Why are the English always the ones who have to accept the denigration of our culture and nationhood and just quietly shut up?England is one of the oldest nation states in Europe, unified by the Anglo-Saxons in the 9th and 10th centuries. We weathered the Norman Conquest and 2-300 years of being treated like second-class citizens in our own country and went on to develop a rich literature, novel institutions (e.g. constitutional monarchy, representative democracy, rule of law, as well as an early experiment in republicanism during the Cromwellian Commonwealth) copied the world over. We also accepted small (by today's standards) numbers of newcomers who became English too.
It's true of course that we haven't been a nation-state since 1707 and the Industrial Revolution changed our culture substantially, including the development of strong city-based regional identities. But in spite of all that, the English have preserved a folk-memory of their nationhood every bit as strong as the Scots or Welsh, admittedly without the need to romanticise obsolete elements of our culture (think kilts 'n' bagpipes).The anomaly - much accentuated by the late 90s devolution settlement - is that England has not been treated as an entity deserving equal respect to our Scottish and Welsh neighbours. True, English institutions (esp. Parliament) morphed from originally England-only institutions to encompass the other nations. But I'd argue that has now been reversed. To such an extent that the English are now the only constituent part of the UK to be force-fed the idea they are 'British' when the others no longer subscribe to the descriptor, for the most part.
If you want to stop English nationalism being caricatured as racist, gammon oafs getting drunk at football matches, you need to give England the tools and institutions to rediscover itself as a nation, shorn of the 'British' baggage. Then, we might have the chance to adapt to the new reality of being a (broadly successful) multi-ethnic society and draw on the many examples of solidarity and a yearning for fairness for the common folk throughout our history (Peasant's Revolt, Levellers, Chartists, etc) that could be the founding ideals of a new England.
[Anonymous contribution]
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