Category Archives: history

English education: the roots of its politicisation

When I left school in the mid-sixties the Empire was effectively finished – the final nail in the coffin of imperial feeling was banged in by our entry into the EU in 1972, which alienated the white dominions – and a new spirit of anti-Establishment feeling was beginning to erode school discipline. But progressive ideals had not yet taken hold the educational establishment and the comprehensive disaster was only in its infancy. The school leaving exams, the O and A Levels, were a real test of competence in both their subjects and of the literacy and numeracy of candidates. To take but one example of the difference between then and now: even O Level science exams had, for 16-year-olds, demanding practicals as well as written papers.

By the mid seventies the grammar schools had been reduced to a rump of a few hundred. Ironically, most of those which had converted to comprehensive schools or which had chosen to become private schools to preserve their status, had been forced to change by a supposedly conservative government, that of Ted Heath, whose education minister was Margaret Thatcher. The failure of Heath to stop comprehensivisation was a harbinger of what was to happen under the future Conservative governments of Thatcher and Major.

Comprehensivisation

The comprehensive ideal is not innately wrong. Children of very widely differing abilities can be successfully taught together. Traditionally, the greatest public schools in England have been comprehensives of a sort. They took boys who varied from the exceptionally bright to the stonewall stupid and managed largely to successfully educate both groups and all those in between. The very bright won scholarships to Oxbridge, while the stonewall stupid at least left school functionally literate.

But these schools were hopeless models for a state comprehensive system. They drew almost all of their pupils from the middle and upper classes and the resources available to the schools from fees and endowments vastly outstripped any that could ever be available to state funded schools. The social class of the pupils meant that the pupils had expectations of being in the higher reaches of society when they entered adult life and parents who actively wanted and expected their children to be educated. To these advantages were added greatly superior financial resources which permitted the recruitment of first rate staff, small classes and personal tuition.

A general comprehensive system lacks the advantages of a great public school. Most of the schools will be dominated by the children of the working class simply because they are by far the most numerous. That would be true even if all private schools were abolished and “bussing” of middle and upper class children was enforced to ensure that schools were socially mixed.

Inevitably the adult expectations of working class children tend to be lower than those of the middle and upper classes. Their parents are generally less supportive of the idea of education. A significant minority are actively hostile to their children becoming better educated than they are because it divorces the children from their workingclass roots. Few will be able to provide active academic assistance to their children. Those facts alone make mixed ability teaching difficult. Add in the much smaller financial resources available to state schools – which expresses itself in larger classes, a narrower curriculum and, on average, less able and less well motivated staff – and you have a recipe for low educational attainment. In such schools the bright and academically interested pupils often become isolated, under-challenged intellectually and frequently bullied, while the duller, non-academic majority are allowed to plough an educational furrow, which stretches from academic inadequacy to an outright failure of education.

In practice comprehensivisation was much worse than that. Bussing was not enforced. The better off continued to send their children to fee-paying schools – today approximately 7 per cent of our schoolchildren are privately educated, a higher proportion than in the 1960s when many middleclass parents were happy to send their children to state grammar schools. (It is a grand irony that comprehensivisation rescued the public schools, many of which were struggling to maintain numbers by 1965).

Social segregation by the use of fee-paying schools was amplified both by the natural segregation of social classes into geographical areas – in the absence of enforced “bussing” a middle class suburb will have a local school which is largely filled with middleclass children – and by the widespread practice of middle class parents moving to areas where good state schools were available. The consequence has been a state school system which is heavily segregated by class, with the schools dominated by the working class tending to be the lowest achieving.

The subversion of the social mixing part of the comprehensive ideal was further complicated by mass immigration. This introduced not only racial and ethnic conflict into schools, a toxic enough disruptive element in itself, but also created grave practical problems because so many of the immigrant children did not have a competence in English. The official promotion of multiculturalism and its concomitant idea that any member of an ethnic minority is automatically a victim of white society complicated the position further, not least in the area of discipline. Ethnic minorities soon realised that in the context of an official sponsorship of “victimhood” they could get away with more and more. Native English children seeing this, naturally enough, also became more inclined to misbehave.

