Sociology Working Paper
Paper Number 2005--05
Who Feels British
Anthony Heath, Catherine Rothon and Robert Andersen
Department of Sociology
University of Oxford
Manor Road
Oxford, OX1 3UQ
www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/swp.html
Citizens of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland officially hold British
citizenship. However, British identity may be more than just an official category; it
may also provide a sense of attachment to the state and may thus have a role in
promoting solidarity within the nation. In the classic formulation of national identity
Benedict Anderson conceptualised the nation as an imagined political community –
imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. He went on to argue that it is
imagined in the sense that “the members of even the smallest nation will never know
most of their members …yet in the minds of each lives the image of their
communion”, and that it is a community because “regardless of the actual inequality
and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep
horizontal comradeship” (Anderson, 1983,6-7).
Developing this idea of a deep horizontal comradeship, Miller has made a powerful
ethical argument for nationality, arguing that this sense of belonging to an imagined
community can be an important source of national cohesion:
“In acknowledging a national identity, I am also acknowledging that I
owe a special obligation to fellow members of my nation which I do
not owe to other human beings” (Miller, 1995, p49).
Nationality can thus become a basis of mutual obligations and social solidarity: one
may feel obligations to one’s fellow nationals, for example to provide for them in
their old age, that one does not feel towards members of other nations. In a related
fashion Verba (1965) has argued that shared national sentiment can provide a basis
for the legitimacy of the state. Metaphorically speaking, we can see national identity
as providing the social glue that holds a nation together (Smith and Jarkko 1998).
For all of its (relatively short) history Britain has been a multi-nation state, composed
of English, Welsh, Scots and Irish, and a British identity has had to coexist with
separate national identities. First Wales was formally incorporated with England by
the 1536 Act of Union. Next came the 1707 Act of Union between England/Wales
and Scotland, which is usually taken as the formal constitutional beginning of Great
Britain, while the 1801 Act of Union created the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland. In 1922 the twenty six counties of southern and western Ireland formed
the Free State, leaving a United Kingdom composed of Great Britain and the six
counties of the Province of Ulster that became formally known as Northern Ireland.
In this chapter (and the book as a whole) we focus on the identities of residents of
these four territories that now make up the UK – England, Wales, Scotland and
Northern Ireland. However, we must remember that there has never been a one-toone relationship between formal constitutions and the inhabitants’ national identities,
either in the UK as a whole or in its constituent parts. At the time of the 1707 Act, for
example, the Scots were not a homogeneous group but were divided between
highlanders and lowlanders; the Irish were divided into the indigenous Catholics,
Presbyterian settlers from Scotland who had arrived in the seventeenth century, and
Anglican landowners and ruling class. And in Wales there have been long-standing
differences between the Welsh-speakers of the West and North, the more anglicized
Welsh Marches and, from the nineteenth century, the industrialized southern
coalfields. England too had important internal divisions, particularly between north
and south. (See Davies (1999) and Kearney (1989) on the history of the four nations;
Balsom (1085) on the three Wales model, Girvin (1999) on the history of nationalisms
in Ireland, Brown et al (1996) on Scottish divisions.)
Linda Colley (1992a) has provided a brilliant and convincing account of the
construction of the British nation from these disparate parts in Britons: Forging the
Nation 1780-1829. Irish Catholics never fully accepted a British identity but to a very
large extent Scots, Welsh and Irish Protestants did come to see themselves as having
dual identities, accepting for example both British and Scottish identities and seeing
them as complementary rather than as competing sources of identity and loyalty.
There are three main factors that Colley focuses on in her account of the emergence of
a British national identity. First, Britain was largely composed of Protestants –
Anglicans in England, Nonconformists in Wales, Presbyterians in lowland Scotland
and some in Northern Ireland. More importantly, for much of Colley’s period Britain
was in conflict with Catholic France and there was a real threat that Catholicism
might be imposed if Britain were defeated. To be sure many Irish were Catholic, and
this accounts in part both for the suspicion with which they were treated at this time,
and perhaps also for their lower commitment to the British state. But Protestants in
the four territories all had a common interest, despite their doctrinal and
organizational differences, in seeing the defeat of France.
A second key factor was the economic opportunities that union with England gave the
Scots, particularly through the removal of internal tariffs, while a third key factor was
the rise of the British Empire which provided opportunities abroad both in commerce
and administration, opportunities which the Scots in particular took advantage of. As
Colley summarizes her argument:
[Great Britain is] an invented nation that was not founded on the suppression
of older loyalties so much as superimposed on them, and that was heavily
dependent for its raison d’etre on a broadly Protestant culture, on the threat
and tonic of recurrent war, especially war with France, and on the triumphs,
profits, and Otherness represented by a massive overseas empire (Colley,
1992b 327).
With its emphasis on mutual interests shared by the four territories Colley’s thesis is
thus at odds with those of writers such as Hechter (1976) who have emphasized the
conflictual relations between England and the so-called celtic periphery of Wales,
Scotland and Ireland. (The idea that lowland Scotland or indeed Northern Ireland was
largely composed of Celts is a strange one.) Hechter in particular emphasizes the
unequal economic relations between centre and periphery, with the peripheral regions
suffering from economic exploitation by the English centre. Hechter uses the
evocative term ‘internal colonialism’ to describe the nature of English domination
over the periphery and indeed there is a great deal of justice in seeing Ireland as
Britain’s first colony. Colley’s account in contrast emphasizes the shared features
that united English, Scots, Welsh and Protestant Irish and which promoted a shared
identity as British, albeit an identity which did not exclude the continuation of
identities as Scots or Welsh as well, or indeed of more local allegiances.
One key point in understanding the nature of Britishness today is that, as Colley
points out, many of the factors that created a shared sense of British identity in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have now declined. Secularization has reduced
both the numbers of Protestants and the salience of religion. Britain is no longer a
passionately Protestant state in the way it once was although relics of Protestant
culture doubtless live on and have some lasting legacy on the formation of the British
character. Secondly, the decline of Empire has reduced the extent to which there was
a common economic project that benefited citizens from all four territories. Thirdly,
the nature of conflict in the modern world has changed. The Second World War was
the last great collective project where all the peoples of the British Isles faced a
common threat. Modern wars typically involve large multinational coalitions in
which Britain is a junior partner (although the Falklands war was a notable
exception). In the modern world there is no obvious ‘other’ equivalent to Napoleonic
France or Nazi Germany that helps to define and distinguish British identity.
The factors maintaining British identity are thus much weaker than they used to be,
although two or more hundred years of history will also have left their mark with
some shared traditions, myths and institutions. A shared sense of Britishness may
thus be less effective today than it was in the past in promoting solidarity and securing
the legitimacy of the state. Britishness, however, remains what some writers have
termed the ‘official nationalism’ of the state (Kellas 1991, Seton-Watson 1977). It
provides a unifying set of beliefs and sentiments, backed up by common institutions
such as the Monarchy and Parliament, and provides some basis for an ‘imagined
community’ that embraces all four territories of the UK in a single nation.
