Category Archives: simon de montfort

English Democrats’ Spring Conference 2015

We had a good Spring Conference with the Party very united and we adopted the proposed policy amendments and we re-elected our National Council. I also was filmed by the BBC as I delivered this speech:-

Ladies & Gentlemen welcome to our 2015 Spring Conference in York.

York is one of our most beautiful and ancient historic cities where many of the pages of English history have been written.

Not very far from here, King Harold Godwinston destroyed the last great Viking invasion led by King Harald Hardrada in 1066 and also his own brother Tostig, the rebel Earl of Northumbria was killed.

It is also not far from here that earlier Viking invaders spread-eagled the last Anglo-Saxon King of Northumbria. Spread-eagling was a sort of Viking cross between torture and human sacrifice in which the victim was tied down on the ground and his chest opened to display the inside of his ribs as the feathered wings of the eagle, whilst Odin’s sacred birds, the ravens, swooped down to feast on his still living heart and lungs. Think about that ladies and gentlemen next time you see a pub called the Spread-eagle! And if you do go inside raise a glass in memory of our Anglo-Saxon forebears who fought off the Vikings to create the new English Nation which united on the 12th July 927 at the Council of Eamont – near modern Penrith!

So here we are ladies and gentlemen in the very heart of England holding an important meeting for the future of our country. Our numbers here today show that we still have much work to do, but we shouldn’t be daunted or down-hearted about that task. I think events are moving in our direction.

It is noticeable after the Scottish Referendum that many more people in England have woken up to the unfair way in which England is treated and even William Hague who once told the BBC in discussion with Jack Straw that he hated and feared English nationalism has begun to make conciliatory gestures towards English nationalism. Incidentally Jack Straw, who was recently exposed using the current arrangement to enrich himself, once said that “The English are potentially very aggressive, very violent”. But William Hague said that “English Nationalism is the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism” and even he, ladies and gentlemen, even William Hague, hating the idea of England, as he evidently does, nevertheless has at least made a half-hearted effort to tinker with the procedures of the House of Commons to give some recognition to English interests.

That EVEL proposal will of course come to nothing and is probably meant as nothing more than what Conservative HQ call a “populist positioning policy”, which you and I, ladies and gentlemen, might well translate with the Army expression “bullshit battles brains”. It is only a device to bamboozle English voters to vote Conservative. So ladies and gentlemen let us not forget David Cameron’s insult to the English when it comes to the ballot box. This is what he said about his national identity “I’m a Cameron, there is quite a lot of Scottish blood flowing through these veins” and this is what he said about people like us “I’ll take on the sour Little Englanders, I’ll fight them all the way”.

Ladies and gentlemen when even our enemies are having to give ground on our agenda we know that our Cause is making headway.

This year is also the 800th Anniversary of Magna Carta. Magna Carta is one of the greatest legacies of our Nation to all the peoples of the Earth. For in it our Nation first devised the idea that even Kings are subject to Law. No previous nation had ever dared to think such a thing. For example in Ancient Rome, ladies and gentlemen, the Will of the Emperor was the supreme law! In most other States throughout history there hasn’t really even been a concept of ‘Law’.

This year also there is a much less well celebrated but important historical anniversary – the 750th anniversary of the first English Parliament. That is the Parliament summoned by Simon De Montfort, the Earl of Leicester. Recently I was being interviewed by the Financial Times and was able to point out to them the very spot in the walls of Westminster Abbey which triggered the events which led to the first English Parliament. King John’s son, Henry III was building his vast and magnificent remodelled Westminster Abbey and he had spent so much on it and on his other building projects that he ran out of money. Being the government he thought that he had the right to take as much out of the pockets of the English as he wanted – just like our own government today!

But he was in for a rude shock as his excessive demands led to rebellion and to the first English Parliament which took place in the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey 750 years ago. The Chapter House is still there and I am looking into whether we could hold a meeting of our English Parliament there!

We have come here at least in part to prepare for the launch of our general election campaign for May 7th 2015. We recognise this is a General Election in which patriotic English people are likely to give UKIP, the “Believe in Britain” party, a chance, but after the election we need to be positioned and understood to be the “believe in England” Party. This is because, Ladies and gentlemen, I believe in England. Do you believe in England?

We stood in the Police Commissioner by-election in South Yorkshire last year and still got a credible result of 8,583 votes and retained our deposit but the statistics that shows our potential is:-

UKIP:

Number of votes: 46,883

Spent: £157048.65

Cost per vote: £3.35

English Democrats:

Number of Votes: 8582

Spent: £9567

Cost per vote: £1.11

It was also interesting that UKIP spent more than three times as much than we did on each and every vote that they received. I think the moral is that if we were actually able to raise enough money to match UKIP’s spending, not only would we beat them, but we would have been more likely to win election than they ever could be.

I wonder could that be something to do with the relative appeal of English nationalism as against British nationalism?

Ladies and gentlemen those of us who spend far too much time on the internet, Facebook and Twitter, even those of us who are trying to push our message I think will have come across huge numbers of over enthusiastic UKIP supporters who think that UKIP is going to be forming the next government!

I have got a message for them and for those English nationalists who think that UKIP may be the answer, despite its un-English stance. That message is:- No they won’t!

This election is an election where, for the first time ever, there is a great deal of detailed information on the likely outcome. Lord Ashcroft the former Tory donor, has spent literally millions of pounds in having opinion polls done in virtually every constituency in the United Kingdom. So we have a very clear view of the current picture and so the likely outcome of this General Election.

