Yesterday I watched the last of the series on BBC2 How God Made The English, written and presented by Professor Diarmaid Macculloch.
Professor Macculloch is a revered academic, knighted in 2012 for his services to scholarship, so one would normally hesitate before criticising a person of his stature.
Notwithstanding Professor Macculloch's academic standing however, I feel bound to say that I found the arguments he put forward to be on the whole bogus, intellectually dishonest and comprised of a series of half-truths.
For instance, right at the start of the series he repeated the recently-developed canard "English people are confused about their identity". Who are these English people who are so confused? I've never met any. He produced no proof to back up this statement. He told us much later that his mother had French ancestry, and as his father must presumably have Irish ancestry it is possible that on a personal level Professor Macculloch may himself be confused about his own identity, but he has no right to extrapolate his personal feelings across a whole population. Especially as identity politics is such a controversial subject in the United Kingdom.
Later (in yesterday's programme) he told us that only 5% of the DNA of the English population is Anglo-Saxon and the rest is indistinguishable from the populations of Ireland, Scotland and Wales (and most of northern Europe) and that this ancient population "came from Spain" about fifteen thousand years ago.
On the face of it this might seem a reasonable theory, but if you examine it more closely you can begin to spot the half-truths. For instance Spain did not exist fifteen thousand years ago, and the post Ice Age migration started from a part of the European landmass that thousands of years later became Spain. Perhaps Professor Macculloch assumed that everyone would know what he meant, but equally one suspects he is peddling the political message "there are no English people they are all immigrants and hence post-war mass immigration is justified".
Also, if the whole population of British Isles and northern Europe "came from Spain" thousands of years ago how is DNA technology going to pick up the later migration from northern Europe to the Roman colony of Britannia in the early dark ages? It is possible the DNA mutated when it was in northern Europe, but if it had presumably Professor Macculloch would have advised us? So another unconvincing grey area.
Returning to Professor Macculluch's statement that only 5% of the English population is of Anglo-Saxon ancestry, this statement is at variance with the research presented in Robin McKie's Face of Britain which tells us that DNA evidence reveals the population of English is 50% Anglo-Saxon and 50% ancient British (Robin McKie is Science Editor for the Observer). Is it 5% or 50%? Or are both assessments wrong and the correct narrative is the one written down by dark age commentators such as Bede and Nennius?
If I had the time I would identify other dubious statements made by Professor Macculluch.
Does any of this matter?
The biological "purity" of ethnic groups is a nonsense, and clearly demonstrable as a nonsense. For instance there can be no more "English" author than John Betjeman, and yet his ancestry was Dutch. Where Professor Macculloch is guilty of misleading us is by implying that only the English have mixed origins and that therefore this is just a big melting pot in which no-one has any indigenous rights (and therefore post-war mass immigration is justified, the English are not indigenous and have no indigenous rights etc etc).
No ethnic group anywhere in the world can prove biological "purity".
Therefore the English people have no more indigenous rights than any other nation, but equally they have no less indigenous rights than any other nation.
Professor Macculloch made a great fuss about telling us that Saint George was from the Middle East, which is such a well-known fact that one wonders why he bothered to state it. But he failed to tell us that St Patrick wasn't Irish, St David wasn't Welsh and St Andrew wasn't Scottish. So what was the point he was trying to make?
If English national identity is to be condemned as some kind of fraud, then surely Irish, Welsh and Scottish national identities are equally fraudulent?
All national foundation myths are, as the phrase implies, "myths". This was true of the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Aztecs, the medieval English, the medieval French, the modern Chinese, the modern Indians etc. This does not invalidate the importance of these myths in determining a community's self-identity.
Throughout the series I continually found myself watching Professor Macculloch and asking the question: what are you up to?
A clue came right at the end where he gave a whole-hearted endorsement of multi-culturalism. It was the big punchline of the series. We're all just a big coffee-coloured melting-pot.
Professor Macculloch is entitled to endorse multi-culturalism and post-war mass immigration (which he omitted to mention has occurred against the wishes of the majority) but he is not entitled to dress this up as impartial historical fact.
How God Made The English was worthless propaganda - clever and well-researched and well-presented propaganda, but propaganda nonetheless.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01flnyq/How_God_Made_the_English_A_White_and_Christian_People/
1 comment:
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed the BBC getting in a bit of anti-Englsh propaganda.
I too was somewhat taken aback by someone called Dairmuid McCulloch given a sample to test the ethnic origins of the English. I too was confused by the fact that everyone knows StGeorge (we have all seen their football flags)is the patron saint of Georgia and that it is unlikely that they would have a saint born in England. Dairmuid spends the time deconstructing the idea of a nation and then refers to people who lived in the Iberian peninsula 15 thousand years ago as "Spanish". Anti-English propaganda used to take the form of the English were late arrivals/invaders to an Ireland with a Homogenous settled community and therefore were immigrants themselves. However DNA advances have shown that the English ethnicity is largely indigenous so the propaganda merchants had to re-digest this to say that the English are (1) still immigrants because they only arrived 12 thousand years ago and (2) have no distinctive ethnicity in comparison to the rest of the UK. Whether 5% or 50% anglo-saxon it is clear that with later Norse/Danish there is a clear distinction. Its a pity that Dairmuid needed to give a sample. There are clear maps available to show the prevalence of fair hair and blue eyes in Britain. And that incidence is far higher in Eastern Britain (largely the area called England) if you remove Cornwall, Multiethnic London and the Home Counties and add on SE Scotland.
The fanatical opposition to English Identity which everyone English that I know, is and has always been comfortable with. To misquote Wellington (if the quote is genuine)just because you were born in Kent, does not mean that you are English
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