The hot-headed Italians are famous for their ability to bear a grudge. For generation after generation, children are raised to understand that the people next door are the family’s sworn enemy. And they’ve been like that since, well, forever. Indeed, one of The Bard’s most famous tragedies revolves around two children who can’t reconcile their feelings for each other with their families’ vendetta.
And in other filthy foreign countries, there are equally incomprehensible blood feuds that span years or even generations. These are invariably pointless feuds, where the “feudees” could achieve so much more by settling their differences and just getting on with, or even without, each other. But just burying the feud would make everyone better off. Instead, the feud escalates and escalates, consuming more and more of both parties’ time and effort and invariably a considerable amount of collateral damage.
Fortunately, such things could not happen here.
Could they?
The first hint I had that British people might be slightly hypocritical about this kind of thing was the Scots. Or rather, the relationship between the Scots and the English. Discovering that at international football, the Scots would generally support England’s opposition. I thought that was slightly churlish, especially since the opposite was not my experience. The English might tease the Scots about their lack of football prowess after the game, but during the game, they’d be cheering for the Scots. Or Andrew Murray. Turns out that there are long memories about wars where all the protagonists are long dead, which somehow justify all sorts of bitterness. And if not the wars, then there is some lingering resentment about perceived unfairness of the Act of Union.
And then came the Welsh and rugby. Same thing, in my experience.
And then I encountered an Englishman who claimed to have been dispossessed by Enclosure.
And I’m sure you can imagine my absolute astonishment when I met a South African who still hated the British for atrocities committed in the concentration camps in the Boer Wars.
And just to show that I’m not biased, how about those French then? Which true Englishman can honestly say he’s never had a cheap shot at the French, for no apparent reason?
All these things have got several things in common:
- They all happened long ago, no-one who was directly affected by them is still alive.
- They are pretty much academic in the grand scheme of things today.
- They are staggeringly divisive for those people who choose to define their lives by them.
For those of us who don’t choose to define our lives by the “unfairness” of the Act of Union or the fact that 500 years ago some soldiers stomped into town and killed great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle Daffydd or that 250 years ago we lost the common that allowed us to raise sheep and we wound up as poor city dwellers rather than rich farmers or whatever, these people look rather disturbed. And the troglodytes who don’t know the actual reasons but know that they have some excuse that allows them to hate someone else are even worse.
I was taken to task by Antisthenes in the comments of another post for daring to disparage the Welsh who want to live in a separate country from England. In the very same comment, he went on to raise the matter of occupation by the English and 500 years of exploitation. That’s obviously a terrible thing to have suffered through, but is it really any different from the Norman conquest or the raids of the Vikings? And really, is it relevant today? I wasn’t around 500 years ago to benefit from the exploitation. How does something that happened 500 years ago excuse behaviour today?
I live in England today. As far as I can see, in the here and now, the Welsh and the Scots have a large proportion of people who hate me for something I didn’t do and who are more than happy to take my money while disparaging me for that thing I didn’t do.
And yes, I am aware that the disparaging is often mutual, but that just confirms my original observation: “just burying the feud would make everyone better off. Instead, the feud escalates and escalates, consuming more and more of both parties’ time and effort and invariably a considerable amount of collateral damage.”
So, I need to ask: is it really not time that the English, Welsh, Scots and Irish just agreed to bury the feuds and historical baggage and get on without the drain on our lives. And if you can’t, then bugger off and take your country with you.
Because I’m sick of it.
Edited to add: while I was drafting this, someone mentioned that the Cornish were not English either. Really, if you’re going to go on about something that happened two thousand years ago, you are the maddest of the lot.
TJW is an itinerant blogger who lives in East Angular. He grew up as a fascist, mellowed into a Tory and was converted to anarchism in his middle age by the Devil's Kitchen.
{ 39 comments }
Well so long as you refuse to recognise anybody but the rightful heir of Bonnie Prince Charlie as you monarch I’m with you.
