Category Archives: parliament

Where are the English-Americans?

There are Irish-Americans, Scots-Americans, Scotch-Irish-Americans, Welsh-Americans, Polish-Americans, German-Americans , Italian-Americans, Korean-Americans, Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Colombian Americans, Dominican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Spanish Americans, and Salvadoran Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Iranian-Americans, and a host of other hyphenated citizens in the USA. Sometimes the hyphenation is based not on nationality but religion, for example, Muslim-American or Jewish-American. Sometimes it is based on race as in African-American or Asian-American.

There is one seemingly glaring omission from the catalogue of the culturally undecided: English-Americans. I say seemingly because there is a most obvious explanation for their absence: England was the cultural founder of the USA. Englishness is the default culture of the USA. Consequently, when the English have emigrated to the USA over the centuries they have not come to a land they felt was wholly alien or with a sense of victimhood or paranoia about their new home.

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. At the time of the first US census English descended settlers formed, according to the historical section of the American Bureau of Census, sixty per cent of the white population (http://tinyurl.com/67faop70 )and the majority of the rest of the white population was from the non-English parts of Britain ( In 1790 the population of the USA was 3,929,214 of which 3,172,006 were white and 757,208 black. http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/tab01.pdf).
It is possible that English ancestry was downplayed in the 1790 census and for much of the 19^th century because of the anti-British feeling caused by the American Revolution and various disputes afterwards such as the war of 1812. If so, the under recording of English ancestry would be amplified as the population expanded as time went on as the descendants of those wrongly classified continued the incorrect classification. However, whichever figures are taken one thing is certain, by 1790 the template for American society was cut and most importantly English was the dominant language, a fact which alone shows who were the dominant group for no minority could force a language on a majority.

In the House of Commons on 22 March 1775 Edmund Burke made a plea for understanding of the American colonists’ demands which was firmly based on their Englishness:

“…the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen…. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles. The people are Protestants… a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it…. My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government,—they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once
understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation,—the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect
will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you…”(http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15198/15198-h/15198-h.htm#CONCILIATION_WITH_THE_COLONIES).

The colonists for their part more often than not themselves as English. Even the rebels placed their rebellion on the ground that they were defending true English liberty, a liberty that had been usurped by the king. The Declaration of independence is a catalogue of breaches of what the colonists considered were their rights as Englishmen. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/american-declaration-of-independence/)

The early English predominance may not seem important at first glance because of the heavy 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 because the numbers of non-Anglo Saxons coming into America were always very small compared with the existing population of the USA. 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.

A distinction needs to be made between settlers and immigrants. Those colonising a land do not come with the intent to assimilate into an existing culture but to transplant their own ways onto fresh territory. The Greeks in the ancient world are a prime historical example.

The English who came to America in the 17^th century were intent on creating a world in their own cultural image, albeit with certain variations most notably different religious regimes. This they did in ways which remain to this day.

When immigrants enter a country their descendants will generally in time adopt at least some of the social and cultural colouring of the native population. Where there is no barrier such as racial difference or membership of an ethnic group with a very strong sense of identity such as the Jews, assimilation will often be complete within a generation or two. Even in a situation of deliberate conquest, the invader if fewer in number than the conquered – as is normally the case – will become integrated through intermarriage
and the general pressure of the culture of the majority population working through the generations. The demographic working out of the Norman Conquest over several centuries as the French invaders became English is a good example.

In the creation of a society, the further the distance from the founding culture the greater the need to maintain a sense of separateness. It is interesting that other missing hyphenated Americans are Canadian-American, Australian-American and New Zealand-American. That is plausibly because they are coming from societies which derive ultimately from England and which were founded by predominantely English settlers. That does raise the question of why the non-English Britons who went to the USA have self-consciously maintained their hyphenated status, most notably the Scots and the Irish. The answer most probably lies in the fact that they felt themselves to be peoples who were subject to England. In short, they were people who bore a grudge against England. It is worth adding that Americans who call themselves Scots-American or Irish-American today are indistinguishable from American-Americans in everything except for a sentimental attachment to their Celtic ancestry and a residual polishing of an historical victimhood.

The demographic significance of the English in the USA remains to this day. It is true that the percentage of those formally identifying themselves as of English origin has diminished. The 1980 US Census showed 26.34% of the US population (49, 598,035) claiming English ancestry (http://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/pc80-s1-10/tab02.pdf). There is no up to date census information, but the US Census Office’s 2008 American Community Survey shows only 9% of respondents claiming English ancestry, although that still makes them the third most numerous national group after the Germans and the Irish (http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ADPTable?_bm=y&-qr_name=ACS_2008_1YR_G00_DP2&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=ACS_2008_1YR_G00_&-_lang=en&-redoLog=false&-format=).

This strong diminution in 28 years makes no sense if it is taken as a literal reduction. Common sense says that millions of English descended people have not suddenly vanished from the USA. Nor, in view of their early predominance and continuing substantial emigration of the English to the USA after independence, does it make any sense for there to be more Americans with Irish or German ancestry than English ancestry.

The explanation for the fall is plausibly threefold: as the founding culture of the USA those with English simply think of themselves as Americans; as the oldest group in the USA, English ancestry on average is probably far more distant than other ethnic groups and lastly many of those with English ancestry will have mixed that ancestry with other groups especially more recent arrivals and will have claimed that allegiance instead of English. There is also the temptation in an age of group politics for people to claim an ancestry which they feel will be most advantageous to them. As the English in the USA do not make a song and dance about being English, other groups which do are likely to attract
those with a divided ancestry. The prime example of this is the way American presidents claim Irish ancestry no matter how tenuous whilst often ignoring much more substantial English ancestry. (http://presidentsparents.com/ancestry.html). There is also the general pressure of political correctness which casts WASPs (into which category English-Americans would generally fall) as an abusive and dislikeable elite ethnicity. That may
add to a general propensity to not identify as English.

A strong pointer to the continuing English connection with the USA are surnames. In 2000 the US Census Office released statistics showing that of the top ten most frequently occurring surnames in the USA, eight were of English/British origin. http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/2000surnames/index.html

Because of her origins and history Englishness is spread throughout US society. 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 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. 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. Americans often affect not to understand English accents other than received pronunciation, 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 which is still remarkably and recognisably English. English-American would be a tautology.

The importance of the continuing influence of the English for the USA can be seen by imagining what the situation would be were no unhyphenated Americans, if there was no group within the population which was devoid of a sense of victimhood, of being ill-at-ease with the society in which its members were born and raised. All that would be left would
be a society in which every racial or ethnic group competed,. There would be no stability or sense of social cohesion. At worst, it could be a recipe for incessant civil war. The English descended and English assimilated part of the population which sees itself as simply American provides the ballast which holds US society upright.

Make sure the costs of Scottish independence get into the media

The letter below was published in the Times 10 May 2011. It is extremely important that the debate on independence for Scotland is conducted on the basis that Scotland will not be allowed to walk away from the financial obligations of the UK. Left to his own devices Cameron will almost certainly be willing to sell-out English interests, for example, by developing a formula which did not require Scotland to take a share of the UK’s financial obligations based on their proportion of the UK population but on some spurious calculation based on need (think Barnett Formula) or a continuation of the English subsidy to Scotland for years as a “transition” payment.

Cameron was asked at Prime Minister’s Question on 11 May 2011 to confirm that the Scotland would, in the event of independence, be expected to take on a share of the UK National Debt and cease to receive any subsidy from England. He confirmed that this was the case – you could hear the reluctance in his voice – but then said that he did not want to campaign against independence by threatening the Scots, but by persuading them that staying in the Union was the best thing for all concerned. It was very telling that Cameron thought that the mention of Scotland taking on part of the National Debt and the ending of the English subsidy constituted threats. This matter needs close watching.

Sir – I have no visceral objection to Scotland leaving the Union provided the Scots meet their UK financial obligations. This means taking on a share proportionate to Scotland’s percentage of the UK population of the UK’s financial obligations existing at the point
of independence. These obligations would include the National Debt; all public sector pensions; all PFI/PPP contracts and any other public debt not covered by the previous categories.

The English subsidy to Scotland – currently around £8 billion a year – should cease and the division of the UK oil and gas fields would be decided on the UN Law of the Sea which defines territorial waters as those within a line drawn at the angle of the border of two countries. That would place a significant amount of oil and gas in English waters. In
addition, the many English public sector jobs which have been moved to Scotland should be repatriated.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

NB On the day my letter was published, there were several other letters in the Times which also dwelt on the question of Scotland taking on a proportionate share of the UK’s financial obligations. This may be a signal that the Murdoch papers have decided to push this issue.

Human accomplishment and the English

Robert Henderson

In his book “Human Accomplishment”   the American Charles Murray
calculates the contribution to civilisation made by   individuals
throughout history up until 1950. To give his calculations as much
objectivity as possible he measures the amount of attention given to
an individual   by specialists in their field in   sources such as
biographical dictionaries – put crudely, the greater the frequency of
mention and the larger the space devoted to an individual, the higher
they score.