There have however been challenges to a sense of British identity both from within
and from without. From within we have seen the rise of what we might term
‘minority nationalisms’ in Scotland and Wales which seek independence, or at the
very least a significant measure of devolution, and which provide alternative and
perhaps more potent sources of separate ‘imagined communities’. In Scotland the
SNP and in Wales Plaid Cymru have campaigned in the past for independence from
the UK (although currently they advocate more extensive devolution within the
British state). In Northern Ireland both Sinn Fein and the SDLP are explicitly Irish
nationalist parties advocating unification of the six counties with the Republic of
Ireland. These are thus nationalist movements of the sort described by Gellner (1983)
that seek to foster separate nations and to secure political autonomy for them. While
devolution is entirely compatible with dual identities and simultaneous membership
both of a British and, say, a Scottish nation, independence movements tend to reflect
and foster exclusive identities as Scottish, Welsh or Irish rather than British. (For
further details see later chapters in this volume.)
There have also been challenges from outside with the rise of European integration
and of what we might term ‘postnationalism’ (Dogan 1994). Dogan sees European
integration as leading to a blurring of national identities, just as it involves some
blurring of national sovereignty, as a result of growing interdependence between the
member states. Shared interests as members of the European Union may also serve to
diminish a sense of national interest. Whereas once France was the ‘other’ that
helped to define British identity, the modern world no longer places nation-states in
these direct conflicts. Somewhat related arguments have been presented by theorists
of postmodernity who argue that such identities are now largely a matter of personal
choice. Stuart Hall for example argues that unified national identities are challenged
by processes of globalization and that postmodern identities are a “moveable feast”
for individuals who now have access to “a variety of possibilities and new positions of
identification … making identities more positional, more political, more plural and
diverse” (Hall 1992, 309). (See also Inglehart 1997, Giddens 1991)
Our first task in this chapter is to map the distribution of national identities, both dual
and exclusive. Our second task is to explore the social bases of British identity. How
inclusive is it? What are the fault lines, if any, that distinguish those who see
themselves as British from those adopt other identities? Our third task is to look at
the meaning of these categories. As Jacobson (1997) has persuasively pointed out
with qualitative work, the meaning of national identity can vary considerably from a
purely formal recognition on the one hand that one holds British citizenship to a deep
affective attachment to one’s nation, a real sense of belonging to the ‘imagined
political community’. As one of Jacobson’s (ethnic minority) respondents put it “I am
British because I’m born here, but it just doesn’t mean anything, to say I’m British – it
doesn’t conjure up an image, it doesn’t hit me here [she puts here hand to her heart]
or anywhere (Jacobson 1997: 189, italics in original). We therefore also want to map
the distribution of this sense of emotional belonging as well as a more formalistic
sense of citizenship.
The distribution of British and other national identities
We begin by exploring the pattern of national identities in the four territories. As we
noted earlier, a British identity does not necessarily exclude other identities such as
Welsh, Scottish or Irish. To capture this complexity we asked the following two
questions in our surveys:
Please say which, if any, of the words on this card describes the way
you think of yourself. Please choose as many or as few as apply.
British
English
European
Irish
Northern Irish
Scottish
Ulster
Welsh
Other (please write in)
And if you had to choose, which one best describes the way you think of
yourself?
The first question allows us to chart the pattern of single and dual identities and
indeed of multiple identities, though in practice only a small proportion of the samples
offered multiple identities.1 The second question, asking for the best description, will
give some indication of the imagined community that is one’s primary focus of
attachment, whereas the first question may indicate a more superficial recognition of
British citizenship.
Using these two questions we have constructed a typology of identity. First we have a
group who gave British as their sole identity. Next we have those with dual (or
multiple) British and other identities. Within this group we distinguish those who felt
British was their best self-description and those who preferred other self-descriptions
such as English, Welsh or Scottish. Finally we have people who did not give a British
identity at all but have an alternative nation to which they feel they belong.
We also pick out the largest ‘minority nationalism’ within each territory. Thus in the
case of England (in the first column) we distinguish those who saw themselves as
English rather than British, in Wales (in the second column) we pick out those who
saw themselves as Welsh rather than British, and in Scotland (the third column) those
who saw themselves as Scottish rather than British. Given the complexities of the
situation in Ireland, we distinguish (in the fourth column) three important groups of
people whose identities were Irish, Northern Irish and Ulster respectively.2
Table 1 National identities in the four territories of the United Kingdom
Column percentages
England
Wales
Scotland
British
identity only
26.9
15.9
7.5
Northern
Ireland
30.8
British identity
best
21.6
12.6
12.3
10.9
1
In England for example 52.2% gave only one identity, 36.6% gave two identities, 8.8% gave three
and 0.8% gave more than three. European was the most common ‘third’ identity (12.0%) but only
2.8% gave it as their ‘best’ identity. For details of the distributions in all four territories see table A1 in
the appendix to this chapter.
2
In effect we have constructed a measure that closely resembles the Moreno scale that asks
respondents to define themselves as ‘English not British’, ‘English more than British’ ‘equally English
and British’, and so on (Moreno 1988). However, the standard Moreno question could not be asked in
Northern Ireland, where identities cannot be arranged on a single continuum, and we therefore felt it
better to construct measures on common principles that could be applied to all four territories. See
table A2 for the distributions of our respondents on the Moreno question. As can be seen, the Moreno
question gives substantially higher percentages with a British identity than does our measure, but the
pattern of differences between the three territories covered by the Moreno question is broadly the same
as that given by our measure.
British but
English etc
best
British but
other identity
best
All dual
British
identities
18.4 English
24.1 Welsh
34.5 Scottish
3.7
4.3
2.6
1.4 Irish
4.7 N Irish
1.9 Ulster
1.2
43.7
41.0
49.4
20.1
Not British,
English etc
best
Not British,
Other best or
no identity
All nonBritish
identities
20.8 English
35.4 Welsh
38.7 Scottish
8.7
7.8
4.4
24.6 Irish
17.6 N Irish
2.7 Ulster
4.1
29.5
43.2
43.1
49.0
N
3689
988
1503
1800
Sample: residents in the four territories.
Table 1 gives an overview of the complex pattern of national identities in the four
territories.3 First, we can see that substantial minorities in all four territories do not
volunteer a British identity at all; in England 29% do not volunteer a British identity,
in Wales and Scotland 43% fail to mention British as one of their identities, and in
Northern Ireland it is almost 50%. Instead, we find that 21% of people in England
define themselves as English not British, 35% of people in Wales define themselves
as Welsh not British, and in Scotland 39% define themselves as Scottish not British.
