Category Archives: Economics

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.

English liberty and the Black Death

The Peasant’s Revolt has to set in the context of the dramatic social changes wrought by the plague. When the Black Death came to England in 1349 it was a source of both immediate misery and future opportunity for those who survived. Estimates of the numbers who died range from a quarter to a half of the population, but whatever the true proportion it had the most dramatic effect on the organisation of society. The immediate result was a widespread transfer of property and consolidation of wealth as the lucky survivors inherited. This consolidation aided people a long way down the social scale, for a man inheriting no more than a couple of oxen and a plough was considerably better off than a man with none.

Most importantly, the country went from being one with an oversupply of labour – England prior to the Black Death was probably as well populated as it was in any time before 1700 – to a country where labour was scarce. Landowners were suddenly faced with a new economic world. They had either lost many of their workers through death or were faced with serfs who were no longer obedient and frequently

absconded, often lured to work as free men by other landowners, or drawn to the anonymity of the towns. Landowners had to employ free men who demanded what were considered extortionate wages. The Statute of Labourers of 1351 was a forlorn attempt to keep things as they had been before the Black Death by restricting wages but, like all attempts to buck fundamental economic forces, it failed.

It is probably not overly sanguine to see English society in the late medieval period after the Black Death as a golden age for the common man. Not only was labour scarce and land plentiful, but the great enclosure movement was still in the future and a very large proportion of the population were, to a large extent, their own masters as they worked their land. Even where labour services were still performed, they were not crushing, being commonly 40 days work in a year. Moreover, agricultural work is seasonal, especially the arable, and for substantial parts of the year there is relatively little to do on a farm.

Beyond agriculture, many people had a large degree of control over their daily lives. This was the time before industrialisation, before the wage-slave and the factory. Skilled craftsmen were often their own masters, and even those who worked for a master will have organised their own time because they worked from their homes. Indeed, most English men and women today almost certainly have far less control of their time than the average mediaeval inhabitant of England.

English liberty and the Peasants’ Revolt

Nothing demonstrates the Englishman’s long held lack of deference and desire to be his own man better than the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. General resentment of privilege and particular hostility to the imposition of a tax (the Poll Tax) considered to be both unreasonable and illegitimate, was given unambiguous voice. For a brief period the fog of obscurity which ordinarily covers the masses in the mediaeval world clears. A remarkable scene meets the eye for we find not a cowed and servile people but a robust cast of rebels who far from showing respect for their betters display a mixture of contempt and hatred for everyone in authority bar the boy-king Richard II.

Perhaps most surprising to the modern reader is the extreme social radicalism of their demands which might, without too much exaggeration, be described as a demand for a classless society. The Revolt may have had its origins in the hated Poll Tax but it soon developed into a series of general political demands. One of the revolt’s leaders, the hedge-priest John Ball, reputedly preached “ Things cannot go right in England and never will until goods are held in common and there are no more villeins and gentlefolk but we are all one and the same”, and the anonymous and revolutionary couplet “When Adam delved and Eve span/who was then the gentleman?” was in men’s mouths. The mediaeval chronicler Jean Froissart has Ball preaching:

Are we not descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve? And what can they sow or what reason can they give why they should be more masters than ourselves? They are clothed in velvet and rich stuffs ornamented in ermine and other furs while we are forced to wear poor clothing. They have wines and fine bread while we have only rye and refuse of straw and when we drink it must be water. They have handsome manors…while we must have the wind and rain in our labours in the field and it is by our labours that they…support their pomp. We are called slaves and if we do perform our services we are beaten and we have no sovereign to whom we can complain…let us go to the King and remonstrate with him; he is young and from him we may obtain a favourable answer, and if not we must seek to amend our conditions ourselves. (Simon Schama A History of Britain p 248)

Whether or not these words bore any resemblance to Ball’s actual words, whether or not they were black propaganda (on behalf of the elite) by Froissart to show the dangers society faced from the Revolt, we may note that the sentiments are compatible with the demands made by the rebels in 1381.

When the Kentish men led by Wat Tyler, an Essex man, met the 14-year-old king Richard at Mile End on 14 June, they demanded an end to serfdom and a flat rent of 4 pence an acre. The king granted the plea. When the king met the rebels a second time Tyler shook the king’s hand and called him “brother”. Tyler demanded a new Magna Carta for the common people which would have ended serfdom, pardoned all outlaws, liquidated all church property and declared that all men below the king were equal, in effect abolishing the peerage and gentry. Richard, much to the rebels’ surprise, accepted the demands, although cunningly qualifying the acceptance “saving only the regality of the crown”. A few minutes later Tyler was mortally wounded, supposedly after he had attempted to attack a young esquire in the royal party who had called him a thief. His death signalled the beginning of the end of the revolt for without Tyler the Revolt lost direction and those who remained willing to resist were pacified in the next few weeks.

During the Revolt the rebels did not run riot, but acted in a controlled manner, attacking the property of tax collectors, other important royal servants and any property belonging to the king’s uncle, John of Gaunt. Any identifiable Exchequer document was ripe for destruction.

The revolt began in Essex when the commissioners attempting to collect the Poll Tax were surrounded by a hostile crowd on 30 May 1381. Physical threats were made against one of the commissioners, and the commissioners retreated from the immediate task of attempting to collect the tax. This brought in the Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas to restore order. He was captured by an even larger crowd and made to swear on oath that no further attempt would be made to collect the tax the area. The names of informers who had provided names to the commissioners was discovered and the culprits beheaded.

The spirit of rebellion soon spread. By 2 June a crowd in the village of Bocking had sworn that they would “have no law in England except only as they themselves moved to be ordained.”

The rebellion had infected Kent by the end of the first week in June. By the time Wat Tyler, an Essex man by birth, had been elected to lead the Kentish men the demand was for the heads of the king’s uncle John of Gaunt, the Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury and the Treasurer Sir Robert Hales. After Tyler’s first meeting with Richard, Sudbury and Hales were captured and beheaded by the rebels. No deference or want of ambition there.

