A Product of History

For all the efforts of Maria Rosetta Bradley to keep the spirit and values of her Welsh husband alive, the grandchildren, it would seem, had little time or inclination to celebrate their Welsh ancestry. If anything, it seemed to rather annoy them. Their Irish roots, had they known about them, would probably have horrified them even more. They grew up in London under the gentle ministrations of the Church of England and there was always a distinct shortage of fond recollection for their Welsh antecedents.

At the end of the day, the chances of the English becoming good Europeans were always slim. Even when blood-lines dictated the opposite, it has proved hard enough to create a genuine sense of pluralistic and meaningful British identity.

Banns of Marriage, 1915

What really shaped the British people and their history was ultimately the geological forces that split the islands away from the main European continent, and the last Ice Age that left the islands temporarily free of human habitation. The current British are thus a travelling people, forged from successive migrationary events. Since, these migrants had to cross the sea, whether from Northern Europe, Iberia or France, they were skilled mariners, not to mention natural adventurers. This seafaring and outward-looking tradition continued long enough to enable the country to create the largest empire the world has ever seen.

In fact, the empire was doomed from the moment the Industrial Revolution took hold, since a small island nation with limited resources could hardly compete in the long-term with much larger and better resourced powers elsewhere. Once sea-power ceased to be the sole or dominant factor in international relations, the Empire was bound to sink slowly into the sunset, as indeed it did.

Hetty Jane Owen was a product of this history. Internal migration to the economic capital of the empire, London, and into the docklands from where the arteries of the empire spread out around the globe, brought the different generations of her family together, from Ireland, from Wales, from Essex and elsewhere, all living off the main trading routes of the empire. Politics, education, and selective historical narratives, then provided the compelling pressures to define and redefine identities into the mould that suited the prevailing requirements of the establishment. Ironically, this meant ceasing by and large to be British and becoming English. And far from developing identity from an understanding of British history, this process was, in truth, a consequence of a long and often deliberate attempt to ensure the forgetting of very large parts of our common heritage.