Examining National Sentiments in Britain...Examining National Sentiments in Britain Roger Scully...

Examining National Sentiments in Britain

Roger Scully

Wales Governance Centre

Cardiff University

[email protected]

Paper presented to the Annual Conference of the Elections, Public Opinion and Parties

specialist group, Oxford, September 2012

Abstract: Attitudes towards the nation have become increasingly central to UK politics in

recent times. While some aspects of this, such as national identities and constitutional

preferences, have been studied in detail, little is known about the sentiments that may

underpin such identities and preferences. This paper aims to address these deficiencies in

current knowledge. Drawing on a hitherto neglected series of items in parallel surveys

conducted in 2003 in England, Scotland and Wales, it demonstrates that these items can be

combined to form reliable, multi-item scales of sentiments towards Britain and towards

England, Scotland and Wales. The paper then examines the relationship between sentiments

towards Britain and those towards the sub-state nations of Britain; explores the factors that

predict national sentiments; considers the relationship of national sentiments to party support;

and assesses the further implications of the findings.

Key Words: National sentiment; Britain; England; Scotland; Wales.

mailto:[email protected]

Nationalism has been arguably the most important phenomenon in global politics over recent

centuries (Elias 1990: 146). Yet outwith the singular exception of Northern Ireland, it has

typically been marginal to the study of UK politics. Questions about competing senses of

nationhood in the UK, and their implications, barely arose until quite recently; a ‘banal

unionism’, shared by the vast majority of people, could safely be assumed (Kidd 2008). The

referendum on Scottish independence due in 2014 is merely the most obvious illustration that

this assumption is now invalid.

In response, significant attention has come to be given to the ‘politics of the nation’ in the

UK. There have been major recent studies of the history, structure and ideology of the

nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales (Lynch 2002; McAllister 2001; Mitchell et al 2011;

Wyn Jones 2007, 2013). Recent years have also seen important analyses of the changing

character of, and growing challenges to, British unionism (McLean and McMillan 2005; Kidd

2008). The establishment and functioning of national devolution in Scotland, Wales and

Northern Ireland has been explored in detail (Rawlings 2004; Trench 2004). And many

aspects of public attitudes have been given attention. Studies have used survey data to

examine the varying senses of national identity across the different parts of the UK (e.g.

Bond and Rosie 2010). Opinions on matters such as the forms of government that should

operate over the nations of Britain have also been probed, and analysts have examined the

extent to which these opinions are shaped by factors such as national identity (Ormston and

Curtice 2010; Pattie et al 2004).

But even within the field of public attitudes research, important aspects of the politics of

nationhood in the UK have received scant attention. Notably, while important work has told

us much about the national identities that people in the different nations of the UK affirm,

and their preferred forms of government, almost no systematic work has investigated the

deeper sentiments about the nation that underpin people’s sense of nationhood. Little work

has explored British national sentiment (cf. Heath et al 1999); no major published studies

have investigated sentiments towards the constituent nations of Britain, nor examined the

relationship between such sentiments and those concerning Britain itself. While this remains

true, our understanding of the politics of nationhood in contemporary Britain must

necessarily remain incomplete.

This paper addresses these deficiencies in current knowledge. Drawing from a (hitherto

neglected) series of items run in parallel surveys conducted in 2003 in England, Scotland and

Wales, it demonstrates that these items can be combined to form reliable, multi-item scales of

sentiments towards Britain and towards England, Scotland and Wales. After this, the paper

goes on to examine the relationship between sentiments towards Britain and sentiments

towards the sub-state nations. We then explore the factors that predict national sentiments,

and conduct an initial exploration of the relationship between national sentiments and party

support. Finally, the conclusion assesses the further implications of our findings.

The Study of National Sentiments in Britain

Studying national sentiments effectively requires a clear idea of what the term means:

something that is less straightforward than might first be imagined, for the study of

nationalism is a field characterised by considerable theoretical and conceptual contestation.

This paper follows the understanding of Breuilly (1996), who distinguishes between

nationalist doctrines, nationalist political movements, and national sentiments. The latter

concerns attitudes towards and about a nation, and will be the focus for this paper.1

In the study of British politics, national sentiments remain largely unexplored territory. There

have been many popular discussions of attitudes to, and understandings of, Britishness, and

similar attention to the constituent nations of Britain.2 Important work has also examined, in

individual cases and among elite groups, how attitudes to the nation underpin nationalist

movements.3 But very little work has systematically explored public attitudes to Britain or to

the constituent nations of Britain. And no published work at all has examined what must

surely be a crucial issue – the relationship between these two forms of national sentiments.

To what extent, and in what ways, do attitudes about Britain relate to those about England,

Scotland and Wales?

The landmark – indeed, virtually the only – published study of British national sentiment

(BNS) is that of Heath et al (1999). In line with the definition offered above, this study

distinguished between “national identity, which can be thought of as a categorical self-

concept, and nationalist sentiment, which can be thought of as a dimension” (1999: 156). The

study sought to develop a multi-item scale to measure this attitudinal dimension; to chart

“whether the supporters of the different parties…differ in their acceptance of ‘official’ British

1 Breuilly observes, on the distinction between doctrines, movements and sentiments, that “we know that

nationalist doctrines and nationalist politics frequently arise in societies and regions where much of the

population lacks any strong or distinct sense of national identity. We also can point to cases where there are

widely shared national sentiments but where these have not been associated either with the elaboration of

nationalist doctrines or the emergence of significant nationalist movements” (1996: 147-148). 2 Prominent examples include, on Britishness, Lowe and McArthur (2010) and (somewhat more scholarly in

nature) Gamble and Wright (2009); Morris (2000) on Wales and Welshness; and Paxman (2007) on

Englishness. 3 Wyn Jones (2007, 2013) provides a detailed qualitative study of the ideology, including understandings of

Wales and Welshness, of Plaid Cymru leaders during the twentieth century. Mitchell et al’s (2011) study of the

Scottish National Party combines the qualitative study of party elites with quantitative measurement and

analysis of the attitudes of the party membership.

nationalism” (1999: 157); and then to explore the relationship between BNS and more well-

established measures of economic left-right attitudes and social libertarian-authoritarianism.

