BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

But rather than dwell like Nairn on the preservation of an archaic state or the English absorption
of Scottish intelligentsia and consequent cultural provincialisms of tartanry and Kailyardism,
Marr called for a reimagined Britain with four parliaments plus overarching federal body as
necessary, not least, for preserving social programs and assisting blighted areas. 13 In contrast to
conservative nationalists, Marr mocked obsolescent state sovereignty arguments and looked to a
non-national Green England tradition, championed by both localists and cosmopolitans, that
would profit by a Europe of semi-autonomous regions and thriving exportable cultures. 14
Scholars differ over whether Britishness subsumed Englishness or imposed English
identity on Britain as a whole, and pronouncements of British identity’s demise have been
countered with promises of its revival in new multicultural forms. Richard Weight and Krishnan
Kumar have stressed the need for redefining Englishness because in their view Britishness had
checked the development of a strong English identity. 15 Countering this, Peter Mandler argues
that English identity has been continually scrutinized and refashioned through centuries and that
the English model of parliamentary government has kept Enlightenment ideals essentially intact.
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberal notions of national character and political leveling fed
radical patriotism at home while the idea of progress justified authoritarian colonial rule of
Editions, 1981), 20, 42-48, 79-80.
13 Marr, 166, 235. Nairn, 109, 118, 120, 131. Nairn defined Kailyardism as “the
definition of Scotland as consisting wholly of small towns full of small-town ‘characters’ given
to bucolic intrigue and wise sayings,” quoted in Cairns Craig, Out of History: Narrative
Paradigms in Scottish and English Culture, Determinations (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1996), 107.
14 Marr, 99, 121, 143, 166-67.
15 These arguments appear in Weight’s Patriots: National Identity in Britain, 1940-2000
(London: Macmillan, 2002) and Kumar’s The Making of English National Identity, cited above.
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