England My England

Discussion in 'Western Europe' started by Heroclitus, Nov 4, 2011.

  1. Heroclitus

    Heroclitus Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 12, 2009
    Messages:
    4,922
    Likes Received:
    265
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Gender:
    Male
    I, like many English people, have been brought up in a quasi intellectual tradition, quite peculiar to England. To people like me, my country is a third rate nation, fading fast, responsible for atrocities from the Transvaal to Guangdong – not a source of much pride. It is a nation now seeking to find its way in the world as a minor power perched on the Western fringes of the European continent. There is another English consciousness, which basically falls into two camps.

    The first camp is comprised of those high Tories who resent the demise of Empire, a decline inflicted on Britain by lily livered lefties. According to this narrative a more muscular Britain, sure of itself and its divine right to rule, would enable thick-as-a-brick brutes to still enjoy their role as the natural rulers of the world. A world of good upstanding Christian white men showing the "fuzzy wuzzies", and other exotic "coloured" peoples, just how good for them a dose of British civilization can be.

    Alternatively there is the apparently xenophobic man in the street - the "poor little street-bred people" as Kipling called them. Ironically, his voiced suspicion of mythical foreigners from abroad runs as deep as his tolerance for the real foreigners who are his next door neighbours. Because the reality is that next door live those who have been assimilated into the mongrol mish-mash of races that makes up the English nation. This ordinary English person lives as if there were no Empire, as if he never profited a penny from its manufactures, wealth or culture, and as if Britain was the only place in the world and nowhere else existed.

    Even when presented with stories of Empire, such as the Battle of Rourke’s drift from the film Zulu, we get this narrative: at the same time as the native zulu warrior is treated as an alien savage hopelessly outnumbering the heroic British Tommy, he is also respected as a warrior with honour that is defending his homeland. In this Empire, Tommy sees himself as the underdog, with a deep tolerance of the foreigner whose country he finds himself in. In this way we stayed in our state of denial.

    For me then, as a young person, being patriotic was for numpties. The flag was a symbol of disgrace (and fascism) and therefore to be avoided. England simply had nothing to do with me. I sought out other identities: I was Irish, and Catholic, and Rroma gypsy to boot. I was not ashamed of being British: I was just indifferent to it. Britain didn’t matter. And that was good thing.

    This is of course a huge stereotype. But it does partly explain the quote from Marge Simpson when she sent Bart off to Tony Blair's Britain:

    Take an umbrella as it always rains.
    Don't eat the steak and kidney poys - they're poyson.
    And don't mistake their self deprecatory sense of humour for actual self loathing!


    We English may like to think of ourselves as quiet, understated and lacking the loud shrillness of Americans (and they are ever so shrill are they not?). We think this reflects our sense of ease with ourselves and our new place in the world (as "Greece to America's Rome"?). But Marge Simpson, don’t be deceived. Underneath it all we are full of inner conflict (if not actual self loathing). There is a monumental fight within us between the two sides of our character, the hero and the villain. Whichever group we come from - disdainful liberal, Tory buffoon, or muscular isolationist - we know that England has been responsible for progress, science and modernity at the same time that it has practiced murder, genocide and savagery. We live in huge denial of this history, staying in our camps and preferring our own self serving story. What do they know of England, that only England know?

    I now have two new perspectives on my nation. The first is an awareness of how European, and hence limited and incomplete, my outlook on England is. A Eurocentric view of England looks backwards at a continent of monarchs and tyrants. England thinkers never looked backwards at anything.

    The second perspective from a former outpost of Empire where I now live, is how inappropriate the "Empire good or bad?" question is. British imperialism is the elephant in the room for an expat in Asia today, something that still influences the intercourse between Caucasians and Asians every minute of the day (deference, resentment, hostility and a whole host of other things). But progressive people in these parts of the world should see Britain’s responsibility to reassert liberal democratic values. Our imperial past should not intimidate us - by tyrants who moan “imperialist” when faced with calls for human rights - into embarrassed silence. British institutions in Hong Kong serve China better than anything Maozedong invented.

    Spinoza said: "I have laboured carefully, when faced with human actions, not to mock, not to lament, not to execrate, but to understand." So when we look at the history of England we can at once acknowledge the history of heroes and villains without seeking some Biblical sense of destiny. Let’s take Elizabeth for example, the monarch who secured a "golden age" by standing firm against Spanish and French superstition, and who launched England as a great sea-faring nation, yearning for discovery. As Elizabeth lay the foundations of an outward looking nation that would expand to the Americas and beyond, the Emperor of China, the most powerful man in the world at the time, chose to embrace centuries of atrophy and decay through self inflicted isolation. I don't think Britain needs to apologize for this.