Heath et al’s BNS scale was constructed around a series of items to which respondents were

given five possible responses, ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’. These

items, used in several waves of the 1992-97 British Election Panel Survey (BEPS), were the

following:

- Britain has a lot to learn from other countries in running its affairs

- I would rather be a citizen of Britain than of any other country in the world

- There are some things about Britain today that make me ashamed to be British

- People in Britain are too ready to criticise their country.4

The BNS scale aggregated responses to all items (with appropriate re-coding so more pro-

Britain answers scored ‘high’ in each instance). BEPS respondents’ scores on the BNS scale

were shown to be related to responses on the Moreno national identity scale in Scotland (with

those scoring higher on British sentiment more likely to affirm a more British national

identity), and to be associated with support for different political parties (with Conservatives

and BNP supporters scoring higher on British sentiments than did supporters of other parties).

Heath et al also made some effort to explore the social bases of such sentiments (with British

sentiment found to be stronger amongst older and less well-educated respondents, as well as

adherents to the established churches in England and Scotland). However, little relationship

4 The core BNS scale items are supplemented in some analysis by two further items included in the 1997 BEPS

wave:

- The government should do everything it can to keep all parts of Britain together in a single state

- Britain should cooperate with other countries even if it means giving up some independence.

The second item in the main BNS scale is identical to one included in two International Social Survey

Programme multinational studies, conducted in 1995 and 2003, which had their own scales of what some

authors term ‘national sentiment’ (Hjerm and Schnabel 2010); however, the label of ‘chauvinism’ used for this

scale by other scholars (e.g. Coenders and Scheepers 2003) appears more appropriate given its rather narrow

focus.

was found between the BNS scale and either economic left-right or social libertarian-

authoritarian attitudes.

Although Heath et al’s study has been widely cited, there have been disappointingly few

subsequent attempts to apply their BNS scale, to extend or refine it, or to develop alternative

measurements of national sentiments in Britain. And while the original study remains a

reference point in the literature, it is not beyond criticism. At least three limitations in the

study can be identified.

First, the BNS scale was simply not empirically very successful. Heath and colleagues

themselves acknowledged the Alpha reliability coefficient (.35) for the four-item scale in

their original study to be ‘meagre’.5 Moreover, when the items used in the scale were factor

analysed (along with items from the standard economic left-right and social libertarian-

authoritarian scales), two of them each loaded heavily on two separate factors. If British

national sentiment is indeed a single dimension, it is not clear that the Heath et al scale taps it

very effectively. Nor is the scale very obviously successful as a tool for understanding other

attitudes. Given these empirical weaknesses, it is perhaps unsurprising that the scale has been

deployed in few subsequent studies.

Second, the construct validity of the scale can be questioned.6 Does the BNS scale effectively

measure ‘British national sentiment’? This is ultimately an interpretative judgement about the

scale items and the underlying concept that they are intended to measure.7 The four items in

5 The Alpha coefficient for Heath et al’s British sentiment scale improves (from .35 to .51) when the two

additional items available in the 1997 BEPS wave are included. 6 A specific form of construct validity – content validity – is relevant here. Content validity is concerned with

whether a measure taps all relevant facets of the underlying construct (Carmines and Zeller 1991). 7 Methods have been developed to assess objectively the construct validity of measures – most obviously, that

one should expect high correlations between the chosen measure and variables that are known to be closely

the core BNS scale all relate to pride in contemporary Britain and its standing in the world,

with the second of the four also tapping to some extent into xenophobia.8 This offers a rather

narrow and partial measurement of sentiments about Britain as a nation. To give but one

example, the BNS scale items include nothing about attitudes towards popular symbols of

Britishness. It seems likely that a more broad-ranging scale, tapping sentiments about Britain

from a variety of directions, might be constructed: an initial attempt at this is made in the

following section.

Finally, we must emphasise that examining ‘British national sentiment’ is not the same thing

as examining national sentiments in Britain. The UK is a state with differing senses of

nationhood and national identity: the serious examination of national sentiments in Britain

must seek to understand sentiments about these different senses of nationality. Such a line of

critique is arguably quite unfair to Heath et al, as it involves criticising their study for not

doing something it never sought to do. But the basic point surely remains intact: the serious

study of national sentiments in Britain requires extending the scope of analysis beyond the

parameters that Heath et al observe.

What is needed, in short, is the construction of reliable and valid measures of sentiments both

about the different nations of Britain and about Britain itself. This is what the following

section of the paper attempts to provide.

Measuring National Sentiments in Britain

related to the underlying construct. But such a strategy is problematic, if not impossible, where no such

variables exist, as is the case for measuring national sentiments in Britain. 8 It should be acknowledged that the two ‘supplementary’ items from the 1997 BEPS wave extend the scope of

the BNS scale somewhat.

Developing reliable and valid measures of national sentiments in Britain is made particularly

difficult by three major limitations in available data. Few major social surveys include

sufficient numbers of respondents from all three main British nations to permit analysis of

attitudes in each. Few of those that do include sufficient respondents from all three nations

have asked questions relating to national sentiments. And the small number of studies

clearing both these first two hurdles have generally not asked about both Britain and the

constituent nations of Britain. However, a parallel series of surveys conducted in 2003 in

England, Scotland and Wales did include several sets of questions, answers to which can be

combined to form measures of national sentiments in Britain.9 This is not to claim that the

scales thus derived constitute the definitive measurement of such sentiments. But they

arguably maximise what can be learned from the limited existing data.

