Britishness

[chickenfeet]

 As the Brexit express hurtles towards the abyss I though I'd ask a question that's been bothering me for a while.  I'd it as a poll but I can't so please comment.  Leaving aside strictly legal definitions (I understand the technical difference between the status of the Isle of Man and Ascension Island) who is "British".  Below is a list of territories and what I want you to consider is for which of these should the inhabitants be considered British:

• The Channel Islands
• The Isle of Man
• Northern Ireland
• The Falkland Islands
• Ascension Island
• South Georgia
• St. Helena
• The Pitcairn Islands
• Gibraltar
• Malta
• Hong Kong
• Victoria BC

Go on.  I'm curious.

Comments

[chickenfeet]

My answer, FWIW

British: The Channel Islands, the Isle of Man
Not British: Gibraltar, Malta,Hong Kong, Victoria
Don't know: Northern Ireland, All the bits in the South Atlantic and Pacific

[ironed_orchid]

I'm pretty sure the Falklands should be Brittish, otherwise I agree with this breakdown.

[twistedchick]

Hong Kong was given back to China ... well over a decade ago, I'm sure. I watched the ceremonies on tv. It is in no way British now.

Gibraltar is British-- there is a military post there.

Northern Ireland -- you will get different views from everyone. Those six counties stayed with Britain during the peace settlement after the Uprising a century ago. Many say they are still Irish but under English rule. I think few of the residents other the the soldiers there would consider themselves to be British as opposed to Irish.

The Falklands are British -- there was a small war fought over this with Argentina, and some concern because Prince Harry was flying helicopters and might have been sent to it.

The Pitcairn Islands are, I think, their own thing. If they'd been a British possession, the British would have easily been able to go recapture Fletcher Christian and his men after the Bounty mutiny. Well, they weren't *then*. Not sure about now.

Malta is its own country.

Some of the Channel Islands are British -- Jersey, for instance. Some are not.

[cmcmck]

Prince Andrew, his uncle, not Prince Harry- he wasn't thought of when the Falklands blew and the war was a little more than small- cruisers and battleships being sent to the bottom and such.

[chickenfeet]

Oddly enough I used to work with the wife of Prince Andrew's flight commander. On the way down from Ascension he was treated to an interview with the task force commander that was remarkably like the "What we need at this stage of the war is a futile gesture" sketch.

[cmcmck]

There were plenty of them in that one for sure!

[chickenfeet]

It was quite a good story. It goes roughly as follows.

Lieutenant Aylard (for such was his name) is summoned to the flagship to meet the task force commander...

LA: You wanted to see me sir?
TFC: Yes, Aylard it's about the young prince
LA: Sir?
TFC: Awfully bad form if anything were to happen to the young prince
LA: Yes sir
TFC: In fact Aylard I'd better make myself clear. If anything does happen to the young prince it would be a jolly good idea if you didn't come back either.
LA: I see sir

[cmcmck]

Hmmmm.......:o)

Other half was involved with STUFT (ships taken up from trade) during that lot and can tell tales about the owners shafting HMG for money in the aftermath.

[cmcmck]

Fwiw

The Channel Islands (Yes, but with its own oddities)
The Isle of Man (Also yes, with its own oddities)
Northern Ireland (yes but one questions whether it should be).
The Falkland Islands (yes it's a BOT and according to the wishes of the locals).
Ascension Island (yes another BOT but according to whom I know not).
South Georgia (yes,a BOT but there are no locals- it's an abandoned whaling station and it kicked off the Falklands conflict)
St. Helena (I knew a couple of 'saints' as the locals call themselves and they didn't see themselves as British although it is a BOT.
The Pitcairn Islands (also a BOT)
Gibraltar BOT but an awkward one.
Malta. (Former British possession but a definite independent entity and an EU member).
Hong Kong (Part of the PR of China but a former British possession).
Victoria BC (Part of an independent state although they seem to like Lizzie Windsor and all that royal stuff which is more than I, a Brit, do)!