Because immigrants settled almost entirely in large towns and cities, these problems were and are confined almost exclusively to schools where the white pupils were workingclass, who found their already inferior opportunities for education further reduced. Worse, immigration was the final lever which allowed progressive education to not only gain absolute ascendency in the English state educational system, but to transform the progressive ideal into an overt political ideology, the ideology we know today as political correctness.

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.

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.

A guide to Anglophobe propaganda

The England-haters use contradictory propaganda tactics in their quest to undermine any attempt to give England a political voice or any other point of national focus. They argue that England is too large to be given a parliament because it would be overly dominant in what would be a de facto federal Britain (Ken Clarke). They say that the English cannot be trusted with power because they are a violent people (Jack Straw). They rant that English nationalism is dangerous (Gisele Stuart). On the obverse of the Anglophobe propaganda coin they argue that there is no such thing as Englishness, no such people as the England, that England is simply a geographical expression (John Prescott). The two positions: that the English are dangerously nationalistic and there is no such thing as the English cannot both be sustained, because if the English do not exist they cannot be dangerously nationalistic and if they are dangerously nationalistic they must exist.

The anti-English camp can rely on Britain’s national politicians to decide whether or not England has a Parliament and a government devoted to her sole interests. Other points of national focus such as England’s dominant role in world history and her sporting teams are more problematic because , unlike an English Parliament and government, they actually exist. The Anglophobes deal with the history problem with a two-pronged attack.

They ensure that English history is barely taught in schools and such history as is taught is slanted to cast the English (and British) in the role of historical villains, most notably in the case of the Atlantic slave trade, the British Empire (although little is taught about the Empire beyond the message that it was a case of colonial exploitation and that it was that exploitation which made England/Britain rich, a claim which at best is simply wrong – it was the industrial revolution which made England then Britain rich – and at worst a politically motivated lie. Teaching the history of the Empire in any depth would of course run the risk of those being taught beginning to think what an amazing thing it was for a country on the edge of Europe to have created such a political and geographical edifice and from there to begin to think that only an extraordinary people could have managed such a feat.

As for institutions such as England’s national sporting teams, there is nothing the England-hater likes more than to see such teams being regularly beaten. To this end virtually unfettered access to England’s top-level sporting club sides by foreign players and coaches is permitted. This results in fewer and fewer opportunities for English players even in the most popular English game, football, where less than a third of the players who start in the Premier league each week are English. This smaller player pool also gives national selectors the excuse to try foreign players who have qualified for England through very lax qualification rules to play in England sides, a fact that drives the Anglophobes to paroxysms of delight for the more than an England side is one only in name, the happier they are for it satisfies their desire to both have a side which is less and less attractive to the English and one which represents their fantasy of a “diverse England”. For the same reason of “diversity” the Anglophobes also energetically urge the selection of English born blacks and Asians at the slightest provocation. Let an Asian take five wickets in a County Championship match or a black score a couple of goals in the Premier league and he immediately becomes in the eyes of the politically correct an England prospect.

Political correctness is the other great Anglophobe engine. By making “discrimination” the supposed test of fairness for any situation, the politically correct have made it impossible for any perceived favouring of the English, even if this is merely to extol the merits and accomplishments of the English, to occur without squeals of racism, xenophobia, English arrogance and English nationalism rising from the white English-haters and their ethnic minority clients. Mass immigration allows this type of mentality unlimited rein.

