Identifying symbols of the four nations
Unit 8. Country and People
8.1. Population of the United Kingdom.
8.2. Ethnic identity: the native and non-native British.
8.3. Family identity.
8.4. Geographical identity.
8.5. Class differences in Britain.
8.6. Men and women identity.
Population of the United Kingdom
Britain ranks about the twenty-first in the world in terms of population and thirteenth in terms of living conditions. According to the results of the 2001 census the home population was 59.6 million, compared with 58.6 million in 1995, 55.7 million in 1981, 38.2 million in 1901, about 6.5 million at the end of the 17th century, and some 2 million in the 11th cent. Censuses of England, Wales and Scotland have been taken regularly every 10 years since 1801, with the exception of 1941 but censuses of Ireland somewhat less regularly.
The population of Great Britain has slightly risen in 2010 to 62.3 million despite the falling birth rate. (For further information on population trends watch the video prepared by the Office of the National Statistics – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyAM6L175Ko).
The reasons for the growth of the population are net migration, natural growth and the increased life span. Although the population as a whole increased, the number of those who rage 65 and over is 16.6%, while the number of under 16s comprises 18.6 %. The population estimates of 2010 showed that there was more than one million more females than males in Britain.
Around one in six Britons is a pensioner and nearly a third of them are aged 75 or over, and almost a quarter of households consist solely of pensioners. Over the decade, the number of one-person households increased by 30% and more than a fifth of the households in Britain now consist of a peson living alone.
England is the most densely populated state of the UK with 52.2 million people (with Greater London having a density of 4,238 people per square km). Key areas with high percentage of population are eight major metrapolitan areas called conurbations. Theyaccommodate a third of Great Britain’s people. They are: Greater London, Central Clydeside, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South East Lancashire, Tyneside, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire. Most of the mountainous parts including much of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the central Pennines are very sparsely populated.
These differences in average density between different regions have been widening. There is a movement of people away from the city cenres to the surrounding suburbs. This can be seen clearly in the declining population of Greater London which was the world’s third city as to population but is now eleventh. There is a fall in the proportion of residents in other metropolitan countries also. Particularly the young and skilled have tended to live city centres and conurbations, although such migration may not necessarily mean a change of job but rather an increase in the distance of travel to and from work. In other cases it has been a consequence of falling employment in city centres and unhealthy environment.
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Ethnic Identity: the Native and Non-native British
When you are talking to people from Britain, it is safest to use ‘Britain’ when talking about where they live and ‘British’ as the adjective to describe their nationality. This way you will be less likely to offend anyone. England is only one of the four nations of the British Isles. Their political unification was a gradual process that took several hundred years. It was completed in 1800 when the Irish Parliament was joined with the Parliament for England, Scotland and Wales in Westminster, so that the whole of the British Isles became a single state – the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. However, in 1922, most of Ireland became a separate state.
At one time the four nations were distinct from each other in almost every aspect of life. In the first place, they were different racially. The people in Ireland, Wales and Highland Scotland belonged to the Celtic race; those in England and lowland Scotland were mainly of Germanic origin. This difference was reflected in the languages they spoke. The nations also tended to have different economic, social and legal systems. Today these differences have become blurred but they haven’t completely disappeared. Although there is one government for the whole of Britain, and people have the same passports, they feel their identity very strongly.
For example, there are millions of people who live in England but who would never describe themselves as English. They may have lived in England all their lives, but as far as they are concerned they are Scottish, Welsh or Irish. These people support the country of their parents and grandparents rather than England in sporting contests.
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The same holds true for the further millions of British citizens whose family origins lie outside the British Isles. People of Caribbean or south Asian descent, for instance, do not mind being described as ‘British’, but many of them would not like to be called ‘English’. And whenever the West Indian or Indian cricket team plays against England, it is certainly not England that they support!