The patterns in Northern Ireland are even more complex with 24% defining
themselves as Irish, not British (as we shall see, these are almost exclusively
Catholics) while 17% define themselves as Northern Irish not British.
Second, we can see that, even among people who volunteer a British identity, many
do not see British as the best description of themselves. In England 18% accept a
British identity but regard English as a better self-description, and the equivalent
groups are larger in Wales and Scotland.
We must acknowledge that there are a number of methodological problems with the
measurement of national identity. Many people may not have very clear conceptions
of their national identities and the distinctions may be rather fuzzy. “The shape and
edges of British identity are thus historically changing, often vague and, to a degree,
malleable – an aspect of the British identity I have called ‘a fuzzy frontier’.” (Cohen,
1995, p.59) This is particularly likely to be the case with English and British
3
In table 1 we cover all respondents resident in the relevant territory and this should not be equated
with the English, Welsh and so on: all four territories have mixtures of the different national groups.
identities as the English are often unclear about the distinction between the two
concepts. Hazelden and Jenkins (2003) have shown that there are major questionwording effects on responses to the national identity question, and we also find that
when people are explicitly prompted for a British identity, as they are in the ‘Moreno’
question, the numbers giving a British identity increase somewhat. (See table A2.)
The key issue therefore becomes what these distinctions means. We should not
necessarily assume that it matters a great deal whether people define themselves as
English not British, or vice versa. It might perhaps be ‘a distinction without a
difference’. We return to this question in the final section of this chapter.
The social profile of the British
Our next research question is to ask who are the people who subscribe to these
different identities and how do their characteristics vary across the four territories.
First of all, however, it is perhaps worth pointing out that, if British identity is indeed
an effective shared identity that unites citizens in a deep horizontal comradeship
irrespective of vertical inequalities, then we would not expect to find any major social
divisions dividing the different categories of identifier. If national identity is to
perform the function attributed to it by Miller or Verba, then it should have no major
social fault-lines beyond that between citizens and non-citizens. We expect this to be
most evident in England, where as we have already seen there is a fuzzy distinction
between Englishness and Britishness. The fuzzier the distinction, the less we expect
to find differences in the social profiles of the different groups.
In contrast to the fuzziness of the English case, we know that there is a major faultline between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland – a fault line that we would
tend to see as an ethno-religious one reflecting the division of the Northern Irish
population into distinct communities based on the religious divide although not
necessarily having much to do with religiosity per se.
The interesting question then becomes what kind of fault lines, if any, do we observe
in Wales and Scotland where the distinctions between British, Welsh and Scottish are
likely to be a great deal less fuzzy than the comparable distinction in England. Do we
find an ethnic basis to identity in Wales and Scotland too?
An alternative account, drawing on Hechter’s ideas of economic exploitation, would
expect to see the fault lines as running along socio-economic rather than purely ethnic
lines. Langland too has argued that historically “it is doubtful whether the
institutional processes of incorporation functioned in the same way for the lower
strata of the population … the opportunities offered by empire and the colonies of
settlement were largely limited to the upper and middle classes” (Langland, 1999, 62).
Thus Britishness as the official nationalism of the British state might be expected to
be a more powerful force among the dominant groups that have gained more from the
union and that are more closely involved with a Britain-wide ‘ruling class’. Minority
nationalism in contrast might have more resonance among subordinate groups. In
similar vein Nairn has argued that “nationalist movements have been invariably
populist in outlook and sought to induct lower classes into political life. In its most
typical version, this assumed the shape of a restless middle-class and intellectual
leadership trying to sit up and channel popular class energies into support for the new
states: (Nairn, 1977, 41).
A related idea is Merton’s distinction between locals and cosmopolitans. Locals are
rooted in their local communities, have often lived there all their lives, and have a
dense web of local social relationships. Cosmopolitans on the other hand are more
oriented to a national arena, are often newcomers to the local community, and have a
wider geographical span of social relations. Merton suggests that this distinction will
be related to educational and occupational differences – cosmopolitans for example
will often be graduates working in the professions – but cannot be reduced purely to
education or occupation (Merton 1957). Along somewhat similar lines Anderson
looks at the way that administrators and officials whose occupational and
geographical careers have a national ambit rather than a purely local one help foster a
sense of belonging to a national community and give that community some physical
reality. In discussing the emergence of independence in the New World from the Old
Word Empires, Anderson thus emphasizes the role of what he terms “creole pilgrim
functionaries” whose careers were limited to the colonies and excluded them from the
metropolitan centre (Anderson 1983, 65). However, the same kinds of process, if
they included access to the centre, could also help foster a sense of belonging, for
example, to a broader British community than to a purely Welsh or Scottish one.
Finally, we might expect Europeanization or globalization more generally to weaken
national loyalties. As we noted earlier, Dogan has suggested that we are entering a
post-nationalistic phase as national boundaries tend to dissolve through the process of
European integration. Experience of foreign travel, exposure to global culture
through television and other mass media, and participation in global communications
through the internet might also tend to reduce a sense of Britishness. We might
expect these processes to be more noticeable among younger generations who came
of age in the final decades of the twentieth century whereas older generations who
came of age in mid-century around the second world war and before the British
Empire became a distant memory might be expected to have the strongest sense of
British identity.
To explore the role of ethnicity, socio-economic position and geographical careers,
we begin in table 2 by looking at the social profile of our main groups in England.
The way to read this table is to compare the figure in each cell with that in the final
column for English residents as a whole. For example, we can see that 24% of people
who said that they were British and volunteered no other national identification were
aged 65 or older. In the sample of residents in England as a whole 23.3% were aged
65 or older, and hence we can conclude that the exclusively British respondents were
not distinctive in their age since the difference between these two figures is not in fact
statistically significant. Any differences that are significant we have indicated with
bold type. (Strictly speaking the highlighted cells are ones where the adjusted
residuals are greater than 1.96.)
Table 2 The social profile of national identities in England
Cell percentages
British British
identity best
British
but
British
but
English
not
Other
not
All
English
ancestry
Ethnic
minority
Member of
Church of
England
Graduate
Salariat
Not lived
outside
England
Lived
outside UK
Aged 65 or
older
Internet user
only
identity
83.7
English
identity
best
92.7
other
British
identity
best
35.0
92.8
78.1
British
22.6
78.5
12.8
5.8
1.9
24.3
1.4
30.1
8.8
31.2
31.3
38.1
11.8
36.2
7.8
30.8
13.2
33.3
75.8
18.1
41.1
76.6
16.5
34.8
86.5
29.4
52.3
32.5
7.7
27.5
83.5
30.1
48.5
24.4
15.8
36.0
73.3
19.1
19.5
11.2
43.8
14.1
59.7
21.2
24.2
19.2
24.2
18.4
31.3
11.6
23.3
44.1
53.6
48.0
60.3
38.0
61.8
47.7
Sample: residents in England.
