Summary
THE comment by Chancellor Brown (March 15) that the British people should stop apologising for the excesses of Empire strikes me as a particularly bizarre basis on which to forge a new sense of Britishness. Not that I am advocating that the English people take on board the kind of national self-flagellation that sadly the Scots excel at, but a passing glance at the present difficulties of Cyprus, India, Ireland and Palestine all show why Pax Britannia was not the finest hour of the English people.
By contrast to Chancellor Brown, who despite what else he achieved at university was certainly not to study history, Melanie Reid made a far more thoughtful and politically mature comment on how the English people currently view themselves. With the welcome demise of Empire and the current instability of the monarchy it seems that one of the few authentic pre-Union institutions that could potentially assist in forging a new progressive sense of Englishness is the Church of England.See the full content of this document
Extract
A New Sense of Englishness
Just as the Church of Scotland gave voice to many expressions of Scottishness in the 1980s and 1990s when the country was under the heel of Thatcherism, so ...
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