The Idea of Being British - Essay Example

Idea of being British Introduction British people are those native to the British countries: Scotland, England, Northern Ireland, and the Wales. They are said to be in the Western Europe, albeit it is an official part of the northern Europe. Britishness is the state of embodying British characteristics, which are used to distinguish them and forms the basis of their identity and unity. It is also used to refer to the culture such as habits, behavior, and symbols that have a common and iconic quality, which can be identified with the United Kingdom. Britishness is also identified with power and politics in terms of nationhood. British citizenship and nationality is governed by the British nationality law, which can be acquired by a descent from British nationals. In an historical context, British people refer to the ancient Britons, the indigenous inhabitants of the Great Britain (Hall, 2004:108). In essence, this paper will delve the present assertion that the ideas of what it is to be British have fundamentally altered in the last fifty years. The English are ethnic group of people from England, a country of the United Kingdom and commonly known to speak English. They originate from the early mediaeval where old English was spoken. They are the source of English language, the parliamentary systems, the common law system, and the numerous major sports. The Irish people are the ethnic group who originate in Ireland, which is an island in the Northwestern Europe. Descendants of the Irish live in many western countries especially the English speaking countries. Their immigration was caused by politics, famine, and economic issues. The Welsh people are the ethnic group and native of Wales and speak the Welsh language. They are common in the northern and western region. They share a common cultural heritage and shared ancestral origin. The Scottish people are an ethnic group native to Scotland, amalgamation of the Picts and the Gaels. They are tied to their linguistic, culture, family ancestors, and generic nature of origin. Their decency in many countries with emigration is attributed to highland and lowland clearances. The notion of the Britishness was shamed during the Napoleonic Wars between the Britian and the first French Empire that later developed further during the Victorian era. Britishness became mixed in much older identities of English, Scots and the Welsh culture with a distinct that resist the notion of a homogenized British identity. Controversies of British identity arise in the Northern Ireland in Leu of the longstanding ethno-sectarian divisions, however, it apprehended with strong assurance by the unionists (Wallman, 1978:200). The British are assorted, multi-national, and multicultural humanity with strong local ccents, appearance, and identities. The British has fundamentally changed radically in terms of the social culture, a decline in the religious observance, growth in the middle class, and increase in the ethnic diversity. The history and its chronological developments are well explained in this paper. Body Reinforcement of a sense of Britishness started in the First World War where the Welsh, Scots, English, and the Irish fought as British. The result of the war institutionalized British national commemoration through the Remembrance Sunday and the Poppy Appeal, which unites them. The Second World War was also to recondition unity through democratic values and its marked contrast to Europeanism. British constituted an island race and that it stood for democracy that was reinforced during the war. The intermingling of the British in the international zenith shared traditions and the common loyalty that was seriously maintained. The Irish dimension was lost from the United Kingdom during those wars that made the British Empire experience a rapid decolonization. This set the Irish a free state and the attenuating empire supplanted by independence movements shrank the appeal of British identity in the commonwealth nations. This exit of the British from the commonwealth reshaped and fragmented them from the influences of gender, ethnicity, class, and religion. The effect of United Kingdom membership to the European Economic Community in 1973 was moreover wiped by the concept of Britishness as discrete from continental Europe. This crisis brought about what is meant by the British due to the growing demands for greater political autonomy for the Northern Ireland and Wales. Establishment of the devolved national administrations for the Northern Ireland, Scotland, and the Wales following the pre-legislative referendums brought great changes to the United Kingdom political arena. This devolution has led to increasingly aggressive Scottish, Welsh and Irish national identities bringing a more assorted cultural expression of Britishness. The resurgence in English nationalism predates devolution that does not automatically have pessimistic implications for the acuity of the United Kingdom political union. English people started migration towards the Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which brought insignificance in the census with people invite to identify themselves as English. A recent dimension taken for the identity of English people brought contradictions where the complex results of the population are heavily simplified. Arguably, the language of race is also employed by journalists in their work. In their assertions, they present how English and Wales are races apart. England is said no to