Category Archives: Nationhood

The racial and ethnic make-up of the August 2011 UK rioters by group

Robert Henderson

I have taken the same Daily Telegraph data used in my earlier analysis (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8698443/UK-riots-suspected-looters-statistics-and-court-cases.html) and divided the names into groups which give the strongest pointer to race and ethnicity. During this process I discovered various duplications in the Daily Telegraph’s data and the total of named people is now 278.

The various group totals are:

21 Biblical names

37 British surnames but non-British forenames

4 Double barrelled surnames

21 African names

48 Muslim names

5 Non-Muslim Asians

16 Foreign European names

126 Those with British names who could plausibly be white or black

The first thing to note is that those with British names who could be  plausibly white or black comprise less than half the named charged rioters and looters. If every one of the 126 is assumed to have been white and British that would still mean around 53% of the rioters were either black or Asian, despite the fact that they formed less than 8% of the UK population at the time of the last published census in 2001. That gives a false picture of  Asian involvement,  because apart from Muslims only five Asians appear and it is a fair bet that some of the Muslims are black rather than Asians.

It is also improbable in the extreme that all of the 126 in the either black or white group were white. Bearing in mind (1) the overwhelming dominance of blacks in the riots which is readily apparent from the voluminous footage of the rioting and (2) the fact that the riots occurred overwhelmingly in areas with a large black population, it is reasonable to assume that many  will have been black.  If it is assumed that only 50% of the 126 are black, the number of white Britons involved in the 282 group of those charged was probably around 60-70. It may well have been substantially less than that.

Group Data

Those with Biblical names – these are most probably black

Nathan David Evans,Male,21,11/14/1989

Nathan Anthony George Henry,Male,

Nathan Dempster,Male,18

Joshua Mathias Courtney Jones,Male,30,8/16/1980

Levi Nesbitt,Male,20

Aaron Mulholland,Male

Aaron Israel,Male,21,4/24/1990

Aaron Young,Male,20,3/19/1991

Aaron Grima,Male,22

Aaron Samuels,Male,29

Aaron Hugh Mulholland,Male,30,7/5/1981

Aaron Warwood,Male,18

Micah Lammie,Male,22,3/18/1989

Samuel Green,Male,22

Samuel Konneh,Male,30

Samuel Thomas Green,Male,22

Daniel Bell,Male,30

Daniel Hourd,Male,21

Daniel Moran,Male,26

Medad Coker,Male,30,10/21/1980

Cain Larden,Male,25

Total 21

Those with regulation British surnames but forenames which are used primarily by blacks.

Mr Byron Cawley,Male,19,3/14/1992

Sanchez Banton,Male,18

Samuel Jolly,Male,18

Curtis Dejean,Male,

Jacques Samuel De La Lubie,Male,18

Lorriane Andalinda Mcgrane,Male,

Byron Cawley,Male,19

Tyrrel Shannon,Male,19

Pierre Wilkinson,Male,20,10/7/1990

Miss Shereece Ashley,Female

Jerome Lewis,Male,20,1/3/1991

Alicia Smith,Female,20

Stefan Hoyle,Male,19,1/21/1992

Jordan Blackshaw,Male,20

Jordan Kelly,Male,20,1/9/1991

Harrison  Mccalla,Male,20

Travis Cadogan,Male,22,9/1/1988

Shonola Smith,22

Kairo Lawson,Male,21

Kaine Stephen Thorpe,Male,24,5/1/1987

Felix Jones,Male,25

Byron Payton,Male,26

Lloyd Mansfield Mcgregor,Male,27,7/30/1984

Chammel Chrison Pusey,Male,27,9/14/1983

Asha Mcdevitt,Male,28

Antany Edwards,Male,23

Marvin Seymour,Male,24

Dayle Blinkhorn,,23

Brice Haddan Green,Male,23,7/9/1988

Lance Prince,Male,20,11/10/1990

Saffron Armstrong,Male,21

Jade Wallace,Female,22

Troy Mcleod,Male,27,9/19/1983

Reiss Wilson,Male,21

Shelly Bishop,Female,36

Rodney Benoni Davis,Male,18,4/28/1993

Ashton Alexander,Male,18

Kellie Hall,Female,25,4/15/1986

Total 37

Double barrelled surnames – these will most probably be black

Reece Davis-james,Male,18

Alexander Elliott-joahill,Male,18,4/16/1993

Alexander Elliott-johill,Male,18

Gary Howe-sampson,Male,20

Total 4

Those with African names – these will definitely be black

James Antwi,Male,18,12/19/1992

David Attoh,Male,18,

Ohene Bamfo,Male,20

Olufemi Akande,Male,20

Lloyd Coudjoe,Male,20

Fredrick Osei,Male,22,1/3/1989

Gassam Ojjeh,Male,22

Ryan Kaputula,Male,21

Jason Akinole,Male,22,12/3/1988

Dammy Sofekun,Male,23,3/14/1988

Anthony Akueruka,Male,23,6/3/1988

Samon Adesina,Male,23,9/11/1987

Sanh Ngan,Male,24,7/31/1987

Nana Kwame Sarpong,Male,25,4/8/1986

Roxwell Yeboah,Male,33

Nosakare Aigbogun,41

Paul Obanyanyo,Male,42

Paul Obonyano,Male,49,9/26/1968

Sayon Leroy Armstrong,Male,31,2/10/

Banye Kenon,Male

Gareth Okoro,Male,30

Total 21

Muslim names – these are unlikely to be white

Samir Drissi,Male,18,3/6/1993

Arjun Tassinari,Male,18,9/7/1992

Jamaal Hakim Hislop Whall,Male,18,12/24/1992

Ali Ladji Ford,Male,18,9/25/1992

Omar Muktar Farah,Male,18,11/14/1992

Ahmed Al-jaf,Male,18,3/22/1993

Zishan Hussain,Male,18

Abdul Majid,Male,18

Amir Shar,Male,18

Beidir Amin,Male,18

Jamal Ebanks,Male,18

Samir Shah,Male,18

Taryk Claytonabdorahman,Male,

Karmail Rizvi,Male,19,

Adel Driouch,Male,19,11/11/1991

Adewumi Adebayo ,Male,19,6/3/1992

Ahmed Diakhaby,Male,19,2/20/1992

Kumail Rizvi,Male,19

Hamza Alamin Abubakar,Male,19

Quamai Nugent,Male,19

Hodan Hussain,Male,20

Abdiasis Ibrahim,Male,20

Badawi Elbadawi,Male,20,3/27/1991

Omar Talab,Male,20,6/29/1991

Abbas Larti,Male,22,2/11/1989,

Munir Zaman,Male,20

Abdullah Ansari,Male,22,5/25/1989

Ishmail Lokko ,Male,22,2/28/1989

Farshad Dousti,Male,22,3/31/1989

Imran Khan,Male,23

Youssuf Addow,Male,25,3/4/1986

Haramein Mohammed,Male,25

Ahmed Farah,Male,27

Adellah Snape,Female,30

Abdelhak Hamraoui,Male,36

Hassan Halloway,Male,39

Hamza Abubakar,Male,19

Khuram Iftikhar,,21

Adam El-wahabi,Male,21,3/30/1990

Amir Mostafa,Male,21,10/19/1989

Youssef El-idrissi,Male,19

Sallah Osman,Male,32

Dirye,Male,19,7/22/1992

Adam Ozdas,Male,19

Armin Naserbakht,Male,22,7/23/1989

Marouane Rouhi,Male,21

Mourouane Rouhi,Male,21

Daniel Ullah,Male,22

Total 48

Non-Muslim Asians

Shourov Chowdhury,Male,19,2/2/1992

Jamie Hoang,Male,19,7/1992

Donness Bissessar,21

Amerpreet Gill,Male,23

Gurmeet Tarmeet,Male,35

Total 5

Foreign European names

Peter Bugososlavsky,Male,20

Bennie Acato,Male,19,10/31/1991

Adam Sieniuc,Male,20

Mr Piotr Dziedzic,Male,22,2/27/1989

Leandro Santos Desaevasconcelos,Male,21

Lucian Trufia,Male,24

Nina Yavarianfar,Female,27

Stefan Phidd,Male,31,11/19/1979

Lee Montaldo,Male,40

Maurice Edward

Dubois,Male,41,11/23/1969

Barry Naine,Male,42,6/25/1969

Paul Raune,Male,46,6/28/1964

Sebastian Praxitelous,Male,18

Michael Caillaux,Male,18

Samuel Caillaux,Male,20

Tony Gustave,Male,33

Total 16

Those with British names who could plausibly be white or black

Kyle Smith,Male,18,4/2/1993

Miss Victoria Holmes,Female

Graeme Paton,

Christopher Edwards

Dale Siddall,Male,18

Dane Williamson

Laura Cook,Female,18,

Joseph Moran,Male,18

Liam Allan,Male,18

Michael Binns,Male,18

Ricky Gemmell,Male,18,,

Ryan  Brack,Male,18

Shane  Collett,Male,18

Lee Anthony  Slade,Male,

Sean Mitchell,Male,19,8/22/1991

Laura  Johnson,Female,19

Christopher Clark,Male,19

Callum Powell,Male,19

Carl Pine,Male,19

Charlie  Herron,Male,19

Heather Russell,Female,19

Michael Doyle,Male,19

Peter David  Morgan,Male,20,4/22/1991

Max Doran Raven,Male,19,7/30/1992

Danielle Mcshane,Female,20

Thomas Anthony Livingstone,Male,20

Curtis Burke,Male,20

David Lukeman,Male,20

John Alexander,Male,20

Oliver  Johnson,Male,20

Billy Bennett,Male,21,9/25/1989,

Billy Watson,Male,21Oliver Tetlow,Male,22

Jack Lamb,Male,22

Andrew Britten,Male,22

Clive Morris,Male,22

David O’Neil,Male,22

Gregory Coleman,Male,20

Perry Atherton,Male,20

Ronnie Whitby,Male,20

Darren Aiken,Male,21

Gavin Richard Edwards,Male,21,3/13/1990

Conrad Mcgrath,Male,21

Ricky Farrant,Male,21

Reece Mcdonagh,Male,21

Craig Moody,Male,22,1/31/1989

Fraser Giscombe,Male,22

Lee Mcaloney,Male,22

Mark Anthony Baker,Male,22

Tom Skinkis,Male,22,12/29/1988

Rhys Cleary,Male,23

James Oliver Tomlinson,Male,23,3/3/1988

Christopher James Harte,Male,23

Mr Nicolas Robinson,Male,23,8/3/1988

Christopher Hart,Male,23,

Callum Nugent,Male,23

Christopher Heart,Male,23

Luke Blakemore,Male,23

Nicholas Robinson,Male,23

Richard Mccoy,Male,23

Ross Jackson,Male,23

Jason Hedgecock,Male,24

Natasha Mavis Reid,Female,24,10/25/1986

George Austin,Male,24,11/18/1986

Linda Boyd,Female,24

Ross Lynch,Male,24

Natasha Reid,Female,24

Craig Fullerton,Male,24

Dwaine Spence,Male,24

David Gordon,Male,25,10/9/1985

David Swarbrick,Male,25

Andrew Barlow,Male,25

David Benjamin,Male,25,4/4/1986

Kieron Samuels,Male,25,8/21/1985

Mark Burns,Male,25

Barry Paisley,Male,25

Stephen Carter,Male,26, ,

John Millbanks,,26

John Joseph Millbanks,Male,26

Craig Cave,Male,26

Gareth Rees,Male,26

Liam Cornwell,Male,26

Daniel Tony Watson,Male,27,5/20/1984

Ryan Doyle,Male,27,10/17/1983

Ian Blaize,Male,27,11/10/1983

Karl Brown,Male,27

Ricky Hudson,Male,27

Michael Hayden,Male,28,2/2/1983

Karl Kaynor,Male,28,

Natalie Lee,Female,28

Eoin Flanagan,Male,28,1/1/1983

Robert Dnison,Male,28

Tony Williams,Male,30

Katie Lovett,Female,30

Julie Aldrich,Female,31,5/25/1980

Mark Phillips,Male,32

Jeffrey Ebanks,Male,32

Keith Adrian  Mitchell,Male,33,1/9/1978

Mark  Cunningham,Male,33,

Jean Brown,34

Paul Williams Newman,Male,34,8/24/1976

Stephen John Williams,Male,34,6/10/1977

Jason Matthews,Male,35,8/22/1975

Terry Payne,Male,35

Jason Matthews,Male,35

Mr Robert Wayne Campbell,Male,38,9/1/1972

Michael Wilson,Male,38

James Best,Male,38

Anthony Winder,Male,38

Jason Ullett,Male,38

William Jenkins,Male,40,5/11/1971

Joseph Levy,Male,41

Karen Anne Turner,Female,42,6/23/1969

Stuart Gallagher,Male,42

Sean Havens,Male,43

Steven Keith,Male,43

Terry Monaghan,Male,44,2/26/1967

Martin Burton,Male,44,6/19/1968

Kenneth Michael Hunnisett,Male,45

Darren Byrne,Male,46

John Mcneil,Male,46

Bernard Moore,Male,46

Michael Coffey,Male,47

Gary Herriott,Male,48

Peter Ellwood,Male,50

Ingrid Smith,Female,58

Jack Onslow,Male

126

In evaluating how many white Britons are amongst the 278 these facts need to be understood:

1. Those with double barrelled British surnames are most probably black because it has become the fashion for blacks in Britain to use both their parent’ surnames because there are so many illegitimate births and half-brothers and half-sisters in black families.

