Category Archives: English

Why are the British political elite so Hell-bent on denying England a Parliament?

The Scots have a parliament; the Welsh have an assembly; the implacable factions of Ulster shall run their own affairs if they can but remove their hands from one another’s throats; yet the English, the most politically mature of all peoples, shall possess no such means of political expression and control over their own affairs, neither now nor ever. So runs the curious view of our political masters.

When I say our political masters I mean the entire British political elite, for no mainstream party advocates an English parliament or gives any sign that it will do so. This is more than a little strange, because a English parliament is not merely the most just but also the most obvious and economical solution to the inequality of democratic representation and opportunity wrought by devolution..

Why is our political class so utterly determined that England shall be given no voice? The obnoxious truth is that our political elite oppose an English parliament for Anglophobic and self-serving reasons, both domestic and supra-national. There is a general terror amongst them of what they describe as English nationalism, but which in reality is a dread of English interests being realised and fought for. To that general motive may be added two particular reasons, the knowledge of Euroenthusiasts that a strong self-confident England would subvert their federalist plans and the Labour Party’s fear that an English parliament could mean a near permanent Tory majority in England. Those things are obvious enough. But there is something deeper, more subtle, more poisonous, whose acid growth has slowly corroded our entire public life, namely elite sponsored Anglophobia which has its roots in the currently dominant elite ideology of the West, liberal internationalism.

For more than a generation there has been assiduously nurtured amongst our elite a habit of public belittlement of England and the English. The disease spreads far beyond politics and infects the worlds of mediafolk, academics, public servants, pressure groups and important businessmen. These people I shall call the Public Class. The habit has become so ingrained and so widespread, that gratuitous insult by public figures of all things English and the energetic promotion of all peoples and cultures other than the English, has become the norm rather than the exception. Things have come to such a pass that it is now commonly suggested by the Public Class that Englishness does not exist and any attempt to protect English interests is treated as at best chauvinism and at worst racism. We have the unsavoury spectacle of a native ruling elite actively denigrating their own culture and generally acting against the interests of the mass of their people. Historically, such behaviour is commonly found in monarchies, aristocracies and despotisms. In a supposed democracy, it is best described as bizarre.

This dangerous habit of mind for England extends to the one parliamentary party, the Conservatives, which might be expected to rebel against it. William Hague, an Englishman born and bred, gave the game away in an interview in the Daily Telegraph (8/7/98) when he stated “I am not an English nationalist” and declared that he “is determinedly British rather than English” and was “dismayed to see so many St George Crosses at the world cup.” It comes as no surpriseto learn that he has since rejected an English parliament on the ground that “it could prove a decisive step in the break-up of the United Kingdom” (translation: Mr Hague is unreservedly willing to subordinate England’s interests to preserving the union at all costs).

The bogus nature of the claims made by those who scream blue murder at the slightest public expression of English pride or defence of English interests is shown by the uncritical support the same people give to Scotch, Welsh and Irish nationalism. They also give the game away when they argue that England is so large in comparison with the other parts of the UK that a Federation would be unbalanced. In other words, their fear is really that England would naturally dominate a federation. The argument about federal imbalance can be simply shown up for what it is, a demonstrable nonsense, by referring to the examples of the USA, Canada and India. There are sixty Californians to every Alaskan; seventy bodies in Ontario for each person in Prince Edward Island and one hundred and eleven inhabitants of Uttar Pradesh for every human being in Goa.

What exactly is this terrible danger our political elite see in their misnamed English nationalism? It is not that England would oppress her Celtic neighbours. It is not that England would engage in any form of aggressive action against the rest of Britain. The fear quite simply is that an England with its own voice and political focus would attend to its own interests. The political fat would then would be in the fire.

The prime political fact of the UK is that England enjoys such a preponderance in population, wealth, educational opportunity, industry and commerce that she inevitably dominates the other parts of Britain. In fact, England has such a predominant position that she could, if she but had the political will, utterly dictate the terms of any future Union or dismantlement of the Union. She has five sixths of the population. She has more than five sixths of the wealth, commerce and industry. An English parliament with the same powers as the Scots would account for approximately three quarters of total UK state expenditure. Most pertinently the English taxpayer pays massive subsidies to the rest of the UK. An English parliament would eventually mean an end to these subsidies. It is this fact above all others which frightens those who oppose such an assembly. The effect of ending these English payments to the Celts would be profound.