I’ll go along with that, Ian Thorpe.
So long as he’s not a Campbell.
This reminds me of my first night out in Scotland. (I arrived 21 years ago).
I was enjoying a pint and said something to the barman, (I forget what), when a local guy started having a go at me for “being English”. I bantered back and forth with him (good naturedly) for about 20 minutes. I said, “Look, this is getting us nowhere. How about a pint, and let’s talk about something else?”. He said, “Well, you started it”, I said, “No, you did”, (this carried on for a couple of minutes and I was reminded of the playground), and said, more decisively, “YOU started it. I just mentioned something to the barman and you waded in”. “You started it” the guy insisted, “YOU beheaded Mary Queen of Scots!”.
It mattered not that I had nothing to do with it personally.
Incredible.
CR.
Its a wonder he didn’t mention William Wallace too,,,
Thaddeus,
You have a point on the hatred aspect of long gone feuds. They are pointless and needless. Unfortunately the loudest and most offensive voices are often well remembered and reasoned debate is sidelined. We are not all frothing at the mouth over past wrongs and there were many.
But you view the struggle for independence from an English perspective and express the view that those who want independence in Scotland, Wales and previously Ireland as being in someway rejecting and hating the English. This is not the case. It is a rejection of London Government and Westminster Overlordship by a metropolitain elite. It is about self determination and democratic accountability. It is about having the right to vote for the government choosen by the people. We want England to have the same rights. You almost had Labour forced upon you because of Scottish/Welsh votes that would have been a nightmare for all.
At the last election the Conservatives returned 1 (ONE) single MP in Scotland yet we have a Conservative government. This is not democratic.
We are both neighbours and cousins. We should work together for our collective benefit and differ when we deem it appropriate. Scotland requires a different type of economic stimulation that the south of England as does Wales.
Economically we should raise and spend our own taxes and address our priorities via democratic voting as deemed by the people.
Scotland should be responsible for Scotland’s problems and solutions.
England should be responsible for England’s problems and solutions.
Wales should be responsible for Wales’ problems and solutions.
Irleand should be responsible for Ireland’s problems and solutions.
It really is simple. Responsible and Rescpectfull Neighbours not Landlord and Tenant.
PS. We will always hate how great your football team is and it is fantastic. But we will mostly hate the commentators discussing who England will get in the Semi Final when the draw for the rounds has just been completed.
Landlord and tenant? As far as I can see, it’s host and parasite! ;o)
And I think you will find that for the last 13 years we did have Labour foisted upon us, all due to Welsh and Scottish voters. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
But for all the apparent disagreement, I don’t see anything in your comment that appears to disagree with the OP, and I agree wholeheartedly with both of you.
In the argot of my workplace, I think it’s time for everyone to either shit or get off the pot.
Similarly things that happend long ago still require apologies. For instance Gordon Brown aplogising for the slave trade.
People are alive today whose lives have been badly affected by the French.
The fact that they have a track record of hating the English only compounds further antagonism when it occurs.
If the French had done their duty in WWII (and WWI for that matter), we (the British) would not have lost so many men liberating their country for them. It might have been understandable if they had lost control of their country in a last ditch battle to the death, but to surrender, and then to form the Vichy Government and openly collaborate was vile. Many people grew up with very few or even no male relatives because of their collective cowardice, and there are Frenchmen alive today, supping wine and eating cheese, while their British liberators moulder in the grave.
I understand that this was all a very long time ago, but it is not so that people are not alive today that have been affected by the mutual dislike between these nations.
There is also the not so small matter of the destruction of the mainly English fishing fleets, brought about by the overfishing of British waters by the French.
And don’t forget Thierry Henry’s hand-ball against the Irish, of course.
PS Most porridge gobblers would fall out with their own shadow. They just like fighting and they use ancient disputes between nations as a justification for their continued aggression. They’ll get their independence one day, and good luck to them. Who will they blame when it all goes belly-up? The English, for abandoning them and breaking up the Union they so dearly treasured for centuries, obviously.
