Robin Tilbrook

THE ENGLISH QUESTION – HOW IS ENGLAND RESPONDING TO DEVOLUTION?

2012-03-07T11:03:00.002Z

WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF RACHEL ORMSTON’S INTERVENTION IN THE DEVELOPING ENGLISH QUESTION DEBATE? A COMMENTARY ON THE ENGLISH QUESTION – HOW IS ENGLAND RESPONDING TO DEVOLUTION?

Rachel Ormston, as her biography shows, is the “Co-director of the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey”, she has “a particular interest in measuring and exploring attitudes across a wide range of areas, from discrimination and prejudice to constitutional change”. Ms Ormston “joined Scotsen in 2005 from TNS Social Research” and she has “a First Class Degree in Philosophy and a Master (with distinction) in Policy Studies from the University of Edinburgh.”

Here is a link to her report >>> http://www.natcen.ac.uk/media/816007/the-english-question-final.pdf

Looking at her report, on the positive side Ms Ormston’s study does at least refer to the question as the “English Question” rather than the usual British Unionist Establishments “West Lothian Question”, (no doubt in the hope that no ordinary English person will understand that they are talking about England’s Constitutional position!).

Ms Ormston does however nevertheless fall into the common error of Scottish commentators many of whom seem to suppose the only issue arises from Scotland. Thus Ms Ormston discusses the question of the rising support for independence in England by reference solely to the election of a majority Scottish National Party government in Holyrood and finds that support for independence in England has not risen dramatically between that election and the date her figures were collated (which seems to be quite a few months ago, in some cases more than a year).

I don’t find it at all surprising that there hadn’t been much of a rise, as up until that time Alex Salmond had not made much noise that was audible in England about his moves towards having a referendum on independence and much of the British national media had downplayed the idea that independence for Scotland was a meaningful option.

However the interesting thing is that, if the full range of her figures are looked at there has been a very significant rise in support for the independence option in England, rising now to 26% (from 14% in 1997)! When we talk about such percentages, even though independence is not yet a majority preference in England, nevertheless 26% is a significantly larger proportion of the population than gave Tony Blair his last landslide victory in the 2005 General Election (when he received the votes of 21.6%).

It is often instructive, when trying to consider the aim of a paper, to look carefully at its conclusion. Interestingly the conclusion of Miss Ormston’s paper appears to be focussed on attacking her commercial and academic rivals in the Institute of Policy Public Research (IPPR) which recently produced a report entitled ‘The dog that finally barked – England as an emerging political community’. That report showed that there was a striking emergence of English nationalist sentiment which was giving rise to an increasing demand for reform of the UK’s constitution to adequately reflect England’s interests.

Interestingly for a balanced consideration of Ms Ormston’s paper, it is her approach which seems to be out of kilter with the many opinion polls that have been done in the last four or more years which have consistently shown over 60% support for an “English Parliament” in some form or another.

NatCen Social Research claim on page 3 of their report that the difference between their findings and other recent surveys reflect a lack of consistency in the methodology and question wording used by all the other studies. On the contrary, the odd man out is the NatCen survey. What is more, the true state of English opinion is being made very clear in the research they have made but they are either blindly or deliberately misinterpreting the data.

The Report actually concerns English attitudes to Scotland, Wales and presumably Northern Ireland. However it chooses to concentrate on Scotland owing to there being more data specific to Scotland. Nonetheless it is probably fair to assume, (as they seem to), that attitudes towards Scotland also broadly represent those towards Wales and Northern Ireland as well.

The report says that there is "some evidence of an increasing 'backlash' in English public opinion" with regards to the excessive public spending in Scotland. Given that the numbers holding this view have more than doubled from 21% in 2000 to 44% in 2011 it brings into question the impartiality of the author’s of the report in being so keen to downplay what any neutral observer would describe as a significant and growing change in public opinion.

We also learn that by 2009, 82% of English residents thought that Scotland ought to raise its own budget. This is then dismissed on the grounds that the level of resentment does not appear to have grown further since 2007, even though their own figures actually show it to have risen by another 10% (from 75% to 82%). To achieve a further 10% growth when three-quarters already hold this opinion is actually quite remarkable. With 82% of English residents expressing their dissatisfaction one has to wonder exactly how high this figure is supposed to rise before they will finally take notice.

As for attitudes to the 'West Lothian' (actually English) Question, it appears from Table 13 on page 15 that 66% of English residents believe that only English MPs should make laws that affect only England, (Table 7). Moreover, the number who strongly agree with this principle has now risen to 31%, almost a third of the electorate. When asked of those who are specifically English, this figure rises as high as 77%, (Table 15). Despite this, the Report blithely concludes that "debates about devolution do not yet appear to have translated into ... majority demand for other changes to the way England is governed" (page 16). Given the figures quoted before are clearly well in excess of 50% it is hard to understand in what way they should not be accepted as "majority demand".

But the really egregious misrepresentation of the data can be seen with the (mis-)interpretation of the data concerning how England should be governed. We have already learnt that respondents believe that only English MPs should make English Laws. The Reports goes on to admit in the quote highlighted in the bottom of page 11: "Devolution does not appear to have weakened commitment in England to being governed from the House of Commons. However, people in England do want changes - most agree that Scottish MPs should not be able to vote on England only matters, and strength of feeling on this issue has increased."

So why were respondents not given the opportunity to express this preference?

The authors made much of the fact that "only" 25% of respondents chose the option "England as whole to have its own new Parliament with law-making powers" - despite the fact that the location and make-up of a new, separate and presumably additional English Parliament were not made clear, nor indeed what would happen to our existing Parliament in its traditional English home at Westminster in England's capital city. Despite the lack of clarity with regards to this option, and also that it is an option that has received no support from the three main parties nor the media as a whole, it was nevertheless chosen by fully 25% of respondents. Why is this not evidence of significant public feelings?

Ms Ormston talks about consistency in the polling approach, but of course what might have seemed a sensible and reasonable question years ago may no longer seem to be relevant. In addition we don’t know either the location or social profile of the people who have been polled in this case, so therefore such difference as she claims from the IPPR Report might not reflect any real difference in English opinion. Certainly to the extent that Ms Ormston does differ from the IPPR Report, I would say that that difference is strikingly contrary to my experience, and that many other English Democrats’; in talking to people on the doorstep. Indeed, it is not even necessary to knock on doors to realise there is a rise in English nationalist feeling, you merely have to look at the numbers of Crosses of St George flown from flagpoles across England and also the dramatically increasing support, largely despite official discouragement, of St George’s Day. The English Democrats have of course been at the spearhead of promoting such change. We are however part of this sea-change in English National identity rather than its authors.

In any event, one of the striking aspects of Ms Ormston's findings is that despite all her efforts she is still forced by the incontrovertible facts to concede that there is a significant rise in the demand for constitutional change to properly reflect the interests of the English Nation and it is to that extent that I welcome this report, imperfect and partial though it may be.

UKIP – just a Conservative Party splinter?

2012-03-05T18:10:00.003Z

Last weekend saw the UKIP Spring Conference in Skegness. There were two developments of interest to English Nationalists.

First UKIP’s much trumpeted English Parliament Policy ran into a storm of diehard Unionist opposition, even though Nigel Farage and Paul Nuttall had reduced the agenda item from a policy proposal to a “workshop” – so much for those UKIP attack dogs who assured anyone foolish enough to listen that UKIP was ready to be a home for English Nationalists!

Second UKIP had a great success in recruiting the high profile Conservative MEP, Roger Helmer to defect to them, this rights the balance after David Campbell-Bannerman’s deflection to the Tories last year.

Roger Helmer is an old Eurosceptic campaigner and his recruitment is a great coup for UKIP - in its role as a Tory splinter party, lobbying to get the Tories to become ‘True Blue’ Eurosceptic (instead of pinkish Europhile??).

Here is what the BBC had to say about Roger Helmer’s defection:-

“CONSERVATIVE MEP ROGER HELMER JOINS UKIP
MEP Roger Helmer has defected from the Conservative Party to the UK Independence Party (UKIP).
The East Midlands MEP ….. told BBC Radio 5live that his new party was more in tune with the concerns of Tory voters.
"UKIP better represents the views of Conservative voters than David Cameron's Conservative Party," he said; on a wide range of issues:
"Take Europe, take climate change and energy, take immigration.
"On all these issues, UKIP presents the sort of policies that Conservative voters believe in and David Cameron's Conservative party sadly does not."
"Conservative voters instinctively know what the right thing is but unfortunately the Conservative Party doesn't."”

Here is what Simon Richards from the ‘Freedom Association’ says about Roger Helmer’s defection:-

“The decision of Roger Helmer, the Conservative MEP for the East Midlands, to defect to UKIP, represents a massive boost for Nigel Farage's party. I've known Roger - and worked closely with him - for many years, so can vouch for the fact that he is a politician of conviction,ability and integrity….
If the Conservatives have any sense, they will treat Roger Helmer's defection as a wake up call which may help them stave off a surge in the UKIP vote that could cost them victory at the next General Election....
As well as being a boost to UKIP, the Conservative Party, too, will have reason to thank Roger Helmer, if it will only heed the warning he has given - namely that the patience of Eurosceptic Tories is not limitless. If it fails to listen, many other disillusioned Tories will follow in Roger's footsteps.”

It is often observed that Coalition Government leads to the boundaries between parties blurring and shifting – maybe this is what we are seeing here. If so we may have the development of two Tory parties. The Unionist Eurosceptics and the Liberal Europhiles.

This is what Left Central’s, Tom Bailey, had to say:-
"There has though been a different shift to the political right occurring: the transfer of support from the Conservatives to UKIP, a development that could be of vital importance come 2015. Labour can benefit from this fracture amongst England’s political right much in the same way that the SDP/Liberal/Labour divides in the 1980s aided three successive Thatcher governments. Defection of votes from the Tories to UKIP helped Labour squeeze past in marginal seats in 2010. This effect seems only likely to increase as right-wing dissatisfaction deepens with this government….
The problem for Cameron is that many right-wing voters and politicians see his coalition government as weak on issues of core importance….
Their aims are not being met, dissatisfaction is rumbling ever louder and UKIP’s policies are looking more attractive.
The anger is not about ephemeral issues but ones of vital importance. The anger has been evident amongst the rebellious 2010 intake of Tory backbenchers who, in the words of Conservative Home, are a political ‘generation that cut its political teeth under Margaret Thatcher’. The perceived policy failures are in areas which Thatcher herself prioritised. She called for reduced state spending, rallied against the EU and warned against the UK being ‘swamped’ by immigrants. To many Tory MPs and right-wing commentators, the government continues to spend too much despite the cuts. They believe that the UK remains strangled, both economically and politically, by the EU. Although Cameron’s veto last December had eurosceptics delighted with his leadership, this week’s developments have demonstrated that veto’s non-existence and highlighted the widening chasm between the Tory leadership and the eurosceptic political right. Tory MEP Danniel Hannan complained ‘so now we know: no repatriation, no renegotiation, business as usual. December’s ‘veto’ turns out to be nothing of the kind; at best, it is a partial opt-out.’ Even if the veto had been meaningful, Cameron believes Britain should remain in the EU and supports eurozone fiscal union. Further to the EU problems for Cameron, immigration hit a new peak last year despite a promised reduction to ‘tens of thousands’. EU immigration accounts for almost half of all coming to the UK. As we cannot restrict EU immigration as part of the EU, those opposed to immigration would surely prefer UKIP to the Tories. The coalition government Tory party is not matching the expectations of the eurosceptic, Thatcherite right on these central issues.
The consequence has been that UKIP’s electoral support has been growing considerably. One YouGov poll put their support at 7%, a number familiar to the Lib Dems. This could benefit Labour immensely. If this level of support for UKIP remains in 2015, it could divide the right wing vote in essential, marginal English constituencies. Indeed, Peter Oborne argued that ‘it goes without saying that a Tory leader can never win an election so long as the broader Conservative movement is so painfully split.’ In response to the UKIP challenge, Cameron could shift to the right. However, this seems unlikely. Cameron’s leadership was centred on ‘decontaminating’ the Tory brand. Lord Ashcroft’s research found that this process remains incomplete and was an electoral hindrance in 2010 against winning floating voters. Given the restrictions of a coalition government, it seems unlikely that Cameron could satisfy the discontented eurosceptics. Consequently, the Tories risk haemorrhaging support to UKIP. This development will certainly not win Labour the 2015 election, but it will give Miliband a boost. With eurosceptic papers raging that the present crisis of the euro represents a “’once-in-a-generation’ opportunity to claw back powers from Brussels”, the divides within the Conservative party over the EU in particular are being stretched to breaking point. If there were a major Tory loss of Eurosceptic support, the rise of UKIP could help Labour back into government in 2015."

Now throw into the mix what happens if Scotland then votes for Independence!

This is how the Guardian puts it:-
"But Ukip is aware of one looming irony. For a party with its raison d'etre it knows that Alex Salmond's campaign to break up the UK must be a growing priority. On the conference fringe in Skegness the most heated debate was between those who advocate an England-only parliament to match the devolved assemblies, end the English backlash and save the union – and those who argued fiercely that such a strategy will "do Barroso's job for him" by breaking up Britain."

English Parliament argued on Daily Politics - "Soapbox"

2012-03-03T22:33:00.006Z

Here is my little item about the need for an English Parliament, which was shown on Wednesday after PMQs, on BBC2's 'the Daily Politics' in their "Soapbox" slot.

What do you think?

Please have a look and pass it on to your friends and family!

BBC Daily Politics Soap Box Slot

2012-02-24T16:08:00.003Z

This Monday I did the filming for the BBC’s Daily Politics “Soap Box” slot which will be broadcast on the BBC2 “Daily Politics Show” on Wednesday, 29th February. The programme starts at 11.30 a.m.

The BBC filming team were very helpful, supportive and encouraging to me as a rookie broadcaster. Whilst I certainly don’t think that I have missed a role in life in which I could have made a great success at earning Jeremy Paxman type money, nevertheless I hope the film will come out well!

After the film has been shown during the programme I shall be appearing in the studio to debate the need for an English Parliament with a Government Minister and an Opposition Shadow Minister on what is after all the Daily Politics Shows most high profile programme in the week i.e. the one following on from Prime Minister’s Question Time.

Please do look out for the programme and tell all your friends and family to either watch it or play it on BBC IPlayer as this certainly will be one of the most high profile bits of media coverage that anyone from the English Nationalist cause has yet managed. Let’s work to ensure that by the next leap year we have really made a difference – for England’s sake!

After the broadcast I shall be interested to hear your comments as to how you think it went!

A great partnership for England too?

2012-02-22T21:20:00.008Z

Today we had a highly revealing and significant exchange in the House of Commons, during Prime Minister's Questions. Here is a transcript:-
12:21 22 February 2012
Frank Field MP:
“Given what the Prime Minister said last week in Scotland, will he devote as much time to facing up to the grievances that the English feel, from the current proposals of devolution, as he will be giving to considering new proposals of devolution for Scotland? Will he open a major debate here in the House, on the English Question? So that members from all parts of the House can advise him on what measures of devolution England needs, if we are to gain equity with other countries in the United Kingdom?”

12:24 22 February 2012
David Cameron PM:
“We have obviously set up the West Lothian Group to look at this Issue, and obviously we want to make sure that Devolution works for everyone in the United Kingdom, but I would part company slightly with the Right Honourable Gentleman, for this reason, that I believe the United Kingdom has been an incredibly successful partnership between all its members and I think that actually, far from wanting to appeal to English People that in any way to sort of nurture a grievance they may feel, I want to appeal to my fellow Englishmen to say, this has been a great partnership; a great partnership for Scotland; but a great partnership for England too; of course Scotland must makes its choice, but we hope that Scotland will choose to remain in this partnership, that has done so well for the past 300 years"

Here is the link, if you would like to see the PMQ question asked by Frank Field >>>
Click here

This reply from David Cameron is disingenuous as to the remit of his West Lothian Question Commission which has no power to consider the English Question generally. I did an article about this commission here.

How strange for Cameron to now try to call himself an "Englishman" when, despite being an MP for an English seat, he declared to the BBC's Andrew Marr, that he wasn't going to do anything about the unfair extra funding formula for Scotland because "I'm a Cameron" and "there is quite a lot of Scottish blood flowing through these veins." Could he now be trying to bamboozle us that he is one of us after all?

Also it should make it crystal clear to anyone with ears to hear that neither he nor the Tories will ever be interested in doing what is right and fair by the English nation. Also it shows that we need our own party to (politically) force the British Unionist Establishment to do right or to replace them!

Help us make it so!

Will the Welfare Reform Bill accelerate the break up of the UK?

2012-02-21T18:24:00.002Z

Over the last few weeks we have seen the first both significant and also effective Westminster focused opposition to the coalition’s plans to drastically cut benefits for the disabled. Not, as you might have expected, with assistance from the official “Opposition” but instead from Cross-Bencher Peers and Bishops in the House of Lords.

I have been sent a copy of an email sent to all Members of the House of Lords by the Black Triangle Group, a “Scottish based disabled advocacy and Campaign group”. The email is lobbying to try to ensure that Peers stand firm in their resistance.

I quote some extracts below which make interesting reading:-

"… We suggest that Britain today is both in a state of constitutional crisis and that there exists a democratic deficit that is the genesis of a crisis of democratic legitimacy.

When our present government came to power in May 2010, it did so on a mere 23% share of the popular vote.

A coalition government was formed on the basis of agreements made between the elites of both Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties without the democratic mandate of our people.

It is a Government that is now intent on forcing upon our population extreme right-wing policies, legislation and cuts to services in the fields of welfare, health and social care and justice.

They are policies and actions for which the electorate have not voted for and which did not appear in any party political manifesto. The Welfare Reform Bill did not form part of the Coalition Agreement and runs directly counter to the expressed wishes of rank and file Liberal Democrats members who voted to pass motions to ensure that many of the amendments for which you voted are Liberal Democrat party policy.

All those Liberal Democrats who have voted with the Government have done so in direct contravention of their own party’s policies, formulated, debated and passed at an autumn conference held under the slogan “In Government, on your side”! ...

...Furthermore, speaking here for the Black Triangle as a Scottish-based disabled advocacy and campaign group; we say that it would be salutary for everyone to sit up and take full note of the nearly unanimous and united opposition of the people of Scotland, from every sector and strata of our society up to and including our Scottish Government, to these despicable ‘reforms’ that the Westminster government is seeking to impose upon us.

These ‘reforms’ have zero mandate here in Scotland.

We are a nation which has returned just one Tory MP and where those who voted Liberal Democrat feel deeply betrayed by a party that is seen to have sold-out its founding principles for which they voted for a chance to be ‘in government’.

At the time of writing, the SNP Scottish Government is working with Scottish Labour are to do all they can to mitigate the evil impact of this bill on our sick and/or disabled people by urgently drafting our own legislation in all the areas the bill touches upon that are within our competence, under the existing devolved constitutional settlement.

The SNP and First Minister Alex Salmond have made public statements that welfare should be an area under home control and that were this the case there is absolutely no way that Scotland would ever countenance such draconian legislation which is anathema to Scottish values of social solidarity, social inclusion and equality which have been expressed as a very rich thread running through the course of our history and culture.

We warn that it would be very foolish to suggest that the passing of this bill in its current form, without your amendments, will (not) make a vote for Scotland’s full succession from the United Kingdom an even more likely prospect.

We must also point out that, under conditions in which Scotland regains her full autonomy and the democratic deficit north of the border is effectively cancelled out, the corresponding democratic deficit south of the border will continue to grow in like measure as the likelihood of a party offering a progressive alternative to the current regime at Westminster diminishes.

Without the Scottish contingent of Labour MP’s at Westminster, there is little chance of the Labour party ever forming a majority administration again. The entire future of progressive politics of any kind in England is therefore at stake.

Labour support in Scotland is haemorrhaging and now stands at its lowest point ever in our history.

The parliamentary party’s continuing failure to provide a genuine opposition or Left alternative to the dominant ConDem narrative and ideology of the cuts and austerity which is killing our country’s economy is the root cause of this.

Similarly, the Labour front bench’s failure to take a principled stand in opposing cuts to the welfare benefits of sick and/or disabled people sooner and their acquiescence (and outright collaboration) with the narrative and consensus of the right surrounding welfare reform, keeping “one eye on the focus groups and the other on the Daily Mail” has cost it dearly here.

Anti-English discrimination? – SUE!!!

2012-02-20T19:46:00.006Z

Any English person should take heart from a recent Judgment of Cambridge County Court, the key elements of which I set out below.

If you encounter anti-English discrimination, in any form – SUE, help the Cause and also make yourself some money!
_____________________________________________________

EXTRACTS FROM THE JUDGMENT
OF HIS HONOUR JUDGE PATRICK MALONEY QC
HANDED DOWN ON THE 2ND NOVEMBER 2010
IN A CASE AGAINST HSBC BANK

_____________________________________________________

1. “Racial grounds (includes) colour, race, nationality and ethnic or national origins. It is not necessary for the purposes of this case to decide into which of these categories the English may fall, because the Bank does not dispute that if it were to discriminate against or harass the Claimants on the ground that they were English, that would be a racial ground.”

2. “The Claimants’ primary case is that the relevant comparison here must be with a non-English nationalist politician, e.g. a Welsh or Scottish nationalist. If such a person had sought to open a party account, he would have been permitted to do so. The fact that they were not so permitted shows, they say, that it was the word “English” which was the determining factor. That word must have triggered a demeaning racial stereotype of a specifically English nationalist (perhaps a loutish racist skinhead) in the (Bank Manager’s) mind, and led him to conclude that association with such people would be harmful to the Bank’s reputation.”

3. “The Defendants’ response is that their decisions in question were based, not on any consideration of the Claimants’ English origins or allegiance, but on an assessment of their political views (as the Bank mistakenly understood them to be). The Defendants accepted … that the (English Democrats) Party is not a racist (or for that matter undemocratic...party.”

4. “As I have already hinted….above, (any attempt to argue a) sharp distinction between one’s race and one’s beliefs may be an over-simplification, at least in an unusual case like the present one. A discriminator may say “I am not employing him because I believe he is a racist”. Fair enough; but if on further inquiry he goes on to say “I believe he is a racist because he is a white man with an English accent and a St George’s flag on his car” then the question of racial grounds is reopened. Put another way, it is as possible to make racist assumptions about other people’s opinions as about, for example, their honesty or intelligence, and discrimination on such a basis would appear to be unlawful. Where the opinions in question are or include nationalist ones, that is ones closely linked to the person’s own perceived national origins or affiliations, the risk of overlap is particularly great.”

5. “The conduct element of (a), discrimination, is admitted, in that the Bank accepts that by refusing to allow the (Second Claimant) to open a bank account it treated him less favourably than others in respect of the provision of facilities or services to the public (RRA 1976, ss. 1 and 20).”

6. On the question of harassment
“As to the (Second Claimant)… He went into the Bank with £5 for what he expected would be a straightforward business transaction. Instead he found that, perfectly politely, he was questioned as to his deeply-held political beliefs, which in the context of a staunch nationalist relate particularly closely to his sense of personal identity and community; and then those beliefs (or rather, a hearsay version of them) were judged in his absence by a stranger, and he was found to be unworthy of the privilege of banking with HSBC. It is clear to me that this was unwanted conduct which had the effect of violating his personal dignity, and that it was reasonable for him to feel “angry, perplexed and demeaned” as he told us he did.”