The Anglophobe desire to dilute Englishness as a concept can be seen in two recent media stories. A film of the Hobbit is to be made in New Zealand. When Hobbit extras were being selected an Asian woman Naz Humphreys, was initially rejected by the casting manager with the words ”We are looking for light-skinned people. I’m not trying to be – whatever. It’s just the brief. You’ve got to look like a Hobbit.” (Daily Telegraph 29 Nov 2010). Ms Humphrey’s inanely commented ”It’s 2010 and I still can’t believe I’m being discriminated against because I have brown skin.” (ibid). She then complained to the director Peter Jackson whose spokesman came along with the routine crawling pc response, describing the casting director’s words as “an incredibly unfortunate error” and insisting that no one at a senior level would ever “ issue instructions of this kind to the casting crew. All people meeting the age and height requirements are welcome to audition.” (ibid). The outcome will doubtless be a sprinkling of what Dame Edna Everidge calls “tinted folk” amongst the extras in what is a quintessentially English tale which shock horror! was conceived as being entirely white. How do we know this? Tolkein tells us . Here is his description of Hobbits: “Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked with mouths apt to laughter and to eating and drinking.” (From the prologue of the Lord of the Rings.) It is instructive to compare the politically correct response to an Asian playing a white part with the hostile reaction to white person playing Othello when the squeals of politically correct rage are unending.

But we do not have to rely solely on a physical description of Hobbits. Tolkein’s stated intention was to create an English myth:

“I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story – the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths- which I would dedicate simply to: England; to my country. It would possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our ‘air’ (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the east), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elsuive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be ‘high’, purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land now long steeped in poetry.”

He wished to do this because: “I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own, not of the quality that I sought, and found in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish, but nothing English, save impoverished chapbook stuff.”

Englishness is also attacked more obliquely. Take the latest film in the Narnia series, “The Dawn Treader”. The C S Lewis books from which the film adaptations are made are both very English in character and tone, but they are also built around a resolutely Christian theology. England is not a Christian country in the sense of most of its people being worshipping Christians, but Christianity is woven into its historical and moral fabric. It is part of the English cultural skeleton.

In the Narnia books represents Christ or if you prefer Christian values though the lion Aslan. Lewis described Aslan as ‘ “ an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question: “What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia?”.’ (Daily Telegraph 04 Dec 2010).

In “The Dawn Treader”, Aslan is voiced by the Irish actor Liam Neeson. After its release Neeson said: “Aslan symbolises a Christlike figure, but he also symbolises for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries.

“That’s who Aslan stands for as well as a mentor figure for kids – that’s what he means for me.” (ibid)

Walter Hooper, Lewis’s former secretary and a trustee of his estate, commented “It is nothing whatever to do with Islam. Lewis would have simply denied that. He wrote that ‘the whole Narnian story is about Christ’. Lewis could not have been clearer.” (ibid).

The intent of comments such as Neeson is to reduce the world to a multi-cultural soup which remove works such as Narnia away from their English roots.

Such behaviour is not trivial because these two examples of the deracination of Englishness are just that, examples. This type of behaviour is commonplace and the steady drip, drip of the propaganda does have an effect. It should be vigorously resisted on principle.

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

— 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.

English Icons – an exercise in Anglophobic NuLabour propaganda

Late in 2005 a body called Icons Online launched a website English Icons (www.icons.org.uk -the website is still up but is no longer being actively managed). The organisation was the creation of the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS). It claimed to be entirely independent despite being funded by the DCMS (to the tune of £1m according to the Daily Telegraph 28 4 2006). The minister with direct responsibility for Icons Online was the black London MP David Lammy, while cabinet minister Tessa Jowell had indirect responsibility as minister for the DCMS.

The ostensible purpose of Icons Online was to provide the English with a sense of nation by celebrating English accomplishments, inventions, events and such forth. The public would nominate and vote on such things and that a number of these nominations would be selected to be official English Icons.

This was an official projection of the liberal propaganda myth that the English have no sense of nation and the Icons’ website unashamedly made this intent clear:” Some people argue that there is no such thing as a shared English culture. They say all those invasions by the Normans and Romans simply left us with a ‘hotch potch’ of other people’s cultures. Paradoxically, this melting pot is what makes England unique. And today’s multicultural communities make this mix even more vibrant and interesting.”

The covert reason Icons Online was created is simple; NuLabour were only too well aware that the English have an immense sense of nation and were growing increasingly restive about their deliberate marginalisation by the British political elite, who besides regularly insulting the English, siphon off vast amounts of English money to give to the Celtic Fringe whilst denying the English any national political voice in an English Parliament having given such a voice to the other parts of the UK.