2. Those with first names such as Tyrone or Byron or standard white names spelt differently,for example Daveeed for David, are likely to be black.

3. Those with African names such as Akinole will be black unless a white woman has married an African.

4. Those of black West Indian origin or ancestry will generally have British surnames because the slaves took their masters names.  Some will have names which are indistinguishable from British names. However, they often use first names  rarely used by native Britons such as Delroy and Winston or unusual Biblical names such as Micah and Esau.

5. Those with Muslim names are unlikely to be white or native Britons. The could just conceivably be white converts or whites who have married Muslims.

6. Those with names such as Singh or Patel are most probably Asian,  although if it is a female who is older than a schoolgirl they might be white women who have married Asians.

7. Those with foreign surnames drawn from European countries will generally be white, but may well be first generation immigrants, especially if they come from Eastern European countries.

Using these criteria as a guide,  I estimate that at worst 70 of the 295 could have been white.  I say at worst primarily because there is no way of testing the question of whether some of those with traditional British names are blacks from the West Indies.   Of those who are white, a significant minority could be recent immigrants.

Not as white as they are painted

Robert  Henderson

Those of us who do not share the liberal’s ostensible love of the multicultural mess they have made of modern Britain  will be gratified to hear that  the latest communal outbreak of the Joy of Diversity has brought  the riotin’, lootin, whinin’ folk to their doorsteps.
The riots and lootfests   currently occurring throughout London and other cities  either “blessed” with large black populations or close to those which do have them  – Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Leicester, Bristol and Liverpool – have spread from black ghettos such as Tottenham,  Brixton and Hackney to richer areas such as Lambeth, Ealing, Notting Hill and Chalk Farm.
The last is of particular interest because Chalk Farm abuts the ancestral home of liberal bigots, Hampstead, and the rioters and looters got to the boundary of the Chalk Farm/Hampstead divide.  How the collective population of Hampstead –which is preternaturally white for an inner London borough – must be sighing with dismay that they did not personally  experience so vivid an  outbreak of the “joy”, especially as
they experience so little of it in normal times due to the terrible shortage of
black and  brown  faces  in their midst (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/16/how-the-well-to-do-liberals-choose-to-live-a-lesson-from-primrose-hill/).

White liberals in Notting Hill  had cause to be  especially excited. According to BBC Radio 5 (the 10.00 pm show 8 August) police warned a householder who rang them to report
looting  to stay inside his home because there were allegedly rioters going about armed with machetes.   Just think of  how he  must have shaken fit to burst  with excitement as they thought of what blacks in Africa generally do with machetes.

Enough of the funnies.  This is serious. Nothing equivalent has happened in Britain  before.  UK Race riots since the late 1950s have been restricted to the ghetto areas themselves and were much less widespread  as a consequence. Nor was there anything like
the scale of  destruction of  property or looting we are presently witnessing.  The widespread use of  arson this time is particularly striking. It would probably be necessary to go back to  the anti-Catholic  Gordon Riots of 1780 to find greater destruction of property in London.  However, the Gordon Riots were genuinely concerned with a particular political issue rather than being primarily an excuse to loot and destroy.

Why has this happened now? Thirty years of pandering to blacks by the British elite in all its guises – politicians, mediafolk, big business,  public servants and  educationalists – has taken its toll.   Blacks have  been taught that two things by Britain’s liberals: nothing is their fault and everything they do wrong  is down to ol’ whitey who just can’t stop oppressing them . On the white liberal side,  they  get their emotional rocks  off by engaging in paroxysms of white  guilt whilst cynically using  ethnic minorities  as a client class, of whom blacks are their unequivocal  favourites.  (The white working class used to be the clients of the liberal left, but that changed in the 1980s when the unions would not play ball with the Labour Party hierarchy and three successive defeats at the hands of Thatcher persuaded most Labour politicians that dumping the white working class was necessary if they were to get into power before they were on their Zimmer frames).

The response of white liberals

Initially, white liberals and blacks  claimed  that looters were protesting about the shooting dead of a black man Mark Duggan by police  in Tottenham on Thursday 4 August 2011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14459516).This response  was   obvious nonsense  – violent protest is one thing, looting quite another. Unable to write this off as a peaceful political protest gone wrong, Liberals and their black quangocracy  clients (the blacks who are  treated as “community leaders” , those who receive considerable amounts of public money to run “multicultural” projects or  given highly paid publicly funded sinecures) are in a quandary.  They know that these riots  are being conducted overwhelmingly by blacks. They know  that the general public understands this  because of the voluminous media coverage. They realise that to deny the  fact that this is a black event puts them in the position of “Comical Ali” during  the Western attack on Iraq when he denied allied attacks were  getting through  as allied planes bombed the land close behind  him.  But  they  are only too well aware that to admit the truth (that this is a black problem) would  undermine the politically correct  virtual world they have created in which everyone in a position of power or influence  in  Britain has to give lip service at least to the idea that ethnic and racial diversity is a good in itself and infinitely preferable to homogeneous societies.

Faced with this profound difficulty liberals and their ethnic minority clients have taken one of  two paths. The first mode of evasion is to portray the riots as having no racial
context and to rely on the intimidatory effect of decades of multicultural propaganda together with liberal control of the media to allow them to call black white without attracting too much public ridicule.  BBC reporters have been especially addicted to this nonsense by stressing at every opportunity that there are “people of all races” taking part in the riots. The more daring ones emphasise the fact that there are white rioters – it would be interesting to know the national origins of the few  white rioters because  eastern
Europeans  and gipsies in particular  have a liking for theft and mayhem.   Best of all the BBC  (bless their liberal bigot hearts) have repeatedly  described the rioters and looters as protestors. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8690267/London-riots-BBC-criticised-for-branding-thugs-as-protesters.html).

Getting on to BBC phone-ins to point out the black genesis of the riots has been next to impossible. On 7th August I did manage to take part fleetingly  in a phone-in on the BBC
Radio 5 Stephen Nolan programme (10.00 pm -1.00 am). After half an hour of listening to Nolan and his guests chatter happily about the riots without mentioning the racial aspect , I rang to mention  that, try as I might to believe them,  I could not help noticing that  the vast majority of the rioters were black and consequently it was not a general social problem but a black social problem. I attributed the source of the problem to  a near universal sense of victimhood amongst blacks.   I bolstered this latter judgement with the fact that I,  unlike white liberals who almost invariably arrange their lives to live in very white worlds,   have lived for most of my adult life  and live now in parts of London which have a large black  population and consequently I engage daily with blacks, many of them, shock horror! poor and  uneducated.

It took me another forty minutes to get on air,  during which time the programme continued to parade a gallery of  politically correct grotesques that included a Metropolitan Police officer who is a leading light in  the black police association.  When I eventually was allowed to broadcast  my comments provoked outrage from this individual and I was immediately cut off, most frustratingly,   before I could point out to him that he had unambiguously  identified himself as a racist by joining a black-only representative group .

Later in the programme Nolan had as studio guests  Edwina Currie (the one-time Tory Minister) and a retired suffragan bishop by the name of Stephen Lowe. Their job was to review the papers. Lowe castigated the Telegraph for having a long gallery of photographs
showing blacks rioting and looting. He objected to this because – wait for it – the coverage made it look as though this was a black riot.  Hilariously, this earned a stern rebuke from
Currie who repeatedly accused Lowe of bringing race into the equation by mentioning the racially monochrome nature of the Telegraph photos.   Not to worry, the Telegraph made up for this terrible blunder  next day by publishing a series of photos released by the police of rioters. Guess the colour of the first rioter shown. Yes, that’s right, he is white. As was the person in the  third photo. Sadly, the pretence of it being a racially neutral riot could not be sustained and the rest of the 14 photos were overwhelmingly black.  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknews/8690951/London-riots-CCTV-pictures-of-suspects-are-released-by-the-Metropolitan-Police.html).   The Telegraph have continued to disgrace themselves in politically correct eyes by printing another series of black villains in their 9 August issue.

The early signs from court appearances resulting from the riots suggest there is something very odd going on when it comes to the application of the law.  As anyone can see from the media coverage,  the vast majority of rioters are black, but the number of those  appearing in court who are white is much  greater than  their proportion of the rioters and looters. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024767/Man-charged-riot-incitement-Facebook-London-rioters-guilty.html#ixzz1UjYYfl00)

I suspect one of two things is happening: either the police have concentrated on arresting white rioters because they  are (1) unlike the black culprits, often not part of a gang of rioters/looters and (2) arresting them does not cause any ethnic mayhem . Alternatively, the police/CPS are deliberately pushing white cases to the front of the queue to give the
false  impression that the rioters are not overwhelmingly black.   The other thing which looks suspicious is the routine showing of black rioters  in groups and whites in what look like cropped photos in which a single person is shown. These could be  extracted from scenes showing one white rioter amongst a crowd of blacks.

The other general  liberal tactic is to blame it all on economics and preferably Tory cuts. This has the advantage of leaving race out of it altogether.   Harriet Harman, a minister in both the Blair and Brown Governments, was sure that this was linked to  the rioting and looting. (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/neilobrien1/100100392/harriet-harman-and-the-intellectual-bankruptcy-of-the-progressive-left/). Mary Riddle, a Labour Party media groupie employed by the supposedly Tory Daily Telegraph,  was in no doubt that the  riots are due to social deprivation in general and the creation of an uneducated underclass in particular: “London’s riots are not the Tupperware troubles of Greece or Spain, where the middle classes lash out against their day of reckoning. They are the proof that a section of young Britain – the stabbers, shooters, looters, chancers and their frightened acolytes – has fallen off the cliff-edge of a crumbling nation.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8630533/Riots-the-underclass-lashes-out.html.

If  Harman and Riddle were correct all poor areas would be susceptible to this behaviour and most of the rioters would be white.  This is not the case. The reality is that the criminality is, as anyone can see from the press and TV, overwhelmingly being perpetrated by blacks. Moreover, the first of the rioting arose in black ghettos.  Most tellingly, no  town or city which does not have a  substantial black population or such a population close by  has seen rioting.  This also gives the lie to the claim from the Conservative side that  the riots are down to the  lax discipline in schools and the undermining  of parental authority  which has produced a generation of youngsters without respect for the law or any authority .

Clearly the causes  of these riots lie in something other than poverty, a lack of school discipline  or poor parenting.   Ostensibly the behaviour is caused by 30 years of our  elite pandering to the black population of Britain by telling them how oppressed they are and how racist Britain is. This has undoubtedly stoked their appetite for victimhood and given
them a belief that they owe nothing to society in general. That gives them the moral release to riot and loot.

The black response to the killing of Mark Duggan demonstrates the difference between blacks and whites. The police in Britain kill very few people compared with virtually anywhere else, not least because they are not routinely armed.  Most of those they  kill are white. Violent protests or protests of any sort rarely if ever occur when the person killed is white because whites still trust the police (just) to behave reasonably . When a  black man is killed it is assumed by blacks that it is tantamount to a murder and violent protest is more often than not the eventual outcome.   It remains to be seen what the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report concludes about the Duggan shooting, but if as has been reported  by the media Duggan had a gun on him it is difficult to see how the police could be criticised for killing him if he either had it in his hand or it was near him and he was reaching for it when he was shot .

But there is a deeper problem. Blacks display the same general type of uncontrolled  behaviour in societies of very different types throughout the world, whether it be where
they are in the racial majority or minority, in an advanced industrial country or one from the depths of the Third World. There is genocide and mutilation  in places such as Rwanda and Sierra Leone; rioting, looting and episodic murder in Britain.  The degree of misbehaviour may vary but  its general type is the same; a lack of self-control  expressing itself in gratuitous violence.

That places the victimhood justification for misbehaviour in Britain in a different light. It is simply a rationalisation of general black social behaviour.  Why do blacks tend to  behave like this?  Part at least of the answer is  probably to be  found in the inferior average  IQ of blacks.  In IQ and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations (2002), the British psychologist Richard Lynn and  the Finish economist Tatu Vanhanan  included their  estimations of the average national IQs of 185 states .  They reached the estimates
either by using studies of IQs conducted by others or where these were not available, by extrapolating from neighbouring countries which did have IQ studies.  For example, if the estimate based on studies of country X was 80, a  neighbouring country Y which had no studies would also be taken as 89. In the case of all black African countries  the estimated average IQ  was 69. (http://www.rlynn.co.uk/pages/article_intelligence/t4.asp).

Such a low average black IQ was unsurprisingly greeted by  widespread disbelief and objections were raised  about the validity of the studies used and the practice of extrapolating from other countries where no studies existed .  In 2006 Lynn and Vanhanan published IQ and Global Inequality which addressed the objections and,  while not removing them altogether, did show that  the correlation between the imputed
IQs  and IQ studies of the states in question  made after 2002 were strong (.91) (http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mamcdani/Publications/McDaniel%202008%20book%20review%20IQ%20and%20global%20inequality.pdf).

But even without the African studies and estimates, it is known that black IQs are inferior to those of whites or East Asians such as the Chinese.  The average American black IQ is a well established 85, considerably higher than the 70 of black Africans but still way below the average white IQ of 100. Moreover, black Americans have a large admixture of white genes, so an average IQ between the black African and the white American average IQ is
exactly what would be expected if it is granted that IQ is strongly dependent on genetic inheritance.  It is reasonable to assume the blacks in the US without a white admixture would have an average IQ closer to the 70 estimated  for black Africans.

