Category Archives: plaid cymru

MY SPEECH FOR AFTER THE COUNT TONIGHT

MY SPEECH FOR AFTER THE COUNT TONIGHT

Ladies & Gentlemen

I would also like to thank the Returning Officer and all his/her helpers who have worked on this election and also those voters who have voted for me and for the English Democrats.

I have enjoyed standing in this election and playing my part in flying the flag for England and for English nationalism.

I am going to be very interested in seeing what now happens. If, as the polls suggested, Labour is able to form a minority government only with the assistance of the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru and possibly Sinn Fein and other Irish nationalists, then I fully expect many voters who voted for other parties to wish that they had voted for the English Democrats to be a voice for England. 

That voice will be sorely missed because for the next 5 years we may have a government which is more anti-English than any government that England has had since the Norman Conquest.

As I speak poor England is now being delivered into the hands of our Nation’s enemies.

I hope that the experience of the next 5 years will ensure that never again will anyone who cares for England vote for any party which hasn’t got “Putting England First” at its very heart!

Will a SNP/Labour coalition A.E.C. aka “ice” the UK?

Will a SNP/Labour coalition A.E.C. aka “ice” the UK?


There is much talk and speculation in the media about an SNP and Labour minority coalition after the General Election.

This is particularly after Nicola Sturgeons’ ground breaking announcement that the Scottish National Party after the General Election will vote for English-only issues.

What she and the SNP seem to be looking to achieve is a coalition in Government with a minority Labour Party. There has also been talk of including the Greens, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein.

So for example we may have a House of Commons composed of Labour with 275 MPs, the Conservatives with 300 MPs and the SNP, on the latest opinion polls, with 54 MPs.

In that scenario the SNP and Labour together would then have overall a majority in the House of Commons and be able to form an effective coalition. This would be a Government under which the interests of England, would not merely be ignored and over-ruled but utterly trampled upon! Indeed it could be described as a Government of anti-English Conspiracy or an Anti-English Coalition i.e. A.E.C. (pronounced “ice”). 

So my question to you, dear reader, is how much in favour of English independence do you think the English will be after 5 years of being A.E.C.ed (aka “iced”)?

As you may have guessed I have been searching for a suitable expression with an element of menace to it.

I wonder if you think that the idea of the UK being “A.E.D.ed or “iced” has legs? Here is a definition of the meaning of “iced”from the OnlineSlangDictionary.com “to kill” as in “I’m gonna ice that punk”.

What do you think? Another alternative that I considered was to talk about a Government of Anti-English Conspiracy.

The growth of English nationalism – Friend or Foe? A Welsh viewpoint

Dr Simon Brooks


The speech, the translated text of which appears below, was given in Welsh at the Institute of Welsh Affairs Lecture, Llanelli National Eisteddfod, 7th August 2014. It was given in the absence of any English nationalists and without so far as I am aware consulting any either. It thus suffers from a failure to understand the nature of English Nationalism. It is nonetheless interesting to see a well considered analysis of Welsh nationalists’ current ideological difficulties which have resonance in England too!

The author, Dr Simon Brooks’ Biography on the University of Cardiff’s website states:-

My work explores tensions between conservatism and liberalism, as they affect literature, politics and the history of ideas in minority language communities.

In 2004, I used this perspective in my volume, O Dan Lygaid y Gestapo, to discuss the inheritance of Enlightenment thought in late 19th and 20th century Wales, and its impact on Welsh literary theory and criticism.

A few years earlier I had been prominent in public policy debate about the future of Welsh-speaking communities. The debate raised the difficulty that attempts by minority communities to resist majority assimilation with communitarian counter-measures can undermine liberal concepts of openness.

In response to this problem, much of my current work explores multiculturalism and ethnic difference in the context of a minority language community. Welsh-language literature provides the discursive evidence. I hope to draw some theoretical conclusions on how ‘conservative’ survival strategies for a minority language community might be reconciled with a ‘liberal’ desire to respect others.

Here is the text of his speech translated into English:-



The growth of English nationalism – Friend or Foe?


It’s a dangerous year in Wales. Next month, the Scots will venture to the polling booths in order to decide whether they want Scotland to be an independent country or not. If they say Yes, some believe that Wales will become independent soon afterwards. This is possible; everything in life is possible. But it is far more likely that Wales and England will be merged as one state for many decades, perhaps forever. That state will be commonly known as England. Its territory shall essentially be the same as that kingdom, The Kingdom of England, that conquered Wales, and of which Wales was a part between 1282 and 1707. Despite all its failings, at least the most important successor to it, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was a multi-national state, and there was, in theory at least, a fairly equal balance between Saxon and Celt. In 1841, the English formed only about 60% of the United Kingdom’s population. But if Scotland votes for independence, the English will account for 93% of the population, 95% if we exclude northern Ireland, of the state of which Wales will be a member. Britain will be an English state without Scotland, although it will include the Welsh as a national minority, a minority that may keep its devolved institutions for as long as they are tolerated by the English.

It is a dangerous decade in Wales. Following next year’s general election, it is likely that we shall see another Conservative government in Westminster. The English seem to have more faith in the Tories to look after the economy than the Labour Party. Soon afterwards, perhaps in 2017, a referendum will be held on Britain’s membership of the European Union. I would not be too hopeful of the result. There is a limit to Berlin’s patience with London’s whingeing about all things European and not every European will be willing to kneel before Great Britain, or will it be Little Britain by then, in order to keep her in the European Union. If Scotland leaves Britain, and Britain leaves Europe, Little Britain will see itself increasingly as an English fortress. It will become a real Little Britain too with the poor Welshman left as ‘the only Celt in the village’.