The Blair Government was trying control this growing English unrest by creating a soviet-style propaganda unit whose ostensible purpose was to give voice to the wishes of the people, but whose real purpose was to produce a preordained propaganda scenario. The preordained propaganda scenario in this instance was to portray England and the English as a happy-clappy multicultural heaven. This intention was signalled not only in the passage from their website quoted above, but also by the choice of The Windrush as one of the original panel chosen Icons. Further evidence comes from the official minutes of the Icons advisory board (available on the ICONS website). The minutes for 13 10 2005 stated:

“JD [Jerry Doyle, Icons’ MD] reported that the Daily Mirror had agreed to be media partner to the ICONS project at launch stage. Efforts had also been progressing to ensure that ICONS’ partners were fully involved in the project. It had been a great success to date, and there was an impressive coalition of support from the National Trust. English Heritage and a range of city museums. Being inclusive was also crucial to the project and JD said she was pleased to report involvement from the Black Cultural Archives, the Jewish Museum and the Muslim Council. Efforts would continue over time to include other groups.”

While the minutes for 8 12 2005 run:

“Partnership news was reported to the meeting by JD. Meetings had taken place with the Football Association, Pride personnel in Brighton and Mencap (re an art competition in 2006). ICONS attended the launch of Islam Awareness Week to build up contacts and Ken Livingstone supplied his nomination at the event.”

According to the Icons website, the official icons were to be chosen by “An advisory board [which] has been set up to help us sift through nominations and decide which will be featured on this site. This group, drawn from a wide range of backgrounds and experience, will consider all your comments and suggestions – as well as the public vote.” “A wide range of backgrounds and experience” eh? The board is comprised of entirely of public servants, members of Quangocracy, mediafolk and academics. The nine members included these three (text taken from Icons website):

“Vineet Lal is currently England Brand Manager with Enjoy England at VisitBritain. Enjoy England is the official national tourism organisation for England, and Vineet has been working with the England team since its inception in March 2003. Originally from Edinburgh, he grew up in Scotland and his tourism career has included roles at Edinburgh and Lothians Tourist Board and isitScotland… [He] thinks it is a delightful irony that someone with such a strong Celtic background should end up working on a brand strategy for England!”

“Jo Turner is head of Arts Online and International at the Department for Culture Media and Sport. She has worked for the department since 1993 looking after policies concerning sport and young people, widening access to museums (including the introduction of free admission), and broadcasting. She also looks after DCMS policy matters for Culture Online. She has worked as Private Secretary to Ministers dealing with Sport, Broadcasting and Tourism. Jo has a degree in History, and was previously a curator at the Imperial War Museum, dealing with photograph collections, and has published work for the IWM about the contribution made by ethnic minority forces.”

“Sam Walker is director of the Black Cultural Archive and Museum. Based in Brixton, the Black Cultural Archive and Museum was developed during the 1980s to collect and document the history and life experiences of black peoples in the UK…”

The last published Advisory Board minutes (dated 23 2 2006) includes this statement:” The second wave of Icons (for addition to the site late April) was discussed. The editorial director suggested additions to his original list to better represent the results of the public vote. Advisory Board agreed.”

When this “wave of Icons” was announced in April 2006 they included the Notting Hill Carnival and Brick Lane. I used the Freedom of Information Act to get the actual voting figures. The Notting Hill Carnival was chosen by the panel despite 84.5% of the public voting NO. Brick Lane was chosen with a mere 20 people taking part in the vote. The voting figures provided by the DCMS for all 21 Icons were:

Icon name votes % yes Yes Votes No Votes

Big Ben 3321 87.70% 2913 408

Blackpool Tower 1090 65.20% 711 379

Brick Lane 20 65.00% 13 7

Cricket 2650 87.80% 2327 323

Domesday Book 1126 80.90% 911 215

Eden Project 597 30.80% 184 413

Globe Theatre 637 73.20% 466 171

Hadrian’s Wall 1040 74.60% 776 264

Hay Wain 610 70.80% 432 178

HMS Victory 1378 82.10% 1131 247

Lindisfarne Gospels 245 61.20% 150 95

Mini-skirt 933 45.30% 423 510

Morris Dancing 6923 88.30% 6113 810

Notting Hill Carnival 2189 15.30% 335 1854

Origin of Species 727 69.60% 504 223

Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen 790 65.80% 520 270

Pub 4353 87.90% 3826 527

Queen’s head stamp

design by Machin 596 68.60% 409 187

St George Flag 2265 87.80% 1989 276

Sutton Hoo Helmet 661 64.10% 424 237

York Minister 735 68.20% 501 234

The Daily Telegraph (28 April 2006) reported that these icons had been chosen as English icons because each was “one of the 21 most voted for icons suggested by the public since the website was set up in January”. Clearly neither the Notting Hull Carnival nor Brick Lane was “one of the 21 most voted for”. They were selected simply to progress Icons Online’s openly declared multicultural agenda: the purpose of The Notting Hill Carnival being to include blacks; that of Brick Lane to include Asians within the concepts of Englishness and England.

Icons Online also censored comments made about Icons, both those nominated and chosen. Here is the project’s director Daniel Hahn writing to me concerning comments made about the Windrush which never appeared on the site: “ Thank you for your e-mail and your continuing interest in our site. At present we have three comments published, and ten which have been submitted and rejected. As you’ll see if you browse through the other icons on the site, we are happy to include debate on our site by publishing comments that don’t support a particular thing’s iconic status; we are not, however, prepared to publish anything we believe to be obviously racist or in any other way offensive, into which category I’m afraid those ten rejected comments fall. “

In addition to pushing of the multicultural agenda, the Icons Website was manipulating matters in the general politically correct interest. The most notable example of this to date was the fox hunting Icon nomination. This has been changed from “fox hunting” (as nominated by the public) to “hunting and the ban”, something which was never nominated by the public nor voted for. (The Icons website still has it as fox hunting but their press releases have it as hunting and the ban).

Apart from being a great political scandal, the behaviour of Icons Online also has criminal implications because taxpayers’ money was being used for purposes other than those which Parliament has agreed to, that is to fund a project to allow the ordinary Englishman and woman to express their sense of national identity. The further manipulation to prevent non-pc Icons such as fox-hunting being included compounds the offence.

I wrote to Tessa Jowell, my MP Frank Dobson and the then Tory shadow spokesman on Culture, Media and Sport Hugo Swire asking them to take action to expose the scandal and prevent it continuing. Jowell did not reply and Dobson refused to act.

Swire sent me a long letter which dealt in detail with the manipulation of the fox hunting nomination, but failed entirely to mention let alone address the choice of the Notting Hill Carnival or Brick Lane as Icons. However, he did send me an interesting reply he received from the DCMS when he put down this Parliamentary question: “Mr Hugo Swire (Devon East): To ask the Secretary of State for Culture,Media and Sport, whether (a) she, (b) Ministers and (c) an official instructed that hunting be omitted from her Department sponsored cultural icons survey.” (22 5 2006).

The reply was given by David Lammy: “No Ministers or officials in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, has instructed the editorial team at the ICONS project on what to exclude from the list of nominated items. Such decisions are entirely a matter for the projects editorial team governed by an independent Advisory Board…”

English Icons was clearly a politically correct propaganda exercise to “include” everyone living in England. Its effect is of course the opposite: it angers the English and leaves ethnic minorities where they were before: feeling anything but English for the icons celebrate not Englishness but something other.

The fact that so many people (1854) took the trouble to vote “NO, the Notting Hill Carnival is not an English icon”, and only 20 people in the entire country bothered to vote one way or the other on the Brick Lane nomination tells you two things: (1) next to no one thinks they are English Icons and (2) the English are very strongly opposed to this type of political manipulation. The problem the English have is that a lack of any mainstream political voice. Until that is remedied the British elite will continue to manipulate and abuse then. The English Icons project is a prime example of that abuse.

England: the most extraordinary of national histories

The most extraordinary fact of English history is that it happened. On the periphery of Europe, sparsely populated for most of its history, always faced by powerful neighbours, it is barely credible that this people achieved such a prominent place in history. Rationally England should have been throughout its history a small impoverished backward state, an extra on the European stage. Consider the history of Ireland which was placed in much the same general situation as England. A novelist who created an equivalent fictional history would be laughed out of court on the grounds of utter improbability.