The extent to which the Revolt frightened the crown and nobility can be seen in the violence of Richard’s words when he addressed another group of rebels at Walthamstow on 22 June, by which time the danger was felt to have largely passed:

You wretches, detestable on land and sea ; you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues. Rustics you were and rustics you are still: you will remain in bondage not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you , and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity . How ever, we will spare your lives if you remain faithful. Choose now which you want to follow . (Simon Schama A History of Britain p 254 )

Don’t laugh; Labour are flying the English flag

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

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

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

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

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

Or take a Labour backbencher , the German Gisela Stuart

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

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

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

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

Selling England by the pound

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

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

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

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

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

England was wealthy long before the Empire and the Slave Trade

Researchers at Warwick University led by economist Professor Stephen Broadberry have concluded that Mediaeval England, far from being a land of poverty-stricken peasants oppressed by a small aristocratic elite, was a prosperous land with a higher average per capita income more than double that of the poorest nations in the world today* The results are published by the University of Warwick’s Centre on Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)in a paper entitled British Economic Growth 1270-1870. www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/broadberry/wp/britishgdplongrun8a.pdf

The researchers took as a benchmark an annual income of $400 annually (as expressed in 1990 international dollars) , a measure often used as a measure of “bare bones subsistence”. They estimated English per capita incomes in the late Middle Ages were around $1,000 (again as expressed in 1990 dollars) and that even just before the Black Death, which first struck in 1348/49, they were more than $800 using the same 1990 dollar measure. This is significant because incomes rose significantly after the Black Death because of a dire shortage of labour.

In an interview with Science Daily Professor Broadberry, said:

“Our work sheds new light on England’s economic past, revealing that per capita incomes in medieval England were substantially higher than the “bare bones subsistence” levels experienced by people living in poor countries in our modern world. The majority of the British population in medieval times could afford to consume what we call a “respectability basket” of consumer goods that allowed for occasional luxuries. By the late Middle Ages, the English people were in a position to afford a varied diet including meat, dairy produce and ale, as well as the less highly processed grain products that comprised the bulk of the “bare bones subsistence” diet.”

He also said: “Of course this paper focuses only on average per capita incomes. We also need to have a better understanding of the distribution of income in medieval England, as there will have been some people living at bare bones subsistence, and at times this proportion could have been quite substantial. We are now beginning research to construct social tables which will also reveal the distribution of income for some key benchmark years in that period”

“The research provides the first annual estimates of GDP for England between 1270 and 1700 and for Great Britain between 1700 and 1870. Far more data are available for the pre-1870 period than is widely realised. Britain after the Norman conquest was a literate and numerate society that generated substantial written records, many of which have survived. As a result, the research was aided by a wide variety of records — among them manorial records, tithes, farming records, and probate records.”

Professor Broadberry further said that: “Our research shows that the path to the Industrial Revolution began far earlier than commonly has been understood. A widely held view of economic history suggests that the Industrial Revolution of 1800 suddenly took off, in the wake of centuries without sustained economic growth or appreciable improvements in living standards in England from the days of the hunter-gatherer. By contrast, we find that the Industrial Revolution did not come out of the blue. Rather, it was the culmination of a long period of economic development stretching back as far as the late medieval period.” (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101205234308.htm)

Broadly, there is nothing tremendously new here, although the research includes interesting work on the quantification of wealth in England before the Industrial Revolution with for the first time annual estimates of English GDP between 1270-1700. From the advent of printing, it was common for travellers in England who wrote and published their experiences there to comment on the wealth of England generally and the good condition of the poorer classes in particular. Middle English literary works such as the Canterbury Tales and Piers Ploughman (both 14^th Century) also paint a picture of an England far from poor. To those literary sources can be added the evidence of the many magnificent mediaeval cathedrals and the plentiful supply of mediaeval castles which both speak of considerable national wealth.

As for the notion that the Industrial Revolution suddenly sprang into the world newly minted around 1760, this has always been treated by serious historians as a nonsense. It was clearly the culmination of a long period of economic accretion and social, legal and political evolution. (see http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/england-and-the-only-bootstrapped-industrial-revolution-2/)

The estimates of mediaeval per capita income may even produce a false comparison between that time and place and the poorest countries today. Most would have had land to work on their own account, whether that be as a freeman or serf, and with that land would have come a place to live in. The same does not apply to the poorest countries today.

If there is nothing startlingly novel, the research is immensely valuable as an antidote to the idea constantly promoted in the mainstream media that England only became rich because of the empire and slave trade and before those events was a poor and insignificant country.

*Poorest nations today per capita income at 1990 dollar values – Zaire $249, Burundi $479, Niger $514, Central African Republic $536, Comoro Islands $549, Togo $606, Guinea Bissau $617, Guinea $628, Sierra Leone $686, Haiti at $686, Chad $706, Zimbabwe $779, Afghanistan $869

England and the only bootstrapped Industrial Revolution

Of all the social changes which have occurred in human history, none has been so profound as the process of industrialisation. The two previous great general amendments to human life – farming and urbanisation – pale into insignificance. Before industrialisation, man lived primarily from the land and animals whether from farming, husbandry or hunter-gathering. In the most advanced civilisations, the vast majority of populations lived outside large towns and cities. Even in industrialising England a majority of the population derived their living directly from the land as late as the 1830s. France did not become a predominantly urban nation until the 1930s.

With industrialisation came not merely a change in the material circumstances, but profound social alteration. There arose much greater opportunity to move from the small world of the village. The massive increase in wealth eventually made even the poor rich enough to have aspirations. Sufficient numbers of the wealthier classes became guilty enough about abject poverty existing beside great wealth that the condition of the poor was further mitigated by greater educational opportunity, welfare provision and legislation regulating the abuse of workers by employers. Political horizons were expanded by the extension of the franchise.

The industrial revolution altered the balance of power throughout the world. David Landes “In the wealth and Poverty of Nations” describes the effect succinctly: “The industrial revolution made some countries richer, others (relatively) poorer; or more accurately, some countries made an industrial revolution and became rich; and others did not and stayed poor.”(p168). Prior to industrialisation, the disparity in wealth between states, regions and even continents was relatively small. Come the Industrial Revolution and massive disparities begin to appear. For Dr Landes, it is to the success or otherwise in industrialising which is the primary cause of present disparities in national wealth.

All of this tremendous amendment to human existence occurred because the one and only bootstrapped Industrial Revolution took place in England. Why England? David Landes in the “Wealth and Poverty of Nations” sees the historical process of industrialisation as twofold. First, comes a pre-industrial preparatory period in which irrationality of thought is gradually replaced by scientific method and what he calls “autonomy of intellectual inquiry”(p201), that is, thought divorced from unquestioned reliance on authority, irrationality, especially superstition. At the same time technology begins to be something more than by-guess-and-by-God. This gives birth to industrialisation by creating both the intellectual climate and the acquired knowledge, both scientific and technological, necessary for the transformation from traditional to modern society. It is as good an explanation as any and fits the flow of England’s historical development.

