Below is an article that should be read by everyone concerned about politics and about the future of our country, and of the world, wriitten by the intrepid Douglas Murray.
Will politicians finally admit that the Paris attacks had something to do with Islam?
by Douglas Murray
Written after the Charlie Hebdo shooting in January and revised after the Paris attacks in November, Douglas Murray’s piece on politicians’ responses to Islamic terror attacks was The Spectator‘s third most read article of 2015:
The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each bloody Islamist assault.
In France, Britain, Germany, America and nearly every other country in the world it remains government policy to say that any and all attacks carried out in the name of Mohammed have ‘nothing to do with Islam’. It was said by George W. Bush after 9/11, Tony Blair after 7/7 and Tony Abbott after the Sydney attack last month. It is what David Cameron said after two British extremists cut off the head of Drummer Lee Rigby in London, when ‘Jihadi John’ cut off the head of aid worker Alan Henning in the ‘Islamic State’ and when Islamic extremists attacked a Kenyan mall, separated the Muslims from the Christians and shot the latter in the head. It was what President François Hollande said after the massacre of journalists and Jews in Paris in January. And it is all that most politicians will be able to come out with again after the latest atrocities in Paris.
All these leaders are wrong. In private, they and their senior advisers often concede that they are telling a lie. The most sympathetic explanation is that they are telling a ‘noble lie’, provoked by a fear that we — the general public — are a lynch mob in waiting. ‘Noble’ or not, this lie is a mistake. First, because the general public do not rely on politicians for their information and can perfectly well read articles and books about Islam for themselves. Secondly, because the lie helps no one understand the threat we face. Thirdly, because it takes any heat off Muslims to deal with the bad traditions in their own religion. And fourthly, because unless mainstream politicians address these matters then one day perhaps the public will overtake their politicians to a truly alarming extent.
If politicians are so worried about this secondary ‘backlash’ problem then they would do well to remind us not to blame the jihadists’ actions on our peaceful compatriots and then deal with the primary problem — radical Islam — in order that no secondary, reactionary problem will ever grow.
Yet today our political class fuels both cause and nascent effect. Because the truth is there for all to see. To claim that people who punish people by killing them for blaspheming Islam while shouting ‘Allah is greatest’ has ‘nothing to do with Islam’ is madness. Because the violence of the Islamists is, truthfully, only to do with Islam: the worst version of Islam, certainly, but Islam nonetheless.
In January a chink was broken in this wall of disinformation when Sajid Javid, the only Muslim-born member of the British cabinet, and one of its brightest hopes, dipped a toe into this water. After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, he told the BBC: ‘The lazy answer would be to say that this has got nothing whatsoever to do with Islam or Muslims and that should be the end of that. That would be lazy and wrong.’ Sadly, he proceeded to utter the second most lazy thing one can say: ‘These people are using Islam, taking a peaceful religion and using it as a tool to carry out their activities.’
Here we land at the centre of the problem — a centre we have spent the last decade and a half trying to avoid: Islam is not a peaceful religion. No religion is, but Islam is especially not. Nor is it, as some ill-informed people say, solely a religion of war. There are many peaceful verses in the Quran which — luckily for us — the majority of Muslims live by. But it is, by no means, only a religion of peace.
I say this not because I hate Islam, nor do I have any special animus against Muslims, but simply because this is the verifiable truth based on the texts. Until we accept that we will never defeat the violence, we risk encouraging whole populations to take against all of Islam and abandon all those Muslims who are trying desperately to modernise, reform and de-literalise their faith. And — most importantly — we will give up our own traditions of free speech and historical inquiry and allow one religion to have an unbelievable advantage in the free marketplace of ideas.
It is not surprising that politicians have tried to avoid this debate by spinning a lie. The world would be an infinitely safer place if the historical Mohammed had behaved more like Buddha or Jesus. But he did not and an increasing number of people — Muslim and non-Muslim — have been able to learn this for themselves in recent years. But the light of modern critical inquiry which has begun to fall on Islam is a process which is already proving incredibly painful.
The ‘cartoon wars’ — which began when the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten published a set of cartoons in 2005 — are part of that. But as Flemming Rose, the man who commissioned those cartoons, said when I sat down with him earlier this year, there remains a deep ignorance in the West about what people like the Charlie Hebdo murderers wish to achieve. And we keep ducking it. As Rose said, ‘I wish we had addressed all this nine years ago.’
