Category Archives: birthright

Don’t laugh; Labour are flying the English flag

Anglophobia has been around the Labour Party ever since Labour shifted focus from the white working class as their core support to the groups protected by political correctness – women, gays and most importantly ethnic minorities. This switch took place gradually in the 1980s.

At first the Anglophobia was muted, but as the party moved away from support for the unions,   embraced  the EU and gradually converted to the worship of the market and private enterprise  the anti-English bigotry grew. These changesl meant that support for the white working class became ever more implausible as anti-union laws were supported by Labour, the European single market effectively ended Britain’s immigration controls allowing hordes of foreign labour in to compete for jobs  and the acceptance of globalism laid waste much of Britain’s industry.  After Blair became Party leader in 1994 he completed the process of turning Labour into a Thatcherite party with political correctness grafted on.

All of this meant that Labour needed both a new creed to allow them to satisfy their natural instincts to control  lives of those they rule and to provide new electoral support to replace losses amongst the white working class.  To this end they embraced ever more fanatically  the totalitarian creed which became political correctness and pandered to the Celts, from whom a disproportionate proportion of their MPs came, with devolved powers and assemblies and  the continuation of huge English subsidies to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (currently around £15 billion pa  – seehttp://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/celtic-hands-deep-in-english-taxpayers%e2%80%99-pockets/ ) .    Having done this, they were forced to prevent the English having a devolved Parliament and devolved powers because they knew that  if they  existed it was improbable that Labour would ever hold power in England (it is historically rare for Labour to get a majority of English seats in the Commons) and  exceedingly difficult for a  Labour government to be able to  continue sending truckloads of English taxpayers money to the Celts if they could only form a UK government with large numbers of non-English seats.

As these things  will, the need to keep English dissent under wraps made Labour politicians ever more strident in their Anglophobia.  Here is Jack Straw when Home Secretary:

“The English are potentially very aggressive, very violent. We have used this propensity to violence to subjugate Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Then we used it in Europe and with our empire, so I think what you have within the UK is three small nations…who’ve been over the centuries under the cosh of the English. Those small nations have inevitably sought expression by a very explicit idea of nationhood. You have this very dominant other nation, England, 10 times bigger than the others, which is self-confident and therefore has not needed to be so explicit about its expression. I think as we move into this new century, people’s sense of Englishness will become more articulated and that’s partly because of the mirror that devolution provides us with and because we are becoming more European at the same” (BBC Radio Four’s Brits  10 January 2000 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/596703.stm )

Or take a Labour backbencher ,  the German Gisela Stuart

“Yet it has only been in the last five years or so that I have heard people in my constituency telling me, “I am not British – I am English”. That worries me. British identity is based on and anchored in its political and legal institutions and this enables it to take in new entrants more easily than it would be if being a member of a nation were to be defined by blood. But a democratic polity will only work if citizens’ identification is with the community as a whole, or at least with the shared process, which overrides their loyalty to a segment.  (15 11 2005 http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-opening/trust_3030.jsp)

Having  lost the last election Labour are in a quandary.   They do not know whether to stick or twist on England and the English.   Their choice is either  to continue the policy of the last 25 years and hope that the electoral pendulum will swing  back to them or seek renewed support for Labour  from the English.  The first option has its attractions especially if the referendum on AV goes through for then they could envisage a perpetual  coalition with the Lib Dems.  The problem with that scenario is that the Lib Dems, or at least a substantial part of the party, may decide to prefer a coalition with the Tories or the  Lib Dems may lose a great deal of electoral support even under AV  and  represent a much less attractive proposition. Moreover, it is difficult to see the AV Bill being passed unless it  (1) has the provisions to equalise constituency sizes (which would favour the Tories)  and (2) can become law in time for the new constituency boundaries to be in position for the next General Election. The worst outcome for Labour would be for the AV referendum to be lost but the equalisation of constituencies made law This would put the party  at a considerable disadvantage.

All of this uncertainty is bad enough, but even if there was to be no electoral change Labour would still have considerable cause for concern.  Labour were in power a long time and electors since 1945  have been  reluctant to toss out  any party after a single Parliament.  The fact that we have a coalition probably strengthens this tendency.  Add to that the widespread dislike of NuLabour policies and loathing of Blair, and the economic mess Brown  left and Labour can have little confidence that they will form the next government even as part of a coalition. That means that some in the party are seeing the need to appeal to the English in general and the white working class in particular.  That is what the article by Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford addresses (see extract below).

As the party they represent has in the past 13 years done everything it could to enrage the English by the denial of  an English parliament, continuing subsidies to the Celts , the ruthless suppression of any display of English national feeling, the public insult of the English,  the export of English  jobs and industry and massive immigration to Britain which has overwhelming come to England, it might be thought that they have a hopeless task, at least in the short run.  However, this may be a false interpretation of present British politics.  The policy may succeed by default because no other British mainstream party  will take up the English baton and run with it. (Sadly, the Anglophobic  line has also become part of the NuTory  philosophy. Here is Willam Hague when Tory leader : “English nationalism is the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism that can arise within the United Kingdom, because England is five-sixths of the population of the UK.” ” (BBC Radio Four’s Brits  10 January 2000 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/596703.stm ).  That may drive the English to Labour out of desperation,  even though you can be sure that the version of Englishness and English interests will be one heavily tainted with political correctness.

Selling England by the pound

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Labour has come close to being destroyed as a national force in England. Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford believe it has lost the language and culture it grew out of

In Dover the port is up for sale and the people are campaigning to buy it and create a community asset. They don’t want a foreign-owned port, they want a people’s port that is ‘forever England’. Football supporters are building community-based organisations by share purchase – in Liverpool, for example – to save our clubs from foreign corporate power. In the Forest of Dean, thousands are rallying in protest at the plans by the government to sell England’s forests which are England’s ‘green beating heart’. In London, porters at Billingsgate fish market campaigned to stop the City of London abolishing their ancient English role and making them redundant. Where is Labour in the fight for an England which belongs to the English just as they belong to the land?

Labour is no longer sure who it represents. It champions humanity in general but no-one in particular. It favours multiculturalism but suspects the symbols and iconography of Englishness. For all the good Labour did in government, it presided over the leaching away of the common meanings that bind the English in society. It did not build a common good which is the basis of an ethical life. It chose liberal market freedoms for the price of our liberty and our sense of belonging.