Note: figures in bold are significantly different at the .05 level from the overall
percentages shown in the final column.
The results of table 2 lend some support to our hypotheses about the roles of ancestry
and ethnicity, socio-economic position and geographical careers. Ancestry is clearly
by far the most important factor. We asked respondents where they and their parents
were born. We have classified respondents who were themselves born in England and
whose parents were also born in England as having English ancestry. As we can see,
93% of respondents who volunteered an exclusively English identity were of English
ancestry compared with the overall figure of 78%. Conversely, a third or fewer of
respondents who gave ‘other’ identities were of English ancestry. These two ‘other’
categories were also notable for their high proportions of ethnic minority members
and of people who had lived at some stage outside the UK. Around one third of the
respondents who fell into our final category of ‘other not British’ were not in fact
British citizens (whereas virtually all of the members of the other categories were
indeed British citizens).4
There was also some support for the socio-economic account. Respondents who
described themselves as exclusively English were significantly disadvantaged in both
educational and occupational terms; only 8% were graduates while 28%, significantly
less than the overall figure, were in professional and managerial occupations.
However, the exclusively British respondents were not notably advantaged, so the
socio-economic account is not an especially strong one. Rather surprisingly, the two
most advantaged groups were the ‘others’ (both the British and the non-British).
4
This might not hold true in Northern Ireland however where many people hold joint British and Irish
citizenship but reject a British identity.
There is also some support for the role of geographical careers, respondents who
preferred an English identity being significantly more ‘local’, over 80% never having
lived outside England. Correspondingly we find that the most cosmopolitan groups
were the two ‘other’ groups, especially the group who did not accept a British
identity.
The post-nationalist account also receives some support from table 2. The two ‘other’
groups have the highest proportion of internet users (our main measure of
involvement in global networks), while the exclusively English have the lowest usage.
As we had expected, these ‘other’ groups are also the youngest while the exclusively
English tend to come from somewhat older generations.
A number of these patterns will be interrelated. Younger respondents will also tend to
be better educated and more likely to use the internet, for example. A multivariate
analysis is therefore appropriate as a way of sorting out the key factors involved in a
sense of British identity. We show the results of multivariate analyses for all four
territories in table 6.
Table 3 The social profile of national identities in Scotland
Cell percentages
British British
only
best
identity
Scottish
ancestry
Ethnic
minority
Presbyterian
Graduate
Salariat
Not lived
outside
Scotland
Lived outside
UK
Aged 65 or
older
Internet user
45.5
61.1
British
but
Scottish
identity
best
91.9
1.8
0.5
0.8
2.6
1.0
21.2
1.9
23.2
20.5
34.0
33.0
30.3
22.7
45.1
44.3
41.4
12.7
34.7
74.6
7.7
41.0
54.3
20.5
34.9
8.6
25.2
80.4
1.5
34.8
52.5
10.6
33.5
14.6
33.6
65.8
27.7
24.3
14.8
15.4
8.9
56.1
16.5
32.1
23.4
23.5
17.9
22.2
12.1
23.0
45.5
55.1
41.6
56.4
41.9
53.0
44.6
British
but
other
identity
best
28.2
Scottish
not
British
Other
not
British
All
92.4
19.7
80.0
Sample: residents in Scotland.
Note: figures in bold are significantly different at the .05 level from the overall
percentages shown in the final column.
The Scottish picture in table 3 has a number of similarities with the English picture
shown in table 2. Once again ancestry is the dominant factor with over 90% of people
who prefer to describe themselves as Scots being of Scottish ancestry. In contrast,
people who prefer a British identity are much less likely to be indigenous Scots, and
this is particularly noticeable among people who define themselves as exclusively
British, where the figure for Scottish ancestry falls to 45%. Moreover, these
differences are much larger than those that we observed in England: north of the
border the distinction between a British and a Scottish identity is much sharper than
the equivalent distinction south of the border.
Almost as important as ancestry is geographical mobility (and stability). People who
define themselves as exclusively British are much more likely to have lived elsewhere
in the UK while the exclusive Scots are much more likely to have lived all their lives
in Scotland. As with ancestry, the magnitude of these differences is much greater
than in England.
As in the case of England, too, we can see that people who prefer a British selfdescription are somewhat more likely to be socio-economically advantaged than those
who prefer a Scottish identity. Interestingly, the differences are of broadly similar
magnitude to those we found in England and the overall percentage in the salariat is
also close to that in England.
Another parallel between the English and Scottish findings is the role of the
established church – the Church of England in England and the Presbyterian Church
in Scotland. In both cases membership of the national church is associated with a
preference for a national (that is English or Scottish) identity rather than for a British
identity, but it is somewhat more strongly associated with a dual than with an
exclusive identity.
In general, then, the patterns parallel those found in England although the magnitude
of the differences tends to be greater – the distinctions are less fuzzy.
Table 4 The social profile of national identities in Wales
Cell percentages
38.9
1.3
49.2
0.8
British
but
Welsh
identity
best
87.3
0
9.7
15.3
43.9
33.8
2.5
22.0
38.9
41.1
12.6
9.7
26.9
71.8
British British
only
best
identity
Welsh ancestry
Ethnic
minority
Nonconformist
Graduate
Salariat
Not lived
outside
British
but
other
identity
best
12.2
7.1
Welsh
not
British
Other
not
British
All
90.9
0
11.7
9.5
67.0
1.3
4.8
21.4
42.5
19.0
9.8
8.9
22.9
79.4
2.7
22.1
30.3
10.4
8.8
13.3
30.7
57.6
Wales
Lived outside
UK
Speaks Welsh
Aged 65 or
older
Internet user
17.2
8.9
7.1
19.0
5.7
39.0
11.5
19.1
34.6
22.6
22.8
35.3
23.9
11.9
11.9
39.1
18.9
13.0
36.0
29.8
24.1
46.5
43.5
39.1
57.1
36.3
45.5
41.1
Sample: residents in Wales.
Figures in bold are significantly different at the .05 level from the overall percentages
shown in the final column.
Table 4, which covers Wales, shows some patterns that are now familiar.5 As in both
England and Scotland, there is a tendency for people who see British as their best selfdescription to be more advantaged socio-economically while there is a clear tendency
for the minority group, especially those who see themselves as Welsh, not British, to
be economically disadvantaged.
We can also see an analogous pattern to that we found in England and Scotland. In
Wales, Nonconformity has historically flourished and has been the distinctive
denomination of Wales. While it is now much in decline, there is still nonetheless a
significant tendency for people who see Welsh as their best self-description to be
Nonconformist.