7. “in the case of this or any specifically nationalist political party there is bound to be a close nexus between the members’ perceived sense of ethnic or national community and their political views...”

“(The First Claimant’s) version is that, when asked why he wouldn’t open an account for the Party, (the Bank Manager) replied in the following terms:
a. because you are an English political party;
b. any association between an English political party and HSBC would be detrimental to the Bank;
c. anything English is right wing;
d. anything English is racist;
e. and that, when told action would be taken under the Race Relations Act, he laughed.
(If (the Bank Manager) did indeed say those things, it would of course be very offensive to (the First Claimant) and very strong evidence that (the Bank Manager’s) decisions had been improperly influenced by some form of prejudice based on the Claimants’ English ethnic or national origins.)”

8. “In this case, however, I am satisfied that (the Bank Manager) did not take racial grounds into account, either directly or indirectly, in reaching his decision to refuse the application for an account.”

9. This is not to say that we regard the Bank Manager's conduct as beyond reproach. With hindsight it would have been better for him to make more careful inquiries before reaching his initial decision, rather than simply relying on (the Bank Clerk) Ms Patel’s short report; and we hope that a more experienced bank manager would have reconsidered the case, or at least made further inquiries, on being told that the Party was in fact an existing customer of the Bank. After all, there was no urgency to the matter at all. In short, we take the view that (the Second Claimant) was the victim of a degree of unfair discrimination and harassment at the Bank’s hands, but not on racial or other prohibited grounds.”

10. “It follows that for the reasons set out above the Claimants fail in respect of each of their claims. I am asked, however, to consider the issue of damages in the alternative, that is, on the hypothetical basis that each of the Claimants had succeeded in making out his pleaded case. The relevant head of damages in each case is injury to feelings. We were taken to the leading cases of Vento v. Chief Constable of West Yorkshire [2002] EWCA (Civ) 1871 and DaBell v. NSPCC [2010] IRLR 19. These establish three bands, which are, in decreasing order of gravity:

a. the most serious cases: £18,000 to £30,000;
b. serious cases falling below the highest band: £6,000 to £18,000:
c. less serious cases:£500 to £6,000.

Mr Tilbrook accepted that this was not a top-band case but sought to persuade us that it was in the middle band. I bear in mind that, if the Claimants had succeeded, we would be dealing with an unpleasant example of racial discrimination and harassment by a multi-national company of enormous size, and that (the First Claimant) would have been subjected to some extraordinary and offensive remarks. However, I also bear in mind that this was a single short-lived incident, and that (the First Claimant)( in particular is a resilient person who was quick to take advantage of the situation. Both Claimants undoubtedly suffered real anger, distress and humiliation from the incident, but quickly recovered without lasting ill effects. After consulting my experienced colleagues, I have concluded that an important consideration here would have been to award such a sum as clearly declared that they had been the victims of a serious incident, but did not unfairly overcompensate them, and I would (on this hypothesis) have awarded them a total of £1,000 each in respect of all their claims.”

If you think you may have experienced Anti-English discrimination, for advice contact either >>> http://www.englishlobby.net/ (if your case is general) Or >>> http://www.workersofengland.co.uk/ (if your case is an employee one)

Would you like to have an input into the next Scottish referendum?

2012-02-19T13:28:00.002Z

This is your chance to help us respond to the consultation.

The English Democrats will be making a formal response to the consultation paper below which has been issued by the UK Government recently.

If you have any comments that you think we should make in reply to this document, then please send those to Derek Hilling, our National Party Secretary (secretary@engdem.org) by 1st March 2012.

Derek will be compiling our response for submission to the British government prior to 9th March 2012.

Here is the link >>> http://www.scotlandoffice.gov.uk/scotlandoffice/files/17779-Cm-8203.pdf

Who is trying to achieve a positive result for the People of England - except the English Democrats?

2012-02-17T01:41:00.004Z

To make the point that we English urgently need someone to fight for England's interests - have a look at this edited statement:- "The Scottish Affairs Commons Select Committee is (looking at Scotland's Independence Referendum and is) calling on the Secretary of State for Scotland to .... achieve a positive result for the people of Scotland."

Nothing wrong in that you may say - except no-one in Parliament is doing the same for us and 'trying to achieve a positive result for the People of England!'
Help us do so!!

Here is the full article:-

In a report published today Wednesday 15 February 2012 the Scottish Affairs Committee sets out a range of important questions that must be answered before the people of Scotland can properly consider any proposed question of separation.

Comment from the Chair
Ian Davidson MP, Chair of the Committee, said:

"The big question about such an unknown quantity as separation is the terms of the "divorce settlement"; how resources, rights and responsibilities will be broken up.
The responses we've had clearly show that there is confusion and concern about this, but also that you only need to scratch the surface to reveal how many complex questions there are; across banking, pensions, currency, national defences - and many more personal things.

Questions that may seem trivial at first actually show just how this issue permeates through every aspect of life: from the television you watch to how you travel round the world.

The purpose of this inquiry is to set out from the start some of those questions and begin to explore their answers, with the aim of helping to make this process as clear and fair as possible.

You cannot ask a big question about separation – however you construct it – without first asking and answering all these questions about how it will affect every aspect of every life, in Scotland and the UK as a whole. There are also questions here for other select committees, and we are aware that some may conduct their own inquiries.

We will be holding a series of evidence sessions on the key themes raised in this report, and will be led by the evidence as new questions come up.

We are calling on the Secretary of State for Scotland to take responsibility for co-ordinating the responses across government, and to work closely with us to provide the factual, unbiased information that is required for this process to be fair and transparent and achieve a positive result for the people of Scotland.

In addition to this work we are doing, we also expect those who support the break-up of Britain to explain the consequences for the jobs and lives of ordinary Scots."

Main areas
The report states the six main areas where Secretary of State for Scotland Rt Hon Michael Moore has identified clarification is required:

Bank regulation
Pension payments
The national currency
Membership of international organisations
Scotland's defences
Costs of Separation
The Committee asked members of the public to submit their questions on what matters need to be clarified on these very broad themes, and what additional questions need to be resolved. In addition the Daily Record launched a campaign in support of the inquiry and its readers have also submitted a series of questions. All the questions received so far are published with this report, and will form the basis of the inquiry.

The Committee says that while the list of questions its sets out in the report is by no means exhaustive, it indicates the scale and complexity of the issues which need to be resolved.

Many relate to specific policy areas where the answers would most likely vary according to which political party or parties formed a Government in a separate Scotland. While it is fair to raise these questions - they will be crucial to voters in determining which party they might vote for in any Scottish General Election post-separation – the Committee says the main structural and institutional issues, which will form the constitutional architecture of a post-separation Scotland, are more pressing in terms of enabling the electorate to make a choice on how they would vote in a referendum on Separation. It is these questions that will be the focus for the Committee.

Recommendations
The Committee recommends that as a matter of urgency, the Secretary of State for Scotland:

takes responsibility for clarifying the UK Government's position on appropriate matters, by co-ordinating work across the Cabinet
undertakes to work with the Committee to provide a joint provision of factual and unbiased information to the people of Scotland.

Here is the link to the original article >>> http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/scottish-affairs-committee/news/separation-unanswered-questions-report/

[url= http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/scottish-affairs-committee/news/separation-unanswered-questions-report/ ] Scottish Affairs Committee: Separation, unanswered questions report [/url]

Court rules St George's Day isn't special, in ENGLAND!

2012-02-14T22:55:00.007Z

Some years ago Neil Addison, a barrister, and I conducted a case challenging, pro bono, the ruling of Norwich Magistrates that St George's day wasn't special in England.

It is a measure of how far we have moved in a few short years since 2005 that when we did this we and our cleint were made to feel daringly out of line but now it is that court decision which seems crazy - rather than the standard official view which is what it was then - then naturally the High Court in effect upheld the Magistrate's decision!

Here is the skeleton Arguement as presented by Neil in open court:-

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE C0/38172005
QUUENS BENCH DIVISION
(Administrative Court)

Re An Application for Judicial Review

TONY BENNETT v NORWICH MAGISTRATES COURT
(Licensing Justices)

================================================
SKELETON ARGUMENT – HEARING 28th NOVEMBER 2005
================================================

From

NEIL ADDISON
(barrister)

NEW BAILEY CHAMBERS
4th FLOOR
CORN EXCHANGE
FENWICK STREET
LIVERPOOL, L2 7QS

To

TILBROOKS
SOLICITORS

CLERK TO THE JUSTICES
NORWICH MAGISTRATES COURT

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE C0/38172005
QUEENS BENCH DIVISION (Administrative Court)

Re An Application for Judicial Review
TONY BENNETT v NORWICH MAGISTRATES COURT
(Licensing Justices)

==================================================
SKELETON ARGUMENT – HEARING 28th NOVEMBER 2005
==================================================

Relevance of new Licensing Legislation

1) In the reply from the defendants in this case and in the refusal of leave to apply for Judicial Review the point is made that licensing legislation is changing and the Licensing Act 1964 will no longer be in force in 2006. It is respectfully submitted that that argument is accepted by the court then the effect is that the Claimant is entirely without any form of legal remedy even though he claims to have been treated unlawfully. It is respectfully submitted that such a response should be rejected by the Court.

The defendant is not seeking damages but he is seeking a recognition of the fact that he has been treated unlawfully. Even though a judicial declaration cannot change the past the obtaining of a declaration is itself a remedy which he is entitled to have.
As was stated by Lord Denning LJ in Barnard v National Dock Labour Board 1953 1 AllER 1113, 1953 2QB 18 (last paragraph of his judgement)

“In the course of the argument counsel was compelled to admit that if the plaintiffs had no remedy by way of declaration they had no remedy at all. ……….if the plaintiffs cannot get redress here they cannot get it anywhere else. I think that they are entitled to redress “
That judgement by Lord Denning was supported by the Judgements of two other Judges of the Court of Appeal.
Similarly in the case of R v Secretary of State for Social Services ex parte Association of Metropolitan Authorities 1986 1AllER 164 Romer LJ granted a declaration that certain statutory regulations had been improperly made even though by the time of the hearing the regulations in question had been superseded by new and lawful regulations.

Correction to Response by Defendants

2) In page 2 of the response from the defendants (paragraphs not numbered) it is said of Claimants Exhibit TB/4 that “only pages 16 to 20 relate to functions organised in 2005.”. This is incorrect pages TB/4 1-12 also deal with events in 2005. The list in pages 16 to 20 are also described as “relatively short”. A breakdown of the events in 2005 is as follows

London 16 events
Hampshire 4 events Norfolk 4 events
Kent 4 events Warwickshire 4 events
Bedfordshire 3 events Surrey 3 events
Berkshire 3 events Yorkshire 3 events
Dorset 3 events Somerset 2 events
Derbyshire 2 events Hertfordshire 2 events
Gloucestershire 2 events Suffolk 2 events
Sussex 2 events Birmingham 2 events

Cumbria, Oxfordshire, Essex, Manchester, Cheshire, Devon, Herefordshire, Isle of Wight, Wiltshire, Cornwall, Worcestershire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Bristol.
1 event each

3) Furthermore the Claimant submits that any consideration of the legality and correctness of the defendants decision must be based not on their detailed response but on the Judgement that they gave at the time as set out in document TB/2 annexed to the Claimants witness statement. In that judgement they said that the events organised by the Claimant

“is not part of any national or local celebrations organised primarily by third parties instead it is organised by Mr Bennett and he would benefit financially from any extension. A licensee is not entitled to organise an event and call it a special occasion”

It is respectfully submitted that that paragraph in itself demonstrates that the decision by the Magistrates was perverse in that it ignored all the other events organised throughout England for St Georges Day. The claimant submits that any national celebration ultimately takes place within individual localities but celebrations organised throughout the country collectively constitute national celebrations albeit each celebration is local.

The Claimant therefore submits that the reasoning used by the Magistrates in reaching their decision was fundamentally flawed The Claimant did not invent St Georges Day, nor did he invent the fact that St George is the Patron Saint of England. The events he was organising were part of a large number of St Georges Day events being organised throughout England and should have been recognised as such by the Magistrates..

NEIL ADDISON (barrister)
NEW BAILEY CHAMBERS
CORN EXCHANGE
FENWICK STREET
LIVERPOOL, L2 7QS

If UKIP adopt a proper English Parliament Policy that will be welcome.

2012-02-12T19:36:00.007Z

Tonight Paul Nuttall, UKIP's chairman, presented the Politics Slot on Channel 4. I was delighted to see that my meetings with him and Nigel Farage have thus far borne fruit. In the King James version of the Gospel of St Luke, Chapter 15, we find the 'Parable of the Lost Sheep':-

Jesus "spake this parable unto them, saying:
4 What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he finds it?

5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.

6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost?

7 I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, who need no repentance."

However, in UKIP's case, it does pay to be cautious before rejoicing. Paul's proposal is just that - a proposed policy. It will not become UKIP's actual policy unless their membership approve it - which presumably they will have the chance to do at their next party conference in March. It is by no means certain that they will do so however as can be seen by this item >>> http://juniusonukip.blogspot.com/2011/12/farage-and-nuttall-v-ukip-wales-party.html

I have also been here before. I helped formulate their previous devolution policy, when it was being written by their then Chairman, now Tory defector, David Campbell Bannerman. After David had retricted the policy to a version of English Votes for English Laws, I was surprised to see him claim on TV that 'UKIP were now the only party campaigning for an English Parliament'!

Nevertheless I think we may be cautiously optimistic that the English Democrats' campaign for 'an English Parliament, First Minister and Government with at least the same powers as the Scottish ones' may be shortly joined by UKIP.

If that happens we English Nationalists will be a significant step closer to the day when we have our own English version of Alex Salmond as our First Minister standing up for English Interests!

My speech at the University of Nottingham

2012-02-09T23:08:00.004Z

I was invited to give a speech to Students at the University of Nottingham, faculty of Law and Social Sciences today. Here is the text:-

Ladies and Gentlemen

Thank you for your kind welcome to Nottingham University. Thank you also to Dr Goodwin for inviting me. I would like to say first that I think that you are lucky to have Dr Goodwin as a teacher who is such a very well respected and clear eyed analyst of contemporary politics.

I thought that I would start by saying a few things about myself. I am a Solicitor; and I must also confess to a dirty secret – mine is that I am a “recovering” Tory! You know like a “recovering” alcoholic!

I am one of the founder members of the English Democrats and have been Chairman since we launched in August 2002. We are a Party which has grown organically from nothing to nearly 3,000 members. We have members who have previously been from all sorts of parties. We have at least one who is an ex SWP, ex Tories, ex UKIPers, ex BNP, ex Labour and ex Lib Dems and also quite a few who have never been members of any other political party.

We are all unpaid volunteers and all the money which we have raised has been spent on improving our Party and on campaigning and indeed many of us have put in significant sums of money into our campaign.

Why have we done this? The answer, Ladies and Gentlemen, is that we have done it because we are patriotic and we love England and I for one am not willing to go to my grave without having done all in my power to preserve England and to do all that I can for the future of our country.

I mentioned that I am a Solicitor but there are different schools for lawyers and unfortunately, for my family, I didn’t get trained in the way that I read about recently of a lawyer in the USA.

This is called “The Great Lawyer Story!”

Apparently, Ladies and Gentlemen, a US based charity called the United Way realised that it had never received a donation from the city’s most successful lawyer. So a United Way volunteer paid the lawyer a visit in his lavish office.

The volunteer opened the meeting by saying, “Our research shows that even though your annual income is over two million dollars, you don’t give a penny to charity. Wouldn’t you like to give something back to your community through the United Way?”

The lawyer thought for a minute and said, “First, did your research also show you that my mother is dying after a long painful illness and she has huge medical bills that are far beyond her ability to pay?”

Embarrassed the United Way rep mumbles, “Uh … no, I didn’t know that”.

“Second” said the lawyer, “did it show that my brother, a disabled veteran, is blind and confined to a wheelchair and is unable to support his wife and children?”

The stricken United Way rep begins to stammer an apology but is cut off again.

“Third, did your research also show you that my sister’s husband died in a dreadful car accident, leaving her penniless with a mortgage and three children, one of whom is disabled and another who has learning difficulties requiring an array of private tutors?”

The humiliated United Way rep, completely beaten, says, “I’m so sorry, I had no idea”.

And the lawyer then said,, “So… if I didn’t give any money to them, what the hell makes you think I’d give any to you?”

When the English Democrats were launched in 2002 England faced being broken up into “Regions”. The Regionalisation Scheme was started by John Major’s Government, after the Maastricht Treaty, but in 2002 it was then pursued enthusiastically by Labour, with John Prescott, the then Deputy Prime Minister, officially claiming that “There is no such nationality as English”. This kind of remark was backed by William Hague who said, during a BBC interview, that “English Nationalism is the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism”. The aim of Regionalisation, as clearly stated, by the then Liberal Democrat’s Leader, to a meeting of Dunfermline’s Liberal Democrats. Charlie Kennedy said, and I quote, that he, Charles Kennedy, supported “Breaking England up into EU Regions because “it is calling into question the idea of England itself”. Imagine the furore if that remark had been made by an Englishman about Scotland!

The English Democrats campaigned in the North East Regional Assembly Referendum for a No Vote and we have now seen off any chance of Regionalisation gaining any popular mandate, if the Labour supporting Think Tank the IPPR can be believed – and I think they can as the result is against what they previously supported – they have found that there now is a mere 9% support for “Each Region of England to have its own Assembly”.

The English Democrats have also been, from the start, in the forefront of bringing the Barnett Formula, the unfair extra spending in Scotland and Wales, to the attention of the English.

When I first started campaigning I actually had people accuse me of lying because they had never heard of the Barnett Formula from the British media. Again the IPPR report shows awareness of this beginning to rise in early 2003 just as we began actually campaigning.

Now the English overwhelmingly want to see action to address this. The IPPR report says that there is:-

“A growing perception within England that the English get a raw deal from the devolution settlement. (It is) clear that there is an increasingly strong tendency in England to believe that Scotland gets more than its ‘fair share’ of public spending. Indeed the number of people who believe this has more than doubled in the last decade.”

Ladies and Gentlemen the kind of issues that we are talking about here may well affect you personally. Take for example the question of student tuition fees. The history of this issue is very instructive of how politics in the UK works.

When I and all those who made their decisions about tuition fees went to university not only didn’t we have to pay fees but also even if like, Blair, Cameron and Clegg, they came from well off families, we got grants for living expenses.

All three British Establishment parties have at various times promised not to introduce them and have behaved thoroughly dishonestly and dishonourably. Tony Blair in his book airily branches off by saying that it shows how unwise it is for a politician to promise anything specific in a manifesto.

When on 27th January 2004 tuition fees were raised to £3,000 Labour only got it voted through using their Scottish and Welsh MPs, when their Nations Governments had already promised not to increase fees at the time of course the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were against Top Up Fees as they were then called. Since then Labour went into the last General Election having set up a review under Lord Browne promising to implement his recommendations but tried to report after the General Election. The Lib Dems went farthest promising to vote against Top Up Fees but reneged on that promise.

For me however the main issue is that it is grossly unfair that the next academic years English students will be made to pay £9,000 per year when Scotland’s students pay nothing and indeed when EU students studying in Scotland also pay nothing.

That however is the price of there being no political voice in Westminster campaigning for England’s interests!

Here is a video clip that we did a couple of years ago which helps explain the issue (Link here >>> Students http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCnFhToPsKA&feature=related

The English Democrats have been campaigning on English National Identity and St George’s Day. National Identity is our sense of National Community. It is the glue that holds societies together. It is the sense of “home is where the heart is”.

The IPPR report says:- On National Identity

“The most significant and revealing analysis stems from contrasting the groups that say they are either exclusively English, or more English than British, with those that say they are exclusively British, or more British than English. …The results are striking. Those that prioritise their English over their British identity (40 per cent), outnumber those that prioritise their British over their English identity (16 per cent) by more than two-to-one.

English not British 17 13 17 17
More English than British 23 19 24 20
Equally English and British 34 25 36 39
More British than English 9 12 9 8
British not English 7 14 6 6
Other 6 10 4 5
Don’t know 3 7 3 4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1,507 750 756 750”

And on St George’s Day the report says:

“One indication of the pride in and attachment to England across the English electorate is the very strong support shown in the .... survey to the suggestion that St George’s Day should be celebrated as a bank holiday. … fully 74 per cent of our respondents agreed with this proposition, with 47 per cent ‘agreeing strongly’. … We should not be surprised … that an increased awareness of and pride in Englishness is being accompanied by such overwhelming levels of support to the public celebration of English national identity.”

Agree strongly 47
Tend to agree 27
Tend to disagree 8
Disagree strongly 4
Don’t know 13
________________________
N 1,507

The Constitutional issue of what should happen about England is often called the West Lothian Question. The WLQ is the name given to the English Question by those who don’t want the issue to be understood as such by the general public. The Government has just announced the membership of its Commission. It is clear that this Commission, chaired by Sir William Makay has been set up to propose EVEL and its membership picked to achieve this.

For those of us who are campaigning for an English Parliament there remains a battle to be fought against the advocates of English Votes for English Laws (aka “EVEL”), but EVEL, even if it could be made to work, which is a big if, is a red hearing because the key issue is the Government of England, not merely its representation in a parliament, but even with the volunteers of the English Democrats’ very limited resources support for an English Parliament is now standing at 36% and is the single most popular option.

Here is a clip which shows one of our supporters, Garry Bushell, making the case for an English Parliament.
(Click here >>> "Why an English Parliament?" http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=M8g-HoqJwM0&NR=1

So all in all we are making great progress, even if you focus on the narrow perspective of our core campaigning issues.

But looking more widely for example on our policy of withdrawing from the EU. Ladies and Gentlemen, unlike UKIP we, English Democrats, started unprejudiced and with the blank sheet of aiming to do whatever was best for England but we could see that there is no way that an English Nationalist can make a case for supporting the EU.

Now our scepticism has been proved by the failures of the EU itself. The EU is hostile to Englishness and wants to supplement all of Europe’s National Identities with a new EUish one, or in the words of several Lib Dems to me “to dissolve all our petty nationalisms in the greater European whole!” or is that hole? The EU costs English Taxpayers at present over £16 billion a year just for the annual subscription and that is even when David Cameron isn’t handing out large wedges of our cash for Euro bail outs and thus squandering all of our future life prospects.

Also consider, unchecked mass immigration which can now be undeniably seen as undermining the living standards of ordinary people in England and the job prospects of our youth (your job prospects!) and also a threat to our own culture. From our launch we have said that our immigration system should be like Australia or Canada, fair, vigorously enforced and aiming to look after the interests of our country and our citizens.

Also I cannot miss out the potential for gains to the English Democrats in the coming 1,000 days before Alex Salmond’s Scottish Independence Referendum. Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my prediction that he will win this referendum and succeed in ending the UK. The British Unionist Establishment is all over the place on Scottish independence, seeing it just as a Scottish issue but again the IPPR report shows that English people are increasingly assertive that we to have a right to be consulted on what should happen for England. The English Democrats are the only voice for England in this debate and are increasingly being recognised as such by the media.

Ladies and Gentlemen I think that both for English Nationalism and also for the English Democrats, to use New Lolours’ phrase “the only way is up!”

Just before I finish let me say a few words about our campaign for Elected Council Leaders (aka “Mayors”).

As you may be aware a couple of years ago we won the elected Mayoralty of Doncaster and in September 2010 I launched our nationwide campaign for Elected Mayors for every local authority in England.