The open economy is England’s historic legacy. Trade is in our national DNA. But the economy has become an engine of inequality, division and dispossession. A financialised model of capitalism has redistributed wealth on a massive scale from the country to the City, from the people to the financial elite, and from the common ownership of the public sector to private business. We do not own our utilities, nor do we have control of our vital energy market. The overseas supply chains of business located here are the chief beneficiaries of our economic upswings. A flexible employment market has stripped workers of rights and security. Our soft-touch approach on corporate tax has encouraged tax evasion and transfer pricing as business relocates its profits to tax havens. It is as if we do not live in a country so much as an economic system that is owned elsewhere and over which we have no control.

Labour lost England in the 2010 May election and the cause is about more than just ‘Southern Discomfort’. Labour shares a political crisis of social democracy with its sister parties across Europe. But in England something more fundamental has been lost, and that is a Labour language and culture which belongs to the society it grew out of and which enables its immersion in the ordinary everyday life of the people. It has lost the ability to renew its political hegemony within the class which gave birth to it. It was its apparent indifference to ‘what really matters’ that incited such rage and contempt amongst constituencies which had been traditional bastions of support.

Read more at http://www.progressonline.org.uk/articles/article.asp?a=7451

How Thatcher became the useful idiot of the education progressives

When Margaret Thatcher came to power many thought she would attempt to undo the damage of the comprehensive experiment and progressive methods, damage which was already visible. In her 11 years in power she not only failed to repair the damage, but she  made things worse through  her attempts to translate her free market ideology into education.

The Thatcher Governments neither reinstituted the grammar schools (or an equivalent) nor drove out the anti-examination, anti-competitive ethos of the teaching profession.  Instead,  Margaret Thatcher contented herself with introducing  Thatcherite ideas such as a national curriculum and league tables and by  encouraging parents and pupils (and later university students) to  think of themselves as consumers while leaving things much as they were in terms of teaching methods, mentality and administrative structure. 

This  bizarre marriage of the prevailing progressive ideology  with Thatcherite ideals would have been unsuccessful at the best of times because the two were simply incompatible.  But the Thatcherite part of the equation was in practice more or less nullified as a means to raise standards.  Over  the 18 years of the Thatcher and Major  governments,  the educational establishment persuaded the Tories that not only should the comprehensive settlement be left unchanged, but that the O Level/CSE exams should be scrapped in favour of GCSE, that more and more coursework should be introduced into school exam marks, that the national curriculum tests should move from simple evaluations of the three “Rs” and a few other subjects to  overblown and time consuming events, that polytechnics should become universities  and that the numbers in higher education should rise to previously undreamt of levels.

Thatcherism  extended more dramatically  into  higher  education. University grants were first allowed to wither on the vine through inadequate uprating and then abolished. In their place came student loans to be repaid after graduation. The post-war ideal of free higher  education finally died with the introduction of tuition fees by in the 1990s.  Students suddenly found themselves faced with debts of £10,000 or more on graduation with future students living under the threat of ever rising fees.

When people pay for something they become resentful if they feel that they do not get what they pay for. In the case of university students they object to not merely failing their degree entirely, but even to getting a poor degree. That any failure to gain a good degree is largely due to themselves is lost in the resentment that something has been  paid for which has not been delivered.  Of course,  the undergraduate is not paying the full cost of their tuition  and they receive a loan on very favourable non-commercial terms.  But because they do end up with a hefty debt at the end of their degree, that makes any perceived academic failure more poignant that it was in the days of grants and no tuition fees.

Although the  relationship between the teacher and the taught  was changed by tuition fees and loans, that in itself would not have been too damaging for university standards. In the end  a disgruntled student can do little unless they have money to go to law, which few do. Nor, in all probability,  would the courts be eager to get involved in disturbing the ideal of academic freedom.  What was damaging was the ending in 1988  of university  funding  by block grants  from a central  awarding authority, the University Grants Committee (UGC). The UGC was replaced by the Universities Funding Council (UFC) and block  grants were replaced by state money primarily attached to students (quality of teaching and research were also taken into account). The more students, the more income.  Universities were immediately changed from places which awarded degrees as they chose to award them based on academic performance to institutions which were anxious to “sell” their wares to students.  To do this they needed to present themselves as a university which not only failed few people but awarded most students “good” degrees.  The upshot was that the proportion of First Class and Upper Second degrees rose inexorably until today  around two thirds of students in the UK receive one or other of them and one third receive Lower Seconds or worse.  (Forty years ago  the proportions  were roughly reversed with a third receiving Firsts and Upper Seconds and two thirds Lower Seconds or worse.) 

The decline of the universities was hastened by the vast  and unprecedented expansion of those in higher education:

“The number of students at university had risen from 321,000   in the early 1960s to 671,000 in 1979. By 1996 it was headed   for 1.5 million, far in excess of the target of 560,000   places set by Robbins thirty years earlier. At the Labour   Party Conference in September 1997, Tony Blair promised   another 500,000 places at university by 2002.” Dominic Hobson The National Wealth p 325.

The increase in numbers was not matched with an increase in funding. The consequence was a substantial increase in  the student/teacher ratio, less tutorial and lecture time and a tendency to favour cheaper arts and social science courses over expensive science degrees.  In addition, although staff did not increase in line with student numbers, they did rise and competition for the best staff increased, with the inevitable consequence that the universities at the bottom of the pile – almost exclusively the polytechnics which became universities in 1992 – became institutions which should be described as universities only when the word is placed in inverted commas, with drop out rates previously unheard of in England.

The consequences of the Thatcher period were, as in so many areas, the very reverse of what she supposedly stood for. Just as the European Common Market undermined British sovereignty more than any other single treaty EU treaty agreement rather than achieving Thatcher’s intended aim of strengthening Britain’s position within the EU, so her education reforms promoted the ideas of those who were supposedly her sworn ideological enemies, the progressives. Thatcher became their useful idiot.

English education in saner times

I was born in 1947. Never, perhaps, has England (and Britain) been more of a coherent community.  The dramatic recent experience of the Second World War  filled the minds of everyone  and that  shared experience  bound together even more tightly  a very racially and culturally homogenous country.  It was rare to see a black or brown face even in London, and any suggestion that someone from a racial or cultural minority should do anything but  their best to assimilate into English culture would have been generally thought to touch the confines of lunacy. It was a very English, very British world. 