However, as in Scotland, much the strongest patterns are related to where people were
born and have lived. Indeed, the figures are almost identical to the Scottish ones, with
only a fifth of people who see Welsh as their preferred self-description ever having
lived outside Wales while nine-tenths are what we have termed indigenous Welsh. It
is also interesting that this is a much more powerful relationship than that with
speaking the Welsh language. However, we must be careful not to interpret this as a
one-way causal relationship. A strong Welsh identity may lead to a preference to
remain in Wales rather than to pursue one’s career elsewhere.
Table 5 The social profile of national identities in Northern Ireland
Cell percentages
Northern
Irish
5
British
only
identity
British
best
identity
89.0
90.7
British
but NI
identity
best
95.2
Irish
not
British
88.7
Northe
rn Irish
not
British
96.2
Ulster
not
British
Other not
British
All
91.7
43.7
88.8
Nonconformist includes Baptist, Methodist, Brethren and United Reformed Church. The question on
ethnic origins was not asked in Wales, and the figures for ethnic minorities are based on the religion
variable and cover Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and Buddhist. The measure will therefore exclude Black
Africans and Black Caribbeans. The measure ‘speaks Welsh’ includes both fluent and non-fluent
speakers.
ancestry
Church of
England
Presbyteri
an
Catholic
Graduate
Salariat
Not lived
outside
NI
Lived
outside UK
Aged 65 or
older
Internet
user
32.1
26.8
26.2
1.4
11.8
20.8
4.2
17.9
35.5
42.8
33.3
2.1
13.4
50.0
11.1
23.2
7.7
6.2
19.7
84.2
4.1
8.8
27.3
76.2
14.3
23.8
39.0
82.1
89.2
27.6
16.2
73.4
47.6
16.6
24.5
80.2
0
4.2
10.9
77.1
31.9
22.2
32.8
34.7
36.1
10.6
22.5
76.6
3.8
8.3
6.0
12.9
9.2
12.5
31.9
9.3
29.2
25.3
18.1
19.7
15.8
29.2
8.3
23.2
37.2
41.8
71.4
35.3
45.7
27.1
50.0
41.0
Samples: residents in Northern Ireland.
Notes: we have excluded the ‘British but Irish best’, ‘British but Ulster best’ and
British but other best’ and ethnic minority categories since the Ns are so small.
Figures in bold are significantly different at the .05 level from the overall percentages
shown in the final column.
The picture in Northern Ireland is in many ways very different from the ones we have
seen in England, Wales and Scotland. Because of the very small numbers in our
sample we have had to exclude some groups such as people who accepted a British
identity but gave Irish as their best self-description. Two of our other groups – British
but Northern Irish best’ and ‘Ulster not British’ are also very small and results need to
be treated with caution, but because of their theoretical and practical interest we have
retained them in the table.
First of all, people who give British as their sole or best identity appear not to be a
particularly advantaged group socio-economically. Nor are they especially likely to
have been born or to have lived elsewhere. This is not the cosmopolitan or
metropolitan elite that we saw in Wales and Scotland. To be sure it is possible that
this contains a small number of the metropolitan elite, but numerically most members
of this group are indigenous to Northern Ireland.
Instead, and unsurprisingly, the picture is dominated by religion. Most strikingly,
people who see British as their sole or best identity are largely Church of England or
Presbyterian, while those with an Ulster identity are even more solidly Presbyterian.
In contrast, and exactly as expected, people who see themselves as Irish not British
are overwhelmingly Catholic. (We find slightly stronger patterns if we look at the
religion in which people were brought up, but the pattern is not fundamentally
different from that shown in table 5.)
None of this is at all surprising. Perhaps more interesting are the two groups with
Northern Irish as their favoured identity. These two groups tend to be somewhat
younger than the average, better educated and more advantaged occupationally, and
are not so overwhelmingly drawn from any particular denomination.
So while the picture is dominated by religion, it would not be true to say that the
religious story is the only one worth telling. There are hints that the exclusively Irish
and exclusively Ulster are socio-economically disadvantaged and are less
cosmopolitan, as suggested by their low rates of internet usage. (See Fahey, Hayes
and Sinnott (2005, chapter 4) for a more detailed investigation of the social bases of
identity in Northern Ireland.) There are also hints of generational change with
younger respondents tending to adopt an Irish or Northern Irish identity rather than a
British one (cf Hayes and McAllister 1999).
Overall, then, we find a strong family resemblance between England, Wales and
Scotland while Northern Ireland has, in these respects, little in common with the other
three territories that make up the United Kingdom. We summarize our results in table
6, where we report a set of multivariate analyses for the four territories. Multivariate
analysis enables us to establish the relative importance of the various factors we have
considered. We carry out a logistic regression in which we focus on the contrast
between people who have a British identity (both those with an exclusively British
and those with a dual British identity) and those who have an exclusively national
identity as English, Scots, Welsh or Irish. (We exclude respondents in the
penultimate columns of tables 2-5, that is those who had some other exclusive
identity.)
Table 6 Multivariate analysis of British identity in the four territories of the UK
Parameter estimates
England
Scotland
Wales
Age
-0.001
0.007
0.023***
Northern
Ireland
0.011
1st gen
Returners
2nd gen
3rd gen (ref)
1.50***
0.27
0.69
0
1.27***
0.92**
-0.02
0
2.39***
0.98**
1.45**
0
0.79
-0.38
-0.76
0
Lived outside
current
territory
0.20
0.42
0.57**
-0.59*
Salariat
0.24
0.40**
0.42*
1.05***
Graduate
0.90***
0.41*
0.03
-0.43
Anglican
Catholic
Presbyterian
Nonconformist
Other/none
0.02
-0.38
-0.63
0.21
0
1.86
-0.02
0.15
-0.17
0
-0.26
0.22
-0.28
0.03
0
1.93***
-3.42***
1.78***
2.01***
0
Ethnic
minority
1.16*
-0.75
Welsh speaker
Internet user
-
-
-0.49**
0.10
Model
91.0 (13 df)
improvement
Variance
.05
explained (Cox
and Snell)
N
1690
-0.09
0.12
0.68**
118.8 (13 df)
177.8 (13 df)
854.9 (13 df)
.09
.20
.51
1508
988
838
Notes: the analysis contrasts all respondents who gave a British identity with those
who described themselves as exclusively English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish.
Statistically significant parameter estimates are shown in bold: * indicates p < .05,
** indicates p < .01 and *** indicates p < .001.
As we had expected from our consideration of the four separate sets of bivariate
analyses in tables 2-5, the multivariate analyses show very clearly the importance of
ancestry in England, Wales and Scotland but of religion in Northern Ireland.6 Once
we have controlled for these variables, few of our other measures reach statistical
significance. In particular it is worth noting what a minor role social class plays.