Other signs of national identity are names. The prefix ‘Mac’ or ‘Mc’ in surnames (such as McCall, MacCarthy, MacDonald) is always either Scottish or Irish. The prefix ‘O’ (as in O’Brien, O’Hara) is distinctly Irish. A very large number of surnames (for example, Davis, Evans, Jones, Lloyd, Morgan, Price, Rees, Williams) suggest Welsh origin (although many of these are found throughout England). The most common surname in both England and Scotland is actually 'Smith'. First names can also be indicative. The Scottish form of 'John' is 'Ian' and its Irish form is 'Sean' ;
There are also nicknames for Scottish, Irish and Welsh men. A Scottish friend may be referred or addressed as ‘Jock’, Irishmen are called ‘Paddy’ or ‘Mick’ and Welshmen are known as ‘Dai’ or ‘Taffy’. If the person is not a friend the nickname can sound rather insulting.
Clothes and musical instruments may also specify a nationality. The kilt, a skirt with a tartan pattern worn by men, is a well-known symbol of Scottishness (though it is hardly ever worn in everyday life). The harp is an emblem of both Wales and Ireland. The bagpipes are regarded as distinctively Scottish (though a smaller type is also used in traditional Irish music).
There are certain stereotypes of national character which are well-known in Britain. For instance, the Irish are supposed to be great talkers, the Scots have a reputation for being careful with money, and the Welsh are renowned for their singing ability.
Jorn Bull is a fictional character who is supposed to personify Englishness and certain English virtues. (He can be compared to Uncle Sam in the USA ). His appearance is typical of the 18th century country gentlemam, evoking an idyllic rural past.
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Caledonia, Cambria and Hibernia were the Roman names for Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The words are commonly used today in scholarly classifications (for example, the type of English used in Ireland is sometimes called ‘Hiberno-English’) and for the names of oganizations (for example, the airline ‘British Caledonian’). Erin is a poetic name for Ireland. ‘The Emerald Isle’ is another way of referring to Ireland, evoking the lush greenery of its countryside.
Identifying symbols of the four nations
For people living in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the way that ethnic identity commonly expresses itself varies. People in Scotland have constant reminders of their distinctiveness. First, several important aspects of public life are organized separately, and differently, from the rest of Britain – notably, education, law and religion. Second, the Scottish way of speaking English is very distinctive. A modern form of the dialect known as Scots is spoken in everyday life by most of the working classes in the lowlands. It has many features which are different from other forms of English and cannot usually be understood by people who are not Scottish. Third, there are many symbols of Scottishness which are well-known throughout Britain (for example, Burn’s suppers, kilts, reels, haggis).
However, the feeling of being Scottish is not that simple. This is partly because of the historical cultural split between highland and lowland Scotland. A genuinely Scottish Gaelic sense of cultural identity is, in modern times, felt only by a few tens of thousands of people in some of the western isles of Scotland and the adjoining mainland. These people speak Scottish Gaelic (which they call 'Gallic') as a first language.
The people of Wales do not have as many reminders of their Welshness in everyday life. The organization of public life is identical to that in England. Nor are there as many well known symbols of Welshness. In addition, a large minority of the people in Wales probably do not consider themselves to be especially Welsh at all. In the nineteenth century large numbers of Scottish, Irish and English people went to find work there, and today many English people still make their homes in Wales or have holiday houses there. As a result, a feeling of loyalty to Wales is often similar in nature to the fairly weak loyalties to particular geographical areas found throughout England – it is regional rather than nationalistic.
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However, there is one single highly-important symbol of Welsh identity – the Welsh language. Everybody in Wales can speak English, but it is not everybody's first language. For about 20% of the population (that's more than half a million people), the mother-tongue is Welsh. For these people Welsh identity obviously means more than just living in the region known as Wales. Moreover, in comparison to the other small minority languages of Europe, Welsh shows signs of continued vitality. Thanks to successive campaigns, the language receives a lot of public support. All children in Wales learn it at school, there are many local newspapers in Welsh, there is a Welsh television channel and nearly all public notices and signs are written in both Welsh and English.
The question of identity in Northern Ireland is a much more complex issue. In this part of the UK, the pattern of identity and loyalty outlined above does not apply. Here, ethnicity, family, politics and religion are all inter-related, and social class has a comparatively minor role in establishing identity. Northern Ireland is a polarized society where most people are born into, and stay in one or other of the two communities for the whole of their lives.
On one side of the divide are people whose ancestors came from lowland Scotland or England. They are self-consciously Protestant and want Northern Ireland to remain in the UK. On the other side are people whose ancestors were native Irish. They are self-consciously Catholic and would like Northern Ireland to become part of the Irish Republic.
