Are the British indigenous to Britain?

“A mongrel race” is how the British, and especially the English are labeled these days. Celt, Roman, Saxon, Viking, Norman are some of the names of the peoples who have made Britain their home over the past 3,000 years, with more groups stretching back further into antiquity.

But is this term accurate? Are the English nothing more than a ‘mongrel race’ as anti-English pressure groups like to make us believe? To find the answer you need look no further than the works of Bryan Sykes and Stephen Oppenheimer to discover the real genetichistory of the British people.

To put it simply, the bulk of the British population today can trace their ancestry back to late Upper Palaeolithic/ Mesolithic peoples who gradually migrated north from their home in northern Spain/ southern France after the glaciers melted at the end of the Ice Age. Britain before then did have a human presence, though its numbers were not large. Having said that, some of their genes do flow in the British today.

As Britain became ripe once again for human habitation, these early Mesolithic peoples arrived over land as Britain was still joined to mainland Europe at this time, about 10,000BC. (Their homeland was actually the Basque lands of today. The British and the Basques share a close ancestry).

The settlers moved quickly along the Atlantic coast to occupy the land as the glaciers retreated north. In his book (and series) ‘British Isles’ Alan Titchmarch says that most of the glaciers would have melted within fifty years, hence the land was exposed extremely fast. These post Ice Age settlers still constitute the majority of the British population today.

In his book ‘Origins of the British’, Stephen Oppenheimer says that 75% to 95% of the British population has an ancient Iberian (Spanish) ancestry. While the figures are higher for Wales than England (Llangefni, north Wales is 96% and Fakenham in Norfolk is 59%), he states that only 30% of gene types in England derive from north-west Europe. This means that the original, indigenous British population is still the dominant in the modern British of today.

Since the British have been in Britain since the last Ice Age it stands to reason that they should not be considered a “mongrel race”. Though other peoples have left their imprint on the British, especially in England, the British are still remarkably united.

Consider this: the Maoris of New Zealand, a Polynesian people, arrived in New Zealand about the year 1000AD. Everyone considers them to be an ‘indigenous’ people. However, the British have been in Britain for 10,000 years, yet people call them a race of immigrants, with the insinuation that they are not indigenous. This is completely wrong and shows a terrible double-standard.

The British are just as indigenous to Britain as the Maoris are to New Zealand. Why is this such a hard pill to swallow? Perhaps it is because the world today is incapable of viewing ‘white people’ as being indigenous to anything.

The British have an ancient connection to their land and this must be respected. Simply calling them ‘immigrants’ and ‘mongrels’ is both historically wrong and a dreadful insult. The British are just as indigenous to their land as the Aborigines are to Australia, the Maoris are to New Zealand and the Native American Indians are to North America.

The English in Australia - why they come here.

It’s no secret that there are a lot of English out here in Australia, some of whom have been here for decades, while others are more recent arrivals. I’m always keen to ask them why they decided to move here, and invariably I get answers like, “The weather here is better”, or “I’ve got family here and wanted to be near them”. However, the answer that I hear most often goes something like this:

“I got so sick of England, I didn’t feel at home there anymore. It’s changed too much”.

When I enquire further into their reasons it isn’t long before I get a more in depth list. They often don’t like the EU and feel that England doesn’t need to be a part of it. They also don’t like the hoards of migrants who have come into the country and not assimilated, nor even tried to learn the English language. Apparently, political correctness is rampart in England to the point of silencing the English majority from any kinds of opinions they have about what is happening to their country.

When I ask if they’d ever like to return one day they almost universally answer with a definite no! One guy at work, who is from Liverpool, has no interest in the well being of his homeland anymore. For him, it has virtually ceased to exist.

I find this a terrible shame. Multitudes of English people, on their own or whole families are fleeing their country not because of any civil war, or poverty or lack of opportunities; they are leaving because they simply don’t feel as if it is their country anymore. It is now owned by corporations, minority groups and PC government thugs.

I’ve been to England twice now and both times I couldn’t wait to get there! And while I was there I loved every minute of it! I wonder then… what am I seeing in England that its native born population isn’t?

The Identity of Self

So what am I, English or Australian? Can I be both or do I have to choose? If I have to choose then why do I have to do so? Is it up to other people to tell us who we are, or are we free to choose our identity?

These are questions for you, because I know who I am. I love Australia; it is the place of my birth, education and growth. However, for whatever reasons, I have never really felt as if I am a part of it. For those who know me, I am not your stereotypical Aussie bloke. I don’t know why I didn’t turn out that way. I just didn’t.

I have both Australian and British citizenship. I have lived in both countries. Between the two, I have always felt closer to England. Maybe it is the realisation that (at least on my father’s side) I am a first generation Australian, and that I have thousands of years of family history and heritage in Britain.

Should I (or you) just ignore our heritage simply because we were born away from our ancestral homeland? If you want to then by all means go ahead, I’m not here to tell you what to do. But for me, I felt that connection to ‘the land’ and to the lives of my ancestors. I realised I wanted to know England – what it was and is, how it got to be the way it is, and above all, what does it mean to be English.

The central question therefore is, can a person of Anglo-Saxon/ British origin be English though not be born there? Of course they can. No one doubted that Jimmy (Christian Bale) in ‘Empire of the Sun’ was English, though he makes it clear that he hasn’t been there yet. This of course brings up the question of what does it mean to be an Australian… But that’s for others to figure out.

Having said all this, my Mum’s family traces much of their ancestry to Scotland. Perhaps I should be talking about a ‘British’ identity for myself, rather than a specifically English one. But again, I feel a connection to England.

And because of that connection, I feel strongly about certain aspects of England’s condition today.