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Copyright 2003 Sage Publications: London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi
ARTICLES
Abstract Europe and national identity are not necessarily in conict, as the examples of Spain, Greece, Germany and Italy in their different ways suggest. The same may be true of some of the constituent nations of the British Isles the Scots, the Irish (North and South), and the Welsh. Europe however poses a particular problem for the English, for longstanding political and cultural reasons. This article explores the different relations of the different parts of the United Kingdom to an increasingly unied Europe. It suggests that, just as there have been many Europes, so there have been many different ways of relating to it, depending on particular historical and political circumstances. Of all the peoples of the United Kingdom it is the English who have the greatest difculty in coming to terms with a future in Europe. Key words Britishness Englishness Europe national identity The United Kingdom
England is no doubt in one sense a part of Europe, but the differences between the English cultural, political and social heritage and that of any other European country are far greater than the differences within mainland Europe itself, substantial though these are. (Robert Blake, 1982: 25) I suspect that relations with the European Union have varying implications in different parts of the nation and that views in, say, Strathclyde and Hampshire would be quite distinct both among the active political classes and among the people at large. (Albert Weale, 1995: 215)
National and European Identities It is clearly mistaken to counterpose, as is often done, nationalism or national identity squarely against Europe or European identity. Different nations have
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Writing in 1982, Trevor-Roper could note the rise of Welsh and Scottish nationalism; but nothing in their endeavours came close to the achievements of 199798. As Vernon Bogdanor (2001: 1) has put it, devolution is the most radical constitutional change this country has seen since the Great Reform Act of 1832 more radical indeed than the reforms of 1832, since what it portends strikes at the heart of the central constitutional doctrine of the British state, the sovereignty or supremacy of Parliament. It is indeed remarkable to contemplate how short and chequered the British story is. There was a Britannia in Roman times, but it excluded most of Scotland as well, of course, as all of Ireland. There followed a period of extreme fragmentation the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy, invasions by Danes and Vikings before the Anglo-Norman state, building on the unication accomplished by Alfred the Great in the ninth century, began its expansive career in the British Isles. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Wales and a part of Ireland were conquered, but
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To some this family likeness is suspicious, a forced striving after an identity that is not there. Europe is a sham, a patchwork of overlapping and conicting elements parading itself as a single civilization in the interests of certain dominant groups (Nederveen Pieterse, 1994; Shore and Black, 1994; Shore, 2000). But when Edmund Burke said that no European can be a complete exile in any part of Europe (in Davies, 1996: 8) he of all people was not praising uniformity. There can be an idea of Europe that accepts difference, even profound divisions (e.g. Gowan, 1997; Eder and Giesen, 2000). Nevertheless, even this brief sketch of European development indicates the many faces of Europe, even the possibility that there are many Europes. The twentieth century made its own contribution in the Cold War division of East and West, and the erasure of the culture of another distinctive component, Central Europe (Kundera, 1984). With the fall of communism, some part of the East-West division has abated. But the European Union has raised new walls. Entry into it has become a prized attainment for many, leading to denitions of Europeanness that in many cases have no historical warrants. There are some states, formerly bitterly fought over in the name of Europe, that now seem thrown into some sort of limbo. If there are many Europes, there are many possible relationships with Europe. The context of Victoria de Grazias remarks about there being no eternal Europe was a discussion of possible changing relationships between Europe and America. Could Americanization simply be the latest stage of European modernization, rather than some eternal other to be constantly fought against (as the French, or at least some of them, seem to regard it)? Or is the latest wave of resistance to Americanization an indication that Europe, having now matured its own brand of modernity, is now in a powerful position to contest the American variety (de Grazia, 2001: 3)? One might ask similar questions about the relation of Britain to Europe. The British state is one entity that has, since the eighteenth century, developed a set of positions in relation to continental Europe. Those positions, though they have varied in relation to the changing congurations of Europe, show some consistency. It is unclear whether there is a British nation or a British people to which these positions can be attributed, though the gap between state and nation can be exaggerated (e.g. McCrone, 2000; but cf. Colley, 1994). There are also the constituent nations of the United Kingdom, and the wider grouping of the British Isles. England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland had widely differing relations with the European mainland before the construction of the British state. They continued to do so, though to a radically diminished extent, after the creation of the British state in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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Notes
This is a revised version of a paper rst given at the 13th International Conference of Europeanists, Europe in the New Millennium, Chicago, 1416 March, 2002. For valuable comments I should like to thank the presenters and participants in my panel, especially Gerard Delanty, Juan Dez Medrano and Gianfranco Poggi. 1 As Pablo Juregui has shown for Spain, the idea of Europe as the source of national regeneration was already popular at the turn of the twentieth century, following Spains disastrous defeat in the SpanishAmerican War of 1898. Its best known exponent was Jos Ortega y Gasset, who declared in a public lecture of 1910: To feel the ills of Spain is to desire to be European . . . Regeneration is inseparable from Europeanization . . . Regeneration is the desire; Europeanization is the means to satisfy it. It was clearly seen from the beginning that Spain was the problem and Europe the solution (in Juregui, 2002: 20). 2 I speak throughout this paper of Germany, Italy, England, etc., as if they are unied entities, speaking with one voice. Clearly that is not the case. The populations of most European societies, at both the elite and mass levels, are very divided in their attitudes to Europe, reecting generally very different interests. Nevertheless, for the kind of argument I am making I think this caution essential in other kinds of analyses is less important. The argument works at a level of generality sufciently high to encompass a considerable variety of view-points. What we may be considering in most cases are ofcial ideologies, national self-conceptions developed through the medium of public institutions, such as schools and the mass media, over sometimes long periods of time; but by that very token they have become the forms of understanding of quite large sections of the population, at all levels of society. The problem of interests and differential perception of course applies not just to attitudes to Europe but in all questions of national identity and what that is presumed to mean. Nevertheless that does not, nor should it, stop us using the concept of national identity so long as we de-construct it when necessary.
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References
Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin (2001) Who Do We Think We Are? Imagining the New Britain. London: Penguin Books. Allen, Kieran (2001) The Celtic Tiger? The Myth of Social Partnership. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Armitage, David (2000) The Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aughey, Arthur (2001) Nationalism, Devolution and the Challenge to the United Kingdom State. London: Pluto Press. Black, Jeremy (1994) Convergence or Divergence? Britain and the Continent. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Blake, Robert (1982) The Englishness of England, in Robert Blake (ed.) The English World: History, Character and People. New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishers. Bogdanor, Vernon (2001) Devolution in the United Kingdom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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