Murray quantifies   achievements under the headings of   astronomy
(Galileo and Kepler tied for first place), biology (Darwin and
Aristotle), chemistry (Lavoisier), earth sciences (Lyell),   physics
(Newton and Einstein),   mathematics (Euler),   medicine   (Pasteur,
Hippocrates and Koch),   technology (Edison and Watt),    combined
scientific (Newton), Chinese philosophy (Confucious), Indian philosophy
(Sankara), Western philosophy (Aristotle), Western music (Beethoven and
Mozart), Chinese painting (Gu Kaizhi and Zhao Mengfu), Japanese
painting (Sesshu, Sotatsu and Korin),   Western art (Michelangelo),
Arabic literature, (al-Mutanabbi) Chinese literature (Du Fu), Indian
literature (Kalidasa),   Japanese literature (Basho and Chikamatsu
Monzaemon), Western literature (Shakespeare).

Objections have been made to Murray’s methodology such as the fact that
many of the great achievements of the past, especially in the arts,
have been anonymous, which give it a bias towards the modern period,
and    fears that it has a built-in Western bias – the representation
of non-Western figures in the science and technology categories is
minimal.   Nothing can be done about anonymity – it is worth pointing
out that the majority of those heading the categories lived at least
several centuries ago – but Murray substantially   guards against
pro-Western bias with the breadth and number of his sources and it is
simply a fact that science and advanced technology arose only in the
past few centuries and that both are essentially Western achievements.
It is also noteworthy that Murray’s method only places one of his
fellow   countrymen at number one in any category    (Edison   in
technology). If any bias exists it is unlikely to be conscious. At
worst, Murray’s findings can be seem as a fair rating   of Western
achievement.

The list of those heading the various categories (see second paragraph
above) suggests that Murray’s method is pretty sound despite any
possible methodological shortcomings, because those who come top are
all men of extreme achievement. There might be arguments over whether
Aristotle should take precedence over Plato or Kant, but no one could
honestly argue that Aristotle was an obviously unworthy winner of first
place in the philosophy category.

Of the 13 categories which can include Westerners (they are obviously
excluded from non-European literature and art),   Englishmen   are
undisputed firsts or share first place with one other in four: biology
Darwin   with Aristotle;   Physics Newton with Einstein;   combined
scientific Newton alone; Western literature Shakespeare alone.   No
other nation has more than two representatives at the top of a
category. The thirteen Western including categories have a total of 18
people in sole or joint first place. England has nearly a quarter of
those in first place and more than a quarter of the 15 who are drawn
from the modern period, say 1500 AD onwards.

Apart from those coming first,   the English show strongly in most of
the Western qualifying categories (especially in physics – 9 out of the
top 20, technology – 8 out of the top twenty – and Western literature).
The major exceptions are   Western art and   music, where English
representation is mediocre.   I think most people who think about the
matter at all would feel those cultural strengths and weaknesses
represent the reality of English history and society.

The fact that England shows so strongly in Murray’s exercise gives the
lie to the common representation of the English as unintellectual.
Moreover, there is much more to human intellectual accomplishment than
the fields covered by Murray, most notably the writing of history and
the social sciences, areas in which England has been at the forefront
throughout the modern period: think Gibbon, Macaulay, Herbert Spencer
and Keynes.

English intellectual history is a long one. It can reasonably be said
to begin in the early eighth century with Bede’s Ecclesiastical
History of the English, which amongst other things firmly establishes
the English as a people before England as a kingdom existed (“At
present there are in Britain…five languages and four nations –
English, British, Irish and Picts…” Book One).

In the late ninth century comes Alfred the Great, a king whose reign
was one of constant struggle against the Danes, but who thought
enough of learning to teach himself to read as an adult and then engage
in translations into Old English of devotional works such as Pope
Gregory’s Pastoral Care, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and Boethius’
The Consolation of Philosophy.

From Alfred’s reign comes the Anglo-Saxon Journal (ASJ), a work also
written in Old English. (There are nine surviving versions written at
different places, eight of which are in Old English with the odd man
out being in Old English with a Latin translation). The journal is
a history/myth of Britain and a narrative of the settlement of
Anglo-Saxons within it until the time of Alfred and then a putative
record of and commentary on the great events of English life from the
time of Alfred until the middle of the 12th century (like all such
medieval works the veracity of the ASJ is questionable, but at worst it
gives a flavour of the mentality of those living at the time). The work
is unique in medieval Europe for its scope and longevity and is
particularly noteworthy for the fact that it was written in the
vernacular throughout the three centuries or so of its existence, this
at a time when the normal language for writing in Western Europe was
Latin.

The    Norman   Conquest   subordinated   the   English    politically,
linguistically and socially for the better part of three   centuries,
but it did not kill English intellectual endeavour.   Those three
centuries of oppression saw the emergence of many of the ideas which
were later to produce the modern world. John of Salisbury   produced a
work on politics (Policraticus 1159) which was “the first attempt in
the Middle Ages at an extended and systematic treatment of political
philosophy” (G H Sabine A History of Political Theory p246) and one
which argued for a form of limited monarchy and the overthrow of
tyrants, views given practical English expression in Magna Carta
(1215). The period was also noteworthy for the strong showing of annals
and histories, most notably those of Eadmer (Historia Novorum or The
History of Recent Events – it covered the period 950-1109), Henry of
Huntingdon (Historia Anglorum or History of the English 5BC-1129) and
Matthew Paris (Chronica Majora).   In addition,   the Common Law was
formed,   English became once more a literary language (Chaucer,
Langland),   John Wycliffe laid the intellectual roots   of    the
Reformation and, perhaps most impressively, ideas which were later to
provide the basis for a true science emerged.    England was the mother of the modern world.

To have produced Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin alone would have been
a great thing for any nation, but for England they are merely the
cherries on the top of a very substantial intellectual cake. Beneath
them sit dozens of others of serious human consequence: the likes of
Ockham, Chaucer, Wycliffe, Francis Bacon, Marlowe, Halley, Hobbes,
Locke, Gibbon, Priestly, Cavendish, Newcomen, Faraday, Austen, Dickens,
Keynes, Turing… ‘Nuff said.

The truth about social housing and ethnic minorities

To an English public incessantly bombarded with politically correct propaganda on the evils and illegality of discrimination based on race, religion, nationality or culture, it will come as a surprise to learn that in one of the most vital things in life, a secure home, it is quite in order to discriminate generally against people who are white and particularly against those who are English.

The most blatant examples of this discrimination are housing associations whose properties are either specifically for reserved for Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) tenants or have practices which result in most of their tenants coming from BME groups. How is this possible in our politically correct world in which discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity or nationality is a cardinal sin? Section 35 of the Race Relations Act 1976 (RRA (1976) does the trick:

“ Special needs of racial groups in regard to education, training or welfare—Nothing in Parts II to IV shall render unlawful any act done in affording persons of a particular racial group access to facilities or services to meet the special needs of persons of that group in regard to their education, training or welfare, or any ancillary benefits.” (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/74/section/35)

Here is how the statutory code of practice on racial equality in England interprets section 35:

“2.41 Section 35 allows housing organisations, including ethnic minority housing associations, to make special provision for certain groups; for example by developing temporary hostel accommodation catering especially for newly-arrived Somali refugees, who may have needs arising from shared traumatic experiences; or sheltered housing schemes for Chinese elders; or by providing wardens and carers who speak a particular Asian language; or by meeting certain dietary and religious requirements. Individuals should still be assessed according to their needs” (http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/code_of_practice_on_racial_equality_in_housing_england.pdf)

The definition a racial group under section 1 of the RRA (1976) is very broad:

“Meaning of “racial grounds”, “racial group” etc.

(1)In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires—

“racial grounds” means any of the following grounds, namely colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins;

“racial group” means a group of persons defined by reference to colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins, and references to a person’s racial group refer to any racial group into which he falls.

(2)The fact that a racial group comprises two or more distinct racial groups does not prevent it from constituting a particular racial group for the purposes of this Act. “(http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/74/section/3)

That definition does not exclude the native white population of Britain in theory , but in practice it does because no one in a position of public authority or influence would dream of suggesting that the white Britons, especially the English, are suffering discrimination and should have HAs which cater to their special needs. However, British courts have ruled that, for the purposes of the RRA, Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers and Jews, constitute racial groups

The overwhelming majority of BME HAs are found in England. Over one hundred were created at one time or another since the 1970s, although the number has been reduced through mergers. The first Scottish one was not created until 2004 http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/first-scots-bme-association-seeks-support-for-set-up/444544.article . Wales was even slower off the mark (http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/wales-moves-closer-to-first-bme-association/445683.article)

The Federation of Black Housing Organisations was the umbrella body representing BME HAs until it closed due to financial problems in 2008. (http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/end-of-an-era-as-bme-umbrella-group-closes/6502330.article) . The representative role has been taken over by BME National which is allied with the National Housing Federation. This organisation represents 65 BME HAs in England (http://blog.bmenational.org.uk/about-2/). The mission statement of BME National runs:

■Be the umbrella group for BME housing associations that provides a consultative and promotional platform for BME housing issues.