The Elected Executive Mayoral system is a better and more democratic one than the only legally permitted alternative of a councillor who is selected by other councillors, no doubt on the well worn principles of “Buggins’ turn” and “back-scratching” to be the Leader with a cabinet.

Both roles have exactly the same powers and exactly the same pay and the same four year period of office. The sole legal difference is that the Elected Mayor is chosen by the voters of their local authority.

So for a democrat – and we English Democrats chose our name carefully, because we are about both England and also about Democracy – for a Democrat - the option of having an Elected Mayor is clearly the only proper one.

The political opportunity for the English Democrats as a Party is that we can trigger a legally binding referendum by getting the signatures of 5% of the local electorate on a petition.

Well Ladies and Gentlemen let me tell you that we have registered such petitions with each and every relevant local authority throughout England.

Two weeks ago we had the first fruits of this campaign, when we won the first referendum which we have triggered, in Salford and now Salford Council will be having a Mayoral election on 3rd May with our candidate having a fighting chance of taking Salford out of Labour control for the first time since the current local authority was created in the mid 70’s.

That referendum Ladies and Gentlemen is the first of many that we will trigger.

For example, I have hopes of causing an upset in my home area of Brentwood, which is Eric Pickles’ seat, the Secretary of State for Local Government, who is spearheading the partisan efforts of this Government which as you may know was to cause referenda in the 12 largest cities of England, 11 of which are Labour controlled. In Brentwood, Ladies and Gentlemen, rather like the self interested Salford Labour Party, he is nevertheless opposed to an elected Mayor because, of course, that would threaten Conservative control of Brentwood.

In Nottingham there is of course a particular point in mentioning all this because you have a Mayoral Referendum in May. I would urge you to campaign for an Elected Mayor for Nottingham and so help give the people of Nottingham a more open and democratic local political leadership.

Before finishing I have to mention the Elected Law and Order Commissioners – in November this I think will be a great opportunity for the English Democrats, because I don’t think anyone has a manifesto more in tune with public opinion on law and order.

Ladies and Gentlemen thank you for your patience in listening to me and thank you Dr Goodwin for inviting me to come here today.

Sign my e-petition!

2012-02-03T17:41:00.004Z

Sign my e-petition! Let's see if we can get 100,000 signatures and get MPs forced to discuss this.

Create an English First Minister, Government and Parliament.

Responsible department: Cabinet Office

"We, the undersigned, demand immediate legislation to call a referendum of the Sovereign People of England, to take place on or before the date of the Independence Referendum in Scotland. This Referendum must seek the Mandate of the English Nation to create an English Parliament, with a First Minister and Government for England, with at least the same powers as the Scottish ones."

Click here to sign >>> http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/28819

Launch of Yorkshire "YES" to Elected Mayors Campaign

2012-02-01T10:52:00.004Z

Yesterday I went up to Sheffield and, at a literally packed meeting, was interviewed by Len Tingle, the BBC's chief political reporter for Yorkshire.

After the interview, the meeting heard excellent speeches by Sheffield Chairman David Wildgoose and Leeds Chairman Chris Beverley and was treated to a sumptuous spread of sandwiches and snacks. The meeting then resumed and endured my speech with remarkably good grace!

Here is the text of my speech:-

Ladies and Gentlemen

Thank you for your kind welcome to Sheffield. Thank you also to Matthew and to all those that have helped make this meeting possible.

I thought that I would say a few things about myself. I am a Solicitor; and, Yes, I have heard the old one about solicitors being buried 12 feet down not the regular 6 because “deep down” solicitors are quite nice! I should also confess that we all have our dirty secrets – mine is that I am a “recovering” Tory!

I am one of the founder members of the English Democrats and have been Chairman since we launched in August 2002. We are a Party which has grown organically from nothing to nearly 3,000 members.

All the money which we have raised has been spent on campaigning and many of us have put in significant sums of money into the campaign.

Why have we done this? The answer, Ladies and Gentlemen, is that we have done it because we love England and are not willing to go to our graves without having done all in our power to preserve our country.

When the English Democrats were launched England faced being broken up into “Regions”. The Regionalisation Scheme was started by John Major’s Government, after Maastricht, but in 2002 was being pursued enthusiastically by Labour with John Prescott saying “There is no such nationality as English” backed by William Hague saying “English Nationalism is the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism”. The aim of Regionalisation, as clearly stated, by the then Liberal Democrats Leader, to a meeting like this of Dunfermline’s Liberal Democrats, Charlie Kennedy who said, and I quote, that he supported “Breaking England up into EU Regions because “it is calling into question the idea of England itself”.

We campaigned in the North East Regional Assembly Referendum for a No Vote and we have now seen off any chance of Regionalisation gaining any popular mandate, if the Labour supporting think tank can be believed – and I think they can – they have found a mere 9% support for “Each Region of England to have its own assembly”.

We have also been, from the start, in the forefront of bringing the Barnett Formula, the unfair extra spending in Scotland and Wales, to the attention of the English.

When I first started campaigning I actually had people accuse me of lying because they had never heard of it from the British media. Again the IPPR report shows awareness of this beginning to rise in early 2003 just as we began actually campaigning.

Now the English overwhelmingly want to see action to address this. The IPPR report says that there is:-

“A growing perception within England that the English get a raw deal from the devolution settlement. (It is) clear that there is an increasingly strong tendency in England to believe that Scotland gets more than its ‘fair share’ of public spending. Indeed the number of people who believe this has more than doubled in the last decade.”

The English Democrats have been campaigning on English National Identity and St George’s Day. The IPPR report says:- On National Identity

“The most significant and revealing analysis stems from contrasting the groups that say they are either exclusively English, or more English than British, with those that say they are exclusively British, or more British than English. …The results are striking. Those that prioritise their English over their British identity (40 per cent), outnumber those that prioritise their British over their English identity (16 per cent) by more than two-to-one.

English not British 17 13 17 17
More English than British 23 19 24 20
Equally English and British 34 25 36 39
More British than English 9 12 9 8
British not English 7 14 6 6
Other 6 10 4 5
Don’t know 3 7 3 4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1,507 750 756 750”

And on St George’s Day the report says:

“One indication of the pride in and attachment to England across the English electorate is the very strong support shown in the .... survey to the suggestion that St George’s Day should be celebrated as a bank holiday. … fully 74 per cent of our respondents agreed with this proposition, with 47 per cent ‘agreeing strongly’. … We should not be surprised … that an increased awareness of and pride in Englishness is being accompanied by such overwhelming levels of support to the public celebration of English national identity.”

Agree strongly 47
Tend to agree 27
Tend to disagree 8
Disagree strongly 4
Don’t know 13
________________________
N 1,507

There remains a battle to be fought against the advocates of English Votes for English Laws (aka “EVEL”) and an English Parliament but EVEL, even if it could be made to work, which is a big if, is a red hearing because the key issue is the Government of England, not merely its representation in a parliament, but even with our very limited resources support for an English Parliament is now standing at 36%!

So all in all we are making great progress, even if you focus on the narrow perspective of our core campaigning issues.

But looking more widely for example on our policy of withdrawing from the EU. We started unprejudiced and with a blank sheet but could see that there is no way that an English Nationalist can make a case for supporting the EU. Now our scepticism has been proved by the failures of the EU itself.

Also consider, unchecked mass immigration which can now be undeniably seen as undermining the living standards of ordinary people and also a threat to our own culture. Put thoughtfully and carefully this is a very important issue with huge political potential.

Also I cannot miss out the potential for gains to our Party in the coming 1,000 days before the Scottish Referendum. The British Unionist Establishment is all over the place on this, seeing it just as a Scottish issue but again the IPPR report shows that English people are increasingly assertive that we to have a right to be consulted on what should happen for England. The English Democrats are the only voice for England in this debate.

Ladies and Gentlemen I think that both for English Nationalism and, with your help also for the English Democrats, to coin a phrase “the only way is up!”

Just before I finish let me say a few words about our campaign for Elected Council Leaders (aka “Mayors”).

As you may be aware a couple of years ago we won the elected Mayoralty of Doncaster and in September 2010 I launched our nationwide campaign for elected mayors for every local authority in England.

The Mayoral system is a better and more democratic one than the only legally permitted alternative of a councillor who is selected by other councillors, no doubt on the well worn principles of “Buggins’ turn” and “back-scratching” to be the Leader with a cabinet.

Both roles have exactly the same powers and exactly the same pay and term of office. The sole legal difference is that the Elected Mayor is chosen by the People.

So for a democrat – and we English Democrats chose our name carefully because we are about both England and also about democracy – for a Democrat the option of having an Elected Mayor is clearly the only proper one.

The political opportunity for us as a Party is that we can trigger a legally binding referendum by getting the signatures of 5% of the local electorate on a petition.

Well Ladies and Gentlemen let me tell you that we have registered such petitions with each and every relevant local authority throughout England.

Last Thursday we had the first fruits of this campaign, when we won the first referendum which we have triggered, in Salford and now Salford Council will be having a Mayoral election on 3rd May with our candidate having a fighting chance of taking Salford out of Labour control for the first time since the current local authority was created in the mid 70’s.

That referendum Ladies and Gentlemen is the first of many that we will trigger.

For example, I have hopes of causing an upset in my home area of Brentwood, which is Eric Pickles’ seat, the Secretary of State for Local Government, who is spearheading the partisan efforts of this Government to cause referenda in the 12 largest cities of England, 11 of which are Labour controlled. In Brentwood, Ladies and Gentlemen, rather like the self interested Salford Labour Party, he is nevertheless opposed to an elected Mayor because, of course, that would threaten Conservative control of Brentwood.

As a campaigning issue Elected Mayors is hard to beat because it is local so you will get local media coverage and it requires getting a petition signed but unlike the usual ones this has legal teeth – and you’re solely there for democracy. It puts you firmly in the sensible, “concerned”, citizen pigeon hole!

In Sheffield there is of course a particular point in mentioning all this because you have a Mayoral Referendum in May. I would urge you to campaign for an Elected Mayor for Sheffield and if the vote is yes then our Party should stand a candidate.
With your permission I would therefore like to call this the inaugural meeting of the Yorkshire “Yes” to Elected Mayors Campaign.

Before finishing I have to mention the Elected Law and Order Commissioners – in November this I think will be a great opportunity for us, because I don’t think anyone has a manifesto more in tune with public opinion on law and order.

Ladies and Gentlemen we are meeting here in interesting times for our Party and our Cause but our ambitions will all depend on what help we can get from volunteers and what money we can raise from our supporters. I urge you to get involved and help us make 2012 a great year for the Cause of English Nationalism!

Ladies and Gentlemen thank you for your patience in listening to me and inviting me to come here today.

English Democrats' David slays Salford Labour’s Goliath!

2012-01-29T12:41:00.009Z

This last week has been a momentous one for the English Democrats and for the Cause of democratic English nationalism.

We had both a great victory in democratising the leadership of one of Labour's heartlands, Salford, and also validation, from a Labour Think-tank, that the rise of English Nationalism is now unstoppable.

Having either happen would have been very welcome but both together is a quantum leap! Also the national background to these two developments was the start of Alex Salmond's 1,000 day drive towards Scottish Independence and the ending of the UK. This will be a time in which the media will be increasingly interested in hearing the voice of moderate and reasonable English nationalism. This is already starting, as was shown by my BBC News interview on Tuesday evening and 5 Live on Wednesday morning and various newspaper interviews.

I have already written about the IPPR report but here is our Press Release about our Salford result:-

English Democrats' David slays Salford Labour’s Goliath!

Today the English Democrats are delighted to announce that our nationwide campaign for directly elected Council Leaders (aka Mayors) for every local authority in England has borne its first fruit - despite an increasingly desperate and dishonest campaign by the Salford Council Labour Party.

Salford is the first local authority where we collected the required 5% of the electors’ signatures (c. over 8,500) to trigger a referendum to give the voters of Salford the chance to change their Council’s leadership, from the old back-scratching and buggins’ system, to one of democratic election by all the voters. The result was, out of 31,091 votes cast, 17,344 were in favour of an elected Mayor and 13,653 were against. Therefore in May there will be an election for Salford’s first directly elected Council Leader.

Stephen Morris, our North West Chairman and Salford Mayoral Campaign Organiser said:-

“This result, where the turnout was quite similar to the usual turnout in Council elections, showed that even Salford Labour Party’s usual supporters have turned against it! I am now looking forward to bringing Mayoral Referendums to Bolton and Wigan as soon as possible.”

Robin Tilbrook, the Chairman of the English Democrats said:-

“This is a fantastic day for local democracy in England and shows that the way is open to achieving a better and more transparent leadership in local authorities across England. We would like to get everyone more actively involved in local politics and we believe we will succeed in doing so, if they can see that the old one party local political machines are being replaced by Mayoral elections which give the electorate a real choice!”

Robin continued:-

“Even David only needed a little stone to bring Goliath crashing down! Now our Party will redouble our efforts in collecting signatures to trigger further referenda the length and breadth of England”.

Contact: Robin Tilbrook, Chairman, The English Democrats,
Party Tel No: 02072421066
Party Website: www.englishdemocrats.org
Personal Blog: RobinTilbrook.Blogspot.com

The English Nation - a dog that is beginning to bark furiously?

2012-01-27T11:52:00.002Z

Yesterday I attended a packed (standing room only) meeting at the IPPR’s plush London offices. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is a leading Labour think tank. The meeting was addressed by two professors and two politicians, Simon Hughes for the Lib Dems and John Denham for Labour and was chaired by a journalist from the Guardian. David Davies MP had been asked to come but backed out citing “constituency reasons”.

The purpose of the meeting was to consider the IPPR’s report called “The English finally barked: understanding the new politics of Englishness”. The results of this report fully justified (and more) my predictions in my previous blog article. Below is the IPPR’s press release.

The report, even though it is written by our political opponents, is a real milestone in the development of the English Nationalist cause. This is in part because it is designed to tell the British Political and Media Establishment that they can’t ignore us any more – except at their peril!

There will be interesting times ahead!

"More now feel ‘English’ than ‘British’ in England
UK Parliament and Westminster parties are failing to represent the English
Voters living in England have become more assertively ‘English’ and place much greater emphasis on their English rather than their British identity, according to a major new report on Englishness from the think tank IPPR and Cardiff and Edinburgh Universities, published today. The report warns that political parties have to address ‘the English Question’ in its own right, regardless of what happens in Scotland, or risk a major backlash.
The report is based on the results of the Future of England survey – the only major survey in this area conducted in England since the formation of both a coalition government at Westminster and the election of a majority SNP administration in Holyrood. Uniquely it compares how attitudes in England have changed over time and how they compare with other European countries.
It shows that:
The number of voters in England who believe that Scottish devolution has made the way Britain is governed worse (35 per cent) has doubled since 2007.
The English believe they get a raw-deal from the devolved settlement, with 45 per cent of voters in England saying that Scotland gets ‘more than its fair share of public spending’ – the number agreeing with this has almost doubled since 2000. Meanwhile 40 per cent of voters in England say that England gets ‘less than its fair share’ of public money.
More than half (52 per cent) say that Scotland’s economy benefits more than England’s from being in the UK, while less than one in four believe England and Scotland’s economies benefit equally.
While support for Scottish independence remains low - only 22 per cent say Scots should go it alone – the English strongly support the view that the current devolved settlement should be reformed. At fully 80 per cent, there is also overwhelming support in England for ‘devolution-max’ (full fiscal autonomy) for Scotland, with 44 per cent agreeing strongly. 79 per cent say Scottish MPs should be barred from voting on English laws, with an absolute majority agreeing strongly with that proposition.
The report finds that having initially been content to continue to be governed themselves by an unreformed set of UK institutions at Westminster, support for the status quo has now fallen to just 1 in 4 of the English electorate. 59 per cent say that they do not trust the UK government to work in the best long-term interests of England.
Voters in England appear to support introducing distinct governance arrangements for England but are currently divided between support for ‘English voters on English laws’ and an ‘English Parliament’ (combined support for these two options is 54 per cent).
The report shows that the proportion of the population that prioritise their English over their British identity (40 per cent) is now twice as large as that which prioritise their British over their English identity (16 per cent). The English are not rejecting Britishness outright and retain a dual sense of identity, but in recent years they are increasingly choosing to emphasise their English over their British identity. This phenomenon is consistent across England's diverse regions (including London) and across all social and demographic groups – with one exception provided by ethnic minority voters. However the report also points to tentative evidence of a growth in English identification within ethnic minority communities.
Dissatisfaction with devolution and the current structures for governing England are felt more strongly among those with a strong sense of English identity, a group that represents a growing proportion of the population.
Polling presented in the report shows that English voters have little faith in the ability of the political parties to stand up for the interests of England. More felt that none of the parties stands up for the interest of England than did those supporting either of the main political parties.
‘I do not think that any party stands up for the interests of England’ = 23%
Labour = 21%
Conservatives = 20%
Don’t know = 15%
UK Independence Party = 9%
Liberal Democrats = 4%
British National Party = 4%
English Democrats = 2%
Green Party = 2%
Nick Pearce, IPPR Director, said:
“English identity is on the rise and it is increasingly expressed in terms that are resentful of the devolution settlement. But that doesn't mean that Englishness is not capable of an open and inclusive political and cultural voice, within a reformed United Kingdom.
“Our mainstream political parties need to embrace Englishness, take it seriously, and find new ways of giving it political expression. It is not something to be feared or abandoned to those on the margins of right wing politics.
“There are those that fear that an engagement with a debate about England and Englishness will weaken the union, but the truth is the opposite. The longer this debate is ignored, or worse, denied, the more likely we will see a backlash within England against the UK."
Richard Wyn Jones, Professor of Politics at Cardiff University and co-author of the report said:
“Despite the exhortations of successive governments that have focused exclusively on Britishness, it is clear that at the popular level it is Englishness that resonates most. Not only that, but there is strong evidence that English identity is becoming increasingly politicized. The more English a person feels the more likely they are to be dissatisfied with the way that the UK is being governed post-devolution, and the more likely they are to support the explicit recognition of an English dimension to their country’s politics. Even if the form that this English dimension should take has yet to fully crystallize in the electorate’s mind, this is arguably at least as much a failure on the part of the political class to lead a public debate on this increasingly important issue.”
Notes to Editors
IPPR’s new report –The dog that finally barked: England as an emerging political community - is available in advance from the IPPR press office and will be available to download from: http://bit.ly/IPPR8542
The report is part of a major research collaboration between the Wales Governance Centre (Cardiff University), the Institute of Governance (Edinburgh University) and IPPR.
All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. The total sample size was 1,507 adults and fieldwork was undertaken between 27 July and 2 August 2011. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+). A boost sample was included for London: the total sample size was 750 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 27th July - 2nd August 2011. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all London adults (aged 18+)."

English Nationalism on the rise? Predictions on next week's opinion poll

2012-01-21T23:28:00.004Z

I am looking forward to the IPPR's event this Thursday (the 26th): "The dog that finally barked: The new politics of Englishness" http://www.ippr.org/events/54/8436/the-dog-that-finally-barked-the-new-politics-of-englishness.

In preparation, we have been treated to a series of tantalising and carefully orchestrated leaks by this very media savvy (and connected!) Labour Think-tank; for example, on the BBC's Today programme, Professor Richard Wyn Jones outlined their main findings explaining that there seems to be a growing "politicisation of English identity". The following link will replay this very interesting interview >>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9678000/9678426.stm
and there has been this:-
http://www.ippr.org/events/54/8213/ideas-on-the-3rd-floor-the-dog-that-finally-barked-england-as-an-emerging-political-community
and especially this article, by the Director of the IPPR, Nick Pearce:- "Learning English: what Gladstone and Disraeli have to teach us about the English question". Here is the link >>> http://www.ippr.org/?p=636&option=com_wordpress&Itemid=17
in which Nick Pearce says:- "79 per cent of voters in England believe that Scottish MPs should be barred from voting on English-only laws. Importantly, support for reform in this area was even greater among the growing proportion of the population in England who emphasise their English over their British identities, suggesting evidence of the politicisation of Englishness."

I must congratulate the IPPR on their media tactics (and connections). They really are milking this event for all that it is worth!

Nevertheless I am looking forward to hearing their findings, with some anticipation after my introductory discussion with Guy Lodge, their 'Politics and Power' Associate Director, which I wrote about on the 3rd of January: The "growing sense of Englishness is becoming politicized"! Here is the link >>> http://robintilbrook.blogspot.com/2012/01/growing-sense-of-englishness-is.html

As someone who, for over a decade, has been an actively campaigning English nationalist, I have had the benefit of innumerable relevent conversations. I wonder then if I can therefore predict these YouGov/ IPPR findings? Well here goes!

My predictions are:-

First: I expect that people in England will be shown to be becoming increasingly very likely to identify themselves as having English National Identity. On the stump, I would say that I increasingly rarely come across people who consider themselves to be "British" (until we get onto passports or benefits etc.
If I am right in this prediction, it will confirm that the official attempt to indoctrinate "Britishness" and the official anti-Englishenss have both failed. The English Democrats and the non party lobby group, the Campaign for an English Parliament, can then take some credit for having, almost unaided, kept the sacred flame of Englishness alive!

Second: I expect that this IPPR/YouGov survey will show that those people who identitfiy themselves as "English" are increasingly wanting to see changes to the British constitution to give a proper voice to English National Interests.
However I would expect that these people will not be very clear about exactly what remedy they currently seek. This lack of clarity isn't very surprising because the British Political Establishment's main tactics so far have been either:-
1/ to lie, to try to conceal their desire to break up England into "Regions"; or
2/ to try to bamboozle us to "dissolve our petty (Englishness) into the greater European whole"; or
3/ to try to trick us to accept some unworkeable House of Commons voting wheeze ("EVEL") as a placebo.
None of these will prove, in the end, to be acceptable to a resurgent English nationalism but, at present, I suspect, that many English people are deceived and they are therefore likely to be unclear as to exactly what reforms they want.
If I am right in this prediction then both the English Democrats and the CEP have got some work to do yet to get the call for an English government and Parlaiment firmly established.

Third: I expect, for somewhat the same reasons, that English people will, currently, be very confused as to which Political Party to support. I expect that the largest proportion will be suspicious of, and just grumbling about, all Parties, and also one of the other larger proportions will be those who admit that they don't yet know which Party to support.
Then there will be sizeable proportions who are still deceived by Labour, or by the Conservatives, or by the Liberal Democrats, or by UKIP.
I have been lobbying YouGov to include the English Democrats as a possible voting option on their Opinion Polls and, if I have been as successful as I believe, then people will have been asked in this poll, for the first time, if they will be considering voting English Democrats.
We have to recognise that we are still much younger, much less wealthy and have much less brand recognition than the Greens, the BNP and UKIP. I therefore suspect that we can only expect to be at 1% or 2% but, as the media wakes up to a realisation of the potential political strength of English nationalism and as we get more coverage, I expect that we will leapfrog over all those minor British Nationalist parties like UKIP, the NF and the BNP and also over all those minor Internationalist Left parties like Respect, the Greens and the SWP.

All in all I predict that next week will be a great week for English Nationalism.

Also I predict the start of great things for the English Democrats - if we can improve our brand recognition and get English people to stop grumbling that "They" should do something - rather than us all together getting on with doing it ourselves! That is our challenge but we can accept it with a more determination when we know whether the opinion polls confirm that our own People are with us!
We need more volunteers and we need more money but our Cause is right, our Cause is just - and it has the increasing support of the English Nation!

'ENGLISH' UNREPRESENTED ON THE GOVERNMENT’S W.L.Q. COMMISSION!

