Great Britain

Ever since its creation in 1707, the United Kingdom of Great Britain has been a powerful union of many different nations and identities, including the English, Scots, Welsh and later Irish. From the Middle Ages until the Second World War this union had not only fortified its domestic political power but also expanded its reign across the entire world, resulting in the world’s largest and mightiest empire, the British Empire. This great achievement of the union was mainly due to the remarkable sense of unity of its people who considered themselves primarily as British and secondly as Scots, Welsh or Irish. By the end of the Second World War, however, the domestic governance stability also threatened to collapse as many foreign colonies of the Empire seized independence. The Scots, Welsh and the Northern Irish started demanding more and more political independence from Westminster and by the end of the 20th century they were finally granted own national parliaments. After this process of devolution, the English people started questioning their own identity and what distinguished them from the Scots, Welsh and the Northern Irish. But is there a national identity in England and if yes can this national identity be politically mobilized in the near future?

When investigating English national identity and its possible future political mobilization it is crucial to analyze its meaning and history in the first part. Bechhofer and McCrone (2009) explain national identity as a political, sociological, cultural and psychological construct which is highly influence by the media, political changes within a state and its institutions. National identity, therefore, stays in a very close connection to notions such as nation, nationhood and nati...

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...necessary in the eyes of the English voters that mainly vote in regard of other more important issues and debates. Partly contradicting Copus, Kumar (2001) explains that a future English nationalism is does not have to be excluded and very possible, but no one can now say how this is reflected in the future. To put it in a nutshell, in my opinion a political mobilization of the English identity in the near future is rather not probable since the English people are clearly not in the need of it an English parliament. Not only due to the multicultural aspect of its society today but also due to its imperialistic past, the English identity has become multifaceted and interpreted in many ways which makes it much harder for the English nationalism to evolve compared to Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Therefore, a unified mobilization is in the near future not thinkable.