A guy on the radio was talking about Englishness. He was brought on to respond to Billy Bragg's call for a more open-ended identity-based definition of englishness to replaced th old-fashioned stereotypes. This guy said that we have to do justice to the people who have many generation descent in this country. They have certain common factors, for instance, Christianity.
I assume his comment was aimed at Muslims (given current levels of Islamaphobia) but it may have been aimed at Hindus, Jews, etc.
It's kind of funny how often I have to explain to Protestant english people how long there have been Jews in this country. It's not a recent development. It's not just since 'The Holocaust', or since the Russian Pogroms. In fact there were enough Jews in the country by the late 13th century, the King decided to expel them all. We were allowed back with William and Mary of Orange implying there are English Jewish families as 'old' as some English aristocrats...