What is the consequence of such a low average IQ? The first thing to understand is that people with low I Qs are not monsters but simply people who have a different level of
mental competence. They have less capacity for abstract thinking, are more literal minded, live more in the present . In short, they are childlike.  This makes them more susceptible to
irrational and uncontrolled behaviour http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/blacks-the-odd-man-out/).  This could be the root of the strong propensity for violence and a lack of social awareness seen amongst blacks. Other factors such as higher testosterone levels in blacks may also have some effect.

But there could also be another factor in play which is a corollary of the low IQ. Someone with a low IQ  may  find living in an advanced society  extremely stressful because they
cannot cope with the intellectual demands which the society exerts on them. It is interesting that some types of mental illness are linked to low IQ (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/a-low-iq-individual-in-a-high-iq-society/).  This could be part of the reason at least  for the fact that  diagnosis of  mental illness, especially schizophrenia, amongst blacks is high in Britain. It is claimed by some, especially educated blacks,  that this is due to racism within the  British mental health services. This is  difficult to take this seriously in these pc times. If diagnosis of mental illeness was to be skewed by bias it would be more likely to result in fewer diagnoses of mental illness amongst blacks not more. Plausibly, blacks become disproprotionately mentally ill in Britain  simply because they cannot cope.  The paranoia  engendered
by the victimhood fostered by white liberals will not help their mental state either. (http://www.blackmentalhealth.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=154&Itemid=139).

The emasculation of the police

The most chilling thing about reports from the scene of the riots and looting has been the persistent claims of those at the scene but not part of the criminality that there  is either an  absence of any police or where there were any police,  they were ineffective.

If the first riot in Tottenham had been quashed there is a good chance that the others might not have happened or have  been much less serious.  Quashing a single riot should have been within the power of the Met which has more than 30,000 officers, not immediately but within an hour or two after they had re-directed  officers from other parts of London.  Instead the police in Tottenham  stood back and watched the looters  for many hours.

Why have the police been so supine? It  is primarily a consequence of  the injection of political correctness into police officers’ minds with its most potent strand being “anti-racism”. A lesser secondary cause is the ever more stifling culture of “health and Safety” which the police have embraced . (see  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13319812
and http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/42/contents). This has resulted in the police putting their own safety before that of the public, a straight reversal of  what used to be the case. Effective  policing system cannot operate on such a basis.

The British elite’s  official pandering to ethnic minorities  goes back to 1965 when the first Race Relations Act (RRA) was passed followed by a second  stronger Act in 1968 which was one of the things which provoked Enoch Powell to make his “Rivers of Blood” speech in the same year. (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/enoch-powells-rivers-of-blood-speech/). A third RRA with considerably more teeth arrived in 1976 which elevated ethnic minorities to a de facto protected status,  not only by  strengthening the penalties for “inciting racial hatred”  but by its provision of  a wide range of  privileges to ethnic minorities in the areas of work, education  and social provision.
(http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/74)

Then came the Scarman report into the Brixton Riots of 1981. Lord Scarman  did not accuse the Metropolitan Police of racism,  but called for the development of community policing, the recruitment of more black officers and laid part of the blame for the riots on social deprivation, particularly the high rate of unemployment in Brixton. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/25/newsid_2546000/2546233.stm)
This began the long march towards  the police policing ethnic minority areas not on the basis of what crime was occurring in them,  but what they could get “community leaders” – who tended to be self-appointed – to agree to and the ascribing of virtually  any black
behaviour to deprivation.

The next and longest  nail in the coffin of rigorous policing of blacks (and ethnic minorities generally) came with the Macpherson report into the death of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm).  Macpherson accused the Metropolitan Police of being “institutionally racist”, that is racist not consciously but through the prevailing  ethos (“canteen culture”)
within the force, an accusation which was eventually embraced wholeheartedly by the Met followed by all the other UK police forces. Macpherson defined racism and institutional racism as:

‘RACISM

6.4 “Racism” in general terms consists of conduct or words or practices which advantage or disadvantage people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. In its more subtle form it is as damaging as in its overt form.

6.34 “Institutional Racism” consists of the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic
origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.’

A  good examination of the ill effects of  the acceptance of the existence of “institutional racism” can be found at http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cs06.pdf).

Macpherson also provided an absurd and dangerous definition of what constituted racist behaviour which should be investigated:

DEFINITION OF RACIST INCIDENT

12. That the definition should be:

“A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person”.

‘13. That the term “racist incident” must be understood to include crimes and non-crimes in policing terms. Both must be reported, recorded and investigated with equal commitment.

‘14. That this definition should be universally adopted by the Police, local Government and other relevant agencies.’

This meant that any complainant who was malicious or simply burdened with a sense of victimhood could turn an ordinary crime into one which was racist or even worse turn an incident which had no meaningful criminal content into a criminal act.

Macpherson continued:

‘REPORTING AND RECORDING OF RACIST INCIDENTS AND CRIMES

15. That Codes of Practice be established by the Home Office, in consultation with Police Services, local Government and relevant agencies, to create a comprehensive system of reporting and recording of all racist incidents and crimes.

16. That all possible steps should be taken by Police Services at local level in consultation with local Government and other agencies and local communities to encourage the reporting of racist incidents and crimes. This should include:

– the ability to report at locations other than police stations; and

– the ability to report 24 hours a day.

17. That there should be close co-operation between Police Services and local Government and other agencies, including in particular Housing and Education Departments, to ensure that all information as to racist incidents and crimes is shared and is readily available to all agencies….’

And

‘PROSECUTION OF RACIST CRIMES

‘34. That Police Services and the CPS should ensure that particular care is taken at all stages of prosecution to recognise and to include reference to any evidence of racist motivation. In particular it should be the duty of the CPS to ensure that such evidence is referred to both at trial and in the sentencing process (including Newton hearings). The CPS and Counsel to ensure that no “plea bargaining” should ever be allowed to
exclude such evidence. ‘ (Ibid)

To put the cherry on  pc policing, in 2000 the Blair Government passed the Race Relations
(Amendment) Act . This extended the obligations laid down in the 1976 Act for private bodies such as companies and charities to the police and other public  authorities  so that “ It is unlawful for a public authority in carrying out any functions of the authority to do any act  which constitutes discrimination.   (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/34).

Faced with that battery of multiculturalism supporting law and the ever more fervent support of  the political elite for political correctness,   unsurprisingly  the British police became  paranoid about being seen as “racist”. The “anti-discrimination ” credo has put any officer judged to have been racist – and this might be no more than a bit of banter suggesting that a black officer is difficult to see in the dark  – at the risk of instant dismissal. It has also given a lever for non-white officers with the police to go on the
grievance trail (http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/217239_43_gmp_officers_in_police_racism_claims).
The upshot is that police officers from newly minted constables  to grandees such as chief constables and the Metropolitan police commissioner  have become not only extremely  of what they say,  but reluctant to act forcefully against suspected black  criminals.  This reluctance is particularly marked in situations such as riots where they know they will be  filmed by the mainstream media and  private individuals.

In 1989 the Metropolitan Police changed its title from the Metropolitan Police Force to the Metropolitan Police Service.  Other police forces followed suit.  The change of name is symbolic of the  profound  change in attitude.  The British police moved from being keepers of the peace and catchers of criminals to quasi-social workers crossed with political commissars who are ever eager to enforce political correctness by investigating
any alleged “hate crime” even though the idea of a hate crime only has a spectral
existence in English law.    No absurdity is beyond them  as shopkeeper Gavin Alexander found in 2007 when the police swooped on his shop and took several golliwog dolls into custody (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23389075-police-seize-golliwogs-in-racism-probe.do).

Needless to say, as political commissars the police are less than eager to investigate complaints  which do not fit into the pc regime. In 2001 I made a complaint to the Racial and Violent Crime Squad against the BBC Director-General Greg Dyke who described his own organisation as “Hideously white”.  This met all the necessary criteria for prosecution:  Dyke was a public figure, he headed the largest media organisation in the world and his words indubitably incited hatred against whites.  The police refused to register the complaint let alone investigate it even,  though I persuaded an MP to write to the Met complaining about double standards (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/the-ever-increasing-madness-of-political-correctness/).

The future

The situation is potentially  very serious. Imagine a situation where riots and looting such as these could be called up regularly without an adequate police response. It would be close to anarchy.  This is what we risk. Potential rioters and looters have seen the police reduced to helplessness. They will think they can do it again whenever they choose.

This was flash mob rioting using social networking. Those on a network simply need to wait until they receive a message telling them where  the next meeting point for a riot
is and head for it.  They get their loot and riot, then get another message telling them to move on elsewhere. The police can be run ragged. The same applies to any violent political protest rather than straightforward criminality. Any society can be reduced to chaos if enough people refuse to respect the law.  That is the message which comes out of these riots.

What will happen now? Even if the police could identify them, the numbers  are too great to bring to meaningful justice. Numbers are always difficult to assess where there is a fluid crowd, but the sheer volume  of riots and the length of time they have lasted must mean there have been thousands of people committing criminal acts.  Even if each incident only involved a couple of hundred people it would be easy to run up a figure of 10,000.  Many of the crimes – arson, serious criminal damage, serious theft – would have to carry a heavy prison sentence if  adequate punishment is to be administered.  To  process that number of people through a police investigation, the  Crown Prosecution Service and the courts would be a colossal task. Those who are old enough to remember the Poll Tax fiasco will recall how the magistrates courts became choked trying to process Poll Tax refuseniks.  This would be much worse because the crimes would all go before a jury in the higher
unless a guilty plea is entered.  There would also be the strong likelihood of appeals, something which did not arise often in the case of a refusal to pay  the Poll Tax.
Even if these problems  could be overcome, there would be no obvious place to incarcerate those convicted because our prisons are already so jam-packed everything is done to avoid
imprisoning people and desperate remedies such as letting prisoners out early a frequent resort.

If  people are not brought to justice or are brought to justice without any serious
punishment  resulting , the numbers of those who   are willing to riot and loot
will grow.  This will drag in blacks who have not been willing to loot and riot before.
It will also tempt other ethnic minorities to join in on the basis that if the blacks can get away with it why shouldn’t  they  have some of the spoils. A proportion of whites will also be tempted if they see ethnic minorities getting away with murder.  That is the truly pernicious nature of what is happening:  it continually encourages more disorder.

The point to cling onto is that without the mass immigration of blacks none of this would be happening. If some whites are engaging in the disorder it is only because the black rioters have provided the platform for them to behave in that way.  We can safely say that because rioting to loot just has not happened in British society when there was no large black population here. Nor do we find such rioting happening in areas dominated by native white Britons.

The riots have all taken place in England. The reason is simple: the vast majority
of  post-1945 immigrants have settled in England not the rest of the UK. It is the English who have had to bear the brunt of  mass immigration’s most obnoxious consequences.

What should be done? I suggest this. All attempts by government to appease ethnic minority groups should stop. No more money for community leaders, ethnic based charities or public projects which promote the interests only of minority ethnic groups.  All the laws such as the Race Relations Act and the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000
which give de facto privileges to ethnic minorities and prevent honest objections to immigration and its consequences should be repealed.  The police should be banned from playing the role of political commissars and get back to honest coppering; catching villains
and maintaining order. Institutionalised political correctness should be stripped from public service  and any organisation which receives public money.
Most importantly, politicians and the mainstream media should  stop incontinently  promoting the liberal fantasy of multicultural heaven and recognise that it is not heaven but at best purgatory.

What will the Coalition Government do?   Sadly, the odds must be on more appeasement
of blacks in particular and probably ethnic minorities in general.   Over the past 30 years  vast sums of taxpayers’ money has been poured into appeasing blacks and Asians.   A
good example is the permitting of Housing Associations which, overtly or covertly,  provide social housing for particular ethnic groups (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/the-truth-about-social-housing-and-ethnic-minorities/).  In addition to spending money, politicians and the mainstream  media have given a grossly disproportionate amount of time and publicity to telling blacks and Asians how valuable they are to Britain.  Like foreign Aid, the attempts to create
a  healthy society by pouring money into alienated and naturally separate communities are doomed. They  simply take the money and attention and then ask for more of the same without becoming any more responsible either individually or to the wider society . They will undoubtedly be coming back for largesse and attention  now and  it is difficult to imagine a political class which has wholeheartedly  signed up to the wonders of diversity  refusing them another hand-out. Perhaps the moving of the Joy of Diversity into the districts inhabited by white liberals will change their  public views  but do not bet on it.  They are well aware of the ill-effects of mass immigration which is the reason they take such care to live in very white worlds themselves.  Provided they can arrange things to keep the immigrants from intruding into their own lives they will probably keep quiet and carry on peddling the same tired multicultural nonsense.

Those who still think that multiculturalism can work need to understand that not only is it more psychologically comfortable for minorities to remain separate, but that it can be advantageous if the host community is soft enough to pander to it.

