Are these people really British?

[glitterpaperchain]

In 1688, foreign strangers were arriving on British shores daily. The locals complained of despoilment of their environment. Londoners complained that French was everywhere, and not a word of English could be heard spoken! The French immigrants were denigrated either for being too poor, thus a drain on rate-paying parishioners, or too prosperous, at the expense of local merchants and business owners.

(Taken from Thou Savage Woman by Blessin Adams, great book!)

That sounds exactly like what I hear the media saying about immigrants now! So when the far right are making sure that Britain is for the British, shall they make sure we all trace our lineage back to the 1600s, and make sure no descendents of those awful French immigrants count as British?

Ok so you don't need to contribute to a thread talking about the past then?

I assumed that too. I’m descended from those Huguenot immigrants, I consider myself British but I wouldn’t have been back in the 17th century.

I should think it’s extremely rare that someone is 100 percent British or English.

I think I’ve had some African and Viking and Roman in me.

We all may have come on different ships but we’re all in the same boat now, as a very famous person once said.

undocumented, unknowable's being imported en mass

Ew

By "illegal immigrants", I take it the other poster is referring to 'asylum seekers'.

As soon as an 'asylum seeker' is granted refugee status then they are immediately entitled to all welfare benefits - the main one being UC.

I believe that it typically takes around six months to process an application. So any 'asylum seekers' will typically be getting UC within six months of arriving.

I'll contribute to any thread I like thanks. Referring to some time way back to try to persuade (or virtue signal) that migration is an amazing and wonderful thing is either woefully naïve or disingenuous.

Funny how it's only the western world that's having this thrust upon us. I know the background story, but most others don't. I don't like people being led up the garden path.

Good on you

I think it’s religion more than skin colour

The truth is ugly eh!

Not as half as ugly as it's going to get, but somehow I doubt people will care. Too busy watching slop on TV to notice what's happening.

So you support Restore and Rupert Lowe then? Because those are the only things I've openly criticised on this thread

Personally I think that making up an OP's intention is disingenuous

I think the figure I saw researching it is something like 20% of the UK population have some sort of Huguenot ancestry. I forget the exact figure but it's high.

It doesn't actually show up on her ancestry DNA profile as being of french ancestry.

The way DNA tests work means this will be the case for many. Indeed the way Ancestry profiles now is the migration will show up as distinctly British anyway because there's been so many generations since then - the sheer number of Huguenots mixing with older British ancestral patterns over years makes identifiable as different to french ancestral patterns.

Ancestry seems to reliability only show up stuff as far back as the 1800s and even then because of the way it works, many people who had immigrant ancestry since then may not have it show up in their DNA anyway because theyve simply not inherited that portion of DNA.

So taking a DNA test wouldn't show someone up as having no immigration in their background. You'd still need to do a paper trace. And that's only really reliable as far back as the 1860s in many cases (the UK started official compulsory birth, marriage and death certs before most places and this was later in Ireland/Northern Ireland and Scotland than England and Wales).

The Independence of Ireland also complicates matters. My Irish Ancestry is technically British as it's before the first world war...

No, your nasty language is

The French are our neighbours. Immigration hundreds of years ago was from neighbouring countries. There were no cheap international flights. There were no people smugglers advertising globally on TikTok. It’s not the same and you know it.

"It's amazing how much leftist discourse is just them pretending not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible."

I think I could post this on 99% of Mumsnet posts on immigration!

We're all a mix. So far as I know, I'm mostly Saxon, which is German invaders. I'm also a bit French. To be honest, I could be just about anything. So are most of us. I'm proud of what I am and someone with a completely different heritage has every right to be proud of what THEY are. Celebrate yourself!

Well we have to play little guessing games as to what people's motives are for starting threads.

I'll leave you all to play happy families whilst I go to work.

That is true, no one flew here in 1688, you've got me there

There's a big Ukrainian population in Manchester which dates back well before 1900.

Also see various Italian settlers to the UK.

I'm sure there are many such communities.

I think I understand PP perfectly well, I just wanted her to actually say what she meant

We don't, you could just ask me what my motives were

I'm someone who is genetically mixed, more recently than 1688, from people from several different continents. I find it quite sweet when people start trying to say they're also mixed because their ancestors were Anglos AND Saxons.

Gut check test: on the basis of this mixed ancestry everyone is falling themselves over to claim because they had a few Huguenot lines, would you join a support group or apply for a special internship that was targeted at minority races?

Or would you recognise that "white English" (or whichever country) is actually a stable and identifiable ethnic group?

It's socially acceptable and you get kudos to say we're all immigrants in the first case, but not in the second. Interesting.

You want someone to say out loud that French culture is more compatible with British culture than, say, Somali culture?

Okay.

French culture is more compatible with British culture than Somali culture.

Same and this stems back to when I worked at KCC in the 90's.