The questions deployed here address national sentiments from several, rather different,

directions. The first we examine is concerned with attachment to the nation. Respondents

were asked to rate, on a four-point scale running from ‘Very to ‘Not at all’, how closely they

felt attached to ‘your local area’, to Britain, and to Europe. Respondents from England,

Scotland and Wales were also asked about their respective level of attachment to England,

Scotland and Wales; English respondents were in addition asked about ‘your region’. Results

for England, Scotland and Wales in 2003 are presented in Table 1. Unsurprisingly, Europe

attracts the lowest sense of attachment in all three nations. In other respects, however, the

nations differ. For England, we observe fairly similar levels of attachment to the locality,

region, England and Britain: there is no clear primary referent of attachment. In Scotland,

attachment to Scotland is greatest, with the locality coming second and Britain a rather

9 The three surveys we draw upon are the 2003 British Social Attitudes Survey (from which we draw our sample

for England), the 2003 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, and the 2003 Wales Life and Times study. Sampling

for all three surveys was conducted face-to-face by the National Centre for Social Research.

distant third. Welsh respondents also accord lower levels of attachment, on average, to

Britain than their locality or Wales. But distinctive to Wales is the relatively strong

attachment to localities, which surpasses even levels of attachment to Wales itself. Popular

contemporary rhetoric that describes Wales as a ‘community of communities’ seems to have

some basis in reality.10

TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE

A second set of questions asked directly about national pride: how proud respondents felt to

be British and to be English, Scottish or Welsh. Results from these questions are shown in

Table 2. As can be seen, in England, levels of pride in Englishness and Britishness are very

similar. In both Scotland and Wales, by contrast, reported pride in the sub-state nationality is

notably greater than in Britishness, with the gap particularly large in Scotland. The one

respect in which Wales stands out is in having the highest number of respondents who reject

the label of the sub-state nationality entirely.11

TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE

A third set of questions explored attitudes towards those ubiquitous symbols of nationhood,

national flags. The results, reported in Table 3, demonstrate little hostility to any flags. Even

those people – mainly in Scotland and Wales – who reject the label ‘British’ are more likely

10

The characterisation of Wales as a ‘community of communities’ dates back at least to ideas propounded by

the writer and political activist Saunders Lewis (see Jones and Thomas 1991 for an introduction to Lewis’

thinking). Interestingly, while Lewis remains a deeply controversial figure, this element of his thinking has

become a widely-shared feature of contemporary political discourse in Wales. 11

Many of those who rejection any sense of Welshness come from the significant proportion of the Welsh

population (approximately twenty per cent, according to the 2001 census, compared to some eight per cent in

Scotland) who were born in England. Of respondents in our 2003 Welsh survey who reported having been born

in Wales, only 1.5 per cent indicated in response to this national pride question that they ‘not Welsh’. Of those

who reported having been born outside Wales (the vast majority of whom were born in England) some 55.0 per

cent chose the ‘not Welsh’ option.

to feel indifference to the Union Jack than hostility. We can also see from the table that pride

in the Welsh flag was very high – even higher than levels of Scottish pride in the Saltire.

TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE

A final question used in the 2003 parallel surveys to some extent required survey respondents

to prioritise one sense of nationhood, by asking them what nationality they would choose to

have on their passport were they able so to choose. As is shown in Table 4, most English

respondents opted for ‘British’. But a substantial majority in Scotland opted for ‘Scottish’,

and a smaller majority in Wales chose ‘Welsh’, although the proportion choosing British was

notably higher in Wales than Scotland.

TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE

Though the specific results for each of these questions are of some interest, of more concern

for current purposes is to explore the extent to which answers to these questions may be inter-

related. Do these four very different questions probe essentially separate attitudes, or do they

tap into a more general phenomena that we might plausibly label ‘national sentiments’? To

explore this issue we draw together elements of the above questions into two distinct sets of

variables – concerned, respectively, with sentiments about Britain and about England,

Scotland or Wales.

Our putative British national sentiment variables are:

- Answers to ‘how closely attached do you feel to Britain?’

- Reported level of pride in being British

- Reported pride in the Union Jack flag; and

- Whether or not respondents indicated that they would choose to be described as

‘British’ on their passport.12

The English/Scottish/Welsh national sentiment items are:

- Answers to ‘how closely attached do you feel to England/Scotland/Wales?’

- Reported level of pride in being English/Scottish/Welsh

- Reported pride in the Cross of St. George/Saltire/Red Dragon flags; and

- Whether or not respondents indicated that they would choose to be described as

‘English/’Scottish/‘Welsh’ on their passport.13

Correlations (not shown) of the individual variables for each of the three nations indicate the

patterns of association between them to be fairly similar in Scotland and Wales, with England

differing a little. In both Scotland and Wales, all the British items are strongly inter-

correlated; so too are all the Scottish/Welsh items. The inter-relationship between the British

and Scottish/Welsh items is less consistent, although in several instances there are significant

negative correlations. In England, while all the British items are positively related, and so too

are most of the English items, there are also many positive correlations between British and

English items (although the English passport item correlated negatively with both attachment

to Britain and pride in Britain).

12

For the British sentiment scale, items were coded as follows. Closeness of Attachment to Britain was coded 2

for Very, 1 for Fairly, -1 for Not Very and -2 for Not at all. Pride in being British was coded 2 for Very, 1 for

Somewhat, -1 for Not Very, and -2 for Not at all. Pride in the Union Jack Flag was coded 2 for Very Proud, 1

for A Bit Proud, 0 for Indifferent, -1 for A Bit Hostile, and -2 for Very Hostile. The British Passport item was

coded 1 for those indicating they would choose to be described as British on their passport, 0 otherwise. 13

For the English/Scottish/Welsh sentiment scale, items were coded as follows. Closeness of Attachment to

England/Scotland/Wales was coded 2 for Very, 1 for Fairly, -1 for Not Very and -2 for Not at all. Pride in being

English/Scottish/Welsh was coded 2 for Very, 1 for Somewhat, -1 for Not Very, and -2 for Not at all. Pride in

the St. George/Saltire/Red Dragon Flags was coded 2 for Very Proud, 1 for A Bit Proud, 0 for Indifferent, -1 for

A Bit Hostile, and -2 for Very Hostile. The Passport item was coded 1 for those indicating they would choose to

be described as English/Scottish/Welsh on their passport, 0 otherwise.

