Channel 4 is running a series of documentaries about the contribution of immigrants to British society. The commissioning process must have been quite interesting. It’s as if some executive decided that the best way they could maximise revenue from the lavishly produced episodes was by guaranteeing them a long after life on the multitude of war porn channels.

As the discussion on English identity pointed out some serious people are doing good work with football supporters to try and establish an anti-racist current in the sport. The other big part of mainstream English identity is constant references to Trafalgar, World War Two and the Spanish Armada. Militarism is at its heart.

Here is what the series’ blurb says:

“Bloody Foreigners is a series of drama documentaries that highlights the role played by foreigners at iconic moments and turning points in British history. Justin Hardy, who has made two of the films, explains how one of the great British naval triumphs owed a lot to foreign sailors and why the British navy was the original equal opportunities employer.”

“The British navy was the original equal opportunities employer.” That’s one in the eye for sceptics who have question the progressive role of British imperialism.

The first episode examined in some detail the crew records of HMS Bellerophon, a vessel in Nelson’s counter-revolutionary fleet. The men comprised runaway slaves, French exiles, a Swede who’d been made captive in North Africa. It had the potential to be an outstanding piece of social history. Instead it felt obliged to overlay that with tales of how British derring-do saw off the French and parts were like what you’d imagine an Andy McNab novel to be like if he were writing about 19th maritime warfare.

The second episode chose to celebrate multi-cultural Britain by a looking at, yep, the Battle of Britain. Polish fighter pilots had enormous kill rates fighting the Luftwaffe and during the war they had a celebrity status. If they’d been familiar with the story of Black sailors after the Napoleonic Wars ended they might not have been so keen to get themselves killed. In order to appease Stalin none of the Polish forces who’d fought the Germans were allowed to take part in London’s victory parade. And whereas the black sailors had mostly ended up begging on the streets the Poles said that they were constantly being told to return home to Stalinist Poland.

If you fancy frittering away a few minutes pretending to be a ship in Nelson’s navy hunting the Frenchies you can play Channel 4 multicultural game here. Anyone trying to untangle the complexity of English identity has to contend with the fact that even when it tries to assimilate multiculturalism and anti-racism its foundation myth is the imperial grandeur of the British state.