■Represent and positively promote BME housing associations.

■Collaborate with the NHF to influence national housing policy.

■Promote equality and diversity in the delivery of housing and support services.

■Promote the needs and aspirations of BME communities in addition to their contribution to successful, vibrant and integrated communities.

■Work with the NHF to influence local and central government, the Tenant Services Authority, the Homes Communities Agency and other relevant statutory authorities in establishing and implementing policies and procedures affecting the housing, support and wider interests of BME communities. “(http://blog.bmenational.org.uk/about-2/terms-of-reference/) .

BME covers a wide range of minorities. It includes blacks and Asians of all varieties, but also white groups such as Jews, the Irish and those from Europe especially the recent immigrants from the East like Poles and Czechs. The one group which does not appear is, yes, you’ve guessed it, is the English. The BME Housing Associations (HAs) which cater for them may be based on race, nationality or religion.

The official definition of a BME HA is one where 80% or more of its governing body is chosen from BME communities. In 2009 the proportion of BME housing associations governed by boards consisting entirely of BME people was 31 per cent (http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/mixed-messages/6503767.article).

Further de facto BME privilege arises in the employment of staff and the granting of tenancies. Staff are largely drawn from BME populations, either from a particular group such as Muslims or the Irish or from various BME groups, for example, Clare Winstanley, the chief executive of Innisfree, an HA set up to cater for the Irish (although it now takes a more varied clientele) says “The majority of staff and board members are Irish or of Irish descent” . (http://blog.bmenational.org.uk/2010/12/01/the-modern-role-of-bme-housing-associations/).

Where a language other than English is involved the exclusion of white employees will be close to complete. As Bashir Uddin, chief executive of London’s Bangla housing association, explains “Our staff speak Bengali, Hindi, Urdu,” (http://www.housing.org.uk/campaigns.aspx).

Do tenancies in BME HAs normally go only to members of particular groups? In the past the BME HAs were happy boast about their discriminatory letting policies, but they have become coy about them over the past decade because they realise that nakedly preferential treatment of racial and ethnic minorities not only goes against the central tenet of political correctness (no discrimination), but will also give cast iron grounds for resentment and political action by those discriminated against, in this case the native population. Some BME HAs remain closed to all but the groups they were set up to represent; others have expanded their lettings to take in a more varied set of tenants. However, these HAs still have a strong predominance of the groups they were set up to represent and the variety in the tenants is heavily slanted towards members of other BME groups, for example, a n HA originally set up to supply housing to West Indians may take in Africans. There has also been a trend for BME HAs to be absorbed by mainstream HAs.

Why is it important to have staff and board members who come from the ethnic group? ‘[Winstanley] cites the example of Clochar Court in the London borough of Brent, as an “incredibly happy place” that houses older and elderly Irish tenants. She believes it would be different if the staff and most of the tenants weren’t Irish. “Memory becomes very important when you’re older,” she says. “It therefore becomes important to be with people for whom those memories are relevant.” (http://blog.bmenational.org.uk/2010/12/01/the-modern-role-of-bme-housing-associations/). That privilege is of course denied to the white native population who live in areas with large numbers of BME people.

There is also official government encouragement to give BME people in housing associations generally a privileged position. The official regulator for social housing The Tenant Services Authority (TSA) states ‘Housing associations should focus on meeting the needs of the ever more diverse black and minority ethnic (BME) communities, particularly hidden or emerging migrant communities, where this is appropriate.’ (Good Practice Note 8 http://www.housing-rights.info/housing-associations.html) and ‘…develop and deliver allocations processes in a way which supports their effective use by the full range of actual and potential tenants, including those with support needs, those who do not speak English as a first language and others who have difficulties with written English’. (http://www.tenantservicesauthority.org/server/show/nav.14715).

In allocating tenancies to BME groups Housing Associations have had a considerable advantage over local council housing because HAs can allocated tenancies are criteria they design themselves rather than operating the type of open waiting list points system driven used for council housing. This allows them, for example, to offer places to immigrants who would not otherwise qualify for social housing, for example, asylum seekers. However, this may change because the Coalition Government has stated it intention to allow local councils to develop their own criteria as well. (para 4.8 http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/pdf/1775577.pdf) .This has the potential to increase the ability of councils to show special preference to BME groups.

More generally, section 19B (1) the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 placed a general duty on those providing public services not to discriminate: “It is unlawful for a public authority in carrying out any functions of the authority to do any act which constitutes discrimination.” This covered those providing social housing whether that be council housing or Housing Association properties. That Act and the politically correct atmosphere of modern England generated a statutory code of practice (which had legal force)_on racial equality in housing which not only required all landlords, private and public, to not discriminate but prove they had not discriminated in the allocation of tenancies and the treatment of tenants. This involves the usual pc rigmarole of “Training, monitoring, and race equality impact assessments” which puts pressure on councils and HAs to be ever more biased towards BME applicants. (http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/code_of_practice_on_racial_equality_in_housing_england.pdf).

Do BME groups take a disproportionately large number of social housing tenancies? A Race Equality Foundation Briefing Paper of February 2009 Looking to the future: changing black and minority ethnic housing needs and aspirations is unequivocal that they do. “Many BME groups are already over-represented in social rented housing, and recent statistical evidence suggests that even those groups that have been traditionally under-represented in this sector are now entering it in growing numbers. (see Conclusion http://www.better-housing.org.uk/files/housing/housing-brief11.pdf#search=”access”)

The Briefing Paper highlights the fact that BME members seek the larger property disproportionately: “Large properties of four or more bedrooms form only 2 per cent of England’s social housing stock (SEH, 2005-2006), making it difficult for large households to access suitable properties in the social rented sector, especially via mainstream service providers… the demand for large family homes is addressed mainly by black and minority ethnic housing associations (BHAs) that work with certain communities in which large households are common. As BME populations grow, the need for larger family homes in the affordable housing sector may increase significantly, even if acculturation will eventually lead to smaller family sizes among the British-born generations (Penn and Lambert, 2002). This need should also be reflected in the mainstream sector provision.” ( see section 4 http://www.better-housing.org.uk/files/housing/housing-brief11.pdf#search=”access“)

The Race Equality Foundation also asserts that BME people require special needs beyond the massive privilege of living in an environment populated and run by people drawn from their own ethnic/racial group: “The extent to which cultural needs and preferences influence people’s housing aspirations in terms of interior design vary between and within different BME groups. Black and minority ethnic housing associations, which house large numbers of Chinese and South Asian people, listed several elements that are of particular importance to their clients (HC, 2008a). Many of these preferences, such as kitchens that accommodate stir fry cooking, bathrooms with showers rather than baths and living rooms that can be partitioned, derive from people’s religious and cultural traditions.

“Other design preferences that appear to be particularly important to some BME households include a desire for large communal areas and separate kitchens and living rooms. These are important especially for Muslims and relatively recent migrants from Africa (HC, 2008a). Instead of being regarded as cultural preferences, however, these would probably be more accurately described as lifestyle choices. Nevertheless, it is possible that Muslims and recent migrants feel more strongly about these, or are more likely to prefer entertaining at home due to, for example, limited access to suitable communal facilities. As qualitative data reveals, cultural preferences are less important to most BME parents than their children’s needs and the desire to bring their children up in a safe environment (HC, 2008a). Although safety is an issue that affects all households with children, this may be even more pronounced for BME social tenants – partly because so many of them have children and partly due to the concentration of BME populations in urban areas and (often socio-economically deprived) neighbourhoods where anti-social behaviour is a bigger problem than in smaller towns or more rural residential areas.” (see section 4 http://www.better-housing.org.uk/files/housing/housing-brief11.pdf#search=”access“)

Are there any hard figures on the total number of BME people in social housing? The answer is no for those born in Britain. For those born abroad we do have some solid statistics. These involve very large numbers . In 2007 the Daily Telegraph reported that “… after an investigation by ITV’s Tonight With Trevor McDonald programme, the Government has admitted that 200,000 of Britain’s social homes – five per cent of the total – were given to immigrants last year.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1556229/200000-social-homes-given-to-immigrants.html) . The official position for 2007 is “… there were 191,185 general needs social rented lettings across England in 2006/07. The nationality of the named tenant was recorded for 170,363 of these lettings. Less than five per cent (4.54 per cent) of these 170,363 lettings were recorded as being to foreign nationals… “ (http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/1138584). A report prepared for the Equality and Human Right Commission found that “some 90 per cent of those who live in social housing are UK born” , that is, ten per cent were immigrants. (http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/ehrc_report_-_social_housing_allocation_and_immigrant_communities.pdf – see p 64 ) . The giving of social housing to immigrants is indefensible when there are millions of native Britons either homeless or living in inadequate accommodation is indefensible. If British born BME people are also getting more of the social housing than their numbers suggest they should then the white native Briton is doubly disadvantaged.

