| Topic: | The Anglo-Saxon English (and other racial myths) | |
| Posted by: | Huw Burford-Taylor | |
| Date/Time: | 21/11/14 16:12:00 |
| The period from the Roman departure to the Norman Conquest had seen the most dramatic and fundamental change in the racial make-up of England's population, and it would never be so sudden or violent again. Perhaps it was during that unhappy period between 410 and 1066 that our fear of new arrivals became hardwired into our collective psyche. Perhaps now when we see a family of asylum-seekers moving into a hostel in the town centre, there is a little bit of us still worried that they might tie us to a tree and pelt us to death with animal skulls (which according to UKIP is pretty much a daily occurrence). This theory might hold true but for one significant historical fact. Though the racial DNA of the British was more or less created during those tumultuous five hundred years IT HAS CHANGED FAR MORE SINCE THEN. When we casually refer to ourselves as Anglo-Saxon we are lazily ignoring the constant intermingling of the races that has continued ever since. 'One hundred per cent Anglo Saxon with perhaps just a dash of Viking' was how Tony Hancock described his blood group, but this line was of course satirising this popular misconception of who we are. So in the unlikely event you are reading this having just arrived in the United Kingdom from Somalia with nothing but the scars of war and an enormous sense of trepidation about what your new home will be like, there is something you should know about all the confident, busy people you see around you. THEY ARE ALL IMMIGRANTS TOO. Everyone in Britain is of foreign stock. Some, like the Saxons or Vikings, arrived many generations ago jumping out of longboats waving swords above their heads. Bur a far greater number arrived in the past few generations: refugees from other wars or revolutions or simply economic migrants looking for better wages and somewhere you could get a pickled egg and a warm pint to wash it down with. There isn't a single person left in Britain who is a result of marrying and remarrying within the same tiny gene pool of those original Neolithic Britons (although I have my suspicions about a few UKIP politicians). Since 1066 our society has been continually enriched by thousands upon thousands of Dutch Weavers, German bakers, Russian Jews, West Indians, Ugandan Asians, Bengali waiters and Premiership goalkeepers; all of them regarded with a certain amount of suspicion and disdain by the people who had got here a generation or two before them. The depth of Britain's cultural heritage is reflected in its native tongue - English has a larger vocabulary than any other major language. This is just one legacy of all the diverse nationalities that have enriched our culture before AND AFTER the watershed of 1066. That same wealth of ingredients applies to everything else in Britain's make up; the more skills, ideas, trades and cultures you have in any one community, the richer that society will be. Especially as the people who upped and left their own homes to carve out a life elsewhere were by definition among the most enterprising and dynamic individuals around. (The above, nicked, paraphrased & mucked about with from John O' Farrell's excellent "An Utterly Impartial History of Britain"). |