It could be a century too of significant immigration into Wales, mainly from England but also from other parts of the world. According to the Census, only 72% of the population of Wales was born in Wales. This is not necessarily a problem. After all only 63% of the population of London was born in Britain. But London isn’t Wales. Wales is a poor, marginal country, in a dependent relationship with her next door neighbour, and it has a minority identity. Such a country is far more open to threats to its identity as a result of demographic change than are majority cultures.

Of course, there is no direct relationship between being born in Wales and empathising or sympathising with Welsh nationhood. There are tens of thousands of people in Wales who were born in England and who speak Welsh, and tens of thousands more who consider themselves to be Welsh. I say this sincerely as a lad from London whose sister is one of the English rugby team’s greatest fans! Despite this, further Anglicisation of Wales in terms of the percentage of the population born outside the country will have political implications for Welsh identity. It is not immigration in itself that is problematic for a stateless nation such as Wales, rather the difficulties that a minority culture faces in trying to integrate newcomers.

I do not wish to raise concerns prematurely, but there is a strong possibility that Britain in the future will become a far more English place than it has been until now, and it is very possible too that Wales will become far more Anglicised as well. The dangers attached to this are intensified by the increasingly reactionary and anti-multicultural nature of recent definitions of Englishness, at least as seen in the growth of political parties such as UKIP.

So a painful question for us as a national minority is whether the recent xenophobia displayed by English nationalism represents the opening of a new path in the cultural history of England, where minorities will face a harsher, sharper wind, or is this merely a temporary storm?

The current intolerant nature of English nationalism and its general attitude towards minorities does cause concern. It is certainly not insignificant. In large states, historically at least, there has been a tendency for antagonistic attitudes towards immigrant ethnic minorities to accompany a deep mistrust of the existence of indigenous minorities. I wonder whether English nationalism will have morphed within ten or twenty years to target the Welsh national minority? We shall see, but it would be irresponsible of us to ignore the possibility that this could happen.

So, is English nationalism friend or foe?

It is a friend to the extent that it will create opportunities for us to sharpen our identity against it. Multinational states often start to unravel when strong nationalisms develop within their most important constituent nations, as happened in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the nineteenth century, and as is happening in England and Scotland today. It is perhaps the hope that the threat of the growth of English nationalism will lead in dialectical fashion to a growth in Welsh nationalism that causes so many nationalists to be in favour of independence for Scotland. In other words, that independence for Scotland will reveal the essentially English nature of the British state and that this will motivate the Welsh to adopt a position of resistance against it.

But English nationalism is also an enemy since such a thing exists in the world as social power. Indeed, the failure of Wales and Scotland to win home rule at the same time as Ireland, at the end of the First World War, goes to show that it is not inevitable that an empire on losing one colony is bound to cede the rest. Indeed, it might strengthen its grip on what remains, more fiercely than ever before: indeed does not the recent history of Russia bear witness to this possibility? And in the future English nationalism could be very powerful indeed. Should English nationalism start to become anti-Welsh, we would have no chance of withstanding its pressure. The Welsh language, as John Cleese might put it, would be a dead parrot. As dead as Ifor ap Glyn’s Cornish-speaking parrot, for those of you who remember that immortal sketch.

For all these reasons, we cannot ignore the debate on nationhood and citizenship that is currently taking place in England.

We have become used to thinking of English nationalism as intolerant and unfriendly. Unfortunately, this is true, but it is also true that what is happening in England is a perfectly reasonable civic discussion concerning the nature of citizenship. Who can become an English citizen, and what are the duties and responsibilities of such citizens? Under what conditions should immigration be permitted, by whom and to what degree? Should immigrants be assimilated linguistically, or is it better to let immigrants use their own language if that is their wish?

Obviously, these could be Welsh themes too. Indeed, until recently, these questions were only being asked in Wales. It’s very strange then that this is not part of political debate in Wales today. It’s bizarre that these issues have been discussed within Welsh-language culture for half a century, but just as the discussion becomes legitimised in England, we in Wales give up on the debate altogether! This is particularly unwise because if we do not define Welsh citizenship ourselves, we shall be defined by what’s happening in England. Indeed that is what is happening at the moment.

UKIP’s message is that immigrants in Wales should be good Britons, and that they should speak English. What is our message?

For decades language campaigners have tried to tackle some of these themes surrounding immigration, citizenship and language. Consider, for example, Cynog Dafis’ mature contributions on the importance of integrating non-Welsh speakers in Mewnlifiad, Iaith a Chymdeithas (Immigration, Language and Society) (1971) and Cymdeithaseg Iaith a’r Gymraeg (The Sociology of Language and the Welsh Language) (1979). We have an intellectual tradition of discussing such matters in Wales.

There also exists a liberal tradition internationally that could legitimise the debate. In the work of some modern liberal philosophers, an attempt is made to reconcile liberalism as a political philosophy with the desire of minorities to protect their cultures. Perhaps the most famous scholar in this field is the liberal political theorist from Canada, Will Kymlicka. Since every state has its own rules which regulate immigration, and which by and large protect the interests of the largest ethnic group in the State, Kymlicka argues that it might be acceptable for stateless minorities to have control over the nature of immigration into their own territories. This would be ‘consistent with liberal principles of equality’. He goes on to say that ‘what distinguishes a liberal theory of minority rights is precisely that it accepts some external protections for ethnic groups and national minorities’.

In the context of immigration, it is perfectly valid, says Kymlicka, indeed essential, that liberal thinkers not only permit the national minority to ‘exercise some control over the volume of immigration, to ensure that the numbers of immigrants are not so great as to overwhelm the ability of the society to integrate them’ but also to have control over ‘the terms of integration.’ For example, if it’s acceptable for majority ethnic groups to set a language test for immigrants, on what basis could one begrudge the same right to a minority? Indeed, without influence over the process of integration, the minority may well be swallowed up. This is extremely important when the majority in the state insist that immigrants to the national minority’s territory, which the majority basically consider to be an extension of their own territory, assimilate into the majority culture and not to the minority culture.

