!

If the racists hadn't hijacked the England flag and claimed it as their own, I don't suppose anyone would have a problem with people flying it.

I do think it's a shame that many ordinary people feel unable to fly it now even for things like the football because they fear that they will be associated with Tommy Robinson and the like.

No one should have a problem with the flag of England at all

Have you found those "facts" yet that you accused me of ignoring earlier?

I literally said them and explained them all.

Sorry, I must have missed that post. I will check the thread.

Strange. Just done an advance search on your posts on the thread, and it didn't show me any posts in which you explained the "facts" of genetics/biology that you said I was ignoring. What time did you post them?

Why can’t you say you’re proud to be English? Why are you not allowed to fly your country’s flag? Who is stopping you? Of course you can fly the flag from your own property. There’s no law against it. But obviously you can’t fly any flag from property that isn’t yours.

You can’t though can you because people will call you far right for saying you’re proud of your heritage. They would say what heritage? What does being English mean? its a mix of heritage bla bla bla

I think the pp means that they "can't fly the flag" in the same way that they "can't celebrate their traditions".

As she has already clarified that she actually can and does celebrate her traditions, then I think we can safely assume that she can also fly her flag if she chooses to do so.

It's a bit like the people who claim that they are not allowed to talk about immigration even though they never seem to talk about anything else.

I think it’s only in your mind that you can’t be proud of your heritage, if that’s how you feel. And it’s a fair question to ask what English heritage means. You can’t see by the range of answers on this thread alone, that it means different things to different people. I’m proud of being English and absolutely nobody has a problem with that. Probably because I’m not full of anger and I don’t feel the need to take to the streets to shout at people, or drape flags from things that don’t belong to me.

Hmmm so if you say you’re proud to be English and British you’ve never been told on here you shouldn’t be, because the British Empire caused so many problems so you shouldn’t be proud? That’s often the constant on here as if we should have to feel guilt for something that happened before we were born. If you d not come across that directly or indirectly then that’s very surprising and no wonder you’re optimistic.

I think all this debate about being English is unhelpful - we all know underneath it is being used in a racist way. I'm interested in Kemi's opinion (noting that she didn't start the debate) but she's made her rebuttal and it's time for all the politicians to STFU and move on to more constructive things.

Being English is an indefinable thing and any British citizen who chooses to may claim it.

You can fly your flag but you’ll be judged so at your peril. I don’t fly a flag but there is definitely a ‘you’re racist’ if you do a the point is that would not happen in other countries. They are taught to be proud we are told to be ashamed. Can’t be seen to be patriotic except if you’re Scottish or Welsh! Not English though

One of the things I learned to love about the UK when I lived abroad was the relative absence of the kind of crass, jingoistic expressions of national pride that you sometimes see in some other places. It wasn't so much that British people don't feel a sense of pride in their heritage, but rather that they tend to express that pride more subtly and in much more sophisticated ways. I consider it a great strength of our country.

As for people who want to fly the flag but can't do so for fear of being called racist, I do recognise this. I know a few people who might traditionally have put flags up for the football etc but now feel that they can't because they are afraid that people might think they're doing it as part of the racist "raise the colours" campaign. It is really sad that the far right have made so many ordinary people feel that the flag has become a symbol of national shame rather than national pride, but I guess that was inevitable when the racists started putting them up everywhere.

People are always asking me where I am 'from'. I can't answer that easily because I wasn't born in Britain but my father was English and my mother was a white Zimbabwean. I've moved around all my life in both England and Scotland. I have a distinctive accent from one region where I lived for a while as a child. I'm British, but I wouldn't say I was English .Ive lived in the UK since I was 3.

To me being English means having English ancestors going back several generations.

I think so too.

Who told you you can’t fly your flag? Is that it? A flag. No other traditions?

I don’t think anywhere else would accept this either. England on mn is seen to have no culture. As if it’s a bizarre outlier globally.

I think snobbish Mumsnetters (who consider themselves very down to earth and enlightened) think rejecting English culture, which they see as basic and working class, somehow makes them more sophisticated and ‘so not racist’.

English culture has nothing to do with skin colour. It’s simply a set of traditions that remind you of England, anyone can take part.

Sometimes Labour MPs do it too eg with the black lab countryside stuff. Fortunately it was nonsense enough to cause a backlash and lots of lovely lab pics.