be a continent but a constitutent in the United Kingdom, its English language may be regarded as national through observing the factors that include a language, culture, history, or occupation in the same territory. Many immigrants to England have assumed British identity, while others have developed are dual or hyphenated identities English is widely communicated all over the world as a national language. This has brought forward a crisis of identity and an outline of ethnicity. The English nationalism contributes much in cultural unity, which comprises political and social movements and sentiment by the love for English culture, linguistics, history and a sense of pride in England. Six countries in the northeast remained in the United Kingdom as the Northern Ireland after the formation of the Irish Free State. Differences among them were brought forward by religion, history and the political differences, which divided the communities of nationalism and unionism. This resulted to national identification predicaments that revealed that over 75% claimed to be British or Ulster and about 3% claiming to be Irish. Later, survey showed that 78% of Protestants that 48% of the people said to be strongly British, 77% of Catholics and 35% of all respondents claimed to be strongly Irish. Irish people consist of emigrants and their descendants moved into United States, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the nations of the Caribbean. The famous cause of the emigration was the great famine, which saw them move to the Liverpool, which resulted in a nationalist movement. They are the second largest self-reported group of people in the United States after the German Americans (Werbner, 1987:176). These people have been criticized for failing to take into contemplation, the multiplicity and intricacy of the people living on the islands of Ireland, and in particular, those living in the Northern Ireland. The population of Protestants in the Northern Ireland constituted conception of nationalism. The Wales increase in population was attributed to the demographic evolution seen in the most industrializing countries during the industrial revolution. Wales received emigrations from parts of the British Commonwealth Nations, and African-Caribbean and Asians communities add to the ethno-cultural mix, seen in the urban Wales (Vertovec & Ballard 1994:272). Many Wales have a mistaken national identity for most of them consider themselves as Welsh ethnicity. Wales had to consider themselves as others during the 2001 census when the United Kingdom decided not to give them an option and therefore they had to mark themselves as other (Colley, L. 1992:309). Due to that racism, 96% of the Wales had to consider themselves as white British. This controversy to determine the ethnicity began early in 2000 with the respondents in Scotland and Northern Ireland is able to check in the box describing themselves as Scottish or of Irish ethnicity and that there was no option for the Wales and the English respondents. Wales nationalism emphasis on the distinctiveness of the welsh language, culture and history that calls for more self-determination. The modern movement of the Wales is linked to the constitution. Most of the Scotland people used to speak Celtic languages and these included the Britons, as well as the Gaels and the Picts. Large numbers of the Scottish people are inherent in other part of the United Kingdom and the republic of Ireland, predominantly the Ulster who form the Ulster-Scots community. Migration makes it impossible for the Scottish who descent in England to qualify for the quantity due to the ancient and the complex pattern of migration in the Great Britain. Some significant number of people is believed to have settled in the Australia and New Zealand. Historically, Scottish people are known to have spoken many languages and dialects but none of them exists today. The predominant language is English while others are considered as a minority (Williams, 1989:398). The modern Scotland people belong to different religions with Protestants and the Catholic divisions remain dominant in the society. The main protestant body there is a Presbyterian while those in the United States belonging to the Methodist and Baptist churches. White English people commonly in England and in Scotland or Wales alleged themselves as English first and British second, while those from the minority backgrounds alleged themselves as the British. On the other hand, in Scotland and Wales, White British and the ethnic minority people both identified more strongly with Scotland and Wales than the Britain. This problem of national identification is still pertinent in the United Kingdom with the English participants usually see themselves as indistinguishably English or Britain, as Scottish and Wales participants identified themselves as Scottish and Welsh than as Britain (Hall, 2004:110). In 1976, a policy was passed to tackle the racial discrimination in the United Kingdom that was to promote the racial equality. This commission was established by the Race Relation Act 1976 under James Callaghans’s Labor government, later superseded by the Equality Act 2010 and applied in England, Wales and Scotland but did not apply in the Northern Ireland. Race Relation (NI) Order 1997 applies in Northern Ireland. This Act used to cover all areas and protected people against discrimination under the Race Relations Act. It used to work for just and incorporated society (Alexander & Alleyne, 2002:542). The Act goals