2012-01-20T11:43:00.006Z

It now appears that, after months of delay, that the English are to be snubbed and unrepresented on the Government's West Lothian Question Commission. The West Lothian Question ("WLQ") is that, deliberately opaque, phrase used by the British Establishment to talk about the 'English Question' without mentioning the "E" word.

As the Daily Telegraph's Philip Johnston explains it:-
"It was in 1977, during the devolution debates in the Commons, that Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP for West Lothian, asked: “For how long will English constituencies and English honourable members tolerate honourable members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland exercising an important, and probably often decisive, effect on British politics, while they have no say in the same matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?” Enoch Powell, in the same debate, gave Mr Dalyell’s puzzle the status it now enjoys: “We have finally grasped what the Honourable Member for West Lothian is getting at,” he said. “Let us call it the West Lothian Question.”
To call something a “question” conjured up those great issues that once preoccupied parliamentarians, like Schleswig-Holstein or, more pertinently, the Irish Question. But this was never really the West Lothian Question – it is the English Question. How does England fit into the post-devolutionary settlement? This has been ignored,"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/scottish-politics/9017866/Amid-the-talk-of-Scottish-independence-its-now-time-to-answer-the-English-Question.html

So after many months of procrastination the Government has now announced the membership of its West Lothian Question Commission (or McKay Commission as it may come to be called). There are six Commissioners. Here are potted biographies of them:-

Sir William McKay KCB (Chairman)
Sir William entered the service of the House of Commons in 1961 and was Clerk of the House from 1998 to 2002. Since retirement, he has served on a large number of bodies that consider complex legal and constitutional matters, including the Legal Questions Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and as an observer on the Law Society of Scotland's ruling Council.

Sir Geoffrey Bowman KCB QC
Sir Geoffrey Bowman was called to the bar in 1968 by Lincoln's Inn, of which he is now a bencher. From 1971 to 2006 he was a member of the Parliamentary Counsel Office, which is responsible for drafting government Bills and facilitating their passage through the Westminster Parliament. He was First Parliamentary Counsel (head of the Office) from 2002 to 2006. He has considerable experience of legislative drafting, Parliamentary procedure and constitutional matters generally.

Sir Emyr Jones Parry GCMG
Sir Emyr is the President of Aberystwyth University. He is the former British Permanent Representative to the United Nations and former UK permanent representative on the North Atlantic Council (NATO). From 2007-2009 he chaired the All Wales Convention.

Professor Charlie Jeffery
Professor Jeffery has held a Chair in Politics at the University of Edinburgh since October 2004 and is currently Head of School of Social and Political Science and Vice Principal for Public Policy at the University. He directed the Economic and Social Research Council's research programme on Devolution and Constitutional Change from 2000-7. He was a member of Council of the Economic and Social Research Council from 2005-11. He has been advisor to the House of Commons Select Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the EU Committee of the Regions, the Commission on Scottish Devolution and the Scotland Bill Committee of the Scottish Parliament. He is a member of the Politics and International Studies sub-panel for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework and chairs the Political Studies Association of the UK.

Professor Yvonne Galligan
Professor Galligan is the Director of Research on Governance and Public Policy at Queen's University, Belfast. She is also the Director of the University's Gender Initiative and of the Centre for the Advancement of Women in Politics. Professor Galligan has written extensively on questions of political and parliamentary representation.

Sir Stephen Laws KCB QC
Sir Stephen Laws was called to the Bar in 1973. He joined the Civil Service in 1975 and transferred to the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel in 1976. Sir Stephen was First Parliamentary Counsel from 2006 to 2012. Sir Stephen's career in the Civil Service has involved being an adviser to different Governments on Parliamentary and constitutional matters, as well as responsibility for the drafting and procedural handling of Government Bills at Westminster.

You will notice that only two of these six are arguably English. Both of these are as British and as Establishment as it is possible to be! They are both retired “First Parliamentary Counsel” i.e. top ranking civil servants whose legal work is both the drafting of government bills and advising Whitehall Ministers etc., and the Committees of the Houses of Commons and Lords as the Bills progress through Westminster’s legislative process.

Also consider the Commission's government-imposed Terms of Reference:
"To consider how the House of Commons might deal with legislation which affects only part of the United Kingdom, following the devolution of certain legislative powers to the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the National Assembly for Wales."
NB no mention of the word "England"

We can therefore be absolutely confident that none of the Commissioners will have any interest whatsoever in the English Nation, English Nationalism or even in democratic fairness for England.

The Government’s approach is now self evidently to delay any recommendations until at least 2015 and even then they are seeking recommendations that will have the minimum impact on the way Westminster currently operates.

However I have a message for Ministers and for their West Lothian Commission – the English are awakening and when fully roused they will not be happy with Westminster or Whitehall which have betrayed the trust placed in them to be fair to England and to the English Nation! And this McKay Commission will not appease us one bit!

Anti- English harassment case update

2012-01-17T20:31:00.003Z

Click the picture to read the Colchester Gazette report from today's paper

I suspect that Eddie Bone will win his case, not least because the North Essex NHS Trust’s “Head of Human Resources” admitted, in the witness box, that she thought that the English were not a recognised racial group under the Equalities Act! Idiotic big mistake!

She was told off by the Judge who said:- “Of course the English are covered! Just like the Scottish, Irish, Welsh and Congolese!” The Judge then sent her out to consider the error of what she had just said.

However, whatever the outcome of this case, it does show that the Workers of England Union are a serious Union willing to fight tooth and nail for their members and are truly worthy to be recommended. Personally I do recommend this Union wholeheartedly.

Their contact details are:-

Workers of England Union
Cannon House
17 Nelson Road
Lexden
Colchester
Essex CO3 9AP
Tel: 01206 766899
Email: admin@workersofengland.co.uk
Website: workersofengland.co.uk

Monmouthshire - English or Welsh?

2012-01-17T00:36:00.000Z

This is an extract from Roy Jenkins' autobiography (click to read the text)

The extract tells a significant tale about Monmouthshire's status but one of our members, the late Elwyn Jones of Abergavenny, told it in much more detail:-

History of Monmouthshire
Ambiguity over Welsh status

Monmouthshire's Welsh status was ambiguous until the relatively recently, with it often thought of as part of England. The entirety of Wales was made part of the Kingdom of England by the Statute of Rhuddlan, but did not adopt the same civil governance system, with the area of Monmouthshire being under the control of Marcher Lords.

The Laws in Wales Act 1535 integrated Wales directly into the English legal system, and divided it into several counties. Monmouthshire, as part of England, was created by this Act (which gave it two knights of the shire rather than one as in the other Welsh counties). However, the Laws in Wales Act 1542 specifically enumerates the Welsh counties as twelve in number, excluding Monmouthshire from the count.

Despite this integration of Wales into England, the word "England" was still taken to exclude Wales in many contexts. The Wales and Berwick Act 1746 ensured that in legislation passed subsequently that Berwick-upon-Tweed and Wales into "England".

Despite this, Monmouthshire was often associated with Wales. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica unambigiously described the county as part of England, but notes that 'whenever an act [...] is intended to apply to [Wales] alone, then Wales is always coupled with Monmouthshire'. Most Acts of Parliament included Monmouthshire as part of England, for example the Local Government Act 1933 listed both the administrative county of Monmouth and county borough of Newport as part of England, but in the rare event that an Act of Parliament was restricted to Wales, Monmouthshire was usually included. For example, the creation of the Welsh Office in 1964 explicitly included Monmouthshire. Another typical example was the division of England and Wales into registration areas in the 19th century — one of which, the "Welsh Division", was defined as including "Monmouthshire, South Wales and North Wales".

Being a part of the diocese of Llandaff, Monmouthshire was included in the area in which the Church of England was disestablished in 1920 to become the Church in Wales.

The question of Monmouthshire's status continued to be a matter of discussion, especially as Welsh nationalism and devolution climbed the political agenda in the 20th century. The Wales and Berwick Act was repealed in regard to Wales in 1967 under the Welsh Language Act 1967. The Interpretation Act 1978 provides that in legislation passed between 1967 and 1974, "a reference to England includes Berwick upon Tweed and Monmouthshire".

The issue was finally clarified in law by the Local Government Act 1972, which provided that in legislation after 1974 the definition of "Wales" would include the area of Monmouthshire.

The English Democrats Party have expressed an intention to stand in the 2007 Welsh Assembly Elections in Monmouthshire with a view to 'Letting Monmouthshire Decide' whether it wishes to be part of Wales or England.

The Murky Transfer from England to Wales

Monmouthshire did not exist before 1535, however Monmouth as a town did exist and was documented in the Domesday Book as being part of England.

The 1535 Act (During the Reign of Henry VIII) was made because of the lack of law and order in the Welsh border areas from Mold to Chepstow which were ruled by the “Marcher Lords” – basically this lad was a no-man’s land between Wales and England.

The Act created the counties of Monmouth, Brecknock, Radnor, Montgomery, and Denbigh and annexed the remaining border area to the counties of Shropshire, Gloucester and Hereford – hence the Welsh place names there - so it is therefore not surprising that the Welsh language was in use in the border country.

In that Act Section Three - notes four, five and six - and all of Section Four – especially note six - refer to everything in the county of Monmouthshire being done according to this ‘Realm of England’ and to the subjects and inhabitants of Monmouthshire to be ‘bound and obedient to the King, Justices, Council, laws, customs ordinances and statutes of this Realm of England, in like manner and form as all King’s subjects within every shire of this Realm of England’.

Sections five, six, seven and eight refer respectively to Brecknock, Radnor, Montgomery and Denhigh as parts of the country of Wales, however, Section 36 states that until three years after the end of that Parliament, the King shall have the power to ‘repeal, revoke and abrogate’ the whole, or any part of the Act.

Section two of the 1542 Act, states that Wales will comprise of 12 counties - the eight old counties of Glamorgan, Carmarthen, Pembroke, Cardigan, Flint, Caernarvon, Anglesey and Merioneth and four new ones - Radnor, Brecknock, Montgomery and Denbigh over and besides the county of Monmouth and the other parts of Wales annexed to Shropshire, Gloucester, and Hereford.

Section five of the Act states that sessions will be held in every of the shires of Wales and then names the 12 above with no mention of Monmouthshire The 1933 Local Government Act lists the English and Welsh counties and the county boroughs and places Monmouthshire in the English county list and Newport in the English borough list.

The pre 1974 Ordnance Survey maps also place Monmouthshire in England and correspondence with them will confirm this.

Correspondence with the Welsh Office will also confirm that Monmouthshire was a part of England prior to 1974.

Confusion over this matter has been caused over generations by misleading statements made and repeated by prominent statesmen and politicians for reasons known only to them, taking advantage of the fact that many residents of Monmouthshire were unable to read and write.

When the 1972 Local Government Act was being dealt with in committee, 3 MP.s with no political connections to Monmouthshire, Brynmor John (Pontypridd),George Thomas(Cardiff West), (later Speaker Thomas) and Gibson Watt (Hereford),on the 14 March 1972 constructed a paragraph that would achieve the transfer of Monmouthshire to Wales from England by stating “including the areas of Monmouthshire and Newport in the new counties of Wales.”ie. the 12 old counties would be replaced by 8 new counties,South Glamorgan.,Mid Glamorgan.,West Glamorgan. ,Dyfed, Powys,Gwynledd, Clwyd and Gwent. They omitted to reveal that Gwent was almost entirely the English county of Monmouthshire. The committee comprised of 36 MP.s,but no M.P.s from Monmouthshire,or Newport, were on that committee.

The effect of that sentence was revealed to Parliament four months later at 5 minutes to midnight, 20.July 1972.,by George Thomas, Gibson-Watt and Ray Gower (Barry). The”debate” was over in less than one minute including Gerald Kaufman (Manchester Ardwick) statement “Am I to take it that an Act of annexation of such magnitude is to be carried though a sparsely attended House of Commons on the nod at 5 minutes to midnight on the same basis as Europe has annexed England,I wish to voice my protest.” The Bill had the Third reading less than 18 hours later before going to the Lords and then receiving Royal Assent. There is no record of the 5 M.P.s representing Monmouthshire,and Newport,Messrs Kinnock,Foot,Abse,Hughes and Stradling-Thomas speaking one word for or against, if they were present. As the paragraph was prepared 4 months earlier and there is evidence that indicates they knew about the paragraph, they could have, during those months, informed us what was being proposed, held public meetings, consulted their constituents and held a referendum, but they did not, and have not given any explanation for their inaction. There is no trace in Hansard of any protest that they were not aware of that paragraph prior to 20 July 1972. That transfer to Wales was the most momentous thing that happened in Monmouthshire’s history going back 430 years, and the most important thing that the 5 MP.s presided over during their careers as MP.s. The fact that they spoke not one word, for or against, in Parliament and did not make us aware of what was about to happen, is an abuse of the trust that should exist between M.P.s and their constituents.

When Welsh devolution was proposed in the county, there was repeated visits from the Prime Minister,his deputy, senior members of all political parties, MP.s ,and Trade Union leaders, months of radio and television interviews, numerous articles in national and local newspapers. That was to transfer a few administrative powers from the UK to Wales, but when it was proposed to transfer an English county, with its population of 400,000 to Wales, there was not a whisper from the constituency MP.s or Parliament. What can be said to justify the actions of 4 MP.s, with no political connections to Monmouthshire and Newport, being allowed to override all democratic procedures by misleading statements in committee and in the commons, resulting in the transfer of Monmouthshire and Newport.

Northern Ireland, The Falklands,Channel Isles and Gibraltar have all been told they will not be transferred without a referendum.

The fact that the 1972 Act of Parliament was required to transfer Monmouthshire to Wales again confirms that it was an English county - if it was already in Wales no Act would have been required.

Elwin Jones
English Democrats
Abergavenny, Monmouthshire
(Born an Englishman in Monmouthshire)

English Deep Sea Fishing

2012-01-16T19:24:00.007Z

A time of plenty -
Great Yarmouth 1948, fisher-girls sort out the herring catch

I have been sent this article by a member of the Party. It makes a lot of good sense to me (although I would talk more about English than British!) Here is the article - what do you think?

How the politicians betrayed Britain's fishermen

'Twas down where fisher-folk gather,
I wandered far from the throng,
I heard a fisher-girl singing,
And this refrain was her song .......

This is the first verse, rarely heard nowadays, of the popular song - Red Sails in the Sunset. Lyrics by Jimmy Kennedy, music by Hugh Williams - 1935

When Edward Heath took Britain into the European Union in 1973, unscrupulous Tory politicians handed over Britain’s once proud fishing industry to Brussels on a plate. The Common Fisheries Policy devised by the EU, is responsible for the destruction of Britain’s fishing industry, with the loss of thousands of jobs and billions of pounds in revenue.

For example, Britain’s annual cod catch fell from 300,000 tonnes a year when Britain joined the EU in 1973 to a low of just 7,000 tonnes in 2007. In 1973 the industry employed about 23,000 fishermen. Today there are less than 12,000 fishermen left.

Background
Britain, as you would expect of an island nation, has a fishing heritage that goes back generations. By 1970, the fishing industries of England and Scotland were among the finest in the world, in technology, efficiency, and quality of produce. Britain was producing over a million tons of fish a year, and was preparing to claim its international right to the resources of a 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around the British Isles. This was the new law of the sea agreed by the UN in 1973.

In 1970, a rise in white fish prices and a resurgence in herring fishing was boosting the prosperity of fishermen and fishing ports. The country’s fishery future looked secure. Then came Britain’s entry into the then European Common Market in 1973, negotiated by Edward Heath.

Betrayal
Hours before Britain was to be admitted, the original six members drafted the notorious addition to the “Acquis Communautaire”. It obliged new members to surrender the control of their waters to Europe, and to agree to “equal access to a common resource” as far as fish was concerned. All new applicants for membership would have to accept the condition, and that has been the case ever since. Despite a stream of subsequent lies and deception that this was not really the case, the government had sold the fishing industry like a pawn to gain entry to Europe. The European Commission then assumed the authority to delegate shares of the fishery resource to member states.

Apart from Ireland, and the existing European maritime states that had nothing to lose and everything to gain, Britain was the only nation in the world to give up that sovereign right to its exclusive 200 mile fishing zone, and accept the principle of ‘equal access' which was made a condition for all EU members.

Years later, Spain’s full entry into the EU Common Fisheries Policy nearly doubled the size of the EU states fishing fleets, and the later entry of the Baltic states increased the size still further. The size of the English and Scottish fleets had to be seriously reduced to accommodate the others.

What had taken British seamen and merchants 300 years to develop, was systematically reduced and destroyed by the EU Common Fisheries Policy in the 35 years from 1975 when measures started to be applied. No other nation in the history of the world has given up its fishing industry to foreign interests like Britain has done.
The Herring fleet set sail, Great Yarmouth 1930s

No state outside the EU has surrendered its 200 mile exclusive fishing zone to another body. Today, the vessels that reap the benefits of the UK marine EEZ are fleets from Spain, France, Denmark, Holland, and the new EU member states of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. In consequence, much of the fish purchased by British housewives, though caught in British waters, are from Continental fishing vessels.

The EU's Common Fisheries Policy imposes a regime of equal access for vessels from all member states in the EU's exclusive fishing zone, 200 nautical miles from its coastline.

Within this zone, member states have a 12-mile zone around their own coastlines within which their own fishing vessels have exclusive rights.

In other words, because Britain is a member of the EU our 200 mile exclusive fishing zone around the British Isles has been reduced to just 12 miles by Brussels bureaucrats. The North Sea, which once ranked amongst the richest waters in the world was, before we joined the EU, Britain’s national fishing waters.

The EU common fisheries policy has created a situation where landlocked nations like Austria have a say in how many fish a seafaring nation like Britain are allowed to catch.

The EU Quota System
Each country in the EU is given a quota of how many tons of fish they are allowed to catch. Each fishing vessel is then handed an individual fishing quota for different types of fish based on scientific data on the health of fish stocks. This leads to millions of tons of fish being wasted every year.

A trawler, for example, may have been given a quota to land 10 tons of cod and 10 tons of haddock. A problem arises when one of those quotas is met but not the other. A trawler that has landed all the cod it is allowed to catch but only half of the haddock, will continue to fish in order to meet its haddock quota. This means any extra cod caught in pursuit of its haddock quota will have to be thrown back into the sea, dead. This damages fish stocks and wastes millions of tons of fish. Catches and landings must be recorded. If a fisherman brings home more than his quota he faces a huge fine.

Surplus fish are thrown back into the sea, dead

Non-EU countries like Iceland have retained booming fishing industries and healthy fish stocks by keeping out competitors, like the Spanish, in a way that membership of the EU’s Fisheries Policy makes impossible.

Conclusion
Devious politicians regarded Britain's fishing industry as small beer, and a pawn well worth sacrificing for other benefits they imagined the European Union would bring.

Since no Parliament can bind its successor, both Labour and the Tories are equally to blame for the sorry mess the fishing industry finds itself in at the present time. But there is no need for us to remain under such grovelling humiliating servitude, since under the democratic principles of our historic constitution we can end the shameful surrender of our fishing grounds, our fishing rights and fish stocks, at any time of our choosing.

Thirty five years of senseless destruction is enough.
The English Democrats will take England out of the EU and re-establish control of our 200-mile exclusive fishing zone. We will then be able to rebuild our fishing industry and ensure the proper environmental management of fish stocks.

Poll - Most English want an English Parliament!

2012-01-13T23:03:00.005Z

There is a significant new opinion poll from Ipsos MORI for “British Future”, December 2011 which has recently been published. Its results are based on 2,320 online interviews with people aged 16+ in Great Britain. The fieldwork took place between 30 November to 6 December 2011. This is however a Great Britain wide survey with more than a quarter of the respondents being from Scotland or Wales.

Question 11 of the poll is as follows:-

"Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have had their own parliament or assembly for some years. Members vote on some issues that affect only their respective countries, for example, on issues about health and education.

Issues affecting England can be voted on by all MPs sitting in Westminster. This means that English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs can vote on issues that are only of relevance to England."

Which one of the following do you think should happen?
%
________________________________________________________________
We should keep things as they are - 22
________________________________________________________________

We should set up a new English Parliament to decide on
England-only issues - 51
________________________________________________________________
We should do away with the Scottish, Welsh and Northern
Ireland Parliaments and make all decisions in the UK
Parliament at Westminster - 14
_______________________________________________________________
Don’t know - 13
_______________________________________________________________

I suspect, that if this poll had been within England only, the result would have been closer to 60% supporting an English Parliament - even though its question is phrased in the way likely to achieve the lowest support, by making it about a new English Parliament.

This result would then have been well in line with YouGov’s pre-Christmas poll for 'Prospect Magazine' which showed 63%, of another GB survey, now consider that their National Identity is “English”.

The importance of this latest opinion poll result for us English Democrats, is that more than 50% of England are already in favour of our headline policy - despite the united opposition of almost the whole of the political and of the media class!

Cameron:- "Scotland may leave the UK"!?!

2012-01-11T00:21:00.005Z

I had understood that ‘Dave’ Donald Cameron to be an intelligent man. Even intelligent people can get things totally wrong but in this case it really is quite simple, Mr Cameron! If Scotland leaves the United Kingdom of Great Britain necessarily ceases to exist - because the very concept of Great Britain is founded on the fusion of the Kingdom of England with the Kingdom of Scotland!

The Act of Union 1706 is crystal clear. Here is the relevant text:-

"ARTICLE 1
THAT THE TWO Kingdoms of England and Scotland shall upon the first Day of May which shall be in the Year one thousand seven hundred and seven, and for ever after, be united into one Kingdom by the name of Great Britain;

ARTICLE III
That the United Kingdom of Great Britain be represented by one and the same Parliament, to be stiled, The Parliament of Great Britain.

ARTICLE VI
That all Parts of the United Kingdom for ever, from and after the Union, shall have the same Allowances, Encouragements, and Drawbacks, and be under the same Prohibitions, Restrictions and Regulations of Trade."

As for Mr Cameron’s remark reported in the Sunday Daily Telegraph “I don’t want to be Prime Minister of England, I want to be Prime Minister of the whole of the United Kingdom”. This is not a new remark for him. I give you a quotation from an article written in 2008 by a journalist, Mark Stuart. “As an ardent Unionist, I was greatly encouraged by David Cameron’s remarks earlier this year, when he took part in a grilling from Yorkshire Post readers. When quizzed by Paul Cockcroft, a member of the Royal Society of St George about introducing a new public holiday to celebrate St George’s Day, Cameron rejected the idea, adding: “I want to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, not just England. I think we’re stronger having England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland united”.

I suggest therefore that Mr Cameron’s real message, for anyone who cares about England, hasn’t changed. Mr Cameron is the sort of politician who isn’t in politics to do something but merely to be somebody and that ambition is against the interests of every English patriot.

Who owns North Sea Oil, Vince?

2012-01-09T10:01:00.003Z

Last month I made a call for there to be a proper Judicial Arbitration of the ownership of North Sea oil and gas, as between the respective national boundaries between the English and Scottish Nations.
I called for this in this blog entry, click here >> http://robintilbrook.blogspot.com/2011/12/no-mr-salmond-some-of-its-england-s-oil.html.
I was pleased to see that one of the leading Scottish newspapers, The Courier, reported this call(read the article and the 'interesting' comments here >> http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Politics/article/19888/english-independence-campaigners-demand-fair-share-of-north-sea-oil.html.)
Then the ForArgyle News reported Mr John Sweeney’s,the Scottish Finance Minister, surprisingly wet response (read the article here >> http://forargyll.com/2011/12/english-democrats-open-question-of-how-much-north-sea-oil-is-really-scotlands/ and on the Global Warming Policy Foundation site >> http://thegwpf.org/uk-news/4668-english-democrats-half-of-north-sea-oil-and-gas-belong-to-england.html).