There is so much that is unusual about England. Not only did she possess the only world empire ever worthy of the name, she produced the one bootstrapped industrial revolution, has displayed a quite unparalleled political stability and a unique political evolution leading to representative government and perhaps most importantly in the long run created a language which for its all round utility cannot be equalled. England is the cause of the modern world. Let her self-respect rest on that massive fact. The English do not need to invent a mythical past for their self-esteem: the reality with all its warts is splendid and marvellous.

But history is more than events and institutions. It is about great and influential personalities. England has many to chose from, I will be self-indulgent and put forward some of my favourites. Alfred The Great (for his preservation of England), Chaucer, Shakespeare, John Bunyan, Queen Elizabeth, Cromwell, Newton, Locke, Wellington, Darwin. All left a mark on the world which went far beyond these shores. (My choice does not include any person from the twentieth century because I believe it is too soon to judge their significance.)

Why did England become what it is and achieve what it has? The conventional explanations revolve around such accidents of nature as its island status providing a barrier to disruptive invasion and its prolific quantities of coal and iron ore summoning an industrial revolution. But none of these hold water because no individual reason or group of reasons is unique to England.

Take the example of Japan, which in its island status, close proximity to one of the most advanced parts of the world and absence of foreign invasion for a great time most resembles England, never came close to achieving and industrial revolution or any form of government which took account of the whole of society. Ultimately, the cause of England’s difference must remain a mystery. If I had to put my finger on a general reason, I would say that England has come the closest of all countries to maturity as a people. General McArthur memorably said of the Japanese that they were a nation of twelve year olds. We are not a nation of seasoned adults, but perhaps a nation of eighteen year olds. I suspect that is about the best any country can hope for.

Is there an English personality? I conclude there is, for I believe all peoples develop a secondary personality. What are the English? They are sceptical, they are pragmatic, they are (still) natural respecters of the law. Above all they are not murderously violent. It is a remarkable thing that mob violence in England for centuries has rarely resulted in mass deaths – this trait is seen in football hooliganism today. The conduct of the English Civil War was wholly exceptional in its lack of sack and pillage which was the norm on the continent in the seventeenth century. The English have long possessed in spades the qualities which make civilised life possible.

But gratifying as our history is, we must never forget that we live in a dynamic universe. The past is but the past and old glories no guardians of the future. As a matter of urgency the English must learn to resist the incessant insult to which they are now subject. A nation may be likened to a man. If a man continually accepts insult or engages in repeated self-denigration, we think him a poor fellow. At first such behaviour is embarrassing. Soon it becomes irritating. Eventually it breeds a profound contempt and contempt is mother to all enormities. So it is with peoples. On the simple ground of self-preservation, the English cannot afford to continue to permit the present gratuitous and incontinent abuse offered by both foreigners and her own ruling elite nor tolerate the suppression of the English voice.

How may the English reverse the present state? As with all peoples, the English need to be taught their history to give them a psychological habitation. Moreover, the myths of the England haters dissolve readily enough in the acid of fact. The problem is that there is presently a conscious effort backed by the forces of the state to deny the English a proper knowledge of their history, or indeed any meaningful knowledge at all. Incredible but true. The attack is two pronged: denigration and a concentration on historical trivia at the expense of the important.

The habit of denigration has a long history. Here is Friedrich Hayek’s description of the left of fifty years ago:

The Left intelligentsia…have so long worshipped foreign gods that they seem to have become almost incapable of seeing any good in the characteristic English institutions and traditions. That the moral values on which most of them pride themselves are largely the products of the institutions they are out to destroy, these socialists cannot, of course, admit. Sdaly, this attitude is unfortunately not confined to avowed socialists. Though one must hope that it is not true of the less vocal but more numerous cultivated Englishman, if one were to judge by the ideas which find expression in current political discussion and propaganda the Englishman who not only “the language speak that Shakespeare spake”, but also “the faith and morals hold that Milton held” seems to have almost vanished. [The Road to Serfdom]