[chickenfeet]

I think I understand where you are coming from. The problem I have is the idea that "Britishness" is merely a legal state. Did the inhabitants of Hong Kong go to bed "British" and wake up "not British" at some point in 1999? It's complicated by the fact that at one time many people in parts of the Empire that were self governing dominions considered themselves "British" though few do now. When did they cease to be "British"? and why?

[cmcmck]

It does all depend on how one perceives onesself for sure- take me with ancestry English, Welsh, Scottish, Italian, Latvian Jewish and Romani and living for some years in Belgium.

It says 'British' on my passport, but...... :o)

[adjectivegail]

Coincidentally I've been involved in a similar-but-different conversation on FB - a friend musing on English vs British identity. Which led me to writing the following on my own FB:
Thoughts prompted by conversation in someone else's FB, I've just realised that I don't 'believe' that I'm 'allowed' to call myself English. After all, I'm only half English, mixed race, born on a British colony rather than in the UK proper, etc (and you won't believe how difficult it was to get a national insurance number, being a British national who was not born in Britain!). I definitely see Englishness vs Britishness through the lens of colonialism. Unsurprisingly.
I wouldn't exist if it weren't for The Empire (and a lot of other messy history), but in my head The Empire is distinctly something that The English (rather than The British) did to the colonies and territories. Whereas The British, to me, is a wider category that also includes all the people that The English, on behalf of The Empire, did stuff *to*?
It has since been pointed out to me by a Scottish person that it's actually massively convenient for Scotland, Ireland, etc, for us to think of The Empire as being English, because they can then neatly gloss over their own contributions to the diversity of atrocities and disasters that befell a rather long list of assorted places, in the name of The Empire.

[chickenfeet]

That takes us down several rabbit holes! Interestingly I think of the Empire as very much British rather than English. It has, after all, been described as "a system of outdoor relief for the sons of impoverished Scots and Irish gentry". I also can't see all the subject peoples of the Empire as "British". Does anyone, or did anyone ever, consider the Sikhs or the Iroquois to be "British"? Curiously enough I had trouble getting an NI number but for very different reasons. I was one of the last cohort in England and Wales legally able to leave school at 15 and my birthday falls in August so one of the youngest of that cohort. I worked the summer I turned 16 but was still 15 when I started. It took some persuading to get the NI people to give me an NI card (and in those days they were cards that employers put physical stamps in).

[cmcmck]

My Scottish other half's father experienced huge social mobility by joining the imperial army and fighting two world wars but also seeing what's now Pakistan and parts of Africa close up and personal- he started out as a boy soldier in 1912 and fetched up in the officer class by 1939.

I don't think the Scots get off quite that lightly much as today's nats would like to think they do..........

[chickenfeet]

Funny how that can happen. One thinks of Bill Slim who was a warehouse clerk in Birmingham in 1914 but wound up a field marshal and a viscount (though Churchill never rated him because he wasn't a "proper" gentleman)

[cmcmck]

FiL didn't quite rise to those heights, but he was a boy bugler in 1914 and a sergeant in 1918, Regimental QSM in 1937 and a Major in 1945- Town Major of a town in the Ruhr.

From the Somme and Pasendal then St Valéry and D Day+3 through to the the liberation of Belsen and Town Major in the Ruhr is quite a journey!

[sollers]

None of the above; none of them is in Britain. A different term is needed, though I've no idea what it could be.

[cmcmck]

The Term that gets used is BOT- British Overseas Territory.

Whether that's how it should be is another question entirely.

[beable]

I'm glad you clarified that (apart from saving me a google search, I wouldn't have made the google search because I already had an other assumption on what the O stood for)

[cmcmck]

I dread to think what it might have been :o)

Thanks for friending btw- I've added you back :o)

[chickenfeet]

Perhaps we could revert to the pre 1972 usage "British subject". I'm joking of course but I can't see what unites the UK, the crown dependencies and the BOTs other than that their inhabitants are persons "owing a duty of loyalty to the crown".

[sollers]

I agree: it's not the places, it's the people who matter.