See also

(http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/the-position-of-minorities/.

http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/black-and-asian-cultural-separatism-in-the-uk/

No 10 Downing Street e-petitions dealing with Immigration, the EU and the ECHR

Robert Henderson

The Government scheme for e-petitions (http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/) which the public can initiate and/or vote on is now live. If a petition can garner 100,000 votes in a maximum of a year, Parliament will then consider whether to  debate the subject of the petition.  Although there is no guarantee of a debate, it would be politically  difficult to refuse one because a failure to debate an issue would nakedly reveal  the scheme as  simply a piece of political elite PR.

There are already quite a  few petitions, the large majority being serious. The most popular subjects are those which the British political class wish they could censor out of public debate: immigration, race, foreign aid, Islam, the EU,  the corruption of the political class, warmongering, weakness in punishing criminals, the death penalty, the harassment of motorists, the cost of transport  and the imbalance of the devolution settlement with England left high and dry without a political class to look after her interests.

There is a good deal of duplication, not least because the search function is poor and it is difficult to see exactly what has been put up by other people.  Nonetheless, it gives a good idea of what the public is most  interested in.

Below are links to the petitions which deal with immigration in all its forms, the European Union and the European Convention of Human Rights  in all its manifestations which have already been sanctioned at this date. Where there are misspellings or typos, this is because those moderating the submissions are putting them up on the site without correction.

Immigration

End mass immigration View

Stop ALL immigration into the UK View

An immediate Ban on immigration from outside of the EEC View

No to Turkey joining the EU View

Abolish the residual categories of British nationality View

Emigration should be drastically reduced View

Emigration should be drastically reduced View

Asylum seekers should should be given temporary refuge and should return to their own country as soon as circumstances allow View

Benefits for immigrants View

Benefits for non-UK residents View

Resident Permits for Immigrants View

To opt out of the Human Rights legislation View

Abolish Islam in the UK View

English Law, Not Shariah Law View

European Union

European Law View

Leave the European Union View

We Want To Withdraw From The EU View

Repeal of the European Communities Act 1972 View

European Sovereignty Act View

Repatriation of Powers from the European Union View

Britain wants referendum to leave EU View

No to Turkey joining the EU View

Referendum on the Accession of Turkey to the EU View

Referendum on accession of Croatia to the EU View

Remove the EU flag from British number plates View

Reduction in payments to EU View

Cost/Benefit Analysis of EU Membership View

Human Rights  (ECHR)

Repeal The European Courts Human Rights Act View

withdraw from the european human rights act View

Protect the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights View

Withdraw from the European Human Rights Commission View

Human Rights Act & the ECHR. View

Human Rights Act View

Ban the Human Rights Act View

Human Rights Act should be revoked. View

Ban the Human Rights Act View

Human right legislation View

Protect the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights View

The English Landscapes and Identities Project

12-07-2011 09:42 by Lucy Palmer

Hazel Down Lynchets. Credit: Ian R. Cartwright.

“A new five-year project is announced today looking at the history of the English landscape from the middle Bronze Age to the Norman period. The English landscape of fields, trackways and settlements is an ancient one.  While much has changed over the 3,500 years since the agricultural landscape was laid out, surprising continuities exist. ‘The English Landscapes and Identities project’ will use a mass of mapped data for the period from the middle Bronze Age to the Domesday Book (AD1086) to explore continuities and changes in the use of the land in different parts of England

“The results will be publicly available on a website to be called ‘A Portal to the Past’, which is being created by the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. The project with funding of €2 million from the ERC (European Research Council) will not only map the whole of England, but also allow the research team to collect and analyse huge amounts of digital data – on a scale never attempted before….”

Read more  at http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/news/items/99.html

 

 

Patriotism is not an optional extra

Robert Henderson

Contents

1. What is patriotism?

2. The roots of patriotism

3. Nations are tribes writ large

4. The importance of a national territory

5. The democratic value of nations

6. What the individual owes to the nation

7.  The liberal internationalist

8. How to move from multiculturalism to patriotism

9 No patriotism, no enduring society

1. What is  patriotism?

By patriotism I mean the sense of belonging to a people, of  owning a land, having a group identity,  of feeling  at ease with those belonging to the group  in a way which meeting  those  outside the group never engenders, of naturally  favouring your  people above foreigners, of knowing that the  interests of the “tribe” must come before that of any outsider. By this  definition patriotism is something which the vast majority of human beings can  understand because it is not an ideology but an innate human quality whose origins lie buried deep within the evolution of social animals.

The only people who may genuinely be unable to understand  patriotism are the severely mentally retarded or those with a personality disorder such as autism which reduces their ability to understand social contexts.  Despite their incessant repudiation of patriotism even latterday liberals understand the pull of patriotic inclinations, although of course they would never recognise the nature of their inclinations.    These drive  them to live in a manner which is directly at odds with their professed ideology. Look at the life of a white liberal and you will find that they overwhelmingly arrange their lives so that they live in
very white, and in England, very English worlds. They do this in two ways. They either live in an area which is overwhelmingly white – the “rightest of right-on”  British folk singers Billy Bragg chooses to live in the “hideously white”  and English county of Dorset – or  reside in a gentrified white enclave created  on the outskirts of an area such as Islington in London  which has a significant ethnic content to its population– the Blairs lived there before moving to Downing Street. The latter tactic allows the white liberal to luxuriate in the faux belief that they are “living the diversity dream”,  whilst in reality encountering little if any  of the “joy of diversity” they are so vocally enthusiastic about.  A splendid example of  white liberal ghettoization is the drippingly  pc TV presenter Adrian Chiles who  described in a BBC programme  The  Colour of Friendship (18 August 2003) how he looked at his wedding photographs which were taken only a few years before and saw to his dismay and  astonishment that it was in the words of the one-time BBC director-general  Greg Dyke “hideously white”.  With a guest list of several hundred he was unable to find a single non-white face staring out at him. The only ethnic  minorities he had equal or extended contact with were those he met at work, who  were of course middleclass and westernised.

The ease and near universality of understanding of  patriotism sets it apart from ideologies such  as Marxism and liberal internationalism.  The majority of the followers of any ideology with a large number of adherents  will have little understanding  of it, either because they are intellectually lazy or because they lack the  intellectual wherewithal to master the creed. Few Marxists have ever had  a grasp of such ideological niceties as the
laws of dialectics and even fewer modern  liberal internationalists understand  the relationship of  laissez faire economic theory  to historical economic  reality.   The tendency for those who ostensibly support  an ideology to be ignorant of it beyond the grasping of a few ideas which can be reduced to slogans is greatly inflated where, as has happened with political correctness, it becomes the  ideology of  the ruling elite.  In such circumstances people  give lip service to an ideology ,  even  if they neither understand its theoretical basis or even agree with it out of  expediency, whether that be driven by fear or ambition.

The majority of believers in any ideology  are in the position of the laity in Western Europe  before the Reformation when the universal use of the Latin Bible and Latin in church rites meant that the vast majority of the population were left at the mercy of a clerical elite who simply told them what to believe, whether or not it was  sanctioned by the Scriptures. Such people will chant the slogans and support  the intellectual leadership of their movements not because they understand and  are convinced by the ideology, but because  they have  nailed their emotional  colours to  a group.  Ironically, they are tapping into the same  innate traits which create tribes and nations.  The problem is they are creating something which is evolutionarily destructive because it drives them to attempt to destroy the natural formation of human groups through bonds of cultural and racial similarity.

Compare the  situation of the follower of an ideology with that of those who respond to the all of patriotism as defined above. They cannot be so easily or routinely hoodwinked and manipulated by the few, because almost everyone instinctively understands what it is to be patriotic. It does not need to be explained to them.  Whatever the behaviour arising from appeals to patriotism it is not undertaken out of ignorance. Of course, the  ways in which people respond to  their innate feelings  need not be either pretty or moral,  for at its extreme appeals to the emotions and thoughts which come with patriotism may lead to attempts at genocide.  However, even in such extreme circumstances,  the tribe or nation attempting genocide is at  least behaving in a way which is congruent with human biology  and the survival of the group, although an  attempt at conquest or genocide which goes wrong may severely damage or destroy the aggressor.

2. The roots of  patriotism

The sense of being separate, of belonging to a discrete group with identifiable characteristics is a necessary part of being human because Man is a social animal. Social animals have two universal features: they form discrete groups and within the group produce hierarchies – although both the group and the hierarchy vary considerably in form and intensity. Human beings are no exception; whether they are hunter-gatherers or people populating a great modern city they all have a need to form groups in which they feel naturally comfortable.

Why do social animals form discrete groups rather than treat all the animals of their species which they encounter as being part of the group? Part of the answer surely lies in competition for territory, food and mates and the  limits placed on any species by their environment.  For example, it would be impossible for lions to exist in much larger groups than they do because of their heavy food demands. Moreover, once the group size is established it is not possible for a species to suddenly change its size because the behavioural template will have been set to accommodate the size which exists.  Man is possibly the exception to this rule, but  it could be argued that humans only learned
how to form larger groups very slowly and that where larger groups form today, for example, villagers moving off the land to the cities in developing countries,  this is simply  the extended consequences of the long, painful steps towards extending the human group size.

Some animals, most notably insects, fish and birds, successfully form very large groups. However, the  form of their association  or their degree of social integration  differs from  that of primates  (and arguably mammals generally). Social insects rely for their organisation on what are in effect  simple  automated responses through such triggers as
chemical releases. Fish and birds may form large groups, most probably because it affords them evolutionary  goods such  as greater protection from predators or easier access to mates,  without  engaging in much social support for one another beyond being together. Birds  may assemble in large groups only when they migrate.

The most highly developed social animals amongst mammals such as primates and wolves do far more than simply congregate.  They develop patterns of behaviour which require active and complex  cooperation between members of the group.  Such behaviour may of itself place limits on the size of a group by the behaviour being dependent  upon the mental capacity of the animal.   For example, it could be that a pack of  wolves can only be the size it is because anything substantially larger would  be impossible for the mind of the animal to comprehend or for behaviours which are essentially automatic to operate within.

There is also the question of mating strategies and the  raising of offspring. Sexually reproducing social animals have to evolve strategies to maximise reproduction for the individual whilst preventing competition for mates amongst males becoming so intense it threatens the viability of the group.  Probably the most common method of achieving this amongst social mammals is to have a dominant male; frequently  a sexually mature male who occupies the position of the oriental despot with his harem, for example,  the gorilla.
This of itself means that that the group must be clearly defined with males from outside excluded. But even where there is a looser social arrangement which permits different males within the group to not only co-exist but share the females , as is the case with the chimpanzee,  there is still a sense of possession amongst the males at least and hence the need for a defined group.When a species has moved to social animal status,  behaviours that intensify group behaviour such as the recognition of members of the group by scent will make the exclusion of outsiders  ever more rigid. It is also probable that amongst the most advanced social  mammals that the individual animals have sufficient mental awareness to become, just as humans do, accustomed to the behaviour of the members of their particular group and that becomes a  major part of maintaining the group identity.
Animals generally hate novelty so it would make evolutionary sense for them to prefer those individuals with whom they have grown up to strangers.

Man is the exception to the rule of group size in as much as over the past 10,000 years or so humans have shown themselves capable of  creating groups of vast size . This is plausibly attributable to the mental capacity of humans being sufficient to overcome the organisational  which thwart the increase in group size of other social mammals.  But this ability to increase group size massively has only occurred in recent human existence. Human settlements where people are counted in thousands rather than dozens or hundreds have a history of less than 10,000 years and even today most human beings live in small communities.   From paleontological and archaeological evidence, historical accounts of how people lived  and  the example of  tribal peoples living today, we can reasonably deduce that the natural size of human groups living  without the ability to generate their own food supply through farming is a few hundred at most.   Importantly, although  Man can now live in larger communities,  he is still in evolutionary terms equipped to live in small groups. This means that the innate tendencies which lead social
animals to set limits to the group  are alive and well.

That leaves the formation of hierarchies to be explained. For animals other than Man the answer is I think simple enough, only by forming hierarchies can social groups cohere. Animals vary considerably in their physical and mental qualities. Observe any animal, even the simplest single cell organism, and differences between individuals within the species will become apparent. Some are more vigorous than others, some unusually large, some abnormally small, some more adventurous and so on. Individuals will also vary in physical capacity and behaviour by age and, in sexually reproducing species, sex.

Solitary animals compete for existential goods through direct competition with other members of their species, something they do through methods such as such as scent marking of territorial boundaries and serious fighting . When an animal is social, differences in individual quality and the urge of each individual to survive have to be resolved by something other than the methods used by solitary animals because the animals live in close proximity. Competition for desirable goods still occurs, most notably
competition for food and mates, but normally within behaviours which are not fatal to other members of the group or behaviours which are so disruptive as to threaten the survival of the group. Moreover, the development of such behavioural restraint  provides the possibility for  behaviours to develop  which  make the individuals of the group dependent  upon one another, for example, the hunting strategies of  the wolf which
requires the adult members of the pack to display a very considerable degree of cooperation.  The development of  such behaviours probably reinforces the tendency
towards hierarchy. The upshot of these various social accommodations  is the formation of different social niches into which individuals with different qualities ad histories fit.

Consider what would happen if hierarchies did not exist. There would be constant conflict within the group because no individual would have cause to defer to another except from fear of physical harm.  Fear is a blunt and very limited instrument of social control, whether it be of humans or animals. It is a strategy more suited to the solitary animal than the social one. Group behaviour is a compromise between the immediate advantage of the individual and the diffuse advantages derived from group activity. The compromise is given structure by hierarchies, whether that be a fixed biological distinction by sex or caste (for example, social bees) or a transient one due to the age of an animal. Hierarchies are
built on the differences between individuals and the more rigid the hierarchical structure the greater will be the selective pressures to produce individuals in the right proportions to fill the various social niches within the group.