Such a situation is extremely damaging to minority cultures, but not because immigrants from ethnic minority backgrounds who choose to side with the majority culture add to the absolute size of the majority community – in all parts of Welsh-speaking Wales, the numbers involved are too small to cause language shift. The harm done is that the process of establishing English as the language of civic integration for immigrants from outside of the European Union even in Welsh speaking areas denotes English as the civic language for the whole community. English becomes the language to be used in communication between ethnic groups and language groups. This in turn removes any moral responsibility on in-migrants from England to learn Welsh.

This then can lead to the indigenous minority assimilating into the majority culture on its own territory. In other words, the native culture assimilates into the immigrant culture, if the immigrant culture is also the culture of the state.

The implications of this are seen at their clearest in the recent British debate concerning immigration, citizenship and language.

There is a cross-party consensus in England that immigrants to Britain should learn English and that the state should promote this. Each one of the four main British parties are in favour of an unambiguous link between learning the English language and British citizenship. The Con-Dem government’s attitude in London on this is clear enough, as seen in a recent proposal that those unable to speak English should not receive dole money unless they are willing to learn English. The Labour Party’s attitude is similar as well. Indeed Ed Milliband came to north Wales during the European election campaign in order to remind us again, as if we didn’t know already, of the duty of immigrants to Britain to learn English. The Labour Party has been pushing this line for at least ten years. During his period as Home Secretary in Tony Blair’s New Labour Government between 2001 and 2004, David Blunkett introduced a number of statutory measures that made it impossible to gain British citizenship without passing a language test. And as we know, the future of the English language is one of UKIP’s main concerns. Who didn’t feel sympathy for Nigel Farage that the English language was not to be heard recently on a train journey between London and Kent?

Such messages come at us from across the border, and affect and influence us. This is scarcely a surprise; after all, the London based press is the main source of news for the Welsh people. As a result, opposition exists in parts of Wales to an imaginary enemy that doesn’t exist, namely the immigration of a non-English speaking population. In Welsh speaking communities there could in future be a battle between the monolingual rhetoric of the British state and the bilingual rhetoric of the embryonic Welsh state. We cannot be certain that the Welsh state will win. The Language Commissioner, Meri Huws, has pennies and smarties to spend on the fight; the Daily Mail is published every day. Inevitably the rhetoric of UKIP and English nationalism will undermine the confidence of the Welsh speaking community to insist that Welsh remains a community language, and it will give new confidence to those who oppose this.

What has been the response of the Welsh establishment to all this? They have buried their heads in the sand! There’s been huge reluctance to get to grips with the debate at all.

The reluctance stems from a problem in Welsh political ideology. There is a political consensus in Wales that we should be civic nationalists and this is defined against that which is called, incorrectly in my view, ethnic nationalism. The Welsh political establishment has put the Welsh language in the ethnic box, although via the creation of a concept of Welsh citizenship it could easily be placed in the civic category. Since they believe that language belongs in the ethnic box, politicians are not willing to tell immigrants to Wales that they are expected to do anything in relation to the Welsh language.

Politicians feel that this would not be welcoming, and perhaps it might be unfair too, and that we in Wales stand apart from this sort of politics. Yet it’s false to argue that learning a language is an ethnic imposition. In England, English is taught for civic reasons, in order for the citizen to be able to speak the language of the country and to access civic privileges without being disadvantaged. But the viewpoint in Wales is that the Welsh state cannot place particular obligations upon anyone.

Though this appears quite tolerant, it is a policy which ignores the reality of social power. In Britain and Wales, this always leans heavily in favour of the English language and British identity and is likely to do so even more heavily in the future. A policy not to define Welsh citizenship is a laissez-faire policy. The trouble with laissez-faire policies in the field of language or nationality, as in the field of economics, is that the strong are always likely to come out on top. There is a massive irony in all this. The practical outcome of adopting a policy of not defining Welsh citizenship is to do Ukip’s work for it as immigrants will be compelled to profess British civic values alone.

We have a responsibility to respond to the political situation in Britain as it develops. The way to do this is to develop a concept of inclusive Welsh citizenship.

I now wish to show how attempts were made to build an inclusive concept of citizenship at one point in our history by comparing the attitudes of nationalists and liberals towards nationhood at the beginning of the twentieth century. Citizenship was not an intellectual problem for British Liberals and nonconformists at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Welsh Liberals tended to define the nation on the basis of religion and saw the Welsh people as chapel-going Welsh speakers, and everyone else, the non-Welsh speaking, along too with Anglicans, Catholics and Jews, as foreigners. They had no interest in integrating these people by making them somehow Welsh. The reason for this is that they did not seek the establishment of a Welsh state. Since they did not covet a Welsh state, the question of Welsh citizenship, and who belonged to the Welsh nation, was not important.

Welsh nationalists on the other hand wished to establish a Welsh state and therefore had to define Welsh citizens. This could not be done without discussing the relationship of all the residents of Wales with the country. There was no way of having a Welsh state without having Welsh citizens.

Saunders Lewis’ answer was to base citizenship on language. In part he did so because Wales at the time was a country with a different linguistic composition to Wales today. But nationalists were also keen to do this because a language could be learned, whilst changing someone’s place of birth would be impossible, and changing religion would not only be impossible but also unfair. In changing your religion, you surrender your old identity, but in learning a language you add to a new identity without giving up the old one. In learning Welsh, one does not have to lose one’s grasp of English.

Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru’s decision to place an emphasis on the Welsh language was not an attempt to exclude people from the nation as has been assumed, but rather it was an attempt to include them.

In Plaid’s seminal first publication, Egwyddorion Cenedlaetholdeb (1926) (The Principles of Nationalism), Saunders Lewis emphasised that immigrants could become Welsh. This was essentially an argument in favour of releasing the Welsh language from its ethnic definition as a tongue used by the ethnic Welsh alone, on ‘the hearths of the Welsh Speakers’, and turning it into a civic language that would be the property of all people from all sorts of different backgrounds:

If the Welsh language and culture are only to be preserved on the hearths of Welsh speakers, then the language and culture will be dead before the end of this century. Because foreigners will come in greater numbers to Wales, to the countryside in the North and to the populous towns and villages in the South; and by their intrusion and multiplicity, they are fast turning the tide of Welsh life into an English one. Only a political movement can save us. We must turn the foreigners – if I were Greek I would say, the barbarians, – they must be turned into Welsh people, and should be given a Welsh way of thinking, the Welsh culture, and the Welsh language. That is what will make safe the only civilisation that is traditional in Wales.

Despite the use of the unwelcoming word ‘barbarians’, this argument turns on the duties and responsibilities of the immigrant; in brief, it is a theory of Welsh citizenship. It is significant that Saunders Lewis did not expect immigrants to Wales to set aside their own ethnicity. A Frenchman could remain a Frenchman so long as he became a ‘Welshman’ as well, by learning Welsh. In an article, ‘Cymreigio Cymru’ (‘Making Wales Welsh’), published in Y Faner in 1925, Lewis elaborated on this by stating:

The Englishman, Scotsman, Frenchman can each one of them, according to this definition, live and thrive in Wales, hold responsible and important jobs, and be a teacher and head teacher, a mayor or alderman or town clerk, and take a full part in the social and political life of the country, – on one simple, fair, appropriate, just condition, that in his official work – that alone, but in that, totally and without deviation – he uses the Welsh language, the language that has always been the medium of civilisation in Wales.

There is an attempt in all of this to create a civic concept of equal citizenship based on language. Now, let’s be completely clear. We cannot base Welsh citizenship on language today. Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru desired the creation of a monolingual, Welsh-speaking Wales, and in that context, making linguistic integration a cornerstone of Welsh citizenship made perfect sense. That is not the aim today, and if a political system does not insist that the native-born learn Welsh, how on earth can it insist that immigrants do so? On what basis could one insist that a man from Poland who moves to Llanelli should learn Welsh, when we know that English is the choice of language for the vast majority of the local population? But the attitude that we shouldn’t expect immigrants to learn Welsh is less fair, and more problematic, in other parts of Wales where the Welsh language has a stronger presence.

What then do we mean by Welsh citizenship in today’s Wales? Welsh citizenship would, as a matter of course, include citizenship in its legal sense, but it would also promote policies concerned with the integration of immigrants into local communities.

We associate legal citizenship mostly with the nation-state, represented in the popular mind by our passports which denote, in the case of most of us, that we are citizens of the United Kingdom. It is also worth noting that legal citizenship can exist on more than one level; indeed some academics talk of multi-level citizenship. All of us who are citizens of the United Kingdom are European citizens, for example. Multi-level citizenship also raises the possibility of Welsh citizenship without necessarily denying the concept of British citizenship. Therefore it would be wholly appropriate for us to try and develop a meaningful concept of Welsh citizenship before or indeed in the absence of independence.

Such sub-state citizenship has been developed in other stateless nations, specifically in Quebec and to some degree in Catalonia. We could follow their example and make establishing citizenship at the Welsh level a part of the devolution project in Wales. Not the least of the reasons to do this would be that it answers an ethnic question in a civic fashion.

How does one go about it? Instead of the ‘British Values’ that come from England, the reference point of Welsh citizenship would be ‘Welsh Values’. These could be defined via a national debate.

Some of the likely characteristics of Welsh citizenship are already fairly evident. In matters regarding race, religion, ethnic background, place of birth and so on, Wales would adopt a very civic type of citizenship. Indeed, this emphasis on the civic is one of the main characteristics of fifteen years of devolution, and it is very different to the emphasis being made in the current debate in England.

But citizenship would also offer a sensible answer in the context of the language problem, as long as one thinks of language as a civic rather than an ethnic characteristic. Citizenship could suggest how to integrate immigrants into Welsh speaking communities. Wales is a bilingual country and it has two equal languages, and two equal linguistic communities too. Concepts of citizenship could be used in order to put some meat on the bones of this theoretical equality. Bilingualism should not be interpreted to mean the unfettered right of non-Welsh speakers to move to Welsh speaking communities and not learn Welsh, thereby forcing the local community to change their language. Responsibility for social integration should not be shouldered in Welsh speaking communities by the indigenous population alone. The responsibility to nurture social cohesion in Welsh speaking communities should be a joint responsibility, and creating civic ideas on how to do this would be a shrewd way of moving forward.

Theoretically at least, it would be fair to expect immigrants to integrate into the Welsh speaking community as well as the English speaking community, and we should aim at giving immigrants some bilingual skills so that they can undertake some basic bilingual tasks at least. It would be great to have a simple statement by the Welsh Government that it would be desirable for people who move to Welsh speaking communities to learn Welsh. I do not foresee that enforcement would follow this, and in the case of immigrants from England we could not introduce compulsion even if we wished. However, such a statement would be of great help in terms of promoting Welsh as a community language in Welsh speaking areas as it would emphasise that learning Welsh was the social expectation, and the psychological pressure on the indigenous population to turn everything Welsh bilingual, and everything bilingual English, would be considerably reduced.

