Who Are the English? Michael Rosen Takes a Look.

I met an English guy from Durham recently and happened to mention I was English. When he found out I was born in Yangon (Rangoon) because my dad was in the British Army, he said I can't be English, I'm British. Needless to say, I didn't waste much time with this one.

Watching developments back home (England and the UK in general) I hear the right wing elements, the Reform Party types and the extreme right, who say the same thing; Pakistani's, Indians, Africans can't be English, only British, and there are efforts to bury that category. 

Unfortunately, this attempt to divert attention from the actual cause of social crisis gets an echo among sections of the population when there is no serious counter to the propaganda.  I went on to google images and typed in, English faces. Every image was a white person. Of course, the Irish can't be English, (not that they'd want to be) and they're white. White Chimpanzees, the British bourgeois referred to them on occasion. Skin color is the dominant means for undermining working class unity in the US and increasingly so in the UK it seems to me.

 

With immigrants being blamed for the economic crisis, we are seeing an increase in racism in the UK as well as Islamophobia. After all, England, like the US, is a white Christian country to these elements. And Islam is heresy. So is Judaism, and Jew hatred has a long history in England. The massacre of English Jews in York in 1190 is one of the examples of anti-Semitic assaults in England and it took an American Jew to inform me of that episode. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the UK as well as the US. I believe the cause of this to a great degree is the barbaric policies , including genocide, of the Israel state whose leaders claim to be the official voice of the Jewish people throughout the world. Fortunately, in the UK and the US, young Jews are in the forefront of the movement against Zionism and Palestinian rights; clearly the best defense against anti-Semitism.

 

Not liking the search in Google images, I asked chatgpt why black people can't be English and got this response below. Now that's more like it. Below the image is a piece that Michael Rosen*  posted to his Facebook page countering this false view that there is a set definition as to what English actually is. In the last analysis though, the dominant division in capitalist society is class. For me, the central aspect of my identity is that I am working class. My life activity that put food in my mouth and a roof over my head has been as a seller of labor power, not a buyer of it. Richard Mellor

 

 

Who Are the English? Michael Rosen Takes a Look.

By Michael Rosen *

July 13, 2026

 

I see that the people I might dub the 'Englishists' are busy at work on social media trying to reinvent the colour bar and fire people from the England team. As with a lot of racism, they rely on ring-fencing groups of people according to this or that migration or invasion. In this case, the 'true' Englander is, in their books, the descendant of the Germanic migrations to what is now England (these Germanic peoples went elsewhere as well but this particular bit of ringfencing is only interested in what is now England). 

 

According to some historians these Germanic migrations began after the Romans left. Some doubt this and say that logically, Germanic peoples must have sailed and rowed across from Germanic countries well before that. As it happens the genetic evidence seems to dispute that, as I'll show in just a moment. 

 

So what is the latest information (according to AI) on the waves of migration before the Germanic peoples arrived? I suspect that the word 'English' and the phrase 'ethnically English' is going to be used by right-wing parties in the near future. At present, I can see on social media that they seem to be talking about, descendants of the Germanic peoples. 

 

Why have these racial purists excluded the English Celts? (I'm leaving out the Welsh and Irish Celts for the moment!) What happened to them? Or are they still here? 

One story is that the Germanic peoples shoved them into Wales and Cornwall. Another story is that the Germanic peoples intermarried with the Celts in most of England but less so in Cornwall and Cumbria. 

 

But then, hang on, who was here before the Celts? After all, weren't they European invaders? Yep. But hang on again. Whoever was here before the Celts, were they invaders? So who was here before them? And so on and so on? 

 

Clearly, when it comes to choosing the England team on a blood and soil basis (as all good racists should) we should dispense with these recent Germanic invaders and fill the team with those with the highest percentage of English Celtic DNA (or, if possible) with the DNA of the folk who came before the Celts - unless they were wiped out, of course.) 

 

Of course, this is all ironic. As you know, this construction of 'the English' as a Germanic type is shot through primarily with hatred of people of colour. All I'm doing here is pointing up that to create this Germanic type (in essence a reinvention of the 'Herrenvolk') they have to dispense with different branches of the Celtic parts of what is now the UK. Most laughably, this includes the 'English Celts' ie those people who (the DNA folks claim) have 'markers' on their genome going back to Celtic settlement in England (not in Wales and Ireland). In other words this racism has to be also racist towards pre-Germanic settlers on 'this land'! 