It was a time when Britain made most of the manufactured goods that it consumed, including its own cars, aircraft, ships, and it would have been thought extraordinary for a British Government to fail to protect British industry.  Great industrial names such as Austin (cars) and  Fry’s (chocolate) were not only English-owned and English made but leaders in the English market.  The shops which people used were generally owned by the English and more often than not family enterprises.  Every day an inhabitant of England  was reminded that  they were members of an advanced technological society which could make or grow what it wanted and that most of what they consumed was made in England (or at least Britain) or came from the Empire. 

The idea of Empire was still important – just. The fifties were the very last moment when an English boy could grow up with an  imperial consciousness as part of everyday life. There was no assumption that the Empire would collapse. India might have gone in 1947, but the assumption amongst both the general population and the political elite was that Britain would have to bear “the white man’s burden”  for many  a long year yet.  That will seem extraordinary to the point of fantasy now, but  it is true. In the forties and fifties  the Foreign and Colonial Office continued to  recruit and train young men for careers  as imperial servants such as District Officers and white  emigration from Britain to places such as Kenya and Rhodesia was officially encouraged. 

Against this background English schools taught as a matter of course a curriculum that extolled English and British values, history and culture.  History for the English child was British and imperial history first with  European history a poor second. Geography was concerned primarily with the physical and demographic demography of Britain.  English literature concentrated on the classic English texts from Chaucer through to Trollope.

But it was not simply English history and culture which was imparted. Whole class teaching was the norm with the teacher firmly in charge. Children were expected to acquire the factual knowledge of a subject as well as its process. Because discipline was not generally a problem, schools were primarily institutions to teach people rather than being the child-minding depots we all too often see today.  There is a good case for saying that the general standard of English education was never higher than in the quarter century between 1945 and 1970. This was not only because of the good overall educational standard, but because  all pupils, unlike the pre-war system, now got a secondary education as of right.

That is not to say everything in the post-war educational garden was lovely.  Before comprehensive education began under the first  Wilson Government,  English state education was divided between grammar schools, secondary moderns and a small number of technical schools – the last were intended as training grounds for artisans, to use an old fashioned word.  The consequence was to lower, irrevocably in most instances,  the social horizons and aspirations of those who did not  pass the 11-plus and go to grammar schools, because it was very difficult to move to a grammar school after the age of 11.  It also created a sense of inferiority and resentment amongst many 11-plus failures.

Despite these shortcomings,  the system was unreservedly to be preferred to what we have today. The grammar schools not only produced a  genuinely educated class, but provided  an escape  route  to something better for clever children from even the poorest backgrounds.  That opportunity grew with the significant expansion of university and polytechnic places in the fifties and sixties. In 1950 approximately  2 per cent of English school-leavers went on to higher education: by 1970, following the implementation of the Robbins Report (1963), the figure was approximately  7 per cent (and this was the age of the post-war baby-boomer generation, so there were more pupils in the age group in 1970 than 1950).  Most tellingly, in the 1960s, before the destruction of the grammar schools,  workingclass children in higher education  formed a greater proportion of the whole student body than it does now – there are more workingclass students now, but that is simply a consequence of the vast increase in those in higher education to more than 40 per cent.

English state education – a project to culturally cleanse the English

Ask an English child of 2011 about the iconic dates of English history such as Hastings, Blenheim and Waterloo and your chances of getting a correct answer are very small. Quiz them on who was Alfred the Great  or ask them to describe the outcome of the Spanish Armada and the odds are that you will be met with blank stares. Pose a question relating to English geography such as the position of the Chilterns or the course of the Severn and a shrug of the shoulders is the likely outcome.  Mention a Shakespeare play or a Dickens novel and childish eyes are wont to roll. 

Sadly, the modern English child is more likely to be able to tell a questioner about the Muslim festival of Ramadan than relate the story of Easter. They will know more of the geography of Africa (if they know any geography at all) than of England. On the rare occasions when they are told about England’s history, it will only be in the context of the country’s “evil” past, with the Atlantic slave trade elevated to the status of the ultimate act of historical immorality and  the  Empire recounted as an unrelieved tale of the exploitation of native peoples.

The upshot is that we have several generations of English children who have commonly left school with next to no meaningful knowledge of their own history and higher culture. That applies not only to those who depart education with a basic school education at the age of 16, but even those who go on to university. Worse, their education is designed to leave them with, at best, a belief that they have nothing to be proud of because they are English, and,  at worst, that they should be thoroughly ashamed of the fact that they are English.

The conscious intent of the liberal elite is to create a belief amongst the English that they, of all peoples, are not worthy of a national identity. Most of the English do not actually believe this even at the intellectual level and  they still have a primal sense of being English  because  of Man’s innate tendency to associate with “the tribe”. But this is beside the point. By being denied  access to their history and culture, English children are left without a bedrock of conscious  cultural imprinting to build upon their natural and healthy communal instincts.  They are like children of good natural parts who have been denied schooling. 

Education, of course, is far more than academic study. It is about the general development of the child.  Modern psychological research consistently fingers the peer group as most potent influence on the development of a child, far more influential than the family.  Those who doubt this is might care to  reflect on the fact that children speak with the accent of their peer group not that of their parents.

The dominance of the peer group is vitally important because it means that children can potentially be manipulated en masse. If they do not take their view of the world from their parents – and children commonly reject their parents’ views – they have to take their view  from elsewhere. That leaves them vulnerable to elite propaganda, especially that pedalled by the mass media and schools. The important point here  is that parents as a class have many views, an elite ideology  has  one view. The danger is that the elite can succeed at least partially in forcing a single view of the world onto all or at least most children.

A peer group whose members have been properly socialised in their history and culture and who have been given a generally positive view of their society, will reinforce that view themselves. A group robbed of that knowledge and mentality will be less inclined – because they have less positive information and reinforcement about their “tribe”  –  to amplify what they glean from the adult world. They may build upon the negative propaganda ceaselessly fed to them by schools, by the media and by politicians and by the persistent promotion of other cultures as superior to their own. Most damagingly, they are in danger of being conditioned to believe that they, the native people of England, are but one ethnic group amongst many, that they have no special cultural claim within their own land.

If England is to survive as more than a geographical entity, it is essential that the young be imprinted with a knowledge of the  immense achievements of Britain in general and England in particular and a sense of what the English have been.