In a perceptive article on citizenship and the Welsh language for the British Council, Gwennan Higham recently noted that the debate concerning language in Wales brings to English all the advantages that stem from being the language of social inclusion. This in turn rebuffs the right of the Welsh language to be a civic language, and downgrades it to the language of an ethnic group, which there is no expectancy of immigrants to learn. This unfairness is reflected by public policy in the field of immigration. Lessons to learn English as a second language, English for Speakers of Other Languages, are provided by the Welsh Government free of charge for all non-English speaking immigrants in Wales who wish to take them, yet no classes exist that are tailored for immigrants who wish to learn Welsh in order to qualify for citizenship. This situation must change. British citizenship in Wales should not be a version of English citizenship. It is true that Welsh for Adults classes exist. But these must be paid for, which highlights the inequity still further.

To make things worse, it appears as if the Welsh Government is placing even less emphasis on this field today than ever before. What other way is there to interpret the government’s recent announcement that it wishes to cut 15% of the Welsh for Adults’ budget? This is money that exists, partially at least, in order to integrate immigrants who move to Welsh speaking areas. What message is conveyed by the fact that this expenditure is being reduced at the same time that the British State is forcing every immigrant to learn English?

The attitude in a country like Quebec is different. A specific policy is followed in order to enable and motivate immigrants to learn French. In Catalonia too, the government in Barcelona attempts to ensure that immigrants who move to Catalonia are integrated through the medium of Catalan instead of Castilian. Of course, the linguistic composition of Wales is different to that in both of these countries. It would be better for us to think of integrating immigrants to both of our country’s linguistic communities, as opposed as to the Welsh-language community or the English-language community alone.

In stateless nations such as Catalonia and Quebec something fairly unique in the Western world is afoot, which provides another reason for creating Welsh citizenship. In the debate over immigration in large countries such as England and France, immigrants are seen in very negative terms as a burden on local society. But in stateless nations, the nature of the struggle between the state and the stateless nation creates a more positive situation from the point of view of the immigrant. Immigrants are often seen as a means of strengthening the minority community, and indeed as a resource, since they add to the numbers of the minority community in question, and they identify too the minority language as multi-ethnic and civic. In Quebec, nationalists are delighted that immigrants are learning French. This strengthens Quebec. This is a far more positive discourse than the negativity which currently exists in England and which unfortunately has spilled over the border into Wales.

Therefore on every level – the defence of the Welsh language and of Welsh culture, giving skills to immigrants, promoting social inclusion, shaping a thriving, multi-ethnic society, developing civic models of belonging in a Welsh polity, developing a different discourse to the more xenophobic one of English nationalism, and also in order to ensure that Wales can remain Welsh within a Britain that could become far more English in the future – establishing Welsh citizenship would be hugely beneficial.

This would be a citizenship that is inclusive of everyone in Wales, but which would also be distinctly Welsh.

Here is a link to the original so that you can leave a comment >>> http://www.clickonwales.org/2014/09/the-growth-of-english-nationalism-friend-or-foe/

Disunited Kingdom The Dutch view. How united are the British? In two weeks time the Scots will vote on independence. Meanwhile, the Northern Irish feel ignored, the English feel unheard, and even the Welsh want more autonomy. A journey through a country that finds itself in a state of existential confusion.

The Dutch equivalent of the Guardian, NRC Handelsblad, Dutch national newspaper, has published an analysis of the disintegration of the UK. 

I think it is interesting so I am republishing it here. 

I don’t think that the author, Titia Ketelaar, is exactly on the money about England but at least she has thought about it unlike most of our British journalists!
 

And well done Eddie Bone of the CEP too!

Here is a translation of her article:-
 

Disunited Kingdom

How united are the British? In two weeks time the Scots will vote on independence. Meanwhile, the Northern Irish feel ignored, the English feel unheard, and even the Welsh want more autonomy. A journey through a country that finds itself in a state of existential confusion.


By Titia Ketelaar

,,I believe in the United Kingdom, head, heart and soul. We’ve achieved so much together, we can go on achieving great things together, so I hope that, when the time comes, Scots will vote to stay in our shared home.”

Those words were spoken by David Cameron, the British prime minister, when he was in Scotland. In two weeks time the Scots will have a referendum on whether they want to be independent.

But is there still a shared home? How united is the kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern-Ireland if one country in all earnestness debates independence? If the smallest country – Wales – asks openly for more autonomy? If some of those in the always troublesome Northern Ireland see this Scottish referendum as a new chance for a united Ireland? And if in England discontentment grows because the other three have their own parliaments and own budgets?

The Scots will, say the latest polls, vote in favour of the union with the others. But that won’t solve the existential confusion in which the United Kingdom finds itself. Because if the referendum debate in Scotland has shown anything, it is how much friction is emerging between the four countries that form one kingdom.

The United Kingdom was never a marriage between equals, socially nor economically. Wales was incorporated, Ireland occupied. Only England and Scotland were from 1707, equal partners. The result is a country that is neither a Unitarian state nor a federation. It has one monarch, two state religions, two official languages, three legal systems, four educational and health services. In its current form it is not even that old: it has existed since the Republic of Ireland became independent in the 1920s.

Travelling through all four countries, looking for what unites the British, it is striking how great the differences are. Of course: everywhere you’ll find a Marks & Spencer’s, a Costa Coffee, Boots, WH Smith. Millions watch Great British Bake Off and Eastenders, the nation’s favourite dish is chicken tikka massala. At a village fair in the middle of nowhere in Dorset, you can find Irish dancers, in the streets of Cardiff an English bagpipe player, in Scotland an English afternoon tea, in Northern-Ireland Scottish bagpipe players.