What the left internationalists did not have fifty odd years ago was control of education or a supremacy in politics and the media. They now possess this utterly. The concentration on trivia is of more recent birth and had its roots in the late fifties and early sixties. Prior to then, complaints about an over concentration on “Kings and Queens” history existed, but no one in the academic world seriously suggested that such history was unimportant. That has now gone. Even pupils who have taken A-Level history know next to nothing. Facts and chronology have been replaced by “historical empathy” and investigative skills. Where once pupils would have learnt of Henry V, Wellington and the Great Reform Bill, they are now asked to imagine that they are a peasant in 14th Century England or an African slave on a slaver. The results of such “empathy” are not judged in relation to the historical record, but as exercises in their own right. Whatever this is, it is not historical understanding. Because history teaching has been removed from historical facts, the assessment of the work of those taught becomes nothing more than the opinion of the teacher. This inevitably results in the prejudices of the teacher being reflected in their presentation and marking. In the present climate of opinion within British education this means liberal political correctness wins the day. Thus history teaching, and the teaching of other subjects such as geography which can be given a PC colouring, has become no better than propaganda. This would be unfortunate if the propaganda promoted English history and culture uncritically. But to have anti-English propaganda in English schools and universities is positively suicidal. That it is state policy is barely credible.

The extent to which the state has embraced the politically correct, anti-British line is illustrated by this letter to the Daily Telegraph from Chris McGovern when director of the History Curriculum Association, which campaigns against the failure to teach British history fairly or comprehensively:

SIR–The landmarks of British history have become optional parts the national curriculum (report Sept. 10). They appear only as italicised examples of what is permissible to teach.

However, this permission is offered in guarded terms. A guidance letter already sent to every school in the country states: “… we would also like to emphasise that it is very much up to individual schools to determine whether or not to use the italicised examples”. However, there is no such equivocation about teaching history through a host of politically correct social themes. Failure to filter history through such perspectives as gender, race, agent and cultural diversity will be in breach of the law. (Sunday Telegraph 4/12/94).

That was the state of affirs 16 years ago. It has worsened considerably since. How have we reached this state? The root of it was in the mentality which Hayek noticed fifty years ago, but it required mass immigration for its realisation as a state policy. Multiculturalism was embraced as a mainstream political ideal in the late 1970s because politicians did not know what to do about mass immigration and its consequences. Both Labour and the Conservatives initially embraced the French solution to racial tension, namely integration. But by the end of the seventies integration was deemed by the our elite to be a failure at best and oppression at worst. Multiculturalism was its successor. Once it became the new official doctrine, the many eager Anglophobic and internationalist hands in British education and the mass media were free to give reign to their natural instincts.

Apart from the denigration and underplaying of English history and culture, the espousal of multiculturalism has had profound effects on English society. By continually denigrating and belittling the English, ethnic minorities have been encouraged to develop a contempt and hatred for England. It is the most consistent form of incitement to racial hatred within these shores, made all the more dangerous by its espousal by the British state and elite.

The practical effects are the creation of a grievance culture within the various ethnic minorities and a belief that English laws and customs may be ignored with impunity, a belief perhaps best exemplified by the Muslim attack on free expression. The position is made worse in that instance by the existence of the Race Relations Act, which is an attack on one of the things Englishmen have long prized: namely the right to say what one wants without fear of the criminal law.

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. This need not mean the creation of a vulgar, contrived chauvinism for there is so much of undeniable value in Britain’s past that a fictionalised and bombastic history is unnecessary. For example, why not base GCSE history teaching on a core of the development of the English language, the history of science and technology (with special emphasis on the industrial revolution), the development of the British constitution and the growth and administration of Empire? Multiculturalism should be abolished in the schools as a matter of policy.

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 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 time:

Englishmen, it is for everything dear and valuable to man on this side of the grave.

The English must learn to attend to their own interests for reasons of simple preservation. They may best do this by the creation of an English Parliament to provide England with a political and public voice. Only when that is done, may the liberal censorship of the ordinary men and women of England be broken.