What is clear is that the native population in Britain and especially the English is being left without a voice while BME groups are having every support from politicians who pass ever more draconian laws to enforce “racial equality” and publicly funded groups which campaign on their behalf. The mentality of those with power in Britain is demonstrated nicely by a passage in the Race Equality Foundation Briefing Paper:

“Exclusively white areas and areas that are known to have problems with racist harassment, however, are not regarded as safe by ‘non-white’ BME tenants and are thus seen as undesirable. As a result of active avoidance of areas known to be racist, many people from minority ethnic groups in effect minimise their chances of being subjected to racist abuse (HC, 2008a). In many instances, fears about racist harassment are well founded, since racist hostility remains a problem in many parts of the country (Beider, 2005; Hemmerman et al., 2007; Law, 2007; HC, 2008c). Racism, and the restrictions it places on BME households’ locational choice, is an important consideration that ought to be taken seriously by housing providers.” (see section 3 http://www.better-housing.org.uk/files/housing/housing-brief11.pdf#search=”access“)

The authors of the paper are so biased in their mindset that they can only see the formation of BME ghettos as a the result of white racism. It would not occur to them to ask why whites flee areas with large BME populations let alone conclude that the whites who do flee do so because of the racist attitude of BME residents.

What has happened to “English votes for English laws”?

The obvious democratic imbalance in the post-devolution settlement is the absence of an English parliament. The Scots, Welsh and the Northern Irish have devolved assemblies which are steadily increasing their formal powers and political permanence through the development of a political class concerned only with their own home country. The English neither have a parliament nor the prospect of one, for no House of Commons party is committed to creating an English parliament.

This is no small matter because the absence of a parliament robs England of a national political focus and voice at a time when other parts of the UK are growing ever more strident in their demands through their devolved political institutions.

But the imbalance is far more than simply the lack of a Parliament. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, despite their devolved powers, still retain cabinet representation, grand committees, select committees and special question times devoted to their local affairs.

The Scottish Grand Committee is made up of all MPs sitting for Scottish seats. It has rarely met in recent years because the powers given to the Scottish Parliament mean that Bills passed at Westminster affecting only Scotland are rare. However, the committee has not been abolished and could be reconvened.

The Welsh and Northern Irish Grand Committees are still regularly functioning bodies because their assemblies have lesser powers than those of the Scottish Parliament. That may change in the case of the Welsh Grand Committee because of the extension of powers voted for in the recent Welsh referendum. The Northern Irish and Welsh committees debate issues relevant to their countries. This can be a very wide-ranging remit as it can include such business as the effects of a Queen’s Speech on the two countries.

The Welsh committee consists of the 40 Welsh MPs, and up to 5 others. The Northern Ireland Grand Committee includes each of the 18 MPs in Northern Ireland, together with up to 25 other MPs.

The Celts have a second bite at the Westminster committee cake, for there are select committees for each of them, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, the Scottish Affairs Committee and the Welsh Affairs Committee.

To complete the Westminster representational hat-trick, there remains within the Cabinet Secretaries of State for each of the Celtic countries.

What does England have? Absolutely nothing: no Parliament, no devolved powers, no Grand Committee, no select committee, no question time, no secretary of state in the Cabinet.

Most obnoxiously MPs from non-English seats can vote on English matters even where, as is often the case with the Scottish parliament, English MPs cannot vote on equivalent legislation for parts of the UK other than England. Thus Scottish MPs voted for Foundation hospitals and increased university tuition fees in England, despite the fact that neither measure will be introduced into Scotland because the devolved Scottish political establishment is against them. The Welsh will be joining the game as they have just voted yes (2011) to the Welsh Assembly receiving similar powers to those of the Scottish Parliament.

Not content with denying the English a voice, the Blair government attempted to begin the process of political Balkanisation in England by announcing in 2003 that referenda for assemblies in the North East, the North West and the region of Yorkshire and Humber would be held. According to the draft Regional Assemblies Bill of 2004, the assemblies would have had much inferior powers to the Scottish Parliament and inferior powers to those of the Welsh Assembly.

The Blair government tested the water with a referendum for a North East Assembly in November 2004 believing that this was the English region most likely to vote for an assembly and if they did this would act as a spur to other regions to follow suit. The ploy failed so miserably, with voters rejecting the an assembly by 696,519 votes to 197,310, that plans for further referenda were dropped.

But although elected assemblies were not established in England, the process of setting English regions against one another was put in hand shortly after the Blair Government was formed through the creation of Quangos. Eight English Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) were established under the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998. These were for: the East of England, East Midlands, North East, North West, South East, South West, West Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber.

A ninth RDA, the London Development Agency, was established in July 2000 following the establishment of the Greater London Authority (GLA). The first eight RDAs are responsible to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) ministers. The London Development Assembly is responsible to the Mayor of London and the London Assembly.

What do RDAs do? Here is the LDA website description:

“Our aim is to create better futures for London’s citizens by delivering projects that will help produce a prosperous, inclusive and sustainable city.

Working in close partnership with the Greater London Authority, London boroughs, businesses and the third sector, we have:

•provided practical advice and help to Londoners and to London’s businesses

•promoted London on a world stage – most recently at the Shanghai Expo

•helped set up the first two of the Mayor’s academies

•won recognition and international acclaim for our regeneration activities

•enabled London to start making significant cuts to Co2 emissions through our climate change programmes

•put projects in place that have helped thousands of Londoners benefit from the impact of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games” (http://www.lda.gov.uk/our-work/index.aspx)

There most significant role is probably their administering of the EU Regional Development Fund disbursements to English regions.

All the RDAs are scheduled to be abolished by March 2012 (http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies/economic-development/englands-regional-development-agencies), but it is not certain that this will happen because the Government has conceded in the face of opposition from the Lords over the Public Bodies Bill which authorised ministers to make the decision (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldbills/025/11025.i-ii.html), that Quangos will not be abolished without parliamentary scrutiny.

The RDAs will be superseded by Local Enterprise Partnerships. These concentrate on much smaller areas than the RDAs. The Coalition Government describes them as:

“Local enterprise partnerships are locally-owned partnerships between local authorities and businesses. Local enterprise partnerships will play a central role in determining local economic priorities and undertaking activities to drive economic growth and the creation of local jobs. They are also a key vehicle in delivering Government objectives for economic growth and decentralisation, whilst also providing a means for local authorities to work together with business in order to quicken the economic recovery.

“As local enterprise partnerships are based on more meaningful economic areas, they will be better placed to determine the needs of the local economy along with a greater ability to identify barriers to local economic growth.” (http://www.communities.gov.uk/localgovernment/local/localenterprisepartnerships/)

To date the Government has announced 30 partnerships that are ready to establish their local enterprise partnership boards. These are:

Birmingham and Solihull

Black Country

Cheshire and Warrington

Coast to Capital

Cornwall and Isles of Scilly

Coventry and Warwickshire

Cumbria

Enterprise M3 (North Hampshire/West Surrey)

Greater Cambridgeshire and Greater Peterborough

Greater Manchester

Hertfordshire

Kent and Greater Essex and East Sussex

Leeds City Region

Leicester and Leicestershire

Lincolnshire

Liverpool City Region

New Anglia

North Eastern

Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Derby, Derbyshire

Oxfordshire City Region

Sheffield City Region

Solent

South East Midlands

Stoke and Staffordshire

Tees Valley

Thames Valley Berkshire

The Marches

West of England

Worcestershire

York and North Yorkshire

Until these bodies are up and running it is impossible to say exactly what powers they will have or what the relationship will be between them and national government.

As part of the Balkanising of England agenda of the recent Labour Government, English Regional Grand Committees were established in November 2008. However, these no longer exist because the Standing Orders that set up these committees expired in April 2010. With the exception of London, the regions of the UK that were covered by a Regional Grand Committee were the same as those administered by the RDAs. London was omitted because it has an elected assembly and mayor.

The nearest any mainstream party has come to offering England any redress for the democratic imbalance is to call for “English votes for English laws”, that is, laws which affect only England should be decided by only English MPs. This idea surfaced as far back as 1999 when William Hague made it official Tory policy. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/394997.stm). David Cameron has also supported the policy. (http://www.heraldscotland.com/english-votes-for-english-laws-would-damage-union-1.847545).

After the Coalition Government was formed in June 2010 Nick Clegg was given the task of considering the matter (http://toque.co.uk/nick-clegg-charged-considering-west-lothian-question)

To date no concrete proposals have been made or the matter been seriously discussed in Parliament. I have emailed both Cameron and Clegg asking what the Coalition’s position is without eliciting a reply. It is reasonable to assume that the question has been kicked into the long grass.