But it is surprising that Scotland, Wales and Northern-Ireland have not become more English. They are other countries, with a different sort of humour, different expectations, different politics.

There are no ethic contrasts, but the political ones are increasing. Fifteen years ago, ‘London’, the centre of power, transferred some competences to new parliaments in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. That so-called devolution has, without a doubt, enlarged the feeling of ‘otherness’. The countries are now responsible, for instance, for the NHS, the National Health Service. And it was precisely the right to free health care that bonded the British.

Moreover, they hardly know each other. ,,Try to find English news when you’re up in Scotland”, Fraser Nelson, editor of the English Conservative magazine The Spectator, himself a Scot, once said. In the Welsh’ Western Mail British (read: English) news can be found on page 8. Under the header ‘world news’.

Even the BBC News is no common denominator. ,,It doesn’t chime with my expectations. English education is as relevant to me as a story about Dutch education.”

,,There is no longer any emotional investment”, pointed out Jim Gallagher at the lecture earlier this year at the London School of Economics. He was the senior civil servant responsible for devolution: ,,I have to pinch myself. It is actually possible that the United Kingdom ceases to be.”

The Scots feel different


Devolution was the answer to the growth of Scottishness. The feeling of Britishness has diluted ever since the last common enemy was vanquished in the Second World War. In the last census more British called themselves Scottish (62 percent), English (60 percent), Welsh (58 percent) or Northern Irish (29 percent) than ever before.

But identity is only indirectly the reason for the current existential confusion. The Scots haven’t become more Scottish in the fifteen years since their own parliament was created. ,,This referendum is not about Scottishness, this is about sovereignty”, says Angus Robertson, the SNP party leader in the House of Commons. ,,A lot of ‘no’ voters feel as Scottish as ‘yes’ voters.”

That is true in Ceres, a village in Fife. It is the weekend after the anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn (1314), the last battle the Scots conquered the English, when traditionally Ceres holds its Highland Games. Seven hundred years ago, the men came back from combat, and showed their might on Bow Butt, the green in the centre of the village.

It’s hard to find anything more Scottish. Broad-shouldered men in kilts throw cabers, sheaf and stones. Bagpipe players from around the country are competing against each other, and little girls, with legs that seem to have been made from elastic, are dancing to the music.

On the edge of Bow Butts, and in the only pub the village has, an equal amount of nationalists and unionists can be found. Huw Bell, the Conservative candidate for the House of Commons says: ,,I feel British with shades of Scottishness.” John Mitchell, whose family has ,,as long as we can remember” lived in the grey house next to the green, says that independence is ,,ridiculous.” But bagpipe player Greg calls himself ,,a card carrying Yes-voter”. And PE-teacher Richard Gallagher says he is ,,a flag waving Braveheart”.

The difference is how they feel about ‘London’. Similarly, the referendum debate has divided all Scots in those who believe Scotland is better off with the English, and those who believe Scotland doesn’t need the English. Bell point to the advantages of a large union: ,,Together we are stronger in a globalised world.” Gallagher says: ,,If you see the poverty in this area, you can’t tell me the union works.”

A lot of Scots reason in the same way. They feel that London imposes measures: from Thatcher’s poll tax, to the closure of docks and steel factories, the privatization cult of New Labour, and the bedroom tax brought on by the current government. That sentiment is even stronger when the United Kingdom is governed by the Conservatives, like now, who represent only one Scottish constituency in the House of Commons.

,,Labour hoped devolution would kill nationalism – even the SNP thought that”, says former civil servant Jim Gallagher. ,,We were building on the fact that there already were separate institutions.”

But devolution increased the feeling of otherness. The Scottish government makes different choices in those areas it has powers – education, health care, transport, agriculture. It means the Scots have free higher education, free medication, free elderly care. The English don’t.

To add to that: the British government is cutting exactly that what binds the British: welfare. It is one of the reasons the Better Off Together campaigners, who have to prevent the Scottish voting for independence, is struggling to convey the message of one nation that shares the good and the bad.

And if anything has been achieved these last months, it is that the Scots have again realised how different they are. ,,This debate has done something to this country that I don’t fully understand yet, but feel. We have gone through an existential self-examination about who we are and how we want to be governed. Even if the answer to the question whether we want to be independent will be ‘no’, the union will feel less unconditional.”

Wales wants to be autonomous


In Wales they also say that less and less speaks for the union. Not that the Welsh want to be independent – only 10 percent is in favour. On its own, Wales couldn’t make it: there is no oil or gas in the ground, the coal mines have long shut or are no longer cost-effective, and the economy is based around the public sector, hard hit by austerity measures. And whereas Scotland has its own legislative system, Wales had not.

But even here, differences are growing. Especially in those areas the Welsh Assembly, Wales’ parliament, has a mandate. ,,Wales distinguishes itself by doing nothing”, says Lee Waters, director of the think-tank Institute for Welsh Affairs: ,,England is leaving us: the Conservatives in England are letting go of the welfare state, Wales isn’t. England chooses different final exams, Wales doesn’t. The same is happening with the NHS.” In England health care is increasingly privatised.

He sees another crisis on the horizon: Brexit. Some English want the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. But Wales, as a poor region, is dependent on European subsidies.

At first devolution had little appeal for the Welsh. It was forced upon them when the Scots got a parliament. In Scotland civil society, unions and churches where at the forefront of self-determination, in Wales only half of the population went out to vote. For the Welsh the United Kingdom had in some way been the saviour of Welshness. The inclusiveness of Britishness meant that Welshness was never swamped. A Welshman could be Welsh and British at the same time.

