FUTURE
OF THE NATION STATE CONFERENCE
Mr
Chairman thank you for inviting me to take part in this debate and to be at your
conference.
I
know you have recently had trouble with the supposedly Honorable Member for
North East Somerset who seemed to have made much play of being a traditional
Conservative. Do I dare mention his name
in this assembly? This is the man who
not only publicly bit your hand that fed him but has recently
said:-
“Education
and health policy in England will be made by people who cannot vote on those
self same subjects for their own districts.
This is absurd and very unfair on the English.”
“Those
of us who are English should feel that this is a price worth paying for the
United Kingdom”.
That
is not a sentiment that appeals to me, ladies and gentlemen. I think that English National interests should
be pursued by our own English National Government democratically elected by the
English people. Perhaps Rees-Mogg is a
new word for Quisling?
Ladies
and gentlemen the title of my speech today is :- The Future of the World’s Oldest Nation
State – England.
One
of the objectively obvious facts which it seems many either left wing and
internationalist, or globalist, or pro-EU-ish commentators overlook is that
nations and nationhood are not disappearing, but, on the contrary, they are
increasingly popular.
Just
consider for a moment that during the course of the 20th Century a
great many new Nation States emerged.
There are now 193 member nation states in the UN.
I
think that sometimes if you try to stand back from things and just look
objectively at an issue you can see something that others may have overlooked in
their haste. But the title of this
conference the Future of the Nation State makes me think of all the clamour
which seems to suggest that the future of the Nation State is a troubled
one!
However
one issue which we should try to avoid getting confused about is the fact that
there may often be a great difference between the fact of a State (albeit often
confusingly called a Nation State) and the idea of a Nation.
The
State is of course at root simply a state structure with a constitution and
systems of control and enforcement and, if it is an effective state, a monopoly
of the legitimate use of force.
Whereas
a Nation on the other hand is a community in one real sense and is based upon
national feeling. So we could say that a
Nation is a product of national identity, or as Left-wing academics would refer
to it, a Nation is an “Imagined Community”.
The
people of a Nation have a subjective sense of national identity as being a
member of their own wider national community.
They may have in their minds many objective criteria which they will
apply in deciding whether an individual is a member or not. This will depend on the peculiar ideas of
that particular Nation, e.g. the idea of
Americanism or self-identifying as being an American which has different
characteristics to Frenchism or self-identifying as being
French.
At
this point I would like to draw an explicit distinction between this sense of
National Identity and the bogus and false notions of, on the one hand, “white
race nationalism” and on the other, “international proletarianism”. In neither case do those ideologues who wish
to pigeonhole people into such groups care that real people don’t actually have
any such sense of self-identification.
On
the contrary they then arrogantly and undemocratically claim that it is everyone
else who is wrong and who have, they say, a “false state of consciousness”! I
reject such ideas and wish to assert my democratic right to determine my own
national identity as an Englishman and as a member of the English Nation.
It
is of course a fact that a State can be highly successful but yet not be a
Nation. Consider for example some
historical examples! Consider Prussia,
which was mainly the conglomeration of territories ruled by the regions
Hohenzollern Prince or consider the Hapsburg Austro-Hungary or indeed consider
the Soviet Union. Such States are in a
sense Empires rather than Nations and cannot survive defeat or collapse as they
have little hold on the hearts and affections of their subjects.
On
the other hand a Nation can have a strong hold on the hearts of its people but
not be a State, for example consider the Kurds or modern Hungarians and in the
late 18th and 19th Centuries the Polish, or, along the
troublesome frontier between the States of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the
Pathans.
Problems
often arise within States where there is no key coherent or integrated
foundation of national identity. For
example in most African countries today of the former British Empire, where
British imperial policies of what we would today call multi-culturalism where
instituted under the guise of “divide and rule”.
It
is instructive to make a contrast between Ghana and Malaysia, both countries
that became independent more or less at the same time, geographically both are
of a similar size, both had similar sized population and both are even similarly
near the Equator. However it is only
Malaysia, with its strong emphasis on Malay nationalism, that has managed to
make the leap into becoming a largely developed country. I hope you see my point that nationalism can
be a key determinate of the success or failure of a State?
How
does all this matter in modern Britain or for the future of
England?
Well
first let us get some terms clear and then things may come more into
focus:-
Britain
was originally the name of the Roman province which included Wales and mostly
went up only to Hadrian’s Wall and never included all of Scotland or any of
Ireland.