These patterns are more formally confirmed by a factor analysis for each set of variables.14

For both Scotland and Wales we observe neat, two-factor solutions, with all the British items

loading heavily on one factor and all the Scottish/Welsh items loading heavily on the other.15

In England, the results are rather more complex. A three-factor solution emerges from the

data: the two national pride questions and those relating to flags load heavily on the first

factor; the second factor is loaded on by both passport items; while the third factor is strongly

associated with the attachment items. This indicates a more complex pattern of national

sentiments in England than in the two other British nations, but reinforces the point that

sentiments towards England and Britain are positively correlated.

When we aggregate responses from the individual items into scales of national sentiments,

we again find very similar results in Scotland and Wales.16

In Wales, the Welsh sentiments

scale produces a reliability coefficient of .73, and the British scale one of .68; in Scotland, the

Scottish sentiment scale has an Alpha of .71 and the British scale one of .69. These are highly

satisfactory results, and suggest that in both countries the two scales are reliable measures of

coherent phenomena.17

In England the findings are slightly less strong: both the English and

14

The factor analysis method used was Principal Components, with varimax rotation. 15

In Scotland, the first factor, with an eigenvalue of 2.65, was heavily loaded on by all four Scottish sentiment

items; the second factor, with an eigenvalue of 2.23, was heavily loaded on by all four British sentiment items.

These two factors combined explained a total of 61.02 percent of item variance; no other factors approached an

eigenvalue of 1. In Wales, the first factor, with an eigenvalue of 2.97, was heavily loaded on by all four Welsh

sentiment items; the second factor, with an eigenvalue of 2.00, was heavily loaded on by all four British

sentiment items. These two factors combined explained a total of 62.14 percent of item variance; no other

factors approached an eigenvalue of 1. In England, the first factor, with an eigenvalue of 2.95, was heavily

loaded on by both national prid variables and both national flag variables; the second factor, with an eigenvalue

of 1.91, was heavily loaded on by the two passport items; the third factor, with an eigenvalue of 1.21, was

heavily loaded on by the two national attachment variables. The three factors combined explained a total of

75.83 percent of item variance; no other factors approached an eigenvalue of 1. 16

Both scales are constructed by adding the values of the individual variables, and thus run from a maximum of

7 to a minimum of -6. A Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of .70 or above is generally regarded as indicating a

reliable multi-item scale (see Pennings et al (1999: 97)). 17

To the author’s knowledge, no subsequent survey in England or Scotland has repeated all the items included

in the 2003 parallel studies. However, the pre-referendum wave of the 2011 Welsh Referendum Study did repeat

all the items. This obtained very similar findings to the 2003 survey in Wales: factor analysis of the items

British sentiment scales produce Alpha coefficients of .60. Nonetheless, this is still far

superior to the findings obtained by Heath et al (1999) for their BNS scale.

A final question to address in this section is the levels of national sentiments that our scale

indicates exist in the three British nations. Average scores on the two national sentiment

scales for England, Scotland and Wales are displayed in Table 5. The findings are intuitive,

reinforcing confidence in the validity of the measures. On the British sentiment scale, we find

England to have the most positive average levels of BNS and Scotland the least positive, with

Wales in the median position. The picture is the reverse for sub-state national sentiment:

levels of such sentiment are greatest in Scotland and lowest in England, with Wales again

falling between the two.

TABLE 5 ABOUT HERE

To summarise, while there is a paucity of good data on national sentiment in Britain, in this

section we have been able to show that a number of survey items included in parallel surveys

in 2003 can be exploited to develop scales that tap into national sentiments in England,

Scotland and Wales. These scales appear to be highly reliable in Wales and Scotland,

although slightly less so in England. The following section of the paper will now explore

what relationship, if any exists between national sentiments towards Britain and those

concerning England, Scotland and Wales.

produced a very similar two factor solution, while reliability analysis produced an Alpha coefficient of .82 for

the Welsh sentiment scale, and .71 for the British sentiment scale. This evidence provides valuable reassurance

that the 2003 findings are robust across time (and also sampling method, given that the 2003 surveys were

implemented via face-to-face sampling, and that in 2011 via the internet).

The Inter-relationship of National Sentiments

It is not theoretically or intuitively obvious how sentiments about Britain should be related to

those about the sub-state nations of Britain. When national identities are examined,

Britishness is often – as in the classic ‘Moreno’ national identity question – placed somewhat

in opposition to an identity with one of the individual nations of Britain.18

In a similar

manner, it may be that those who have the strongest national sentiments about England,

Scotland and Wales are also those most eager to distinguish these nations from Britain. But it

is quite conceivable that some people may have strong positive or negative sentiments about

both Britain and one of its sub-state nations; or, indeed, that many people may have no strong

sentiments about either.

Elements of history and contemporary politics, however, suggest that the most plausible

expectation may be one of differing patterns between the three British nations:

In England, where British identity and the British state have often been intermingled

and confused with England, we should be most likely to see a positive correlation

between national sentiments about Britain and those about the sub-state nation.

In Scotland, where a strong Scottish nationalist movement has existed for some years,

where many people affirm an exclusively Scottish (not British) national identity, and

where – as we have already seen – levels of BNS are lowest, we should be most likely

to see a negative correlation between sentiments towards Britain and those concerning

the sub-state nation.

18

The Moreno national identity question was first developed by Juan Linz and Luis Moreno in the context of

research on Scotland and on Spain’s autonomous communities, primarily the Basques and Catalans. (For

discussion of the background to the development of the question, see Moreno 2006). The question asks

respondents to choose a single national identity from a range of options along a dimension whose extreme points

are (in the case of Scotland) ‘Scottish not British’ and ‘British not Scottish’.

Wales, we hypothesise, will be somewhere between England and Scotland in the

relationship between it and Welsh sentiment, just as it was in levels of both British

and sub-state national sentiments. This reflects the rather weaker status of Welsh

nationalism and of exclusively Welsh national identity when compared to their

equivalents in Scotland.

To explore the inter-relationship between the two forms of national sentiments, we compare

the mean levels of BNS among those with negative, neutral to mildly positive, and strongly

positive levels of sentiments about England/Scotland/Wales.19

Results are shown in Table 6.