    But this is also the Elizabeth - as an English Catholic I was well taught - that persecuted Catholics by murdering and torturing them into sainthood, a stinking slattern with rotten teeth who unleashed pirates of the seven seas to rob and murder and plunder Spanish and French ships.

    But again this same Elizabeth, maker of the modern England, lay the protestant foundations for the Cromwellian puritans, through whom we secured the parliamentary tradition that gave the world, including the United States of America, its modern democratic governance. This Elizabeth is heroine and villain, in one person.

    "Repulsive but right" was how 1066 and All That describes the "roundheads" who cut off the head of the “wromantic but wrong” king. Out of such repulsiveness grew the Levelers and those like John Lilburne who called for a Bill of Rights, democracy and a republic. From there came the Norfolk man Tom Paine, who a hundred and twenty years later, made the American Revolution, squarely in that English radical tradition. It means something to be a "freeborn Englishman" back then, and it was a state that Englishmen in America insisted on when they demanded to be consulted by their king.

    The ancient traditions of representation of communities in England that American colonials insisted on, go back to well before Norman times. To be English has always meant to be one who rejects the moral authority of the King or the Lord or the Baron, even as one sullenly accepts its political reality. In England there has always been the notion that a monarch can only govern with the consent of his people and that any divine right of kings is an inbred popinjay's fantasy. We didn't need a Boston Tea Party to show us that. And yet we did too.

    Continued....
     
    Lindis, cenydd, catalinacat and 6 others like this.
  2. Heroclitus

    Heroclitus Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 12, 2009
    Messages:
    4,922
    Likes Received:
    265
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Gender:
    Male
    ...continued...

    The little iron bridge that stands in the Shropshire town of that same name is a testament to the revolutionary zeal of those engineers and entrepreneurs who dreamed great things and delivered them. England’s contribution to science, industry and modernity has been immense. It went from the railway, through the Age of Steam, to the cotton and textile industry and the manufacture of all kinds of industrial goods. Today, for example, Toyota's museum in Nagoya features the spinning Jenny and items from the industrial revolution in England; it is seen as an intrinsic part of Toyota’s story of automation and innovation, today’s global automotive giant, on the other side of the globe from the Lancashire mills where it all began.

    This doesn't detract from the fact that Manchester, Birmingham and other industrial cities were at once great centres of wealth and horrible cesspits of poverty and disease. Similarly the British Empire - ultimately a massive Trade Project that took globalization to modern levels - also combined great idealism, learning, tolerance and curiosity with barbarism, atrocity, mass extermination and the most appalling hypocrisy. Heroes and villains feature once again.

    So now, getting older, and with a new perspective to look at what my country means to me, I do get a little nostalgic for Orwell's England:

    But look here how even Orwell's essay here borders on jingoism, despite its nuance. There is the familiar suspicion at the sultry exoticism of Johnny Foreigner, a "wogs start at Calais" mentality. Even from Orwell, who hated the Empire with every fibre of his being, you sense a fierce patriotism and pride, a struggle to square his socialism with an innate sense of worth at being an Englishman, despite all the awful stuff, as he falls into all the old traps that our complex history presents to us.

    It an authentic patriotism nonetheless: it’s too easy to disown your country. No matter how much we understand the vile role played by jumped up inbred chinless wonders in colonial conquests, or the fact that the cities of Bristol and Liverpool and the whole industrial revolution thereafter was built on the blood and bones of Africans stolen from their homes and sent across a vast ocean as "cargo". It is still worthwhile to remember that England, with the leadership of quite a few Scots into the bargain and notwithstanding a little Welsh influence to boot, made the twentieth century world, for good and for ill.

    And there was much good: when you look around the world at the rule of law, the common law that comes from England, and the traditions of liberty that spring from it, there is something positive to be said for England’s role in the world’s development. No matter how much we send ourselves up in Gilbert and Sullivan operas, or how we dumb down our role in the world today, we can only remember with pride Lord Mansfield’s judgement, that "the air of England is too pure for any slave to breathe". This was our tradition, going back to the eleventh century and before – to stand for the rights of individuals against those of the barons and kings.