Hierarchies also make sense in terms of the development of social animals. Social animals are descended from asocial animals. The movement from asocial to social animal is presumably akin to the evolutionary process whereby a parasite is converted to a symbiotic partner. It is a process of gradual behavioural accommodation.

Social animals on the bottom rung of the social animal ladder may do little more than associate together at certain times. The next rung up and the animal frequently associates with others of its kind. One more step and the animal forms more or less permanent groupings. And so on until we reach the ultimate social animal, Man.

The gradual evolution of social behaviour of itself points to the need for hierarchy, because at each stage of the evolution the natural overtly selfish behaviour of the original solitary animal has to be modified. That modification will only come through natural selection working on behavioural traits which favour more complete socialisation.

What about human beings? Are they not capable of breaking the biological bounds which capture animals? Does not their immense intelligence and possession of language place them in another category of being? Could Man not simply decide not to behave in a non-hierarchical manner? The fact that human beings have never done so is of itself sufficient evidence for all but the most ideologically committed nurturist to decide that human
beings cannot do it in practice and to conclude that the forming of hierarchies is part of the human template. However, to that fact can be added another, the dominance-submission behaviour which every person witnesses daily not merely in positions of formal dominance and subordination such as the workplace, but in every aspect of social life.

Societies which consist of various human groups that  see themselves as separate  from each other disrupt the creation of a healthy hierarchy. Instead of there being a single hierarchy within an homogenous group (defining homogenous as a population in a discrete territory  which sees itself as a group), there are  hierarchies formed within each group and a further overarching hierarchy formed from the various groups themselves
with  each group hierarchy competing within the population as a whole.

The nature of the competition between the groups will depend on the relative  proportions each forms  of a population and the history of each group.  The subordinate groups within the society will feel that they are there on sufferance and  be suspicious and fearful of the dominant  group and constantly  worried that any  other minority group is outcompeting them.  A majority population which has been  dominant  in all respects within the territory will take some shifting from its position of supremacy,  but the influx of substantial numbers of outsiders will nonetheless create insecurity and  resentment amongst the dominant population. In such circumstances no individual , whether of the dominant or subordinate group(s), feels entirely  secure because there is constant tension between groups. Most importantly for the wellbeing of the society, there is no common bond of trust between people sharing the same territorial house.

3. Nations are tribes writ large

Nations are tribes writ large. They are remarkably durable. Empires invariably fall but a nation is timeless and can be only be utterly destroyed only through an act of genocide. Even the loss of a homeland – the most traumatic loss any nation can sustain – does not destroy a people as the Jews have emphatically shown for nearly two thousand years.

A shared faith or political ideology does not make a nation.  Muslims may claim to be one people, but the reality is very different as the continual strife between Muslims bears witness. Not only is there the major division between Shias and Sunnis, Muslim dominated states of the same ostensible branch of Islam are often hostile to each other, while Muslim terrorists/freedom fighters (take your pick) willingly kill fellow Muslims – women and children included – in large numbers.

Similarly, Marxist Leninists in the Soviet Union and Red China may have maintained the fiction to the bitter end of the Soviet Bloc that the international proletariat was as one, but the substantial deviations between their ideologies and the viciously repressive measures they used to deny their own proles contact with outside world (and hence with the rest of
the proletariat) told another tale.

Today, the doctrine of liberal internationalism pretends to a universality of human experience and commonality which is refuted every day by the manifold social, ethnic and racial strife throughout the world. It is an ideology which wishes the world would be as it says rather than asserts that this is the world as it is or would be under given conditions.

Nations are organic growths. They cannot be constructed consciously as the “nation-builders” of the period of European de-colonisation fondly imagined and their liberal internationalist successors today continue to at least pretend to believe. Nations are developed through the sociological process of establishing trust within the group. This only happens when others are recognised as belonging naturally to the group. That does not mean that every member of the nation is seen as equal as an individual, whether for
reasons of personality, ability or social status, but it does mean they are accepted automatically as being part of the nation. An English duke may have little if any social contact with the English working man, but each would instinctively recognise the other as English because despite their social distance they fall within the recognised template of what it is to be English.

Nor is the sense of group solidarity and empathy  restricted to nations. As David Hume noted  over two centuries ago when he reflected on how we respond to people in different circumstances: “An Englishman [met] in Italy is a friend:  A European in China [is a friend] ; and perhaps a man [of any origin] wou’d be belov’d as such, were we to meet him in the moon.” ( A Treatise of Human Nature Book II section 2 (A Treatise of Human
Nature).  The same forces which create tribes and nations are at work here as the individual seeks, in the absence of members of his tribe or nation,  those who are closest to his tribe or nation.

Just as a nation cannot be consciously created the individual cannot decide in anything other than the legal sense that they are this or that nationality. A man may decide to become a British citizen through an act of will but he cannot decide to be English. That is because being English is the consequence of parentage and upbringing, something over which the child has no control. It is the unconscious imbibing of a culture something
visceral.

Most vitally, to be part of the tribe or nation a person has to be accepted without thinking by other members of the nation as a member of the nation to be of that nation. That is why the claims of English men and women to be Irish, Welsh or Scots are both forlorn and ridiculous. As the English film director Stephen Frears wittily remarked of the very English actor Daniel Day-Lewis “I knew Daniel before he was Irish”.

Like it or not, the upbringing of these wannabe Celts has made them English. Not only do they think like the English, understand English mores without thinking and are armed with a library of English cultural references, they have a personality which falls within the English spectrum. Put them in a room with foreigners or the Celts they wish to be and they will be taken for English. Such people cannot be anything but English, because only by being raised in a society where you are accepted without question as being part of the nation can the person become part of a nation. An Englishman who wishes to claim that he is a Scot cannot realistically  do so because he lacks the cultural imprinting of a Scot. It is not something which can be faked.

4. The importance of a national territory

A national territory is essential to the well-being of the nation. The fate of the Jews after they lost theirs is a cautionary tale for anyone who believes otherwise. The ideal is a territory which is controlled entirely by the nation, a population which is overwhelmingly comprised of people who are authentic members of the national “tribe” through their parentage and upbringing. The prime example of such a state is the pre-union England, which was the first true nation state.

The next best choice is for a nation state containing different peoples who each have de facto their own national territory. Britain is a first rate example of such a state, with the four home nations – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – each having their own territory.  Simply having a land in which you form the majority on the ground is a great consolation and benefit . That applies even to a people such as the Kurds whose land is  divided between Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Being the dominant population they have both the reassurance of their demographic  control of the territory – boots on the ground – and the consoling possibility of converting that demographic dominance into political control in the future.

The Jews are an oddity. Until the modern state of Israel was founded in 1948 they had been without a homeland for nearly two millennia. They neither controlled a territory in their own right nor were the dominant people in a land. Because of that they were able to convert their religion into a cultural suit to be worn by all adherents in a way that Islam and Christianity or any political ideology never could. Denuded of their own land, they could neither be oppressed by an invader nor oppress others by invasion. They could
not exercise state power. All they had left was cultural power, whether that be intellectual or economic. The consequence was that Jewish culture rather than the possession of a homeland became the primary or even sole psychological focus of  Jews.

As a consequence of the history and  evolution of Jewish society, there been a strain within Jewry since the foundation of a modern state Jewish state was first seriously mooted  in the 19th century that has been hostile to the formation of such a state,  because the Jewish culture which they valued was the product of not having a country to call their own and consequently would become tainted if Jews had a homeland, that Jews would become like other peoples.

Although this mentality has a certain intellectual attraction, it condemns Jews to perpetual insecurity. Although Jews have successfully developed a culture built upon the need to accommodate themselves as a minority within majority non-Jewish populations whilst maintaining a strong ethnic identity, the absence of a territory which they control has meant that their history for the past twenty centuries has been an unhappy one, punctuated regularly by abuse from the majority populations with whom they co-existed,
abuse which ranges  from everyday discrimination to attempts at genocide. This abuse is the consequence of the disordering of the hierarchy humans need, the consequences being what at bottom is a battle for territory.

5. The democratic value of nations

Politically, nations are immensely valuable because the nation state is the largest political unit which allows any meaningful democratic control. Indeed, it is arguable that representative government at the national level is the only real opportunity for serious democratic control, because representative bodies below the national level are always subject to a national government. Supra-national authority signals the end of democratic control. More of that later.

Only in a country where there is a sense of shared history, culture and communal interest can representative government function, even in principle, as a conduit for the interests of the entire population. In a country which is riven by ethnic and racial difference representative democracy invariably deteriorates into a mass of competing groups all struggling for their own advantage. Policy making and its execution becomes fragmentary and it is impossible to construct a coherent approach to promoting the common good. In a nation state with a large degree of homogeneity the political process is concentrated instead upon policies which affect all, or at least the overwhelming majority, of the people. For example, before post-war mass immigration fractured Britain, the great political questions were ones related to class. Policies were put forward  which either were intended to better the situation of the working class or to resist change.  Whichever side a person
was on in that debate, they had no illusions that political policy was designed to meet the situation of the British people as a whole. Today political policy in Britain  is at best a juggling act between the competing ethnic and racial groups and at worst  a deliberately  conspiracy amongst the political elite to suppress the interests of the native population to accommodate those of  minority groups formed over the past 60 years  by incontinent mass immigration.

Once a country’s sovereignty is breached through treaties which commit countries to bow to the will of supra-national bodies , as has happened with the constituent countries of the EU, democratic control withers on the vine because mainstream politicians of all stamps begin to formulate their policies within the context of what the supra-national body allows not in the interests of the country. Eventually, a situation is reached, as has been reached in the case of the EU, where all parties with an opportunity for power sing from the same policy hymn sheet. At that point representative government becomes a shell and democratic control is gone because there is no opportunity to vote for any party which will change matters. That is so because the grip of the existing elite is so tight on all the levers of power, most importantly the mass media, that no new party can even get a serious hearing.

Where the form of government is parliamentary, the difficulty is enhanced by the fact that very large numbers of candidates must stand to both be taken seriously and have any chance of forming a majority. This imposes an immense organisational and economic burden on the new party, not least because the party will lack experienced politicians as candidates and party bureaucrats. Add in things such as first-past-the-post voting in
individual constituencies and the deposit of £500 for each candidate which is at risk of being lost in the vote does not reach 8% of the total, and the British system is just about the best armoured against new parties gaining a foothold in government as any in the world.

Democratic control is vitally important to maintaining the integrity of the nation. There is only one general political question of importance in any society, namely, how far can the masses control the abusive tendencies of the elite? Elites as a class are naturally abusive because it is in the nature of human beings to be selfish and to look for their own advantage and that of those closest to them. That does not mean that no member of an
elite will break ranks and go against their class interest. What it does mean is that an elite as a whole will not change its spots , not least because the sociological shackles are too strong for most of those members of the elite who might be tempted to go against their class interest will be dissuaded from doing so because of the group pressures within the elite, for the elite will develop a “tribal” sense of their own, with those outside the elite seen as a separate social entity.

The less democratic control there is over the elite , the more the elite will engage in behaviours which are detrimental to the coherence of the “tribe” as a whole because the elite will seek their own advantage rather than that of the nation.  Before the rise of the nation state, the abuse was generally much in evidence because elites commonly took the form of monarchies and subordinate rulers in the forms of territorially based aristocracies presiding over territories which contained various national/ethnic groups, the members of which were seen as subjects not part of a national whole. The common and deliberate policy of such elites was to “divide and rule”. Territories were also frequently subject to changes of ruler through conquest, a change of royal favour (in the case of subordinate rulers), inheritance or marriage contracts. In such circumstances there was little
opportunity for the masses to exercise any form of control over their rulers because there was no unity of feeling or sense of commonality amongst the peoples they ruled and the sense of “tribe“ was localised.  It is noteworthy that arguably the most dramatic popular rising in Europe during the mediaeval period took place in England (the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381), the one large kingdom in Europe at that time with a broadly homogenous population and a territory which enjoyed meaningful central Royal control.

With the creation of the nation state there arose the possibility of democratic control. The creation of a sense of nation within a single territory responsible to a single ruler in itself provides the circumstances whereby dissent can be focused and power and influence removed from the monarch and diffused to an ever larger part of the population. That is
precisely what happened in England , with first the gradual accretion of powers by Parliament , especially over taxation, then with the development of Parliamentary government after 1689 and finally with the extension of the franchise from 1832 onwards. By the beginning of the 20th century a large degree of democratic control had been established because the elite were working within the nation state, were dependent on a mass electorate and were having to produce policies within a national context. That control lasted until the early 1970s when the elite found another way of breaking it by moving politics from the national state to a supra-national power, the EU. Once that
was done, the abusive tendencies of the elite could re-assert themselves, as they have done in spades.

6. What the individual owes to the nation

Membership of a nation places a natural duty on the individual to support the nation. Patriotism should be viewed as a matter of utility, an absolutely necessity for the maintenance and coherence of a society. The idea that a society can survive which is merely a collection of deracinated individuals has no basis in history or observed human behaviour today.

