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britain
November 2009 
Believing in Britian -Crisis of British Identity
Posted on Oct 14th, 2009
by 
Albert
Albert
An excellent blog entry from Rachel Castagne. At the newly launched "Right to be" blog which is asscociated with British Centre for Human Emergence. Once again the power of identity awareness in a national frame is integrally demonstrated. Congratulations Rachel! I could not agree more.
Beeing on the German side I see the theme here too. As I often mentioned here on Gaia last years.
Believing in Britain -Crisis of British Identity
A guest post by Rachel Castagne.
I am reading Ian Bradley’s book on ‘Believing in Britain’. I used to think it was ‘just me’ or that I was in a minority when I didn’t consider myself British (being born in Trinidad gave me the perfect excuse!) or want to, was in fact ‘ashamed’ of being British; when my daughter came home from school a few months ago and said she was ashamed of being British, I wondered if I had ‘passed on’ the sentiment, like a hereditary gene, although I knew she hadn’t always felt that way, she’s become aware of ‘Britishness’ as a national identity in her adolescence, turns out, its not ‘cool’ to be Brit, turns out she’s not the only teen that feels that way…
In fact Bradley reports some interesting stats:
2005 Social Attitudes Survey found 44% of the population said ‘British’ was the ‘best’ or only way of describing their national identity, as against 52% ten years earlier.
Amongst those in Scotland 14% described themselves as British compared with 70% who described themselves as Scottish
Wales: 35% and even England only 48% of the population considered themselves British, 15% fewer than in 1992.
The 2001 census was the first in which the majority in England marked their nationality as English as opposed to British
read more..
See also, earlier this year:
A Summit and a Meetup in London about Britishness
Beeing on the German side I see the theme here too. As I often mentioned here on Gaia last years.
Believing in Britain -Crisis of British Identity
A guest post by Rachel Castagne.
Rachel Castagne
I am reading Ian Bradley’s book on ‘Believing in Britain’. I used to think it was ‘just me’ or that I was in a minority when I didn’t consider myself British (being born in Trinidad gave me the perfect excuse!) or want to, was in fact ‘ashamed’ of being British; when my daughter came home from school a few months ago and said she was ashamed of being British, I wondered if I had ‘passed on’ the sentiment, like a hereditary gene, although I knew she hadn’t always felt that way, she’s become aware of ‘Britishness’ as a national identity in her adolescence, turns out, its not ‘cool’ to be Brit, turns out she’s not the only teen that feels that way…
In fact Bradley reports some interesting stats:
2005 Social Attitudes Survey found 44% of the population said ‘British’ was the ‘best’ or only way of describing their national identity, as against 52% ten years earlier.
Amongst those in Scotland 14% described themselves as British compared with 70% who described themselves as Scottish
Wales: 35% and even England only 48% of the population considered themselves British, 15% fewer than in 1992.
The 2001 census was the first in which the majority in England marked their nationality as English as opposed to British
read more..
See also, earlier this year:
A Summit and a Meetup in London about Britishness
Access: Public
An in-depth complimentary article at CHE-UK blog here:
Identity Crisis
And a very strong and clear comment from Dr. Nicholas Beecroft, UK:
Global British Identity