Although the two communities live side-by-side, their lives are almost entirely segregated. They live in different housing estates, listen to different radio and television programmes, register with different doctors, have prescriptions made up by chemists of their own denominations, march to commemorate different anniversaries and read different newspapers. Their children go to different schools, so that those who go on to university often find themselves mixing with people from the 'other' community for the first time in their lives. For the majority who do not go to university, merely talking to somebody from the other community is a rare event.
In this atmosphere, marrying a member of the other community is traditionally regarded with horror, and has sometimes even resulted in the deaths of the Romeos and Juliets concerned (as punishment for the 'betrayal' of their people). The extremes of these hard line attitudes are gradually softening. It should also be noted that they apply to a much lesser extent among the middle-classes. It is illustrative of this that while in football, a mainly working-class sport, Northern Ireland and the Republic have separate teams, in rugby, a more middle class sport, there is only one team for the whole of Ireland, in which Protestants from the north play alongside Catholics from the south with no sign of disharmony whatsoever.
The Non-native British
The long centuries of contact between the peoples of the four nations of the British Isles means that there is a limit to their significant differences. With minor variations, they look the same, speak the same language, eat the same food, have the same religious heritage (Christianity) and have the same attitudes to the roles of men and women.
The situation for the several million people in Britain whose family roots lie in the Caribbean or in south Asia or elsewhere in the world is different. For them, ethnic identity is more than a question of deciding which sports team to support. Non-whites (about 6% of the total British population) cannot, as white non-English groups can, choose when to advertise their ethnic identity and when not to.
Most non-whites, although themselves born in Britain, have parents who were born outside it. The great wave of immigration from the Caribbean and south Asia took place between 1950 and 1965. These immigrants, especially those from south Asia, brought with them different languages, different religions (Hindu and Muslim) and everyday habits and attitudes that were sometimes radically different from traditional British ones. As they usually married among themselves, these habits and customs have, to some extent, been preserved. For some young people brought up in Britain, this mixed cultural background can create problems. For example, many young Asians resent the fact that their parents expect to have more control over them than most black or white parents expect to have over their children. Nevertheless, they cannot avoid these experiences, which therefore make up part of their identity.
As well as this 'given' identity, non-white people in Britain often take pride in their cultural roots. This pride seems to be increasing as their cultural practices, their everyday habits and attitudes, gradually become less distinctive. Most of the country's non-whites are British citizens. Partly because of this, they are on the way to developing the same kind of division of loyalties and identity that exists for many Irish, Scottish and Welsh people. Pride can increase as a defensive reaction to racial discrimination. There is quite a lot of this in Britain. There are tens of thousands of racially motivated attacks on people every year, including one or two murders. All in all, however, overt racism is not as common as it is in many other parts of Europe.
As for English identity, most people who describe themselves as English usually make no distinction in their minds between 'English' and 'British'. There is plenty of evidence of this. For example, at international football or rugby matches, when the players stand to attention to hear their national anthems, the Scottish, Irish and Welsh have their own songs, while the English one is just 'God Save the Queen' – the same as the British national anthem.
There is, perhaps, an excuse for people who use the word ‘England’ when they mean 'Britain'. It cannot be denied that the dominant culture of Britain today is specifically English. The system of politics that is used in all four nations today is of English origin, and English is the main language of all four nations. Many aspects of everyday life are organized according to English custom and practice. But the political unification of Britain was not achieved by mutual agreement. On the contrary, it happened because England was able to exert her economic and military power over the other three nations.
Today English domination can be detected in various aspects of British public life. For example, the supply of money in Britain is controlled by the Bank of England (there is no such thing as a 'Bank of Britain'); the present queen of the country is universally known as ‘Elizabeth the Second’, even though Scotland and Northern Ireland have never had an 'Elizabeth the First'! (Elizabeth I of England and Wales ruled from 1553 to 1603); the term 'Anglo' is also commonly used. (The Angles were a Germanic tribe who settled in England in the fifth century. The word 'England' is derived from their name.) For example, newspapers and the television news talk about ‘Anglo-American relations' to refer to relations between the governments of Britain and the USA (and not just those between England and the USA).