It is a very great privilege to be unambiguously part of a nation, for it is the place where you automatically belong. Just as a family is the place where most people can find automatic support so is the nation. In fact, the nation is even more reliable than a family because no one can remove the nationality which has been imprinted into a person while a family can reject a member. In an advanced country such as Britain membership of the nation state is valuable indeed, for materially at least it is still (just) a fully-fledged
life support system.

That which is valuable needs to be defended, because what is valuable is always envied by others and will be stolen if possible and destroyed if not. The state recognises this by expecting its nationals to fight to protect the national territory against an overt invader. The principle can be extended to other things such as opposing mass immigration (a surreptitious form of conquest) and defending the nation’s vital industries.

Patriotism becomes less intense as the size of the group   increases, a fact noted by David Hume: “But when society has become more numerous, and has encrease’d to a tribe or nation, the interest is more remote; nor do men so readily perceive , that order an
confusion follow upon every breach of these rules , as in a more narrow and contracted society.”  (Book II section 2 A Treatise of Human Nature).  But that does not mean it becomes diluted to the point of having no utility. It simply means that patriotic feelings are not as immediately strong as those which attach to family and friends.  Perhaps more exactly, patriotism is not called upon with the same frequency  as the emotions which attach to those whom we regard with personal affection.  The latter feelings are constantly with us,  constantly being called upon. Patriotism on the other hand, is intermittently required to preserve the integrity of the tribe or nation. But it is always there in the
background guiding our  behaviour from thinking it natural that immigrants are excluded from our territory to supporting a national sporting team.

Being patriotic by my definition does not mean constantly and stridently asserting a nation’s achievements and superiority to other nations. It simply   means looking after
the national interest in the same way that an individual looks to their own interest.

7. The liberal internationalist

Liberal internationalist ideology is diametrically opposed to what Nature has decreed. It states that homo sapiens is a single species whose atoms, the individual human being, are interchangeable. For the liberal internationalist discrimination is the dirtiest of words and a word which he interprets to the point of reductio ad absurdum.

That is the theory. In practice, the liberal internationalist complains of discrimination only when it effects those whom it includes within the protective embrace of political correctness. Those outside that embrace may be abused and vilified. Most perversely this attitude frequently results in members of a majority actively discriminating against their
own people. Nowhere is this behaviour seen more sharply than in the attitude of the British elite towards the English to whom they deny any political voice – a privilege granted to the other parts of the UK – and actively abuse them by representing English national feeling as a dangerous thing.

The liberal left internationalists may have made truly immense efforts to portray nations as outmoded relics at best and barbarous survivals from a less enlightened past at worst, but despite their best (or worst) efforts they have not changed the natural feelings of people because these feelings derive from the general biological imperative common to all
social animals: the need to develop behaviours which enhance the utility of the
group.

But if an elite cannot destroy the naturally patriotic feelings the people they rule, they can severely taint and shackle  them by suppressing their public expression through the use of the criminal law, for example, laws against the incitement to racial hatred which are interpreted  as applying to any dissent from the politically correct position on race and immigration  and civil law penalties such as   extortionate payments for unfair dismissal
through racial discrimination which, curiously, only ever seem to apply to members of  ethnic minorities. To this they add the ruthless enforcement of their liberal-left ideology throughout politics, public service, academia, the schools, major private corporations and the mainstream media.

So successful have liberals in Britain been in their censorship and propaganda  that rarely
does any native dissent about immigration and its consequences enter the public realm, while it is now impossible for anyone to occupy  a senior position in any public organisation or private organisation with a quasi-public quality, for examples, charities
and large companies, without religiously observing the elite ideology which has solidified into what is now called political correctness. The consequence is that people have developed the mentality common in totalitarian regimes that certain feelings, however natural, are somehow now out of bounds and dangerous and consequently should be the subject of self-censorship. People still have the feelings but they are withdrawn from public conversation and increasing from private discourse.

It is important to understand that even the most vociferous liberal does not believe in his or her heart of hearts that humanity is a single indivisible entity whose atoms (the individual) are in practice interchangeable. They wish it was so but know it is not so. However, the ideologically committed continue to live in hope that minds and behaviours can be changed by what they are wont to call “education”, for which read indoctrination. The rest go along with the idea because it has been built into the structure of the elite and the doubters prize ambition and their membership of the elite above honesty.

It is of course impossible to consciously force someone to be patriotic,  but there is no need to because the natural instinct of human beings is to be patriotic. All that needs to be done is to remove the constraints placed on national expression by the liberal internationalists and these natural instincts will re-assert themselves . That can be done by the political elite changing their tune towards a defence of the nation and the nation state. Let the political rhetoric alter and the public mood will swing towards the patriotic. The underlying strength of patriotism can be seen in the case of England. Despite being denied any national political voice and incontinently abused by the British elite,   whenever a national sporting  team representing England takes the field the support is immense.  Come the football World Cup and vast numbers of the flag of St George appear on everything from flagpoles to cars. Let England win the Rugby World Cup or cricket’s Ashes and great crowds fill the streets of London as they teams go on a celebratory parade.  Whenever an England side plays abroad they are joined by astonishing numbers of  English men and women.

8. How to move from multiculturalism to patriotism

All treaties which restrict the power of a government to act in the national context must be thrown away. In the case of Britain that means leaving the EU and repudiating treaties such as the UN Convention on Refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The institutionalisation of political correctness within public service must be destroyed, both by dismissing all those employed explicitly to enforce such views (who are de facto political commissars) and by repealing all laws which both provide powers for officials and those which restrict free expression. I say political correctness in its entirety because the various strands of political correctness support each other, most notably in the general attack on “discrimination”. Leave anything of the “discrimination” culture intact and it will be used to bring in multiculturalism by the back door. It would also require many of the de facto political commissars to be left in office.

Public office, both that held by politicians and officials, should be restricted to those with four grandparents and two parents as nationals born and bred. This should be done to prevent any lack of focus because of the danger of divided national loyalties.

Mass immigration must be ended. Immigrants in a country illegally should be removed in short order where that can be done. Where possible, those legally in a country who cannot or will not assimilate fully, should be re-settled in their countries of their national origin or the national origin of their ancestors or in other countries where they will be in the racial/ethnic majority. Those who are in a country legally but who do not have essential scarce skills which cannot be supplied by the native population, should be sent back to their countries of origin – there would be few from countries who could not be returned because they would be definitely identifiable as coming from a country and few countries will refuse to receive one of their nationals even if they do not have a passport.

A written constitution is a must because otherwise any change to remedy matters will be vulnerable to easy reversal. Such a reversal could be thwarted, as far as these things can ever be thwarted, by placing a bar on what a government may do. That should include prohibitions on the signing of treaties which restrict national sovereignty and mass immigration, provisions for the protection of strategic industries and the restriction of
public office to born and bred nationals and a clear statement that the nation state exists to privilege its members over those of foreigners. Most importantly, there should be an absolute right to free expression for that is the greatest dissolver of elite abuse and general chicanery. Milton understood this perfectly: ‘

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose upon the   earth, so truth be in the field [and] we do injuriously  by  licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength.  Let  her
and falsehood grapple;  who ever knew truth put to the worse,  in a free and open encounter…’ [Milton – Areogapitica].

9. No patriotism, no enduring society

The value of patriotism is its ability to produce social coherence and an enduring and discrete population . Without patriotism a country becomes no more than a geographical expression and is ready prey for colonisation by overt conquest through force or covert conquest through mass immigration.

Liberal internationalists have ends which are directly in conflict with patriotism. They seek the destruction of nation states and the subordination of nations to a world order ommanding a single human society .  A particularly crass example comes from the TV
broadcaster I mentioned earlier, Adrian Chiles:

“I want all the species to marry each other so that in 300 years’ time we are all the same colour.

“White people can’t talk about whiteness without sounding racist. I would love my daughter to marry an Asian or black man. “http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100localnews/content_objectid=13305960_method=full_siteid=50002_headline=-Asian-for-Aide-s-girl-name_page.html#story_continue

The  ends  of liberal internationalism are predicated on the demonstrably false premise that diverse populations will live not merely as peacefully and productively as homogeneous ones , but produce stronger and, by implication, more enduring societies . The internationalists have no rational grounds for believing this , for the whole experience of human history and the world as it is today is that diversity of race and ethnicity in the same territory equates to violence and social incoherence. There is literally no example of a diverse society which has not suffered serious ethnic strife, whether that be outright racial war or chronic social disruption such as riots and the production of ethnic ghettos which become de facto no go areas.

Ironically, the invariable consequence of mixed populations is not as liberals would like to believe, a diminishing of aggressive national/tribal sentiment but an inflation of it. A people secure in its own territory does not need to engage in constant national expression because nothing threatens it: a people in a mixed society must constantly do so because
all the ethnic/racial groups are necessarily in conflict because of the need for each to compete for power and resources for their own group.

Because Man is differentiated profoundly by culture, the widely accepted definition of a species – a population of freely interbreeding organisms sharing a common gene pool – is unsatisfactory. Clearly Man is more than an animal responding to simple biological triggers. When behavioural differences are perceived as belonging to a particular group by that group as differentiating members of the group from other humans  they perform the same role as organic differences for they divide Man into cultural species. That is how homo sapiens should be viewed, as an amalgam of species and subspecies who require their own territories to maximise peace . In addition such societal differentiation probably  drives  the evolution of Man . A good example of  the latter would be 18th century England and the Industrial Revolution. Would that revolution have occurred if England had not been a very homogeneous society which suffered very little immigration from the 14th century onwards?  Probably not, because large-scale immigration or conquest by a foreign power would have radically changed the nature of England.

The Liberal internationalists’ belief  that human beings are interchangeable social atoms who may live as readily in one society as another is a recipe for national suicide. Patriotism is not an optional extra.

The Spring Edition of the Quarterly Review is out

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Quarterly Review  Vol 5 . No 1 . Spring 2011

CONTENTS

Editorial Derek Turner Click here

Who owns the food chain? Julian Rose Click here

Lukács and Gramsci – curiously conservative radicals Geoffrey Partington

The promised planet

Frank Ellis on Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? by Eric Kaufmann

Libya: a war of the womb Ilana Mercer

The disuniting States of America

Mark G. Brennan on Age of Fracture by Daniel Rodgers

Home schooling – an idea whose time has come? S. Jay Porter

The West in history

Michael H. Hart on Why the West Rules – For Now by Ian Morris

Jerusalem – the heavenly and profane city

Peter Stark on Jerusalem – The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore’s

Revolution, freeze-framed

Leslie Jones on Photography and Memory in Mexico: Icons of Revolution

by Andrea Noble

Replay: Ordet Luise Hemmer Pihl

Replay: The Man Who Knew Too Much Johanna Rhiannon Johnson

Second Reading: Hakluyt’s Voyages Derek Turner

Uncollected Folk Roy Kerridge on playing the blues

Taki Taki on men (and women)

Eggs Catharine Savage Brosman (poem)

On the terrace Niels Hav (poem)

The complete “Wages of Scottish independence”

I have now completed the series on the implications of Scottish independence on the Calling England blog. They cover all the important ground relating to the question:

The wages of Scottish independence – England, Wales and Northern Ireland must be heard

In the matter of Scottish independence, the British political elite and the Scottish Numpty Party (SNP) are flatly ignoring the interests of the English, Welsh and Northern Irish. This is unreasonable for two reasons: firstly, the granting of independence to … Continue reading →

The wages of Scottish independence – If Parliament says NO

Whether or not Scotland would vote for independence is debatable. Polls consistently show a majority against, although there are always a substantial number of “don’t knows”. In a referendum held only in Scotland with the YES campaign headed by the … Continue reading →

Geographically Scotland is very isolated. It is a stranded at the top of mainland Britain with a single land border with England. Any goods or people coming and going to Scotland have a choice of independent access by air and … Continue reading →

The wages of Scottish independence – a divided country

The divided country is not the UK but Scotland. Its divisions are cultural, geographical, religious, demographic and racial. Demographically Scotland is a most peculiar place. It has a population estimated at 5.2 million in 2010 (http://www.scotland.org/facts/population/) set in an area … Continue reading →

The wages of Scottish independence – membership of the EU

The Scottish Numpty Party (SNP) leader Alex Salmond has a dream; well, more of an adolescent fantasy really. He imagines that an independent Scotland would immediately be embraced enthusiastically by the EU. In the more heroically bonkers versions of the fantasy, … Continue reading →

The wages of Scottish independence – The monarchy

The Scottish Numpty Party (SNP) has committed itself to the Queen being Scotland’s head of state should independence occur. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/wintour-and-watt/2011/may/25/alexsalmond-queen). As with so much of the SNP policy towards independence this presumes something which is far from self-evident, namely, that …Continue reading →

The wages of Scottish independence – immigration

The Scots Numpty Party (SNP) fondly imagines that an independent Scotland would continue to have free access to England. They recklessly assume Scotland’s position would be akin to that of the Republic of Ireland. However, that assumption rests on a …Continue reading →

The wages of Scottish independence – Public Debt

One thing is certain about an independent Scotland: it would begin life with a massive national debt. Exactly how much is problematic because the Scottish referendum on independence will probably not be held until 2015. The Scots Numpty Party (SNP) …Continue reading →

The wages of Scottish independence – the currency problem

The most problematic decision for an independent Scotland is the currency. There are three choices: to keep using the pound, join the Euro or create their own currency. If they choose the pound or Euro they will not be truly … Continue reading →