[sollers]

"Owing a duty of loyalty to the crown" doesn't cover the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands ( the Lord of Man and the Duke of Normandy happen to be the Queen, but the monarchy could be abolished tomorrow without altering their situation)

[chickenfeet]

Curiously the Isle of Man's treason statute refers to "our sovereign lord the King" and is otherwise rather similar to the 1351 English statute

[cmcmck]

And as that rarest of flowers, a British republican, I have real issues with that!

[chickenfeet]

Well I'm not keen either. I suppose one could replace "British Overseas Citizen" with "Colonial with no right of residence in the UK" but that would be too close to truth in advertising.

[cmcmck]

Wouldn't it just?

[adjectivegail]

None of them are Britain, but some of the residents have British nationality, and/or identify as British, and/or have no other nationality so if they weren't recognised as British would be Stateless.

[adjectivegail]

Well for me the first question is, do you mean "British" as a personal, individual identity, or do you mean it in the more legal senses of for example being able to apply to British consuls for assistance, or hold a British passport, or vote in British elections, etc? These are vastly different things! Then there's the fact that you can have British Overseas Citizenship while not having right of abode in the UK. And then there's the fact that we're constitutionally responsible for things like military defense of some of those places, while they otherwise maintain independence of for example the judiciary. Basically it's a giant mess. For most of the above, I have no idea whether they'd 'count' as British in the legal sense. I know that people in the Falklands and Gibraltar generally prefer to identify as British, but I don't know what rights they might or might not have as British subjects - partly because I'm not sure whether they are still legally British subjects or not.

The only one that I really know about is Hong Kong (unsurprisingly). If you were born in Hong Kong before 1997 and were not ethnically Chinese (and didn't already have nationality/citizenship with another country), you automatically became a British National (Overseas) when the handover happened. But this is relatively useless as although it's a nationality and you get to call yourself British, it doesn't give you any rights to live or work in the UK. There was some unhappiness about that. Then there was the 50,000 families selected for British citizenship (you applied and they awarded points for meeting certain criteria), which contributed to the 'brain drain' in HK in the 1990s as all the doctors, lawyers, civil servants, etc, applied.

The other thing is that these things change over time. So for example there are still plenty of Hong Kongers who have BN(O) status, but any children born to them after 1997 aren't/won't be BN(O).

I think citizens of Bermuda and Gibraltar are British citizens, being former colonies who are still dependent territories? Or maybe some form of BN(O) where technically you're British but you have no right of abode in the UK. I know Falkland Islanders were granted citizenship after the war, but not sure if this is ongoing or if it was revoked at some point. We like doing that.
I find the Channel Islands and Isle of Man particularly confusing as I sort of assume they're British, legally, but with additional rights that BN(O)s don't have, particularly the right to live & work in the UK. But they're also independent territories where the Crown technically doesn't have much (any?) jurisdiction but we're responsible for their defense. I don't know. It's all very weird.

[chickenfeet]

I agree it's hideously complex. My motivation for asking the question was the rather unconsidered way that the term "British" has been tossed around in the Brexit debate. In particular whichever ancient Tory moron was prepared to go to war with Spain to defend the right of the people of Gibraltar to remain "British". It's perhaps symptomatic of the whole constitutional and psychological muddle around the remnants of the British Empire. Nobody really wants to admit that Gibraltar etc are really just colonies because nobody is supposed to have colonies anymore (c.f. Puerto Rico) but the British government can't actually bring itself to consider the people in those places as fully British.

FWIW I think the French do these things so much better. If where you live is French, you are French and you get the same rights as other French people including electing members to the National Assembly. And that applies in the South Pacific and the Gulf of St. Lawrence as much as to, say, Corsica.

The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are particularly confusing. They are not part of the UK and the Queen holds them as Duke of Normandy or Lord of Man (as previously pointed out) but oddly enough the Estates and the Tynwald seem to have gone along with whatever decisions the Westminster Parliament has made about the succession to the British crown which would appear to imply rather less independence than the formal legal situation might suggest.

[chickenfeet]

Also come to think of it how could one expect otherwise from people who can't even decide how to organise their "national" sports teams? In football Northern Ireland and the Republic have separate teams but in rugby and cricket they are joined whereas for the Olympics there is a UK team and an Irish (republic of) team. Nowhere else in the world could come up with that!