Contra the political leaders, the Charlie Hebdo murderers and the latest Paris attackers were not lunatics without motive, but highly motivated extremists intent on enforcing their Islamic ideas on 21st-century Europe. If you do not know the ideology — perverted or plausible though it may be — you can neither understand nor prevent such attacks. Nor, without knowing some Islamic history, could you understand why — whether in Mumbai or Paris — the Islamists always target the Jews.
Of course, some people are willing to give up a few of our rights. There seems, as Rose says in his book on the Danish cartoons affair,The Tyranny of Silence, some presumption that a diverse society requires greater limitations on speech, whereas of course the more diverse the society, the more diverse you are going to have to see your speech be. It is not just cartoons, but a whole system of inquiry which is being shut down in the West by way of hard intimidation and soft claims of offence-taking. The result is that, in contemporary Europe, Islam receives not an undue amount of criticism but a free ride which is unfair to all other religions. The night after the Charlie Hebdo atrocities I was pre-recording a Radio 4 programme. My fellow discussant was a very nice Muslim man who works to ‘de-radicalise’ extremists. We agreed on nearly everything. But at some point he said that one reason Muslims shouldn’t react to such cartoons is that Mohammed never objected to critics.
There may be some positive things to be said about Mohammed, but I thought this was pushing things too far and mentioned just one occasion when Mohammed didn’t welcome a critic. Asma bint Marwan was a female poetess who mocked the ‘Prophet’ and who, as a result, Mohammed had killed. It is in the texts. It is not a problem for me. But I can understand why it is a problem for decent Muslims. The moment I said this, my Muslim colleague went berserk. How dare I say this? I replied that it was in the Hadith and had a respectable chain of transmission (an important debate). He said it was a fabrication which he would not allow to stand. The upshot was that he refused to continue unless all mention of this was wiped from the recording. The BBC team agreed and I was left trying to find another way to express the same point. The broadcast had this ‘offensive’ fact left out.
I cannot imagine another religious discussion where this would happen, but it is perfectly normal when discussing Islam. On that occasion I chose one case, but I could have chosen many others, such as the hundreds of Jews Mohammed beheaded with his own hand. Again, that’s in the mainstream Islamic sources. I haven’t made it up. It used to be a problem for Muslims to rationalise, but now there are people trying to imitate such behaviour in our societies it has become a problem for all of us, and I don’t see why people in the free world should have to lie about what we read in historical texts.
We may all share a wish that these traditions were not there but they are and they look set to have serious consequences for us all. We might all agree that the history of Christianity has hardly been un-bloody. But is it not worth asking whether the history of Christianity would have been more bloody or less bloody if, instead of telling his followers to ‘turn the other cheek’, Jesus had called (even once) for his disciples to ‘slay’ non–believers and chop off their heads?
This is a problem with Islam — one that Muslims are going to have to work through. They could do so by a process which forces them to take their foundational texts less literally, or by an intellectually acceptable process of cherry-picking verses. Or prominent clerics could unite to declare the extremists non-Muslim. But there isn’t much hope of this happening. Last month, al-Azhar University in Cairo declared that although Isis members are terrorists they cannot be described as heretics.
We have spent 15 years pretending things about Islam, a complex religion with competing interpretations. It is true that most Muslims live their lives peacefully. But a sizeable portion (around 15 per cent and more in most surveys) follow a far more radical version. The remainder are sitting on a religion which is, in many of its current forms, a deeply unstable component. That has always been a problem for reformist Muslims. But the results of ongoing mass immigration to the West at the same time as a worldwide return to Islamic literalism means that this is now a problem for all of us. To stand even a chance of dealing with it, we are going to have to wake up to it and acknowledge it for what it is.
Click here for the original >>> http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2015/12/will-politicians-finally-admit-that-the-paris-attacks-had-something-to-do-with-islam-2/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
The war against Isil is only the tip of a much bigger Middle East war unfolding before our eyes. It pits the Muslim world against itself – Sunni versus Shia; Saudi versus Iran
Here is an important and strategically sensible article that puts the Syrian Civil war in its proper context although I do think more could be made of the malign influence of the US, the Saudi and the Turkish governments' roles in creating the whole mess.