As can be seen, our expectations regarding England are wholly fulfilled. The small number of

respondents reporting negative sentiments towards England also reported very low average

levels of positive sentiments towards Britain. Those with neutral or mildly positive

sentiments about England also felt somewhat more warmly about Britain, while those with

the strongest positive sentiments towards England also tended to have the most positive

attitudes to Britain. The strongly positive (Pearson’s r = .54; p < .000) bivariate correlation

between the two forms of national sentiments confirms the clear nature of this relationship.

TABLE 6 ABOUT HERE

By some contrast, however, at least some of our expectations about Scotland and Wales are

confounded. In Scotland, where we see significantly lower average levels of BNS than in

either England or Wales, we nonetheless also see an apparently rather weak positive

relationship between sentiments towards Scotland and those towards Britain. However, the

19

Levels of BNS reported in Table 6 are mean averages as measured on the scale running from -6 to 7 (as

explained in note 15). We should note that, by using measurements of national sentiments that derive from

parallel items, the chances of observing any relationships between British national sentiment and

English/Scottish/Welsh national sentiments should be maximised (when compared with potential measures that

sought to tap these underlying constructs in rather different ways.)

apparent relationship shown in Table 6 is dependent on the very small numbers of

respondents who reported negative sentiments towards Scotland. Overall, a bivariate

correlation suggests that the two forms of national sentiment are essentially unrelated (r =

.02; p = .43). Rather contrary to our expectation, what individuals feel about Scotland seems

to have little relationship to their sentiments regarding Britain.

Also somewhat contrary to expectations it is in Wales where we observe a mildly negative

relationship between the two forms of national sentiments. The figures in Table 6 indicate

that higher levels of Welsh national sentiment among respondents are associated with slightly

lower levels of British national sentiment (and vice-versa). However, a bivariate correlation

indicates that any such relationship between the two sets of attitudes is strikingly weak (r = -

.11; p < .01). For the most part, and very similar to our findings from Scotland, what people

feel about Wales seems to have rather little bearing on what they feel about Britain.

Explaining National Sentiments

Having established our measures of national sentiments in Britain, gauged the levels of such

sentiments and explored their inter-relationships, a number of further questions arise. One set

of questions, to be examined in the following section, is the relationship between national

sentiments and party support. Another set of questions, which we examine now, concern the

factors that might help account for national sentiments.

Heath et al (1999) found a number of social background variables to be significantly related

to their BNS scale. These were:

Age (with older age cohorts having higher levels of British sentiment);

Education (with the more highly educated scoring lower in BNS);

Religion (with British sentiment being significantly associated with membership of

the established church in both England and Scotland;20

Social Class (with middle-class respondents having greater BNS); and

National identity (with a more strongly Scottish national identity associated with

lower levels of British sentiment).

Here, we explore whether these relationships hold true for either the alternative BNS measure

developed here or for English, Scottish and Welsh national sentiments. Using our national

sentiment measures as the dependent variables for our analysis, we report in Table 7 OLS

regression estimates (with robust standard errors and model fit statistics) for a simple

multivariate model in England, Scotland and Wales. The model includes measures of all

those factors found to be important by Heath et al; we also include a dummy variable for the

sex of respondents. (Detailed of how all variables in this analysis were specified are given in

the Appendix).

TABLE 7 ABOUT HERE

While there are some results that differ slightly, and there is in general a somewhat better

model fit in Wales and Scotland than in England, the picture overall is strikingly similar

across the three nations. In all three, the strongest predictors of variation in BNS are age and

religion. In comparison to the reference category of those 65 and older, those from younger

20

It may be useful to remind ourselves of the differences in the official status of churches in our three nations.

The Anglican Church of England is the established state church in England only. A wholly different church, the

Presbyterian Church of Scotland, enjoys established status in Scotland. In Wales, the Anglican church was

disestablished in 1920 after a long popular campaign.

age cohorts in England, Scotland and Wales evince significantly lower levels of British

sentiment. We also find that membership of the Anglican church in England and Wales, and

of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland in Scotland, is associated with significantly greater

levels of BNS. For BNS, patterns of association with national identity are somewhat

complex, although in both Scotland and Wales – but not England to anything like the same

extent – those rejecting a British element to their national identity score much lower on our

BNS scale. For sentiments about the sub-state nation, although there are some significant

correlations with some of the other variables, by far the strongest predictor is national

identity. Those whose national identity is exclusively or mainly with the sub-state nation,

rather than Britain, evince much greater levels of positive sentiments for England, Scotland

and Wales.

Our findings, rather in line with those of Heath et al (1999), do indicate a generally strong

relationship between national sentiments and national identities. But national identities

appear to be far from the only factor shaping sentiments towards the nation. Sentiments

towards Britain appear to be related also to two other social markers – church membership

and age. However, with the established churches in long-term decline, and at least the

possibility that the age differences found here are more generational than life-cycle in nature,

the implications of our findings are not particularly positive for the maintenance of British

national sentiment over the longer-term.

National Sentiments and Party Support

In this final main section of the paper we turn attention to another issue explored by Heath et

al (1999) in their study of BNS: the relationship between national sentiments and party

support. Heath and colleagues found that levels of BNS differed notably across supporters of

the different parties; they also found that their BNS measure made a significant contribution

towards explaining party support. Here, we explore these same questions but for our twin

measures of national sentiments in the three British nations.

Heath et al measure ‘party supporters’ via question on attitudes to parties; given that such

data are not available for all three surveys we use we instead focus on a more traditional party

identification. Table 8 reports the mean average scores on both national sentiment scales, for

each of the three British nations, of identifiers with the main parties. The results show the

differences between the parties to at times be greater than those, reviewed earlier, between

the nations. Conservative identifiers score much the highest levels of British sentiment in all

three nations; perhaps unsurprisingly, identifiers with the nationalist parties score lowest on

this measure in Scotland and Wales. However, it should be noted that, on average, nationalist

identifiers score low positive levels of British sentiment, rather than lapsing into negative

territory – suggesting that something close to indifference, rather than active hostility,

characterises the attitudes towards Britain of identifiers with these parties. Identifiers with the

nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales also, rather unsurprisingly, score highest on levels

of Scottish and Welsh sentiments respectively. But identifiers with each of the three main

unionist parties also tend to have positive attitudes towards Scotland and Wales. In England,

reinforcing the positive correlation observed earlier between British and English sentiment,

Conservative identifiers are again those who score highest on average on the latter.

