What do the English think of Britishness?
Britishness is the passport we hold and includes Welsh and Scottish people. There are also 8 million people of Irish descent who live in Britain. Interestingly, Britishness is ambivalent about Northern Ireland. I got caught out once after introducing a motion in the House of Commons calling for equality for British women and being criticised by the Ulster Unionists for excluding them! My original answer spells out how my sense of my Irish origin and rejection of Empire and racism, originally seemed ill at ease with Britishness but later became part of a new sense of Britishness that easily incorporated all the people who were recruited from the Commonwealth to work after the 1950s. Over time, the arguments over racism towards black and brown people from Commonwealth countries reminded British people of the diversity of the existing population and broke down the dominant image of white, conservative, Church of England Britishness. This challenge created a more inclusive sense of British