It is not utterly implausible to suggest that without England the world might have had no Industrial Revolution. Those who would scoff at such a proposition should consider the cold facts: even with England and Britain’s example to follow no other nation matched her industrial development until the 1870′s and then the first country to do so was a state ultimately derived from England, namely the USA. Nor did England produce an industrial revolution only in England, they actively exported and financed it throughout the world, for example, most of the European railway building of the years 1840-70 was the result of British engineers and money.

Some may point to scientific advance in Europe from 1600 onwards as reason to believe that industrialisation would have been achieved without England. It is true that Europe advanced scientifically in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but scientific knowledge is no guarantee of technological progress. Moreover, a good deal of that scientific advance came from England. Nor does scientific knowledge have any natural connection with the severe social upheaval required for a transformation from the land-working dominated pre-industrial state to capitalism. Indeed, the landowners of pre-industrial Europe had a vested interest in not promoting industrial advance. Moreover, in many parts of Europe, particularly the East, feudal burdens became greater not less after 1500. This was so even in as advanced a country as France. Consequently, the widespread social mobility which historians have generally thought necessary to promote a bootstrapped industrial revolution simply did not exist in Europe at the beginning of the British Industrial revolution. Even the country most like England in its commercial development, the Netherlands, became socially and politically ossified in the Eighteenth century, with a bourgeoisie developing into an aristocracy and representative government narrowed to what was in effect a parliament of nobles.

There will be those – Scots in particular – who will chafe at the idea that the industrial revolution was dependent upon England. The facts are against them.

Scotland before the union with England (1707) was a remarkably poor state. Nor, despite its much vaunted educational system – supposedly much the superior of England – had it produced many men of international importance. Read a general history of Europe, either old or modern, and you will find precious few Scots mentioned on their own account before the Union. The names John Eringa and Duns Scotus with perhaps a nod to John Knox are the best the reader may hope for, and the former two had to leave Scotland to make their names. If any other Scotsman who lived before the Union is mentioned, he will be noticed only because of his connection with another country, most commonly England. It required the union with England to give Scots a larger stage to act upon. Without the union, the likes of David Hume, Adam Smith and James Watt would in all probability have been roses which bloomed unseen in the desert air. That is not to decry the talents and contributions of Scots, which are considerable, merely to describe a necessary sociological condition for their realisation.

Let me demonstrate how much of an English enterprise the Industrial Revolution was by using the example of the development of steam power. Contrary to many a schoolboy’s imagining, James Watt did not invent the steam engine. That was the province of Englishmen. The Marquess of Worcester may have produced a working steam engine on his estates in 1663; James Savery certainly did in 1698. This was improved by another Englishman, Thomas Newcomen. Their machines were crude beam engines, but the technological Rubicon had been crossed.

It is true that the Scotsman Watt’s improvements to the steam engine – the conversion of linear to rotary action and the introduction of a separate condenser – were profoundly important and provided the means to extend the use of steam engines from their limited applications in pumping water from mines. But it should be noted that he had to come to England to achieve his improvements through his association with an English entrepreneur of genius, Mathew Boulton, who at his Soho works in Birmingham had probably the best engineering facilities then in the world. It was also Boulton who pressed Watt to develop the conversion of linear to rotary action. It is worth adding that Watt was a timid, retiring personality who left to his own devices would probably have achieved little of practical consequence. Moreover, within a generation of Watt’s improvements, the English engineer, Richard Trevithick had greatly improved on Watt’s engine by producing a high pressure steam engine, arguably a more important advance than Watt’s innovations because without it steam engines would have remained large and seriously underpowered.. static installations unable to drive vehicles such as trains and ships..

But before steam could play its full role there had to be a revolution in iron production. This was accomplished by Englishmen. Until Abraham Darby began smelting iron with coke made from coal in the early 1700s, iron making was an expensive and uncertain business carried on in small foundries using charcoal to fire the kilns (an ironmaker named Dudley claimed to have used coal successfully for smelting as early as 1619 but died without establishing a business to carry the work on). Compared with coal, charcoal was in short supply. Worse, it did not produce the same intensity of heat as coal converted into coke. Darby and his son solved the basic problem of smelting with coke made from coal. Henry Cort’s puddling process allowed cast-iron to be refined to remove the brittleness. A little later Benjamin Huntsman improved steel making. In the middle of the next century the Bessemer revolutionised steel production to such a degree that its price fell dramatically enough to make steel no longer a luxury but the common material of construction. All these advances were made by Englishmen.

Large scale organisation is also intellectually demanding. If a ready and cheaper supply of iron was a necessary condition for the industrial revolution, so was the very idea of large scale manufactories using machines. Undertakings employing hundreds of men on one site were not unknown before the 18th Century – a clothier named Jack of Newbury had a factory employing 500 in Tudor times – but they were very rare. In 18th Century England such enterprises became if not commonplace, at least not extraordinary. By the next century they were the norm. Industry became for the first time geared to a mass market. Nor was this new method of manufacturing confined to the necessities and banalities of life. Factories such as Josiah Wedgewood’s at Etruria manufactured high quality and imaginative china directed deliberately at the growing middle classes. All the most successful 18th century machines for mass production were developed by Englishmen. Arkwright’s water frame, Crompton’s mule, James Hargreaves spinning jenny.

Once the first blast of the industrial revolution had passed, the fundamental fine tuning was undertaken by Englishmen, with men such as Whitworth leading the way with machine tools and new standards of exactness in measurement and industrial cutting and finishing. All very boring to the ordinary man, but utterly essential for the foundation of a successful industrial society.

Many vital industries since have originated in England. To take a few, George Stephenson produced the first practical railway (the railway probably did more than anything to drive the Industrial Revolution because it allowed a true national market to operate within England); Brunel issued in the age of the ocean going steamship; William Perkins laid the foundation for the modern chemical industry by discovering the first synthetic dye; the first electronic computer was designed in Britain, after the theoretical foundations had been laid by the Englishman, Alan Turing. (In the previous century another Englishman, Charles Babbage, designed but did not finished building the first programmable machine.)

Alongside the development of manufacturing ran that of agriculture. The enclosure movement was already well advanced by 1700. By the middle of the nineteenth century it was effectively finished. Not merely feudalism but the peasantry were gone. The old, inefficient open-field system was a dead letter. With enclosure came agricultural innovation. In the eighteenth century we have Jethro Tull, whose seed drill greatly reduced the amount of seed needed for sowing, Robert Bakewell whose selective breeding greatly increased the size of sheep and cattle and “Turnip” Townsend who greatly increased crop efficiency by various mean such as the marling of sandy soil. The importance of such developments cannot be overestimated because the population of Britain rose so dramatically in the next century.