I am today sending my formal request for an arbitration to Mr Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and here is a copy of the text of the letter:-

Mr Vince Cable MP
Secretary of State for Business,
Innovation and Skills
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

Dear Mr Cable

Re: North Sea Oil Adjudication

I write on behalf of the currently unrepresented English Nation and as Chairman of the English Democrats, the only Party campaigning for English interests to be properly looked after, to formally request that you set up a Judicial Enquiry to reach a binding arbitration on the allocation of the geological assets, in particular to oil and gas, beneath the seabed of the territorial waters in the North Sea as between England and Scotland.

I further formally request that this arbitration be conducted according to the usual principles of International Law and the Conventions which apply to such allocations, on which basis we provisionally assert that half of the North Sea oil beds and gas are English.

Please acknowledge receipt of this letter and indicate the time period in which you propose to deal with this request. Please note that if your response is unsatisfactory we reserve the right to remove such arbitration from the jurisdiction of the British Government and place it with the United Nations or other competent international jurisdiction.

Yours sincerely

R C W Tilbrook

Anti English Victimisation of a Trade Union Rep Leads to Employment Tribunal!

2012-01-06T21:53:00.009Z

This is yesterday's press release for the Workers of England Union:-

"Eddie Bone, a highly qualified nurse and Trade Union shop steward / Representative of a new Trade Union The Workers of England Union is taking North Essex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to the Bury St Edmunds, Employment Tribunal alleging that the Trust has failed to take any action to stop anti English bullying and harassment against him in their Colchester based mental health hospital. The Tribunal is set to take place at the Employment Tribunal Service, 100 Southgate Street, Bury St Edmonds, IP33 2AQ today and is scheduled to last to the 12th January 2012.

Eddie Bone is a joint founder of the Workers of England Trade Union, an independent Trade Union that does not financially support the Labour Party. Several members complained at the Lakes Mental Health Hospital in Colchester that serious clinical concerns were not being addressed. Eddie Bone raised the concerns and it is alleged he was then the victim of serious harassment from management at the Hospital and Labour supporting Unison Representatives who objected to the name of his Union containing the word England. These attacks caused Eddie Bone, a qualified nurse with an exemplary record of some 16 years, much distress. Once Eddie Bone’s witness statement has been put in the public domain when he starts to give evidence on the 5th January 2012, it will be available to any journalist who requests a copy. It details anti English racism and serious clinical deficiencies arising from NHS cuts.

Carleton Maflin, General Secretary of the Workers of England Trade Union, said :-“It is our case that this Union Representative has been subjected to more than two years of anti English bullying and harassment for raising serious clinical concerns. The Workers of England Union will always support and protect its members throughout England when highlighting legitimate issues. Racism in any form should not be tolerated in the workplace and the case will test whether North Essex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust should not have engaged in it and should have protected Eddie Bone from this terrible abuse”.

Carleton Maflin
General Secretary
The Workers of England Union
Cannon House, 17 Nelson Road, Colchester, Essex CO3 9AP
Telephone 01206 766899"

Here is the link to the Union's BBC Newsnight appearence shortly after their launch >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSpjRwMgObk

The Workers of England Union now have a rapidly growing membership and, from the excellent work that I saw yesterday, I can fully understand why!

I attended the Hearing yesterday to support Eddie and to give evidence. Here is my witness statement:-

IN THE BURY ST EDMUNDS
EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL
CASE NO: 1500119/2011 & Others
BETWEEN:

MR EDWARD BONE
Claimant
-and -

NORTH ESSEX PARTNERSHIP
NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
Respondent

__________________________

WITNESS STATEMENT
__________________________

I, ROBIN CHARLES WILLIAM TILBROOK, of Quires Green, Willingale, Ongar, Essex, CM5 0QP, will say as follows:-

1. I am a Solicitor of over 20 years standing and the Principal of Tilbrook’s Solicitors whose practice address is as above. I am a past President of Mid-Essex Law Society, a former Church Warden and Chairman of St Margaret’s, Stanford Rivers, Ongar, Parochial Church Council. I am also a Liveryman and Freeman of the City of London and I am the Chairman and one of the founder members of the English Democrats Party.

2. The purpose of mentioning the status related items in the previous paragraph is to emphasise that the English Democrats Party is a respectable political party, properly registered with the Electoral Commission, which has stood in many elections and won hundreds of thousands of votes. We currently have 6 District/County Councillors and have won the Directly Elected Mayoralty of Doncaster, which is the largest metropolitan borough council in England. The Party constitution is expressly inclusive of all those who support our political aims from whatever background. Our manifesto position is firmly rooted in the modern ideal of the democratic nation state. Our key note policy is the establishment of an English Parliament with our First Minister and our Government with at least the same powers as the Scottish ones, within a federal United Kingdom.

3. I am however aware from my political involvement that there is quite a widespread, pervasive and quite frankly racist anti-Englishness in many official circles. As a solicitor I have taken a professional interest in these types of cases and have no doubt that the applicant herein has been subjected to a campaign of harassment at least part of the motivation for which is anti-English racism.

4. It is now well established in Race Relations law, as it always must have been as a matter of general principle, that discriminatory treatment of somebody based upon their assertion of English Nationality, National Identity and National Origin is contrary to law in exactly the same way it would be for any other racial, ethnic or national group.

5. On behalf of the English Democrats I have fought several such cases and on no occasion has a legal argument contrary to the above points been accepted by the court. As an example of the approach taken by the courts I quote this from the Judgment of His Honour Judge Patrick Maloney QC in one of my cases:-

“As I have already hinted….above, (any attempt to argue a) sharp distinction between one’s race and one’s beliefs may be an over-simplification, at least in an unusual case like the present one. A discriminator may say “I am not employing him because I believe he is a racist”. Fair enough; but if on further inquiry he goes on to say “I believe he is a racist because he is a white man with an English accent and a St George’s flag on his car” then the question of racial grounds is reopened. Put another way, it is as possible to make racist assumptions about other people’s opinions as about, for example, their honesty or intelligence, and discrimination on such a basis would appear to be unlawful. Where the opinions in question are or include nationalist ones, that is ones closely linked to the person’s own perceived national origins or affiliations, the risk of overlap is particularly great.”

6. Knowing this I recommended to the Workers of England Union, for whom I have done some professional work, that an allegation of racial discrimination should be made against the Respondent Trust.

7. Given the type of remarks and behaviour exhibited by management and employees of the Trust, I took the view that the threshold had been well and truly passed to put the onus of proof onto the Trust to prove that its behaviour and the unchecked behaviour of its employees was not discriminatory. Indeed I would say that the more I have read and the more that I have heard about what has happened to the Claimant, the more convinced I am of the institutionalised anti-English discrimination that seems to be inherent in the practice of the Trust displayed towards Mr Bone.

8. Despite my having had some involvement in helping to set up and do some work for the Workers of England Union, nevertheless the Workers of England Union are of course a separate organisation from the English Democrats and I am not personally an officer of the Workers of England Union.

9. I am willing to attend the Tribunal and give evidence and to tender myself for cross-examination.

Statement of Truth

I believe that the facts in this Witness Statement are true.

Signed………………………… ……… Dated ………………………
Robin Charles William Tilbrook

Paying the Price? This year’s students from England

2012-01-05T14:57:00.004Z

Any day now on the doormats of many student hopefuls there will be a letter offering a place at university later this year.

For English students a decision to accept these offers won’t just be a proud moment but also an expensive decision. The evidence now emerging suggests that there has been a significant drop in applications for places;
eg see here >>> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/8992752/University-applications-drop-by-23000-after-fees-hike.html

Most of the English students who accept will be landed with a bill for £9,000 per year for tuition fees naka Top up fees, courtesy of a government whose millionaire leaders went for free and of a British political establishment which has broken its promises not to introduce such fees, a promise made at one time by all three establishment political parties (Labour first, then the Conservatives and most infamously the Liberal Democrats).

In Scotland, with the benefit of rule by a Party which champions for the Scottish, not only are there no such fees, but also there are still grants available for Scottish students from deprived backgrounds.

To add insult to injury, whilst English students must pay £9,000 a year to attend a Scottish University, any students from other EU countries will go free – courtesy of EU rules against discrimination! The English Democrats are campaigning for democratic fairness for England and we oppose any discrimination against English students.

I have issued a press release saying:- “It is appalling and unfair that English students have been singled out to pay to go to university when Scottish students are to go for free. This is a consequence of no party in Westminster daring to stand up for England and for English interests!”

The English Democrats have been campaigning against Top Up/Tuition fees for years. Here are links to two of our campaigning videos:-

serious >.> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCnFhToPsKA&feature=related

and more jokey >>> http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PbibPOjQf-4&feature=related

What do you think?

Is Plaid Cymru a serious nationalist party?

2012-01-05T09:54:00.005Z

In mid 2010 I was asked by the blogsite 'Wales Home' to do a guest article questioning Plaid Cymru's effectiveness and credentials as a nationalist party.
Here is the article. What do you think?

Is Plaid Cymru a serious nationalist party?
Bubble — By Robin Tilbrook on June 28, 2010 7:00 am

IT IS a truism that Welsh independence can only come about either with the consent of the English nation or by war! Thankfully there is little sign of any appetite by any Welsh nationalists to achieve a separation of the nations by war. That leaves the consent of the English nation as the only legitimate and viable option for Plaid Cymru.

We might therefore expect to see Plaid Cymru to spare no effort to encourage a greater sense of English nationalism, as it is obvious that a lingering sense of Britishness represents the greatest obstacle to the Welsh nationalist dreams of independence (or even the more modest aim of a full Welsh Parliament). It is worth recalling that as Conservative leader in 2000 William Hague, took part in a BBC Radio 4 programme called Brits in which he said: “English nationalism is the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism that can arise within the United Kingdom, because England is 5/6ths of the population of the UK…Once a part of a united country or kingdom that is so predominant in size becomes nationalistic, then really the whole thing is under threat.”

So if Plaid Cymru is serious, we would expect to see signs that they were not only leading the debate within Wales for independence, but also seeking to encourage the debate by all means available to them within England. In fact, what do we see?

When presented with the opportunity of leading the government of Wales and of having one of their leaders as the First Minister of Wales, Plaid Cymru stayed within their comfort zone by taking a few insignificant seats in the British unionist Labour led Welsh government. It became apparent that unlike the savvy Scottish National Party, which has merely positioned itself as being left of centre, Plaid Cymru had fallen into the trap of actually becoming leftist. So, when presented with such a golden opportunity for advancing their ostensible cause, they refused to take it simply because that would have meant sitting in the same cabinet with some Conservative Assembly members. Thus Plaid Cymru lost the kind of opportunity for the advancement of Welsh nationalism which might not present itself again for a generation.

And instead of campaigning against the Barnett Formula for being what it is, namely a unionist electoral bribe, created with a view to using English taxpayers’ money to bribe Welsh voters to vote for whichever unionist party is in power at Westminster, Plaid Cymru’s Welsh Assembly members are seen actively campaigning for an even bigger hand out!

Last but not least in Wales, when offered the opportunity to campaign for a referendum to decide democratically whether the people of Monmouthshire are Welsh or English, Plaid Cymru remain unwilling to engage in a political debate which might be one of the most significant in getting people on both sides of our national borders to focus on their developing sense of Welshness or Englishness.

In England, we find an almost startling absence of activity by Plaid Cymru to promote their cause. While Alex Salmond and the SNP often make controversial remarks helpfully stirring up English nationalism, do we ever hear Plaid Cymru’s voice? To my knowledge, not once.

Also in England, the Scottish National Party has supported the English Constitutional Convention; The Chairman of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, Canon Dr Kenyon Wright, has even spoken, supported and become a member of the English Constitutional Convention and helped the Campaign for an English Parliament (CEP). There has however been no support whatsoever from Plaid Cymru or from Welsh nationalists.

The only English nationalist party comparable to Plaid Cymru, campaigning for an English Parliament, Government and First Minister, with at least the same powers as the Scottish ones, is the English Democrats.

In the EU elections last year the English Democrats stood for the first time across the whole of England and despite our tiny campaign budget got 279,801 votes (more than twice Plaid Cymru’s 126,702). In this year’s General Election we stood 107 candidates (more than Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party put together). So you might think that a serious Welsh nationalist party would be making every effort to help our progress and thereby build a constituency in England that would welcome constitutional change for Wales. Instead Plaid Cymru’s leadership has refused to even meet us.

This is in stark contrast with our friendly relations with the Scottish National Party. We have been pleased to welcome the SNP’s Angus MacNeil MP to speak at a recent Annual Party Conference and our Vice Chairman was welcomed by leaders of the SNP in Edinburgh and her hand was shaken, during a BBC Newsnight programme, by Alex Salmond.

The reason for this refusal, that was given by their leadership, was that Plaid Cymru would not work with a political party that was “Eurosceptic”. This confirmed all my suspicions about Plaid Cymru’s ineffectiveness as a nationalist party for Wales. It would have been impertinent, if they had been genuine Welsh nationalists, to worry about the attitude of English nationalism towards the EU. Also it showed that they were not interested in developing the English dimension to the debate, nor yet again are they willing to step outside their ideologically, hide bound comfort zone, in order to develop their ostensible cause.

When Nigel Farage, one of the leaders of the British nationalist UKIP appeared on Question Time in Wales on 25th February 2010, he was foolishly insulted by Elfyn Llwyd MP, who claimed that Farage’s British nationalist comments showed him up as being “a little Englander”! Mr Llwyd also spent much of the programme cozying up to Labour’s, Peter Hain. Doesn’t Mr Llwyd even know the difference between British and English nationalism?

In the event during the 2010 General Election, far from supporting us in England, Plaid Cymru supported the internationalist, socialist and Europhile, Green Party!

In the coming Welsh Assembly elections, the English Democrats will be standing in the South East Welsh Assembly region where we will continue our campaign for the people of traditional Monmouthshire to have a referendum on a question that only a modern, democratic, nationalist party could pose i.e. do the people of Monmouthshire wish to be English or Welsh? Because the media coverage rules require it, we shall also be standing in the Regional lists throughout Wales on the ticket “English Democrats – for a Proper Welsh National Parliament”. My sincere hope is that either Plaid Cymru will support us in this campaign or that a more effective Welsh nationalist party will emerge.

When a political party acts in a manner which does not further its ostensible agenda and supports other parties which are ostensibly hostile to that agenda, as Plaid Cymru does, I think it is legitimate to raise the question that I have in the heading of this article: is Plaid Cymru a serious nationalist party for Wales and the Welsh Nation? In my view Wales deserves a serious nationalist party, just as England deserves its serious nationalist party and so does Scotland. Scotland and England have theirs but where, oh where is Wales’? I leave you with a proverbial quotation from St Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 7, verse 20: “By their fruits ye shall know them”.

There were 268 comments - not all friendly! You can see here >> http://waleshome.org/2010/06/is-plaid-cymru-a-serious-nationalist-party/

The "growing sense of Englishness is becoming politicized"!

2012-01-03T19:51:00.003Z

The IPPR is one of Labour's favourite 'Thinktanks' but it is worried! It is becoming aware that the English are waking up!

At the IPPR offices in Buckingham Street, London at noon on Thursday 26 January, it is running a seminar entitled:-

The dog that finally barked: The new politics of Englishness
The seminar will ask:- "Is Englishness now the dominant source of identity for the English? Do the English still believe that Westminster is capable of governing in the interests of all parts of England? How will the English react to further constitutional change in Scotland?"

And we are told:- "Drawing on the most comprehensive examination of English public attitudes towards questions of identity, governance and nationhood this seminar will discuss the extent to which a growing sense of Englishness is becoming politicized and its implications for British politics."

On the panel are Professors Richard Wyn Jones and Michael Kenny who have done the research and two establishment politicians and MPs, John Denham and David Davies.

Dr Guy Lodge, the politcs director of the IPPR tells me that the English Democrats are going to be very pleased with what the IPPR have discovered about the awakening of English Nationalism and he has promised to include me in the discussion. He hopes that Labour and the Conservatives will be so alarmed by the rising English groundswell that they will take steps to draw its sting before it does damage to the British political Establishment!

After the meeting I shall report back on what ideas they come up with!

........................................................................................

Here is what the IPPR say about themselves:-

About us
IPPR, the Institute for Public Policy Research, is the UK’s leading progressive thinktank. We produce rigorous research and innovative policy ideas for a fair, democratic and sustainable world.

We are open and independent in how we work, and with offices in London and the North of England, IPPR spans a full range of local and national policy debates. Our international partnerships extend IPPR’s influence and reputation across the world.

We currently have more than 30 research staff working on key policy areas: the future of the economy, reform of public services, family policy, welfare reform, political renewal, climate change and migration.

IPPR North, based in Newcastle and Manchester, specialises in regional economics, localism and community policy.

We publish more than 50 reports each year and our website is a key hub for progressive thinking. Our events programme brings high-profile politicians and leading thinkers to a wide range of audiences.

IPPR is committed to the following objectives:

Combating inequality: Not just through distributing some of the proceeds of growth to the least well off, but by taking active steps to share power, opportunity, income and wealth much more evenly.
Empowering citizens: Not simply by handing down responsibility from the state, but giving people real power, security and resources to shape and control their destiny.
Promoting social responsibility: Not treating people as atomised individuals, but recognising that society is made up of interdependent individuals, who flourish because of the ties and networks that support them.
Creating a fair and sustainable economy: Not only through better regulated financial markets that move away from greed and debt, but through a commitment to a low carbon, less consumerist and more inclusive growth and prosperity that helps alleviate the plight of the global poor and protects the future of our planet.
Revitalising democracy: Not just through sweeping away outmoded practices at Westminster and embracing political pluralism, but by radically transforming democratic processes and establishing new ways of doing politics at local and national levels, in Europe and internationally.

The English Democrats' Chairman's New Years' Message

2011-12-31T09:26:00.004Z

I hope that all English Democrats’ members, supporters and voters have already had a very Merry Christmas and I wish us all a very Happy New Year!

As the New Year approaches, it is worth considering both what we have achieved already, which I have tried to give some flavour of, in my three part 'Retrospectives', and also to look forward to the opportunities which the coming year will present.

An important milestone, that was reached in 2011, was our council election victories in Boston, Lincolnshire, where our excellent candidates, Elliott Fountain and Dave Owens, were elected as English Democrats councillors for the Borough. These were not the first English Democrats councillors, but their victories were our first ever election wins at this level, and I am sure there will be many more such results in the coming years for our Party. It is generally considered a significant milestone when a party reaches the point where it can win First Past the Post elections!

We fielded a very respectable 237 candidates across the country in the May elections, and some other excellent results, for a small Party at our stage of growth, were obtained.

2011 was also the year in which the new website was launched. We also had an excellent Party Conference, held in Leicester.

A number of organisational and administrational improvements were also set in motion in 2011, and I am sure the Party will benefit from these as we move into 2012. We have 'upped our game' considerably with a professional fund raising campaign and have also used the opportunity to prune our membership database from any natural wastage of lapsed members – an exercise which we hadn’t done for a couple of years. So I can now reveal that we have today 2992 proper party members as specified in our Constitution and a further more than 7,000 who have signed up to express their support. This is a useful point from which to focus on building up our donor and supporter base over the coming years.

The coming year will be an exciting one for our Party. 2012 will see mayoral referendums in eleven of the major cities of England, with some coming as a result of government legislation and others having been or to be triggered due to the hard work of our activists, as is the case, for example, in Salford. There our North West Chairman, Stephen Morris, is doing great work towards the success of that campaign. The Salford referendum gives the people of Salford their first chance to decide who will be their Council Leader on the 26th January (http://www.salford.gov.uk/mayoral-referendum.htm).

In addition to this, there will be a Spring Conference on the 10th March and then 128 Local Authority elections on the 3rd May, at which our Party will strive both to stand more candidates than ever before and to ensure that some of those candidates emerge as victorious English Democrats councillors.

On the same day there will be elections in London, to the Greater London Assembly and also for the position of Mayor of London. Our capital desperately needs an English patriotic voice and it is important that we give London the best campaign that we can manage - and our plans are already well advanced!

In November the public will have the chance to elect Police and Crime Commissioners for every English Police Force area outside London. The English Democrats will field as many suitable candidates as possible in these elections, as some good old fashioned commonsense is badly needed in our Police Forces where their effectiveness is weakened and undermined constantly by red tape and politically correctness. Elected English Democrats' Police and Crime Commissioners will oppose the PC politicisation of our Police Forces and let our bobbies get on with doing what they do best - fighting crime!

So far I have only mentioned some of the main elections which are to be held in 2012. There will also be many other exciting projects and developments that our Party will be busy with.

As you may imagine, from the above photograph, I shall be looking to hanging out the Cross of St George right across England and I shall need all the support that you can give! So let's start the New Year determined to make much more real progress for England!

For now let me just wish all our members, supporters and voters a very Happy New Year. I look forward to working together to make 2012 a great year both for our Party and for England’s Cause!

Robin Tilbrook
Chairman
The English Democrats

Retrospective - Part 3 - (2011)

2011-12-30T20:53:00.003Z

Last year whilst we were pleased to have volunteers to stand in elections for the English Democrats but we had not worked hard to maximise the numbers of candidates in the May local elections because we would have needed to stand over 1,500 candidates to qualify for a Party Election Broadcast.

Below I set out our results for the 2011 local elections. They naturally vary according to whether the English Democrats had any track record of standing in the relevant local authority or ward and also how much effort was put in. All in all I think the results are very credible both to our Party and especially to our candidates.

We also stood in all 3 parliamentary by-elections and in several local elections. Our reach is growing with the growing public awareness of us and of England’s Cause!

I expect that this upward trend will continue – perhaps dramatically so next year – as we have now reached a critical mass of public awareness of our issues. More and more people in England are identifying their National Identity as “English” (see this opinion poll for startling evidence of this growing trend >>> http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/hufq8ro02k/YG-Archives-pol-Europe-181111.pdf).

I believe that this politically hugely significant sea change in public awareness of our Cause is in no small part due to our over 25 million leaflets delivered so far (also Alex Salmond has helped a bit too!).

Whatever the cause I am getting growing interest in the English Democrats and English nationalism from other politicians, journalists and also from academics. They recognise that the slumbering giant of England is stirring and awakening – the interesting question is what will that giant and the English Democrats do in the coming year?

........................................