In the past opinion polls have generally been done on opinions across the whole country, but as the results for the Social Democrat Party showed in the 70’s, you can have a full quarter of the vote but if your vote is spread out across the country you will win hardly any seats. It is for that very strong electoral reason that the British Establishment have clung on to “first past the post” system, which gives them a disproportionate number of seats, especially given their increasingly limited support. It is the “first past the post” problem that UKIP have to contend with. It is because of “first past the post” and its effect of constituencies on the result that Lord Ashcroft’s polls suggest that UKIP will win between 3 and 5 seats.

Despite some recent UKIP spin, one of the seats that they appear to be increasingly unlikely to win matters perhaps more to them than any other because it is South Thanet, the seat that Nigel Farage is standing in.

I think you can already see fault lines developing in UKIP from the comments made by Douglas Carswell that he supports multi-culturalism and has criticised Enoch Powell’s views on the problems of mass immigration whereas Mark Reckless supports starting to think about repatriation of immigrants. So it’s easy to see that without Nigel Farage to hold them in check as Leader in Westminster, UKIP is likely to descend into open civil war and one of the issues they will fight over is the question of English nationalism.

Turning from UKIP to the likely consequences of the General Election, Lord Ashcroft’s polls show that the Conservatives and Labour are likely to win a very similar number of seats and that that number is likely to be well short of a majority in the House of Commons. This means that it seems unlikely, as things stand at the moment, that either Party will be able to form a government without assistance from smaller parties. It follows from this that the really important battle may well prove to be how many Liberal Democrat seats are lost and also equally important how many Scottish National Party seats are won.

So far as the Liberal Democrats are concerned, Lord Ashcroft’s polling suggests that they may well lose all but 20 of their seats. One of their seats that is in the balance is that of Nick Clegg at Sheffield Hallam. That is a constituency where there are a lot of students, many of whom will not have forgotten Nick Clegg’s dishonesty over student top-up or tuition fees. To add to the mix, the English Democrats will be standing in that seat and our candidate is Steve Clegg. Stand up Steve. So we will have Steve Clegg of the English Democrats hopefully higher up the ballot paper than Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats! It may only need a couple of hundred Liberal Democrat voters to make a mistake to decapitate that Party. What do you think of that ladies and gentlemen?

So far as the SNP are concerned, some opinion polls have put the number of potential wins for the SNP, out of the 59 seats in Scotland, at 56, almost wiping out Labour, wiping out all but 1 of the Liberal Democrats seats and wiping out the Conservatives in Scotland. Remember that whereas the first past the post vote will reduce UKIP’s vote to small numbers because it is spread out, the SNP are in the opposite position because the 45% of the Scottish who voted for Independence are concentrated in Scotland, whereas their unionist opponents are split which means that the SNP will win more seats than is proportionate.

If the Liberal Democrats are reduced to 20 then on the current opinion polls it will not be possible for either the Conservatives or for Labour to form a government with only an alliance or coalition with the Liberal Democrats. That means that they would have to form an alliance with the Scottish National Party.

The Scottish National Party have made it clear that they would not support a Conservative administration and therefore we may well see a coalition, or a “confidence and supply” agreement, between Labour and the Scottish National Party. You can be very sure that the price of such an arrangement will be deeper in-roads into English national interests.

To add to the interest in the outcome of this General Election it may be that Labour will need to also bring in the other parties that the SNP are in alliance with, Plaid Cymru, the Greens and Sinn Fein.

It may interest you to know that it has been reported and it has not been denied that senior Labour figures have already been in talks with Sinn Fein to see whether they would come into such an arrangement. I wonder ladies and gentlemen whether such a government shouldn’t be known as the Government of Anti-English Conspiracy?

I wonder if anybody here thinks that these prospects for the General Election, coupled with the effects of the fixed term parliament act which means that the arrangement, once in place, is likely to last 5 years, however ineffective and unpopular it becomes, that after that even the most politically comatose Englishman and Englishwoman won’t be roused out of their lethargy and political slumbers to support the only English nationalist party? Ladies and gentlemen do you think that they will also stop Believing in Britain? I do ladies and gentlemen.

So ladies and gentlemen as I said I believe in England. Again I ask do you believe in England? Well then ladies and gentlemen let’s live up to our motto and put England first. Who is with me?

750th Anniversary of the First English Parliament:- 1265 – 2015

OUR PRESS RELEASE

20th January – English Parliament – First Meeting


The English Democrats are calling for all English people to have pride on the 20th January that our Nation held its first meeting of the first Parliament on the 20th January 1265. This Parliament is the ancestor of every Parliament on earth today and is one of the many unique, historic and important contributions the English Nation has made to the foundation of the modern world and in creating representative democracy.

Whilst Simon de Montfort’s Parliament in 1265 was a revolutionary development, subsequent adoption by Edward I of Parliament and its embodiment into Medieval English Royal Government was a reflection of Parliament’s usefulness in getting consent for Royal tax raising powers.

Robin Tilbrook, the Chairman of the English Democrats said:- “Sadly on the 20th January 2015 almost unnoticed by officialdom in England there will pass an anniversary which demonstrates even more than the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, how ancient some of England’s institutions are.”

“The Earl of Leicester, Simon de Montfort, called his parliament the first proper English Parliament on the 20th January 1265 and so began the progress towards representative democracy.”

“A progress which has been of huge importance, not only in English history, but in the history of the entire modern world and is yet another unique and hugely significant contribution of the English Nation to the culture of the whole human race!”

Robin Tilbrook
Chairman,
The English Democrats