Britain must not get caught in Islam's clash of civilisations
A Saudi-led ground force to confront Isil is welcome news – but there are perils for the UK and the West
By Michael Clarke
Saudi Arabia’s announcement that it is forming a 34-nation military coalition to confront Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters on the ground is good news. It promises a much more credible military punch than the “70,000” local fighters David Cameron boasted of, who are engaged elsewhere in Syria and, in places, being attacked by Russian bombers.
Crucially, this latest initiative involves three of the four big local players – Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt – as well as some smaller local actors like the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. For once, regional states are taking a lead in trying to restore order in their own neighbourhood.
"The war against Isil is only the tip of a much bigger Middle East war unfolding before our eyes"
All this is tardy but nevertheless welcome, and it may yet rescue the Government’s open-ended air campaign against Isil from drifting into irrelevance. There is much that the US and the UK can add to the new coalition’s command-and-control centre to be established in Riyadh. A coordinated air/ground campaign is now a genuine prospect. Indeed, Isil fighters know that ground forces are coming for them in Mosul, Palmyra and Raqqa, because they are making elaborate preparations. When they do come, the resulting battles will be desperate and hard on public sensibilities.
This newfound military impetus should also add real urgency to the political processes in Vienna and New York – currently an exercise in diplomatic form over substance. The Western-orientated coalition now has a substantial bargaining chip to set against the forces of Assad, the Russians, and Iranian-led militias that have been in poll position since the summer.
But herein lies the problem. The war against Isil is only the tip of a much bigger Middle East war unfolding before our eyes. It pits the Muslim world against itself – Sunni versus Shia; Saudi versus Iran. And with the West supporting the Saudi-led Sunnis, and Russia the Iranian-led Shia, it threatens a dangerous renewal of Cold War-style conflict by proxy.
The signs of this are ominous. In theological terms, Saudi Wahhabism lies at the heart of the Sunni perversion of Islam that forms Isil. Yet the Saudis have long since lost control of the extremists. Indeed, Isil’s attraction for many ordinary Sunnis is popular frustration at how badly their autocratic and corrupt governments have let them down over the years, and how frightened they now are at a Shia resurgence across the Middle East that began with the Iranian revolution in 1979.
Britain has no direct interest in being part of a regional, sectarian war. The West simply wants to snuff out Isil, while adopting a strictly diplomatic approach to the broader regional problem. But sticking to our war against Isil without becoming part of the larger proxy war now taking shape will be a considerable achievement. What if the Saudi-led forces face defeat at the gates of Isil’s de facto capital in Raqqa? Would coalition air support alone save them? Or would some greater ground commitment become imperative?
For Western powers, the Saudi initiative promises to help achieve our main and only military objective – the defeat of Isil. But for the Saudis themselves, defeating Isil is only the first step in wresting back control over the Sunni communities of the Levant and Arabia. They could be at the beginning of a long war. How far will we go along with them?
There are disturbing historic echoes in the two great struggles between Sunni and Shia Muslims – in the Seventh and 16th centuries. In a region where grudges, animosities and spilt blood are particularly long-remembered, the repercussions are still felt today.
"The fact that Washington and London seem to know so little about this Saudi initiative is not a good sign"
Of course, the presence of the US, Russia, Britain, France and Germany in this regional equation might have a sobering effect on all participants and help keep the military objectives limited. But the fact that Washington and London seem to know so little about this Saudi initiative is not a good sign; they appear to be trailing in the wake of discreet Saudi diplomacy and are not yet in a position to react in more than general ways – let alone direct matters.
The Prime Minister has the right to feel that the announcement from Riyadh has justified his arguments for extending the UK’s air campaign to Syria. But he might also feel a tremor of dread. If this does prove to be another clash of Islam’s titanic forces, then Britain already has its fingers in the mangle.
Michael Clarke is the former Director of the Royal United Services Institute
Here is a link to the article >>> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/12056767/Britain-must-not-get-caught-in-Islams-clash-of-civilisations.html
This is our PRESS RELEASE: –
Winston McKenzie, the former UKIP candidate, who some say is the most influential Black English political figure today, has declared himself an English nationalist and joined the English Democrats, the only campaigning English nationalist party.
In our National Council meeting on Saturday, 12th December in Bradford, the English Democrats selected Winston McKenzie as our candidate for the London Mayoral election in May 2016.