 

No surprise it's racist towards Irish, Welsh and Scots Celtic peoples, but it's grimly funny that it has to be racist towards English Celts. (In terms of where such people are most likely to live today, it's Cornwall and Cumbria, say the geneticists.)

 

For people who hate all this DNA stuff, you have my sympathy. By no means am I trying to reduce people, culture, language, or politics to DNA. And we must never forget that DNA studies of difference are talking about tiny, tiny differences. 

And, as geneticists have always pointed out: differences in DNA make-up between so-called different 'races' are no greater than differences between people within an alleged 'race'. However, I am interested in the 'markers' that modern geneticists use as they do show, I believe, stories of migration. 

 

Below, when it says DNA - they are not talking about a whole genome (the whole DNA package). They are talking about one or several markers that belong to a given group, and which, they claim, are distinctive of that group. 

 

[Geneticists reading this, please feel free to dive in on comments below]

Anyway....

 

So what did AI tell me about all this?

 

As follows:

1. The Anglo-Saxon Profile is Clear and Localized

The study (Oxford University) tracked the genetic signature of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon migrations that occurred after the fall of the Roman Empire (around 450 AD).

 

The Genetic Marker: This parentage closely matches modern populations in Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

 

The Concentration: This Anglo-Saxon DNA is concentrated primarily in central, southern, and eastern England, where it makes up roughly 10% to 40% of the modern local genome.

 

2. The Indigenous "Celtic" Profile is Fragmented

 

The most surprising discovery was that there is no single "Celtic" genetic group. Before the Anglo-Saxons arrived, the indigenous Celtic Britons were already highly localized.

 

Distinct Tribes: The study found that Celtic parentage in the UK splits into vastly different genetic clusters. For example, the Celtic people of Cornwall, Devon, Wales, and Scotland are among the most genetically different from each other.

 

The Welsh Isolation: The Welsh genetic cluster showed almost zero Anglo-Saxon input, remaining the closest living match to the original, post-Ice Age indigenous settlers of Britain.

 

3. Anglo-Saxons Intermarried Rather Than Replaced

For centuries, historians debated whether the invading Anglo-Saxons completely wiped out the indigenous Celtic population of England. The study settled the controversy:The Anglo-Saxons intermarried with the existing Celtic population.

 

Even in eastern and southern England—the heart of the ancient Saxon kingdoms—the remaining 60% to 90% of the DNA is still indigenous Celtic Briton. The incoming Saxons contributed a minority percentage to a massive, pre-existing Celtic genetic baseline.

 

Summary of Differences

The survey proves that Anglo-Saxon parentage (Germanic/Continental Europe) and Celtic parentage (Indigenous/Ice-Age Briton) are fundamentally different branches on the genetic tree. 

 

However, they do not exist in separate people today. Modern English parentage is a story of the two lines fusing together.

 

A DNA study of Britons has shown that genetically there is not a unique Celtic group of people in the UK. According to the data, ``(BBC Who do you think you really are? A genetic map of the British ...19 Mar 2015) — There was no single 'Celtic' genetic group. 

 

When is it thought that Celts started inhabiting what is now England?

 

The mainstream scientific consensus is that the people who became the Celts began inhabiting what is now England during the Middle to Late Bronze Age, specifically between 1400 BC and 800 BC.

 

For decades, historians believed Celtic culture didn’t arrive until the Iron Age (around 600 BC) via a sudden military invasion. However, a groundbreaking Harvard-led ancient DNA study completely reshaped this timeline:

 

1. The Bronze Age Genetic Shift (1400 BC – 800 BC)

By extracting DNA from nearly 800 ancient skeletons, scientists discovered a massive, peaceful migration from continental Europe (mostly modern-day France) into southern Britain (England and Wales).

 

 

This migration was sustained over centuries and was so significant that it altered half the genetic ancestry of England's subsequent population.Rather than a violent conquest, it was a steady integration of continental people who brought new ritual practices, trade links, and crucially, early Celtic languages.