No nation can maintain itself if it does not have a profound sense of its worth. In a healthy society this sense of worth simply exists and children imbibe it unconsciously. Our society has been so corrupted by a  mistaken educational ideology and the liberal’s hatred of his own culture,  that a conscious programme of cultural imprinting  is necessary. If it is not done, how long will it be before English children express surprise when told they are speaking English and not American? The corrosion of English society can only be halted if pride of England and her achievements is instilled in the young.

The words of the younger Pitt in 1783 (following the disaster of the American War of Independence) seem peculiarly apt for our deracinated time:

We must recollect … what is we have at stake, what it is we have to contend for. It is for our property, it is for our liberty, it is for our independence, nay, for our existence as a nation; it is for our character, it is for our very name as Englishmen, it is for everything dear and valuable to man on this side of the grave.

That the tribal  sense of English identity is still immensely strong can be seen in the way the English take the opportunity to publicly  express their patriotism in the only regular way left to them – through their support for sporting teams. The English fans of all the major team sports are truly amazing in their dedication to their national teams. Go to any football game or Test match  involving England  played overseas and you will see a support unmatched by any other travelling supporters. See how a forest of St George’s Crosses sprout when a football world cup is on. Marvel at the reception given to the England Rugby team after they returned as world champions.  It is also noteworthy that in recent years the English have taken the opportunity to come out in ever increasing numbers for occasional national  events such as the Queen’s Jubilee and the Queen Mother’s funeral, surely a sign of English national pride being frustrated in most other ways.  There is a generation of English children just waiting to be given their sense of historical place and culture back. All it needs is the political will to do it.

The British elite express their hatred and fear of England

John Prescott’s office in the Department of Nations and Regions (sic) in response to a question as to why we could not tick English in the nationality box on our census forms – “there is no such nationality as English.”

The official answer to the West Lothian Question has always been not to ask it. Once England enters the mix as an acknowledged grievance, stand back!

— Anthony Barnett

New Statesman, The Staggers, 19 May 2010

There is no need for an English parliament because there is no England.

PETER ARNOLD

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE

— Cllr Peter Arnold

Letter in the Independent, 17th March, 2006

 The average Englishman thinks that they have got a Parliament which is the Westminster Parliament and I think resentment could perfectly well be sorted out so long as we could tackle what I regard as this niggle that sometimes English matters are setlled against the majority of votes of the English MPs. This English Parliament would be quite a dangerous remedy to that because it will just take a little step further this sense of separate identity.

— Ken Clarke

House of Commons’ Justice Select Committee, 20th February, 2008

 You hear people yelling about some looming crisis. What do you do? You sit back, sip your cooling tea and don’t bother your fat backside. How else can we explain the utter lack of interest in the possibility of the breakup of Britain, at least as far as the English majority is concerned?

— Andrew Marr

Guardian, 18th April 1999

 Sometimes people say to me ‘You know, David, it would be easier to be Prime Minister if you wanted just to be Prime Minister of England’. And I say ‘I don’t want to be Prime Minister of England, I want to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, all of it, Scotland included’. I believe in the United Kingdom head, heart and soul. I would never do anything to put it at risk. People need to know that.

— David Cameron

Press Association, 14th May 2010

However much we disagree about issues, we should try to work together for the benefit of the whole of the United Kingdom and for the benefit of Scotland as well.

— David Cameron

Speech in the Scottish Parliament, BBC, 14 May 2010

I don’t care whether pandering to English Nationalism is a vote winner. The very fact that in my two years as leader I haven’t ripped open the Barnett Formula and wandered round England waving a banner shows you that I am a very convinced Unionist and I’m not going to play those games.

— David Cameron

Telegraph, 10 Dec 2007

English resentment of the Scots should never be underestimated as an emotional or indeed a political force. No home-grown Conservative descanting on the iniquities of the modern political system can last more than a minute without noting that Labour’s stranglehold over the Commons rests on its 50 or so Scottish MPs. The West Lothian question, whereby Scottish Labour MPs can intervene in English domestic affairs but not vice-versa, burns unappeasably on.

— DJ Taylor

Independent, 6 December 2009

Since devolution there has been a growing English consciousness and that has given credence to the unfinished business of devolution. The issue is not an English Parliament. It is how you reform the way in which the House of Commons operates so that on purely English business, as opposed to United Kingdom business, the wishes of English members cannot be denied.

— Malcolm Rifkind

Daily Mail, 28 October 2007

The creation of an English Parliament is likely to threaten the stability of the Union. For this reason an England-wide solution to governance of England is unsustainable.

— John Tomaney

Empowering the English Regions, 1999

Whether in the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party or the Ulster Unionists—all of us who share the desire to preserve the Union, must insist that this House does not become an English Parliament. It must be a British Parliament as long as the Union exists, and for it to be a British Parliament it must have roughly comparable powers and responsibilities for the four countries of the Union.

— Malcolm Rifkind

Hansard, 14 November 1977

The average Englishman thinks that they have got a Parliament which is the Westminster Parliament and I think resentment could perfectly well be sorted out so long as we could tackle what I regard as this niggle that sometimes English matters are setlled against the majority of votes of the English MPs. This English Parliament would be quite a dangerous remedy to that because it will just take a little step further this sense of separate identity.

— Ken Clarke

House of Commons’ Justice Select Committee, 20th February, 2008

The re-emergence of Welsh, Scottish and indeed English nationalism . . . can be seen not just as the natural outcome of cultural diversity, but as a response to a broader loss of national, in the sense of British, identity.

— Linda Colley

Britons: Forging the Nation

Government has attempted to tackle the question of national identity before, most recently with efforts by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. These were expressions of nationhood concocted in Westminster against a benign economic backdrop. Now all our political parties must search for an animating, inclusive and optimistic definition of modern England to choke off what the EDL taps into.

— John Cruddas

Sunday Times, 24th October 2010

Everyone pays the same taxes so public expenditure should be on a fair basis. Scotland has done very well, so it shouldn’t be subsidised. There is a danger to the union if extremists in England start saying, why is Scotland getting all this money? The Barnett formula needs to be looked at again.

— Peter Bone

Sunday Times, 10 January, 2010

I was never a passionate devolutionist. It is a dangerous game to play. You can never be sure where nationalist sentiment ends and separatist sentiment begins… I supported the UK, distrusted nationalism as a concept and looked at the history books and worried whether we could get it through. However, though not passionate about it, I thought it inevitable. We didn’t want Scotland to feel the choice was status quo or separation.

— Tony Blair

My father’s side of the family by being Camerons are predominantly Scottish. On my mother’s side of the family, her mother was a Llewellyn, so Welsh.