    Today, Britain looks forward as a multicultural country, strengthened by people from all over the world, the mongrel nation par excellence, enriched by its glorious and gory experience. Now to be British means not just to be an angle, saxon, jute, pict, scot, viking, celt, roman, African or Norman. It also means to be Indian, Pakistani, an Eastern European jew fleeing pogroms, a French Hugenot perhaps, or a West Indian coming back to the “mother country”. We British are Chinese too or Irish, from Malaysia, or South America. We are a tolerant and embracing people. And when we do indulge in a spot of self deprecatory reflection, we should reflect on this: there are millions of people all over the world who still look to Britain as a country with strong values, of fair play and the rule of law, of tolerance and universal values, of culture and open-mindedness...and who forgive us our hypocrisy more than they probably should.

    I'm now a little proud. Indeed.
     
  3. highlander

    highlander Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 13, 2008
    Messages:
    5,104
    Likes Received:
    26
    Trophy Points:
    0
    And a little self deception to boot...helps oil the wheels of genocide and the allusion to normality!

    Ireland 60% of the Irish starved to death! Aye English beneficiary hurts all that comes into contact with it!

    The clearances?

    The imposition of the Scottish estates to the English landed gentry!! Ninty percent of Scotland handed to the aforementioned to estates that cannot by law be broken up!!
    Where there is empty parts wilderness, like Aviemore Cairngorm park....there used to be Scottish people!

    Churchill a (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)! According to Sandhurst appraisal he prayed on the same sex! A fact of the English private education system.... and the corruption of the young!
    The first concentration camps! Aye Churchill was a bloody hero! Even when he was murdering English people on the street of England or Scottish people in the streets of Scotland!

    Values.....what bloody values...the massacrer of Libyans? The threat of war in Iran? The Tory and Labour yellow bellied behaviour in the UN and fear of reprisals from the American AIPAC fraternity?
    Bloody poodles!
    The drugs being imposed on English people through the corrupt practices of ENGLISH BANKS laundering drug money for the establishment!

    But there are some notables.....Nye Bevin? What....you know nothing of him? Or Clement Attlee....The hero of WW2...again nothing! Aye your tory's won't teach you about your true history!

    Or the murder of Princess Diane.....again nothing! Aye...one can deceive oneself through ignorance and/or bigotry!

    And all at today's price..........freedoms v slavery!

    Regards
    Highlander
     
  4. ryanm34

    ryanm34 New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2009
    Messages:
    2,189
    Likes Received:
    37
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Thats just not true, The famine killed approx 1 million, most of them not trough starvation but sickness. The british government did attempt to prevent excess mortality and the food exported from Ireland was exported by irish strong farmers who wished to profit from their labourers.

    Do you believe that the british government should have sat on it's hands while gaddaffi wiped begazi from the map?
     
  5. CanadianEye

    CanadianEye Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Oct 16, 2010
    Messages:
    4,086
    Likes Received:
    282
    Trophy Points:
    83
    History alone examines and judges, the hammer, forge and metal of a nations present worth.

    You should be a little proud.
     
  6. Plymouth

    Plymouth New Member

    Joined:
    May 17, 2010
    Messages:
    1,884
    Likes Received:
    32
    Trophy Points:
    0
    I was looking forward to some of the scathing criticisms you had stated that you are able field. :p
     
  7. Gator Monroe

    Gator Monroe Banned

    Joined:
    Jun 1, 2011
    Messages:
    5,685
    Likes Received:
    155
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Are Teen boys still allowed to do Schoolboy Scrambles (Motocross) Motorbike Racing or has that been phased out as tooooo Western & Very un Eco Friendly ?
     
  8. catalinacat

    catalinacat Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Mar 25, 2008
    Messages:
    6,922
    Likes Received:
    1,689
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Female
    You should be proud Hero. England had many, many great inventions.

    I do wish we had a Churchill now. He was a great man. He was the only one in England that gave the alarm to the King about the nazis.
     
  9. highlander

    highlander Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 13, 2008
    Messages:
    5,104
    Likes Received:
    26
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Mmmm....bollocks! Sixty percent! 60%!

    At least know something of your Irish history...obviously its sadly missing from the curriculum in your education system! Would that be England by any chance?

    Pray tell me....which ships (carrying food for the Irish nation)and from which nations were burned by the English navy and in which ports were they burned? Obviously you'd know these important facts if it was your nation that were made to starve!
    But I very much doubt you'd know!

    As for Libya........
    http://www.voltairenet.org/Lybia-Human-rights-impostors-used

    http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2011/11/assassination-gaddafi

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27418

    Because of your age you're entitled to be wrong....but you can always learn...keep an open mind!