While class differences are significant in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland –
members of the salariat being more likely to volunteer a British identity than a
minority identity - in all three territories class clearly plays a smaller role than
ancestry or religion. There is some support therefore for Nairn’s idea that
“nationalist movements have been invariably populist in outlook and sought to induct
lower classes into political life” but this is not a major part of the story, except
perhaps in Northern Ireland (where historically there have been major economic
inequalities between Protestants and Catholics. See for example Li and O’Leary
forthcoming.) This suggests that any failure of Britain to capture the loyalties of the
Welsh or Scottish cannot really be blamed on economic inequalities.
The multivariate analysis also suggests that Merton’s distinction between locals and
cosmopolitans and processes of globalization (at least as measured by internet use)
have little additional explanatory value. While the crosstabulations had suggested
some differences in the direction predicted by the theories, it now appears likely that
these patterns are largely explained by ancestry: the indigenous populations are
somewhat less likely to be geographically mobile, to be highly educated, or to use the
internet.
6
However, if we contrast British identities against an exclusive Northern Irish identity we find the
more familiar picture with generation playing a significant role. That is, the first generation in
Northern Ireland are significantly more likely to volunteer a British identity than a Northern Irish one.
The reason for the different in the two analyses is simply that some of the exclusively Irish were
themselves first generation newcomers from the Republic.
Perhaps most surprisingly, age differences have little importance except in Wales.
We had expected to find that a British identity would be more common among older
generations and English, Scottish or Welsh identities to be more prevalent among
younger generations socialized in the later decades of the twentieth century (and there
is also strong evidence for marked generational changes in the strength of pride in
Britain: see Tilley et al 2004b). The positive signs for the parameter estimates
suggest that there are some tendencies in the predicted direction, but with the
exception of Wales they do not reach statistical significance. Possibly there are two
contradictory tendencies at work: on the one hand older generations may be more
likely to feel British rather than exclusively English, Scots, or Welsh; on the other
hand younger and more highly educated generations may tend to reject overt forms of
ethnic nationalism and opt for the more inclusive, civic forms of Britishness.
The pre-eminence of ancestry suggests that English, Welsh and Scottish may be more
‘ethnic’ and exclusive conceptions of nationality whereas British may have more of a
‘civic’ and inclusive character. It is also perhaps the case that, in this context, higher
education should not so much be seen as an indicator of socio-economic advantage
but as a source of an inclusive orientation towards nationality.
The differences in variance explained (shown in the penultimate row of the table) are
also of considerable interest. In effect, these summary measures of variance
explained tell us to what extent the divisions between British and exclusively national
identities are socially structured. In other words, are there structural fault lines within
the four territories or are these divisions more ones of personal choice rather than of
social structure?
As we might have expected, the explained variance is the lowest in the case of
England where the distinction between English and British is fuzzy. However, even
in Britain the distinction is not wholly unstructured. At the other extreme comes
Northern Ireland where there is a very high degree of social structuring. In between
lie Wales and Scotland, with Wales showing a markedly more structured division
between British and Welsh than that found in Scotland between British and Scottish.
The other striking phenomenon is that in Northern Ireland the polarization is within
the indigenous population. In England, Wales and Scotland, in contrast, there is very
little socially structured variation at all within the indigenous populations. If we rerun
the regressions selecting only the indigenous populations (and therefore dropping the
ancestry variable from the model) we find that the variances explained become very
small indeed, whereas in Northern Ireland the variance explained remains very large.
In Wales for example, among the indigenous population, our structural variables
explain only 4.9% of the variance, the only significant ones being age and Welshspeaking. In Scotland it falls to 3.9% (the only significant variable being the salariat),
and in England it falls to 2.5% (the only significant variables being salariat and
degree). In Northern Ireland, however, variance explained remains a huge 52%.
What this means is that, among the indigenous populations, the distinction between
Welsh and British or between Scottish and British is just as fuzzy as that between
English and British.
Low variance explained should not be equated with consensus and cohesion,
however. While the absence of social structuring is a necessary condition for national
identity to perform the function of social integration, it is not a sufficient condition.
The absence of any major social structuring to national identities in England might
merely indicate that British or English identities are not especially meaningful to
respondents and are not especially salient. It may be more a reflection of the
indifference that people have towards national identity than an indicator of a broad
comradeship that transcends social inequalities. We need to look deeper to see if
national identity does indeed provide a source of social solidarity.
Symbolic aspects of national identity
We can check on this by exploring the relation between national identity and national
pride. As we have suggested, some people who subscribe to a British identity may
not have a very strong sense of attachment to that identity, while others who prefer a
different identity may nonetheless still have strong attachment to Britain. We can
investigate this through our questions on attachment to the national flags. (Cf Billig
1999). While the Union Jack does not have quite the same significance in Britain as
the Stars and Stripes does in the US, it is nevertheless an explicitly unionist symbol of
Great Britain with its conjunction of the Cross of St George, the Cross of St Andrew
and the Cross of St Patrick (but no cross for Wales).7 Pride in the Union Jack is also
closely associated with other measures such as pride in Britain and with various
measures of patriotism. Pride in the Union Jack can also be contrasted with pride in
the specifically national flags of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
To measure attachment to the various national flags, we said to our respondents (with
slight variants in the introduction to the question in Northern Ireland:
I am going to show you two flags. First of all, here is the Union Jack. When
you see the Union Jack, does it make you feel proud, hostile or do you not
feel much either way?
And here is the (cross of St. George/ Saltire / Red Dragon, Irish tricolour).
When you see this, does it make you feel proud, hostile or do you not feel
much either way? IF PROUD, is that very proud ….
In table 7 we show the percentages who feel proud of the Union Jack, combining
those who feel very proud and those feel simply proud.
Table 7 National identity and pride in the Union Jack
percentages
England
Wales
Scotland
British only
64.6
65.6
57.1
Northern
Ireland
54.0
British best describes
yourself
British but
62.9
67.7
59.5
54.1
71.3
48.7
41.4
Irish
7
4.0
Pedantically it should be called the Union Flag since it is the only the Union Jack when flown as a
jack on naval ships.
English/Welsh/Scottish
best
British but other best
47.9
NI
33.3
Ulster 74.3
-
66.7
38.5
English/Welsh/Scottish 65.2
but not British
32.0
25.1
Other best or no
identity but not British
32.6
36.4
24.2
Irish
0.9
NI
10.9
Ulster 79.2
12.5
All
61.9
47.7
37.7
30.7
Samples: residents in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Table 7 shows clearly that pride in the Union Jack varies very considerably across the
four territories, with 62% of residents in England feeling proud falling to 31% in
Northern Ireland. This partly reflects the proportions in the four territories who
describe themselves as British (as we saw in table 1), which also shows a similar
pattern. However, table 7 also shows that pride cannot simply be read off from
identity: 65% of residents in England who described themselves as exclusively
British felt proud of the Union Jack, but this falls to 57% in Scotland and 54% in
Northern Ireland. And the differences are even greater when we consider people with
dual identities. A British identity does not therefore involve the same emotional
attachment to the imagined community in all four territories but appears to be
strongest in England.