We just had a government of Scots for a decade.
The Scots and Welsh have just stopped the Tories getting in.
Some occupation.
Now just a minute, lets not get beyond ourselves here. I mean, Andrew Murray, really.
I’m reminded of the character in ‘Olivers Travels’ in the Orkneys, who announced that his family had moved there during the Highland Clearances, and ‘just about settled in’
@Viking
As often I find you harsh.
The French did their duty in the Great War to the tune of 1.3m dead.
“Most porridge gobblers would fall out with their own shadow”
Love this sentence.
Perhaps I was not clear. I meant that WWI led to WWII.
If France (and the US) had not made ridiculous and cruel conditions to the German surrender, I am of the opinion that WWII would most likely not have happened, which would have deprived the French of their opportunity to collaborate in WWII.
That Hitler personally accepted the French surrender, in the exact same railway carriage in which the German surrender had been made to the French General Foch 22 years earlier, was not a coincidence.
Harsh? We’re talking about a nation that eat horses!
Sorry, when I got to the horses line I realised I was on the side of an argument defending the French.
This is new. It won’t happen again.
I find it disappointing that the attitude to the English from the Scots is so negative. I never realised until I went to live and work in Scotland just how bad it is in some sections of the community. As a young man I always supported any of the home nation teams in ANY sport (so long as England was not playing) – I had no idea that the Scots actively supported any one else BUT the English (including, to Viking’s point, the German’s who only one generation ago were dropping bombs in Glasgow).
Very odd…
That said, I will support anyone but the French…….sigh…
It is the triuphalism of the Sports programmes that gets really up our snot boxes.
The re-runs on B & W flickering images of 1966. The God given right to be, at least, in the semi finals.
I remember a recent tournament, probably a European one when England were destined, by God’s almighty hand, to lift the prize. The proble was that they had to meet and beat the dreaded Germans. Cue B & W flickering images of some funny bloques with funny hair cuts , some with no teeth, holding shoulder high a blond German ooking chappie with a lamp thingie in his hand; again and again and again. Fans with a TV station at their disposal springs to mind.
The game did go to plan and the dirty Hun won!
Next day the headline in one of the national newspapers.
“Proof, there is a God”
Luckily, the Germans, having beaten twice recently, can sometimes dispense with the need for a vendetta.
Oh dear – holes and digging spring to mind. As a Welshman, living happily in Scotland, I can claim to be perfectly balanced, having a chip on both shoulders – lighten up, ffs.
What is truly weird is that in the Atlantic Isles there can be barely anybody who does not have ancestry from other parts even in relatively recent generations. Go back 25 generations then just about all of us with any longish history in the Isles have a common ancestry in part. Remember that Bonnie Prince Charlie had a Flemish wife, a Polish mother, an Italian Grandmother on his fathers side and running back French and Danish. As for Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth was a Tudor, and they were Welsh.
I get really annoyed, about all the other countries moaning about what the English did, when their real complaint is against Normans, at whose hands we Anglo Saxons suffered more than any of you Celts.
Quite honestly, I don’t think I’d be able to understand the Weather Forecast if it wasn’t delivered by a Scots lass wearing a gaudy mac while standing in the Blue Peter Garden. Equally, I doubt I’d even recognise a Chancellor’s Budget delivered without a Scottish accent: I could stare at the picture and even watch the lips moving but I wouldn’t understand a word of it unless it was delivered in a lilting brogue.
As I like to remind my wife’s family (Welsh): the Welsh have a chip on their shoulder thinking that they’re somehow better than the English. However, the English have no such chip, we know we are better. Works every time
As does – the bloke who invented the Irish jokes had never met a Welshman. If you are getting offended, me eld dad tells some wicked Scouse jokes, and he’s Scouse.
Remember (paraphrasing Rhodes?): to be born English is to have won the lottery of life. (I think he said British – but hey, infuriates the neighbours).