The wages of Scottish independence – the loss of the military

 

One of the most complex aspects of disentangling Scotland from the rest of the UK should Scotland become independent is defence. It is complex because of (1) the siting of the Trident submarines and other major ships at Faslane; (2) … Continue reading →

The wages of Scottish independence – public sector employment

One of the many major issues which an independent Scotland would have to address is the extent to which the Scottish economy is dependent on public spending and in particular the number of public sector jobs which would be moved … Continue reading →

These posts also address the same subject:

The truth about UK oil and gas

 

The Scots Numpty Party (SNP) bases its case for the viability of Scotland’s independence on the idea that wicked England has been “stealin’ ouir oil” and that if only they had control of the tax revenues from UK oil and gas … Continue reading →

Make sure the costs of Scottish independence get into the media

The letter below was published in the Times 10 May 2011. It is extremely important that the debate on independence for Scotland is conducted on the basis that Scotland will not be allowed to walk away from the financial obligations … Continue reading →

Scottish independence? Yes, but only on these terms

The Scots Numpty Party (SNP) has managed to defeat the attempts of the unionists who deliberately devised the electoral system to thwart single party government (and hence leave independence off the practical political agenda) and get a majority in Scotland. The …Continue reading →


The wages of Scottish independence – England, Wales and Northern Ireland must be heard

In the matter of Scottish independence, the British political elite and the Scottish Numpty Party (SNP) are flatly  ignoring the interests of the English, Welsh and Northern Irish.  This is unreasonable for two reasons: firstly, the granting of independence to Scotland has considerable political, economic and security implications for the remainder of the UK and, secondly, the conditions on which Scotland might be allowed to leave the Union are of direct interest to the rest of the UK, because if they are too generous to Scotland they will disadvantage England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The granting of over-generous conditions to the Scots  is probable with the present Coalition Government, which has done nothing to abate the appeasement of the Scots so assiduously practised by New Labour since 1997  by continuing the Barnett Formula and tossing juicy bones to Edinburgh such as increasing the number of armed forces personnel in Scotland at a time of massive reductions in Britain’s defence forces (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/8646134/Liam-Fox-Scottish-defence-footprint-to-increase-despite-RAF-Leuchars-closure.html).  There is also the strong possibility that the present Government would attempt to placate Scots by going for devolution max or independence lite, either of which would shift major powers to Scotland such as fiscal independence and the revenues from the oil and gas in Scottish waters without the Scots taking on a share proportionate to their population of the UK’s financial obligations.

It is also true that even if the cutting adrift of Scotland was entirely equitable in terms of the division of debts and assets, the rest of the UK (and especially England) would have a serious interest in blocking the divorce. To begin with, an independent Scotland would not be able to guard its own borders or patrol the oil and gas fields in its waters because of its small population, the large territory in relation to the population and the sheer cost of doing so. The rest of the UK (in reality England because Wales and Northern  Ireland receive far more from the UK Treasury tax pot than they put in)  would in practice be providing Scotland’s defence,  because no country could imagine that an attack on Scotland would not bring in England.

There would also be the threat of immigration from an independent Scotland to England. Scotland could operate an open door policy in the sure knowledge that immigrants entering Scotland would overwhelmingly head for England. Scotland might even act as a national people trafficker by selling entry to Scotland and/or Scottish citizenship. If both Scotland and England remain within the EU, the Westminster Government would be unable to do anything about the immigration to England via Scotland  of any number of people from both within and without the EU.

Lastly, there would be the question of what would  happen if  an independent Scotland ran into the sort of economic trouble experienced currently by the Republic of Ireland and Greece. As sure as eggs are eggs, England would be called upon to bail her out.  Even if that did not happen it is probable that an independent Scotland would not be able or willing to finance her share of the accrued financial obligations of the UK. There would be no way of guaranteeing that an independent Scotland could service even her 9 per cent share of the UK national debt (which is officially projected to be  at least £1.3 trillion at
the proposed referendum date of 2015) let alone her PFI and other public service debt (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/the-wages-of-scottish-independence-public-debt/). The reality  is that if Scotland had a nominal independence England would be the guarantor of last resort, underwriting Scotland’s obligations accrued both before and after independence.

The rest of the UK, and especially England, clearly have a pressing interest in the question of  Scottish independence. How should that interest be given a  political voice? This can be done either with a referendum on Scottish independence in which they (but not the Scots) vote on a simple question such as “Should Scotland be allowed to vote on whether they want independence” or by a referendum held in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on any conditions for independence which have been agreed between the UK and Scottish Governments and accepted by the two parliaments. It is important to understand that UK Government cannot simply decide to grant Scotland independence, because the 1707  Act of Union would have to be repealed by the Westminster Parliament  and the Scottish Parliament would have to accept the conditions for independence and pass legislation preparing Scotland for independence if a YES vote was obtained. (The later Acts bringing  Ireland into the Union and then adjusting the Union to include Northern Ireland rather than Ireland,  would be amended by the doctrine of implied repeal. However, a new Act might be passed clarifying the new situation).

A  vote on the simple question of independence should be held in England, Wales and Northern Ireland  and a YES vote obtained  before a Scottish referendum is  held.  If a NO vote resulted then Scottish independence would be off the agenda.   Similarly, if the conditions are voted upon, this should be done before the vote is put to the Scots.  A NO vote would mean that either Scottish independence was off the agenda or that the conditions had to be changed and put to the English, Welsh and Northern Irish electorates again.  Nothing short of Westminster abolishing the Scottish parliament and government by repealing the devolution settlement as it applied to Scotland could prevent a referendum, being organised by the Scottish government and sanctioned by the Scottish parliament, but such a referendum would have no legal or constitutional status.

If Scotland declared UDI they would legally  be in rebellion. That would not only lay Scotland open to catastrophic sanctions by Westminster but also put them at odds with the EU because  an independent Scotland created illegally would not automatically  have EU status. It would also be a very dangerous thing for the EU to offer any support on encouragement to part of an established EU member seceding from the member because there are so many parts of the EU which might do the same. In theory this might play into the hands of Eurocrats because it undermines the powerful  national state, but in practice it would simply strengthen nationalism and in the most messy and chaotic manner with
micro-states popping up all over the EU.  This consideration would also prevent the EU
pushing for Scotland to be made  independent in the case of Scotland voting YES in a referendum which had no legal status.  However, the EU might well push for greater
devolved powers short of independence for Scotland in  such circumstances. That needs watching.

There is also the ticklish question of what the franchise should be for the Scottish referendum on independence. Like the rest of the UK, Scotland is far from being ethnically monolithic. The 2001 census showed 88 per cent of the population being White Scottish, 9 per cent White non-Scottish  and 2 per cent black or Asian. (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2004/02/18876/32939).
There are also different electoral qualifications for voting in Scotland and the rest of the UK, these varying between UK national elections, elections to the devolved assemblies, EU elections and local elections. Elections to the Scottish parliament include Scottish residents from other EU countries in the electorate, while elections to the Commons do not. Conversely, ex-patriot Britons are allowed to vote for Westminster MPs while they are not allowed the privilege in the election of MSPs to the Scottish parliament even if they are on Scottish electoral registers. As there are large numbers of Scots living outside
Scotland,  this is no small difference.

The Scottish government Draft Referendum (Scotland) Bill Consultation Paper  states “Eligibility to vote will follow the precedent of the 1997 referendum in being based on who
can vote at Scottish Parliament and Scottish local government elections. However, the draft Bill provides that those aged 16 or 17 on the electoral register on the date of the referendum will also be entitled to”.   (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/02/22120157/7)

That is all very well on paper, but there is no guarantee that the Commons would accept such a franchise because that would mean a large proportion of voters could be either without British citizenship or possessed of dual citizenship. It would in principle be possible to identify people from outside Scotland who would be willing to vote for independence, ship large numbers of them into the country shortly before a referendum, get them registered as resident in Scotland and effectively fix a YES vote.

There is also the strong possibility that there would judicial challenges from those excluded particularly ex-patriot Scots. In a country such as modern Britain they might well succeed, so hemmed about with laws and treaties obligations restricting what parliaments and governments may do. Most particularly Article 3 of the first Protocol to the Human Rights Act runs “The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.”  It is all too easy to foresee the type of legal wrangles over who comes within the definition of “the people”, especially in the case of ex-patriot Scots.  Would a Scot have to live outside Scotland for six months, a year, five years or what to count as not being part of the people?

If the Scottish parliament could not simply lay down who should vote in the referendum large numbers of possibilities arise. Here are a few. Should every adult living in Scotland get the vote? Should it be every adult who is qualified to vote for the Scottish Parliament? Should it be only British citizens living in Scotland?  Should it be only Scots living in Scotland? Should it be Scots living throughout the UK? What about Scots living abroad? Should they be allowed to vote as ex-pat Britons are allowed to vote in Westminster elections? Should it be any adult in Scotland entitled to vote in EU elections? Should it be every adult in Scotland entitled to vote in local elections?

The above facts speak for themselves: there is considerable doubt about when and in what form a referendum on Scottish independence might be held. It is vital that the many unresolved questions are answered before any referendums are held and that the political elite in the UK does not simply railroad an independence referendum through without giving the people of  England, Wales and Northern Ireland a say in that which so directly concerns them.

The wages of Scottish independence – infrastructure

Geographically Scotland is very isolated. It is a stranded at the top of mainland Britain with a single land border with England.  Any goods or people coming and going to Scotland have a choice of independent access by air and  sea  or dependent  entry and exit via rail and road through England.

Why does this matter?  Two reasons: Scotland cannot assume free passage for goods and  people through England in perpetuity. They might not have it immediately after independence if  Scotland  is  unable to gain EU membership,   either because the  reduced UK (henceforth the UK) opposed it or the other EU members did.  Alternatively the UK (or England on its own) might leave the EU.  It would also be in the UK Government’s hands
to impose its own restrictions on the free movement of Scottish imports and exports.

In any of these eventualities Scotland would be severely hampered in its importing and exporting.  EU law would prevent the free export of Scottish goods to and through the rest of the UK  if Scotland was not part of the EU and to the EU through the UK if the  UK  did not remain in the EU.  If the UK did not remain in the EU, exports to Scotland  from the UK would also be subject to EU protectionism and even goods from the EU could become subject to tariffs and quotas if they passed through the UK.  As for the UK Government taking steps off their own bat to impose restrictions, that could be a real possibility if the UK left the EU,  either in retaliation for EU imposed restrictions on UK trade with the
EU or EU restrictions on the movement of goods to and from the non-EU nations of Europe  to the UK . There might also be disputes between the UK and Scotland which could result in restrictions, for example, Scotland failing to pay the interest on their share of the UK National debt at the time of independence or Scotland operating too lax  an
immigration policy resulting in immigrants coming into Scotland with the intention of moving across the border to England.

The precarious geographical situation of Scotland shows the importance of it remaining on good terms with the UK  in the event of independence.  But it also means that  the UK  would have no incentive in improving railways and roads right up to the Scottish/English border.  In the UK  it may make sense for political  reasons to build a high speed rail line from London to Glasgow and Edinburgh as is presently under discussion (http://news.scotsman.com/edinburgh/Scotland-must-be-on-new.6606935.jp),
although the proposed HS2 route is being fiercely resisted by those parts of England through which it will wend on its way to Scotland (http://www.rail.co/2011/01/31/why-britain-needs-hs2/).  But if Scotland were independent , at best it would make no  political sense for the UK to extend such as line further than Carlisle, a city ten miles short
of the Scottish border and  70 odd miles from Glasgow.  More likely than extending  the high-speed line to Carlisle  would be a decision to extend it no further than Manchester, a city 170 miles from Glasgow. The same reasoning would be likely to apply to all rail and road access between England and Scotland,  because there would be little benefit  to the UK in improving  the links right up to or anywhere near the Scottish border.

But even if the UK was willing to improve railways  and roads up to the Scottish border, it is doubtful whether an independent Scotland could afford to extend the links to Glasgow and Edinburgh. HS2 if it ever gets built will cost tens of billions of pounds  (http://stophs2.org/news/2368-hs2-bill-1000-family).  A substantial part of the line, around a fifth of its length, would be in Scotland if it runs  to Glasgow and/or Edinburgh.  Bearing  mind that Scotland’s GDP at present is  less than £140 billion (in 2009 it was
officially estimated at £131 billion – http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/06/21144516/5), it is difficult to see how Scotland would fund the construction, maintenance and running of the HSE on their side of the border.

Poor communications,  external and internal,  would  not hinder only Scottish exports and imports of goods . It would  also adversely affect large sections of the private enterprise part of the Scottish economy  such as tourism and dissuade talented  individuals from coming to work in Scotland or businessmen to invest there. Poor infrastructure generally would be a disincentive to individuals and businesses.  Existing well qualified individuals and companies located in Scotland might well decide to move elsewhere.