Table 7 also brings out some of the complexities of the meaning of national identity in
the British context. At one extreme we find that, in England, there is little difference
between people who define themselves as exclusively British and those who define
themselves as exclusively English in their attachment to the Union Jack. Thus 64% of
those who said that British was their best self-description were proud of the Union
Jack, but 65% of those who said they were English, not British, were also proud of the
Union Jack, and the people who were most proud were actually the ones with dual
identities who said that their best self-description was English (71%).
At the other extreme, virtually no-one who defined themselves as Irish was proud of
the Union Jack whereas a remarkable 79% of the (admittedly small number) of people
who defined themselves as Ulster, not British, were proud of the Union Jack. In
between come Scotland and Wales where people who defined themselves as Scottish
or Welsh were much less likely to be proud of the Union Jack, even when they also
accepted a British identity as well.
The meaning of the different identities thus varies across the four territories. The
meaning of a dual identity as both British and English, British and Welsh, British and
Scottish or British and Irish are very different from each other. In England, a dual
identity indicates no lack of attachment to British symbols, but in Northern Ireland an
Irish identity really does seem to be antithetical to a British identity, even among
those who accepted a dual identity as both Irish and British. Wales and Scotland come
in between but the evidence of table 7 suggests that a dual identity may indicate a
rather lukewarm attachment to British symbols in these two territories.
More generally we can see that attachment to Britain and attachment to a national
(that is, English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish) identity show varying patterns of
relationship across the four territories. This can be seen from the pattern of
correlations between attachment to the Union Jack and those to the national flags, that
is to the cross of St George, the Red Dragon, the Saltire and the Irish tricolour. In
England we find that there is a strong positive association between attachment to the
two flags (Spearman’s correlation of .59) but in Wales and Scotland the association is
much weaker, although remaining positive (.13 and .21 respectively). In Northern
Ireland we asked about pride in the Irish tricolour (the national flag of the Republic)
and here the correlation was strongly negative at -.56.
Table 8 then shows patterns of attachment to the national flags.
Table 8 National identity and pride in the national flags
percentages
England –
Cross of St
George
Wales – Red Scotland Dragon
Saltire
41.4
57.3
45.5
Northern
Ireland –
Irish
Tricoloug
1.0
British best describes
47.5
yourself
British but
61.7
English/Welsh/Scottish
best
British but other best
20.8
69.4
65.4
0.0
94.5
83.0
47.6
35.9
Irish 0.0
NI
1.0
Ulster 0.0
-
English/Welsh/Scottish 61.3
but not British
94.0
85.1
Other best or no
identity but not British
15.1
42.9
40.9
Irish 32.8
NI
7.0
Ulster 0.0
1.4
All
47.0
79.3
75.8
9.7
British only
Perhaps the most striking finding here is how high overall levels of pride in the Welsh
Dragon and the Scottish Saltire are compared with pride in the Union Jack. The
Welsh Dragon and the Scottish Saltire thus appear to be more potent symbols than the
Union Jack. Similar patterns are also found if we consider pride in the country rather
than pride in the flags: levels of pride in Wales or Scotland exceed levels of pride in
Great Britain in those territories. (See tables A4 and A5.)
The situation in Northern Ireland, as usual, looks rather different. The Irish tricolour
does not appear to be a potent symbol, even among people who define themselves as
Irish. They do however show the expected levels of pride in being Irish (with
percentages around 90%) that would be expected from patterns for minority groups
elsewhere in the UK.
Conclusions
A sense of British identity is both most widespread and most resonant in England, and
in England we find that a sense of Britishness is entirely consistent with an English
identity. To be sure this is largely because of the fuzzy nature of the distinction
between Englishness and Britishness, but that in turn almost certainly reflects the fact
that England has historically been the dominant partner in the United Kingdom, both
in absolute size of the population and in political influence. We suspect that the
English are simply less aware of Scotland and Wales as separate nations.
In Scotland and Wales a majority of the population continue to see themselves as
British, although a majority of the self-defined British in these two territories see
Welsh or Scottish as their best self-descriptions, not British. Moreover, these Welsh
or Scots with dual identities have markedly lower attachment to UK symbols such as
the Union Jack than their counterparts in England, and much greater attachment to
their own national symbols of the Red Dragon and the Saltire.
Within England, Wales and Scotland there are also quite substantial minorities –
much more numerous in Wales and Scotland than in England – who do not see
themselves as British at all but instead adopt a national identity as exclusively
English, Welsh or Scottish. The single most important factor in predicting whether
someone will see themselves as British or not is ancestry: newcomers who were born
outside the territory (and to a lesser extent those whose parents were born outside) are
much more likely to adopt a British than an English, Welsh or Scottish national
identity. This particularly applies to ethnic minorities, who define themselves as
Black-British or Asian-British rather than as English, but it also applies to members of
the white majority when they move to a different territory. For example, people of
English ancestry who move to Wales will tend to emphasize their Britishness rather
than assimilate to a Welsh identity. British thus provides a civic identity that is more
inclusive than the separate English, Welsh or Scottish identities. (Cf Tilley et al 2004a
on the distinction between ethnic and civic identities in the British context).
Northern Ireland, as is well known, shows very different patterns of identity from any
of the other three territories and in NI the dividing lines are drawn between
religiously-defined communities. Within the Protestant community, British is the
dominant identity but the meaning of Britishness in Northern Ireland is rather
different from that elsewhere in the UK: their attachment to UK symbols such as the
Union Jack is much weaker than among the self-perceived British elsewhere in the
Isles. However, within the Protestant community there are indications of a
subordinate group who define themselves as Ulster not British. Like the minority
nationalisms elsewhere in the UK, they are less educated and less socio-economically
advantaged, although unlike them they show hyperloyalty to the Union Jack (cf
Inglehart 1997 on different sorts of minority nationalism.)
Within the Catholic community there are few who see themselves as British and those
who do tend to be rather more economically advantaged. Irish is the dominant
identity here, but it does not go with any great attachment to the national flag of the
Republic of Ireland. There are signs also of a Northern Irish identity that is
particularly prominent among younger Catholics. (See also Girvin 1999, p390).
However, as Fahey et al (2005) emphasize: “… enthusiasm for the various forms of
citizenship is restrained in Northern Ireland. That may reflect a degree of
ambivalence about all of the citizenship options on offer, itself a historical by-product
of the contested nature of identity within this society” (2005, p.75).
