What does it mean to be English? A debate has broken out on this thorny question, sparked by a conversation between Konstantin Kisin and Fraser Nelson, where Kisin, a British-Russian social commentator suggested Rishi Sunak, as a ‘brown Hindu’, was British but not English, and Nelson (a Scot) said that it was simple – if you’re born and bred in England, you’re English. End of story.
The video on YouTube got 4 million views. Since then, Suella Braverman has weighed in with her instinct that despite being born and raised in England, she will never be truly English. The debate has generated more heat them light over these past weeks – just read the comments after Nelson-Kisin YouTube video to get the gist.
Now this is something I've thought about all my life, as it's been a bit of an issue for me.
I was born in England, have lived most of my life in England, my dad was English, I speak with an English accent, and love it when England beat the Aussies at cricket.
However, my mum was Irish. She was born and grew up in Limerick, met my dad in Dublin after he had moved to Ireland to train to be a Baptist minister. I never knew my father's family, as his parents had both died before I was born. So, the only family I knew in my childhood were Irish. Family summer holidays were spent in Dublin or most often in County Clare in the wild west of Ireland. Growing up, I felt at home in Bristol where we lived, with my English friends, supporting the mighty Bristol City at Ashton Gate. Yet the place where I felt most secure and rooted, at home in a different way, surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and people who had known my family for generations, was Ireland.
While my dad liked football, and we cheered when England won the World Cup in 1966, my mum was a big rugby supporter. So when it came to the Six Nations (or Five Nations as it was in those days) there was no question of who we followed, driving to Cardiff Arms Park or Twickenham, festooned in green scarves, cheering on the boys in green. I still do support Ireland, rooting for Peter O’Mahony and Caelan Doris as well as players in the team less Irish (at least by descent) than me, like New Zealanders James Lowe and Jamison Gibson-Park, the Australian Finlay Bealham, or the very un-Irish sounding, yet hero of the nation, Bundee Aki.
Of course, my story is far from unique. The Irish diaspora is everywhere. Irish people for centuries have left Ireland to find jobs, to see the world, or like my mum, following a spouse to different shores. There are loads of us, part-Irish, living in England, caught in our nationality somewhere in the middle of the Irish sea.
So am I English? Or am I Irish? I have held both passports, long before Brexit. I can sing God Save the Queen and Amhrán na bhFiann. The truth is that I'm a bit of both. Sometimes my Englishness comes to the fore, sometimes my Irishness. I remember being at school in the 1970s during the IRA bombing campaign and getting abuse and graffiti on my school locker for being Irish, then spending holidays in Ireland and being teased for sounding English. Such is the fate of the half-breed.
So for me, and for countless other people who have a mixed heritage, nationality is a complicated thing.
When nationality becomes the primary location of a person's reason for being, that's when it can become dangerous.
There are many different factors involved in a person's national allegiance: where they were born, where they grew up, where their parents or ancestors came from, where they decide to settle later in life. It can also be affected by emotions as varied as gratitude for a welcome received or resentment for rejection. Centuries ago, when people didn't travel much, and most didn't travel far from the place where they and their parents were born, the nation states that emerged in Europe and across the world out of the great empires of earlier times were relatively stable entities and could claim a degree of settled character, and a claim to loyalty. The twentieth century, with two world wars fought largely over nationality and race showed us the dark side of absolute loyalty to country or ethnic origins.
In today's hyper-mobile world, and especially in the UK, which is a magnet for people all over the world, there are probably very few people with simple, pure national heritage. Most of us have some migrant blood in our veins, stemming from some ancestors who moved from their home at some point in the past, seeking a better, or a different life elsewhere.
Being nationalistic or patriotic by supporting a sports team, learning a language, or being proud of one's origins is a good thing. Life would be a lot poorer without the possibility of rooting for your national team, taking pride in your national culture or history, feeling rooted in a particular place on this good earth. We were made to put down roots in a place, to care for it and take pride in it.
Yet nationality is too fluid and imprecise a concept to provide a firm sense of identity. When it becomes the primary location of a person's reason for being, that's when it can become dangerous. That's when we begin to fight wars over national sovereignty, identity and superiority.
Nationality can never become a strong enough centre to unite a people. It’s why the debate on ‘British values’ never quite lands. Even if we could decide what they are, is the implication that they are better than other values? And if they are does that give us the right to feel superior to other nations who don’t share them? And even if we could identify them, I imagine the French, the Germans or the Swedes would probably recognise a lot of them and claim them as their own.
To have a firm sense of identity, a centre around which to gather, requires a stronger and more unshakable foundation. I may be part English, part Irish, but I am wholly a child of God. Even more deeply rooted than my Irish mother and English father, the place of my birth or my family roots, lies my identity as someone whose true origin comes not from them but from the God who made me, continues to love me, and will hold me until my dying day and beyond. And unlike national identity, this identity can be true of anyone, therefore it’s not something I can ever use as a badge of superiority over anyone else.
That is who I am. Nothing can disturb or change it. And only something like that – something unshakable, independent of our changeable feelings and shifting allegiances can provide a firm basis for belonging and cohesion.
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Graham Tomlin
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