It has been claimed for some time by Left-wing multiculturalists that Black people in England only identify with being British.
Winston McKenzie’s declaration of his English national identity is a big step away from the remnants of Britishness in England and towards almost everyone in England identifying themselves as being English rather than British, just as the equivalent already happens in Scotland and Wales.
Robin Tilbrook, the Chairman of the English Democrats welcoming Winston McKenzie to the English Democrats and as its Mayoral candidate in London said:-
“I am delighted to announce that we have selected Winston McKenzie to be our candidate for the London Mayoral election. Winston is a great character and one of the most high profile Black English political figures of our day."
"His journey from the old national identity of British to the re-emerging national identity of English is very welcome as it shows that English national identity is now catching up fast with Scottish and Welsh national identity."
"I think we will look back on this day as a milestone in the re-emergence of England - and of what the English Democrats campaign for - England resuming its place amongst the Nation states of the earth and to be able to become a modern, democratic, prosperous, independent European Nation State respecting the uniqueness of all nations and in friendship with our European neighbours in a Europe of Nations and of Freedom!”
“Now this important decision has been taken we are making a call for support so that Winston’s campaign can reach as many London voters as possible.”
Robin Tilbrook
Chairman,
The English Democrats
SPEECH TO ENF CONFERENCE, 4TH DECEMBER 2015
Ladies and Gentlemen when Charles de Gaulle gave his famous “NON!” reply to the British Government’s applications to join the European Common Market, as the European Union was then known, he said:-
“England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions”.
Most British commentators since then have either ignored that comment or laughed at it. I however, as an Englishman, think he was right. In doing so I fit in with opinion poll evidence which makes clear, that people who think of themselves as being “British” are very likely to be Europhiles, whereas people like me who strongly identify with being English, are very likely to be Eurosceptic.
Let me now explain why I think I am right in thinking that Charles de Gaulle was right.
To do so I first need to explain why England is so exceptional and the uniqueness of the English Nation.
Of course a collection of eminent patriotic nationalists, such as we have here in this conference from other European countries revel in the uniqueness of their own country and their own nation and rightly so! It is partly out of a sense of English understatement and restraint and politeness that English people don’t emphasise the uniqueness of England, hoping thereby not to give offence. However it is because our uniqueness is what makes us so uniquely unsuited to incorporation into the European Union Superstate project that I must run the risk of offending but I hope that you will understand and forgive me because it is to educate English people that I need to say this. It will probably seem odd to many of you that I have to explain what may seem obvious but the UK State and the British political and media establishment are hostile to Englishness and want to break up England.
Most non-English people, just like President De Gaulle, are well aware of England’s uniqueness but English exceptionalism does need to be explained to English people. This is partly because of English insularity. It remains a fact that many English people have never been outside of England and so know nothing else other than English ways. Such people are singularly ill-equipped to judge what is special about England. As one of our famous 19th Century poets, Rudyard Kipling, wrote:-
“What should they know of England who only England know”?
There is also the problem that even those English people who have travelled outside of England have usually not travelled outside of the Western developed world. All Western countries have adopted large parts of the English cultural, political, legal, industrial, etc., contribution to the world. So such limited English travellers are inclined to imagine, as they only anyway get a superficial view of other countries, that the glimpst similarities, which they have only seen at a quick glance, show that all other countries, and therefore all human beings, are basically English with a few quaint or interesting customs thrown in! They do not see the deep differences that make each nation unique. As we say:- “They cannot see the wood for the trees”! This is what in psychology is known as “projection”. Most English people “project” that everyone has the same moral code as them and so projection may also be part of the multi-culturalist delusion that mixing everyone up could ever lead to harmony!
There are therefore only a few English people who have seen the unique contrasts and so have the perspective to understand the reality that English ways and culture are unique.
This lack of understanding is a pity, not only because English people should feel some pride in the achievements of our Nation, but also because an understanding of English uniqueness would help English people appreciate that not only should our own uniqueness be treasured, but so also should the uniqueness of every other nation on earth. Such an understanding would be a transformative inspiration leading to a better appreciation of the role of nations and of the need for respect of other national identities.
People who understand that idea would support the emergence of a world order, where nations are encouraged to be self-governing. The fundamental principle is that nations should be self governed. The borders of states would be encouraged to be reordered, where practicable, to re-unite divided nations and to facilitate the correction of past errors, many of which were made by British imperialists.
