O'er the broad face of England

The blog Loose the Delusion, in a post titled In your English faces says:

...the loudest and most vociferous opponents of the EU are most usually to be found in England. You can see this clearly in the blogosphere. Apart from the dedicated Eurosceptic sites, it is interesting that a number of the other 'British' blogs that rant and rave about Europe seem to have the word English prominently displayed in the title.

Anyway, I have always wondered how these English Eurosceptics, who seem to adore the British union, would respond when faced with the same arguments from Scots or Welsh nationalists as they deploy against Europe.

You need to read the rest of the post but there are a number of issues it raises that I might as well address here from my own personal perspective.

Firstly the presumption that the the loudest and most vociferous opponents of the EU are most usually to be found in England. If we accept that this is indeed the case all we can say is that it is a legitimate observation of British bloggers and the English in general. What we cannot yet say is why this might be the case. For instance, there are tens of millions more people living in England than in each of the remaining parts of Britain and this significantly larger population may be the reason. I am guessing that there are more English blogs than there are blogs of Scottish or Welsh persuasion. I don’t see any evidence that the English (ignoring the excesses of some football fans who I do not think are representative) are more nationalistic (and hence more anti-EU) than the Scots or the Welsh at this time (indeed in the case of the Scots I think exactly the opposite might be true), so doubt this could be the cause if indeed the original presumption is correct, which it might not be.

Having said that I do think that the English will become (and are becoming) more nationalistic as time goes by and I put that down to a better understanding by the English of what has been happening to them and their culture over the past few decades. I am talking about unbalanced devolution, regionalisation, lack of proper political representation and the way English national identity is being ignored on the petty day to day level. Examples being the Keep Scotland Tidy, Keep Wales Beautiful and Keep Britain Tidy campaigns (no Keep England……); no English nationality on Census forms; BBC Scotland but no BBC England etc. Petty, but people notice and these things pile up.

Another issue is this adoration of Britain which English Eurosceptics are apparently adorned with. I personally have a high regard for Britain, though not quite as high ever since devolution started working its solvent magic on the glue that holds Britain together. My adoration of Britain is not as strong as one might think, though I hope that the return of the correct symmetry of the Union with the introduction of an English Parliament might one day fix that.

Having said that, I do not think it particularly meaningful to compare a person’s affinity to an old and well established union and that persons affinity to a new and larger current process of union. One might as well rubbish ones affinity to England, a union in itself. How far back do we want to go?

Loose the Delusion muses:

Anyway, I have always wondered how these English Eurosceptics, who seem to adore the British union, would respond when faced with the same arguments from Scots or Welsh nationalists as they deploy against Europe: the right to exercise national sovereignty, the right to rule themselves, the lack of democracy, the imposition of regulations from outside, etc.

We know already that the Scottish are over-represented in the Union. They have their own parliament over which the English have no real authority and they also have significant voice in the UK parliament. I would say that the Scots could not really use quite the same arguments as we deploy against the EUropean project. They have never had it so good and have done well for themselves over the past few years; I wish them luck. However, if either the people of Scotland or Wales made it clear that they wished to be independent and break away from British union I would support them 100%. The union, such as it is, is nothing without the willing participation of the people that make it up.

Let's see how well the loons can fight their own arguments!

I’d pay to watch that.

As an aside I would be keen to see some more of these blogs with English prominently displayed in the title. I know of very few: Campaign for an English Parliament (a movement that do not comment upon European Union policy), English Democrat Blog (which may comment, though I don’t recall anything) and possibly An Englishman’s Castle and The Edge of England’s Sword (which do comment on the EU – and I gave those for free given that they do not strictly speaking qualify given their titles).

Posted by John at January 19, 2005 01:42 PM | TrackBack