Saturday 24 October 2009

London No Longer British?

Assuming that it is still predominantly inhabited by British Citizens and other subjects of the Crown, and by the Irish really, then yes, it is.

Whether London is an English city is, however, another matter. Can you assume, as you can in North Wales or in the Western Isles, that everyone can speak English, even if they happen to speak something else a lot of the time? This has nothing to do with ancestry. A city not like that is not an English city, just as it is not a Scottish city, or a Welsh city, or an Irish city, or an American city, or a Canadian city, or an Australian city, or a New Zealand city, or a Jamaican city, among many other things. So, is London still an English city? There is more to it, none of it anything to do with "race". But this is the point at which to start.

The Question Time audience may have been very London in containing a high number of people from visible ethnic minorities. But there were none of the Muslim women in veils, or even just in headscarves, who are so striking when one arrives at a London railway station from anywhere else in the country. Why not? And that audience jeered when Nick Griffin said that most people here were descended from those who had lived here since everlasting. But that is simply a fact. They are not descended from no one else. But the whole, entirely part-Huguenot White British group, ninety-two per cent of the population at the last census, is descended from those aboriginal inhabitants. So are all Afro-Caribbeans. So is an African-American such as Bonnie Greer. And so are many, many others besides.

Griffin has settled in rural Mid-Wales but has never bothered to learn the local language. What does that make him?

1 comment:

  1. Hi David, browsed on over here from Fr Brown's blog. I too noticed the audience and panel's attitude to Griffin's 'indiginous' argument, and it's kind of a shame a valid point like that should get jumbled in with his racist nonsense and dismissed out of hand because of that. It's all very well 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants claiming the label British now their families have settled here, but there's also the historical reality of the angles, saxons, picts, celts, britons, (and i've probably missed some out), who have been here a long time and whose culture I am as proud of as the dark skinned folk on Question Time are of their cultures. It is unfortunate that Griffin has co-opted this proud heritage, along with our christian heritage, but I blame his inept political opponents for that, rather than Griffin himself. He is, after all, a nazi and it is to be expected. I'm far more bothered about the fascistic treatment of immigrants meted out under Labour, y'kno, the ones who actually have power!
    See http://www.chickyog.net/2009/10/22/and-the-other-is-the-leader-of-the-british-national-party/

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