If it makes the brethren feel better, the same chip lies on many in the North of England, completely unnoticed by the South.
Being ex-forces, worked with people from all over the UK, Ireland and beyond. Everyone has their chips, and everyone has the chink you can needle – it’s a British thing – we all do it. Macams, Taffs, Monkey-hangers, Jocks, Micks, Mancs, Brummies, Cockernies.
Vive la difference.
Edited to add: while I was drafting this, someone mentioned that the Cornish were not English either. Really, if you
Last time I looked the bulk of the Duchy of Cornwall estates were outside the county…
And as to the Cornish language, it died. I know people resurrected it, but it is no more an authentic living language than Hittite or Phonecian. The choice to learn and speak Cornish is political, not cultural.
That said, Cornish beer is definetly distinct from its Devonian neighbour…
Quite right, the bulk of the Duchy estate is elsewhere. The long line of Dukes kept re-investing the money that came from Cornwall elsewhere. I must pick you up on the language point. It never completely died out.
Well in the interest of us porridge gobblers I would like to thank the people of England for electing David Cameron to be prime minister. Of course the clan Cameron are now deceiving our southern cousins by putting their children to posh schools but 24 of the last 25 generations were Braw Highland Laddies. It seems remarkable how well we lead the political establishment. It must be all that porridge. Alba Gu Brath
the truth is we Scots dont think about the English very much at all.
Im sorry about the captain rantys experience but perhaps the guy was winding him up .Not you Captain Ranty but by and large English people cant take being wound up.
just look at the racist remarks above and in the main English newspaper blogsabout Scots .
You never here us complain about that .
And by the way why pick on the Scots no other country in the world likes the English
Interesting isn’t it, how in your catechism of nations in dispute with the English, and vice versa, that there is no mention of Germany?
Twice within a 100yrs the Germans have caused the deaths of 100,000s of English, Irish, Scots & Welsh many of whom have sons and daughters still alive today……….and yet, you concentrate on the French.
Irrational hatred is just that.
One little story – I fully concur with your soccer stories, I remember cheering heartily for Scotland in the 1974 and 1978 world cups. However, as the 1990s went on I too began to be aware of a hostility towards the English which on sporting occasions has bordered on the demented.
After tolerating so long the Celts unified rejoicing at the denial of England’s rugby ‘grand slam’, I resolved to support the ABs……Anyone But Scotland/Ireland/Wales.
In Sydney for the 2003 RWC, I was in a bar watching Scotland vs Fiji, with the flying Fijians giving the Scots and early roasting………cheering for the men in white I was accosted by two Welshman who berated me, “You can’t support Fiji mun, we’re all British”.
In light of Anna’s exhortations in this article, and having spent four years of my life there, it would obviously be wrong of me to point out that in the Celtic race the Cornish came last.
Sounds interesting. Care to prove it?
Nationalism is an ideology I fundamentally disagree with, but you can see the attractions. Myths and symbols are easy to love and a common foe is always fun.
People who want the break up of the Union always depress me slightly. The three hundred-odd years since the Act of Union have been far superior to pre-Union periods for all concerned. The sentimental attachment to the memories of a collection of fairly average medieval states over the achievements of the United Kingdom baffles.
A point I often find that comes up when debating with nationalists is that they base their world view on fundamentally different beliefs to mine – that you should partition various imagined communities (that is what all communities of more than a few hundred usually are) based on ethnic or historical criteria, and then base government on that. Taking this as a fundamental principle, other arguments (economic ones, for example) are more likely to be justification than motivation. For example, the poster above who argued that Scotland requires different economic policies than the south of England. That is entirely true, but then the north of England requires different economic management to the south of England – should that be independent too?
Personally, I don’t think nationalism is a forward-thinking ideology. Humankind should be moving towards unity rather than retrenching ancient divisions. Worst of all is when a nationalist movement puts a lot of work into reviving divisions that might have fallen by the wayside (often language).