For example, part of what we are seeing in the turmoil in the Middle East now is the inevitable instability created by States seeking to maintain themselves as entities against the wishes of their constituent fragmented nations often where the boundaries were drawn after the First World War, without any respect for the various nations or communities within the Middle East.
Returning to England, to point out why the English Nation is so unfitted to be in the EU I shall go through some of the reasons why we are unique. The first thing to note is how ancient England is.
English is ancient
After the collapse of the Roman Empire what is now England was settled by the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, whose political systems gradually coalesced into the Kingdoms of the Heptarchy but already by 731 AD the Venerable Bede was writing about England and the English Nation. England would never have come into unified existence except as a result of the Viking invasions.
Alfred the Great not only started the fight back but set up many of the social, political and cultural institutions that have come to define Englishness as the mission for his dynasty, the House of Wessex. So successful were they that under his Grandson, the great King Athelstan, England was united on more or less its current borders. Which it has retained more or less uninterruptedly ever since the 12th July in the year of our Lord 927!
Aristocracy
Another example of “English Exceptionalism” is that our aristocracy were never legally a separate Caste, unlike French aristocrats who before the French Revolution could not be required to pay tax but also not be either prosecuted or sued in a court of law. Our aristocracy has never been like that and indeed in 1760, at the very height of the Ancien Regime in France, Earl Ferrers was hanged at Tyburn having been convicted in an English court of law of murdering his steward.
Rule of Law
In 2015 there were some celebrations of another “English Exceptionalism” that of the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede where England became the first country ever to make its King subject to the Rule of Law.
Compare that with Roman law, as handed down to us through the Institutes of Justinian, which is by comparison the law of tyranny, specifically stating that the ‘Emperor’s Will is Law’. Since 1215, the English King’s Will has not been Law in England.
Representative Parliament and Democracy
Although universal adult suffrage is relatively new in England, with all adult women finally getting the vote in 1928, our representative parliamentary system is much older. In 2015 there was some limited official recognition given to January 20th being the 750th anniversary of the calling of the first English Parliament by Simon de Montfort. The meeting took place in the still existing Chapter House of Westminster Abbey.
Even that anniversary somewhat understates the antiquity of English representational participation as the Anglo Saxon Kings ruled through their Witan, with participation from a representational sample of the great men of England, in a manner totally dissimilar to autocratic Roman Emperors or any of the other tyrannical states all across the globe and throughout history.
The Anglo Saxon Kingdom also had a highly significant array of courts and of local representative decision-making bodies which as a result included in decision making and implementation quite a large proportion of the adult male population and most of the free population.
Together with the Rule of Law this led very early to Englishmen having a clear idea of their rights and of what the Monarchy was allowed to order and what tradition did not allow. It was against this strong idea that King John’s autocratic idea of Kingship was wrecked. As Kipling wrote of the Anglo Saxon mentality:-
“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!”
Religion
The Church of England is unique amongst the Nation States of the world. The Church of England is part of the constitutional structure of England with its Senior Bishops having automatic positions in Parliament and the Queen being the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
England alone has a Protestant church which regards itself as Catholic in the sense of being for all People of England. This combined with our history led to a unique attitude to religion and had a big impact on other aspects of our politics and our economic development.
Because until 1829 people who were not Church of England could not hold official positions, non-conformist Protestants tended to focus on business and are disproportionately represented amongst the great historical entrepreneurs e.g. Cadbury, Rowntree. As attendance in the Church of England has declined this has led to the English Nation being one of the most secularist societies on earth.
Political Sectarianism
English Politics were partly configured as a result of our history and our religion. With religious non-conformity being the root of our radical traditions and of the historical foundations of our political divide between historically conservative traditions and Labour non-conformist.
Also the fact that the English constitution has evolved over the last thousand years without being utterly overthrown by the devastation of invasion means that our political divide is unique in its ideological content.
So perversely for a nation which almost invented the ideology and practise of free trade capitalism, our Conservative Party fights to maintain the monolithic, statist, bureaucratic structure of one of the largest single employers in the world, the National Health Service (only just beaten in size by the Chinese Red Army!). Unsurprisingly no other country has thought to copy such an unmanageable behemoth.
Mercantile Revolution
England early had its mercantile revolution and English merchants were already trading around the world in the 16th Century.