But infrastructure is about much more than main roads and rail links to major cities. An independent Scotland would have to fully fund all new capital projects in  Scotland including the rail and road network over the sparsely populated highlands and islands, and maintain the existing networks.  This would not be easy to do even under the present devolution arrangements because  Network Rail (which has responsibility for the
railway in Scotland)   is projecting  considerable cuts in funding (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/31/rail-industry-prepares-for-public-funding-cuts)

Amongst other things, an independent Scotland would also have to build new schools, universities, prisons, law courts   and hospitals and maintain the old ones;  prevent coastal erosion (a considerable task with such an extensive coastline for such a small population);  fund most the local council’s infrastructure spending and maintain state-owned Scottish Water  infrastructure . Of course much of this is already done via the UK Treasury block grant Scotland receives each year, but  thereby hangs a tale: in the first ten years of devolution public spending in Scotland increased dramatically. Now it is due to fall, viz:  “In the last decade, Scottish Government departmental expenditure has grown by over 5% a year on average in real terms. It is projected that between 2011/12 and  2014/15 it could fall by an average of 2.9% in real terms per annum and be £3.5 to £4bn lower.” (http://www.scdi.org.uk/downloads/SCDIBlueprintforScotland.pdf).  That  is the official estimate in the event of Scotland remaining within the UK  with  all the benefits that provides, such as assurance for business investors that Scotland is effectively  underwritten by England  and   a massive annual subsidy from England. (Shortly before Labour left office in 2010, the monetary benefits to Scotland since devolution in 2000 were calculated by  the Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy’s office at £76 billion, that is the difference between tax raised in Scotland and public expenditure in Scotland since 2002 – http://www.scotsman.com/news/Scotland39s-76-billion-39devolution-dividend39.6009619.jp).

In short, infrastructure spending in the ten years since devolution has taken place in the most benign economic and fiscal circumstances. Those circumstances would not exist come independence. Indeed, they would probably be far  worse by the time independence was reached because  according to the Murphy report the tax deficit is already at  dangerous levels : ‘… an examination of “real money” government expenditure that excludes capital spending, Scotland Office economists found total expenditure in Scotland currently amounts to 145 per cent of all Scottish tax receipts.”

An independent Scotland would find itself immediately saddled with a massive national debt as the result of taking on a proportionate share of the financial obligations of the UK at the time of independence (this would be in excess of £200 billion – https://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/the-wages-of-scottish-independence-public-debt/), further debt in the shape of PFI contracts for work undertaken in Scotland
and local authority debt. On the other side of the fiscal ledger, the tax base in an independent Scotland would shrink because of the unhealthy  proportion of its GDP which is  dependent  on public spending (https://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/the-wages-of-scottish-independence-public-sector-employment/) and the receipts from oil in Scottish waters would not compensate for the £8 billion pa Scotland receives in extra funding from the UK Treasury because the per capita funding is around £1,500 per head higher in Scotland than it is in England.  The oil is also a rapidly declining asset. (https://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/the-truth-about-uk-oil-and-gas/).
It is also a fact that Scotland has a dangerously narrow private sector being far too dependent on oil, Scotch whisky, material and tourism.  This means it could easily be blown off course by a sudden change of fortune in one of the main revenue earners .

With additional costs and tax revenue falling, it is improbable in the extreme that Scotland’s infrastructure could be maintained at its present level let alone substantially improved.  Nor  is there any reason to believe that  an independent Scotland would be wise in its use of money for infrastructure investment.  The Scottish parliament was estimated to cost £40 million and cost  £414 million (http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/briefings/snpc-03357.pdf) and a tram scheme in Edinburgh which bids fair to waste £750 million with
precious little to show for it (http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/comment/Edinburgh39s-disgrace-II-Tram-fiasco.6783582.jp).  Those are serious amounts of money for an economy the size of Scotland. A massive like England could shake them off, but a few fiascos of this magnitude could seriously damage Scotland.

The likely outcome for infrastructure in an independent Scotland is more ridiculously expensive projects, less of it and worse maintained.

The wages of Scottish independence – The monarchy

The Scottish Numpty Party (SNP) has committed itself to the Queen being Scotland’s head of state should independence occur.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/wintour-and-watt/2011/may/25/alexsalmond-queen). As with so much of the SNP policy towards independence this presumes something which is far from self-evident, namely, that
this would be acceptable to the Queen, practical or agreeable to the remainder of  the UK.

It  might seem a simple thing for the Queen to be Scotland’s  head of state for many of Britain’s ex-colonies and dominions, including substantial states such as Australia and
Canada, retain such a link with the old colonial power.   If she can act as head of state for them why not for an independent Scotland, a much smaller and more insignificant entity?   The answer is simple; all the Commonwealth  countries of which she is queen  are not intimately connected with Britain  geographically, administratively or economically.   Scotland is. In addition, if Scotland retained the pound she would have something no other Commonwealth country has, her fiscal policy substantially decided by Westminster.

To understand the potential dangers of the Queen as head of state of an independent Scotland a familiarity with the nature of the monarchy as it is today.  Britain’s monarchy
evolved from an executive to a constitutional one largely through convention rather than law.  For example, the  monarch stopped vetoing Acts of Parliament after the advent of the Hanoverians in 1714 not because the power was removed by Parliament,  but because the monarch did not use the power. In time this became a convention.  The consequence is that there are few constitutional bars placed on the Crown’s powers and the Royal prerogative is essentially what it was after the Bill of Rights was passed in 1690 in the aftermath of the overthrow of James II. (An up to date description of the Royal Prerogative can be found at (http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/briefings/snpc-03861.pdf).  However, all of the important  powers  which remain bar two  are exercised today by the Prime Minister.  The important exceptions  are (1) where the appointment of a prime minister  is to be made when there is no party with a clear majority in the Commons and the monarch has to decide whether a government can be formed and if so who is best able to do so and (2) the monarch’s decision whether to grant  a dissolution of  Parliament is not straightforward.  For example, suppose a coalition government breaks up and there is the possibility of forming a different coalition with a working majority, the monarch might  decide that the denial of a dissolution and the acceptance of a different coalition might be preferable to another General Election. That could be the case where there have been two General Elections in a short period which have failed to return a House of Commons with a workable  majority for a single party.  If the present Coalition pushes through the promised Bill to make future Parliaments go the full five years unless a strong majority in the Commons votes for a dissolution, this objection would  be much weakened. If the present arrangements for   general elections  in Scotland continue, namely that they be called only every four years , (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/46/part/I/crossheading/general-elections)
the difficulty will not arise.  However, in the case of an independent Scotland there would be more opportunity  for the monarch to be called upon to appoint a new government during the course of a parliament because  the electoral system is likely to produce coalitions and often coalitions of more than two parties.   At present the formation of the Scottish devolved Parliament and government does not involve the monarch. If Scotland became independent she would have to do one of three things: have a Governor-General as the Queen’s representative ;  have a  relationship in which the Queen performs  the same duties in Scotland as she does in the UK as it is presently constituted or some entirely new relationship which reduces the monarch to nothing more than a figurehead with no prerogative power or influence, for example, no Royal warrants, no part in hung parliaments and so on.  This strikes me as unlikely because it would offer  an example to  other Commonwealth states which persuade them to  lobby top change their relationship
with the Crown.

In the case of the appointment of a Governor-General,  that in itself would be a difficult political decision because the Scots would doubtless call for a Scot. The appointment of a Scot could produce a person  with divided loyalties or even worse one wholeheartedly biased towards Scotland’s interests.  Conversely, the failure to appoint a Scot could result in a continuous running political sore. But appointing a Scot as  Governor-General  would be no guarantee of compliance to Edinburgh’s wishes.  The Governor-General of Australia who dismissed Gough Whitlam as Australian Prime Minister in 1975, Sir John Robert Kerr, was Australian.

Any relationship other than one which was new  would produce constitutional difficulty, because the major element of the prerogative which the monarch still exercises which would be applicable to Scotland –  the decision of who should form a government where there is no clear cut electoral decision –  would force the monarch into politics, either
directly or through a High Commissioner.  This might not matter if coalitions were a
rarity in an independent  Scotland. But they would probably be the norm rather than a rarity.  If Scotland retains the  electoral system used for her devolved parliament, the monarch (or Governor-General)  would have to make such a decision  after most  Scottish general elections . Coalitions being fragile, there would also be multiple opportunities for more than one such decision to be made in any parliament.   If that were the case, the monarch (or Governor-General)  would constantly be brought into active politics. Should the monarch (or Governor-General ) make a decision which  was questionable, for example, accepting a coalition which excluded the party with the most seats, the monarch could be subject to personal political attacks. That could undermine the position of the
monarchy in the rest of the UK as well as Scotland.

Scotland could adopt a first-past-the-post electoral system, but that is most unlikely because of the vested interest all parties in  Scotland have in retaining the present system,
that is, all know they will have a chance of at least some seats, something which would not be the case under first-past-the-post.  But  even if a first-past-the-post system was adopted there would still be occasions when a   coalition was needed. This would be much
more likely in a small assembly such as the devolved parliament than in the House of Commons , which has more than  five times the members of the  Scottish parliament.

A small number of elected representatives means that any overall majority is going to be small whatever the electoral system.  That is simply a matter of arithmetic.  In a House with 646 members such as the House of Commons, a party winning 55% of the seats  has 355 members  which gives a majority of  64.  60% of the seats in the Scottish parliament (129 members)  is 71 seats and a majority of 13.  Managing a parliament for four or five years on a majority that small would be difficult. Every death or retirement of a member would take on considerable importance.  The opposition would be constantly on the alert to embarrass the government with “ambush” voting and refusals to pair.  This would make coalitions even where an overall majority likely within their potential for politically embarrassing the monarch.

That is not the only chance of political embarrassment or worse for the monarch. The Queen acts a conduit for  the UK Government’s legislative programme through the Queen’s speech. She does not do the same for the devolved government in Edinburgh.   If  an independent Scotland wished the Queen to give a Queen’s speech in an independent Scottish parliament , she could easily find herself proclaiming contradictory policies in Westminster and Edinburgh, for example,  Westminster might decide to raise duty on Scotch whiskey while Edinburgh opposed such a move. More dramatically, if Scotland continued to use the pound the Scottish government might, for example,  argue for lower
interest rates and Westminster to raise them.

The monarch might also find herself having to speak words written for her by either government which would insult or enrage either Westminster or Edinburgh. It is easy to imagine Alex Salmond putting anti-English rhetoric into a Scottish Queen’s speech.

Embarrassment could also arise if those who were persona non grata to either  Westminster and Edinburgh were entertained by the other and monarch had to meet them. Or the monarch might be called upon to undertake a public duty which was unpalatable to one of the governments, for example opening a nuclear power station in England and praising it as the best way of ensuring future energy supplies while Scotland continued with a no nuclear policy.    The same problems would arise with any lesser royal, in whom they me, the speeches they might give and the places they might visit.

If an independent Scotland decided to use the Royal Prerogative powers which the Westminster Government  uses,  they would be much more potent in Scotland than they are at Westminster. The small size of the  Scottish Parliament would lend itself much more easily to corruption and intimidation because there would be few people who would need to be corrupted or intimidated. That would, for example,  make the use of existing prerogative powers which allow ministers to produce law without having to put legislation through Parliament a potentially dangerous weapon  in the hands of a Scottish Prime Minister inclined  to govern autocratically. In the latter days of the last Labour Government  The Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill 2008-0 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/46/part/I/crossheading/general-elections)
was passed. This did put some restrictions on the Royal Prerogative such as giving Parliament  a say in the  waging of war and the agreement to Treaties . But that Act only applies to the Westminster Parliament and UK Government. An independent Scottish Parliament could use the Prerogative in its form prior to that Act.  They could, amongst other things,  make treaties or declare war without  Parliamentary approval.  The Queen could end up supporting a treaty  or war in one country and opposing it in another.

A particularly fraught  problem  is the position of the armed forces. The UK armed forces owe their loyalty to the monarch not Parliament or Government.  Imagine the situation after Scottish independence if both Scotland and the UK had their separate armed forces who were yet all subject to the authority of the monarch.   The opportunities for disagreement would be immense, as indeed they were before the Union when the English and Scottish crowns were united.  In the 1690s Scotland  developed a madcap scheme to establish a colony on the Isthmus of Panama  http://www.rogermoorhouse.com/article2.html).  Its promoters knew nothing about the reality of the site, which was inhospitable. It also fell within the Spanish  ambit.  The promoters of the scheme  called on William III  as King of Scotland to use English colonial power,  English troops and the Royal Navy to support the colony and to generally aid them to the disadvantage of English interests.   William refused because he did not wish to give Spain grounds for war  or create opposition in England.  It is conceivable that similar clashed of interest could arise again, for example, if an independent Scotland could not defend  its territorial waters and called on  the Royal Navy to do so.

That would be an awkward enough marriage of dissonant interests, but the SNP leader is hoping for an independent Scotland and the remainder of the UK to share a common defence force (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/8515034/Sir-Mike-Jackson-tells-Alex-Salmond-British-soldiers-have-only-one-master.html).
That would create an impossible situation whereby Scotland might wish to  withhold  troops and equipment  from Westminster  if there was disagreement about how they might
be deployed.  Servicemen cannot  have two political masters.

Those are some of the problems which would come with an independent Scotland with the Queen as head of state. There are others, for example, the funding of the monarchy. What would Scotland pay?  Or the diplomatic service; how would UK and Scottish ambassadors in the same country, both appointed by the monarch, reconcile different views on the
same diplomatic matters?   What is clear is that a return to the 1707 situation of one crown but two countries would be immensely messy and not in England’s interest.  If Scotland becomes independent it should be without  the Queen as head of state.   The Queen (or her successor) could not veto this,  because the Parliamentary settlement of 1689 with William III puts the ascension of a monarch to the throne of England  in the gift of Parliament.