The technological inventions and discoveries made by the English are legion. The list below gives some idea of their importance and range.

Thomas Savery (1650-1715). Invented the first commercial steam engine -a steam pump.

Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729). Improved Savery’s engine by introducing the piston.

Richard Trevithick (1771 – 1833). Invented the high pressure steam engine. Built the first steam locomotive.

George Stephenson (1781-1848). Made the railway a practical reality.

Abraham Darby (1678-1717). Developed the process of smelting iron using coke.

Sir Henry Bessemer, 1813-1898. Devised a process for making steel on a large scale.

James Hargreaves (1722-1778). Invented the spinning jenny.

John Kay (1733-1764). Invented the flying shuttle.

Samuel Crompton (1753-1827). Invented the spinning mule.

Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) Invented the waterframe.

Edmund Cartwright (1743-1823). Invented the power loom.

John Harrison (1693-1776) First to build watches accurate enough to solve the longitude measurement problem.

Edward Jenner (1743-1823). Developed vaccination.

Joseph Lister (1827-1912). Developed antisepsis.

Sir Joseph Whitworth (1803-1887) standardised screw threads, produced first true plane surfaces in metal, developed ductile steel.

Henry Maudslay (1771-1831). Invented the screw-cutting lathe and the first bench micrometer that was capable of measuring to one ten thousandth of an inch.

Joseph Bramah (1748-1814). Invented the hydraulic press.

John Walker (1781- 1859). Invented the first friction matches.

John Smeaton (1724-1792) made the first modern concrete (hydraulic cement).

Joseph Aspdin (1788-1855) invented Portland Cement, the first true artificial cement.

Humphrey Davy (1778-1829). Invented the first electric light, the arc lamp.

Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Invented the electric motor.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859). Built the first really large steam ships – the Great Britain, Great Western, Great Eastern.

Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897). Devised the most widely used modern shorthand.

Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802 – 1875). Developed an electric telegraph at the same time as Samuel Morse.

Rowland Hill (1795-1879). Invented adhesive postage stamps.

John Herschel (1792-1871). Invented the blueprint.

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) Invented the negative-positive photography and latent image shorter exposure time.

Sir Joseph William Swan (1828-1914). Invented the dry photographic plate. Invented, concurrently with Edison, the light bulb.

Sir William Henry Perkin (1838-1907). Created the first artificial dye – aniline purple or mauveine – and the first artificial scent, coumarin.

Alexander Parkes (1813-90). Created the first artificial plastic, Parkensine.

Sir George Cayley (1773-1857). Worked out the principles of aerodynamics, his “On Ariel Navigation” showed that a fixed wing aircraft with a power system for propulsion, and a tail to assist in the control of the airplane, would be the best way to allow man to fly. Also invented the caterpillar track.

Sir Frank Whittle (1907-1996). Took out the first patents for a Turbojet.

Sir Christopher Cockerell (1910-1999). Invented the hovercraft.

Charles Babbage (1792-1871). Worked out the basic principles of the computer.

Alan Turin (1912-1954). Widely considered the father of modern computer science – worked out the principles of the digital computer.

Tim Berners-Lee (1955-). Invented the World Wide Web defining HTML (hypertextmarkup language), HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and URLs (Universal Resource Locators).

English Speaking Union debate: ‘This house believes that an English Parliament is the last hope for a United Kingdom’

Report and commentary on the Campaign for an English Parliament English Speaking Union debate 24 November 2010

Proposition: ‘This house believes that an English Parliament is the last hope for a United Kingdom’

Chair: Louisa Preston (BBC Presenter)

For: Scilla Cullen (CEP), David Wildgoose ( (English Democrats)

Against: Prof. Hugo de Burgh (Ex-journalist and now a Director, China Media Studies at Westminster U, Eddie Bone (CEP)

NB Eddie Bone was playing devil’s advocate (see below) as he is a supporter of an English Parliament

The proposition for debate was lightly worn as both the platform speakers and comments and questions from the floor tended to circle around the questions of a federal UK and the practicality of an English parliament. Nonetheless, it was an interesting evening with a healthy turnout.

Scilla Cullen

Mrs Cullen’s main thrust was directed at what she claimed were breaches of the 1707 Act of Union. She illustrated this by pointing to the fact that we now have at two Parliaments – at Westminster and Edinburgh – in the UK ( four if the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies are treated as parliaments) whereas the Act says there will be but one Parliament for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and different tax and regulatory regimes for trade between the four home countries, something which she claimed was forbidden by the Act.

There are two objections to Mrs Cullen’s argument. The Act of Union is simply an ordinary Act of Parliament. It has no superior status as constitutional law. This means that it can be amended or repealed overtly by an Act of Parliament or by the application of the English legal doctrine of implied repeal, viz:

“As a general rule, if an Act is partially or wholly inconsistent with a previous Act, then the previous Act is repealed to the extent of the inconsistency. It does not matter that the later Act contains no express words to affect the repeal or alteration. This is known as the doctrine of implied repeal. (page 3 – http://cseng.aw.com/catalog/uploads/Carroll_C05.pdf – there is a good presentation of the history and development of the doctrine at this url )”

There have been attempts since Britain’s entry into the EU (EEC at the time of entry) – most notably in the ‘Metric Martyrs’ case – to establish that some statutes have a de facto constitutional status and should not be subject to implied repeal – but no higher court has sustained the claim. (This failure to create a superior constitutional law status underpins David Cameron’s recent claim that Parliament is supreme and consequently Britain could leave the EU simply by an Act of Parliament. Cameron is incorrect because of the Lisbon Treaty – see below under Wildgoose). It is worth adding, that even if some ordinary Acts of Parliament were retrospectively given a superior constitutional law status and were not subject to implied repeal, the constitutional position would remain unclear because the Acts with constitutional law status would contradict one another.

The existence of implied repeal means that any complaint that the original Act of Union has been breached by later law has no legal force.

