Support our Nation today - please donate here
News

Media, politicians and academics must pay more heed to differences in national identity within UK says prof

22 Feb 2022 3 minute read
The flags of Wales, Scotland, England and the UK. Picture by Joowwww.

The media, academics and politicians must pay more heed to differences in identity and politics across the different constituent parts of the United Kingdom, a professor of political science has said.

Writing in UK in a Changing Europe: British Politics after Brexit, Professor Ailsa Henderson of the University of Edinburgh said that of late even British identity meant different things in Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland.

She said that there was now “very real differentiation, not just in electoral preferences but in political ideals” across the four nations of the United Kingdom.

“Separate discussions in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England often comprise four completely different debates, bearing little relation to any of the political
arguments occurring outside those borders,” she said.

“And on those occasions when we are having the same argument — over Brexit, for example — we often come to different conclusions.”

She said that part of the problem in recognising these different identities was that efforts to understand the British state were “serially Anglo-centric”.

“First, the very label ‘British’ politics is symptomatic of a series of other elisions and omissions committed within the Anglo-British state, where England is simultaneously the point of reference but largely ignored as a political community,” she wrote.

“Serial offenders here are UK ministers and government departments that routinely refuse to acknowledge when they are announcing policy developments for the state as a whole or England-alone.

“This is coupled with an Anglo-British media that sees little merit in clarifying these distinctions to its audiences (which has on occasional earned a warning from Ofcom).

“This is not just practitioners at fault here. Academics routinely plonk ‘British identity’ into regressions and find results (people who feel British think/do this) without ever acknowledging that British identity works in different ways in different parts of the state.”

‘Similar’

The different political directions of travel within the nations of the UK are also noted by Professor Roger Awan-Scully in his chapter in the same volume on whether Welsh and English politics are diverging from English politics.

He noted that since 2015 a different political party had won in each of the four nations in the UK.

“But the story is not wholly one of divergence. Conservative general election underperformance in Wales compared to England has been diminishing in recent times, and the 2019 Welsh Conservative vote share of 36.1% was their best since 1900,” he said.

However, he questioned whether this trend could be maintained in the long term, pointing to the Welsh Labour comeback at the 2021 Senedd election.

“Brexit certainly appeared to contribute to the Welsh Conservative advance in December 2019 in places that had clearly backed Leave,” he said.

“This allowed the Tories to capture seats that were already quite marginal, including several in north-east Wales.

“But similar swings occurred in the south Wales valleys’ seats: longstanding Labour bastions with deeply-entrenched traditions of hostility to the Conservatives.

“The Tories had too much ground to make up to win any of these seats, but the direction of travel was very similar to that witnessed in other ex-industrial but pro-Leave communities in England.

“It remains to be seen whether, post-Brexit, such trends can be maintained. These are very different communities from more traditional Tory heartlands, and there
was little evidence in the 2021 Senedd election of continuing Conservative momentum in such places.”


Support our Nation today

For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

9 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
GW Atkinson
GW Atkinson
2 years ago

To me the British identity means imperialism, lack of democracy, a class system and thievery. Also a ton of racism and xenophobia on top of that. Everything Britain represents is the opposite of what I was brought up with and still believe in.

GW Atkinson
GW Atkinson
2 years ago

I think Awan-Scully does a disservice by comparing Welsh Labour and English Labour as the same entity. I would consider voting for Welsh Labour but no way in hell would I vote for English Labour steering itself towards the right of policitcs run by a leader who is in bed with the English establishment. As soon as you accept an honour, you have just put another brick in the class system to protect undeserved power while we are all denied a proper fully fledged accountable democracy.

Grayham Jones
2 years ago
Reply to  GW Atkinson

Kick all English party’s out of wales that’s the Tories Labour and all Brexit party’s it’s time for a new wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Kerry Davies
Kerry Davies
2 years ago
Reply to  GW Atkinson

These are just two brief opinions from a report written by nearly 50 people on 23 topics released today. I agree with what you write to an extent but will need time to read the 120+ pages and more time to mull it over. Ailsa Henderson co-wrote the book Englishness: The Political Force Transforming Britain with Richard Wyn Jones which was vaguely interesting but too academic and incomplete for my poor brain.

Grayham Jones
2 years ago

The UK is finished we in wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and Ireland 🇮🇪 have got to be independent

Andrew
Andrew
2 years ago

Anglo centric academic circle’s, particularly historian’s are regular offenders . A recent article describing Stone Henge as being, ‘quintessentially English ‘ might please American readers, who are ignorant of the fact that the monument was ancient before the Saxon’s arrival and has nothing to do with the English, other than standing in an area that thousands of years later was to become England. This cultural appropriation also applies to the king Arthur stories . When they big up Alfred the,’ Great ‘, they always omit the fact that Assar, a Welsh monk taught Alfred and his court to read and… Read more »

Welsh_Siôn
Welsh_Siôn
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew

Highly recommend you read this (if you haven’t already!):

‘A veritable chauvinism of prehistory’: nationalist
prehistories and the ‘British’ late Neolithic mythos
Gordon J. Barclay & Kenneth Brophy (2021)

Available in .pdf form at “The Archaelogical Journal”. Free.

Last edited 2 years ago by Welsh_Siôn
Andrew
Andrew
2 years ago
Reply to  Welsh_Siôn

Diolch Sion. Interested in anything that challenges the academic mainstream.

Nottabott
Nottabott
2 years ago

Those swings are probably the best they will ever do, I won’t be surprised to see next to no T*ry seats next election in Wales.

Our Supporters

All information provided to Nation.Cymru will be handled sensitively and within the boundaries of the Data Protection Act 2018.