Anti-English sentiment, also known as Anglophobia (from Latin Anglus "English" and Greek φόβος, phobos, "fear"), refers to opposition, dislike, fear, hatred, oppression, persecution, and discrimination of English people and/or England.Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford University Press, 2005 It can be observed in various contexts within the United Kingdom and in countries outside of it. In the UK, Benjamin Disraeli and George Orwell highlighted anti-English sentiments among Welsh, Irish, and Scottish nationalisms. In Scotland, Anglophobia is influenced by Scottish identity. Football matches and tournaments often see manifestations of anti-English sentiment, including assaults and attacks on English individuals. In Wales, historical factors such as English language imposition and cultural suppression have contributed to anti-English sentiment. In Northern Ireland, anti-English sentiment, arising from complex historical and political dynamics, was exemplified in the IRA's targeting of England during the Troubles.
Outside the UK, anti-English sentiment exists in countries like Australia, New Zealand, France, Ireland, Russia, India, the United States, and Argentina. In Australia and New Zealand, stereotypes of English immigrants as complainers have fueled such sentiment. France has historical conflicts with England, like the Hundred Years' War, contributing to animosity. Russia has seen waves of Anglophobia due to historical events and suspicions of British meddling. Argentina's anti-British sentiment is linked to the Falklands War and perceptions of British imperialism.
Generally, the term is sometimes used more loosely as a synonym for anti-British sentiment. Its opposite is Anglophilia.
Within the United Kingdom British statesman and Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said that the proud English were sprung from "a horde of Baltic pirates who were never heard of in the greater annals of the world." In his essay "Notes on Nationalism", written in May 1945 and published in the first issue of the intellectual magazine Polemic (October 1945), George Orwell wrote that "Welsh, Irish and Scottish nationalism have points of difference but are alike in their anti-English orientation".
Scotland
In 1998, 19 year-old apprentice mechanic Mark Ayton was punched to the ground and kicked to death by three youths. Ayton's father explicitly cited his English accent as a factor contributing to the attack. Court proceedings recorded that immediately before the attack, the attackers were singing Flower of Scotland, which includes the lines "And sent them homeward, Tae think again": an allusion to the Scottish victory over the English army at the Battle of Bannockburn.
In 1999, an inspector and race relations officer with Lothian and Borders Police said that a correlation had been noticed between the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and anti-English incidents.
A 2005 study by Hussain and Millar of the Department of Politics at the University of Glasgow examined the prevalence of Anglophobia in relation to Islamophobia in Scotland. One finding of the report suggested that national "phobias" have common roots, independent of the nations towards whom they are directed. The study states that:
The study goes on to say (of the English living in Scotland): "Few of the English (only 16 per cent) see the conflict between Scots and English as even 'fairly serious'." The study found that Anglophobia was slightly less prevalent than Islamophobia but that, unlike Islamophobia, Anglophobia correlated with a strong sense of Scottish identity.
Hussain and Millar's research suggested that Anglophobia had fallen slightly since the introduction of devolution.
In 2009, a woman originally from England was assaulted in an allegedly anti-English racially motivated attack. Similar cases have been connected with football matches and tournaments, particularly international tournaments, in which the English and Scottish football teams often compete with each other. There was a spate of anti-English attacks in 2006 during the FIFA World Cup. In one incident a 7-year-old boy wearing an England shirt was punched in the head in an Edinburgh park.
In 2017 Kevin McKenna, former Scottish Journalist of the Year, penned an article in The National labelling English people living in Scotland as "colonising wankers".
In 2020, groups of Scottish nationalists picketed the English border, airports and railway stations sporting hazmat suits and dogs, intent on stopping English people from crossing the England-Scotland border.Health. Coronavirus The Scottish Secretary Alister Jack accused Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of having incited the incident by inaccurately using COVID statistics to stoke anti-English sentiment In the November of that year, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford was accused of making an Anglophobic attack against an English-born photographer living in Scotland: Blackford falsely accused Ollie Taylor of breaching pandemic travel restrictions after he posted a photograph of the Northern Lights at Caithness on his Twitter profile, claiming that he lived in the south of England. Taylor had in fact moved to Caithness earlier in 2020. Other Twitter users accused Blackford of trying to organise a "pile on". Scottish Liberal Democrats leader Willie Rennie accused Blackford of bullying a private citizen and stoking anti-English sentiment in Scotland. Blackford apologised for his claims but insisted that he would "continue to stand up for my constituents" who "feel very strongly about the breaking of travel restrictions that we see across the Highlands and islands" (Blackford's constituency did not include Caithness). When questioned on Blackford's actions in the Scottish Parliament, First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said Blackford had "acted with grace and dignity".
