Speech - April '09

We can get some impression of the character of people by looking at famous sayings

Gengis Khan
1163-1227

“The greatest happiness is to crush your enemy in battle, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who loved him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters”.

Gengis Khan



Old Chinese Proverb

The greatest happiness is to be fishing quietly on a river bank when the body of your worst enemy floats by.


Nelson famous signal “England expects that every man will do his duty”
or his dying words “I thank God for this opportunity of doing my duty”.



Cromwell after Dunbar “God made them as stubble to our swords”.

For the English there is a certain restraint even in the excess that is war. Can you imagine another people being so critical of their high command for bombing Dresden?

We are a people deep in whose culture it is to believe in fairness and justice. Listen to this verse from Rudyard Kipling’s “The Norman & The Saxon” The dying Norman lord is advising his son and heir how to treat Saxons.

“The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite. But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right. When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own,
and grumbles, ‘This isn’t fair dealing,’ my son, leave the Saxon alone.”


I had an email recently from a good friend that I had not heard from for some years who lives in Australia – he said he heard that I had gone completely mad and got involved in politics.

Sometimes it can feel a bit mad to be involved when so many people aren’t willing to get involved but if we care for our cause we have to stick to it until the job is done! Here is a good tale about the ‘Madness of Politicians’.

‘Did I tell you,’ Lloyd George once asked Frances Stevenson his long time private secretary and mistress as they walked together hand in hand along a deserted lane ‘about the last time I nearly got certified? I was driving home from the Guildhall – after a big function – me in the full Privy Councillor rig, the knee-breeches and the silver buckles, sword and cloak! Then the official limousine broke down. Mostyn, my driver, gets out and sticks his head under the bonnet, fiddling around there for about twenty minutes. And you must understand it had been a very long banquet, and the waiter had kept on refilling my glass, the (lemonade) flowing like water.

So I quickly slipped out of the back seat to go – you know – to relieve myself. But before I was halfway through I heard the car door slam – gospel truth – Pussy, my darling – vrmm, vrmm, the car goes off in to the night. “Hey! Come back! Come ba-ack!” Gone! So I hitch up the knee-breaches, straighten the scabbard and flourish the cloak, D’Artagnan was nowhere in it.

I tramped for miles and miles till I came to these great iron gates, extensive grounds inside. I didn’t know what it was.

Mud all over the silk stockings by this time, and a wind had sprung up. I rang the bell and announced: “I am the Chancellor of the Exchequer!” “Oh yes,” they say, very soothing like, “come on in, Chancellor, the rest of the Cabinet have been expecting you! And Napoleon Bonaparte too!”’.


When I first got involved in our cause I had exhausted all the lobbying I could think of doing and been finally told that the Establishment was not interested in England or Englishness so I had a decision to make. Did I shut up and just do what we English do so well grumbling – or did I get involved and try to do something about it? Well you know the answer!

But then I thought, about 8 years ago, that the chances of doing anything were very small but I thought that I could go to my grave knowing I had tried, but now with all of us in this Party together I think we can do it. My feeling is that it is still only a possibility, not yet a probability, but if we all work hard in the EU and County Council elections we may have built up enough momentum to break through in a year or two – perhaps even getting some MPs elected in the General election which is now likely to be in May 2010. So take heart as I do from all the progress we have made - even the stars are apparently with us now!

In 2009 Old Moore’s Almanac on page 6 there is this prediction for UK politics:-

“The United Kingdom”

“Harsh realities will be faced and new values will begin to emerge. We will find our way forward in 2009 with new sense of nationalism that England, in particular, has not experienced for a very long time. And a greater sense of community will begin to emerge, though we will need to manage this carefully.”





Gengis Khan
1163-1227

“The greatest happiness is to crush your enemy in battle, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who loved him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters”

Gengis Khan


Oliver Cromwell April 20th 1653 in dismissing the rump Parliament whose members had been busy feathering their nests at public expense.


“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

'Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

'Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves gone!

So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!”

It looks like some things never change!


I have here some extracts from an up to date Conservative County Council Elections Briefing Paper

“English Democrats should be regarded as a significant problem. They will not win but could draw off Conservative supporters sufficiently to cause problems, in the same way that UKIP has done in the past.”

“Unlike the BNP which draws 50% of its support from traditional non-voters and the remaining 50% equally from Conservative and Labour, all the polling evidence suggests that the English Democrats take 80% of their support from us.”

“The English Democrats will probably poll between 5 - 8% of the vote between them (fueled by anti-European sentiment which always runs high at European election time).”

“I think you now need to look to re doubling your efforts, if the English Democrats were to get just 100 or so votes in each seat, you could be in problem.”

Well there is plenty to disagree with for example where we have been making a serious effort in local elections we have been getting up to 35%, but the main point is that if this paper is right, even in its conservative way about our vote, then we probably will get some MEPs elected. If we do then we will have succeeded in establishing England’s First National Party – that will be an historic achievement.





OUR THREE
NATIONS

WALES : SCOTLAND : ENGLAND




PLAID CYMRU
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PARTY
COMMON WEALTH PARTY

1956




The National Parties of Scotland and Wales

In the meantime, the strongest and most self-conscious forces for decentralization in the United Kingdom today are the Scottish and Welsh National Parties.

These are the spearheads of their respective national campaigns for the establishment of National Parliaments and Home Rule, which have, in both countries, already revived a conscious and purposeful sense of national community.

England, whose national culture and existence has not been subjected to comparable threats, has little awareness of national community and is, we believe, the poorer for it.



But we are a nation. That is a historical fact and no laws passed by the Westminster Parliament, nor resputions passed at the annual Conferences of either the Conservative or Labour parties, can in any way alter it. Closing one’s eyes to historical facts is never good politics, even though it may often suit the interests of the party which holds the whiphand in Britain at any particular moment.



English people do not often have to ask themselves what they mean by nationality; but we, who have not the glitter of military parades or even a government to boost our national prestige, have been face to face with the question for a long time. A nation is not a group of people having one language, one government and the same coloured skins. Very few of the nations of the world will fit in with that description, if you look at them closely enough. It is a natural, historical community which binds its members together in a spirit of loyalty and co-operation and which, over centuries of triumph and suffering, has learnt some of the secrets of how to live together for the good of all. It is a community in which past, present and future are of equal importance.


We regard it as the only sure foundation on which we can build a road into the future. If we fail, our children unborn will be the sufferers; for the, twenty centuries of achievement will have crumbled into the dust. And you cannot compensate for that loss by giving the next generation television sets, football pools and hydrogen bombs.

The second fact upon which Welsh nationalism is based is that the freedom of the individual and the freedom of the nation go hand in hand. If a man’s nation is not free, he cannot be free himself.


In the modern world we must learn to live with our neighbours since we can no longer dominate them. This is not a recognition of defeat or failure but a demonstration of our ability to triumph over circumstances which would crush less resilient peoples. Our future is that of a free democracy among free democracies, not of a ruined imperialism seeking to maintain a façade of power in an alien world.