The Eurofederalists share the fears of English interests being realised and defended, but their reasons are different. They understand that a strong, self-confident England would spell the end of their plans to embed Britain within the EU. That Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should have a means of national political expression is nothing to them, because these countries are too insignificant and above all too poor to resist the march of Eurofederalism. England with fifty million people and the third or fourth largest economy in the EU is a different kettle of fish. It is also a fact that opinion polls show the English to be considerably more Eurosceptic than the rest of the UK, many of whose peoples harbour fantasies of being given massive subsidies by the EU in the manner of the Irish Republic, as “nations within Europe”.

Before the 2010 election the Tory position was for “English votes on English laws”, a misnomer because what they really meant was all MPs except those sitting for Scottish seats voting, the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies not have the same depth of devolved powers as the Scots’ “Wee pretendy parliament”, as Billy Connolly described the largely English-taxpayer funded edifice in Edinburgh. Since the formation of the Big LibCon coalition, Cameron has made no mention of this. It is a fair bet that the proposal is dead while the coalition exists. If the proposal to shift from first-past-the-post to the Alternative Vote system for general elections becomes law, then Britain will probably be cast into a situation of perpetual coalition, one at least of the partners in which would be the LibDems or Labour. Neither would countenance a move to any measure which would give the English any political voice. Hence, it is difficult to see how either English-votes-for-English-laws or any other move short of an English Parliament such as an English Grand Committee will be on the agenda for the foreseeable future.

The English-votes-for-English laws or anything else short of would have been of little use in immediately changing the disadvantage under which England constantly suffers, not least because the Welsh and Northern Irish MPs would be voting on much of the legislation because it would apply to them. However, it would be of great utility in forcing MPs to publicly address the imbalances produced by the present devolution settlement. That in turn could spill over into the question of our immersion in the EU which is the other end in the pincer movement between Westminister and Brussels to Balkanise the UK .

England: the most extraordinary of national histories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If England is to survive as more than a geographical entity, it is essential that the young be imprinted with a knowledge of the immense achievements of Britain in general and England in particular. This need not mean the creation of a vulgar, contrived chauvinism for there is so much of undeniable value in Britain’s past that a fictionalised and bombastic history is unnecessary. For example, why not base GCSE history teaching on a core of the development of the English language, the history of science and technology (with special emphasis on the industrial revolution), the development of the British constitution and the growth and administration of Empire? Multiculturalism should be abolished in the schools as a matter of policy.

No nation can maintain itself if it does not have a profound sense of its worth. In a healthy society this sense of worth simply exists and children imbibe it unconsciously. Our society has been so corrupted by the liberal’s hatred of his own culture that a conscious programme of cultural imprinting is necessary. If it is not done, how long will it be before English children express surprise when told they are speaking English and not American? The corrosion of English society can only be halted if pride of England and her achievements is instilled in the young.

The words of the younger Pitt in 1783 (following the disaster of the American War of Independence) seem peculiarly apt for our time:

We must recollect … what is we have at stake, what it is we have to contend for. It is for our property, it is for our liberty, it is for our independence, nay, for our existence as a nation; it is for our character, it is for our very name as

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

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

Of what has England to be ashamed?

Of what has England to be ashamed? There are wars of aggression such as the Hundred Years War, but these are the common currency of history. As with the history of all peoples there are massacres, such as that of approximately 150 Jews at York in 1190 or the several thousand deaths which followed the storming of Drogheda in Ireland in 1649 , but they are precious few in England or abroad. Moreover, in the case of Drogheda, the killing took place after the town had refused to surrender and the convention at the time was that the lives of those who had refused to surrender were forfeit if the victor choose to take them. There is nothing to compare with the mass killings of men such as Genghis Khan or the frightful slaughter of the Thirty Years’ War.

