English nationalist

English nationalism is the nationalism that asserts that the English are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of English people. In a general sense, it comprises political and social movements and sentiment inspired by a love for English culture, language and history, and a sense of pride in England and the English people. English nationalists often see themselves as predominantly English rather than British.

On the political level, some English nationalists have advocated self-government for England. This could take the form either of a devolved English Parliament within the United Kingdom or the re-establishment of an independent sovereign state of England outside the UK.

The history of English nationalism is a contested area of scholarship. The historian Adrian Hastings has written that: "One can find historians to date 'the dawn of English national consciousness' (or some such phrase) in almost every century from the eighth to the nineteenth".

Patrick Wormald has claimed that England was a nation by the time of the Venerable Bede, who wrote the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) around 730. Wormald attributes Bede with a decisive "role in defining English national identity and English national destiny". Bede uses the label "English" to describe the Germanic peoples who inhabited Britain: Angles, Saxons and Jutes and excludes Britons, Scots and Picts. In the final paragraph to the preface of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People Bede departs from the usual word "gens" and instead uses the word "natio" to describe the "historia nostrae nationis": the history of our own nation. This is the first verbal appearance of the English nation.

...
Wikipedia