What parts of our traditions and culture makes you feel like you belong in Britain

[Lionsandtigersandbears7]

Inspired by another thread ,it got me thinking I don't really have a strong sense of my identity being British..
I'm born in UK ,but moved around a lot ,so don't have an area I feel is home either ,or a strong sense of being British.
There's Christian festivals.christmas and Easter ..is that classed as our culture ?or is that religion?..I suppose there were mods and rockers and teddy boys ,that would of given people a sense of identity..then skinheads and skar ..moving in to music , different types like rock and indie gives people an identity...I missed all that though..
On postcards you get beaches and the seaside towns .. Blackpool was part of my childhood holidays,does that make up part of my identity then ?..
What makes me British other than just being born here ..I feel like culture and identity has passed me by .
I get what it would mean to be Scottish or Irish..I can see an identity with that ..but all I can think of for British is morris dancing.

Oddly I never heard that word used in Yorkshire but it was very common on the right side of the Pennines! Right as in proper.

@JudgeJ If you go from darkest Salford through Swinton and Walkden towards Farnworth and then Bolton proper, you can hear the accent evolve (devolve?) as you go along.

I've only ever heard skriking in Wigan though.

I'd say "my lover" is West Country

"Where are you to?" Meaning "where are you?"

D'reckly". Meaning "in a bit, shortly" .

Cornish or deep Devon.

Drives me MAD b when Americans say "British accent". Plonk me next to Glaswegian and let's see you understand us both.

Same for me!

Very true, looks like the old No 8 bus route! I think there was even a difference between Manchester and the adjacent Salford! Skriking was well used in Bolton, I recall having an argument about it during a game of scrabble in Yorkshire, every time I see it I can hear my late Aunt when we fell over 'Stop yer skriking, it's only a scratch!'

Yes - I have to agree, on reflection.

My husband comes from a south-Lancs industrial town between Liverpool and M/c and they have a particular accent. It is NOT a scouse accent. Things have changed in the last 20 years, but my FIL used to say there was an almost mathematical line which used to divide the local accent from the scouse one. Scouse is a very interesting and mysterious accent - most likely influenced by Irish immigrants, but also very strongly by Welsh ones. But I've never heard a complete explanation of why it's so very different from the surrounding Lancs ones, or the Manchester accent - and why it used to be so limited to just the city of Liverpool. Oh - and having watched Alexei Sayle on the subject, there is more than one scouse accent....it's so complex!

All this is fascinating to me.

Is that the gorgeous accent from Bolton/Blackburn? It has a sort of burr to it, and a questioning intonation. I think Jane Horrocks has it? I love listening to it.

Oooh - interesting. But I think we can blame the Vikings in any case! It's been Anglo-Saxonised as 'shriek', but I think it would have been skrike way back.

Sorry to get heavy, but I hate the way various people and groups are constantly trying to find things which divide society. If this country is going to survive and even prosper we need to find things which unify us. This was easy 70-odd years ago: Christianity, the Royal Family, the pride in our role in defeating Hitler etc.

Things are very different now but we need something that almost every person of good will (you'll always have the nihilists who just want to smash the system) can support or enjoy:

• the English/Scottish/Welsh countryside
• the heritage of wonderful buildings both in the countryside and cities
• the literature from the British Isles, from Shakespeare to Wordsworth, Burns, Dickens, Hardy, Yeats etc etc
• music by native composers like Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Holst, Sullivan, Purcell...as well as the highly original pop music the British have produced
• the inventions and engineering achievements of Britons which powered the Industrial Revolution and basically created the modern world. We;re great bridge builders still - even the French have commissions British companies to build bridges for them!

And so much more. I really hope it's possible in the future to wrench back national pride from extremists and find things which make us appreciate our heritage without negativity and division.

Engineering that started the Industrial Revolution. Many more of us could have warm coats of woven materials.
We had railways that increased trade and reduced prices.
Agriculturally we had a better land holding system than many other countries. In factories we paid wages in Cash.
We didn't have a mass revolution like the French or a Civil War like in USA.

This is a fantastic thread and a real pleasure to read through.
I will contribute the myths, legends and sacred places that we have: Herne the Hunter, King Arthur, Robin Hood, the Wild Hunt, Lady Godiva, Elen of the Ways, all the various black dogs, fairy folk of various kinds, the Cerne Abbas giant, ley lines and holy wells, sacred hills and stone circles, chambered tombs, hill forts and ancient woods, to name but a few.

Totally agree & love these suggestions.

Re Christianity, I'm C of E officially & do think British Christianity has a lot of positive things we should hang onto. It can still have a positive role for nonreligious & other religions, too : the best elements should focus on building community. Otoh I'm far more suspicious of the Church hierarchy due to the abuse scandals, among other reasons. I hope things are improving on that front. I wasn't keen on Welby at all but did appreciate his intervention on the dangerous assisted dying Bill.

