[britishness] does it mean anything to you

Martin Kelly wrote an article called What Being British Means To Me (If Anyone's Interested) and I'm going to quote it in full here:

In an editorial for 'Comment is Free' entitled 'What young British Muslims say can be shocking - some of it is also true', the professional Europhile Timothy Garton Ash writes that:

"I have always thought that the very undemanding vagueness, the duffle-coat bagginess of Britishness was an advantage when it comes to making immigrants and their descendants feel at home here. After all, what have you traditionally required in order to be British? An ability to talk about the weather at inordinate length. Being willing to mind your own business, to live and let live. A general inclination to obey the law of the land, more or less. Perhaps a mild interest in the royal family, football or cricket. That's about it.

The very idea of talking about ourselves as "citizens" has seemed to the British vaguely pretentious and foreign, more specifically French - and therefore bad. But perhaps a more demanding civic-national identity, like that of the French Republic, has its advantages after all, giving a stronger sense of identity and belonging."

The concept of Britishness to which he refers is not universal. The United Kingdom is comprised of three nations, a malfunctioning statelet and a couple of semi-autonomous island territories in the near offshore. His concept is one which is specifically English, and upper middle class, in origin.

Speaking for myself, my concept of Britishness is informed by a conscious rejection of the West of Scotland's sectarian tribal loyalties (sometimes quite difficult when others are parading them in your face) which motivates the abominable waving of Irish flags at Celtic Park by those happy to claim Her Majesty's Dole, and also of the petty but powerful allure of Scottish nationalism, in favour of the recognition that one is a citizen of a greater entity, with rights and duties to the greater whole.

In other words, Britishness is something which, even after nearly 150 years of my family's residence on the mainland, has had to be worked at. Thus I'm not really interested in the carping of those for whom special interest pleading is quite literally an article of faith.

And although Garton Ash might now see the importance of civic education, it's been attitudes like his that have helped to get us into the mess we're in today. An uncharitable suggestion concerning where he should store his duffle coat springs to mind.

I confess my attitude to Britishness is romanticized [possibly the effect of yearning from afar] but it was always the railway children, Falling Foss, Beckfoot Bridge, the canals, the Norfolk broads, Arthur Ransome, Carnaby Street, Twiggy, ska, Madness, two pints of lager and a packet of crisps please, real ale, Stamford Bridge, North Yorkshire moors, Betty's tearooms, Maggie's too, Hendon Aircraft Museum, the Spitfire, Python, the Young Ones, Pink Floyd, the A68 to Edinburgh and so on.

I suppose that explains some of the reactions to the concept of Britishness I introduced in the immigration post. What's your concept? ASBOs, education destroyed, NHS destroyed, post-modernist? I don't know.