What are the implications of these findings for the role of British identity as a source
of a UK-wide imagined community? First, it has to be said that the sense of a UKwide community is a lot less potent than the separate senses of membership of
separate Welsh or Scottish nations. The contrast between England, Wales and
Scotland is brought out particularly strongly if we consider only the indigenous
populations in each territory. Wales for example has a rather high proportion of
residents with English ancestry who tend to opt for a British identity. If we exclude
these people and focus solely on those whom we might term members of the Welsh
nation, then we obtain an even sharper picture. This is shown in table 9.
Table 9 National identities among the indigenous populations of the four
territories of the United Kingdom
Column percentages
England
Wales
Scotland
British
identity only
26.3
9.2
4.3
Northern
Ireland
30.8
British identity
best
British but
English etc
best
British but
other identity
best
All dual
British
identities
22.1
9.2
9.4
11.1
22.1 English
31.3 Welsh
39.6 Scottish
1.9
0.8
0.9
1.5 Irish
5.1 N Irish
2.1 Ulster
0.9
46.1
41.3
49.9
20.7
Not British,
English etc
best
Not British,
Other best or
no identity
All nonBritish
identities
25.2 English
48.1 Welsh
44.7 Scottish
2.5
1.4
1.1
24.5 Irish
19.2 N Irish
2.8 Ulster
2.0
27.7
49.5
45.8
48.5
N
1491
988
1198
1800
Samples: residents of the four territories who both were born themselves in the
territory and had parents born in the territory.
Table 9 shows that almost half of the indigenous Welsh and Scottish populations
reject British identities and opt for an exclusive Welsh or Scottish identity while less
than one in five actually see British as their best identity. The hold of a British
identity seems to be rather weak in these two nations. Nor do the indigenous Welsh
seem at all proud of being British or of the Union Jack: only 44.1% of the indigenous
Welsh population feel proud of the Union Jack, 50.1% being indifferent, whereas
90.7% feel proud of the Red Dragon (and 74.4% feel very proud). Similarly only
36.1% of indigenous Scottish population are proud of the Union Jack with 55.7%
being indifferent. The sentiments expressed by Jacobson’s ethnic minority
respondent that “I am British because I’m born here, but it just doesn’t mean
anything, to say I’m British – it doesn’t conjure up an image, it doesn’t hit me here
[she puts here hand to her heart] or anywhere” seems to apply almost as much to the
indigenous Scots and Welsh as it does to ethnic minorities. It is only really the
indigenous English who really feel a strong attachment to British symbols.
In contrast, a sense of being Welsh or Scottish does seem to mean something to our
respondents. 90.7% of the indigenous Welsh feel proud of the Red Dragon (and
74.4% feel very proud). 81.1% of the indigenous Scots feel proud of the Saltire
(55.8% very proud). Moreover, as we noted earlier, if we limit ourselves to the
indigenous populations we find very little in the way of social divisions in attachment
to the Welsh or Scottish nations. In Wales and Scotland, therefore, but not in the
United Kingdom as a whole, we do see evidence of a “deep horizontal comradeship”
regardless of the actual inequality that prevails within each territory.
Norman Davies has put the matter in his typically bold fashion “National identity is
no trivial matter. It is the psychological cement which binds communities together.
The Scots knew who they are. So, too, did the Welsh and the Irish. But a large part
of the English were manifestly bewildered. The widespread failure to create teams
representing the entire United Kingdom must be seen as a symptom of the wider
failure to complete the construction of a British nation” (Davies 1999, p831). This
may be somewhat overstated. While the Welsh and Scots clearly know who they are;
the Northern Irish (unlike inhabitants of the Republic) have a less clear sense, neither
wholly Irish nor fully British, of who they are. And the English have perhaps a clear
but mistaken idea that Britain is England. But Davies is almost certainly right to
emphasize the wider failure to complete the construction of a British nation.
Members of the four (or perhaps five) nations have very unequal levels of attachment
to the broader British state. There is a clear asymmetry, perhaps reflecting the fact
that, for the Welsh and Scottish, England as the dominant partner does constitute a
significant ‘Other’ against which they can define their own identities. The English on
the other hand neither have a significant ‘Other’ against which to define themselves
nor perhaps have fully accepted the Welsh, Scottish and Irish as equal comrades.
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APPENDIX Supplementary tables
Table A1 Number of national identities in the four territories
column percentages
One
Two
Three
Four or more
None/NA
N
England
Scotland
Wales
52.2
36.6
8.8
0.8
1.6
3709
46.3
40.3
11.1
1.9
0.5
1508
56.5
33.3
9.4
0.5
0.3
988
Northern
Ireland
73.2
18.4
5.1
1.2
2.1
1800
Table A2 Answers to the Moreno question in England, Wales and Scotland
Column percentages
English/Welsh/Scottish
not British
English/Welsh/Scottish
more than British
Equally
English/Scottish/Welsh
and British
British more than
English/Welsh/Scottish
British not
English/Welsh/Scottish
Other
None/Don’t know
N
England
17.0
Wales
21.4
Scotland
32.2
19.5
25.4
32.5
31.1
29.8
22.4
13.4
8.7
4.3
10.0
8.9
4.1
5.8
3.2
1916
4.7
1.2
988
3.4
1.1
1508
Sample: residents in the four territories.
Table A3 European identities in the four territories
European
identity
mentioned
England
Scotland
Wales
12.0
14.8
8.8
Northern
Ireland
3.5
European the
best identity
N
2.8
2.2
1.8
3675
1502
988
Table A4 National identity and pride in Great Britain
percentages
England
Wales
Scotland
87.3
91.1
86.6
Northern
Ireland
87.2
British best describes
90.1
yourself
British but
88.2
English/Welsh/Scottish
best
British but other best
77.5
89.5
95.1
91.2
86.6
76.5
90.5
61.5
Irish 40.0
NI
69.0
Ulster 85.7
-
English/Welsh/Scottish 73.8
but not British
56.0
45.4
Other best or no
identity but not British
32.3
53.2
22.7
Irish
6.0
NI
27.5
Ulster 62.5
29.2
All
80.0
74.4
64.7
52.3
53.3
Scotland –
proud of
being
Scottish
53.6
Northern
Ireland –
proud of
being Irish
16.5
70.2
78.9
29.9
British only
Table A5 National identity and pride in the nation
percentages
British only
England –
proud of
being
English
75.0
Wales –
proud of
being Welsh
British best describes
82.5
yourself
British but
92.7
English/Welsh/Scottish
best
British but other best
43.8
97.9
97.5
31.0
51.3
Irish 88.0
NI
54.8
Ulster 17.1
-
English/Welsh/Scottish 92.3
98.3
97.9
Irish
93.1
but not British
Other best or no
identity but not British
17.7
27.3
31.8
NI
63.9
Ulster 14.6
22.2
All
77.3
79.1
88.0
48.5