England’s immediate Celtic neighbours have had on the whole a good deal from their association with England. Those Celts who imagine that England has exploited their countries in a peculiarly gratuitous, vicious and avaricious fashion should look at the general historical (and, indeed, present) fate of small countries faced with powerful neighbours. That general fate includes occupation by force, the reduction of conquered populations to a servile state, wholesale depredations, chronic legal disadvantages, the refusal of free trade – even with the occupying power, the absolute exclusion from government and, at the worst, genocide.

Compare such behaviour with that of England’s towards Scotland, Ireland and Wales for the past century and a half (at least). During that time all Celts have shared absolute legal equality with Englishmen, have enjoyed the immense benefits of free trade with England, had an inside track to the first industrial revolution, have been able to export their surplus populations to England, have received greater parliamentary representation than the English, have been given the privilege of national parliaments, a privilege denied England as I write, have benefited – particularly since 1945 – from preferential government spending paid for by the English, and, most important for small peoples, have received the protection of the British state which would be nothing without England. As for the Irish Famine, that most prized price of victimhood for Irish nationalists, it was caused not by deliberate British policy but by the administrative inadequacy of the British state to deal with such a calamity.

In truth, it is a very long time since the English behaved with gratuitous harshness or deliberate unfairness to even Ireland, despite the fact that Fenians remain to this day a source of provocation which would bring condign punishment in most parts of the world as it is now and which would have guaranteed such punishment everywhere at any time in history prior to the nineteenth century. If Celts had an ounce of intellectual and emotional honesty they would stand amazed at England’s moderation not shout their unreasoning hatred or bleat imagined wrongs.

As for the British Empire, although it is an obnoxious thing to be a subject people, it is reasonable to consider the condition of those who became imperial subjects before they were part of the empire. Apart from those taken forcibly to the colonies as slaves, all the native populations who came within the Empire lived either in despotic states such as those in the Indian sub-continent or in tribal societies where they were subject to the commonly brutal conditions of such a life. It is also true that many lived under foreign rule before they became subjects of the British Crown, most notably those living with the Mughal Empire. The fact that Britain was able to establish the Raj in India points to the fact that the native populations were far from happy with their rulers before Britain took control. That control was only established, as happened with the Spaniards and Portuguese in America, because sufficient of the native population was willing to support the would-be colonial powers.

On the plus side, Britain brought much of value to the Empire. Playing the “What did the Romans ever do for us” game, Britain can point to the rule of law, parliamentary government, large scale administration, modern armed forces, access to European intellectual life, organised education and modern technology. Most importantly, being ruled by Britain meant having an inside track to modernity. It is also true that from the second half of the 19^th century official British imperial policy was predicated on the principle of putting the interests of the native population first.

To modern eyes the slave trade is the grossest blot on England’s name. I am repelled by both the idea of slavery and the particular cruelties of the Triangular Trade, but then I am a man living in an advanced industrial state with all the conditioning and prejudices that implies. Placed in the context of human history it looks rather different. Forms of legal and customary bondage from full blown chattel slavery where the slave is simply property to the indentured labourer who binds himself to an employer for a legally set period, have been the norm rather than the exception everywhere at every time. Where formal bondage did not exist, informal bondage through economic circumstances has been the fate of most men and women who have ever lived.

It should also be remembered that the trade could not have been carried on without the cooperation of native Africans. Until the 19th Century European involvement in Africa was very limited, being mainly restricted to coastal settlements, many of which were no more than forts. Had the African not been so eager to sell his fellows, the trade could not have existed. The balance of power was unarguably with the African slavers not the European buyers.

England also made amends. Not only did Britain abolish the slave trade much earlier than most, she maintained an antislavery patrol for more than sixty years in the Atlantic. In the 1830s, She also ended slavery in the Empire at the immense cost to the British taxpayer of £20 million in compensation payments to slave owners at a time when UK GDP was only £453 million (http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/).

Put in the context of contemporary behaviour, at any point in her history, England’s behaviour, both domestically and abroad, will, at worst, stand comparison with that of any other nation or state and, at best, be seen as morally superior at most times and places. A first rate example of this is the fact that England was the first state to provide general support for the poor by the Poor Law Acts of 1597 and 1601. The operation of the Poor Laws may have bad reputation today, but they did provide the means of subsistence at a time when the common European experience was to depend on private charity or starve.