As for the claim that the original Act required equality of tax and trade regulations throughout Great Britain, this is simply wrong because there are exceptions such those in clause VI (the full text of the Act can be found at http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/the-act-of-union-1707/ ). Most notable is clause IX, viz:

“THAT whenever the sum of One million nine hundred ninety seven thousand seven hundred and sixty three pounds eight shillings and four pence half penny, shall be enacted by the Parliament of Great Britain to be raised in that part of the United Kingdom now called England, on Land and other Things usually charged in Acts of Parliament there, for granting an Aid to the Crown by a Land Tax; that part of the United Kingdom now called Scotland, shall be charged by the same Act, with a further Sum of forty-eight thousand Pounds, free of all Charges, as the Quota of Scotland, to such Tax, and to proportionably for any greater or lesser Sum raised in England by any Tax on Land, and other Things usually charged together with the Land; and that such Quota for Scotland, in the Cases aforesaid, be raised and collected in the same Manner as the Cess now is in Scotland, but subject to such Regulations in the manner of collecting, as shall be made by the Parliament of Great Britain.”

At the time of Union England had a population in the region of 5 million and Scotland a population of approximately 1 million. If Scotland had been taxed at the same rate as England under that clause they would have been paying not £48,000 but nearer to £400,000. Hence, from the very beginning Scotland was treated much more favourably than England when it came to taxation.

Mrs Cullen was on firmer ground when she pressed the fact that we had a de facto federal system which could only be equitable by the creation of an English Parliament . She illustrated the point by mentioning that we currently have the absurdity of the SNP’s Richard Lochhead, a domestic Scottish politician without any electoral base in UK politics, negotiating on behalf of the UK with the EU over fishing policy.

David Wildgoose

Mr Wildgoose wanted a federal UK but it would not have been one which I think most English men and women would welcome. His idea of a federal government was one in which 55 seats at Westminster were taken from the Celts and given to the English, with “English votes for English laws” and the federal issues decided by the entire Parliament. The problem was he was not envisaging a situation in which the English subsidy to the Celts ended, for example, he assumed welfare benefits would continue to be funded from Westminster . This sat uncomfortably with his claim that he wanted “The English to be equal citizens with equal rights”.

During the Q and A session afterwards I detailed what a stable and long lasting federal UK should involve – four national parliaments with home rule including fiscal responsibility and one assembly to deal with federal matters such as foreign affairs, defence and the servicing of the national debt. Oddly, Mr Wildgoose claimed this was not a federation but a confederation. I pointed out, sadly without success, that a confederation is a loose league of states without any overarching government, for example, the confederation which arose immediately after the end of the American War of Independence , while a federation has an overarching government such as that which was formed when the United States was established. Clearly what I was proposing was a federal system while Mr Wildgoose was suggesting no more than a procedurally amended House of Commons.

Mr Wildgoose also recited the oft made claim that because Parliament is supreme Britain can leave the EU simply by passing an Act of Parliament repealing all the Treaties which enshrine our EU membership in law. This is no longer true. The Lisbon Treaty contains for the first time a mechanism for any EU state wishing to withdraw from the Union, viz:

“Article 50 of the Treaty runs:

“1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.

4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it. A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.”

Apart from requiring a qualified majority of the other EU states (QMV means in practice the support of most of the large EU nations), the state which wishes to withdraw would be excluded from any discussions on the conditions for withdrawal. Then there is the delay before withdrawal can be effected. It is probable that the minimum period of waiting before secession would be two years, because it would be extraordinary if the EU did not try to make withdrawal as difficult as possible, while the provision in paragraph 2 that departure must be by negotiation “setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union” means that it will necessarily be a protracted process.

During the time before Britain left she would be bound by EU laws and the EU could adopt directives which could do Britain a good deal of damage, for example, directives which severely interfered with the City. These would not even have to be directives deliberately designed to harm Britain, but simply decisions advantageous to the remaining members which would take no account of any damage that might be done to Britain. Britain would take no part in discussions or votes on EU legislation introduced during the period between asking to withdraw and actually withdrawing. There would almost certainly be significant conditions for withdrawal which impinged upon British sovereignty including agreement to ‘voluntarily’ adopt much EU legislation, both existing and future. With the Treaty unsigned Britain could have simply stated that it was withdrawing. Such a declaration would raise the question of whether Article 56(1) of the Vienna Convention on the Law on Treaties, to which our political elite have also promiscuously bound Britain, would sanction withdrawal. The Article runs:

“1. A treaty which contains no provision regarding its termination and which does not provide for denunciation or withdrawal is not subject to denunciation or withdrawal unless:

a) it is established that the parties intended to admit the possibility of denunciation or withdrawal; or

b) a right of denunciation or withdrawal may be implied by the nature of the treaty.”

Whether the various treaties which encumber the EU before the Lisbon Treaty is in force could be said to imply a right of withdrawal is a matter of legal debate, although the fact that the Lisbon Treaty itself makes provision for withdrawal is a tacit admission that withdrawal was always implied. But legal or not, a situation where the right of withdrawal was claimed where no treaty sanctioned, forbade or laid down conditions for withdrawal would be a vastly more fluid and, consequently, Britain would be in a much stronger bargaining situation than that which would exist after the Lisbon Treaty becomes law. After implementation of the Treaty, Article 54 of the Vienna Convention on the Law on Treaties would apply to the EU. That Article runs:

“The termination of a treaty or the withdrawal of a party may

take place:

(a) in conformity with the provisions of the treaty; or

(b) at any time by consent of all the parties after consultation with the other contracting States.”

This is in conformity with the withdrawal Article in the Lisbon Treaty and the EU’s legal position would be greatly strengthened by the Treaty‘s implementation. That is one of the reasons why the EU is so desperate to get the Treaty ratified before the next British general election.

But legality in international matters is not the same as legality within a nation state. This is both because there is no democratic legitimacy for international law and for the entirely practical reason that there is no means of enforcing such law, short of blockade or war. Hence, international law is all too often observed in its breach by powerful nations and enforced by the powerful on the weak. Its unreality is shown in Article 42 of the Vienna Convention on the Law on Treaties:

“Validity and continuance in force of treaties

1. The validity of a treaty or of the consent of a State or an international organization to be bound by a treaty may be impeached only through the application of the present Convention.

2. The termination of a treaty, its denunciation or the withdrawal of a party, may take place only as a result of the application of the provisions of the treaty or of the present Convention. The same rule applies to suspension of the operation of a treaty.”

This means that for Britain to legally withdraw from the Vienna Convention all Britain’s co-signatories would have to agree to the withdrawal, a truly fantastic hope.” (Extract from my recent Quarterly Review article Life after Lisbon: freedom or servitude?)

