British national homogeneity is a retrospective construct, not a historical reality.

Evidence

The so-called homogeneity of “Britishness” as a national culture has been considerably exaggerated. It was always contested by the Scots, Welsh, and Irish; challenged by rival local and regional allegiances; and crosscut by class, gender, and generation. There have always been many different ways of being “British.” Most national achievements—from free speech and a universal franchise to the welfare state and NHS [National Health Service]—were won only as the result of bitter struggles between one kind of “British” person and another. Only retrospectively were these radical differences smoothly reintegrated into the seamless web of a discourse of transcendent “Britishness.” — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 325

Categorization

• XREF: This is Anderson’s imagined-community mechanism applied to Britain specifically: the nation as retrospective narrative smoothing over real internal conflict — a keystone for the scaffolding module’s treatment of nation as constructed category. — connects to: National identity is built on manufactured ancestral myth, not primordial history. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 74