Why I no longer consider myself a ‘British’ citizen.

On the day after the highlight of the European calendar and as the elections draw ever nearer, the relationship between Britain and Europe is under close scrutiny. Naturally, that makes me want to chuck my two-pennyworth into the mix and publicly stick two international fingers up at that party in the purple and yellow.

                We in the island nation of Great Britain have a history of considering ourselves as being a little bit different to our European neighbours, something that may be due to the puddle of water between us and the rest of the world, or possibly because of what my mother would call ‘small man syndrome’, but it’s about time we recognise that we are a product of Europe and the wider world perhaps more than anywhere else. Everything which we consider as part of our unique British heritage has been given to us, forced on us or borrowed/ adopted/ stolen by us; our language, our monarchy, our religion, even our beloved tea, it all comes from overseas. (Except perhaps Morris Dancing, about which the less said, the better.) There are of course some genius home-grown traditions – cheese rolling and tossing the caber spring to mind, but in general these are regional rather than part of our shared British culture.

                But this is one of the few things that I really love about Britain. We have so much that we are perfectly warranted in moaning about (the weather, naturally) but this hotchpotch of cultures is not one of them. If you want to find ‘pure’ British culture, I think you’d have to be looking back to pre-Roman Britain (and I thoroughly recommend you do, it’s fascinating) but let’s accept that we are the original melting pot and make the most of it. We’re no Madagascar, a strange petri-dish of oddities grown in total isolation; rather our Britishness was forged in the furnace of Europe over centuries, even millennia. Even those who have never got as far as those gleaming cliffs have roots that spread further than we ever stop to think about; we owe it to ourselves and the rest of the global community to recognise it and keep in close contact with our heritage. We have shaped nations across the globe, but let’s not forget just how much they have shaped us.