Hugo de Burgh

Prof de Burgh served up a very rum political dish. On the one hand he was wont to make comments such as the EU is “Germany’s Fourth Reich” and a claim that the best governments in the world were all to be found in the Anglosphere as well as constantly extolling the culture and traditions of England. He was also roundly contemptuous of modern politicians, whom he sees as largely corrupt and self serving, and the centralising tendencies of recent British governments. On the other hand he was adamant that that there should be no English Parliament.

There are two contradictions here. First, if English culture and traditions are so valuable, it follows that they are worth preserving and like everything else worth preserving this is best done by those with the most direct interest, in this instance the England. Second, if Prof de Burgh wants less centralisation, what could be a better place to start than by removing English spending from the bonds of UK policy? It was noticeable that while advocating a devolution of powers generally to the local levels, the Professor did not feel it necessary to suggest that the Celtic Fringe assemblies be abolished. Astute readers will see that Prof de Burgh’s ideal UK is not a million miles from that of the Blair government with England balkanised and the Celts left politically intact.

How did Prof de Burgh justify his opposition to an English parliament? Apart from his localism argument, he conjured up a vision of a new world dominated by China with the Anglosphere replaced as top political world dog by the Asiansphere and argued from this that it made no sense for England to assert her nationhood because England would be too small and insignificant to have a significant voice. Why this would be a significantly smaller or significant voice than that of the UK – England having five sixths of UK population – he did not attempt to explain.

The Professor eventually let the cat out of the bag by saying that England (and the rest of the Anglosphere) should exercise its influence by simply continuing as before which would set an example to nations without a tradition of the type of values he most admired in the Anglosphere such as representative democracy (note: England invented representative government not democracy) and equality before the law. This is the modern liberal internationalist version of the late imperial ideal of bringing civilisation to “lesser breeds without the law”.

Prof de Burgh told a fascinating story about a recent encounter he had with a rising member of the Chinese elite who was already an important administrator. Most Chinese the professor meets love to show off their English. Not this one. In fact, he did not speak at all and was proud of the fact. The Chinese official explained that he had made a conscious decision not to learn English because he wanted to remain untouched by foreign culture as this would allow him to fully understand and appreciate the people he would be effectively governing. That is precisely the mentality which Lord Macartney encountered on the first official British embassy to China in 1794 (His journal is available from the Folio Society in their publication An Embassy to China. ) The liberal idea that China will become a model of Liberal democracy rigid with political correctness is so far removed from the Chinese mentality as to be comical were it not for the threat China potentially pose to the West. (Those who wish to understand the immense ambition of the Chinese should read Parag Khanna’s “The second world”.)

Prof de Burgh disavowed this mentality but clearly admired it. In fact, it is a classic expression of the natural human desire to guard the security of the tribe. I applaud that, but seek the same privilege for the English and any other nation.

Eddie Bone

Mr Bone’s contribution I found unreservedly fascinating. He has amassed a positive treasury of quotes of Anglophobic politicians from all the major parties and used these to put the anti-English Parliament government case. There was Jack Straw claiming the English were dangerous because they were violent, David Cameron recoiling with horror at the idea of being Prime Minister of merely England , George Robertson rubbing his hands at the idea of regional governments in England, John Prescott bizarrely claiming he is a “proud Welshman” and William Hague insisting he is a Briton first and foremost.

Mr Bone has promised to send me a copy of his quotes which I shall post on the England calling blog (he has agreed to this).

Questions and comments from the floor

There was a good array of questions including important issues which had gone largely or wholly unmentioned by the speakers such as the complication of the EU and the dire economic situation of the Celtic Fringe.

The mood of the meeting was overwhelmingly one of anger at the way England was being treated.

The vote on the proposition was carried overwhelmingly.

My general observations

Those who want an English Parliament must ensure they:

1. understand the legal position before making claims. It is not enough to think that something is so or to rely on a quote. It is imperative to go and look at the full Act or Treaty to properly understand the situation and quite probably to read an expert commentary on the Act or Treaty.

2. realise the importance of economics to this debate because the Celtic Fringe countries are all economic basket cases, for example, the public service proportion of their GDP is approximately 70% Northern Ireland, 65% Wales and 58% Scotland. They survive at their present level of expenditure simply because of the English subsidy which is probably in the region of £25 billion a year once the higher per capita Treasury funding to the Celtic Fringe (£15 billion), the lower tax take in the Celtic Fringe than in England and the higher per capita benefits bill (which is paid by Westminster) in the Celtic Fringe than England . None of the speakers raised the issue and I was the only one to do so in the Q and A.

3. understand that unless each home nation has full autonomy for domestic issues and has to raise all the tax they use to fund domestic and their share of federal funding, the odds are that England would still end up subsidizing the Celts.

What would happen if the UK disintegrated?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Celtic hands deep in English taxpayers’ pockets

Let me start with a rock-solid fact: England receives considerably less Treasury funding per capita than any of the other home countries. This may come as a surprise to many, because the higher Treasury payments to Scotland get the vast majority of the media coverage and this gives the impression that Wales and N Ireland do not benefit in the same way. In fact, the Barnett Formula applies to all three Celtic home countries.

What is the Formula? Here is the Treasury‘s description: “Under the Formula, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland receive a population-based proportion of changes in planned spending on comparable United Kingdom Government services in England. Changes in each devolved administration’s spending allocation is determined by the quantity of the change in planned spending in departments of the United Kingdom Government, the extent to which the relevant United Kingdom programme is comparable with the services carried out by each devolved administration and each country’s population proportion.”

This means that the funding advantage of the Celts is permanent while the Formula remains in its present form. This is so for two reasons: there was a disproportion built into the Formula at its creation in the late seventies – higher payments to the Celts than England on the grounds of their relative poverty and the additional costs of servicing sparsely populated regions such as the Highlands – and every time funding to England is increased the Celts receive a proportionate increase based on their respective populations, that is, they get per capita the same increase as England.

The differences in public funding are considerable. The latest per capita Treasury funding figures are for 2008/9:

England £7971

Scotland £9538 (£1567 more than England)

Wales £9162 (£1191 more than England)

NI £10,003 (£2032 more than England.)

Translating the per capita figures to the respective populations produces national additional funding to the Celts in 2008/9 of:

Scotland (approx population 5.1m) £7.99bn extra

Wales (approx population 3m) £3.57bn extra

N. Ireland (approx population 1.8m) £3.56bn extra

If the per capita funding of the Celts had been at English levels in 2008/9 UK government expenditure would have been reduced by approximately £15bn pa.