English Democrats' results for the May 2011 Local Council Elections

The percentages are based on valid ballot papers. (not all Councils in England had elections in 2011)

Ashfield District Council

Woodhouse Ward - Carole Terzza
Lab - 1081 44.18% LibDem - 995 40.66% ED - 371 15.16%

Woodhouse Ward - Tony Ellis
Lab - 968 45.23% LibDem - 943 44.07% ED - 229 10.7%

Barnsley City Council

Hoyland Milton Ward - Kevin Riddiough
Con - 314 9.49% Lab - 1630 49.26% ED - 290 8.76%

Boston Council

Fenside Ward - Elliott Fountain Elected
BBI - 182 29.21% Lab - 159 25.52% LibDem - 51 8.19% ED - 231 37.08%

Fenside Ward - David Owen Elected
BBI - 176 29.28% Lab - 162 26.96% LibDem - 68 11.31% ED - 195 32.45%

Fishtoft Ward - Dee Bills
Con -1502 40.33% Ind - 1199 32.20% Res A - 626 16.81% ED - 397 10.66 %

Kirton Ward - Mark Blackamore
Con - 573 28.25% UKIP 276 13.61% Ind 620 30.57% Res A 363 17.9% ED - 196 9.66%

Pilgrim Ward - Jamie Taylor
Con - 146 42.44% UKIP - 93 27.03% Res A - 48 13.95%% ED - 57 16.57%

Skirbeck Ward - Callum McCuaig
Con - 397 25.42% Lab 372 23.82% Ind 336 21.51% Res A 198 12.68%  ED - 259 16.58%

Skirkbeck Ward - Carl Rowe
Lab 390 43.24% Res A 206 22.84% ED - 306 33.92%

Staniland North Ward - Richard Green
Con - 66 15.64%  UKIP - 43 10.19%  Lab - 118 27.96% Res A 110 26.07%  ED - 85 20.14%

Staniland South Ward - Darren Crozier
Con - 284 30.24% Lab - 225 23.96% Res A 244 25.99%  ED - 186 19.81%

Staniland South Ward - Liam Blackamore
Con - 293 31.61% Lab - 265 28.59% Res A 194 20.93% ED - 175 18.88%

West Ward - Ross Isham
Con - 438 56.52% Res A 208 26.84% ED - 129 16.65%

Bradford City Council

Wibsey Ward - Andrew Clarke
Con - 809 23.42% UKIP - 363 10.51% Lab - `1814 52.50% LibDem - 243 7.03% ED - 226 6.54%

Brentwood Council

Warley Ward - Kim Burelli
Con - 978 45.94% Lab - 259 12.17% LibDem - 782 36.73% ED - 110 5.17%

Bristol City Council

Bedminster Ward - Jon Baker
Con - 749 18.10% Lab - 1694 40.93% LibDem - 839 20.27% Grn - 621 15% ED - 111 2.68%

Filwood Ward - Barbara Wright
Con - 311 14.18% Lab - 1400 63.84% LibDem - 135 6.16% Grn - 108 4.9% BNP - 112 5.11% ED - 92 4.2%

Frome Vale Ward - Greg Shaw
Con - 1671 45.21% Lab - 1358 36.74% LibDem 218 5.9% Grn - 243 6.57% ED - 136 3.68%

Hartcliffe Ward - Stephen Wright
Con - 642 23.88% Lab - 1500 55.8% LibDem - 148 5.51% Grn - 126 4.69% ED - 272 10.12%

Hengrove Ward - Mike Blundell
Con - 1010 28.49% Lab - 131 37.55% LibDem - 924 26.06% Grn - 91 2.57% ED - 189 5.33%

St George West Ward - Eddie Tranter
Con - 432 13.49% Lab - 1346 42.04% LibDem - 936 29.23% Grn - 229 7.15% ED - 181 5.65%

Whitchurch Park Ward - Ray Carr
Con - 449 15.74% Lab - 1472 51.59% LibDem - 688 24.11% Grn - 90 3.15% ED - 154 5.4%

Broxbourne Borough Council

Bury Green Ward - Chris Francis
Con - 1035 60.31% Lab - 389 22.67% ED - 292 17.02%

Chestnut Central Ward - Ramon Paul Johns
Con - 1405 67.91% Lab - 423 20.44% ED - 241 11.65%

Rosedale Ward - Steve McCole
Con - 642 53.95% Lab - 214 17.98% ED - 334 28.07%

Wormley and Turnford Ward - William James Dewick
Con - 1250 59.13% Lab - 543 25.69% ED - 321 15.18%

Bury Council

Besses Ward - Stephen Morris
Con - 462 16.5% UKIP - 138 4.93% Lab - 1523 54.39% LibDem - 468 16.71% ED - 209 7.46%

Holyrood Ward - Valerie Morris
Con - 584% 16.32% Lab - 1508 42.13% LibDem 1314 36.71% ED - 173 4.83%

Dartford Borough Council

Bean and Darenth Ward - Stephen Culliford
Con - 908 20.92% Lab - 416 9.58% ED - 227 5.23%

Bean and Darenth Ward - Gary Rodgers
Con - 886 20.41% Lab - 362 8.34% ED - 185 4.26%

Bean and Darenth Ward - Neil Tibby
Con - 824 618.98% Lab - 358 8.25% ED - 175 4.03%

Brent Ward - Jerry Chatterton
Con - 1152 18.93% Lab - 779 12.8% ED - 252 4.14%

Brent Ward - Mike Tibby
Con - 1129 18.55% Lab - 638 10.48% ED - 211 3.47%

Brent Ward - Mitchel Jackson
Con - 1115 18.32% Lab - 616 10.12% ED - 193 3.17%

Castle Ward - Francis Maud
Con - 337 56.35% Lab - 122 20.4% Ind 83 13.88% ED - 56 9.36%

Greenhithe Ward - Dianne Cooper
Con - 1565 38.48%  Lab - 871 21.42 Res A 1540 37.86% ED - 91 2.24%

Heath Ward - Carol White
Con - 4267 68.50% Lab - 1685 27.09% ED - 268 4.31%

Joyce Green Ward - Glen Garderner
Con - 492 26.14% Lab - 1055 56.06% Lib Dems 159 8.45% ED - 176 9.35%

Joydens Wood Ward - Laurence Williams
Con - 5144 74.48% Lab - 1531 22.16% ED - 232 3.36%

Littlebrook Ward - Paul Wells
Con - 489 27.10% Lab - 1089 60.37% ED - 226 12.53%

Newtown Ward - Darren Staines
Con - 951 16.56% UKIP - 842 14.66% ED - 265 4.61%

Newton Ward - Jim Read
Con - 938 16.33% UKIP - 733 12.76% ED - 225 3.92%

Newton Ward - Louise Uncles
Con - 898 15.63% Lab - 679 11.82% ED - 213 3.71%

Princess Ward - Christine Dunmall
Con - 1591 38.97% Lab - 2223 54.46% ED - 268 6.57%

Stone Ward - Paul Cooper
Con - 1845 47.95% Lab - 1811 47.06% ED - 192 4.99%

Sutton Hawley Ward - Chris Bousfield
Con - 1777 67.90% Lab - 703 26.86% ED - 137 5.26%

Town Ward - Andy Waghorn
Con - 533 48.63% Lab - 391 35.68% Ind 43 3.92% ED - 129 11.77%

Town Ward - Nathan King
Con - 495 50.46% Lab - 354 36.09% Ind 26 2.65%  ED - 106 10.81%

West Hill Ward - John Griffiths
Con - 1145 18.22% Lab - 756 12.03% Ind 218 3.47% ED - 258 4.10%

West Hill Ward - Michelle Duncan
Con - 1142 18.17% Lab - 666 10.59% ED - 225 3.58%

West Hill Ward - Steve Uncles
Con - 1028 16.35% Lab - 660 10.5% ED - 188 2.99%

Willington Ward - Terresa Cannon
Con - 2031 72.90% Lab - 638 22.90% ED - 117 4.2%

Doncaster City Council

Adwick Ward - Vivian Woodrow
Con - 509 14.9% Lab - 2326 68.07% LibDem - 259 7.58% ED - 323 9.45%

Askern Spa Ward - Malcolm Woodrow
Con - 831 20.64% Lab - 2205 54.77% Independent 416 10.33% ED - 574 14.26%

Bentley Ward - Tony Wagstaff
Lab - 1937 61.03% Independect 498 15.69% ED - 739 23.28%

Bessacarr and Cantley Ward - Keith Hewitt
Con - 1006 21.19% Lab - 1371 28.88% LibDem - 1614 34% ED - 756 15.93%

Edenthorpe, Kirk Sandall and Barnby Dunn Ward - Fred Gee
Con - 837 - 18.89% Lab - 1618 36.51% LibDem - 384 8.89% ED - 928 20.94%

Edlington and Warnsworth Ward - John Brennan
Con - 292 7.55% Lab - 1856 48.01% BNP 153 3.96% Independents 1053 27.24%  ED - 512 18.20%

Finningley Ward - Nigel Berry
Con - 2217 41.43% Lab - 1327 24.8% LibDem - 670 12.52% ED - 1137 21.25%

Great North Road Ward - Steve Grocott
Con - 551 15.12% Lab - 2195 60.24% LibDem - 161 4.42% ED - 492 13.5%

Hatfield Ward - Mick Glynn
Con - 556 14.44% Lab - 1519 39.45 Independent 773 20.08% Residents Association 329 8.55% ED - 673 21.87%

Sprotborough Ward - Barbara Hewitt
Con - 1629 38.44% Lab - 1398 32.99% Green 549 12.95% ED - 662 15.62%

Stainforth and Morrends Ward - Margeret Holt-Taylor
Con - 471 15.18% Lab - 1582 51% BNP 288 9.28% Independent 135 4.35% Residents Association 232 7.48% ED - 394 13.28%

Wheatley Ward - Roy Penketh
Con - 500 14.58% Lab - 1867 54.45% LibDem - 276 8.05% ED - 786 22.92%

East Lindsey District Council

Chapel St Leonards Ward - Tim Burrett
Con - 958 37.10% Independents 1358 52.59% ED - 266 10.30%

ConningsbyTattersall/ Ward - Ronnie Ford-Kennedy
Con - 1123 48.55% LibDem - 701 30.31% ED - 489 21.14%

East Riding of Yorkshire Council

Hessle Ward - Victoria Carte
Con - 893 22.45% Lab - 1334 33.54% LibDem - 1459 36.39% ED - 291 7.32%

Hessle Ward - Peter Mawer
Con - 673 17.5% Lab - 1335 34.71% LibDem - 1471 38.25% ED - 367 9.54%

Hessle Ward - Michael Burton
Con - 793 20.48% Lab - 1257 32.46% LibDem - 1269 32.75 Independent 220 5.68% ED - 333 9.12%

Tranby Ward - Michael Cassidy
Con - 683 21.21% Lab - 1077 33.45% LibDem - 1093 33.94% ED - 367 11.4%

Tranby Ward - Peter Asquith-Cowen
Con - 581 18.87% Lab - 1058 34.36% LibDem - 1046 33.97% ED - 394 12.8%

Willerby and Kirkella Ward - Joanne Robinson
Con - 2163 45.78% Lab - 801 16.95% LibDem - 1443 30.54% ED - 318 6.73%

Willerby and Kirkella Ward - Graham Robinson
Con - 2300 48.84% Lab - 682 14.48% LibDem - 1324 28.12% ED - 403 8.56%

Willerby and Kirkella Ward - John Ottaway
Con - 2039 44.26% Lab - 705 15.3% LibDem 1476 32.04% ED - 387 8.4%

Epping Forest District Council

Chipping Ongar, Greensted and Marden Ash Ward - Robin Tilbrook
Con - 669 42.83% Lab - 155 9.92% LibDem - 491 31.43% Green 99 6.34% ED - 148 9.48%

Erewash Borough Council

Hallam Fields Ward - Giles Farrand
Con - 888 33.76% Lab - 1450 55.13% ED - 292 11.1%

Hull City Council

Boothferry Ward - David Rust
Con - 260 8.04% UKIP - 204 6.13% Lab - 1402 43.34% LibDem - 1432 37.19% ED - 166 5.13%

Derringham Ward - Billy Hughes
Con - 215 7.20% UKIP - 268 8.98% Lab - 1243 41.64% LibDem - 1139 38.16% ED - 120 4.02%

Newington Ward - Tineke Robinson
Con - 102 4.84% Lab - 1204 - 57.09% Libdem - 680 31.29% ED - 143 6.78%

Pickering Ward - Peter Mawer
Con - 169 5.21% Lab - 1658 51.14% LibDem - 1203 37.11% ED - 212 6.54%

Kettering Borough Council

Brambleside Ward - Derek Hilling
Con - 1383 43.29% Lab - 1033 37.36% ED - 349 12.62%

St Peter Ward - Kevin Sills
Con - 1783 61.36% Lab - 890 30.61% ED - 233 8.00%

Kirklees Council

Denby Dale Ward - Paul McEnhill
Con - 2514 41.11% Lab - 2285 37.36% LibDem - 392 6.41% Grn - 443 7.24% BNP - 206 3.37% ED - 276 4,51%

Leicester City Council

Humberstone and Hamilton Ward - David Haslett
Con - 4638 38.16% Lab 6800 55.95% Ind 274 2.25% ED - 442 3.64%

Leeds City Council

Ardsley & Robin Hood Ward - Joanne Beverley
Con - 1377 23.55% UKIP - 384 6.57% Lab - 2847 48.68% LibDem - 360 6.16% ED - 880 15.05%

Morley North Ward - Tom Redmond
Con - 874 12.69%  Lab - 1599 23.22% LibDem - 199 2.89% Inds 3642 52.88% ED - 573 8.32%

Morley South Ward - Chris Beverley
Con - 736 11.56% Lab - 2129 33.44% LibDem 180 2.83% Inds 2076 32.61%  ED - 1245 19.56%

Liverpool Council

Central Ward - Steve Greenhalgh
Con - 161 8.41% Lab - 1348 70.43% LibDem - 144 7.52% Grn - 178 9.3% ED - 83 4.34%

Old Swan Ward - Steve McEllenborough
Con - 118 2.87% UKIP - 202 4.92% Lab - 2689 65.51% LibDem - 751 18.29% Grn - 97 2.36% Lib 116 2.83 TUSC 74 1.8%% ED - 58 1.41%

St Michaels Ward - Neil Kenny
Con - 143 3.65% UKIP - 70 1.79% Lab 1341 34.23% LibDem - 326 8.32% Grn - 1978 50.48& Lib 31 .79%  ED - 29 0.74%

Warbreck Ward -Lee Walton
Con - 110 2.81% UKIP - 124 3.17% Lab - 3190 81.46% LibDem - 337 8.61% Grn - 34 0.87% Lib 66 1.69%  ED - 55 1.4%

Medway Council

Chatham Central Ward - Karen Streafield
Con - 2323 25.14% UKIP - 314 0.03% Lab - 5699 61.69% LibDem - 659 7.13% ED - 242 2.62%

Lordswood and Capstone Ward - Phoebe Troy
Con - 1618 58.52% UKIP - 256 9.26% Lab - 712 25.75% ED - 179 6.27%

Peninsula Ward - Dean Lacey
Con - 1557 56.03% Lab - 898 19.68% LibDem - 282 6.18% Grn - 351 7.69% ED - 476 10.43%

Peninsula Ward - Ron Sands
Con - 2125 54.03% Lab - 975 24.79% LibDem - 298 7.58% ED - 535 13.6%

Princess park - Daniel Logan
Con - 1488 53.62% Lab - 968 34.88% LibDem - 119 4.29% ED - 200 7.21%

Rochester West Ward - Agita Sudraba
Con - 1658 50.23% Lab - 1029 31.17% LibDem - 246 7.45% Grn - 280 8.48% ED - 88 2.67%

Strood North - Philip Varnham
Con - 2016 47.8% Lab - 1390 32.95% LibDem - 318 7.54% ED - 282 6.69%

Strood South - Michael Walters
Con - 1576 42.7% Lab - 1395 37.79% LibDem - 207 5.61% ED - 513 13.9%

Walderslade Ward - Sean Varnham
Con - 1280 44.83% Lab - 490 17.16% LibDem - 121 4.24%

Medway Parish

Hoo St Werburgh (East Ward) - Ron Sands
Bamber - 601 22.77% bhattal - 298 11.29% Chambers - 329 12.46% Hipsey - 305 11.55% Perfect - 500 18.94% Sands - 347 13.14 % Elected ED

North Hertfordshire District Council

Letchworth Grange Ward - Charles Vickers
Con - 924 35.86% UKIP - 165 6.4% Lab - 1085 42.1% LibDem - 185 7.18% Grn - 145 5.63% ED - 73 2.83%

Pendle Council

Earby Ward- James Jackman
Con - 1145 53.73% Lab - 513 24.07% LibDem - 210 9.85% ED - 263 12.34%
Earby Parish - James Jackman - Elected Uncontested

Peterborough Council

Fletton and Woodston Ward - Kevin Roddis
Con - 1220 47.88% Lab - 845 33.16% Grn - 253 9.93% ED - 230 9.03%

Northborough Ward - Simon Potter
Con - 695 60.43% UKIP - 85 7.39% Lab - 134 11.65% ED - 236 20.52%

Orton Longueville Ward - Graham Murphy
Con - 999 40.38% UKIP - 292 - 11.8% Lab - 942 38.08% ED - 241 9.74%

Park Ward - Maria Goldspink
Con - 1220 40.14% Lab - 1555 51.17% Grn - 151 4.97% ED - 113 3.72%

Stanground Central Ward - Stephen Goldspink
Con - 996 39.79% Lab - 818 32.68% Ind 105 4.19%  ED - 584 23.33%

Portsmouth City Council

Baffins Ward - Ian Ducane
Con - 1251 28.65% Lab - 683 15.64% Lib Dem -1842 41.78% Grn - 216 4.95 Ind 149 3.41% ED - 243 5.57%

Copnor Ward - David Knight
Con - 1402 38.29% Lab - 864 23.59% LibDem - 1094 29.87% ED - 302 8.25%

Drayton and Farlington Ward - Dave Ward
Con - 3074 63.95% Lab - 925 19.24% LibDem - 555 11.55% ED - 253 5.26%

Eastney and Craneswater Ward - Peter Lawrence
Con - 1369 34.21% Lab - 603 15.07% LibDem - 1842 46.03% ED - 188 4.70%

Rochford District Council

Hockley Central - Thomas Broad
Con - 1577 74.14% UKIP - 255 11.99% ED - 295 13.87%

Hullbridge Ward - John Hayter
Con - 990 42% Lab - 402 17.06% Grn - 425 18.03% ED - 540 22.91%

Lodge Ward - Jason Hodson
Con - 901 63.54% LibDem - 276 19.46% ED - 241 17%

Sweyne Park Ward - Alan Twydell
Con - 673 56.84% LibDem - 316 26.69% ED - 195 16.47%

Rossendale Council

Stackstead Ward - Tony Justice
Con - 221 22.78% Lab - 605 62.73% ED - 144 14.85%

Salford City Council

Little Hulton Ward - Arthur Johnson
Con - 297 12.97% UKIP - 165 7.21% Lab - 1522 66.46% LibDem - 106 4.63% ED - 200 8.73%

Walkden North Ward - Laurence Depares
Con - 387 15.55% UKIP - 188 7.56% Lab - 1604 64.47% LibDem - 116 4.66% ED - 193 7.76%

Walkden South Ward - Paul Whitelegg
Con - 1784 49.71% UKIP - 167 4.65% Lab - 1379 38.42% LibDem - 142 3.96% ED - 117 3.26%

Sefton Council

Derby Ward - Dean Mcgrane
Con - 95 3.48% UKIP - 404 14.79% Lab - 2071 75.81% LibDem - 107 3.92% ED - 55 2.01%

Solihull Council

Dorridge/Bentley Heath Ward - Andrew Taylor
Con - 3094 68.83% Lab - 350 7.79% LibDem - 544 12.10% Grn - 210 4.67 Res A - 120 2.67% ED - 177 3.94%

Elmdon Ward - Robert Lassen
Con - 1299 32.56% UKIP - 221 5.54% Lab - 580 14.54% LibDem - 1648 41.31% Grn - 77 1.93% Res A - 46 1.15% ED - 118 2.96%

Knowle Ward - Frank O'Brien
Con - 2931 68.92% Lab - 435 10.23% LibDem - 317 7.45% Grn - 297 6.98% Res A - 80 1.88% ED - 193 4.54%

Lyndon Ward - David Reynolds
Con - 1041 26.42% UKIP - 131 3.32% Lab - 760 19.29% Lib Dem - 1605 40.74% Grn - 131 3.32% Res A 14 0.36% ED - 258 6.55%

Stoke City Council

Baddeley, Milton and Norton Ward - Leslie (Sammy) Simpson
Con - 3320 28.82% UKIP - 410 3.56% Lab - 3381 29.35% LibDem -566 4.91% BNP - 439 3.81% Ind - 2025 17.58% Res A 1124 - 9.76 ED - 253 2.20.%

Tameside Council

St Michaels Ward - Dave Timpson
Con - 716 24.93% UKIP - 145 5.05% Lab - 1627 56.65% Green - 145 5.05% ED - 239 8.32%

Tandridge District Council

Bletchingley and Nutfield Ward - Daniel Beddoes
Con - 122 14.17% UKIP - 243 28.22% Lab - 211 24.51% LibDem - 231 26.83% ED - 54 6.27%

Three Rivers District Council

Croxley Green Ward - Roger Holmes
Con - 620 30% Lab - 248 12% LibDem - 1022 49.44% ED - 177 8.56%

Croxley Green Parish Council - Roger Holmes
Con - 1881 29.97% Lib Dem - 1870 29.79% Ind - 1767 28.15% Res A - 411 6.55% ED - 348 5.54%

Tunbridge Wells Council

Sherwood Ward - Jojo Stanley
Con - 813 47.8% UKIP - 192 11.29% Lab - 340 19.99% LibDem - 235 13.82% ED - 121 7.11%

Walsall Council

Pheasey Park Farm Ward - Christopher Newey
Con - 1782 48.35% UKIP - 429 11.64% Lab - 1161 31.5% LibDem - 104 2.82% ED - 210 5.7%

Wealden Council

Hailsham East Ward -
Con - 282 45.41% Lab - 121 19.48% Lib Dem - 145 23.35% ED - 73 11.76%

Wellingborough Council

Croyland Ward - Terrence Spencer

Con - 2802 69.65%   Lab - 735 18.27% ED - 486 12.08%

Retrospective - Part 2

2011-12-30T19:23:00.006Z

I will continue the story of how the English Democrats have progressed with this Summary of General Election performances and Parliamentary by-elections and EU elections.