It is early August when Wales celebrates its Welshness. In Llanelli the annual Eisteddfod takes place, an enormous cultural festival. Since 1167 it keeps Welshness (or Cymreictod) alive: the Gorsedd, the circle of bards and druids chooses the best poet, musician, actor and dancer of the year. During an impressive ceremony, those who’ve devoted themselves to Wales, are included in the Gorsedd, this year for instance Stephen Jones, captain of the rugby team.

Everyone at Eisteddfod speaks Welsh: from the six-year old girl who concurs that tikka cyw iâr is indeed chicken tikka masala, to the elderly gentleman who jovially shouts: Hei, hei, ble’r aeth yr haul? (where did the sun go to). In Wales, like in the rest of the UK, the weather is a conversation starter.

The language distinguishes the Welsh. But it isn’t what makes a Welshman Welsh, says Leanne Wood. She doesn’t speak the language. It isn’t what you expect from the party leader of the nationalist Plaid Cymru, that fights for independence. ,,I am learning”, she says. ,,But my nine year old daughter has already caught up with me.”

Like Scottishness, Welshness had become a political identity. Public ownership of public services is important to the Welsh, ,,whether that is the best option or not, it is felt as a shared part of who we are.”

It makes Wales more left-wing than the rest of the country. The most powerful Labour politician in the UK is not party leader Ed Miliband, but Carwyn Jones, the Welsh prime minister. The last time the Conservatives had a majority of votes in Wales, was in 1859, some years before suffrage was introduced. And if the Conservatives are in power in Westminster – like today – it increases the Welsh’s bitterness.

By now a majority of Welsh thinks decisions about Wales should be made in Cardiff. Three quarters of them want more power in those areas the British parliament is now responsible for, like policing and energy policy. That demand will only grow if Scotland votes ‘yes’ to independence, or – as the polls are predicting – Scotland gets more devolved powers when it votes ‘no’.

,,The Welsh don’t want independence, they want to be independent”, is the subtle distinction Roger Scully, professor of political science at Cardiff University, makes. In English it is a difference of two letters.

Devolution created Northern Irishness


If there is one country where the United Kingdom is not in danger, it is remarkably enough Northern Ireland. Devolution has created a parliament here as well, and although the coalition between unionists and republicans is fragile, polls suggest that the majority of Northern Irish are satisfied with the British welfare state and economy. Almost 60 percent – more that there are unionists – hold a British passport (19 percent an Irish one).

And devolution has had another unforeseen consequence: the 2011 census showed for the first time that 29 percent of the people called themselves Northern Irish, not British or Irish. Especially among university educated.

,,It is a cultural identity, a way to say ‘I don’t hate the other, the status quo is acceptable”, explains political commentator Alex Kane, former spokesman of the moderate pro-union Ulster Unionist Party. When asked for five examples of what defines Northern Irishness, like kilts do Scottishness, and the language does the Welsh, he pauses. A couple of hours later he sends a text message: ,,My girlfriend can’t come up with anything either.” A week later: ,,I’ve asked several friends. We can’t think of anything.”

The question of identity remains a loaded one. Only a foreigner can – dares – to ask it. Among each other the Northern Irish guess: ,,There is always this instinctive urge to place someone: you ask for a surname, a school, listen how someone pronounces the h. If it is haitch, it’s catholic, aitch is protestant.”

Kane says: ,,We are mixing. But there are still conversations you don’t have at work, or if you don’t know someone well.”

It doesn’t all mean that those who feel distinctively British, are happy with their fellow countrymen on the British Isle. ,,They forget about us”, says factory worker Darren McPhillips. He points to Team GB, the name during the Olympics. ,,Where were we?” The country is indeed officially called: the United Kingdom of Great-Britain and Northern Ireland. ,,We all carry the same passport”, complains former police officer John McDowell. And real estate agent Graham Barton observes: ,,The only other ones that call themselves British are immigrants. The rest of the union sees us the same context.”

Columnist Kane agrees: ,,I have never heard a prime minister passionately defend Northern Ireland the way David Cameron did Scotland. The average Brit sees us as ‘those dangerous idiots across the Irish Sea.”

The politics of Northern Ireland are partially to blame. Whereas the secretary for Scotland, and his colleague for Wales represent their countries at cabinet, the secretary for Northern Ireland is a referee between nationalists and unionists.

Belfast is keeping a close eye on the Scottish referendum. David Trimble, former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, has already warned that the question of Ireland should be reunited will ,, from a non-issue become an important issue” if Scotland votes ‘yes’. For Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams, who seeks a united Ireland, this episode signals a chance. He said that the unity of the kingdom ,,was hanging by a thread”.

Even the English grumble


But the elephant in the room is England. The English have never held a debate about identity, representation or sovereignty. ,,They don’t know what they want”, says a Scottish journalist. ,,The move to a slower beat than we do”, says a colleague in Wales.

It doesn’t mean the English are happy with the union. Immigration, the idea of being swallowed by Europe, and devolution has increased a feeling of Englishness. Forty percent call themselves English first, then British. It’s twice the proportion seen in 2007.

The English also feel discriminated against: 45 percent think devolution has created unevenness; there is no longer a sense of fair play. Because, why do Scottish students get free education, while those in Wales and Northern Ireland pay a third of the 9.000 ponds an English student pays in college fees? Why is there no secretary for England? Why do the English have to appeal to the British parliament in Westminster, and has the country that 85 percent of Brits call home no self-representation?

Nurse Eddie Bone has been campaigning for the latter for years. Somewhere in the middle of England – York for example – an English parliament should be established that, like the other three, will be responsible for education, health care and agriculture. ,,England was always indifferent. No longer”, he says. But it seems too soon for an ‘English revolution’. Not a lot of ordinary Englishmen know about the Campaign for an English Parliament, and politicians don’t take it very seriously.

