It's not racist to believe in English identity
The first King of the English, Æthelstan, was crowned in 927AD, and it was during his reign that the word 'England' was first written down, by Ælfric of Eynsham. The English have been a people, and England a country, for a very long time. We are what the Bible calls an ethnos; a people and a nation.
Yet when Matt Goodwin made these arguments in an interview with Spectator editor Michael Gove, drawing a distinction between Britishness, a wide, cultural identity, and Englishness, a 'very distinct identity… which goes back for centuries', many commentators reacted with fury and disgust. David Henig, a trade expert, described Goodwin's remarks as 'unashamed racism'. Simon Schama, the historian, said they were 'pure recycled Enoch Powell', and journalist Oliver Kamm posted that 'it's alarming how far racism has become normalised in public debate'.
John McTernan, who served as Tony Blair's Director of Political Operations, went even further, saying that 'the concept of the ethnic English is truly evil', in a tweet so unpopular that it had been viewed almost a million times, and attracted fewer than 50 likes before he deleted it. McTernan went on to claim that 'races and ethnicities don't exist', despite having described himself as 'Irish' and 'never English'. When I asked him to explain, he claimed that any definition of Englishness 'is either wooly and meaningless or othering and malign'. I find these reactions very strange. Is it racist to recognise that the English exist?
I asked Oliver Kamm to explain his thoughts. He said 'it's obvious what the subtext is, and it's alarming… moreover, the reasoning is spurious… very few people can 'trace their roots over generations' – my own ancestors, like many Central European Jews, came off the boat at Liverpool and settled'.
Is Kamm right? Can it really be true that 'very few' English people can trace their roots in this land back for generations? Adrian Targett, a teacher from Cheddar in Somerset, has been shown to be the direct descendant of 'Cheddar Man', a 9,000 year old skeleton found in the area. And according to Laura House, Genetic Genealogist at Ancestry, 'the majority of people from the British Isles will be able to trace their ancestors back to the 19th century… [and] for people with Christian ancestors… there's a good chance researchers will be able to trace at least one line into the 1500s'.
As with any people, there are fuzzy edges and exceptions. But the existence of these exceptions doesn't mean the people don't exist. Would these commentators say the same if the Irish, Igbo or Han identified themselves as a distinct ethnos? I suspect not. What is different about the English?
Bijan Omrani, historian, churchwarden and author of God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England said McTernan's tweet is 'unhinged'. Omrani told me that the hostile response to Goodwin's interview is 'an amazing manifestation of our intelligentsia hating itself', something he links to an education system which, since the 1960s 'doesn't even want to pass on any knowledge or vision of Englishness'. Omrani agreed with Goodwin that there is 'undoubtedly an ethnic element to Englishness', although he sees this as one aspect, alongside language, culture and our Christian faith.
To recognise the English as a people need not mean excluding others from Britain, or Britishness, nor does it mean that those who aren't English are lesser, merely different. To say that someone isn't English is no more a moral judgement than to say they aren't Tamil or Maori or French. To believe otherwise a person must think the English are uniquely bad, or uniquely good.
It seems that this anger and horror that the English might identify as an ethnos is grounded in a prideful self-loathing. To suggest, as McTernan did, that it is 'truly evil' to even conceive of the English as an ethnic group, is to deny our right to describe, recognise and understand ourselves. That is the true evil.
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