Abstract
Our aim in this paper is to assess the evidence for the emergence of an English nationalism. To do this we must take account of the British setting of English national sentiments, and the allied cases of Scotland and Wales. There is growing evidence of a drift away from British identification (Tilley and Heath 2007). But the consequences of this for the ‘sub-state’ identities are much different in the English case from the other two, leaving aside the case of Northern Ireland. This is because English identities are bound up with British identity in a way that the other two, Scotland and Wales, are not. Indeed, whilst devolution has problematised the characterisation of Wales and Scotland as ‘sub-state’ nations (see Brubaker 2004, p. 157, on ‘degrees of state-ness’), this only serves to emphasise the curious status of England as the dominant nation in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and yet without any semblance of statehood.
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Mann, R., Fenton, S. (2014). English Nationalism and Britishness: Class and the ‘Sub-state’ National Identities. In: Garbaye, R., Schnapper, P. (eds) The Politics of Ethnic Diversity in the British Isles. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137351548_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137351548_9
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