Family Identity
In comparison with most other places in the world, family identity is rather weak in Britain, especially in England. This definitely means the nuclear family. There is little sense of extended family identity, except among some racial minorities. This is reflected in the size and composition of households. It is unusual for adults of different generations within the family to live together. The average number of people living in each household in Britain is lower than in most other European countries. The proportion of elderly people living alone is similarly high.
Significant family events such as weddings, births and funerals are not automatically accompanied by large gatherings of people. It is still common to appoint people to certain roles on such occasions, such as 'best man' at a wedding, or godmother and godfather when a child is born. But for most people these appointments are of sentimental significance only. They do not imply lifelong responsibility. In fact, family gatherings of any kind beyond the household unit are rare. For most people, they are confined to the Christmas period.
Even the stereotyped nuclear family of father, mother and children is becoming less common. Britain has a higher rate of divorce than anywhere else in Europe, except Denmark and the proportion of children born outside marriage has risen dramatically and is also one of the highest (► Children born outside marriage in Britain). However, these trends do not necessarily mean that the nuclear family is disappearing. Divorces have increased, but the majority of marriages in Britain (about 55%) do not break down. In addition, it is notable that about three quarters of all births outside marriage are officially registered by both parents and more than half of the children concerned are born to parents who are living together at the time.
► Children born outside marriage in Britain
■ all births outside marriage
■ birth registered by both parents
■ birth registered by mother only
Source Key Data
Geographical Identity
A sense of identity based on place of birth is, like family identity, not very common or strong in most parts of Britain. People are just too mobile and very few live in the same place all their lives.
A sense of identity with a larger geographical area is a bit stronger. Nearly everybody has a spoken accent that identifies them as coming from a particular large city or region. Liverpudlians (from Liverpool), Mancunians (from Manchester), Geordies (from the Newcastle area) and Cockneys (from London) are often proud to be known by these names.
Traditionally, a true Cockney is anybody born within the sound of Bow bells (the bells of the church of St Mary le Bow in the East End of London). In fact, the term is commonly used to denote people who come from a wider area of the inner most eastern suburbs of London and also an adjoining area south of the Thames.
'Cockney' is also used to describe a strong London accent and, like any such local accent, is associated with working class origins.
A feature of Cockney speech is rhyming slang, in which, for example, 'wife' is referred to as 'trouble and strife', and 'stairs' as apples and pears' (usually shortened to 'apples'). Some rhyming slang has passed into general informal British usage, some examples are 'use your loaf, which means 'think' (from 'loaf of bread' = 'head') and 'have a butcher's', which means 'have a look' (from 'butcher’s hook' = 'look')
In other cases, identity is associated with a county. A notable example is Cornwall, in the south-west corner of England. Even today, some Cornish people still talk about 'going to England' when they cross the county border - a testament to its ethnic Celtic history.
Many English people see themselves as either 'northerners' or 'southerners'. The fact that the south is on the whole richer than the north, and the domination of the media by the affairs of London and the south-east, leads to resentment in the north. This reinforces the pride in their northern roots felt by many northerners, who, stereotypically, see themselves as tougher, more honest and warmer-hearted than the soft, hypocritical and unfriendly southerners. To people in the south, the stereotypical northerner (who is usually male) is rather ignorant and uncultured and interested only in sport and beer-drinking.
Class Identity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pQnFOIixl0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIemPxHSb6Q
Historians say that the class system has survived in Britain because of its flexibility. It has always been possible to buy or marry or even work your way up, so that your children (and their children) belong to a higher social class than you do.
People in modern Britain are very conscious of class differences. They regard it as difficult to become friends with somebody from a different class. Class system does not have very much to do with political or religious affiliations. It results from the fact that the different classes have different sets of attitudes and daily habits. Typically, they tend to eat different food at different times of day, they like to talk about different topics using different styles and accents of English, they enjoy different pastimes and sports, they have different values about what things in life are most important and different ideas about the correct way to behave. Stereotypically, they go to different kinds of school.
An interesting feature of the class structure in Britain is that it is not always possible to guess the class to which a person belongs by looking at his or her clothes, car or bank balance. The most obvious and immediate sign comes when a person opens his or her mouth. The English grammar and vocabulary which is used in public speaking, radio and television news broadcasts, books and newspapers is known as 'standard British English'. Most working class people, however, use lots of words and grammatical forms in their everyday speech which are regarded as 'non-standard'.