TABLE 8 ABOUT HERE

The contribution of BNS to party support was measured by Heath et al through a multivariate

analysis of recorded voting behaviour in European and general elections. Such a measure of

party support at the ballot box is less easy to construct using the data available to us.

Measures of voting in the 2003 devolved elections are available for Scottish and Welsh

respondents, but no such equivalent measure exists for those from England. We therefore

once again use party identification as our dependent variable, specifying multinomial logistic

regression models where we compare those identifying with any of the major parties (three in

England, four in both Scotland and Wales) with the reference category of those identifying

either with ‘other’ parties or with none. Table 9 presents outline results from a series of

models for each of the three nations.

TABLE 9 ABOUT HERE

Model 1 in each nation is a simple ‘social demographics’ model that includes the same

measures of age, sex, social class and educational attainment as used in the analysis reported

in Table 7. This model displays limited explanatory power in all three nations. Model 2

simply adds a measure of national identity to the variables in Model 1. This addition makes

little improvement to the model fit in England, but produces a rather better fit in both

Scotland and Wales, where more strongly British identity is associated with identification

with the Conservatives, and greater levels of Scottish/Welsh identity with support for the

nationalist parties (and also, in Wales, the Labour party).

The sole explanatory variable in Model 3 is respondents’ placement on a standard socio-

economic left-right scale constructed from answers to a series of attitudinal questions.21

As

we see, this attitudinal scale has a very limited association with party identity in any of the

three British nations. Model 4 is similarly parsimonious in including only our two national

sentiment scales. As the outline results indicate, this model obtains at least as good a fit as

that for socio-economic attitudes in England, and a substantially better one in both Scotland

and Wales. Finally, we specify an aggregate model that includes all the variables from

models 1-4. This aggregate model obtains the best fit in all three nations, indicating that the

different categories of variables all have some contribution to make towards explaining party

identification. But, most importantly for current purposes, the detailed results for this final

model (not shown) indicate that even when such a range of other factors are controlled for,

there remains a robust association between national sentiments and party identification in all

three nations. In England, there is a strong a significant positive relationship between BNS

and Conservative identification, and a similar (if slightly weaker) relationship with Labour

party identification. In Scotland, BNS is linked strongly to Conservative identification, while

Scottish sentiment is associated closely with identification for the SNP. And in Wales, we

again see a strong link between BNS and Conservative identity; Welsh sentiments are

significantly related to identification both with Plaid Cymru and with Labour.

The analysis here does not claim to offer a full and final model of the factors underpinning

party identification. But it does indicate that the relationship between national sentiments and

party identification, at least, is sufficiently robust to persist in all three British nations within

a model that accounts for a number of other plausible independent variables. The findings

also raise the possibility that if national sentiments can help us account for party identity, then

21

For England and Wales, we use an identical socio-economic left-right scale, as developed and reported by

Heath et al (1994). Only two of the five questions used in this scale, however, were asked in the 2003 SSA

survey. We therefore use three alternative ones to construct a similar scale. (Details available from author).

they may also have a role to play in explaining other measures of party support, including

voting behaviour. At the very least, our findings indicate that this is an issue that warrants

further investigation.

Conclusions

This paper has, arguably, bitten off rather more than it has been able to chew. We certainly

cannot claim that it has offered the final word in the measurement of national sentiments in

Britain, nor in assessments of the relationships between such measures and other variables.

The contribution of this paper has been far more provisional in nature; however, it may still

be significant.

We have established that, while there is a marked paucity of relevant available data

measuring matters pertaining to national sentiments, items from a series of parallel surveys

conducted in 2003 can be combined to form reliable and valid measures of national

sentiments towards both Britain and the sub-state nation in the three main British nations. It

has also been shown that more recent evidence from Wales strongly supports the continuing

reliability of these national sentiment scales. It has further been shown that, at least when

measured in 2003, levels of British national sentiment were lower in Scotland than Wales,

and lower in Wales than England. Sub-state national sentiments, however, were the opposite

– strongest in Scotland and weakest in England. Nonetheless, the inter-relationships between

the two forms of national sentiment are more interesting and complex than many would

perhaps expect. Sentiments towards Britain and towards England in England are strongly

positively correlated, while the equivalent measures in Scotland and Wales are essentially

unrelated. There is little sign that national sentiments in either of the Celtic nations have

become negatively related: indeed, as we have seen, even among identifiers with the Scottish

and Welsh nationalist parties Britain generally evokes indifference rather than active

hostility. We have also seen that national sentiments appear to be correlated with age group

and with national identity, while sentiments themselves appear to have some potential as a

variable for the explanation of party support and maybe voting.

In general, we believe that the results presented in this paper should be interpreted cautiously.

But we do suggest three implications that might be drawn from them. First, the findings here

indicate strongly that national sentiments in the UK are both complex and potentially

important. Therefore, there is a need for political science to study them more seriously than it

has done hitherto. Second, and following directly from the first point, there is a clear need for

greater efforts to gather and analyse data relating to national sentiments. Some recent work

has suggested that an English identity more distinct from a British one has, over recent years,

begun to emerge much more clearly (Lodge et al 2012). Further data is needed to discover

whether the relationship between sentiments towards England and towards Britain may also

have changed in any significant manner in the years since 2003.

A final point concerns the practical implications of our findings. Nationhood has become far

more contested in Britain in recent times. The 2014 independence referendum in Scotland

will make it more contested still. The stark choice imposed by a referendum may require

people in Scotland to decide whether they prioritise their Scottish or British identity. But our

findings indicate that, even in Scotland and even among those with the strongest sentiments

towards Scotland, there is little sign that such attitudes are either motivated by, or prompt,

hostility towards Britain. In that sense, thus far Britain appears to have avoided some of the

most negative national sentiments that can be generated by nationalist movements.