Royal Family- I'd like to be a royalist but I feel every adult generation (& the late Queen & Prince Philip) is tainted with abuse again (Mountbatten, Andrew) & financial corruption. I hope George & maybe Charlotte & Louis can mark a new, positive era. They will need to be much more frugal. I also don't think they should be one of the MAIN uniting factors. It's unhealthy imo to idolise, & fame has never helped the royals themselves, either. I wish we had as the national anthem 'Rule Britannia' or 'Land Of Hope and Glory' or maybe 'I vow to thee my country'. Nothing wrong with 'God save the king' but I think an official anthem should focus on the people.

Oh yes, I love British folklore!

Few more....I mentioned the punk movement earlier as an example of culture that flourished due to British sense of eccentricity. Kate Bush would be another imo : extremely talented, and also resolutely offbeat. Plus her music often feels very rooted in English culture (Irish too- her mother was Irish & several of her songs have Irish musical influence) : Wuthering Heights & In Search Of Peter Pan obviously, then The Kick Inside, Babooshka & Get Out Of My House (all based on traditional English folksongs), The Infant Kiss & others inspired by old British films etc

British history has lots of fascinating characters & events ofc : studying history now & it also makes me think that to some extent stereotypical British traits are often Victorian. Eg. Stereotypes of prudery don't really fit the medieval or Restoration or Georgian eras, among others. 'Stiff upper lip' arguably came from that era to some extent, whereas you had movements like the Romantics & others in the Georgian era who viewed deep emotion as noble (not to mention that in Elizabethan times, the English weren't noted by foreign visitors to be emotionally repressed). Arguably also ignore regional differences.

Yes! We had the bloodless Glorious Revolution & then gradually transitioned to a constitutional monarchy with only soft power for monarch.

Dirty, I just can't resist this skit on an English revolution:

"What do we want? GRADUAL CHANGE!
When do we want it? IN DUE COURSE

"What do we want? GRADUAL CHANGE!
When do we want it? IN DUE COURSE
Fair comment, another example of British humour.
Shall we go back to 1215 and the Forest Laws which led to Magna Carta?
The Break with Rome under Henry VIII. Celebrate that the Chancellor made Queen Elisabeth pay for the hospitality expenses of Mary Queen of Scots from her own purse not from taxation.

Wow everyone sounds like they grew up in heartbeat or downtown abbey.

my British youth?
trolleys and bags of puppies in the canal.
missing teenage girls found wrapped in carpets in the 1mile sq green patch near the canal.
ketamine.
rats running down the high street.
getting harassed by taxi drivers in the early hours of the morning.
not being able to fully pay my rent and my bills and fuel my car all in the same month.
getting horrendous chest infections one after another in the wi get and not being able to see a doctor.
kids at school fighting in lumps at the top of the school drive every day.
walking home from school in the pissing down rain and getting home to a freezing empty house.
taping up my letterbox at from mid October to end of November to prevent live fireworks being posted through.
walking to school to save my bus money to buy fags with my friends.
walking through town on a Saturday night to hundred of people wild eyed, vomitting, shouting, fighting
people asking your postcode and turning their nose up at you
being sexually harassed by the PE teacher as a female right of passage
rain. Rain. Gloom. Rain.

needless to say I don’t live there any more 😂

Oh yes. See for example Ringo Starr vs Jamie Carragher

Or the difference between Steven Gerrard (Huyton) and Johnny Vegas (St Helens). They’re 6 miles apart but the accents aren’t even similar. It blows my mind!

@Pranaon

That does sound very tough.

No, my background wasn't Downton or Heartbeat, though more like Heartbeat.

I grew up long, long ago in the countryside in the North of England and we were working class. But I went to a grammar school where disruption and misbehaviour wasn't tolerated so I suppose I had a privileged free education and that's a huge advantage in life.

I think I've been really lucky in my background, but people nowadays would be horrified at the lack of consumer goods, holidays, fashionable clothes (or any clothes really, apart from school uniform and one other outfit!!). My family and my school gave me lots of interests which have enriched my life and keep my happy and stimulated every day.

Sorry - this sounds very smug - it's not intended to. I'm just trying to explain that I don't come from a privileged background in material terms.

Royal Family- I'd like to be a royalist but I feel every adult generation (& the late Queen & Prince Philip) is tainted with abuse again (Mountbatten, Andrew) & financial corruption. I hope George & maybe Charlotte & Louis can mark a new, positive era. They will need to be much more frugal.

I think there's hope, even after the Prince Andrew scandal. King Charles is elderly and ill, and has lots on his plate, but I think William has very different ideas about how the monarchy should be. I hope (and I believe) that he'll want to reform things, slim them down and make things more informal like the Scandinavian and Dutch monarchies. I think he'll do this not just for altruistic reasons, but because he wants a more balanced life for his family and particularly George. And William won't have the same attachment to places like Sandringham and Balmoral that the late Queen and Charles have. Plus - he's seen how other people live through his experience with Catherine's comparatively 'normal' middle-class family, and I think that's the model he'd like for his own children.