“English votes for English laws” is no remedy for the disadvantage under which England currently suffers, but it would act as a catalyst for an English Parliament in two ways. First, if the matter was done honestly, the majority of the UK Government budget would be decided by English MPs because most is spent in England. That would create an impossible tension between a UK Government and the English majority if the UK Government could not form a majority from English seats alone. Second, the mere fact of having to concentrate on English interests would create a sea-change in the mentality of the English political elite. MPs sitting for English seats would be unable to ignore the essential unfairness of the present situation because English voters would expect them to do something about it.

There are dangers with “English votes for English laws”. One way it could be fudged is by declaring many Bills which are obviously affecting England alone to be matters of UK importance. There would also be ample opportunity to push legislation through without the procedure being invoked on the grounds that it is EU deriving from the EU. It is conceivable that the process could be emasculated whilst leaving Westminster politicians free to say the “West Lothian Question” has been solved, a tactic which would not remove the problem but could suppress public debate about it. Nonetheless, it is the only realistic way forward those who want an English Parliament and Government for the foreseeable future. Consequently, it is a tactic (not an end in itself) which should be supported.

The development of the franchise in England

Serious disquiet with the Commons’ electoral qualifications, provisions and practices began in Elizabeth’s reign and reached its highest pitch, prior to the 1640s, during the years 1621 to 1623.

The discontent was provoked primarily by the situation in the boroughs rather than the counties, Since 1430, the county electorate had been restricted to the forty shilling freeholder, which qualification had become almost sacrosanct by the end of the sixteenth century – only one proposal before the 1640s (in 1621) was made to raise or lower it. Tudor inflation had greatly lowered the barrier it represented (40 shillings in 1600 was worth perhaps 15 shillings at 1430 values) and it is reasonable to suppose this considerably increased the rural electorate. Also, there is evidence to suggest that the qualification was not always enforced and some county electorates may have had a very broad manhood franchise indeed prior to 1640.

Borough franchises were anything but uniform. In some the whole ‘commonalty’ (all householders) or even all ’potwallers’ (men with their own hearths) voted. In others the vote was restricted to all taxpayers (‘scot and lot’), freemen of the town, or those in possession of burgage property. In extreme cases the vote might be restricted to the ruling corporation. Such discrepancies of representation were aggravated by a distribution of borough seats which took insufficient account of the demographic changes of the past two centuries, during which time England’s population increased very substantially, especially during the 16th century, perhaps by as much as a third. These facts prepared a well mulched political soil for agitation for more equal borough representation, both in terms of the breadth of the franchise and in the number of seats.

Tudor monarchs, not unnaturally, did not favour larger electorates. The existence of ‘rotten boroughs’ was a source of patronage and, if the monarch could control the oligarchies who returned the MP, a means of reducing opposition to the Crown. As there was a significant number of such boroughs, this was no small advantage to the monarch.

The attitude of Parliament to the franchise was mixed. The Lords had a similar interest to the Crown in distrusting broad franchises. The peers often effectively controlled seats in the Commons. They also had a natural inclination to deny the ‘commonality’ any voice in the affairs of the kingdom. Conversely, it was obviously in the Commons’ interest to increase electorates, where such increases reduced the Monarch’s’ and the Lord’s opportunities for patronage.

There is particular evidence that the Puritans favoured larger electorates, at least in so far as it suited their own purposes. At Warwick in 1586 Job Throckmorton was elected after he threatened to invoke the right of the ‘commonality to vote. In 1587 John Field remarked to colleague ‘seeing we cannot compass these things by suit or dispute, it is the multitude and people that must bring the discipline to pass which we desire.’ (J.H. Plunb. The Growth of the electorate 1600-1715). As Puritans displaced many court nominees and the creatures of aristocrats, this is significant in view of the attitude of the Commons towards electoral qualifications between 1621 and 1628.

By 1621, the Commons had gained the right to decide disputed elections and to revive lapsed borough seats and even make new creations, The tendency until 1628 was to decide in favour of wider franchise and to allow all the ‘commonality’ to vote. At Bletchingly (1624) and Lewes (1628) ‘all the inhabitants,’ were to be electors’, and at Cirencester (1624) all ‘resients:’. In the case of Pontefract in 1624 a general principle was formulated:

‘There being no certain custom nor prescription, who should be the electors and who not, we must have recourse to common right which, to this purpose was held to be, that more than the freeholders only ought to have voices in the election, namely all men, inhabitants, householders resient within the borough.’ (J.H, Plunb. The Growth of the electorate 1600-1715).

Further, in the case of Boston (1628) it was asserted that the election of burgesses belonged by common right to the commoners and only prescription or ‘a constant usage beyond all memory’ could rob them of this. (K. Thomas, The Levellers and the Franchise p.62).

It is true that when the Commons revived or created borough seats, they concentrated, as the Tudors had done, on small towns to promote their own advantage. But, even so, they granted ‘scot and lot’ franchises in every case (except Weobley) which meant that even small towns such as Great Marlow or Hilbourne Port had electorate of around 200.

Bills were introduced to regulate electionsand standardise,the franchise in 1621, 1623, 1625, 1628 and 1640, The 1621 Bill is of particular interest because it proposed that the 40/- freeholder qualification be increased to £4 and to admit £10 copyholders by inheritance. The borough proposals add no more than the various decisions on individual cases (in fact even less), for electors were to be freemen except where they numbered less than twenty-four, in which case all inhabitants not in receipt of alms were to be included,

In 1640 the franchise was raised again by Sir Simonds D’Ewes. It was he who first uttered the idea later made famous by Rainsborough ‘that the poorest man in England ought to have a voice, that it was the birthright of the subjects of England and all had voices in the election of Knights etc. previously.’ (K. Thomas, The Levellers and the Franchise p.63).

In 1641 a bill had reached second reading but was then lost. D’Ewes favoured its contents except that he ‘desired that whereas it was provided in the bill that none that took alms should have voices in elections, which I well allowed, we would likewise provide that no more monopolizing elections might be in cities and boroughs, that all men resients might have voices.’(K. Thomas, The Levellers and the Franchise p.64)

It is also noteworthy, both for its own sake and the part it played in Leveller literature, that many believed that the Statute of 1430 had disenfranchised people. William May, in 1621, said ‘Anciently, all the commonality had voice, but because such a multitude made the election tumultuous, it was after reduced to freeholders’.

The religious radical William Prynne put it even more plainly,’Before this Petition and Act every inhabitant and commoner in each county had voice in the election of Knights, whether he were a freeholder or not, or had a freehold only of one penny, six pence or twelve pence by the year as they now claim of late in most cities and boroughs where popular elections are admitted’ (K. Thomas, The Levellers and the Franchise p.64).

It is a sobering thought that if the Statute of 1430 did disenfranchise large numbers of county electors, the county franchise may have been wider in medieval England than it was to be again before the end of the nineteenth century and conceivably wider than the Franchise before the 1918 Representation of the People Act.

What of the position of those deemed to be dependents: the servants, wage-earners and almstakers? Resident household servants were generally considered beyond the electoral pale, although ‘servants’ were said to have voted in the Worcestershire county election of 1604. Wage-earners certainly did so, for those in the ‘potwaller’ and ‘scot and lot’ constituencies were granted the right to vote. Almstakers were excluded in the 1621 and 1640 bills, yet at Great Marlow in 1604 77 of the 245 voters were said to be almstakers, nine of them inmates of the almshouse. In 1640 the right of the Bember inmates to vote was said to have been sustained and in 1662 the St. Albans almsmen were said to have ‘had voices time out of mind’.

It is clear from all this that those who promoted the radical or democratic cause in the 1640s, most particularly the Levellers, did not enter untilled ground. There are also three points of particular interest. First, the Commons, or at least an influential part of it, was not unduly disturbed by the prospect of an enlarged electorate. Second, those deemed to be dependent such as servants and almstakers – were included on occasion in the franchise long before the Civil War. Third, that there existed even gentlemen (such as Sir Simonds D’Ewes) who had an active and unambiguous democratic spirit. The latter point is particularly pertinent because the chief Leveller, John Lilburne, was also of gentle-birth, albeit ”small gentry”, a fact he never ceased to emphasise. Clearly, democratic ideas and feeling were not foreign political bodies suddenly introduced by the Levellers and others in the 1640s.

After ferment of the Civil Wars and their aftermath had quietened, the voices of those who sought a broad franchise (especially the Levellers) faded and the Restoration in 1660 placed the franchise in aspic until 1832 when the Great Reform Act granted a franchise much narrower than that envisaged in the 1640s, with about one in six adult men being enfranchised. Indeed, the years between the Restoration and 1832 saw a squeezing of franchises as rotten boroughs with minute numbers of electors increased and the populations of the new great urban developments such as Manchester and Birmingham went largely enfranchised. The 1832 Act removed the most glaring examples of rotten boroughs and allocated seats to places such as Manchester).