How much have the Celtic nations gained since the Barnett Formula was introduced? Mike Denham, a former Treasury economist, produced a report for the Taxpayers Alliance in September 2009 which came to the conclusion that in “ the last two decades (since 1985-86), higher spending in the three devolved territories has cost UK taxpayers a cumulative £200 billion (£102 billion in Scotland; £43 billion in Wales; £57 billion in Northern Ireland). http://tpa.typepad.com/home/files/unequal_shares_the_barnett_formula.pdfhttp://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/TaxPayersAlliance.pdf

But not all government expenditure made inside Britain or is identifiable. The total identifiable spend on public services for 2008/9 is:

England £400666bn

Scotland £ 48023bn

Wales £ 26777bn

NI £ 17322bn

Outside UK £14053bn

Total £506840bn

In addition there is the non-identifiable spending and accounting adjustments for 2008/9.

Non-identifiable public expenditure £79018bn

Accounting adjustments £22500bn

Total UK Expenditure 2008/9 £608359bn

(The identifiable and non-identifiable stats can all be found at http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pesa09_chapter9.xls – tables 9.1-9.4).

The unidentified expenditure is important because nationalist Celts complain that England gets a larger amount proportionately of the expenditure than the Celtic nations. This is a claim with little force because the unidentified expenditure in 2008/9 accounted for less than 8% of the total UK budget spend . The three Celtic nations have a combined population of 10 million which is about 16% of the UK population. 16% of the 2008/9 unidentified expenditure is only £12bn. Even if all the £12bn had been spent in England, an obvious absurdity, the Celts would still be about £3bn to the good on the year ,for they have received £15bn more funding than they would have received if their per capita funding matched that of England.

The funding of the extra Celtic expenditure

Where does the additional funding for the Celts come from? In the cases of N Ireland and Wales it must come from England because the tax raised in those two countries is less than the amount they receive from the Treasury. (Exactly how much tax is raised in each home nation is a little problematical, because it is not possible to assign all tax revenue to a particular home nation. Nonetheless, it is clear that N Ireland and Wales with their significantly lower average wage and higher unemployment than England and Scotland and with no oil and gas revenues to claim must receive substantially more from the Treasury than they contribute).

The Scottish position is complicated by the Scots nationalist claim that all the North Sea oil and gas tax revenues are rightfully Scotland’s and consequently Scotland is a net contributor to the UK national tax pot. This is both irrelevant and wrong in fact.

It is irrelevant because while the UK is a unitary state, tax is gathered at the UK level and distributed to finance public spending throughout the UK as a whole. If England was poorer than Scotland, that would be an argument for Scotland subsidising England, because, as Unionist Scottish politicians have long argued, UK funding should be on need.

The nationalist claim is wrong on two counts. First, the tax from oil and gas has not covered the additional funding over an extended period and, second, not all the oil and gas is in Scottish waters.

The Taxpayers Alliance report mentioned previously concluded “North Sea Oil has not funded the Scottish spending gap, despite

Scottish Nationalist claims to the contrary. In only five of the last 23 years have North Sea Oil receipts exceeded the cost of higher funding paid to Scotland. Even with current high oil prices, the income from the Scottish share of North Sea Oil only just covers the spending gap, and North Sea. Oil output is projected to fall by 50 per cent by 2020.”

Hence, even if Scotland had been granted all the tax revenue from the North Sea for the past 23 years, they would still have been subsidised very substantially by England over that period. As for the future, that will see an ever diminishing tax return from the North Sea even if the price of oil remains high because output is falling rapidly. Should the oil price falls substantially, as it might well do if alternative energy sources are developed or massive fresh sources of oil such as the Canadian oil shales are exploited, the North Sea tax receipts could rapidly become a minor consideration for Scotland’s economy – at the low point of oil prices in the 1990s ($11 a barrel), North Sea receipts were less than £2bn pa..

But the oil and gas tax revenue position is even less promising than that for Scotland, because not all the oil and gas is indubitably in Scottish waters. Much, possibly the large majority of gas, is in English waters ( Scotsman North Sea Oil & Gas 13 Dec 2006 Andrew Stuart). Then there is the question of territorial waters at the English/Scotland border. Where there is a boundary between two countries which ends at a coast, international law allows the territorial waters of each country to be determined by extending a line at the angle at which the land boundary meets the coast. In the case of the boundary between Scotland and England abutting the North Sea the angle is 45 degrees, which means some of the oil and gas fields off the Scottish coast would fall within English territorial waters.

Oil and gas production is self evidently no basis on which to build Scotland’s future.

The differing size of the public sectors

The Celtic countries have dangerously high proportion of their GDP concentrated on public spending. While England has a a public sector which is 43% of GDP, Scotland has one of 56% of GDP, with Wales posting over 60% and Northern Ireland over 70% (The Sunday Times

January 11, 2009 Scotland on a par with Cuba for state largesse Jason Allardyce)

Bad as these figures are the near future is much bleaker. A recent report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research projected the Scottish public spending to rise to 67% of GDP by 2012. (Telegraph Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent 11 Jan 2009).

The reason why the Celtic countries can sustain such a high level of public spending when their private wealth creating sector is so small is beautifully simple: the subsidy provided by England both openly and covertly. The Celtic countries GDPs are considerably inflated by this subsidy.

Public spending also has an effect on tax revenues. Income tax and National Insurance deducted from public servants is simply a book-keeping event. It does not add to the tax gathered, merely, moves it from one government ledger to another. The larger the public sector, the smaller the amount of tax actually gathered.

The costs of independence

Independence would mean much more than losing the direct English subsidy. A Celtic nation seceding from the UK would have to (1) take a share proportionate to .their population of the UK national debt (currently £800bn and rising), (2) shoulder the costs of any government contracts (especially PPP and PFI obligations) which are solely for the benefit of the seceding country, (3) establish their owned armed forces, (4) create their own free standing civil service including a diplomatic corps and (5) fund their own benefits system. In addition, any public sector jobs in the Celtic countries which cater wholly or partly for English affairs, for example, the administration of English tax and benefits in Scotland and Northern Ireland or the DVLA centre in Wales and UK defence expenditure such as that on Trident in Scotland would return to England.

They would also lose the advantage of being part of a large nation state with an unparalleled history of meeting its financial obligations. The dire economic condition of Iceland and the Republic of Ireland (RoI) show how easily small countries can be capsized by irresponsible behaviour by governments and financial institutions. What causes pain in large nations can be mortal with small ones, vide Iceland and the Republic of Ireland. Imagine what Scotland‘s position would be if it had to fund the fall out from RBS and HBOS. The vast sums required would simply overwhelm it.