Nevertheless, nearly everybody in the country is capable of using Standard English (or something very close to it) when they judge that the situation demands it. They are taught to do so at school. Therefore, the clearest indication of a person's class is often his or her accent. Most people cannot change this convincingly to suit the situation. The most prestigious accent in Britain is known as 'Received Pronunciation' (RP). It is the combination of Standard English spoken with an RP accent that is usually meant when people talk about 'BBC English' or 'Oxford English' or 'the Queen's English'.
In England and Wales, anyone who speaks with a strong regional accent is automatically assumed to be working class. Conversely, anyone with an RP accent is assumed to be upper or upper middle class (In Scotland and Northern Ireland, the situation is slightly different, in these places; some forms of regional accent are almost as prestigious as RP).
During the last quarter of the twentieth century, the way that people wish to identify themselves seems to have changed. In Britain, as anywhere else where there are recognized social classes (the upper, middle and working classes), a certain amount of people try to appear as if they belong to as high a class as possible. These days, however, nobody wants to be thought of as snobbish. The word 'posh' illustrates this tendency. To accuse someone of being posh is to accuse them of being pretentious.
Working-class people in particular are traditionally proud of their class membership and would not usually wish to be thought of as belonging to any other class. Interestingly, a survey conducted in the early 1990s showed that the proportion of people who describe themselves as working class is actually greater than the proportion that sociologists would classify as such. This is one manifestation of a phenomenon known as 'inverted snobbery', whereby middle-class people try to adopt working-class values and habits. They do this in the belief that the working classes are in some way 'better' (for example, more honest) than the middle classes.
In this egalitarian climate, the unofficial segregation of the classes in Britain has become less rigid than it was. A person whose accent shows that he or she is working class is no longer prohibited from most high-status jobs for that reason alone. Nobody takes elocution lessons any more in order to sound more upper class. It is now acceptable for radio and television presenters to speak with 'an accent' (i.e. not to use strict RP). It is also notable that, at the time of writing, none of the last five British Prime Ministers went to an elitist school for upper-class children, while almost every previous Prime Minister in history did.
In general, the different classes mix more readily and easily with each other than they used to.
Men and Women
Generally speaking, British people invest about the same amount of their identity in their gender as people in other parts of northern Europe do. On the one hand, society no longer overtly endorses differences in the public and social roles of men and women, and it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex. On the other hand, people still (often unconsciously) expect a fairly large number of differences in everyday behaviour and domestic roles.
In terms of everyday habits and mannerisms, British society probably expects a sharper difference between the sexes than most other European societies do. For example, it is still far more acceptable for a man to look untidy and scruffy than it is for a woman, and it is still far more acceptable for a woman to display emotions and be demonstrably friendly than it is for a man to do so.
As far as roles are concerned, most people assume that a family's financial situation is not just the responsibility of the man. On the other hand, they would still normally complement the woman, not the man, on a beautifully decorated or well kept house. Everyday care of the children is still seen as mainly the woman's responsibility. Although almost as many women have jobs as men, nearly half of the jobs done by women are part-time. In fact, the majority of mothers with children under the age of twelve either have no job or work only during school hours. Men certainly take a more active domestic role than they did forty years ago. Some things, however, never seem to change. A comparison of child-rearing habits of the 1980s showed that the proportion of men who never changed a baby's nappy had remained the same (40%).
At the public level there are contradictions. Britain was one of the first European countries to have a woman Prime Minister and a woman chairperson of debate in its Parliament. However, in the early nineties, only about 5% of MPs were women, only 20% of lawyers in Britain were women, less than 10% of accountants were women and there was one female consultant brain surgeon in the whole country.
At the 1997 election the proportion of women MPs increased sharply (to 18%) and nearly every institution in the country has opened its doors to women now. One of the last to do so was the Anglican Church, which, after much debate, decided in favour of the ordination of women priests in 1993. However, there are a few institutions which, at the time of writing, still don't accept female members - for example, the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London, an association for graduates of these two universities.
Literature
1. Population trends – http://www.cpc.ac.uk/resources/downloads/PopTrends137.pdf
2. Population estimates for the UK – Office of National Statistics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyAM6L175Ko
3.
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