In 1867 the Second Reform Act enfranchised around two in five adult men, still well short of that demanded in the 1640s. The third Reform Act of 1884 doubled the electorate. This produced the breadth of franchise wanted by the mainstream democratically inclined advocates in the 1640s. (There were those who would have gone further).

All 19^th century electoral reform was based on property qualifications and women were excluded, although ironically before the 1832 Act women arguably had the right to vote because the gender of voters was not laid down. The 1832 Act altered that by referring to males not persons. (http://www.historyofwomen.org/suffrage.html). It was not until the 1918 Representation Act that full manhood suffrage at the age of twenty-one was granted and women aged thirty were definitely enfranchised. The final Act of full adult suffrage did not occur until 1928, although the qualification was not reduced to its present age of eighteen until 1969.

The Levellers: the first English radicals

Radical has a special meaning in English political history. It describes those whose instincts were democratic although they did not espouse the idea of a full male adult suffrage let alone a suffrage which included women until very late in their existence. But what they all had was a desire to see political power taken from the few and given to many more. Their means of doing this was not to overthrow Parliament but to make it responsive to the interests and needs of the general population, something which was to be achieved by devices such as broadening the franchise, ending rotten boroughs, annual parliaments. As for the monarchy, this might be allowed or not, but if it was to continue the powers of the crown had be emasculated. With few exception such as Gerrard Winstanley and his Diggers, they were not socialists or egalitarian in a general sense. The sort of people who became radicals were typically men with some material independence and education such as tradesmen and those educated at non-conformist colleges. Constitutional reform – in which they had a naive trust as a panacea for all the ills they wished to mend – was what they sought, not social revolution.

The English radical emerged in the struggle between Charles I and Parliament. The group which gave the strongest voice and effect to the new radical was the Levellers. They were a disparate and ever shifting crew, drawing their support primarily from the ranks of the Parliamentary armed forces (especially after the New Model Army was formed in 1645), small tradesmen, journeymen and apprentices. However, they also included those from higher social classes, their most famous leader, John Lilburne, being the child of minor gentry.

What the Levellers were most certainly not, were the thorough going democrats and proto-socialists portrayed by the likes of Tony Benn and Bill Bragg. Rather they were men who would have fitted much more comfortably into the ideological sleeve of Margaret Thatcher than that of social democracy.

Their opponents attempted to portray the Levellers as social revolutionaries who would take the property of the rich, most particularly their land, and give it to the poor. Hence the epithet of Leveller which originated as a term of abuse. But the Levellers consistently denied that they had any such programme and were staunch defenders of the right to property. They might best be characterised as radical democrats with a very strong libertarian streak. Indeed, so far were they from being proto-communists that they had an almost sacramental belief in the individual’s right to personal property.

Intellectually, they started from the view that all Englishmen had a birthright which entitled them to have a say in who should govern them, although at times they accepted that the birthright might be breached through dependence on a master or by receiving alms. More importantly, their ideology contained the germ of the idea of a social contract between the people and those who held power, an idea which was to come to dominate English political thinking for the next century or so through the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

The Levellers were, with one or two exceptions such as Richard Overton, who was a deist at best and an atheist at worst, or John Wildman, who was a libertine and chancer, religious. But their belief had a strong vein of rationalism in it. They saw God not as the often cantankerous and domineering supernatural being of traditional Christianity, but as a rational intelligence who entered every man and allowed him to see what was naturally just and reasonable. For the Levellers, it seemed a natural right – a rational right – for a man to have a say in who should hold power and what they should do with the power.

The Levellers were happy to use historical props such as Magna Carta and the legend of Norman oppression when it suited them, but their rationality led them to question how men were governed from first principles. One of the Leveller leaders Richard Overton actually called Magna Carta a ”beggarly thing” and went on to comment:

Ye [Parliament] were chosen to work our deliverance, and to estate us in natural and just liberty, agreeable to reason and common equity, for whatever our forefathers were, we are the men of the present age, and ought to be absolutely free from all kinds of exorbitancies, molestations or arbitrary power. (A Remonstrance. Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution)

More balanced was his fellow Leveller William Walwyn:

Magna Carta (you must observe) is but a part of the people’s rights and liberties, being no more but what with much striving and fighting, was wrested from the paws of those kings , who by force had conquered the nation, changed the laws and by strong hand held them in bondage. (England’s Lamentable Slaverie, Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution.)

To call the Levellers a political party in the modern sense would be misleading. Yet they were the closest thing to it both then and, arguably, for several centuries. Their tactics and organisation were modern – the use of pamphletering and newspapers, the ability to get large number of supporters onto the streets (especially in London) at the drop of a hat, the creation of local associations. Much of this was the work of Lilburne, a man of preternatural obstinacy, courage and general unreasonableness. It says much for the restraint of the English elite of the day and respect for the law that he was not killed out of hand. It is difficult to imagine such behaviour being tolerated anywhere in Europe in the seventeenth century.

Lilburne by every account of him was a most difficult man – it was said that his nature was so combative that he would seek a quarrel with himself if he were alone – ‘Jack would fight with John’. Yet this man, who came from a very modest gentry background, remained alive despite challenging the authority of first the king and then during and after the civil war, Parliament, Cromwell and the Commonwealth. He thus carried on this mortally dangerous behaviour for almost a generation. To the end of his life in 1657, he was thought dangerous enough to imprison.

Lilburne first came to notice for seditious speeches and writings in the 1630s. For that he was whipped from the Fleet to the Palace Yard where he was stood in the stocks. Whilst in the stocks, he removed copies of the pamphlets which had caused his punishment and threw them to the crowd. That little episode will give a good idea of the Lilburne’s general mentality. He was an extreme example one of those necessary unreasonable men without whom nothing great gets done.

From the time of his flogging onwards, Lilburne’s career was one of studied defiance of authority. He was one of the most potent pamphleteers England has ever seen. For more than a decade, he produced a flood of writings guaranteed to inflame virtually anyone in public authority in the land. He faced down judges in the most powerful courts in the land. He controlled the London mob consummately. He treated the greatest men in the land as equals. In any other place on the planet at that time, he would have been dead meat before his career as an agitator began. But not in England. He might be flogged. He might be put in the stocks. He might be imprisoned. He might be tried twice for his life. But what 17th century England would not do was unreservedly murder him.

The Levellers developed an increasingly sophisticated political programme in a series of documents known as The Agreements of the People. These Agreements dealt extensively with political representation and structure. They were also very successful in creating a sense of historic grievance and an enemy. They did this by portraying 1640s England as having declined from a golden age of freedom to an oppressed land and people under the heel of the Normans and their French successors.

The Levellers time was brief. They were a serious political force for, at most, the years 1646 to 1649 and that is probably being a mite too generous. They failed utterly in the end, not least because they were unable to carry the army, especially the junior officers, with them. But they were important both for giving voice to the ideas and creating many of the practices on which modern politics is founded.

England and the rejection of violence

Why was England so different from other countries in its political, social and economic development? How was it that only in England did parliamentary government evolve and the one and only bootstrapped industrial revolution arise? Perhaps much of the answer lies in the fact that the English, in comparison with any other large nation, have long been wonderfully adept in dealing with the central problem of human life – how to live together peaceably. A Canadian academic, Elliott Leyton, has made a study of English murder through the centuries in his book Men of Blood. Leyton finds that the rate of English (as opposed to British murder) is phenomenally low for a country of her size and industrial development, both now and for centuries past. This strikes Elliott as so singular that he said in a recent interview “The English have an antipathy to murder which borders on eccentricity; it is one of the great cultural oddities of the modern age.” (Sunday Telegraph 4 12 1994).

This restraint extends to warfare and social disorder. That is not to say England has been without violence, but rather that at any point in her history the level of violence was substantially lower than in any other comparable society. For example, the English Civil War in the 17th Century was, apart from the odd inhumane blemish, startlingly free of the gross violence common on the continent of the time during the 30 Years War, where the sacking and pillage of towns and cities was the norm. A particularly notable thing, for civil wars are notorious for their brutality.

The way that England responded to the Reformation is instructive. She did not suffer the savage wars of religion which traumatised the continent and brought human calamities such as the St Bartholomew Day’s Massacre in France in 1572, when thousands of French protestants were massacred at the instigation of the French king.

It was not that the English did not care deeply about their religion, rather that they have been, when left to their own devices, generally loth to fight their fellow countrymen over anything. English civil wars have always been essentially political affairs in which the ordinary person has little say, for the struggles were either dynastic or a clash between Parliamentary ambition and the monarch. Even the persecution of the Lollards in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the persecution of Protestants under Mary I had a highly political aspect. The former was a vastly disturbing challenge to the established social order with men being told, in so many words, that they could find their own way to salvation and the latter an attempt to re-establish not merely the Catholic order in England, which had been overturned since the time of Henry VIII’s breach with Rome, but also what amounted to a new royal dynasty with Mary’s marriage to Philip of Spain.

