My grandma Althea was English. Very English. She came from Bognor Regis in Sussex, and spoke with an accent that made the locals say she sounded like “the closest thing we have to the Queen here”. Her mum made hats. Her dad worked in a bank. And until last Saturday, I had never met any of her relatives. I didn’t even know they existed.
It was my grandpa Evan’s 90th birthday, and the house was packed with his old colleagues and seemingly endless numbers of second cousins from the sprawling welsh Price clan (And yes, Price is a welsh name – Ap Rhys, son of Rheece). Champagne flowed and the cake said Penblwydd Hapus (spelt incorrectly). Suddenly my dad grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the old consulting room.
“Ellie, I would like you to meet someone. This is grandma’s cousin, Sally McLachlan.” A smiling woman with soft curly hair held out her hand. The physical resemblance was not striking, but the voice was,
“Hello Ellie, pleased to meet you”. She said. “Are you Charles’ eldest?” and I realized she knew nothing about us either. Sally and my dad launched into an animated conversation about our ancestors, throwing out place names in Essex and Suffolk that I had never heard of. She asked me where I had studied, and told me proudly that her grandson had got accepted into Cambridge (No-one else in my family ever went to Cambridge). But what I won’t forget, was what my mum then said,
“It is so nice to meet to finally meet someone from Althea’s side of the family. You know, my dad was Irish, and I always felt –“
“Oh, my Dad was Irish too!” said Sally’s husband excitedly, leaning forward, “McLachlan! You know, Irish”.
And that’s the thing really. No-one shouts out, “Oh my grandma was from Sussex!” And it’s a plateau that goes right across these Isles. The English play up their Celtic ancestry. The Welsh recall their grandma who spoke Welsh as a first language. The Scottish look to the highlands and across the Irish sea. The Irish try to pretend their culture is less British than it is has become. In my family, Gallic and Gaelic and Welsh are learned as a second language. Children are taken to the overgrown graves of Celtic ancestors on cliffs and peat blogs, without knowing they have living family in Sussex. (Have I even been to Sussex?)
And at the same time, St George’s flag is raised higher up the mast. The political scene now is of splintering and nationalism. Since the 90s we have devolution and a simultaneous rise of Englishness. And a resurfacing of discussions about Celtic and Germanic peoples which have uncomfortable racial undertones. But when people do dig into all that, they discover that the people of these isles are overwhelmingly similar. Genetically the Scottish are no less “Germanic” than the English. The English are no less “Celtic” than the Irish. And of course all regions have increasing numbers of people who arrived more recently still than when the original inhabitants vanished from pre-history.
In fact from the deep historical perspective there simply is no Anglo-Celtic divide. There is a Celtic divide. And at the root of all this debate about Britishness, lies the apparent fact that the British were a tribe from a Celtic sub-group covering Wales, England, and half of Scotland.
So why have the English struggled so much to create a national identity? Perhaps because despite the wails of the martyred Irish, the English were the worst of the colonized. They were the only part of these isles to have the Celtic language and culture completely wiped out by later migrations. Perhaps the awkwardness and self-depreciation at the heart of the supposed English character, relates to an inferiority complex about what happened.
And not only that, but England is the origin of the most monumental event in human history. The industrial revolution which changed the world forever. Today English language is the global language, and English suits are the global attire. When so much of someone’s culture has been completely globalized, what remains that is theirs?
This is the point where people cut to easy answers. Let’s create a new multicultural 21st century culture. Be proud to be English. Proud to be Scottish. Proud to be British. Proud to wear whatever other historical fluke of a constructed “national” identity fits most comfortably. Because we are human, and we want to be universal, but we also just ache to belong. In my case, even though I support Scottish independence and getting rid of the monarchy, I am happy enough to come from the only sovereign state without a noun to describe its citizens. The only country in the world with four football teams. And to have had a wonderful grandma from Sussex*.
* Further family research suggests that grandma Althea’s ancestors immigrated from Germany in the 19h century.