Agricultural Revolution
England’s medieval open field assistance farming systems were early being transformed into commercially engaged enterprises, aiming to sell produce in markets from the middle of the 14th Century. It was this transformation that gives England its unique countryside, villages, farms and country houses.
By the beginning of the 18th Century there was virtually no subsistence farming left in England and almost all farming was commercialised and incorporated into national market commercial patterns. The hub of which early became the largest city in Europe, London, with its world trading connections and politically dominant role. By the Norman Conquest in 1066 London was already by far the largest city in England.
Industrial Revolution
England had the Rule of Law and a legally enforceable array of individual rights, and of property rights, whereby anyone could own, buy and sell property in most cases by the early 16th Century. In principle all property was legally transferrable and the last of the restrictive medieval ownership patterns were abolished in the 1650’s.
It is partly as a result of this exceptionally early ability to transfer property that the English were the first people in all human history to have an Industrial Revolution. In England’s case it was not a product of State intervention but as a result of free enterprise.
To give an anecdotal example of how unusual this is, I was having a conversation with a Austrian a couple of years ago and explained to him that the English railway network was built by entrepreneurs and not by the State. He was amazed to hear this as, of course, almost all the railway systems of continental Europe were built by the State, often mainly for military purposes rather than commercial purposes.
Sporting Revolution
England is the home and the source of most of the games which dominate in world sport today and the English wrote the original rules regulating them and first turned these games into mass spectator events.
Empire
The British Empire wasn’t a uniquely English phenomenon but the English had a big role in its creation and maintenance. Unusually for empires it had its roots in trade and commercial opportunism as Napoleon famously and rightly said “England is a country of shopkeepers (merchants)”. While the high watermark of empire was very short its impact includes English as the world language. English is now the largest language in all human history at over one million words.
Naval power
Unlike most European Powers which had large armies, English security and power rested on the English Navy from Queen Elizabeth’s defeat of the Spanish Armada (latterly the Royal Navy) until after the Second World War. Our armies were usually small and were also usually deeply unpopular in peacetime.
The Evolution of our Unions
The Kingdom of England is particularly ancient but the first national union that took place within the British Isles was the Union between England and the newly constituted principality of Wales in 1536. That was a full Union whereby Wales was fully incorporated into the political, legal and religious structures of England.
The next Union is 1707, which was the Union between the Kingdom of England (which as I say included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland. That Union was and is a partial union. The Scottish monarchy and the English monarchy, which were already the same person, changed its title, to the King or Queen of the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The Scottish and English legal systems and religious structures, the education establishments remained separate. In effect the main result of the Act of Union of 1707 was the merger of the parliaments of England and Scotland. This Union took place in response to war, with absolutist France under Louis XIV, and was not a popular measure in either Scotland or England but just part of the elite building up the constitutional infrastructure that enabled the creation of a world empire.
The next Union also took place against the backdrop of war and empire, this time against Napoleonic France in 1801 with the Union between Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland. This again was a partial Union and in the case of Ireland did not even allow Irish traders to have full access to English markets.
In 1922 a further change took place to the structure of the multi-national state known as the United Kingdom, when Southern Ireland succeeded in obtaining its independence, leading eventually to the current constitutional structure known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
I think this explanation is necessary to understand what exactly the United Kingdom is and therefore to be able to question whether it serves the best interests of the People of England and the English Nation.
Legacy of Imperialism
The Union of the United Kingdom was formed, as I have already said, in order to advance the Imperial project and as part of the struggle for Imperial dominance with France. Thankfully those days are over, but the legacy hangs on in Government. British Governments still wants to prance about on the world stage making out that we are an important power. That is the reason we got ourselves into the mess as of Iraq, Afghanistan and even more ludicrously and disastrously Libya. We are now faced with active involvement in the quagmire of Syrian Civil War. I would say let us revert to the traditional English virtue of minding our own business!
The existence of English National Identity
You may ask whether there is such a thing as the English Nation after 300 years? Well my answer to you would be to say yes of course there is and the simplest demonstration of that is the strong sense of national identity shown in the 2011 National Census Results organised by the Government’s Office of National Statistics. For the first time in it we in England were asked whether we felt that our national identity was English rather than just British or Irish or a foreign national identity.