Even the prohibitions on Catholics and non-Conformists after the Reformation had a fundamental political basis to them, namely, they were predicated on the question of whether such people be trusted to give their first loyalty to the crown.

The treatment of foreigners

Compared with other peoples, the English have been noticeably restrained in their treatment of other peoples residing within their country. A few massacres of Jews occurred before their expulsion from England in 1290, but from that time there has not been great slaughter of a minority living within England. Since 1290 there have been occasional outbreaks of anti-foreigner violence. During the Peasants’ Revolt London-based Flemings were murdered. In later times an anti-Spanish “No Popery” mob was frequently got up in London and he influx of Jews and Huguenots in the 17th and 18th centuries caused riots, one so serious in 1753 that it caused the repeal of a law naturalising Jews and Huguenots. But these riots did not result in great numbers of dead, let alone in systematic genocidal persecutions of any particular group. Most notably, the English fonts of authority, whether the crown, church or parliament, have not incited let alone ordered the persecution of a particular racial or ethnic group since the expulsion of the Jews. They have persecuted Christian groups, but that was a matter of religion not ethnicity, the Christians persecuted being English in the main. The only discrimination the English elite have formally sanctioned against an ethnic group for more than half a millennium was the inclusion of Jews within the general prohibitions passed in the half century or so after the Restoration in 1660 which banned those who were not members of the Church of England from holding a crown appointment such as an MP or election to public offices such as that of MP.

This comparative lack of violence can plausibly be seen as the ground for England’s maintenance and unique development of a Parliament and the development of the rule of law a consequence of England’s political arrangements. From that sprung the gradual erosion of monarchical authority. Put those three developments together and there is arguably the ground upon which first a great commercial edeifice was built followed by industrialisation.

But even if that is the immediate cause of English development it does not explain why the English become exceptionally peaceable within their own territory. One could argue that being an island helped, not least because England has not been subject to a forced foreign conquest from the continent for the better part of a millennium. However, England has suffered a good deal of inter-nation warfare within the British Isles, especially with Scotland. She has also fought many a campaign around the world, both as England and later under the banner of Great Britain. It is not that the English are or have been naturally timid.

Perhaps the fundamental answer to English peaceableness lies in the fact that the English enjoyed a level of racial and cultural homogeneity from very early on. Long before the English kingdom existed Bede wrote of the English as a single people. The English have never killed one another in any great quantity simply because one part of the population thought another part was in some way not English. That is the best possible starting point for the establishment of a coherent community.

The favoured liberal view of England is that it is the mongrel nation par excellence. In fact, this is the exact opposite of the truth. The general facts of immigration into England are these. The English and England were of course created by the immigration of Germanic peoples. The British monk, Gildas, writing in the sixth century, attributed the bulk of the Saxon settlement to the practice of British leaders employing Saxons to protect the Britons from Barbarian attacks after Rome withdrew around 410 A.D. The English monk Bede (who was born in A.D. 673) attributed the origins of the English to the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who came to England in the century following the withdrawal of the Romans at the request of British war leaders.

Archaeological evidence suggests that substantial Germanic settlement in England had a longer history and dated from the Roman centuries, perhaps from as early as the third century. What is certain is that in her formative centuries following the exit of Rome, the various invaders and settlers were drawn from peoples with much in common.

They were the same physical type, there was a considerable similarity of general culture, their languages flowed from a common linguistic well. When the Norsemen came they too brought a Teutonic mentality and origin. Even the Normans were Vikings at one remove who, if frenchified, were not physically different from the English nor one imagines utterly without vestiges of the Norse mentality. Moreover, the number of Normans who settled in England immediately after the Conquest was small, perhaps as few as 5000.

After the Conquest, the only significant immigration into England for many centuries were the Jews. They were expelled from England in 1290. There was then no really large scale and sudden immigration from outside the British Isles until the flight of the Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (which granted limited toleration to the Huguenots within France) in 1684 by Louis X1V.

There was other immigration in the period 1066-1650, but it was small and highly selective. Craftsmen of talent were encouraged particularly in the Tudor period. Italian families with trading and banking expertise (such as it was in those days) appeared after the expulsion of the Jews. Foreign merchants were permitted, but for much of the period on sufferance and subject to restrictions such as forced residence within specially designated foreign quarters.

The upshot of all this is that for six centuries after the Conquest England was an unusually homogeneous country, both racially and culturally. This is reflected in the absence since the Norman Conquest of any serious regional separatist movement within the heart of English territory. There has been meaningful resistance at the periphery – Cornwall, the Welsh marches and the far north, but even that has been effectively dead since the sixteenth century. Englishmen have fought but not to create separate nations.

The unusual restraint of the English is also shown in their dealings with foreigners abroad. England did not routinely go in for sack and pillage as was common on the continent and occasional massacres often occurred in special circumstances, for example, Cromwell’s in Ireland happened in aftermath of a massacre of Protestants in Ulster in 1641 and the fear that Ireland would be used as a springboard for a Royalist invasion of England.

Nowhere was the restraint seen more emphatically than in the Empire. If a people were forced to become part of an empire, the British Empire was indubitably the one to join. There were of course outrages committed in the Empire’s name, but there was no general policy of cruelty and, for the final century of the Empire’s existence, official British policy towards the colonies was that the interests of the natives should come first.

If the theory that a homogeneous population long occupying a territory without suffering foreign conquest results in greater social restraint is correct, this may have a profound implication. Assuming that personality is substantially innate, natural selection will act upon the type of personality which is best suited to the environment. It could be that the native English are, on average, genetically better suited to live in a society in which politics are decided by peaceful transfer of power and business and personal disputes are mediated through the law. On top of any genetic propensity is added the culture of restraint which has developed from the genetic propensity over the centuries.

Should it be true that the English have a unique genetic national shape and a culture which uniquely plays to that genetic national shape, then mass immigration will weaken both by introducing both different genetic types an competing cultures.

English liberty and the weakness of state power

There were two great sources of general authority in mediaeval England. The Church was one, the other was the Crown. The mediaeval English man and woman had no great regard for either. This robust contempt for authority and the inability of either priest or king to exercise enough power to quell it allowed the English to develop a mentality which was not customarily subordinate.

The English who people the pages of Langland and Chaucer show a mediaeval England where commoners would not as a matter of course willingly touch their forelock or allow their lives to be circumscribed by those with social status. Later, Shakespeare’s lowlifes and the characters in Ben Johnson’s Bartholomew Fair often show a rumbustious lack of deference for their social betters. It is improbable in the extreme that the worlds depicted by these authors would not have reflected the societies in which they lived. Traits were exaggerated for dramatic effect doubtless, but the cultural story they told was fundamentally rooted in the England in which they wrote.

Langland’s Piers Ploughman is especially interesting because the work begins with a catalogue of the people who inhabited the world he knew (Prologue – The plain full of people). Here are the worldly and the devout, the high and the low. The cleric and the noble jostle with minstrels, tramps, beggars, merchants, tradesmen, and the honest ploughman who tills “the soil for the common good”. Langland’s clerics are often corrupt, the nobles capricious, the merchants avaricious, the workmen shoddy and cheating in their work, the beggars dishonest and the minstrels bawdy, but they are balanced by honest men in their various callings. In other words, it is a world not so different in terms of human personality to that we inhabit.

Before the Reformation the English were renowned throughout Europe for their anticlericism – a good example of this attitude was the response to Sudbury’s warning to Wat Tyler’s rebels that England would be put under an interdict by the Pope if he was harmed. This was met by hearty laughter followed by the grisly dispatch of the unfortunate cleric soon afterwards, whose head did not part from his shoulders until a goodly number of blows had been struck.

The contempt in which many of the servants of the Church were held can be seen in both John Wycliffe’s complaints against clerical abuse in the latter half of the 14th century and in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and William Langland’s Piers Plowman, both written in the same century in which the Peasants’ Revolt took place. Both works are full of jibes at fat illiterate priests and cheating pardoners who peddled absolution from sins with their indulgences sold for money.

Wycliffe’s doctrine contained the fundamental ideas which were later realised internationally in the Reformation. He questioned the reality of transubstantiation (the Catholic belief that the bread and wine at Communion turn literally into the body and blood of Christ), he attacked the authority of the pope, he railed against the abuses of simony and indulgences. He advocated a bible in English and either he or his followers, the Lollards, produced a complete translation before the end of the fourteenth century.

Implicit within Wycliffe’s thought was the democratic spirit, because it is a short intellectual step from the belief that each man could be his own mediator with God to the idea that he should have a say in his earthly life. The Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries both promoted this individualist mentality in matters both sacred and profane and weakened the power of the Church as a source of authority in competition with the monarchy.