 

2. The Iron Age Flourishing (800 BC – 43 AD)

While the genetic foundation was laid in the Bronze Age, the distinct "Celtic culture" we recognize today—hillforts, distinct curvilinear artwork, complex metalworking, and Druidism—became fully dominant during the Iron Age.

 

By 320 BC, Greek explorers like Pytheas sailed around the island and explicitly documented that the inhabitants were culturally and linguistically Celts (Keltoi).

 

3. "Continuity" Rather Than Arrival

It is important to note that the term "Celt" is largely cultural and linguistic rather than a biological group that suddenly showed up. The people inhabiting England did not just cross a border as "Celts"; they were a mix of the indigenous Neolithic stone-circle builders, Bronze Age migrants, and continental traders who slowly evolved a shared Celtic identity over a thousand years.

 

What do we know of the genetic make-up of who was living in what is now England before the Celts arrived?

 

Before the Celtic migrations arrived in what is now England around 1400 BC, the island's genetic landscape had already undergone two distinct, total population replacements.

 

Ancient DNA extracted from skeletons has revealed a detailed timeline of the people who occupied England during the millennia before the Celts:

 

1. The Bell Beaker People (2400 BC – 1400 BC)

Directly before the Celts, England was inhabited by the "Bell Beaker" culture (named after their distinct, inverted bell-shaped pottery).

The Genetic Horizon: 

 

Arriving around 2400 BC from the river deltas of northwestern Europe (modern Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium), they were part of a massive westward expansion of people carrying Eurasian Steppe ancestry.

 

The Turnover: 

A landmark Harvard Medical School study proved that the Beaker folk replaced 90% to 100% of the British gene pool in just a few centuries.

 

Physical Traits: The Beaker people brought the genetic variants for lighter skin, blue eyes, and lighter hair to the island. They also introduced the paternal DNA haplogroup R1b-M269, which became the dominant genetic signature of modern 

British men. 

 

By the time the Celts arrived, England's population was almost entirely composed of these Beaker-descended communities.

 

2. The Early Neolithic Farmers (4000 BC – 2400 BC)

The sophisticated society that the Bell Beaker people replaced consisted of the Neolithic Farmers, the very communities responsible for building iconic monuments like Stonehenge.

 

The Genetic Horizon: This population arrived around 4000 BC, tracing their deep ancestral origins back to Anatolia (modern Turkey). They migrated across the Mediterranean and continental Europe, bringing agriculture and livestock to Britain.

 

Physical Traits: 

Skeletal DNA shows that these Stonehenge-builders typically had olive-brown skin, dark hair, and brown eyes. When the Beaker folk arrived, this Neolithic genetic signature was nearly entirely wiped out, possibly due to a lack of immunity against continental diseases like the plague.

 

3. The Western Hunter-Gatherers (10,000 BC – 4000 BC)

Before the farmers arrived, Britain was populated by a sparse group of post-glacial Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.

The Genetic Horizon: They re-colonised Britain after the glaciers receded.

 

Physical Traits: Famously epitomised by "Cheddar Man," this population possessed a genetic combination rarely seen today: very dark skin paired with striking blue eyes. When the Neolithic farmers arrived in 4000 BC, they caused a 90% genetic replacement of these hunter-gatherers, leaving only a tiny fraction of their DNA in the subsequent farming populations.

 

Summary of the Pre-Celtic Genome

When the Bronze Age "Celts" began crossing the channel around 1400 BC, they were not entering an empty land or encountering the people who built Stonehenge. They were stepping into an England populated by Beaker-descended communities who had light skin, high rates of the R1b gene, and deep roots in the continental European Steppes.

 

By they way, you may know that apart from my common ancestry with all human beings (which is the large proportion of all our DNA) my markers (and it is only specific markers) aren't part of any of this! I'm culturally 'Ashkenazi' and, say the geneticists, there are significant markers on my genome that says that these originate in a mix of the 'Levant' and what they call 'southern Mediterranean Europe' (ie Italy, Sicily, Malta and Greece.) More on that in my next post.

 

*Michael Rosen is a writer that writes children’s books and poetry. He has also directed plays. You can find out more about him by going to his website at; MichaelRosen.com.UK  He also has a You Tube channel: Kids’ Poems and Stories With Michael Rosen