THERE are quite clearly some people who were born and raised in Irish families in England who consider themselves English. I don’t have any problem with that.I don’t fully understand it, but that’s not meant as any kind of judgement. I’m only going by my own experience, and such was the intensity of being Irish in that upbringing that being English just never occurred to me.
Of course, I can see how that is different for different people. Coming from those huge, urban Irish immigrant communities, I can’t quite see how you come out of that not being Irish—but, you know, to each their own. English. Half-Irish-Half-English. British. I’ve heard all of them and, like I say, while I can't quite grasp those identities, that doesn’t mean they aren’t valid. The failure of understanding is mine, isn’t it? I know I can define and defend my identity—God only knows I’ve gone on about it quite enough—so I’ve no need to denigrate someone else’s.
I do have some bad news, though, for those who do see themselves as English: it might just be the case that they don’t want you.
The English, I mean.
The English-English, if you like.
Fittingly enough, as I’m writing this in the month the death was announced of Norman Tebbit, the 1980s hardline Conservative MP. Back in the eighties, Tebbit was one of my early confirmations of how I wasn’t English when he rolled out his infamous “cricket test”.
It all sounds quite innocent by today’s standards, but Tebbit’s notion was that if you had been raised and were living and working in England but did not support England in the cricket, then what were you doing here?
As neither a cricket fan nor an England fan, I knew I was going to fail that loyalty test every time. I was never going to be English in Tebbit’s eyes—and that suited me fine.
But we’ve gone way past cricket now in Brexit-flavoured England.
What follows is not a conversation from the dark corners of the internet, nor one between fringe figures. It comes from The Spectator magazine and features Michael Gove, who was until recently a senior government minister, and Matt Goodwin, a political scientist, commentator, and GB News presenter. These are their words, quoted verbatim for the purposes of commentary:
Michael Gove: “Would you say that Kemi Badenoch, or Rishi Sunak or Tony Sewell or Dame Kelly Holmes are not really English?”
Matt Goodwin: “Well, this is a debate. My view is that Englishness is an ethnicity, deeply rooted in a people that can trace their roots back over generations. It is a very distinctive identity and a different identity from Britishness. I think someone can identify as British and can be British but they cannot simultaneously identify as English.”
Goodwin continues: “I take a much thicker view of Englishness and that is that our history, the legacy of our collective identity, the legacy of our culture, goes much deeper and much further back.”
Gove then asks him about the Englishness of former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak—pointing out that Sunak was born and raised in Southampton, went to that most English of public schools, Winchester, supports Southampton FC, and is a Conservative. “Is he not English?”
To which Goodwin replies: “Well, Rishi Sunak could choose to identify as English if he views himself that way, but I think it is also true that there is an English ethnicity, an English group, that goes back generations that Rishi Sunak himself would say, ‘I do not have as strong a linkage to that group as other people do.’”
Asked to define Englishness, Goodwin says: “I would say someone who has been born in England, can trace their roots back through many generations, and who would identify with a way of life and a culture that surrounds Englishness as an identity.”
Now, all of those words are theirs. I haven’t altered them or shaped them to fit an argument of my own. I haven’t even explored where such ideas of English ethnic identity lead to, or just how many people it excludes.
But one, maybe two generations removed from a farmer in Mayo, a labourer in Cork, or a painter in Dublin—just how English do you think they really think you are?
Joe Horgan posts on X at @JoeHorganwriter
See More: Englishness, Irish Identity