If the English were derisive of their priests, they were, as the Peasants Revolt showed, even less enamoured of the Crown with its tax collectors and the widespread existence of serfdom. But in truth the hand of the mediaeval state as embodied by the monarch was remarkably light by modern standards, especially so during the century long struggle of the houses of Lancaster and York and partly because mediaeval kingship was of necessity very limited in what it could do administratively because of a lack of funds, the power of the peerage, primitive technology, poor communications, administrative naivety and a radically different view of what government and society should be – apart from looking after his own privileges and estates, kings were expected to defend the land, put down rebellions, provide legal redress through the royal courts, maintain the position of the church and lead in war against other rulers. And that was about it.

But there was also a further check on the monarch. Perhaps the most important practical adjunct of this desire for freedom, has been that the English long hated and mistrusted the idea of a standing army as the creature of tyrants. The English were eventually content to have the strongest navy in the world because it could not be used against them, but a substantial army was not accepted as reasonable until the experiences of the Great War accustomed men to the idea. Soldiers were held in contempt before then. “Gone for a soldier” was little better than “taken for a thief”. The needs of Empire produced more ambivalence into the English view of soldiers as Kipling’s poem “Tommy” shows: “Oh, it’s Tommy this an’ Tommy that, and chuck him out the brute! But it’s ‘Saviour of ‘is country’ when the guns begin to shoot.” But the old resentment, fear and contempt remained until the stark democracy of experience in the trenches during the Great War tempered the English mind to tolerance of the soldier.

Because of a lack of a large standing army, English kings were ever dependent on the will of others, be it their nobles, parliament or the gentry. Even the most practically tyrannical of English kings, Henry VIII, was most careful to use Parliament to sanction his acts.

The consequences of this weakness was that power was localised. Incredible as it may see today, the practical governance of day-to-day life in England until well into the nineteenth century lay largely in the hands of private gentlemen occupying the post of JP, whose powers were much greater than they are today. Indeed, the central state impinged very little on the ordinary Englishman before 1914. George Bowling, the hero of George Orwell’s “Coming up for air” reflecting on how the arms of the state touched an honest citizen before the Great War could think only of the registration of births, deaths and marriages and the General Post Office.

By keeping the king dependent upon the will of others, the English ensured that a despot such as Louis X1V could not arise in England and in so doing underwrote their general liberties. Without that, it is improbable that parliamentary government (as opposed to a parliament) would have arisen. England would almost certainly have been involved in many debilitating wars for the aggrandisement of the king. In those circumstances it is unlikely that England as a modern state would have arisen.

The inability of English monarchs to create an absolute monarchy on the lines of Louis XIX’s France is a reflection of the independent spirit of the English and their natural instinct for liberty.

The beginnings of England’s political success

If England’s unique political success lies in the general tenor of her society, the institutions through which it was achieved were cultivated from the thirteenth century onwards. The start of the long climb towards representative government and the neutering of monarchy may reasonably be set in the reign of John. In 1215 he was forced by many of his barons to sign a charter which granted rights to all the free men of the kingdom. This charter, the Magna Carta, was of immense significance because it formally restricted the power of the king in an unprecedented way. The pope of the day thought it such an abomination he granted John absolution for its repudiation. Perhaps for the first time since the end of the classical world, a king had been forced to acknowledge unequivocally that there could be legal limits to his power.

Long regarded as a revolutionary document by historians, the fashion amongst them in recent times has been to treat the charter as little more than as an attempt to preserve and enhance the position of the barons or to restate existing English law and custom. Of course it did that but it did much more. Had it done nothing beyond circumscribing the power of the king it would have been revolutionary, but it went far beyond that by explicitly extending rights that we consider fundamental to a free society to all free men. Perhaps its two most famous clauses show its importance in the development of the future sharing of political power:

Clause 39 No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled or deprived of the standing in any other way , nor will we proceed with force against him or send others to do so, except by judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

Clause 40 To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.

Until the security of a man and his property are secured, there can be no sustained spreading of power, for if a king may imprison and dispossess at will no man is safe. All merely live at the will of the monarch. By providing both, Magna Carta created the necessary legal and ideological infrastructure for the political development which culminated in parliamentary government.

Perhaps the most intriguing clause of Magna Carta was the one, clause 61, which gave a committee of 25 Barons legal authority and practical power over the king. It is long clause but worth quoting in full:

Clause 61. Since, moreover, for God and the amendment of our kingdom and for the better allaying of the discord that has arisen between us and our barons we have granted all these things aforesaid, wishing them to enjoy the use of them unimpaired and unshaken for ever, we give and grant them the underwritten security, namely, that the barons shall choose any twenty-five barons of the kingdom they wish, who must with all their might observe, hold and cause to be observed, the peace and liberties which we have granted and confirmed to them by this present charter of ours, so that if we, or our justiciar, or our bailiffs or any one of our servants offend in any way against any one or transgress any of the articles of the peace or the security and the offence be notified to four of the aforesaid twenty-five barons, those four barons shall come to us, or to our justiciar if we are out of the kingdom, and, laying the transgression before us, shall petition us to have that transgression corrected without delay. And if we do not correct the transgression, or if we are out of the kingdom, if our justiciar does not correct it, within forty days, reckoning from the time it was brought to our notice or to that of our justiciar if we were out of the kingdom, the aforesaid four barons shall refer that case to the rest of the twenty-five barons and those twenty-five barons together with the Community of the whole land shall distrain and distress us in every way they can, namely, by seizing castles, lands, possessions, and in such other ways as they can, saving our person and the persons of our queen and our children, until, in their opinion, amends have been made; and when amends have been made, they shall obey us as they did before. And let anyone in the country who wishes to do so take an oath to obey the orders of the said twenty-five barons for the execution of all the aforesaid matters, and with them to distress us as much as he can, and we publicly and freely give anyone leave to take the oath who wishes to take it and we will never prohibit anyone from taking it. Indeed, all those in the land who are unwilling of themselves and of their own accord to take an oath to the twenty-five barons to help them to distrain and distress us, we will make them take the oath as aforesaid at our command. And if any of the twenty-five barons dies or leaves the country or is in any other way prevented from carrying out the things aforesaid, the remainder of the aforesaid twenty-five barons shall choose as they think fit another one in his place, and he shall take the oath like the rest. In all matters the execution of which is committed to these twenty-five barons, if it should happen that these twenty-five are present yet disagree among themselves about anything, or if some of those summoned will not or cannot be present, that shall be held as fixed and established which the majority of those present ordained or commanded, exactly as if all the twenty-five had consented to it; and the said twenty-five shall swear that they will faithfully observe all the things aforesaid and will do all they can to get them observed. And we will procure nothing from anyone, either personally or through any one else, whereby any of these concessions and liberties might be revoked or diminished; and if any such thing be procured let it be void and null, and we will never use it either personally or through another, And we have fully remitted and pardoned to everyone all the ill-will, anger and rancour that have arisen between us and our men, clergy and laity, from the time of the quarrel. Furthermore, we have fully remitted to all, clergy and laity, and as far as pertains to us have completely forgiven all trespasses occasioned by the same quarrel between Easter in the sixteenth year of our reign and the restoration of peace. And, besides, we have caused to be made for them letten testimonial patent of the lord Stephen archbishop of Canterbury, the lord Henry archbishop of Dublin and of the aforementioned bishops.

The extreme nature of the concessions the king made – he gave permission for his subjects to act with force to remedy any Royal failure to observe the charter – is a graphic example of the inherent weakness of the mediaeval monarch. King he might be, but not a tyrant because he did not have the resources to dominate utterly.

This committee was never actually formed, but the clause has great interest. Once such a council of nobles to restrict the behaviour of the king is accepted as reasonable and possible, it is not such a great leap to the idea of a larger assembly which might do the same. That idea was realised before the century was out in a Parliament.

Magna Carta is not as is commonly said the first formal restriction on the powers of a monarch. The coronation oaths of mediaeval kings regularly contained promises to observe the laws and customary freedoms of England, but there was no means of enforcing the oaths other than rebellion. There was even a previous occasion when Ethelred was forced to agree to formal restrictions on his powers in 1014, but that had no practical effect because of his death and the Danish conquest in 1016. Magna Carta unlike coronation oaths was both specific enough to usefully form the basis of law and in 1215 England did not fall under foreign rule. Instead, in modified form, it quickly became part of the statute books which developed in the thirteenth century. More importantly it acquired a mythological quality which lasts to this day. Every important English rebellion and political movement from 1215 until the Chartists in the 1840s has cited Magna Carta in their defence and derived their programme from it. The Levellers in the 1640s made constantly cited it. It was a benchmark which allowed the powers of the king to be progressively whittled away. Never again could an English king convincingly claim that such restrictions on the prerogative were unthinkable or unprecedented.