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Nations and State Citizenship in the modern world
by the Revd. John Lovejoy

States are highly artificial constructs, and sometimes come into being and also collapse with remarkable rapidity. Thus, there ought not to be any rivalry between the Nation and the State, since the former has roots in antiquity, while the latter will usually have been set in place in stages, partly to maintain the nation as a unity, and partly so as to enable the Nation to relate to the wider world. The State is secondary to the Nation.

In recent times, however, the State has assumed more and more practical importance, in response to the demands of international trade, the increased specialisation of ever more diverse skills, the development of modern transport and communications, urbanisation, coordination of national defence, etc.

At the same time, political and philosophical movements have led to the formation of highly artificial States such as the erstwhile USSR, modern India, modern China, and even the earlier Tsarist Russia, which comprised the original Russia along with many smaller nations in the original sense. This was really an empire.

A further complication was the rise of the 'Settler States', such as the USA, Canada, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa - this latter one only just coming to terms with the latter stages of its development as such.

With these later sorts of States there has been a strong pressure to minimise the importance of the nation in the old sense and to substitute for this the Modern State in the hope that this would enable a new form of communal identity to displace the older one - based as this had always been on descent, common history, and origins in remoter antiquity.

Australia as example of settler state - here Australians of Indonesian and European origin celebrate Australia Day.

But has this tendency worked? What has happened very often is that whereas the original settlers came to construct a 'Brave New World' in a new territory (albeit at the expense of a sparsely populated original or indigenous people), their descendants have typically yearned for their ancestral homeland and culture. The USA, it is said, is not a melting pot but a mosaic. A consequence of this, too, is that the nation in the old sense persists, but finds itself spanning the oceans. As for one who has for some time had contact with the Greek Nation, I am aware how strong this persistence of original nationhood can be.

For some time now, it has seemed to me that the political/philosophical base of the later artificial and settler States is too slight and flimsy to provide the strong base for communal human existence that the earlier traditional nations did have. Either the original nations will persist alongside the State machinery, or they will overthrow it, or they will wither away to leave the State in charge of a rootless and culturally-impoverished mass of 'citizens' who will then have no common identity beyond their immediate family and that of the state itself. Examples of all these can be found across the modern world.

Where does this leave us; The English Nation?

To summarise, then: The English Nation is much older than the unified English State. Once unified, the Old English State was strong, though not stable, under the later Anglo-Saxon kings. There was, however, too much dynastic confusion and rivalry in the monarchy.

The Norman Conquest was a cataclysm which replaced the English State by attaching it to the Norman Empire, but at the expense of damaging our culture, legal system, language, and ecclesiastical development, as well as making the English an oppressed class for a very long time.

Henceforth monarchs were never really English, and thus not 'kings' in the original Anglo-Saxon sense of the word.

King John - one of the monarchs descended from the Norman conquerors and who typified their collective contempt of the English

The economy ceased to be in English hands as it depended on tenacious landowners who were of Norman descent for the most part, and even when that was forgotten, still behaved like it.

Later, the English became divided, too, by the shattering of the Western ecclesiastical unity with the Reformation, so that subsequently each little village had its little chapels as well as the Church of England parish church. The Roman Catholics existed still, but with severe restrictions.

The English and Scottish States were conjoined in 1707 so as to form a broader base for the expanding Empire. This new state was called Great Britain and comprised the English, Welsh and Scots ethnically. (Ireland must be treated separately.) But this State, with the burgeoning Empire to control, became ever more distant from the English and other indigenous nations as such. We were the cannon-fodder!

The base for this Empire was also broadened by the smoky and lurid dawn of the Industrial Revolution, which had the effect of causing a great deal of internal migration from one region and nation to another in response to a freer labour market, and also the growth of the new urban areas which William Cobbett deplored so much when he described them as 'wens' - the Old English for warts or excrescences.

The two world wars destroyed a large proportion of our young manhood.

The second half of the last century saw massive changes and developments in trade, technology and communications, along with international financial institutions and corporate might on a worldwide scale, such as have induced our governments to adjust to these realities and to regard the population which they govern as a mass of economic units - with such matters as culture, beliefs, origins and identity as irrelevant side-issues, such as had best be marginalised and regarded as merely for private or personal individual choice.

Thus we have seen the rise among us of concepts like 'multiculturalism', 'vibrant diversity', while immigration has been allowed in a very unrestricted way so as to have a ready supply of fit young single cosmopoltan persons, ready on arrival to man the State Economy. In line with this, it has been regarded as politic to discourage the use of the word 'English' and 'Englishness' while merely promoting a shared sense of 'British Values' - whatever the politicians really mean by that term.

Despite the pressure to 'regroup' human beings in the three ways just alluded to, and also in other ways yet to be described, the nation remains the only grouping small enough - and yet also large enough - to remain a stable base for a communal human existance with a culture that can be transmitted through the generations.

There could never be a single 'world-nation' with a global culture and world government, for such a notion would be a monstrosity. We must aim instead for harmony between the nations, with co-orodination in grave and essential matters, with States truly serving the nations that they comprise.

But the nation unifies, and cuts across divides of age, class, ability and aptitude, political leanings, religious divisions if they are unavoidable, while also uniting those who would otherwise be sundered by rival corporate and profesional statuses. The nation also links us with our past and with our remoter origins and myths.

It is certainly worth the struggle to help it survive!