— David Cameron

Telegraph, 10 Dec 2007

As the economies of Europe stutter and shrink, nationalism is on the rise almost everywhere. In Britain we have been blinded to it by our insularity and by the risible performance of the British National Party. But British nationalism is a red herring in this context. It’s the contest between Scottish nationalism and English nationalism that will do much to shape the future.

— David Runciman

London Review of Books, Vol. 32 No. 10, 27th May 2010

The establishment of a Scottish Assembly must be a top priority to ensure that more decisions are taken in Scotland by Scots.

— Margaret Thatcher

Edinburgh Rally, 1975

The danger is of a very virulent and unpleasant English nationalism arising after Scottish independence.

— Vernon Bogdanor

Dinner with Portillo – Why Should We Care About Scottish Independence? BBC4, 15th Sept 2009

So far as I know, no one has yet put forward a positive case for devolution to England, based on a moral vision of what England and the English stand for or might come to stand for. Sadly, this is not surprising.

— David Marquand

Our Kingdom, 7 January 2008

What moral vision does the revived English national consciousness embody? It’s pitifully inadequate to say that England should have a devolved government because that is what the Scots and Welsh now have, and leave it at that.

— David Marquand

Our Kingdom, 7 January 2008

I believe that devolution has made us stronger as a United Kingdom and given democratic accountability for decisions in Scotland and Wales that used to be made centrally. Across the country, we need to see whether there are further ways of devolving power. However, I do not see a new parliament for England as the answer. The vast majority of the UK parliament is comprised of English MPs, and so there is no reason to believe an English Parliament would enhance accountability.

— Ed Milliband

Labour Space

The break-up of the United Kingdom will give the best and the brightest of the English the decisive push which will take them off the fence in favour of the European Union, not because they love England so little but because they love England so much. For a nationalistic Little England will be a travesty of Britain’s former self, with all its vices bloated and all its virtues shrunken.

— Peregrine Worsthorne

England Don’t Arise!, The Spectator, 19th September, 1998

There is no need for an English parliament because there is no England.

Scotland, Wales and Ireland are fairly homogeneous nations, each with its own clearly defined character and culture. That is why devolution (or independence) has been quite successful in all three. In England, the picture is far more complex. There are millions of Scots, Welsh and Irish living in England. The overwhelming majority of non-white migrants also live in England, along with many hundreds of thousands of other Europeans and people from other parts of the world. England is the genuine mongrel nation, and I welcome that. This fact however, makes identity far more complex and difficult than in the other British nations.

For example, I regard myself first and foremost as a Northumbrian, then as British, and finally as European. Here in the north-east we only began to be part of the nation after 1603. Before that, the independent kingdoms of England and Scotland played havoc with the area, and used it (and abused us) for their own dynastic ends. I have no loyalty to England. For me, the British state has meaning and relevance precisely because it has little connection with a brutal past based on ignorance and exploitation.

The answer to the West Lothian question is the creation of a fully federal United Kingdom, based on Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the regions of England. There would still be disparities of size, but these would be far less than a separate English parliament would create. The failure of the referendum in the North-east in 2004 doesn’t invalidate the concept. Devolution is working in Scotland and Wales; and independence has given most of Ireland a new lease of life. We just need to expand that successful formula to the rest of the United Kingdom.

PETER ARNOLD

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE

— Cllr Peter Arnold

Letter in the Independent, 17th March, 2006

It is not the English people’s fault that they make up 80% of the population of the UK, but it does mean that England cannot sit happily alongside the other nations as a political unit. The only sustainable federations are ones where the constituent parts are more or less the same size. This means revitalising the case for democratic regional government in England (not dismissing it, as the Conservatives are doing).

— Richard Laming (Federal Union)

Letter to the Guardian, 19 February 2009

Let us not forget that in Scotland the Scottish Constitutional Convention had eight years to develop their proposals for the Scottish Parliament. Then those proposals were put to referendum. In England there needs to be an equally wide process of deliberation and consultation: the English deserve no less.

— Robert Hazell

Public Law; 2001, Summer, 268-280

Coalition Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on  the 16th November 2010 stated, at the Hansard Society event, ‘that there is no evidence at all that devolution leads to inequalities.’ 

 Oliver Letwin’s  reply ‘that David Cameron is England’s First Minister’ when asked if England like Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should have a first Minister? – stated at the conservative party conference, fringe event, 2010

Important English constitutional documents

The text of each of these important constitutional documents has been posted as pages on England Calling.  The links can be found at the top of the blog.

1. The development of Parliamentary Government

These documents show the gradual reduction of the power of the  monarch and the eventual development from this of Parliament and eventually the shift of the executive power from the monarch to the House of Commons.

1100 The charter of liberties of Henry (also known as the Coronation Charter)

This concerned primarily the relationship between the King and his nobles and foreshadows that part of  Magna Carta  which deals with things such as inheritance and the treatment of widows.

1215 Magna Carta

Apart from the  stating of rights and restrictions on what King John might do in certain situations, this was the first formal attempt to impose a council with powers to not merely advise the King but to restrain him (article 61).  This article was never implemented.

1258 The Provisions of Oxford and  1259 The Provisions of Westminster

These attempted to do what article 61 of Magna Carta  intended,  impose on Henry III a council with power to restrain the King.

1311 The Ordinances of the Lords Ordainers

These  vigorously  reiterated Magna Carta, bound Royal officials to obey the Ordinances and   in article 40 introduced a panel to have power to interfere with the king’s ministers, viz:  “ Item, we ordain that in each parliament one bishop, two earls, and two barons shall be assigned to hear and determine all plaints of those wishing to complain of the king’s ministers, whichever they may be, who have contravened the ordinances aforesaid.”

1628 The Petition of Right

This was a direct challenge to the attempt of Charles I to extend the Royal Prerogative, or more unkindly, to simply assume that he could do anything, in the early years of his reign. The primary complaint  was Charles’  raising of money without Parliamentary approval.  It set in train the events which led eventually to the proroguing of Parliament for 11 years(1629-1640).  The Petition relies heavily on citing documents such as Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, as well as the usual insistence of the restitution of English liberties.

1641 The Grand Remonstrance

This was another attempt to persuade  Charles I to do Parliament’s will by what had the form of a traditional petition to the King but the content of demands with unspoken menaces .  The King was not blamed personally – the failings were ascribed to a Papist conspiracy – but the tone of the petition was much more robust than the Petition of Right and left no doubt that Parliament was not pleading for Royal indulgence but insisting that Charles did their bidding.