“England”
is arguably the oldest Nation State on earth.
The idea of the English Nation is first mentioned in literature by the
Venerable Bede in about 731 who may well have invented the concept to try and
bring together the disparate tribes of Jutes, Angles and Saxons which had
coalesced into the seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy in what is now England and
which would probably have never come together as a single State.
Ladies
and gentlemen it is often claimed that all nationalisms arise in response to a
threat. In the case of England and the
English Nation that threat was the Vikings and our great founder is Alfred the
Great, who after his memorable burning of cakes when he was a fugitive and the
last serving Anglo Saxon King, came back to win the decisive Battle of Edington
against the Viking host in 878.
Alfred
then launched his Wessex Kingdom on a mission to create a new Kingdom of the
Angelcynn with his burhs, or boroughs, and civic freedoms, reforms of the army,
putting village life on the war production footing of the early medieval open
field system (a system which continued right up until the Black Death); his
encouragement of reading and writing in English; his translation of the Bible
into English; his strongly Roman Catholic Christian mission. Alfred’s policies were crowned with ultimate
success by his grandson Athelstan on the 12th July 927 at the Council
of Eamont when the then new State, England, was unified into a single kingdom on
more or less its current borders.
Ladies
and gentlemen just compare that length of history with the creation of a united
Germany in 1871, or a united Italy in 1863, by contrast we English have a united
national history of 1086 years.
In
all those years since then England was never divided nor separated into warring
States and so therefore the English Nation has the deepest roots of all European
nations.
The
only Nation State in the world that has an equivalent claim is that of China,
but I would question whether China isn’t an Empire rather than a Nation, given
its over 200 spoken languages. Also it
has had several periods of division and warring states since it was united under
the first Emperor.
Another
term which we need to define is that of Great Britain. In 1603 there was the Union of the Crowns
with the accession of James I of England, who was also the VI James of Scotland,
but despite James’ best efforts there was no union of England and Scotland.
In
1707 the increasingly successful English State and Nation entered into a partial
union with the Kingdom of Scotland, which was then in deep financial trouble
after its unsuccessful colonial adventure in middle America. The Darian adventure was a sort of Scottish
South Sea Bubble where there was a speculative boom which bankrupted much of
Scotland’s elite and the Scottish state.
The Scots at the time had a different Act of Succession so it was feared
that on the death of Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch there would be an end
to the Union of the Crowns. The English
threatened to end Scottish trading access to English markets under the Aliens
Act and eventually a sordid deal was done, in what is now a public toilet in
Edinburgh, which meant that members of the Scottish elite would be bribed with
English taxpayers’ money and a partial union would be created by the union of
the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England into the newly coined “United
Kingdom of Great Britain”. That is the
origin of the term Great Britain.
The
purpose of this Union of Great Britain was nakedly about big power,
real-politique and imperialist aspirations, coupled with the struggle for
imperial dominance and world power against in particular the absolutist Catholic
monarchy of France there was also a strong element of Protestantism at its
foundation.
We
then move onto considering the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland which was created in the last great struggle with France, this time
in the Napoleonic wars, and led to another partial union with the Kingdom of
Ireland in 1801. In this case it didn’t
even create a customs union or economic free trade zone between Great Britain
and Ireland. When the Union with Ireland
largely collapsed in 1922, not only was the modern Conservative party formed and
its 1922 Committee, but also there was yet another permutation of the Union
state, with its new and current title, the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland.
The
next term we need to consider is Devolution. In 1998 New Labour enacted, following strong
success in their Scottish referendum and very marginal success in the Welsh
referendum, Devolution in Scotland and in Wales. These devolutions were different from each
other and both began a process whose destination it seems to me can only
naturally be the end of the UK.
In
Northern Ireland of course there is a special case arising from the peace
agreement.
For
me as an English Nationalist a key factor to take account of in considering
devolution is of course that there was to be no national devolution for
England. On the contrary the only
attempt to devolve in England was an attempt to break England up into EU
inspired Regions.
This
gives us another term – Regionalisation.
This was a policy first pursued by the John Major government following
Maastricht, but most enthusiastically pursued in office by new Labour. The attempt to break England up led to a
spectacular failure to get any democratic mandate for regionalisation in an area
which Labour had created by gerrymandering the so called “Region” of the “North
East”. Here devolution was defeated by a
full 79% of the electorate of the “North East” in 2004. There is no coincidence that the so called
“North East” is one the areas which has the strongest English National Identity
(80.5% in the 2011 Census).