were to encourage greater incorporation and promote the relation between people from different ethnic groups, help eradicate the racial discrimination and harassment. The Commission Race Act also helped to raise public awareness of injustice through creating a fairer and more equal society, support local and regional organizations, and employers in all sectors through ensuring equal opportunity venture and good race relations. This Act organized the annual Race in the Media awards to promote unity and a good relation among people of ethnic regions. Later in 2005, national identity cards were raised as a concern over the potential effects of the identity cards bill for those ethnic groups considered minor in the society. This has Act is essential that will bring people of different races together and evaluate the potential of ethnic minority and make the racism a thing of the past (Colley, 1992:309). The class was determined by what a community had like the size of the middle class was depended on how it was defined, whether by education, wealth, environment of upbringing, social network, manners or values. In the modern usage of the term middle class achievement of the tertiary education, professional qualifications, including academics, politicians and chartered engineers, owning high houses and jobs perceived to be secure, lifestyle, cultural identification are the factors observed in the modern. In the recent analysis, United States classified themselves as people of the middle class than as lower or the working class and some other insignificant numbers identifying themselves as people of the upper class. The British formed a Labor Party to grow up the labor movement and originally drew almost all its support from the working class (Brah, 1999:4). British people have recently intermingled with many people, like blacks considering racism as an instrument that brings about conflicts, differences, and ethnic differences in the countries. Laws have been enacted to eradicate those racial discriminations considering events, classes, and nationalism in a productive manner. In football, racism has no place because footballers from all regions of the world come to play together govern under set Acts and rewards that are presented to all people provided that skills prevail. Another aspect that has put racial discrimination is entertainment that has brought forward people mixing to be entertained. Actors from different countries come together with the aspect of unity regardless of nationality or race or class (Hewitt, 1986:216). Summary and Conclusion English people, Welsh people, Scottish people, and the Irish people all have different ancestral background, ethnic group, and race as well explained in the above statement. English people originate from mediaeval and are known to contribute majorly in the development of the daily activities. Some of the activities that they have developed to avoid racial discriminations are majorly in sports. They are perceived as a constituency but most of the countries that are beyond their territories use English as a national language. They had a lot of power in the recent past that influenced other ethnic groups to use their language. Wars and diseases, poverty caused the ethnic differences and the diversification to other regions. Search of natural resources and agriculture has also eradicated the racial differences with the whites moving to the Africa for development through the annual review that shown the movement (Williams, 1989:401). Irish people are other ethnic groups that recently have caused the complexity in identification since they have many have adopted English as a national language. They live in the Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom with their difference contributed by history of origin, politics and religion. Most of them are Christians and Islamic following while Hinduism the last. Their national move to the Liverpool was as a result of famine. Their descendants have moved to the many different countries to show that racial discrimination is no longer a matter of concern. The Wales were involved with a movement that was instituted by the commonwealth through industrial devolution. They are the people who believe that they come from the Welsh community hence the issue if identity has become a major problem to them (Rex &Mason, 1986:171). These are the people who lost self and referred themselves as other during the 2001 census because the United Kingdom denied an option for the census. The Scottish people are believed to have communicated very many Celtic languages and dialects; the main community is Ulster-Scots. Their complex pattern has made migration impossible with some of its descendants living in Australia and New Zealand (Hall, 2004:112). Their difference in religion has put them apart with most of them belonging to Presbyterian Church while those in England belong to the Methodist. All these ethnic groups have been brought together by laws that dismiss a racial discrimination and ethnic differences, especially to politicians enactment of CRE was to dismiss the racial card practice. As a result, most of them speak in English as their national language. Bibliography Alexander, C. & Alleyne, B. 2002, ‘Framing Difference: racial and ethnic studies in 21st century Britain’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 541-552. Brah, A. 1999 ‘The Scent of Memory: strangers, our own and others’, Feminist Review, No. 61, Spring, pp. 4-26. 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