It listed 204 separate points of objection, including a call for the expulsion of all bishops from Parliament and a  Parliamentary veto over Crown appointments. Charles refused to agree to all Parliament’s demands  in December 1641 and the first Civil War began a few months later.

1653 The Instrument of Government

This document  is in content if not formal description a written constitution. It created Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector, stipulated that the office of Lord Protector was not to be hereditary, required regular Parliaments,  and  laid down a mesh of obligations and restrictions on government.

1689 The Bill of Rights

Further formal restrictions on the monarch, a list of rights to protect the liberty of all English men and women, the protection of MPs, regular Parliaments  and the assumption of the English crown to be in practice dependent upon the support of Parliament, thus driving the final nail into the coffin of the  doctrine of the divine right of kings.    This opened the way for the development of the executive in Parliament.

1789 The American Constitution and Bill of Rights

The influence of English constitutional development can be clearly seen in the Constitution and Bill of Rights (the first  ten amendments).  The short lived US Articles of Confederation is  placed below the Constitution and Bill of Rights to allow comparison between the documents.

2. The unification of Britain

1535 The unification of England and Wales

There was no formal Act of Union between England and Wales but the 1535 Act   – “An Acte for Lawes & Justice to be ministred in Wales in like fourme as it is in this Realme” –  was the most important  piece of legislation in the piecemeal process of  administrative incorporation of Wales into England which took place  in the latter years of Henry XIII. The text of  this Act  is in England Calling.

What would happen if the UK disintegrated?

In the long term, this is a strong possibility regardless of whether an English parliament is instituted. Devolution has predictably increased the sense of nation amongst the various Celts and given fuller reign to the widespread resentment of England. These traits will grow, sustained by a number of fantasies. The Scots dream of an Eldorado of oil revenues enjoyed by Scotland alone. The Scots and the Welsh dwell in a fantasy  world in which they are funded by the EU with the same largesse as the Irish Republic. The Ulster republicans dream of the same in a unified Ireland.

For England it is difficult to envisage any insuperable disadvantage in the break up of the UK, but easy to see definite and substantial advantages. She would be shorn of the burden of Celtic subsidies, both direct and indirect, while her very considerable population, wealth and general sophistication would ensure that she could maintain without any real  difficulty  the present levels of government provision from the welfare state to the military. Moreover, England would be able to act wholeheartedly in her own interests rather than constantly tailoring national decisions to take into account the demands of the Celts, who in all honesty, increasingly resemble a squadron of albatrosses  around Albion’s neck.

The only important disadvantages for England could be balance of payments difficulties (primarily from the loss of oil, gas and whiskey production) and ructions in the international institutional sphere. Happily, adverse balances of trade are(eventually) self-correcting even if the correction, as is the case with America, can seem an age coming. Moreover, with the free global currency market and a floating pound, an  adverse balance of trade does not hold the horrors it once did, for international borrowing is infinitely easier than it was even ten years past and  devaluation of the currency is not viewed as a national humiliation. England might be temporarily embarrassed by a substantially increased trade deficit, but there is no reason to believe that it would be prolonged or seriously affect the English economy.

As for international upheaval, it is conceivable  that England would be unable to sustain a claim to Britain’s privileged position on international bodies such as the UN Security Council and the board of IMF. However, this is unlikely for a number of reasons. To begin with there is the precedent of Russia which assumed all of the Soviet Union’s  international entitlements.  Britain is also the United States’  only halfway reliable ally on most of  these international boards.  To this may be added Britain’s position as one of the larger international paymasters and providers of reliable military muscle. None of these facts  need essentially change with the substitution of England for Britain. Perhaps most importantly, the denial to England of any of Britain’s institutional places would pose the awkward question of who was to take any vacant position. This could(and almost certainly would) in turn raise the whole question of whether the constitutions of most world bodies are  equitable or suited to the modern world. (The constitutions were after all created approximately fifty years ago and are in no sense equitable). To deny England could mean the opening of a can of worms. Conversely, it could be plausibly argued  that membership of such  international  bodies represents a liability rather than an advantage and England would be well shot of them.

None of the would be Celtic states,  unlike England,  would be large enough or rich enough to maintain government spending and services at anywhere near the current level.  Moreover, the cost of their separate state administrations would almost certainly be proportionately  substantially greater than that of England because of the loss of the  advantages of scale.  Nor for reasons already stated would they be likely to obtain the largesse currently handed out to the Republic of Ireland by the EU. Indeed, it is quite probable that all or some of them could be refused membership of the EU because of Germany’s fear of incurring liabilities for more beggar nations.

It is also reasonable to ask what would happen if an external military threat appeared. (Unlikely in the immediate future but not improbable over the next fifty years). Even if independent  Celtic states were members of the EU, it is carrying optimism to the limit to imagine that they would receive active military help from that quarter. In the end  they would have to turn to England for help.

The Celts should also realise that an independent England might well leave the EU. Then she  could act, without infringing any of its general international obligations, in ways which would gravely disadvantage the Celts. She could impose passport regulations.  She could refuse  reciprocal social security and health provisions. She could insist upon  work permits. Because the need for  emigration is much greater in the Celtic parts of Britain than in England and the number of Celts on benefit in England vastly exceeds that of the English in Scotland, Wales and Ulster, such measures could be utterly calamitous for independent Celtic states.

There is also the ticklish problem of the national debt. In the event of the independence of Scotland, Wales or Ulster,or the amalgamation of Ulster with the Irish Republic, a proportionate share (based on population) of the UK national debt would have to be borne by a seceding part of the UK. Scotland’s share, for example, would be currently in excess of 30 billion pounds; that of Wales approximately 15 billion.  Even at current rates, the financing of the interest alone would cost between two and three billion a year.

Ulster  has a particular problem whether  it  remains independent or becomes submerged in a united Ireland. The removal of English subsidies alone would be a massive blow because  they are of a different magnitude (when  the expenditure of the armed forces in Ulster and special compensation payments for terrorist actions are taken into account) to those in Scotland and Wales. But if the EU refused to continue, either in whole or in part, subsidising the Republic of Ireland, Ulster would almost certainly have to bear a massive decline in Irish cross border trading.