Wales
The Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, also known as the "Acts of Union", passed by the Parliament of England, annexed Wales to the Kingdom of England and replaced the Welsh language and Welsh law with the English language and English law. Section 20 of the 1535 Act made English the only language of the law courts and stated that those who used Welsh would not be appointed to any public office in Wales. The Welsh language was supplanted in many public spheres. Much later, the Welsh Not was used in some schools to suppress the use of the Welsh language. This was never government policy, and was later described as a symbol of English cultural oppression.
Since the Glyndŵr Rising of the early 15th century, Welsh nationalism has been primarily non-violent.Kivisto, P. (2002). Multiculturalism in a global society. Oxford. p.129 The Welsh militant group Meibion Glyndŵr () were responsible for arson attacks on English-owned second homes in Wales from 1979 to 1994, motivated by cultural anti-English sentiment. Meibion Glyndŵr also attempted arson against several estate agents in Wales and England and against the offices of the Conservative Party in London.
In 2000, the Chairman of Swansea Bay Race Equality Council said that "Devolution has brought a definite increase in anti-English behaviour", citing three women who believed that they were being discriminated against in their careers because they could not speak Welsh. In 2001 Dafydd Elis-Thomas, a former leader of Plaid Cymru, said that there was an anti-English strand to Welsh nationalism.
On 21 April 2023, it was reported that Plaid Cymru councillor, Terry Davies had been suspended for a rant of discriminatory xenophobia. Davies referred to two colleagues as "outsiders" after telling them that "Wales is for Welsh people."
On 11 January 2024, It was reported that a note had been sent to an address in Aberystwyth, in Ceredigion, with racial slurs about English people from Birmingham. The note called for Brummies to "go back home to Brummyland". It also called the West Midlands accent "vomit-inducing", and urged the occupant to "take a few thousand other people back with them". Dyfed-Powys Police treated the note as a hate crime. It read: "Iorwerth Ave was once a nice, quiet, pleasant residential area until a load of [people] from the Midlands hit", and "Low-life like you should be forced to live in fenced in sites, preferably back where you came from."
Northern Ireland During the Troubles, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) mainly attacked targets in Northern Ireland and England, not Scotland or Wales, although the IRA planted a bomb at Sullom Voe Terminal in Shetland during a visit by the Queen in May 1981. The ancestry of most people in the Loyalist and Unionist communities is Scottish rather than English. In the Protestant community, the English are identified with British politicians and are sometimes resented for their perceived abandonment of loyalist communities.Bruce, S. (1994). The Edge of the Union: The Ulster Loyalist Political Vision. Oxford, Oxford Univ. Press.
Outside the United Kingdom In his 1859 essay A Few Words on Non-Intervention, John Stuart Mill notes that England "finds itself, in respect of its foreign policy, held up to obloquy as the type of egoism and selfishness; as a nation which thinks of nothing but of out-witting and out-generalling its neighbours" and urges his fellow countrymen against "the mania of professing to act from meaner motives than those by which we are really actuated".
Australia
"Pommy" or "Pom" (acronym for 'Prisoner of [his] Majesty) is a common Australian slang word for the English, often combined with "whing[e]ing" (complaining) to make the expression "whingeing Pom" – an English immigrant who stereotypically complains about everything. Although the term is sometimes applied to British immigrants generally, it is usually applied specifically to the English. From the 19th century, there were feelings among established Australians that many immigrants from England were poorly skilled, unwanted by their home country and unappreciative of the benefits of their new country.
In recent years, complaints about two newspaper articles blaming English tourists for littering a local beach and calling the English "Filthy Poms" in the headlines and "Poms fill the summer of our discontent", were accepted as complaints and settled through conciliation by the Australian Human Rights Commission when the newspapers published apologies. Letters and articles which referred to English people as "Poms" or "Pommies" did not meet the threshold for racial hatred. In 2007 a complaint to Australia's Advertising Standards Bureau about a television commercial using the term "Pom" was upheld and the commercial was withdrawn.
The Australian word is infrequently used in New Zealand to refer to a British immigrant.
France
After the Norman Conquest of 1066, Anglo-Norman French replaced Old English as the official language of England. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Plantagenet kings of England lost most of their possessions in France, began to consider England to be their primary domain and turned to the English language. King Edward I, when issuing writs for summoning parliament in 1295, claimed that the King of France planned to invade England and extinguish the English language, "a truly detestable plan which may God avert".Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood. Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 45."[Rex Franciae] linguam anglicam, si conceptae iniquitatis proposito detestabili potestas correspondeat, quod Deus avertat, omnino de terra delere proponit." William Stubbs, Select Charters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), p. 480. In 1346, Edward III exhibited in Parliament a forged ordinance, in which Philip VI of France would have called for the destruction of the English nation and country. The Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) between England and France changed societies on both sides of the Channel.