Ladies
and gentlemen next year on the 19th September 2014 we have the
possibility of another great change to the Union, perhaps its very dissolution
if Scotland votes, and I think it may well, for Independence.
You
may ask how does this cause the dissolution of the UK? Well I have partly answered this question
already, but going back again to history to help to show how that applies to our
constitutional law, the Union of the Crowns of England and Ireland took place in
the Middle Ages but in 1536 the principality of Wales, which historically had
never coalesced into a long-lasting single sovereign state, was incorporated by
an Act of Union but this union was a full incorporation of the principality into
the Kingdom of England. This got MPs for
Welsh constituencies sitting in the English House of Commons. Wales was integrated into English law and
included in the English Judicial Assize Circuits and also had established the
Church of England in Wales.
In
1603 as I mentioned there was the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and
England.
In
1707 the Union of the Scottish and English parliaments let some Scottish Lords
sit in with the English Lords and some Scottish MPs sit in what had been the
English Commons but there was and never has been any union of the Scottish and
English churches or of the two legal systems.
In
1801 there was the Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain’s Parliament
with the Irish Parliament but no customs union, nor a union of legal systems but
the Church of Ireland was Anglican and Episcopalian. Bear in mind however that this further Act of Union in 1801
is grafted onto the foundation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain brought
about expressly in the 1707 Act of Union by the merger of the Kingdoms of
Scotland and England into that new United Kingdom of Great Britain.
Therefore
it follows logically and legally that if Scotland secedes then the United
Kingdom of Great Britain is ipso facto dissolved and so is the subsequent Irish
Union as that was with that United Kingdom of Great Britain. The Northern Irish
rump of the 1801 Union would then no longer have any constitutional entity to be
attached to.
So
in late 2014 the British Establishment politicians may have to scrabble about to
cobble together a new Union, but if Scotland goes then the Union of Great
Britain is dissolved from any sensible constitutional and legal
perspective.
Who
can say what the other constituent parts of the current Union will then want to
do and here I would just remind you what the current First Minister of Wales,
the Labour Party’s Mr Carwyn Jones has said at a meeting in the London School of
Economics earlier this month. Here is
what he said and I quote:-
“Imagine
a referendum of the European Union which resulted in a vote to leave, carried by
the weight of English votes against the preferences of other parts of the UK to
remain in membership. That would put us
under enormous strain and could only serve the interests of those who wanted the
United Kingdom to cease to exist.
It
is ironic that those who are pressing for an ‘In/Out’ referendum on the grounds
of their commitment to the United Kingdom may actually be imperilling the very
future of the UK as presently constituted.
And that would be a matter of grave concern to the majority of people in
Wales.
Wales
remaining part of the United Kingdom benefits our economy. The UK works for all of its constituent
nations, and all have contributed to its success. I want the Union to flourish, and Wales to
play a dynamic role in it. But for this
to happen, the structures of the UK must adapt to the changing identities and
aspirations of its citizens”.
Oh
the irony of Ed Miliband’s recent sloganising at the Labour Conference, about
Labour’s “One Nation” vision! Which
Nation is that Mr Miliband?
But
coming back that maelstrom of negotiations that will inevitably arise if
Scotland votes to go I would ask everyone here to search carefully for an answer
to this question. Who then will speak
for England?
One
contender might be Mr Cameron is the British Prime Minister. He is a man who is on record as having
promised to fight “little Englanders” wherever he finds them and he asserted to
the BBC’s Andrew Marr that he would keep the colossal over subsidy for Scotland
going, despite being the MP of an English constituency, because he said, and I
quote “I am a Cameron and there is quite a lot of Scottish blood following in
these veins”. Is that, ladies and gentlemen a race point or what? So will it be Dave Donald Cameron that speaks
for England?
Or
would it be the Dutch/Russian Nick Clegg, or the Ed Miliband whose Marxist
father fled here from the Nazis and who ungratefully seems to have wished us to
lose both the Second World War and later the Cold War?
No,
Ladies and gentlemen, none of them care a damn for England. Indeed all three have already been trying to
break up England with their parties’ respective Regionalisation policies.
Is
it a coincidence I wonder that this is the very England that Karl Marx mourned
was the “rock upon which all the revolutions of Europe” were “wrecked”
upon?