Tables

Table 1: ‘How Closely Attached do you feel to…?’ (%)

A. Wales

Local Area Wales Britain Europe

Very 60 53 35 4

Fairly 32 35 44 28

Not Very 6 9 18 42

Not at all 2 3 3 24

Don’t Know <1 <1 <1 1

Number of respondents = 988

B. Scotland

Local Area Scotland Britain Europe

Very 51 61 23 4

Fairly 38 34 50 33

Not Very 9 5 21 46

Not at all 2 1 5 16

Don’t Know <1 0 <1 <1


C. England

Local Area Region England Britain Europe

Very 39 28 38 30 5

Fairly 46 48 47 51 30

Not Very 12 20 13 15 46

Not at all 3 4 3 3 19

Don’t Know <1 1 <1 <1 1


Sources: Wales: Welsh Life and Times Survey; Scotland: Scottish Social Attitudes 2003; England: British

Social Attitudes 2003

Table 2: National Pride (%)

A. ‘How Proud are you of being British?’

Wales Scotland England

Very Proud 35 23 41

Fairly/Quite Proud 39 41 38

Not very Proud 10 14 10

Not at all Proud 3 5 3

Not British / Don’t Know 12 17 8

Number of respondents 988 1508 1929

B. ‘How Proud are you of being Welsh/Scottish/English?’


Very Proud 61 70 43

Fairly/Quite Proud 17 19 33

Not very Proud 2 2 8

Not at all Proud 2 <1 2

Not Welsh/Scot/English / Don’t Know 18 9 14


Sources: as Table 1

Table 3: Pride in National Flags (%)

A. ‘How do you feel about seeing the Union Jack’?


Very Proud 23 14 34

A Bit Proud 23 22 27

Indifferent* 50 57 36

A bit hostile 3 4 2

Very hostile 1 3 1


B. ‘How do you feel about seeing the Red Dragon/Saltire/Cross of St George?


Very Proud 59 48 28

A Bit Proud 21 28 19

Indifferent* 21 23 50

A bit hostile <1 <1 2

Very hostile <1 <1 1


Sources: as Table 1

*Combination of ‘Not feel much either way’, ‘it depends’ and ‘don’t know’ responses

Table 4: ‘If allowed to choose Nationality on Passport’ (%)


British 33 26 56

English 5 1 32

Welsh/Scottish* 56 67 3

European 2 3 5

Other 4 3 4


Sources: as Table 1

(*Welsh in Wales, Scottish in Scotland, either in England)

Table 5: Mean Average National Sentiment Levels, England, Scotland and Wales

British Sentiment English/Scottish/Welsh Sentiment

England 3.7 3.3

Scotland 2.0 5.0

Wales 2.7 4.3

Table 6: Mean Levels of British National Sentiment by levels of English/Scottish/Welsh national

sentiment

Levels of English/Scottish/Welsh Sentiment

-6 - -1 0 - 3 4 - 7

England 0.3 3.0 4.7

Scotland 1.2 1.9 2.1

Wales 3.2 3.1 2.6

Table 7: OLS Regression Estimates (Robust Standard Errors) for Social Bases of National Sentiments

England Scotland Wales

British

sentiment scale

English

sentiment scale

British

sentiment scale

Scottish

sentiment scale

British

sentiment scale

Welsh

sentiment scale

Age (Reference category = 65+)

18-24

25-34

35-44

45-54

55-64

-1.41 (.29)***

-1.01 (.26)***

-1.00 (.25)***

-.83 (.23)***

-.32 (.24)

-.18 (.27)

-.63 (.24)**

-.51 (.23)*

-.35 (.22)

-.23 (.22)

-1.64 (.27)***

-1.58 (.21)***

-1.75 (.19)***

-1.26 (.20)***

-.78 (.19)***

-.32 (.20)

-.16 (.15)

-.54 (.14)***

-.34 (.14)*

-.09 (.14)

-1.33 (.34)***

-1.36 (.26)***

-.78 (.25)**

-.90 (.25)***

-.08 (.25)

-1.10 (.28)***

-.42 (.22)

-.45 (.21)*

-.25 (.21)

.09 (.44)

Female -.23 (.15) .40 (.14)** .35 (.12)** -.03 (.09) -.09 (.16) .04 (.14)

Highest qualification (Reference category = no qualifications)

Degree

Other qualifications

-.60 (.24)*

-.21 (.18)

-.80 (.23)***

-.28 (.17)

-.46 (.21)*

.09 (.15)

-.19 (.16)

.04 (.11)

-.56 (.28)*

-.33 *.19)

-.04 (.23)

.01 (.15)

Religion (Reference category = None)

Anglican

Catholic

Other Christian

Non-Christian

Church of Scotland

1.13 (.17)***

.15 (.27)

.66 (.22)**

-.16 (.30)

-

.83 (.16)***

.40 (.25)

.68 (.21)**

-.21 (.28)

-

-

-.49 (.19)*

1.00 (.20)***

-.38 (.57)

1.03 (.14)***

-

-.06 (.14)

.19 (.15)

-.30 (.41)

.63 (.10)***

1.04 (.20)***

.15 (.30)

.67 (.22)**

-.50 (.50)

-

.34 (.16)*

.17 (.25)

.54 (.18)**

-.21 (.41)

-

Social Class (Reference category = working class)

Salariat

Petty Bourgeoisie

Routine non-manual

Foremen/Technicians

-.05 (.18)

.32 (.31)

.18 (.20)

.18 (.26)

-.17 (.17)

-.14 (.29)

.07 (.19)

.24 (.24)

-.04 (.16)

.38 (.24)

-.25 (.18)

-.22 (.21)

.08 (.12)

.36 (.18)*

-.04 (.13)

-.01 (.16)

.04 (.32)

-.41 (.21)*

-.17 (.29)

.01 (.22)

-.42 (.27)

.22 (.17)

.35 (.24)

-.11 (.18)

National Identity (Reference category = British not

English/Scottish/Welsh)