    Regards
    Highlander
     
  10. highlander

    highlander Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 13, 2008
    Messages:
    5,104
    Likes Received:
    26
    Trophy Points:
    0

    Just goes to show how little you know both about Churchill and the

    German/English King!

    Churchill was a pervert!

    The King was a Nazi!

    But regards any ways
    Highlander
     
  11. ryanm34

    ryanm34 New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2009
    Messages:
    2,189
    Likes Received:
    37
    Trophy Points:
    0
    The youngest school child in Ireland can tell you a million dead a million fled of eight million. And you won't find a reputable source to the contrary.

    Rather than continue to embarrass your self how about you attempt a little research on Irish history? May I recomnmend "The New History of Ireland Ireland under the Union Vol V 1801-1870" Of particular note might be chapters 5, 8, 12. It is considered to be the standard survey course of Ireland under the union for third level students . You might also find Professor Cullens an Economic History of Ireland Since 1660 enlightening?

    Should the british government and the west thave sat on it's hands while bengazi was bombed?

    I ask because I was fortunate enough to speak with a woman who had been in bengazi the week before the no fly zone was officially announced. There was no doubt in her mind, she is a journalist who has spent several years in afghanistan, that if the no fly zone had not been called she would have died.
     
  12. highlander

    highlander Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 13, 2008
    Messages:
    5,104
    Likes Received:
    26
    Trophy Points:
    0
    I see you nailed your colours firmly to the English mast!

    I notice also you haven't mentioned the ships burned in Belfast or Dublin or Waterford to name but a few! Or even the nation state from where they originated! Or who burned them!
    But that would mean you'd have to admit to your English history being a fictional story created to portray an etiquette and a morality which in reality is missing from your aristocracy!
    Fortunate...you know nothing of Gaddafi or the clan system in Libya!

    But they do say ignorance is bliss....you may explain yopurself if you feel like it!
    http://www.ireland-information.com/articles/irishfamine.htm
    http://www1.american.edu/ted/potato.htm
    http://gazatvnews.com/2011/06/how-t...ith-aid-to-ireland-during-the-famine-in-1847/
    http://www.eirefirst.com/archive/download/famine.pdf


    Go back to your German dictatorship!

    England your England!

    Regards
    Highlander
     
  13. ryanm34

    ryanm34 New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2009
    Messages:
    2,189
    Likes Received:
    37
    Trophy Points:
    0
    My Great Grandfather fought in the war of independance and was murdered by anti treaty thugs in the civil war. We are not all bigoted fools who are happy to trot out the woe is me an misery begorrah toorahloorah loorah (*)(*)(*)(*) that seems to be expected of any irish man or woman who looks back over their history.

    It is possible to look back over British rule in Ireland and apraise the good that was done while decrying the sporadic brutalilty and systemic opression. It is possible to appreciate that as bad as the Irish had it it was not significantly worse than in many other european countries and that had we been independant it is unlikely that the indigenous Irish aristocracy would have treated the peasantry any better than they were treated by the mixed aristocracy under the British. And it is also important to remember that the greatest lobbyists against penal reform were always Irish protestants. And no I am not bigoted enough to claim that an Irishman is not Irish becasue he is protestant. Emmet, Wolf Tone and Parnell were amoung the greatest that ever lived and can not be denied their nationality because of their religion.
     
    Heroclitus and (deleted member) like this.
  14. starbow

    starbow New Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Dec 30, 2008
    Messages:
    2,668
    Likes Received:
    61
    Trophy Points:
    0
    "Land of Hope and Glory
    Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
    How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?
    Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set;
    God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet,
    God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet."


    I am unapologetic in my warm feelings for England and Britain in general.
     
  15. highlander

    highlander Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 13, 2008
    Messages:
    5,104
    Likes Received:
    26
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Its good to be proud of your culture and your heritage....pity for you it wasn't Ireland or Irish!
    Good what bloody good......good grief.....Catholics weren't allowed to vote until 1971! The H blocks, The B specials murdered with impunity! Just like the English forces research institute until the 1990's!
    I could go on about the 1972 Spinningdale agreement or Lord Faulkner's lies but there is no use...closed book...., you can drag a horse to water and all that!

    Oooh and I did notice your reticence to look at the sites I posted previously and not answering to the facts you previously denied!
    Regards
    Highlander
     
  16. ryanm34

    ryanm34 New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2009
    Messages:
    2,189
    Likes Received:
    37
    Trophy Points:
    0
    What?

    A northern problem that was the result of the oppression of Irish Catholics by Irish protestants not of Irish Catholics by the British government.


    And? Northern Ireland was a dreadful what do you expect any Irish person to say?


