Abstract
The British Isles consist today of two states (the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – Britain in short; and the Republic of Ireland/Poblacht Na hÉireann/Éire), and at least four nations (England, Scotland, Wales/Cymru and Ireland). Claims are made by Cornish nationalists that there is a Cornish nation, and by Manx people that there is a Manx nation. Many inhabitants of Orkney and Shetland deny that they are Scottish: instead, they claim to be Norse (they were ruled by Norway until 1469), and they never spoke Gaelic. The Gaelic-speaking parts of Scotland today (the Western Isles, Skye and some parts of the western mainland), despite their language difference with most of Scotland (which is now English-speaking) identify with Scotland in national terms.
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Notes
Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 374–5.
E. Moxon-Browne, ‘National identity in Northern Ireland’, in P. Stringer and G. Robinson (eds), Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1991), p. 25. Figures for Registrar Office marriages from General Register Office for Northern Ireland, Seventy-Ninth Annual Report of the Registrar General 2000, Table 7.7 (London: Stationery Office, 2001).
For example, David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
Moxon-Browne, op.cit., pp. 23–30. For 1995 survey see M. Duffy and G. Evans, ‘Class, community polarisation and politics’, in L. Dowds et al., Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland. The Sixth Report (Belfast: Appletree, 1997). Ch. 6.
Quoted in R. Rose, Understanding the United Kingdom. The Territorial Dimension in Government (London: Longman, 1982), pp. 14–15.
J. Brand, J. Mitchell and P. Surridge, ‘Identity and the vote. Class and nationality in Scotland’, in P. Norris et al. (eds), British Elections and Parties Yearbook 1993 (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), pp. 143–57.
For a table comparing surveys on national identity in Scotland from 1979 to 1999, see L. Paterson et al., New Scotland, New Politics? (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2001), p. 105.
A. Brown, D. McCrone and L. Paterson, Politics and Society in Scotland, 2nd edition (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), p. 213.
B. Taylor and K. Thomson (eds), Scotland and Wales: Nations Again? (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999), p. 43.
Quoted by Dr Sydney Elliot, ‘Finding Out What the People Really Think’, Parliamentary Brief, Vol. 3, no. 5 (March 1995), pp. 5–6.
Quoted in B. O’Leary and J. McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism. Understanding Northern Ireland (London and Atlantic Highlands NJ: The Athlone Press, 1993), pp. 279–84.
Some grounds for optimism can be gleaned from, for example, B. O’Leary, T. Lyne, J. Marshall, B. Rowthorn, Northern Ireland. Sharing Authority (London: Institute for Public Policy Research, 1993), and B. O’Leary and J. McGarry, op.cit.
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© 2004 James G. Kellas
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Kellas, J.G. (2004). The British Isles. In: Nationalist Politics in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230597273_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230597273_3
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