More British than English/Scottish/Welsh

Equally British and English/Scottish/Welsh

More English/Scottish/Welsh than British

English/Scottish/Welsh not British

.98 (.25)***

.60 (.21)**

.23 (.23)

-.56 (.25)*

1.10 (.23)***

1.61 (.20)***

2.60 (.21)***

2.50 (.23)***

1.03 (.35)**

.70 (.24)**

-.74 (.23)**

-2.39 (.23)***

1.06 (.25)***

2.84 (.17)***

3.95 (.17)***

4.34 (.17)***

1.04 (.32)**

.56 (.25)*

-1.25 (.25)***

-2.82 (.27)***

1.70 (.27)***

4.77 (.20)***

6.06 (.21)***

6.46 (.22)***

Adjusted R2 .16 .27 .34 .43 .33 .59

Weighted number of respondents 931 931 1505 1505 988 988

* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001

Table 8: National Sentiments and Party Identification

England

Party Identity British sentiment (mean) English sentiment (mean)

Conservative 4.2 3.9

Labour 3.8 3.3

Liberal Democrat 3.5 2.9

Scotland

Party Identity British sentiment (mean) Scottish sentiment (mean)


Labour 2.1 5.0


SNP 0.9 6.0

Wales

Party Identity British sentiment (mean) Welsh sentiment (mean)


Labour 2.7 4.9


Plaid Cymru 1.0 5.8

Table 9: Goodness-of-Fit Measures for Models of Partisan Identification, England, Scotland and Wales

2003

A. England

Model McFadden R2 % correctly predicted AIC†

1. Age, Sex, Social Class & Education .04 42.4 11222.26

2. 1+ National ID .04 42.8 11193.29

3. Left-right scale .03 41.9 9090.83

4. National sentiments .03 39.0 2337.59

5. Aggregate Model .11 49.2 1862.80

B. Scotland



2. 1+ National ID .09 40.8 4318.74

3. Left-right scale .03 35.6 3860.60



C. Wales



2. 1+ National ID .10 47.6 2679.29

3. Left-right scale .00 45.1 2262.16



References

Bond, Ross and Michael Rosie (2010) ‘National Identities and Attitudes to Constitutional

Change in Post-Devolution UK: a Four Territories Comparison’, Regional and Federal

Studies. 20: 83-105.

Breuilly, John (1996) ‘Approaches to Nationalism’ in (G. Balakrishnan, ed.) Mapping the

Nation. London: Verso.

Carmines, Edward G. and Richard A. Zeller (1991) Reliability and Validity Assessment.

London: Sage.

Coenders, Marcel and Peer Scheepers (2003) ‘The effect of education on nationalism and

ethnic exclusionism: an international comparison’, Political Psychology. 24: 313-343.

Elias, Norbert (1990) Studien über die Deutschen: Machtkämpfe und Habitusentwicklung im

19 und 20 Jahrhundert. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Gamble, Andrew, and Tony Wright (eds.) (2009) Britishness: Perspectives on the British

Question. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Heath, Anthony, Geoffrey Evans and Jean Martin (1994) ‘The Measurement of Core Beliefs

and Values: The Development of Balanced Socialist/Laissez Faire and

Libertarian/Authoritarian Scales’, British Journal of Political Science. 24: 115-158.

Heath, Anthony, Bridget Taylor, Lindsay Brook and Alison Park (1999) ‘British National

Sentiment’, British Journal of Political Science. 29: 155-175.

Hjerm, Mikael and Annette Schnabel (2010) ‘Mobilizing nationalist sentiments: which

factors affect nationalist sentiments in Europe?’, Social Science Research. 39: 527-539.

Jones, Alun Richard and Gwyn Thomas (eds.) (1991) Presenting Saunders Lewis (2nd

edition). Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Kidd, Colin (2008) Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500-2000.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lodge, Guy, Daniel Wincott, Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones (2012) The Dog that

Finally Barked: England as an Emerging Political Community. London: Institute for Public

Policy Research.

Lowe, Steve, and Alan McArthur (2010) Blighty: A Cynic’s Guide to Britain. London:

Sphere.

Lynch, Peter (2002) SNP: The History of the Scottish National Party. Cardiff: Welsh

Academic Press.

McAllister, Laura (2001) Plaid Cymru: the Emergence of a Political Party. Bridgend: Seren.

McLean, Iain and Alistair McMillan (2005) State of the Union: Unionism and the

Alternatives in the United Kingdom Since 1707. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mitchell, James, Lynn Bennie and Robert Johns (2011) The Scottish National Party:

Transition to Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Moreno, Luiz (2006) ‘Scotland, Catalonia, Europeanization and the ‘Moreno’ Question’,

Scottish Affairs, 54: 1-21.

Morris, Jan (2000) Wales: Epic Views of a Small Country. London: Penguin.

Ormston, Rachel, and John Curtice (2010) ‘Resentment or Contentment? Attitudes towards

the Union, ten years on’, in (A. Park et al, eds.) British Social Attitudes: the 27th

Report.

London: Sage.

Pattie, Charles (2004) Citizenship in Britain: Values, Participation and Democracy.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Paxman, Jeremy (2007) The English: a Portrait of a People. London: Penguin.

Pennings, Paul, Hans Keman and Jan Kleinnijenhuis (1999) Doing Research in Political

Science. London: Sage.

Rawlings, Richard (2004) Delineating Wales: Constitutional, Legal and Administrative

Aspects of National Devolution. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Trench, Alan (ed.) (2004) Has Devolution Made a Difference? The State of the Nations 2004.

Exeter: Imprint Academic.

Wyn Jones, Richard (2007) Rhoi Cymru’n Gyntaf: Syniadaeth Plaid Cymru Cyfrol 1. Cardiff:

University of Wales Press.

Wyn Jones, Richard (2013) Rhoi Cymru’n Gyntaf: Syniadaeth Plaid Cymru Cyfrol 2. Cardiff:

University of Wales Press.

Examining National Sentiments in Britain...Examining National Sentiments in Britain Roger Scully...

Documents

Transcript of Examining National Sentiments in Britain...Examining National Sentiments in Britain Roger Scully...