    And I can talk about land acts and poor law relief efforts and universal primary education the system of government that we still use, a country that for all its poverty had a belief in the institutions of government and a firm respect for the rule of law. I can tell you about the perfidity of the British government with regard to the boundary commission. I can talk about the land annuities and the granting of emancipation and the struggles for the parliament acts.
     
  17. ryanm34

    ryanm34 New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2009
    Messages:
    2,189
    Likes Received:
    37
    Trophy Points:
    0
    http://www.ireland-information.com/articles/irishfamine.htm

    Copyrighted to "A Bit O Blarney.com" clearly a reputable scholarly article.

    http://www1.american.edu/ted/potato.htm

    The second reads as a wonderful piece of bigotry reaffirming propaganda to be spooned to the willing mouths of "Irish" Americans.

    http://gazatvnews.com/2011/06/how-t...ith-aid-to-ireland-during-the-famine-in-1847/

    That's from "gaza tv" lets try russia today or glenn beck while were having fun with propaganda vehicles.

    http://www.eirefirst.com/archive/download/famine.pdf

    The last attempts to portray the famine as a genocide, I find it distasteful to say the least.
     
  18. highlander

    highlander Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 13, 2008
    Messages:
    5,104
    Likes Received:
    26
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Your last is insightful.....as to your education and you understanding!

    But then the truth is distasteful and especially when one doesn't like the flavour!

    Closed book...no point in trying!
    I to was like you in my early years, but I learned to open my eyes! I hope some day you'll also do the same!
    Regards
    Highlander
     
  19. ryanm34

    ryanm34 New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2009
    Messages:
    2,189
    Likes Received:
    37
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Words fail me.
     
  20. Heroclitus

    Heroclitus Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 12, 2009
    Messages:
    4,922
    Likes Received:
    265
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Gender:
    Male
    Its best to leave illiterate trolls alone if you dont want to derail a thread.

    My grandfather was an IRA man. I am legally an Irish citizen. England has played a despicable role in Irish history, as have Scots, especially the paid lackeys who drove Irish Catholics to Connaught.

    None of that detracts from what I have posted. The subject of the thead is that national identity is a complex thing. Those who simplify it into cowboys and injuns are nothing but ********s.
     
  21. Heroclitus

    Heroclitus Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 12, 2009
    Messages:
    4,922
    Likes Received:
    265
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Gender:
    Male
    Did you not read the thread? Do I really need to quote the criticisms?

    I wrote this to explain how someone who is completely aware of the barbarism of his country's history, could also be moderately patriotic.

    It seems this was an effort that was wasted on you. Shame.

    Dialectic is an effective way to look at the world. It reflects reality more than simplistic sloganizing.

    I am sorry I disappointed you by not listing a list of "bad things about Britain" and instead constructing an argument, finely balanced, in favour of a qualified patriotism.

    I am also sorry that you couldn't see that this could be easily adapated to the USA, or France or other countries and that this was a commentary on patriotism and nationalism as a whole, which certainly gave no tub thumping jingoism a free pass.
     
  22. highlander

    highlander Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 13, 2008
    Messages:
    5,104
    Likes Received:
    26
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Wot...wot....where are all the platitudes now?

    Aye..... parochial hypocrisy come's to mind!

    Regards
    Highlander
     
  23. Plymouth

    Plymouth New Member

    Joined:
    May 17, 2010
    Messages:
    1,884
    Likes Received:
    32
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Perhaps we did not get off on the wrong foot, after all.

    Note the smiley with the protruding tongue. I was merely jesting. Get over yourself. :bored:
     
  24. DonGlock26

    DonGlock26 New Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2010
    Messages:
    47,159
    Likes Received:
    1,179
    Trophy Points:
    0

    I think you have cloaked the secular humanist pseudo-religion of the progressive Left in a British flag. How did that all work out this past summer?

    _
     
  25. highlander

    highlander Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 13, 2008
    Messages:
    5,104
    Likes Received:
    26
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Pray tell me...why Churchill....a reprobate and a degenerate!

    http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=36860

    Winston Churchill’s original Sandhurst file, for example, described him as an idle layabout and a confirmed sodomite who was a menace to the younger boys.

    And he never changed through out his disgusting life!

    But this is the case of many of political figure in the tory, liberal and labour parties today!
    Please follow the links, it just goes to show even the likes of Harriet Harman and spouse are just as bad! To name but a few!

    But facts and decadence are not good bed fellows to the general public!

    You can then make up your own mind!

    Regards
    Highlander
     

Share This Page