By-elections, 2004-2005
Date of election Constituency Candidate Votes %
15 July 2004 Birmingham Hodge Hill Mark Wheatley 277 1.4
30 September 2004 Hartlepool Ed Abrams 41 0.1

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General Election 2005
The English Democrats contested 24 seats, receiving a total of 15,149 votes, an average of 631 (range 221 to 1216). The percentage share of the vote ranged from 0.6% to 3.4%, with an average of 1.45%. We got almost no mention in the media but did distribute a single unaddressed leaflet using the Royal mail election distribution in most of these seats.
Constituency Candidate Votes %
Aldershot Gary Cowd 701 1.7
Basildon Ms Kim Gandy 510 1.2
Bristol North West Michael Blundell 828 1.7
Chatham & Aylesford Michael Russell 668 1.6
City of Chester Ed Abrams 308 0.7
Chesterfield Ian Jerram 814 1.8
Copeland Alan Mossop 662 2.0
Doncaster North Michael Cassidy 561 1.8
Epping Forest Robin Tilbrook 631 1.4
Grantham & Stamford Benedict Brown 774 1.6
Greenwich & Woolwich Garry Bushell 1216 3.4
Hexham Ian Riddell 521 1.3
Ipswich Jervis Kay 641 1.3
Lancashire West Stephen Garrett 525 1.2
Leeds North West Adrian Knowles 545 1.2
Norwich South Christine Constable 466 1.1
Reigate Harold Green 600 1.4
Saffron Walden Raymond Brown 860 1.6
Sevenoaks John Marshall 751 1.7
Southend West Jeremy Moss 701 1.8
Staffordshire South* Garry Bushell 643 2.5
Vauxhall Janus Polenceus 221 0.6
Wakefield Paul McEnhill 356 0.8
Wantage Gerald Lambourne 646 1.2

*Note the South Staffordshire election was postponed until 23 June due to the death of a candidate

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By-election 2008
Date of election Constituency Candidate Votes %
10 July 2008 Haltemprice and Howden Joanne Robinson 1714 7.2 Our best Parliamentary election result YET!
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General Election 2010
The English Democrats stood 107 candidates in the 2010 general election. (106 is the minimum number required to qualify for a Party Election Broadcast.) The EDP received 64,826 votes, or 0.3% of the vote in England, won only one deposit in Doncaster North with 5.2% and overall 0.2% of the vote in the United Kingdom. We were determined to qualify for the Party Election Broadcast and here is a link to it >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mC4wiGZsVU What do you think?
Constituency Candidate Votes %
Ashfield Tony Ellis 1102 2.3
Beckenham Dan Eastgate 223 0.5
Bedfordshire Mid John Cooper 712 1.3
Bexleyheath & Crayford John Griffiths 466 1.1
Blyth Valley Allan White 327 0.8
Bosworth Kames Lampitt 615 1.1
Brent North Arvind Tailor 247 0.5
Brentford & Isleworth David Cunningham 230 0.4
Brentwood & Ongar Robin Tilbrook 491 1.0
Bristol East Stephen Wright 347 0.8
Bristol North West Ray Carr 635 1.3
Bristol South Craig Clarke 400 0.8
Bristol West Jon Baker 270 0.5
Bromley & Chislehurst Jon Cheeseman 376 0.9
Broxbourne Debbie LeMay 618 1.4
Bury South Valerie Morris 494 1.0
Calder Valley Barry Greenwood 157 0.3
Camberwell & Peckham Yohara Robby Munilla 435 0.9
Cambridgeshire North East Graham Murphy 387 0.7
Cambridgeshire North West Stephen Goldspink 1407 2.4
Chatham & Aylesford Sean Varnham 400 0.9
Chelmsford Claire Breed 254 0.5
Chelsea & Fulham George Roseman 169 0.4
Chester, City of Ed Abrams 594 1.3
Chesterfield Ian Jerram 1213 2.6
Chippenham John Maguire 307 0.6
Cities of London & Westminster Frank Roseman 191 0.5
Colchester Eddie Bone 335 0.7
Dartford Gary Rogers 2178 4.3
Daventry Alan Bennett-Spencer 1187 2.3
Devon North Nigel Vidler 146 0.3
Dewsbury Michael Felse 661 1.2
Don Valley Bernie Aston 1756 4.0
Doncaster Central Lawrence Parramore 1816 4.4
Doncaster North Wayne Crawshaw 2148 5.2
Dover Michael Walters 216 0.4
Ealng Southall Sati Chaggar 408 1.0
East Ham Barry O'Connor 822 1.6
Eastleigh Tony Stephen 249 0.5
Eltham Mike Tibby 217 0.5
Enfield North Raquel Weald 131 0.3
Enfield Southgate Ben Weald 173 0.4
Epping Forest Kim Sawyer 285 0.6
Erith & Thamesmead Laurence Williams 465 1.1
Esher & Walton Mike Kearsley 307 0.6
Fareham Joe Jenkins 618 1.1
Gillingham & Rainham Dean Lacey 464 1.0
Gloucester Alan Platt 564 1.1
Gosport Bob Shaw 622 1.3
Gravesham Steven Uncles 1005 2.1
Greenwich & Woolwich Topo Wresniwiro 339 0.8
Haltemprice & Howden Joanne Robinson 1485 3.0
Hampshire East Matt Williams 710 1.4
Harborough David Ball 568 3.1
Hastings & Rye Rodney Bridger 339 0.7
Havant Fungus Addams 809 1.8
Hayes & Harlington Cliff Dixon 464 1.1
Holborn & St Pancras Mikel Susperregi 75 0.1
Hull East Mike Burton 715 2.1
Hull North Michael Cassidy 200 0.6
Hull West & Hessle Pater Mawer 876 2.8
Hyndburn Christopher Reid 413 1.0
Isle of Wight Ian Dunsire 1233 1.8
Islington South & Finsbury John Dodds 301 0.7
Kettering Derek Hilling 952 2.0
Kingswood Michael Blundell 333 0.7
Leeds North West Alan Procter 153 0.4
Lewisham East James Rose 426 1.0
Lincoln Ernest Coleman 604 1.3
Louth & Horncastle Colin Mair 517 1.0
Meon Valley Pat Harris 582 1.1
Northampton South Kevin Sills 618 1.6
Old Bexley & Sidcup Elaine Cheeseman 520 1.1
Orpington Chriss Snape 199 0.1
Penistone & Stocksbridge Paul McEnhill 492 1.1
Peterborough Rob King 770 1.7
Poplar & Limehouse Andrew Osborne 470 1.0
Portsmouth North David Knight 1040 2.4
Portsmouth South Ian DuCane 400 1.0
Rayleigh & Wickford John Hayter 2219 4.2
Redditch Vincent Schittone 255 0.6
Rochester & Strood Ron Sands 2182 4.5
Romford Peter Thorogood 603 1.3
Rossendale & Darwen Michael Johnson 663 1.4
Salford & Eccles Stephen Morris 621 1.5
Selby & Ainsty Graham Michael 677 1.3
Sevenoaks Louise Uncles 806 1.6
Sheffield Hallam David Wildgoose 586 1.1
Southend West Terry Phillips 546 1.3
Stevenage Charles Vickers 366 0.8
Stockton North Ian Saul 1724 2.9
Stratford-On-Avon Fred Bishop 473 0.9
Streatham Janus Polenceus 229 0.5
Sutton & Cheam John Dodds 106 0.2
Tonbridge & Malling Lisa Rogers 390 0.8
Uxbridge & South Ruislip Roger Cooper 403 0.6
Vauxhall Jose Navarro 289 0.7
Warwickshire North David Lane 411 0.9
Wellingborough Terry Spencer 530 1.0
West Bromwich East Mark Cowles 1150 3.0
Westminster North Edward Roseman 99 0.3
Weston-Super-Mare John Peverelle 275 0.5
Winchester Mark Lancaster 503 0.9
Workington Rob Logan 414 1.1
Worsley & Eccles South Paul Whitelegg 1334 3.2

By-elections, 2011

Date of election Constituency Candidate Votes %
13 January 2011 Oldham East and Saddleworth Stephen Morris 144 0.4
3 March 2011 Barnsley Central Kevin Riddiough 544 2.2
15 December 2011 Feltham and Heston Roger Cooper 322 1.38

Summary of EU Parliamentary election performance
Year Number of English Regions Contested Total votes GB Percentage of vote Saved deposits GB Change (percentage points) Number of MEPs
2004 5/9 130,056 0.8 0 N/A 0
2009 9/9 279,801 1.8 1 +1.0 0
In 2009 we made sure that we qualified for the PEB. Here is a link >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mI8678VyRM What do you think?

Note the English Democrats do not stand in Scotland or Wales in the European Elections although the results are displayed as a proportion of the GB results (Northern Ireland has a different electoral system)

Welsh Assembly elections
2007 Welsh Assembly (3rd May 2007)
Due to the English Democrats stance on the status of Monmouthshire, the English Democrats stood in the three constituencies in Monmouthshire and in the South Wales East region. They came 16th place nationwide with 0.2% of the vote.

Constituency Candidate Votes %
Monmouth Ed Abrams 804 2.7
Newport East Michael Blundell 429 2.2
Newport West Andrew Constantine 634 2.7
Regional lists Votes % +/- %
South Wales East 1,655 0.9 n/a

2011 Welsh Assembly (5th May 2011)
The English Democrats stood 5 candidates in the South Wales East region and contested only one individual constituency, Monmouth. The vote in Monmouth fell by 0.2% but regional vote increased by 0.2%. They came 11th place nationwide with 0.1% of the vote.

Constituency Candidate Votes % +/- %
Monmouth Steven Uncles 744 2.5 -0.2

Retrospective - August 2002 to February 2010 (the BBC view)

2011-12-29T11:23:00.004Z

As we approach the New Year and the campaigns of 2011, I wanted to set out what has been achieved so far in establishing the English Democrats as a viable English nationalist party. Like Caesar's Gaul I shall divide this into three parts.

For the first part and in doing this for the period up to February 2010 I don't think that I can do more objectively than to quote materially in full from the obviously not pro English Democrats internal briefing paper to BBC Political Journalists on the English Democrats dated 25 February 2010. It includes consideration of the Electoral Alliance that we were building in preparation for the General Election. It reads as follows:-

"The Alliance for Democracy – English Democrats/Jury Team
Last updated: 25-Feb-2010 11:36
Millbank x36359

1. Alliance for Democracy
2. English Democrats
3. Jury Team

1. Alliance for Democracy

On 13 February, 2010, the English Democrats and Jury Team launched the Alliance for Democracy campaign and manifesto for the 2010 general election.

Whilst remaining independent political parties, they pledged to “campaign on a common policy platform” and not to field candidates against each other in individual constituencies. They declared their intention to field “at least 350 candidates in the 2010 general election across England, Scotland and Wales”.

In addition to candidates from both parties fighting the election “in a co-ordinated manner”, they declared that “other non-discriminatory political parties and groups with similar views are welcome to become associates of the Alliance”.

Alliance for Democracy Policies (published 13 February, 2010)

Reforming our democracy to change the people’s relationship with the state by holding referendums on

- The status of the UK within the EU (UK Electorate)
- Setting up an English Parliament (English electorate)
- The status of Scotland within the UK (Scottish electorate)
- Giving the Welsh Assembly similar powers to the Scottish Parliament (Welsh electorate)
- Reducing the number of MPs by a third (from 650 to 433)
- Changing Commons elections to proportional representation
- Requiring referendums on petition by 5% of the electorate

Legislating for the following policies and then having an authorising referendum before they become law

- Limiting government borrowing to 10% of expenditure
- Protecting bank customer deposits from casino banking
- Limiting benefits to 80% of the after tax minimum wage
- Sentencing violent criminals to “army style” punishment
- Limiting UK troops in Afghanistan to the NATO average
- Requiring private medical insurance for non-EU citizens
- Establishing 10 year residence requirement for UK Citizenship
- Requiring stores to let customers leave excess packaging

Strengthening Parliament

- MPs to be free to vote in line with their best judgment on issues not in their manifesto
- MPs to be paid according to civil service pay scales
- MPs to serve for only three full terms of five years
- Elected Representatives (Prevention of Deception) Act to be passed
- Independent Politicians Complaints Commission to be set up
- Cap donations to political parties
- Members of Select Committees to be elected by MPs
- Gold-plating of EU directives to be stopped
- General elections to take place every five years

Improving the Running of Government

- The House of Commons to elect the Prime Minister
- Prime Minister to appoint junior ministers jointly with Cabinet Ministers
- Departments to be run by a Board
- Government statistics to be published by an independent body

Contacts for the Alliance
www.AllianceforDemocracy.info
Enquiries@AllianceforDemocracy.info
Tel: 08700 624 555

By Post:
Alliance for Democracy
PO Box 65106
London SW1P 9PN

2. English Democrats

The English Democrats party was established in 2002 and Robin Tilbrook is its Chairman. Mr Tilbrook is a solicitor in Essex. In annual financial accounts submitted to the Electoral Commission, the English Democrats gave their membership as 172 in 2002, 775 in 2003, 1,011 in 2004 and 1,202 in 2005. Since 2005 I have not seen any published membership figures.

In the 2003 local elections held across most of England, the party contested one seat out of the 10,427 fought received 123 votes.

In the June 2004 elections to the European Parliament, the party contested five of the nine English regions and secured 1.4% of the total votes cast in those five regions. In the local elections fought in England one the same day, they contested nine of the 4,815 seats up for election and received 1,943 of the 6.8 million votes cast.

In the 2005 general election, the party fielded 24 candidates in England (all of whom lost their deposits) who received a total of 15,149 votes – 0.01% of all the votes cast in England. In the local elections held on the same day, the party contested 11 of the 2,396 seats fought and received 3,026 votes out of the 11.7 million cast.

In the 2006 local elections, the party fielded 16 candidates in the 4,300 contests and received around 5,000 votes out of the total 7.9 million cast.

In the 2007 local elections, where 10,486 seats were contested, the party fielded 78 candidates who received a total of 19,705 votes.

In the May 2008 London Mayoral election, the party’s candidate received 0.4% of the total first preference votes cast. Among the 2,840 seats contested in council elections across England that same day, the party fielded 45 candidates who received a total of 11,340 votes.

In the June 2009 European parliament elections, the party contested all nine of the English regions with the following res

Votes %
East Midlands 28,494 2.3
Eastern 32,211 2.0
London 24,477 1.5
North East 13,007 2.2
North West 40,027 2.4
South East 52,526 2.2
South West 25,313 1.6
West Midlands 32,455 2.3
Yorks. & Humber 31,287 2.6

Total votes cast 279,797 2.1

In the 2009 local elections held on the same day, some 2,318 seats were contested and the English Democrats fielded 76 candidates who received a total of 36,507 votes.

The party’s most spectacular result to date was in the Mayoral election in Doncaster, held on the same day as the European Parliament election, where they narrowly won.

4 June, 2009 Doncaster Mayoral election result

1st Prefs % 2nd Prefs Total votes %
Michael Maye Ind
17,150 22.8 7,840 24,990 49.6
Peter Davies ED 16,961 22.5 8,383 25,344 50.4
Sandra Holland Lab 16,549 22.0
Jonathan Wood Con 12,198 16.2
David Owen BNP 8,175 10.9
Stuart Exelby Ind
2,152 2.9
Michael Felse Ind
2,051 2.7
Turnout: 34.9

The BBC commissioned an NOP among 500 residents of Doncaster (sampled 2-7 January, 2010) to test levels of awareness, as well as attitudes towards, the Mayor of Doncaster. The poll suggested that 63% of adults in Doncaster preferred their council to be run by a cabinet of councillors, compared with 22% who preferred a directly-elected Mayor. Some 54% said they would vote against Doncaster’s current system of a directly-elected Mayor in a referendum (34% said they would vote for). And 13% could correctly name the English Democrat Mayor of Doncaster (Peter Davies).

Westminster Parliamentary by-elections

In by-elections contested by English Democrats, the party received the following vote shares:

Birmingham, Hodge Hill (15.7.04) 1.4%
Hartlepool (30.9.04) 0.1%
Bromley & Chislehurst (29.6.06) 0.7%
Ealing, Southall (19.7.07) 0.4%
Sedgefield (19.7.07) 0.6%
Crewe & Nantwich (22.5.08) 0.7%
Henley (26.6.08) 0.5%
Haltemprice & Howden (10.7.08) 7.2%*

* Not contested by either Labour or the Lib Dems

Contacts

Robin Tilbrook, Chairman – English Democrats & Alliance for Democracy Spokesman
E-mail: – RobinTilbrook@EngDem.org
Web: www.EnglishDemocrats.org.uk

3. Jury Team

The Jury Team was launched in March 2009 by Sir Paul Judge, Director General of the Conservative Party (1992-5). He was formerly chairman of Premier Brands, a major food company, and is said to have a personal fortune of £30 million. According to the Electoral Commission, the Jury Team spent £344,522 on its European Parliament election campaign (of which 46% was spent on media activities)

The Jury Team subscribe to two additional policies that do not appear in the Alliance manifesto above, namely: “allowing state schools to opt out from local authority control” and “introducing ‘no-fault’ compensation for public bodies”.

In the June 2009 European parliament elections, the party contested all nine of the English regions with the following result:

Votes %
Scotland
6,257 0.6
Wales
3,793 0.6
English regions
East Midlands
7,362 0.6
Eastern 6,354 0.4
London
7,284 0.4
North East 2,904 0.5
North West
8,783 0.5
South East 14,172 0.6
South West 5,758 0.4
West Midlands
8,783 0.6
Yorks. & Humber.
7,181 0.6

Total votes cast 78,569 0.5

Westminster Parliamentary by-elections

In the one by-election contested so far by the Jury Team, the party received the following vote share:

Glasgow North East (12.11.09) 1.3%

Contacts

Sir Paul Judge, Leader – Jury Team and Alliance for Democracy Spokesman
e-mail: paulj@juryteam.org
web: www.juryteam.org

Alex Salmond is The Times' 2011 'Briton of the Year'

2011-12-27T16:35:00.004Z

Congratulations are due to Alex Salmond not only for winning this rather inappropriately misnamed award (given to the leading opponent of Britishness)but also on his being a constitutional game changer.

As the Times' leader says:- "One incumbent politician managed to defy the odds, to win re-election despite everything, to win a majority when the election system was designed to prevent anyone winning a majority, to come from behind to destroy his opponents. That politician was Alex Salmond."

His achievement includes even kickstarting the adamantly anti-English British Coalition Government into considering the English Question even if they can't yet bring themselves even to mention the "E" word!

As the Press Association reported recently:-
"A commission to resolve the so-called West Lothian Question will start work in February, the Government has confirmed.

Cabinet Office minister Mark Harper said the commission would then report by the end of the next Parliamentary session, in the spring of 2013.

In response to a written question by Conservative Mark Lancaster, MP for Milton Keynes North, Mr Harper said work had been on-going since the Government's last announcement on the issue in September.

He told MPs: "We have been in consultation with House authorities on how the commission can best address the relevant issues on the business and procedures of this House.

"It is my intention for the commission to start work in February 2012 to report by the end of the next session, in spring 2013.

"I will make a further statement on the commission in the new year.""

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jdWAFsBR8sUbThvqxtuu0v8kM5Lg?docId=N0569251324409158606A

English Taxpayers mugged Olympicly

2011-12-24T10:40:00.005Z

This Article, on the Society of Procurement Officers' website, tells all those who have ears to hear or eyes to see a telling tale of how, in practice, the (post-colonial?) 'British' government rules England.

The price for any spending of English Taxpayers' money in England is a payment of Danegeld to the increasingly fractious and demanding, not to mention separatist, Nations of Scotland and Wales.

This wholly unjustifiable policy (aka the 'Barnett Formula') is applied even to British 'Vanity Projects' like the 2012 Olympics.

A project which, I might add, not only provides no benefit to the English but also in which we, as a Nation, are not even permitted to be represented by any English National Teams whatsoever!

Here is the article >>>

Olympics consequential funding

Sector: Central Government

Date: Thu 22nd Dec 2011, 14:11:32

URL: http://www.govopps.co.uk

Source: www.govopps.co.uk

Working together through the Joint Ministerial Committee (JMC) the UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments and the Northern Ireland Executive have reached agreement on an inter-administration dispute concerning the application of the Barnett formula to funds set aside for regeneration and transport within the budget for the Olympics Games in 2012.

The issue was discussed at a plenary meeting and helped clarify unresolved issues in the dispute. It also confirmed administrations’ shared interest in resolving those issues creatively and constructively with a view to ensuring the success of the 2012 Olympic Games. The meeting’s communiqué noted agreement ‘to consider the matter further to examine ways in which progress [could] be made’.

The administrations have agreed:
?to reaffirm their shared commitment to the success of the 2012 Olympics and other major sporting events in the UK.
?that there have been significant changes in public finances since this dispute first arose and that they should therefore not revisit decisions on the Olympics budget first made by the previous UK Government.
?that the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive will receive a one-off sum equivalent to the Barnett formula consequentials of relevant changes to Olympics funding since the present UK Government took office in May 2010. These sums amount to £30.2m, of which the Scottish Government will receive £16m, the Welsh Government £8.9m and the Northern Ireland Executive £5.4m (rounded to the nearest £100,000).

http://www.sopo.org/cgi-bin/news.cgi?action=full_story_SOPO&id=1115506&unpub=false&strt=&act=search_SOPO&term=&keyword_bool=&websiteId=2

No, Mr Salmond, some of it’s ENGLAND’s Oil!!

2011-12-21T22:40:00.005Z

So far Scotland and the Scottish National Party have had it all their own way claiming that North Sea oil is Scottish.

As a lawyer I can tell Alex Salmond that the normal International Conventions for determining the National Territorial Boundaries of the coastal Seabeds between Nations would suggest that up to half of North Sea oil is within English territorial waters, if you apply the geological test, and a quarter if you apply the average of the national land boundary test.

I therefore call upon the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and President of the Board of Trade, Mr Vince Cable, to institute a proper judicial enquiry to establish the boundary without further delay or prevarication.

The English Democrats are the only Party campaigning for English national interests to be properly represented. As part of our campaign, we now call for the respective national ownership of the off-shore territorial seabed, and therefore of the mineral resources, be judicially determined between England and Scotland.

This determination will allow the claims of the Scottish National Party as to Scottish oil to be properly allocated. In the highly probable event of Alex Salmond winning a referendum for independence of Scotland, that there will already be a binding determination at least on this issue out of the many other issues that will need to be resolved between the successor national states after the dissolution of the United Kingdom. This would also be an important step if full fiscal autonomy is to be granted to Scotland, under so called “Devo Max”.

The English Democrats will be organising a demonstration outside the Department of State for Business Innovation and Skills early in the New Year to follow up this call. I would therefore call for volunteers to take part in a demonstration. Would all those interested please email Enquiries@EngDem.org?

When the Euro collapses will there be fighting?

2011-12-18T14:54:00.009Z

This is the question which our military planners appear to be considering, if this article by the eminent and not usually over excitable Professor Michael Clarke, who is the director general of the Royal United Services Institute, is to be believed.
Here is his article:-

Britain's Armed Forces face a new enemy Cost-cutting and the euro crisis are real and present dangers for Britain's hard-pressed Armed Forces.

The Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir David Richards, was doing no more than stating Government policy this week when he said that the single biggest strategic risk facing the country today is economic rather than military. “No country can defend itself if bankrupt,” he said in his annual review of defence policy at the Royal United Services Institute.

Britain is still one of only three significant Nato members, out of 28, who spend 2 per cent of their GDP on defence. Nevertheless, the country is facing volatile times in austere circumstances. We need to think strategically, he maintained, and reform the Armed Forces even while they are extensively stretched. It’s a challenge akin to rebuilding the ship while still at sea.

To those who lament recent defence cuts as somehow lacking in strategy, the Government’s answer is therefore simple. Britain’s grand strategy – as immediate and overwhelming as anything in 1940 – is to maintain the country’s triple-A credit rating in the international markets. Without that, no credible defence strategy would be affordable.

As the country’s top military officer, Sir David is duty-bound to set out the Government’s grand strategic case in this way. But he also has to deal with the consequences of it. He has to speak military logic to the politicians, and political logic to the military. He does not interpret his role, and nor should he, as the champion of the military in a public battle with Downing Street for resources. Grandstanding against the Government is not his job, and certainly not Sir David’s style. But what he said was also the tip of a nasty iceberg that he and others can see drifting ever closer to the ship of state.

The tip of the iceberg, it has to be said, is not all bad. Britain remains a significant military player; the fourth largest military spender, behind the US, China and Japan, and ahead of France and Russia. If the first division of real military power only includes the United States, Britain stands in the top half of the second division that presently consists of Russia, China, France and India. And though Britain and France will drift towards the foot of that division over the coming decade, they will not be quickly relegated from it, if only because there is such a yawning gap to the third division below.