As for the ‘Scotland elected one Conservative MP and has a Conservative government – this is WRONG!’ argument, my counter is straightforward.
Scotland is part of the United Kingdom. In being part of the United Kingdom, it accepts the terms of that union. In union-wide elections, Scotland has its proportional share of seats, but it obviously does not have casting vote.
The Conservative & Unionist, Liberal Democratic and Labour parties are all unionist – they subscribe to the terms of the union I described above. Thus a vote for the Liberal Democrats or Labour is a vote for a party that subscribes to the legitimacy of the union and thus the legitimacy of a Conservative government that carries the largest number of seats in the Union Parliament.
The party that rejects the legitimacy of the Union, the Scottish National Party, did not get substantially more votes than the Conservatives (who with the SNP and Liberal Democrats were all within the 400,000 – 500,000 mark), and certainly failed to come close to matching the pro-Union vote.
Thus the Conservative government of the United Kingdom derives its mandate for administering non-devolved issues in Scotland from the Union whose legitimacy has been endorsed by the vast majority of the Scottish electorate in the pan-union elections.
Simple.
My 2p worth, my family have had it in for the Monarchy since 1617, when an ancestor was a ward of Court due to his minority on inheritance of our Leicestershire estates, James I (A Scot) then gave said estates to his lover the Duke of Buckingham in return for a bit of slap and tickle. Buckingham was deservedly stabbed to death a few years later.
Just saying thats all
A “simple” question for all who posted pro Union or who are pro Union.
If Scotland is such a bad place, sucking on the teat of Mother England and refusing to pass it over to other siblings, if Scotland drains the financial lifeblood out of England and hasn’t the good grace to say thank you and instead belches asking for more.
If Scotland is such a hopeless basket case why,
have do all three major UK political parties want Scotland not to secede?
Why do they want us to stay?
The same reason that they all want to remain in the EU, despite every poll since the year dot showing large majorities of English subjects who do not.
What is it about giving billions of pounds of other peoples money to foreigners, be they French, Latvian or Scot, that the English politicians love so much?
Perhaps I was being too rhetorical when I asked my question about why, Brown, Clegg and Cameron are all dyed in the wool unionists?
Let us try it another way
Whoever had won the GE at Westminster, Lib, Lab or Con and perm any two or three from three, and had to offer security for the shedloads of money they need from the IMF, Word Bank, Goldman Sachs or whoever, where would reside the three assets first in line?
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
Once hill walking up near Cape Wrath I stopped at a pub for a pint. Sitting at the bar I could hear mutterings of “bloody southerners” over at one of the tables where the locals sat. The bar man spotting my discomfort said “Och dont worry, they are talking about the lot from Edinburgh,”
Well following on from the pro unionist arguments that we are better and stronger together I look forward to the English transferring all the remaining powers to the EU and us all adopting German or French as our first and only language. While disolving that backwards looking national identity British/English.
Then we will all be one big happy family living in perpetual bliss from a wise and democtratic socialist government controlled by our friends the French and Germans.Why is your argument only about maintaining your identity and culture? We can all be different and still be friends.
Alternatively we can look to the USSR and see the improvement in much of the post soviet era emerging nations. Government should be like management. They need to be there on the scene with an understanding of the issues to make good decisions.
A distance government that has no idea about an area, people, economic conditions that are all centred in one area would see the immediate vicinity of their location prosper while the rest of the area under government faulters with inertia and poor governance.
Compare the success of Scotland, Ireland, Wales and North of England to that of London and the South.
I would even settle for a smaller house of commons and regional/national assemblies with full fiscal control as a big step in the right direction. With the house of lards being for international representation of the British Isles.
dilettante how can you justify dissagreeing with nationalism as an ideology by appealing to British nationalism.
jono the locals would most likely have a good sprinkling of English people in the corner.
More English people the better ,their more likely to vote for independence than those cringing unionist scots.