I
have mentioned the term “Regionalisation”.
The policy of Regionalisation is the British Establishment vision for
England’s future. It was introduced by
the Conservatives, to break us up into EU Regions. Regionalisation was enthusiastically pursued
by Labour, and whose purpose was said by Charles Kennedy when he was the Leader
of the Liberal Democrats saying that he enthusiastically supported
Regionalisation for England it because he said – and I quote - “it was calling
into question the very idea of England itself”.
It
is in this sense that the new post-colonial Britishness, having lost its Empire
and collapsed its power and nearly exhausted its credit over the last 100 years,
is now a threat to our English Nation – an English Nation which some
commentators have pointed out recently is now the last British colonial
possession - the last part of the world directly ruled as it is by the British
State. As Jeremy Paxman said England is
now something of a “Scottish Raj” – where is an English Mahatma Gandhi when you
want one?
Our
former Colonial Master or should I say “Dear Leader”, Gordon Brown, went so far
as to talk of the “Nations and Regions of Britain” with England called the
“Regions”. He restructured the English
national curriculum to ensure Britishness classes were given to English
children, whereas the devolved governments of Scotland and Wales of course teach
their own children the value of their own nations. This is all part of a wider effort to
propagandise English people into accepting the dissolution of the English Nation
and the use of our resources to unfairly subsidise Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland under what is known as the Barnett Formula.
In
early 2009 a cross party committee of the House of Lords reported that the
Barnett formula subsidy to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland was running to
the tune of £49bn a year. That is right
ladies and gentlemen, £49bn a year - almost half the entire UK budget
deficit!
The
good news though, ladies and gentlemen, if you are English, is that the English
are awakening. Consider the results of
the Labour supporting Think Tank,
JULY
2013 IPPR Report called
“ENGLAND
AND ITS TWO UNIONS”
The
IPPR is a Labour supporting “think tank” and was one of cheerleaders for the
Labour Government’s attempt to break England up into regions. They are still
trying and their latest scheme is for a Northern Parliament. So this is by no means a report from our friends
and the report’s authors include not one single English patriot. The
results are therefore all the more striking! Here are all the important
extracts:-
The
level of British identity recorded was the lowest in any survey reported here
(going back to 1996).
Only
10 per cent of respondents claim to be ‘more British than English’. In this
sense there was no
discernible post-Olympics ‘Britishness bounce’.
58
per cent agree that the English have ‘become more aware of English national
identity in recent years’.
There
is
one significant exception – in the strength of English national identification.
That exception was London. In the dual capital of England and the United
Kingdom, while English national identity remains the most popular choice,
Englishness was notably weaker than elsewhere and Britishness rather
stronger.
That
fully 40 per cent of people in England would, if given the opportunity, choose
an English passport is striking,
especially given the complete absence of any public debate around English
citizenship.
Across
all age-groups, social classes and both genders Englishness is stronger than
Britishness.
The one important exception concerns members of England’s ethnic
minorities.
ENGLISH
CONSTITUTIONAL CONCERNS
Scotland
was felt to receive more than its fair share of public spending (and England
less than its fair share).
The
English also overwhelmingly believe that public services delivered in Scotland
should be funded by taxes levied in Scotland, and that Scottish MPs should not
be allowed to vote on English laws.
ENGLISH
INTERESTS
Also
striking is the lack of trust in the UK government to act in England’s
interests. Around 60 per cent of
respondents did not think that the UK government could be relied upon to do
so.
Such
sentiments are widespread across England. Although Londoners appear a little
less dissatisfied than the English average, there is a striking regional
uniformity in views. The overall message is clear: English dissatisfaction with
the territorial status quo is both broad and deep.
SALIENCY
The
UK’s relationship with Europe was accorded highest priority. But, strikingly, the question of ‘how England
is governed now that Scotland has a parliament and Wales has an assembly’ was in
a clear second place, well ahead of
a range of other constitutional issues – including voting reform, reform of
local government and the House of Lords, and even the position of Scotland
within the UK – to which the political system itself has accorded much higher
priority in recent years.
INDEPENDENCE
Equally,
English Independence might be seen as a potential response to the electorate’s
call for action. We broached this possibility for the first time in our 2012
survey and garnered an intriguing response. Despite no significant political
party or actor advocating this option, those supporting the proposition
that ‘England should become an independent country’ (34 per cent) were only
narrowly outnumbered by those in opposition (38 per cent). And when asked how they would respond if
Scotland were to vote to become independent, a plurality (39 per cent, compared
with 33 per cent who disagreed) then said that England too should become
independent.