When it comes to paying their own way, independent  Celtic states would also have to consider the effect of confidence on their finances. If independent Celtic states were deemed to be poorer credit risks than Britain is now as a whole, which is probable, they would have to pay more for their future  public and private borrowing in the form of higher  interest rates. That would apply whether or not they were members of EMU, for a universal ECB bank rate does not mean that everyone can borrow at the same rate. A lender still has to believe that the borrower is worth the risk.

Even if the most favourable conditions envisaged by Celtic Nationalists could be secured – essentially  the  same conditions currently enjoyed by the Republic of Ireland, Portugal etc – the omens would not be good. To begin with beggar nations within the EU can never be sure that the money  will keep hitting the bottom of the begging bowl. To have an economy as dependent upon handouts as the Republic of Ireland’s is simply courting disaster. Then there is the natural price to pay for such money, the supporting of the donor nations through thick and thin. This can, and often does mean,  going against the direct interest of one’s own people. (England – because it is from England rather than Britain that the EU Danegeld is extracted in practice –  has the sovereign distinction of uniformly voting against the interests of its people and being the paymaster to the beggar nations). Nor should beggar nations be under any illusion that the EU will generally protect their interests in international disputes. The equation is quite clear: votes for money and to hell with the long term interests of the populations of the poorer EU states if these clash with the interests of the powerful.

Looked at unsentimentally, the prospect for an independent Scotland, Wales or Ulster is one of poverty, a decayed welfare state, established companies moving across the border into England, foreign companies refusing to settle because of a lack of subsidies and the absence of the security of a large nation state, massive emigration of the middle classes and extreme levels of unemployment for those left behind.

But what about the oil and gas? I can hear the Scots Nationalists  positively screaming. Well, the current tax take is relatively trivial in terms of the revenue an independent Scotland would require.  (It would probably  finance their share of the national debt at current rates).  Moreover, not all oil is in Scottish waters. Further, even the revenues from oil within Scots waters might be claimed in part by both the various islanders, who fear  rule from Edinburgh, and England (on the grounds that because the project was started when Britain was a unitary state, the rewards should continue to be split proportionately according to the new  states’ various populations). There are also the unfortunate facts that British oil is very expensive to produce and may well become uncompetitive as countries such as China expand production or other forms of energy become cheaper, and, more definitely,  oil extraction at its present level is unlikely to last for more than another generation. Oil and gas production revenues would be a poor pair of crutches to prop  up an impoverished independent Scotland.

Why are the British political elite so Hell-bent on denying England a Parliament?

The Scots have a parliament; the Welsh have an assembly; the implacable factions of Ulster shall run their own affairs if they can but remove their hands from one another’s throats; yet the English, the most politically mature of all peoples, shall possess no such means of political expression and  control over their own affairs, neither now nor ever. So runs the curious view of our political masters.

When I say our political masters I mean the entire British political elite,  for no mainstream party  advocates an English  parliament or gives any sign that it will do so.  This is more than a little strange, because a English parliament is not merely the most just but also the most obvious and economical solution to the inequality of democratic representation and opportunity wrought by devolution..

Why is our political class so  utterly determined that England shall be given no voice? The obnoxious truth is that our political elite  oppose an English  parliament  for Anglophobic  and  self-serving reasons, both domestic and supra-national. There is a general  terror amongst them of what they describe as English nationalism, but which in reality is a dread of English interests being realised and fought for. To that general motive may be added two particular reasons,  the knowledge of Euroenthusiasts that  a strong self-confident England would subvert their federalist plans and the Labour Party’s fear that an English parliament could  mean a near permanent Tory majority in England. Those things are obvious enough.  But there is something deeper, more subtle, more poisonous, whose acid growth has slowly corroded our entire public life, namely  elite sponsored Anglophobia which has its roots in the currently dominant elite ideology of the West, liberal internationalism.

For more than a generation there has been assiduously nurtured amongst our elite a habit of public belittlement of England and the English. The disease spreads far beyond politics and infects the worlds of mediafolk, academics, public servants, pressure groups and important businessmen.  These people I shall call the Public Class.  The habit has become so ingrained and so widespread, that gratuitous insult by public figures of all things English  and the energetic promotion of all peoples and cultures other than the English, has become the norm rather than the exception. Things have come to such a pass that it is now commonly suggested by the Public Class that Englishness does not exist and any attempt to protect English interests is treated as at best chauvinism  and at worst racism. We have the unsavoury spectacle of a native ruling elite actively denigrating their own culture and generally acting against the interests of the mass of their people. Historically, such behaviour is commonly found in monarchies, aristocracies and despotisms. In a supposed democracy, it is best described as bizarre.

This dangerous habit of mind for England extends to the one parliamentary  party, the Conservatives, which might be expected to rebel against it.  William Hague, an Englishman born and bred, gave the game away in an interview in the Daily Telegraph (8/7/98) when he stated “I am not an  English nationalist” and declared that he “is determinedly British rather than English” and was “dismayed to see so many  St George Crosses at the world cup.” It comes as no surpriseto learn that he has since rejected an English parliament on the ground that “it could prove a decisive step in the break-up of the United Kingdom” (translation:  Mr Hague is unreservedly willing to subordinate England’s interests to  preserving the union at all costs).

The bogus nature of the claims made by those who scream blue murder at the slightest public expression of English pride or defence of English interests is shown by the uncritical support the same people give to Scotch, Welsh and Irish nationalism. They also give the game away when they argue that England is so large in comparison with the other parts  of the UK that a Federation would be unbalanced. In other words, their fear is really that England would naturally dominate a federation. The argument about federal imbalance can be simply shown up for what it is, a demonstrable nonsense, by referring to the examples of the USA, Canada and  India. There are sixty Californians to every Alaskan; seventy bodies  in Ontario for each person in Prince Edward Island and one hundred and eleven inhabitants of Uttar Pradesh for every human being in Goa.

What exactly is this terrible danger our political elite see in their misnamed English nationalism? It is not that England would oppress her Celtic neighbours. It is not that England would engage in any form of aggressive action against the rest of Britain. The fear quite simply is that an England with its own voice and political focus would attend to its own interests. The political fat would then would be in the fire.