To Bone’s frustration. ,,Who will represent England when we negotiate with Scotland?” Even if there would be representation, what do the English want? What is the common goal? The biggest problem is that Englishness is growing, but no one can define it.

It is difficult to find anything more English than Piddlehinton, hidden deep in the Dorset countryside: thatched cottages with climbing roses, a meandering stream, a school where Thomas Hardy’s sister taught, and a church from 1295. The village appeared in the Domesday Book of 1068.

In the garden of the Old Rectory a village fair is being held. The vicar greats his visitors: farmers in their wellies, children with blushing apple cheeks, young mothers in flowery dresses. The villagers sell home-made jams and cake, enter competitions for the biggest marrow. It feels like an episode of Midsomer Murders – without the murders. Fairs like this are held all over southern England. The announcements are pricked in the grass verges of roundabouts. But to the question if this is Englishness, people just don’t know an answer. Nor to the question if there should be an English parliament.

Equally hesitant are the people at Kirkgate Market, the largest covered market in England, in Leeds, a multicultural town in the north. This is where Michael Marks in 1884 started his penny bazaar, which has grown to the archetypical English Marks & Spencer. The stand is situated between a haberdashery, a fishmonger selling cockles in vinegar, a Persian with baklava, and an Asian greengrocer.

Very few immigrants call themselves English. Especially those generations that came from the British colonies, say they are British. Added to that, the most important symbol of Englishness – the St George’s flag – was used by football hooligans and the extreme right National Front and English Defence League. English nationalism leaves for some a bitter aftertaste.

Even those who now say they are exclusively English (and are partly anti-immigrant, anti-Europe, and might vote UKIP) don’t know what they want. Sunder Katwala, director of the thinktank British Future, says: ,,They expect politicians to come up with an answer.” The middle group, those who feel both British and English, has ,,soft grievances” and looks for ,,something cultural, not so much political”. ,,But no one knows what the forum is.”

That is the reason, says Katwala, that it is a mistake David Cameron is not talking about Englishness. ,,The idea is that the Scots might be offended, but they won’t.” He says: ,,Cameron should’ve appointed a secretary for England last year. At this moment England needs an institutional voice.”

Luckily the English have one big advantage. They are in the majority. No one can force them to do something, which the other way round is possible. The English could take the UK out of the EU, even though the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish are against. Just because they have more seats in the House of Commons.

Existential confusion


Even if the Scots vote against independence, it is hardly likely the UK can go on the way it has for the past 92 years. The Scottish will, like the Welsh, keep thinking that they are governed by politicians in London with whom they are not on the same wavelength. The Northern Irish feel ignored, the English not heard.

In 2008, then prime minister Gordon Brown feared the ,,balkanisation” of the UK. He felt after devolution the country needed nation building, and wanted a Museum of Britishness, or at least a Day of Britishness.

It didn’t strike a chord, because no one really knew what Britishness was. Maybe only Danny Boyle, with his opening ceremony at the Olympics of 2012, succeeded in showing what British unity meant: Queen Elizabeth, James Bond, green pastures and the Industrial Revolution, self-mockery and especially no over the top patriotism.

If fifteen years of devolution have shown anything, it is that separate identities can exist next to the British one. The first is a day to day identity, the second a civic one. The Welsh cheer on the Welsh rugby team, the Scots the Scottish. But on Remembrance Day, they feel British.

But the feeling that the Union is no longer working needs to be addressed. Westminster is slowly acknowledging that; all party leaders have made big promises in the last months. Among those is the promise that Scotland will get more devolved powers.

More is however needed, thinks Carwyn Jones, the Welsh prime minister. In a speech in Dublin, last year, he said: ,,We need to debate the constitution of this country.” He suggested reform of the House of Lords, so that the seats would be equally distributed among the four countries. The House of Commons would reflect the population, the House of Lord would the geography, like the American system. Others suggest more devolved tax powers, or federalisation, with more power to English regions and maybe London.

The United Kingdom is united by assent. The challenge is to find reasons for all four countries to stay, and that are fair to all four – even to the largest one.

If nothing happens, the fault lines that are now visible will become larger. Next year there are elections, and the Conservatives could again, without getting a majority of votes in Scotland and Wales, win. In 2017 – if David Cameron remains the prime minister – the real test case will follow: a referendum on membership of the European Union. The English could then – without agreement from the other three – take the UK out of Europe. And that, the Union won’t survive.

Here is a link to the original article >>> http://www.nrc.nl/handelsblad/van/2014/augustus/30/onverenigd-koninkrijk-1413044

Guest speaker at Kings College School, Wimbledon

On Thursday I was the guest of Kings College School, Wimbledon, which is a non-boarding public school.  For those who do not know Wimbledon it is in a very nice part of what is now in effect West London.

As a guest speaker I was following in the footsteps of MPs from the various other parties, including not only the usual ones, but also the SNP and Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein.

I had been asked to come to talk to the Sixth Form about the politics of English culture and nationalism.

I introduced the topic by going through our exceptionally long history as a united people and nation state.  After the constitutional landmarks I then talked about where we are now using the results of the 2011 Census.

I then got so many interesting questions that I didn’t get to make the speech that I had prepared to make.

It was however interesting to again see from some of the questions that the main challenge to English Nationalism comes from those whose vision is of multi-cultural “Britishness”.

It was nice to be able to reassure those who thought of themselves as being English that theirs is still the majority view in England by showing them the results of the 2011 Census.

For those who consider themselves to be in national identity terms “British only” but who are ethnically English, it was also a pleasure to be able to assure them that they were in a tiny minority in the country!  They are now of course a minority within that minority of less than 30% who consider themselves to be in any sense British!