So
the responses confirm:
• low and decreasing support for the
status quo
• very low support for
English regionalism
• strong
support for a form of governance that treats England as a distinct political
unit
• continuing lack of consensus
about which English option is appropriate.
It
confirms low support for the territorial status quo, at 22 per
cent.
When
respondents were asked to choose directly between English votes on English laws
or an English parliament, they split their votes almost evenly – and both
options were more popular than the status quo
The
status quo is consistently less favoured than alternatives which would give some
form of institutional recognition to England as a whole.
Our data shows a strong, consistent and
unambiguous link between Euroscepticism and English, rather than British,
national identity.
For example, when asked whether or not UK membership of the EU is a good or bad
thing, negative views are much more prevalent towards the more English end of
the identity spectrum. Conversely – and again counter to received wisdom – attitudes to
European integration are notably more positive among those with a more British
identity. It is British
identifiers who are the Europhile group in England.
Those
who adopt the Eurosceptic position (regarding EU membership as a bad thing;
indicating they would vote for UK withdrawal from the EU; and regarding the EU
as having most influence over the way England is run) are also notably more
dissatisfied with the constitutional status quo in the UK.
Euroscepticism
and devo-anxiety are two sides of the same coin of English discontent.
Euroscepticism
is also clearly associated with a demand for greater recognition for England in
the UK’s own constitutional arrangements.
Also
and in many ways even more definitively the 2011 Census returns also show
Englishness rising:-
England
has over 32 million (32,007,983) people (or 60.4%) who have stated they have only English National
Identity. A further 4.8 million
(4,820,181) people (or 9.1%) stated that their National Identity is ‘English and
British.
In
sharp contrast with this nearly 70% being English there were only a mere 10
million (10,171,834) people or (19.2%) who claimed to be ‘British only’. A substantial proportion of these ‘British
Only’ appear, from cross referencing with the results of the Census ethnicity
question, to be of non-English ethnicity (ie Scottish, Welsh or
Irish).
On
the question of demand for English Independence there is also increasing rapidly
in England and although reactive to the movement for Scottish Independence it is
not dependent on it. The June 2011
ComRes survey done for the BBC showed that then there was 36% support for
England to be a fully independent Country irrespective of the result of the
Scottish Independence Referendum.
And
now
ladies and gentlemen there is also for the first time in all our long history a
fully-fledged albeit as yet small (with about 3,000 members) political party
calling for Independence for England.
That Party, ladies and gentlemen, is the English Democrats.
So
ladies and gentlemen to answer the proposition in the title to this speech, I
think that there are good grounds for some optimism as to England’s
future.
I
cannot finish without suggesting, ladies and gentlemen and Mr Chairman, to a
body with the name of Traditional Britain that some of the features of the
emergent English nationalism identified by the IPPR may appeal to your
members.
One
feature is that whole England political solutions to devolution are
overwhelmingly what English people want - and all such solutions are more
popular than the current constitutional status quo!
English
nationalism seeks no cross border subsidies and, in particular, Scotland to pay
its own way.
English
Nationalism seeks an end to mass immigration; it seeks a celebration of St
George’s Day and other English
festivals. It even seeks an English
passport! 40%!
However
I think that one of the key aspirations of English nationalism that will have
instant appeal here, it is the demand to get England out of the EU. This is an aspiration which seems to be
contrary to the majority feeling in Scotland and Wales.
One
of the interesting things is that the IPPR’s research shows that the National
Identity which is most Europhile is in fact people who identified themselves as
being British!
So
Mr Chairman to be cheeky I wonder whether these points appeal enough to you and
your members for you to consider becoming “Traditional
England”?
So,
ladies and gentlemen, finally I suggest we take the EU Justice Commissioner and
indeed Senor Barroso himself at their words. They have repeatedly said that if
Scotland leaves the UK that as a new State which not a signatory to the EU
accession treaties, Scotland would be automatically out of the EU. They went on to say that Scotland would then
have to re-apply to re-join!
Ladies
and gentlemen, that means that if England leaves the UK we would be
automatically out of the EU too! Is
there anyone here who is so Britishly Europhile that they would want to take Mr
Barroso’s advice and apply to re-join the EU?
Thank
you Mr Chairman and ladies and gentlemen for your
patience.