The prime political fact of the UK is that England  enjoys such a preponderance in population, wealth, educational opportunity, industry and commerce  that she inevitably dominates the other parts of Britain. In fact, England has such a predominant position that she could, if she but  had the political will, utterly dictate the terms of any future  Union or dismantlement of the Union. She has five sixths of the population. She has more than five sixths of the wealth, commerce and industry. An English parliament with the same powers as the Scots would account for approximately three quarters of total UK state expenditure. Most pertinently the English taxpayer pays massive subsidies to the rest of the UK.  An English parliament would eventually mean an end to these  subsidies. It is this fact above all others which frightens those who oppose such an assembly. The effect of ending these English payments to the Celts  would  be profound.

The Eurofederalists  share the fears of English interests being realised and defended, but their reasons are different. They understand that a strong, self-confident England would spell the end of their plans to embed Britain within the EU. That Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should have a means of national political expression is nothing to them, because these countries are too insignificant and above all too poor to resist the march of Eurofederalism. England with fifty million people and the third or fourth largest economy in the EU is a different kettle of fish. It is also a fact that opinion polls show the English to be considerably more Eurosceptic than the rest of the UK, many of whose peoples  harbour fantasies of being given massive subsidies by the EU  in the manner of the Irish Republic, as “nations within Europe”.

Before the 2010 election the Tory position was for “English votes on English laws”, a misnomer because what they really meant was all MPs except those sitting for Scottish seats voting, the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies not have the same depth of devolved powers as the Scots’   “Wee pretendy parliament”, as Billy Connolly described the largely English-taxpayer funded edifice in Edinburgh.  Since the formation of the Big LibCon coalition, Cameron has made no mention of this. It is a fair bet that the proposal is dead while the coalition exists. If the proposal to shift from first-past-the-post to the Alternative Vote system for general elections becomes law, then Britain will probably be cast into a situation of perpetual coalition, one at least of the partners in which would be the LibDems or Labour. Neither would countenance a move to any measure which would give the English any political voice.  Hence, it is difficult to see how either English-votes-for-English-laws or any other move short of an English Parliament such as an English Grand Committee will be on the agenda for the foreseeable future.

The English-votes-for-English laws or anything else short of would have been of little use in immediately changing the disadvantage under which England constantly suffers, not least because the Welsh and Northern Irish MPs would be voting on much of the legislation because it would apply to them. However, it would be of great utility in forcing MPs to publicly address the imbalances produced by the present devolution settlement. That in turn could spill over into the question of our immersion in the EU which is the other end in the pincer movement between Westminister and Brussels to Balkanise the UK .

Ultimately the USA is the child of England: no England, no United States

Ultimately the USA is the child of England: no England, no United States. The nonexistence of the United States   would have made a colossal difference to the history of the past two centuries and to the present day, not least because  it is and has been for a century or more responsible for a tremendous proportion of global scientific discovery and technological development.

At this point I can hear the cry of many: why the English not the British? Was not the United States formed as much by the  Scots and Irish as by the English? There will even be those who will press the claims of the Germans. A little careful  thought will show that no one but the English could have been responsible, although many peoples and cultures have  subsequently added to the considerable variety of American life.

The English were the numerically dominant settlers from the Jamestown settlement in 1607 until the Revolution. Moreover, and this is the vital matter, they were overwhelmingly the dominant settlers for the first one hundred years. Even in 1776 English descended settlers formed, according to the historical section of the American Bureau of Census, nearly sixty percent of the population and the majority of the rest of the white population was from the non-English parts of Britain. This English predominance may not seem important at first glance because of the immense non-Anglo-Saxon immigration which occurred from the eighteenth century onwards. Would not, a reasonable man might ask, would not the later immigration swamp the earlier simply because of its greater scale? The answer is no – at least until the relaxation of immigration rules in the sixties – because the numbers of non-Anglo Saxons coming into America were always very small compared with the existing population of the USA.

When immigrants enter a country their descendants will generally adopt the social and cultural colouring of the  native population. The only general exception to this well attested sociological fact is in a situation of conquest,  although even there the invader if few in number will become integrated through intermarriage and the general pressure of the culture of the majority population working through the generations. Thus at any time in the development of the USA the bulk of the population were practisers of a general culture which strongly reflected that of the original colonisers, namely the English. Immigrants were therefore inclined to adopt the same culture.

America’s English origins spread throughout her culture. Her law is founded on English common law. The most famous of  American law officers is the English office of sheriff. Congress imitates the eighteenth century British Constitution (President = King; Senate = Lords; House of Representatives = The House of Commons) with, of course, the difference of a codified constitution. (It would incidentally be truer to describe the British Constitution as uncodified rather than unwritten). It is an irony that their system of government has retained a large degree of the   monarchical and aristocratic principles whilst that of Britain has removed power remorselessly from King and aristocracy and placed it resolutely in the hands of elected representatives who have no formal mandate beyond the  representation of their constituents.

 The Declaration of Independence is full of phrases and sentiments redolent of English liberty. The prime political texts of the American revolution were those of the Englishmen John Locke and Tom Paine. The American Constitution is  designed to alleviate faults in the British Constitution not to abrogate it utterly. The first ten amendments which form  the American Bill of Rights draw their inspiration from the English Bill of Rights granted by William of Orange. The  American Revolution was conducted by men whose whole thought was in the English political tradition.

The English influence is written deeply into the American  landscape. Take a map of the States and see how many of the place names are English, even outside the original thirteen colonies which formed the USA. Note that they are divided into parishes and counties.

 Above all other cultural influences stands the English language. Bismarck thought that the fact that America spoke  English was the most significant political fact of his time. I am inclined to agree with him. But at a more fundamental level, the simple fact that English is spoken by Americans as their first language means that their thought processes will be broadly similar to that of the English. Language is the ultimate colonisation of a people.

 Moreover, the English spoken by the majority of Americans is still very much the English of their forebears. It is, for  example, far less mutated than the English spoken in India. The English have little difficulty in understanding USA-born white Americans whatever their regional origin. Indeed, it may come as a surprise to many Americans that the average Englishman probably finds it easier to understand most American forms of often affect not to understand English accents, but it is amazing how well they understand them when they need something. Oscar Wilde’s aphorism that “America and England are two countries divided by a common language” was witty but, as with so much of what he said, utterly at variance with reality.

 There is a special relationship between England and America but it is not the one beloved of politicians. The special  relationship is one of history and culture. American culture is an evolved Englishness, much added to superficially but  still remarkably and recognisably English.

When you go to the cinema think of how often English legends such as Robin Hood are used by Americans. Reflect on how, until recently at least, American universities would give as a matter of course considerable time to the study of writers such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen. These things happen naturally and without self-consciousness because English culture and history is part of American history.