The Celtic nations might imagine that if they were independent they would be automatically be welcomed with open arms by the EU which would act as a substitute for England as a financial protector of the last resort This is far from certain because the EU has rather a large number of financially incontinent members at the moment and is unlikely to welcome others.

Will things change?

There is one thing which would alter matters radically is an English Parliament, but that, sadly, is not on offer. Labour and the LibDems are committed in practice to the status quo because it suits their parties who draw much of their representation from seats outside England., while the Tories offer not even an English Grand Committee..

All that Cameron has had to say on the matter is that those sitting for Scots seats (not Welsh and N. Irish seats note) should be excluded from votes on issues which only affect England, a concept he has signally failed to define and which Scots MPs have already said they will routinely challenge on the ground that anything which affects England affects Scotland because of the English predominance within the Union. It is noteworthy that Cameron has recently promised greater powers for Scotland. ( David Cameron in Holyrood powers pledge Simon Johnson Telegraph 14 Feb 2010) which will make change more not less difficult.

The likelihood is that the next Parliament and Government will stumble on with things largely as they are on the devolution front, That is England’s tragedy, but in the long run the Celtic nations’ tragedy as well for the longer the inequity of the present situation continues, the greater will be the English backlash when it comes.

The only world empire ever worthy of the name

The British Empire was, like the industrial revolution, essentially an English phenomenon. It is a myth that the Empire was largely run by Celts, especially Scots. It was overwhelmingly staffed by the English, as the difference in population between England and the rest of the UK would suggest. The Celts may have been represented disproportionately to their proportion of the British population, but they were still very much in a minority amongst the British in the Empire.

Practically, there were two Empires. The first including the American colonies, ended in the first half of the nineteenth century and was primarily driven by trade and political competition between the major western European powers, all of whom lived in fear of the other gaining European ascendency through their passion of colonies which were seen as a source of wealth and hence power. The clichéd idea that Britain obtained an Empire in a fit of absent mindedness really will not stand up. England sought an empire consciously in the seventeenth century because they feared the power of other colonising nations, particularly Spain. The second developed from the 1830s and forties when colonisation began to be seen officially as primarily a duty rather than a political or commercial enterprise,

Trade not plunder was the engine of the early Empire. The American colonies became England’s largest overseas trading partner. England’s relations with India were primarily those of a trading nation until Clive’s victories in the mid eighteenth century. It was not until the second English empire that the imperial ideal became dominant.

As for overall material gain from the Empire, it is a moot point whether the Empire from start to finish turned a profit. The Boer War, for example, cost Britain £200 million pounds at 1900 prices when Britain’s GDP was approximately £2 billion. If the same proportion (10%) of today’s GDP (2010) was devoted to a war, the expenditure would be in excess of £147 billion.

David Landes in the “Wealth and Poverty of Nations” dismisses the claim that colonialism was the primary cause of the wealth of European powers or their cultural offshoots such as the United States, by pointing to inconvenient facts such as the experience of Spain, the greatest power in Europe between 1500 and 1650, and Portugal. Despite the immense wealth generated by their American possessions, as societies they remained poor even during their period of greatest material gain from the Americas. Nor did their rulers achieve financial respectability – the Spanish Crown managed to go bankrupt in 1557, 1575 and 1597. As for the slave trade, one may point to the wealth of Britain at the time of abolition and in the century which followed. In 1807 Britain’s GNP was approximately £200 million pounds. By 1914 in was over £2 billion pounds. (Prices in 1807 and 1914 were approximately the same as far as these things can ever be judged) At most, Mr Landes allows that the wealth received by Britain from the slave trade, India and the Americas may, but only may, have slightly accelerated the first Industrial Revolution.

Whether Empires are ever morally justified is a moot point. I must confess to veering instinctively towards Gibbon’s view of the matter, namely that great empires are to be regretted because they impose uniformity and allow a man no escape from +a government which he cannot either tolerate or be tolerated by. But my head tells me that in practice the harshest and most morally obnoxious societies are those which are based on Oriental despotism, dynastic kingship or primitive tribal association. The British Empire mainly ruled over peoples who before the British came behaved in a manner which would appal latter-day liberals..

What is certain is that compared with every other empire ancient and modern, the British Empire was a model of restraint and in its final century, of deliberately benign government. For those who would dispute the matter, let them consider the cruelty of the French in Algiers in the decade prior to Algerian independence or the Chinese now in Tibet.

The British Empire gave a great deal, both material and moral to those it ruled. The humane values to which the Commonwealth pays at least lip service to as the defining values of a civilised state, are English values. It may even be that in the long run the representative institutions which have been so perverted in many of Britain’s ex-colonies will bear the fruit of democratic rule. Political institutions do not guarantee democratic ways, but they do provide the opportunity if times become more propitious.

Perhaps the most amazing fact about the Empire is the small number of Britons who were involved in the administration of colonies. The subcontinent is perhaps the best example. At the height of the Raj, the 1921 census of the Indian Empire (which included Burma and the states which became Pakistan and Bangladesh) shows a total population of 318,492,480. The total British (white) population was 115,606. This represents 0.036% of the population or one white for every 275 Asians. The 2001 UK census shows approximately 2,083,759 residents of Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi origin. (www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=273). This represents 3.6% of the official population of Britain in 2001, or one subcontinental Asian for every 28 whites. The British figures are understated because of illegal immigration and the fact that the census relied on self-reporting of racial type. In addition, the Asian population has grown since 2001. Nonetheless, using the 2001 census figures, If immigrants from the subcontinent were in Britain in the same proportion as the British were in the subcontinent, their numbers would be approximately 21,000 as opposed to the two million plus which are now resident. (These comparative figures also show how unreasonable it is to try justify sub-continental immigration to Britain on the grounds that Britons colonised the sub-continent. The British in India did not swamp the native population anywhere because they were in such tiny numbers. The numbers of sub continental Asians and their descendants in Britain is large enough to allow what is effective colonisation of parts of the country).

The Empire was a most remarkable phenomenon in its scope, disparate nature and, until the advent of the steamship, its utterly daunting lines of communication in vessels most men would not now trust for a trip across the Channel. At its height it covered approximately a quarter of the world’s population, drawn from the four quarters of the earth. It was the only world empire ever worthy of the name. It will probably be the last because the political, material and technological circumstances of the world are never again likely to be conducive to such dominion.

As a coda, I would add that the existence of the Commonwealth, which is a voluntary association of states, is unique. Never in the whole of history have the past members of an Empire so immediately and willingly associated themselves with their erstwhile imperial masters.