Ultimately the USA is the child of England: no England, no United States

Ultimately the USA is the child of England: no England, no United States. The nonexistence of the United States would have made a colossal difference to the history of the past two centuries and to the present day, not least because it is and has been for a century or more responsible for a tremendous proportion of global scientific discovery and technological development.

At this point I can hear the cry of many: why the English not the British? Was not the United States formed as much by the Scots and Irish as by the English? There will even be those who will press the claims of the Germans. A little careful thought will show that no one but the English could have been responsible, although many peoples and cultures have subsequently added to the considerable variety of American life.

The English were the numerically dominant settlers from the Jamestown settlement in 1607 until the Revolution. Moreover, and this is the vital matter, they were overwhelmingly the dominant settlers for the first one hundred years. Even in 1776 English descended settlers formed, according to the historical section of the American Bureau of Census, nearly sixty percent of the population and the majority of the rest of the white population was from the non-English parts of Britain. This English predominance may not seem important at first glance because of the immense non-Anglo-Saxon immigration which occurred from the eighteenth century onwards. Would not, a reasonable man might ask, would not the later immigration swamp the earlier simply because of its greater scale? The answer is no – at least until the relaxation of immigration rules in the sixties – because the numbers of non-Anglo Saxons coming into America were always very small compared with the existing population of the USA.

When immigrants enter a country their descendants will generally adopt the social and cultural colouring of the native population. The only general exception to this well attested sociological fact is in a situation of conquest, although even there the invader if few in number will become integrated through intermarriage and the general pressure of the culture of the majority population working through the generations. Thus at any time in the development of the USA the bulk of the population were practisers of a general culture which strongly reflected that of the original colonisers, namely the English. Immigrants were therefore inclined to adopt the same culture.

America’s English origins spread throughout her culture. Her law is founded on English common law. The most famous of American law officers is the English office of sheriff. Congress imitates the eighteenth century British Constitution (President = King; Senate = Lords; House of Representatives = The House of Commons) with, of course, the difference of a codified constitution. (It would incidentally be truer to describe the British Constitution as uncodified rather than unwritten). It is an irony that their system of government has retained a large degree of the monarchical and aristocratic principles whilst that of Britain has removed power remorselessly from King and aristocracy and placed it resolutely in the hands of elected representatives who have no formal mandate beyond the representation of their constituents.

The Declaration of Independence is full of phrases and sentiments redolent of English liberty. The prime political texts of the American revolution were those of the Englishmen John Locke and Tom Paine. The American Constitution is designed to alleviate faults in the British Constitution not to abrogate it utterly. The first ten amendments which form the American Bill of Rights draw their inspiration from the English Bill of Rights granted by William of Orange. The American Revolution was conducted by men whose whole thought was in the English political tradition.

The English influence is written deeply into the American landscape. Take a map of the States and see how many of the place names are English, even outside the original thirteen colonies which formed the USA. Note that they are divided into parishes and counties.

Above all other cultural influences stands the English language. Bismarck thought that the fact that America spoke English was the most significant political fact of his time. I am inclined to agree with him. But at a more fundamental level, the simple fact that English is spoken by Americans as their first language means that their thought processes will be broadly similar to that of the English. Language is the ultimate colonisation of a people.

Moreover, the English spoken by the majority of Americans is still very much the English of their forebears. It is, for example, far less mutated than the English spoken in India. The English have little difficulty in understanding USA-born white Americans whatever their regional origin. Indeed, it may come as a surprise to many Americans that the average Englishman probably finds it easier to understand most American forms of often affect not to understand English accents, but it is amazing how well they understand them when they need something. Oscar Wilde’s aphorism that “America and England are two countries divided by a common language” was witty but, as with so much of what he said, utterly at variance with reality.

There is a special relationship between England and America but it is not the one beloved of politicians. The special relationship is one of history and culture. American culture is an evolved Englishness, much added to superficially but still remarkably and recognisably English.

When you go to the cinema think of how often English legends such as Robin Hood are used by Americans. Reflect on how, until recently at least, American universities would give as a matter of course considerable time to the study of writers such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen. These things happen naturally and without self-consciousness because English culture and history is part of American history.