The results horrified the British Political and media establishment because even including the very multi-racial London, over 60% (over 32 million people) of the population of England said that they were “English-only” and not “British”. A further just less than 10% said that they were “English and British”. That is 70% of the population of England including London saying that their national identity is English. Also there was less than 30% that said that they were in any sense “British”. The difference was made up of course by people who said they were of “Non-British” national identities.
Outside of London typically 70% of the population say that they are “English-only”. Adding those that say that they are “English and British” will usually take you up to somewhat over 80%.
So it is absolutely crystal clear that there remains a strong sense of national identity in England. Indeed, despite 50 years of increasing mass immigration it remains by far the dominant national identity in England.
However I mentioned the expression “English Exceptionalism”, of course, not only is England exceptional in its cohesion, Rule of Law, our representative parliament, our constitutional monarchy, our glorious history, the first agricultural revolution, the first industrial revolution and so many other achievements but now the English are also exceptional in having no English national parliament, no English national government and no English First Minister.
Conclusion
It is therefore not surprising that given England’s uniqueness and exceptionalism that it is uniquely difficult for us to accept the Statist, corporatist, bureaucratic structure of the EU that incorporates the 28 Nations forming the European Union (out of the 50 European Nations). Just as De Gaulle thought England is unique, quirky, often infuriating, but we English like it that way.
English nationalism is developing towards not only withdrawal from the EU but also from the other Union that we are involved with. That is towards ending the Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
There is an excellent Eurosceptic reason for supporting the call for English Independence. If England left the United Kingdom it would be dissolved. The United Kingdom is the constitutional entity which joined the European Union and it is a fundamental Rule of Law that if the entity which enters into an arrangement ceases to exist then that arrangement ceases to exist.
That is why in the run up to the Scottish referendum, Senor Barroso, the then President of the European Union Commission, came over here to say that if Scotland voted to go, Scotland would not be an accession State and would be automatically outside of the EU. The same logic applies to England. It is therefore a complete solution to not only the imbalance of the arrangements within the United Kingdom Union but also the £18bn a year which England gives to the EU which would also automatically cease.
This logic will apply to other EU member states/dissident nations like the Flemish nationalists in Belgium and the Catalonian nationalists in Spain.
So our English ambition should be to turn Karl Marx’s comment:-
“England: The rock upon which all the revolutions of Europe are wrecked”
into a prophesy and make England indeed the rock upon which the EU revolution is wrecked!
And so Ladies and Gentlemen what I would like to see, and what the English Democrats campaign for, is for England to resume its place amongst the Nation states of the earth and to be able to become a modern, democratic, prosperous, independent European Nation State respecting the uniqueness of all nations and in friendship with our European neighbours in a Europe of Nations and of Freedom!
Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen.
This is our press release today:-
PRESS RELEASE
Oldham shows UKIP have 'shot their bolt'!
Despite having a clear run left for them by the English Democrats, UKIP have failed (again) to beat Corbyn’s Labour in Oldham. UKIP have 'shot their bolt'!
The English Democrats left the field clear for UKIP insurgents to do as well as possible in Oldham. Despite Labour’s new Leader making it clear that he was very much of the unpatriotic Far Left, nevertheless UKIP was unable to make the breakthrough.
This was even with all UKIP's tremendous campaigning efforts and its £100,000 campaign spend. UKIP’s "Believe in Britain" and "British" Eurosceptic message failed to resonate sufficiently with Oldham's patriotic English voters. http://www.ippr.org/news-and-media/press-releases/euroscepticism-in-england-is-english-not-british
It is now increasingly clear that UKIP’s time has come and gone. UKIP’s shelf life is limited in any case to the end of 2017, by which time the EU Referendum would have been decided and UKIP’s sole purpose will have either been endorsed or rejected by the electorate of the United Kingdom.
Robin Tilbrook, Chairman of the English Democrats said:- “It was sadly all too predictable that UKIP’s insurgency in Oldham would fail, given UKIP’s failure to become an English nationalist party and its leadership’s obsession with increasingly old-fashioned and irrelevant Britishness."
Robin continued:- "UKIP’s shelf life is now approaching the end, as once the EU Referendum has come and gone, before the end of 2017, UKIP’s sole purpose will have ended. I am now looking forward to the day when the rising sense of English nationalism is politically and culturally centre stage - from 2018 onwards!”
