English resentment will inevitably grow and have nowhere to go within the political system. The danger will be that people will turn to violence because they have no democratic means of gaining national representation. Suppose no mainstream party takes up the cause. Suppose that English majorities committed to an English parliament were elected to Westminster, yet were never able to form a government because an English minority allied to the Celts formed a Commons majority. Suppose that Proportional Representation was introduced and practically removed forever the opportunity for a single party to form a government. All this and a media dedicated to preventing honest public discussion of the subject. Some would think that no meaningful constitutional or nonviolent opportunity was left?
The most obviously inflammatory constitutional position would be where an English party advocating an English parliament gains a majority of English seats in the Commons but did not gain an overall Commons majority. Using parliamentary procedures and keeping their behaviour within customary bounds, they could inconvenience the business of government but little more. They might boycott Parliament but that would be an impotent ruse unless linked to massive demonstrations. They might set up a self-declared English parliament but it would have no power. The best tactics in such a situation would be for the party with the English majority to take the lead in organising civil disobedience and to announce before the election that they would do so if an English parliament was denied.
Then there is Europe. Our enmeshment in the EU may become so advanced that we could not legally set up an English parliament. Fanciful? Suppose that the EU at some future date insists on Regional Assemblies throughout the EU and this is accepted by a British government. Such Assemblies might then be set up in England without referenda. Suppose further that the EU insists that the only representation for domestic matters rests with the Regional Assemblies. Add to that entry into EMU the ever diminishing control over policy in foreign relations and plans for an EU defence force and tax harmonisation, and it would be constitutionally impossible for England to set up a meaningful parliament for it could decide nothing. The only nonviolent answer to such a situation would be to elect a UK or an English parliament to declare independence from the EU.
The English should not be afraid of national feeling. Let them ask themselves why should all peoples except the English be encouraged to celebrate and defend their ethnicity? The oft cited dichotomy between patriotism and nationalism is contrived. Both words have at their core a pride of nation and a desire to protect and celebrate the nation and culture. Nationalism is a synonym for patriotism. The true difference is between non-aggressive and aggressive patriotism; between those who wish to celebrate and protect their nation within their existing territory and those who wish to invade and compromise the culture and territories of others. The modern English of all peoples can be trusted to remain within the limits of non-aggressive nationalism.
Devolution and our membership of the EU raise the most profound of political questions: who governs? Those who would deny England a parliament do so because for one reason or another they wish to destroy England as a nation. The English must work unceasingly for an parliament both for their self-respect and to prevent the political murder of Albion.