None the less, Sir David also knows that to stay in the game at all, military forces have to be credible and able to be used in different situations at short notice. Forces that look impressive on paper, or forces that take years to mobilise, are no use to Britain in the 21st century, and no one would bet on a period of idleness for the military in the near future.

So in the present climate, military chiefs have got to balance the risks of their trade in a different way. Last year’s defence review took 7.5 per cent out of the defence budget and committed the MoD to eliminating its famous “black hole” of unfunded future commitments that was, in reality, about £27 billion net. This summer, the Government put 0.4 per cent back into the defence budget as a whole to guarantee forward equipment programmes, but now the autumn statement extends existing defence cuts from 2015 out to 2017 and it would be foolish to rule out even further tightening before we get to 2017.

For Sir David, the new balance of risks is relatively clear. Britain aims to keep as many military capabilities as possible intact and “rebalanced” by 2020. By that time we plan to have a smaller Army of only 82,000, but a bigger, usable Reserve; a small force of new US jets to serve with the Eurofighter Typhoon; an effective strike aircraft carrier; refurbished nuclear forces; next generation electronic assets – the new battle winners – and a reformed MoD to manage it all.

But to get there, Sir David will have to save considerable amounts of money by holding some of his present force elements at lower readiness, relying on allies and partners to do other things, and accepting that in many areas a “good enough” level of technology will suffice, as long as the expertise of military personnel who operate it can be kept at its present high level.

Sir David’s problem is not so much balancing the risks in a military sense; all good commanders can do that. It’s the politico-military balances that are hardest to strike; when predictable casualties send politicians running for cover, or when changes in a battle plan send the media into gloomy prognoses of defeat. There is no pain-free use of the military instrument – even in Libya this year. Not all battles can be won, even in victorious campaigns. And some campaigns, where victory is simply impossible, may still be worth fighting.

What Sir David is saying about the rest of the planning iceberg is that British defence will get worse before it gets better, and that if the politicians want to keep reaching for the military lever, they will have to be braced for the political and human costs of doing so. Libya was a relatively easy military campaign, but it was still a politically close run thing once it became clear that the operation would last more than a fortnight.

More to the immediate point, he knows that the crisis in the euro area has become life or death to his chances of getting his defence forces to 2020, even in the sort of shape envisaged by the 2010 defence review. The Government’s reaction to domestic recession has been austerity in public spending, accompanied by growth strategies targeted on particular sectors. If the Government reacts in the same way to any new recession, defence would likely suffer further austerity and is very unlikely to be an area for targeted growth. All that was implicit in Sir David’s speech.

What he didn’t mention was that part of the iceberg that really worries the planners; perhaps for the good reason that it’s too early to press the panic button, or maybe for the bad reason that the prospects are just too awful to talk about in public. However the euro crisis plays out next year, we may see the return of real insecurity to the European continent itself.

The crisis has been technocratic so far; next year it will become political. If the euro is saved, it will be by a greater fiscal integration between the prosperous north European countries. If it is not, there will be chaos across southern Europe. Either way, we are witnessing a rapid and fundamental political shift from a continent that was long stabilised along an east/west axis, to one that will be defined by its north/south differences.

Some economic and political basket cases in the south will find themselves dealing with an acrimonious and introverted group of more prosperous northern countries trying to re-fashion some version of the grand integration project. Uncontrolled migration pressures will increase; organised crime will flourish on the imbalances between north and south, there will be less to prevent insecurity in the Balkans getting worse, or to prevent a Vladimir Putin under pressure from testing where Nato’s “red lines” really are. It will be a good year for populist parties everywhere who will freely allocate the blame for the chaos they see around them.

This is not the prelude to some cataclysmic European war. But it is probably the beginning of a new surge of human insecurity in and around the backyard we have come to see as nicely secure. And the United States is in no mood to bail the Europeans out of a mess they think we have made for ourselves. If insecurity returns to our continent over the next couple of years, Sir David will really have his work cut out finding the forces to deal with its effects, and 2020 will seem a long way away.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/defence/8958589/Britains-Armed-Forces-face-a-new-enemy.html

Professor Michael Clarke
Position: Director General

Michael Clarke is currently the Director of the Royal United Services Institute. Until July 2007 he was the Deputy Vice-Principal and Director of Research Development at King's College London, where he remains a Visiting Professor of Defence Studies. He was the founding Director of the International Policy Institute at King's College London from 2001-2005 and Head of the School of Social Science and Public Policy at KCL in 2004-05. He was, from 1990 to 2001, the founding Director of the Centre for Defence Studies at King's. He was appointed as Professor of Defence Studies in 1995.

He has been a Guest Fellow at The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, and a Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. He has been senior Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Defence Committee since 1997, having served previously with the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee 1995-7. In 2004 he was appointed the UK member of the United Nations Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. In 2007 he was appointed as one of the Security Commissioners at the Institute for Public Policy Research. In 2009 he was appointed to the Prime Minister's National Security Forum in pursuit of the new National Security Strategy launched in 2008.

Is UKIP here to stay?

2011-12-15T13:37:00.010Z

The heading of this item superficially might seem perverse at a time when UKIP appears to be riding high but see what you think after considering what Peter Oborne has to say.

Peter Oborne is the Daily Telegraph's chief political commentator and one of our most thoughtful political analysts. At the beginning of November, he wrote the interesting Article below.

The article's originality is not so much about UKIP as about his theory of the split within the ranks of Conservatism which UKIP represents.

The implication of Peter Oborne's theory is that if the official Conservative Party shifted its positioning to encompass Euroscepticism then UKIP would be reabsorbed. Interestingly we have had corroboration of just such a probability in this recent polling >>>

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2011/12/13/support-for-ukip-falls-following-cameron-s-eu-veto

Here is Peter Oborne's article:-

As the landscape starts to shift, Ukip can create political havoc

November 2nd, 2011

The modern history of the Conservative Party has been poorly understood, mainly because it has been written by the winner – the modernising faction that undermined the leadership of William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith before seizing control after the 2005 election defeat.

These modernisers like to portray recent Tory history as a victory for change, pragmatism, progress and sanity. But this relentlessly optimistic account ignores the central truth: the Conservative Party formally split in the decade that followed the political assassination of Margaret Thatcher in 1990.

The first manifestation of this split was the creation of the Anti-Federalist League by the distinguished historian Alan Sked in 1991, at just the time that the Maastricht Treaty was signed. The decision to deprive eight Conservative MPs of the whip in the mid-1990s was another significant moment. Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party took the disintegration process one stage further.

Sir James was far more successful than is widely appreciated, and forced the Conservative government to pledge a referendum on future European treaty changes. He also sucked away many Tory activists. When the Referendum Party folded after his death the following year, these activists tended not to return to the Conservatives. Many of them gave their loyalty to Ukip, the protest party led by Nigel Farage which now campaigns for Britain to leave the European Union.

In contrast to the racist BNP, which tends to attract former Labour supporters, Ukip is in reality the Conservative Party in exile. Many of its senior members wear covert coats and trilbies, making them look like off-duty cavalry officers. They are fiercely patriotic and independent.

Farage himself is a very jolly chap who smokes, drinks and occasionally gets into minor trouble. He is instantly recognisable as the kind of man who would have served loyally in the post-war Conservative Party and would have been popular with opposition parties. He is one of the relatively few politicians I actually look forward to meeting. Indeed, Mr Farage, who abandoned the Tories on the day that Margaret Thatcher quit as party leader, is entirely representative of his membership, many of whom are small businessmen, or served in the Armed Forces, and are extremely public-spirited.

It was widely noted that party activists were heavily outnumbered by lobbyists at this year’s Conservative conference. One of the reasons was that so many Tory activists have gone off to join Ukip. Practically all of its supporters were instinctively at home in the party of Margaret Thatcher. A steady trickle of former Tory grandees have defected to Mr Farage’s party: Alexander Hesketh, the former treasurer and chief whip in the House of Lords, is the most recent.

If a Left-wing party had reached Ukip’s size and consequence, the media would be fascinated. But, because of its old-fashioned and decidedly provincial approach, it has been practically ignored. In the 2004 European elections, the party gained a sensational 16 per cent of the vote. Had it been the Greens or the Communists that had pulled off this feat, the BBC would have gone crazy. Instead it chose not to mention this event, coolly classifying Ukip as “other”.

For the metropolitan elite, the party scarcely exists. This is why last Sunday’s YouGov poll showing that support for Farage’s party had crept up to 7 per cent – just one point fewer than the Liberal Democrats – gained no coverage. But the significance of this is very great. I believe that Ukip is about to take over from the Lib Dems as Britain’s third largest political party.

The Lib Dems are finished for the foreseeable future – the invariable fate of the smaller party in a coalition government. They will be fortunate to retain a dozen seats at the next general election. Meanwhile, Ukip will probably overtake them in the polls over the coming months, most likely pulling well ahead as the general election approaches. The European elections, due in two and a half years’ time, will provide an important test: my guess is that Ukip will perform very strongly, while the Lib Dems will be all but wiped out.

It is becoming painfully apparent that Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy made a historic mistake at the end of the last century. Had the Lib Dems then made the decision to reflect popular opinion and challenge the European Union, they could have been a genuinely radical party, capable of confronting head-on and overtaking their two main rivals. Instead (to the despair of several of their MPs), they timidly chose to become a voice of the European machine in Brussels, meaning they became part of the consensus and were never able to make the breakthrough they wanted.

As a result of this failure of nerve and vision, Britain’s political architecture is about to be transformed. Since the Second World War, our third national party has been on the Left. This has meant that Conservative governments have often been pulled towards the centre, while Labour governments have had crucial cover. We are now moving towards a new era, in which the most significant third force may be on the Right.

The consequences of this are, at this stage, hard to predict. It is possible that Ukip may develop into a rebellious third party, like Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National in France, but this is unlikely: Le Pen’s party was semi-fascist, and Ukip seems too fundamentally British, conservative and decent to go down that frightening route. Furthermore, our electoral system holds back Ukip, just as it does the Lib Dems. Though it is easier now to imagine the former surging to victory in a by-election, with the latter extinguished as a vehicle for protest votes, it is virtually inconceivable that Mr Farage’s party can win parliamentary seats at the next general election.

But Ukip can still exercise a determining influence. The strength of its national support means that it holds the future of scores of Tory MPs in its hands. By running a candidate in a marginal seat, it can deprive the Tories of a few thousand votes, more than enough to cause him or her to lose – indeed, one Tory, David Heathcoat-Amory, ironically himself a Eurosceptic, blames Ukip for his loss in the 2010 election.

Meanwhile, the party can throw its weight behind Tory candidates fighting for their lives against Lib Dem or Labour rivals. But in return, of course, it is entitled to demand a price and insist that those candidates pursue strong anti-European policies. This ability to determine or affect the result in individual constituencies means that Ukip can intervene dramatically in the Tory civil war over Europe which broke out after last week’s Commons vote. It can terminate the careers of ministers and loyal backbenchers, while throwing a lifeline to rebels.

Ukip’s strength is very easy to explain. The leadership of the three mainstream parties have made an error. They are determined to cleave to the centre ground. Ukip alone has the courage to stand outside this cosy alliance and to cause havoc. Meanwhile, it goes without saying that a Tory leader can never win an election so long as the broader Conservative movement is so painfully split.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100115144/as-the-landscape-starts-to-shift-ukip-can-create-political-havoc/

Supporting the Out of EU Campaign

2011-12-14T12:29:00.004Z

Last September the celebrity journalist and commentator, Jon Gaunt ("Gaunty"), asked to come and speak at the English Democrats' Annual Conference. He spoke to us about the launch of his, then new, EU referendum campaign group. As you would expect from English nationalists, Jon and his campaign were enthusiastically supported by one and all!

I was therefore delighted when Jon mentioned to me a few days ago that his group is now aiming to run local referenda in the LibLabCon leaders' contituencies. Jon then asked would the English Democrats help - especially in Doncaster North, Ed Miliband's constituency?

I immediately spoke to our Executive Mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies, and he was also delighted to help and to throw the weight of his mayoralty and therefore of Doncaster MBC behind the campaign! I look forward to the progress of a campaign which will put Ed Miliband's kneejerk Islington Europhilia to a stress test! The English Democrats will be doing all we can to help!

Here is Jon Gaunt's Press Release:-
Now Is The Time – Cameron Should Let The People Decide
The British public now has even less of a say in the EU yet still pays £51m a day

The Vote UK Out of EU Campaign welcomes David Cameron’s stance on the EU Treaty yet demands the Prime Minister goes one step further and offers to put the question on the future of EU membership in a straight in/out referendum to the British public.

The Prime Minister should be congratulated for refusing to sign the Treaty but as a result it is clear that we are more isolated than ever before. Now is the time to go further. In previous polls taken by the Vote UK Out of EU Campaign, people across Britain have made their views clear – they want out.

They have had enough of the endless regulation, the ridiculous waste of billions of pounds of our money and politicians bossing us around who were not elected here in the UK.

In response to this widely held view, the Vote UK Out of EU Campaign has announced that it is to hold three independently run referendums in the party leader’s constituencies of Witney, Sheffield Hallam and Doncaster North. These will be run by the Electoral Reform Services and will be completely independent from the campaign. Paid for by campaign supporters including businesses, the campaign has been encouraged by emails of support and generous donations made online since the announcement of the referendum. Furthermore, individuals are now coming forward offering to pay for a referendum in their constituency.

Commenting on this and David Cameron’s refusal to put the question to the British public, Vote UK Out of EU Campaign spokesman, Jon Gaunt said:

“We congratulate David Cameron but he hasn’t gone far enough. He has left us even more isolated and more vulnerable than before. Britain is a strong nation and can survive without being held back by other EU countries – now is the time to trust the British public and put the question to them via a referendum.

Jon Gaunt goes onto add:

“When the British people realise that they have even less say on how their £51 million a day is being spent in the EU, they will quite rightly demand their money back. When this country is in a deep recession, how can we justify spending this outrageous amount of money? It has to stop. What is David Cameron frightened of? Our referendum next May will put even more pressure on him to do the right thing and offer the opportunity to the rest of the UK”.

The UK is now a member of a “two speed” Europe with the other 26 member states jammed in the slow lane. However, the UK could be speeding along in the fast lane if Cameron heads for the exit that leads to giving the British public an in/out referendum on EU membership.

Click here for the press release >>> http://voteukoutofeu.co.uk/press-release-now-is-the-time-cameron-should-let-the-people-decide

Democracy in Policing?

2011-12-11T13:39:00.004Z

Police and crime commissioners | Home Office Circular
Here is potentially a useful item for all those who think Policing and the Criminal Justice system in general are too focused on Social Engineering and Political Correctness issues and are far too little focused on good old fashioned English Common Sense and on enforcing Law and Order.

Later next year the Govenment is planning to take a slightly modified leaf out of The English Democrats' manifesto and have this potentially important post directly elected throughout England except for London. Click here >>> http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/police/police-crime-commissioners/

These elections are planned to be held on 15th November 2012!

The English Democrats will certainly be standing in these elections on our very strong Law and Order Manifesto commitments - and, if the electoral system used for these elections is fair, then we can expect some success!

Here is what we say on Political Correctness:-

3.19 Political Correctness

3.19.1 The English Democrats share the public concerns as to the harm caused to our society by political correctness.

3.19.2 The English Democrats unreservedly condemn this intolerant creed. We reject the self-righteousness of political correctness and condemn the ideology as an evil. Political correctness is incompatible with a free and democratic society.

3.19.3 One key aspect of political correctness is that a person, an institution or a government is politically correct when they cease to represent the interests of the majority, and become focused on the deliberate subversion of English national culture and interests, the denigration of English history and of the English themselves, and the promotion of the objectives of minority pressure groups.

3.19.4 Political correctness is grounded in the capture of state institutions, with official spokespeople, legislative powers and sanctions for breaches of political correctness. It is this capture of state institutions which makes political correctness so oppressive and dangerous. This must end.

3.19.5 The English Democrats will take whatsoever measures are necessary to remove political correctness from both national and local government, including the various quangos and other government bodies funded either directly or indirectly by the taxpayer. These measures will include the following three steps:

3.19.5.1 Firstly, those educational establishments, legal establishments, quangos, departments or other government organisations that are promoting political correctness will be fundamentally reconstituted and/or have their funding withdrawn or, where appropriate and if possible, be closed down. In particular, the so-called Commission for Equality and Human Rights will be closed. Private organisations that promote political correctness will not be awarded government contracts.

3.19.5.2 Secondly, the English Democrats recognise that those institutions that are run by state appointees are the most detached from public opinion and are more likely to become politically correct. The English Democrats will, where practical, ensure that senior public employees, such as police chief constables and senior judges, are democratically approved by the community they serve. This will be achieved either via direct elections or via approval by democratically elected representatives. Many senior public posts will be subject to a maximum occupancy period, for such senior public employees to be accountable to the public will form a part of a bulwark against political correctness.

3.19.5.3 Thirdly, the English Democrats will carry out a review of all laws and regulations, and will amend or, where appropriate and if possible, completely repeal those laws and regulations that foster and promote political correctness.

And here is what we say on Policing:-

2.11 Policing

2.11.1 Policing is an increasingly difficult job due to changes in our society, which now lacks the social cohesion and shared values that once gave us a mostly peaceful and well-ordered way of life. Our cities have become places where it is impossible to perform traditional communal policing.

2.11.2 English Democrats seek a return to a system of policing which recognises the principle that all citizens are treated equally. In their efforts to prevent crime and catch criminals the police should not be hindered and demoralised by unreasonable ideological constraints.

2.11.3 We should not lose sight of the fact that the basis for the maintenance of law and order in England rests on a firm foundation of active participation by law-abiding citizens. A relationship of trust and co-operation between citizens and police is essential to effective policing and the prevention of crime. With that in mind, it is reasonable to expect that policing should not be oppressive. The aim is a peaceable society in which liberty and justice can flourish.

2.11.4 It is essential that the police force be adequately trained and resourced.

2.11.5 Police forces should be more democratically accountable than at present. This would require the election of Chief Constables or the Police Authorities which appoint them.

2.11.6 English Democrats call for the creation of a scheme enabling businesses to pay for their security staff to train and register as Special Constables, their powers of arrest applying to their place of work and its neighbouring streets. Such registered security staff would be subject to Police staff performance monitoring and discipline.

2.12 The Legal System

2.12.1 The primary role of a legal system is to provide the means for settling disputes. It should enable those who suffer loss, in the form personal injury, theft, or damage to property, to be properly compensated by the party at fault. Laws, and the penalties for breaking them, should comply with the principles of natural justice.
As societies have become more complex, so have their law codes. To a great extent, this is unavoidable.

2.12.2 However, states and their governing elites are extending the reach of law into areas that infringe upon individual liberties. The result is a body of law which is more restrictive and complex than it need be.
Many of the customs and principles of English law are being undermined in the political quest for greater conformity with Continental ideas and practices. Law is being used as a tool for imposing dogma. One of the consequences of these changes is that the police are increasingly being made the enforcers of political doctrine and moving further away from their traditional role of upholding the delicate balance between Order and Liberty.
2.12.3 In order to obtain justice, citizens must feel able to consult and employ the services of the legal profession. Many people are deterred from this by the procedures and costs of the present legal system. Improvements have been made in recent years but more needs to be done to make the system user friendly and efficient.

2.13.4 The English Democrats favours less law and a simplification of law. There are far too many matters currently covered by the criminal law. There should be a drastic reduction and rationalisation of the number and extent of criminal offences.
2.13.5 We must reform the jury system but not abandon it because the jury provides a democratic check on the legal system. The law is not the property of lawyers; it belongs to the people and should serve their needs.
Our preference is for a return to comprehensible, just and effective law. Given its current chaotic state, the law should be codified.

2.13.6 Once the criminal law has been properly codified, the English Democrats would ensure that the criminal law is vigorously policed and enforced.

2.13.7 Except in an emergency there should be a single annual implementation date for new law. This will help rectify the current muddled situation where no one can be sure, without considerable effort or expense, whether a clause of a new Act has been brought into force or not. Also, some rules, for example the Civil Procedure Rules, are being rewritten so frequently that new editions are being published more than once a month! This leads, not surprisingly, to the shameful situation where no-one, not even the judiciary, can be sure of the current rule in force without first making unreasonable efforts to research the point.
2.13.8 In order to avoid such excessive complexity developing again, a monitoring system should be devised which ensures that new law is unambiguously comprehensible and properly and efficiently enforceable. This could be a function of a reformed Second Chamber.
2.13.9 The English Democrats respect the right of victims of crime to defend themselves and their property against criminals. The English Democrats would extend the right of self-help.
2.13.10 The English Democrats believe that every victim of a criminal offence should have the right to address the court on the question of sentence and for the court to be required to bear the victim’s views in mind when passing sentence.
2.13.11 It is not acceptable that 100,000 hardened criminals commit over half of all crime in the U.K. Once a criminal is identified as beyond effective rehabilitation he or she must be kept out of the community until no longer a risk.
2.13.12Prisons should be designed and equipped so that prisoners are not subject to degrading conditions

2.14 Drugs and Alcohol

2.14.1 English Democrats believe that government should encourage a healthy lifestyle which makes the minimum use of “recreational” drugs of all kinds and only reasonable use of alcohol. The Government’s drug policy is failing to control the use of illegal drugs and its alcohol policy appears to be making the problems worse.

2.14.2 The English Democrats favour an independent and open minded, English enquiry into alcohol and drug abuse. This should consider, amongst other issues, the pros and cons of legalising the use of cannabis and its health and social consequences. The enquiry should consider health and social consequences. We recognise that there are good arguments on either side. What is needed is a proper conclusion to the debate for England so that it is possible to move on with an agreed stance and suitable measures.

2.15.3 It is clear that the current policies for dealing with problems of addiction are not working adequately and there is an ever rising tide of criminality arising from, in particular, drug abuse. Addiction problems are very difficult to solve and require careful analysis. One particularly frustrating aspect of addiction is that family and friends are often aware of the plight of the addicted person but unable to do what is best for them. One area of reform should be greater provision for addicts to be subject to compulsory treatment in secure care.

2.15.4 All those who commit criminal offences whilst under the influence of drugs or alcohol should be subject to compulsory assessment and if found to be addicted should immediately be taken into such care.

2.15.5 The most important aspect of the fight against drug dealing criminals is that any policy should seek to destroy their market, protect the public, and punish offenders.

2.15.6 The English Democrats intend to raise gaol sentences for drug dealing in Class A drugs graduating from a fixed five year term as a minimum doubling it for any subsequent re-offence.

2.15.7 Registered Class A drug addicts will be placed in secure drug rehabilitation schemes rather than sent to prison, where active participation in the detoxification programme will be a requirement of their sentence. Failure to comply with the detoxification programme may result in secure custody within a prison environment as per a graduated tariff based on previous antecedence.

2.15.8 Addicts with children will be put on the 'at risk' register and custody of children will be dependent on an addict's ability to detoxify. Addicts failing to successfully complete detoxification will not have their children returned to them, the rights of the children must be paramount and either familial custody or foster parents will be sought until detoxification has been completed. The return of children will be conditional on regular detoxification checks.

2.15.9 Addicts wishing to seek help for their addiction will be registered at a specific medical centre, one which is outside of the GP network.

2.16.10 The government will provide a dedicated County based Drug Management Service for those who are addicted to Class A drugs. Registration as a drug addict will require regular visits to the centre under a personally structured drugs management programme.

This might include:
2.16.10.1Maintenance doses of drug to which the person is addicted whilst awaiting to attend a detoxification scheme
2.16.10.2 Provision of supervised medical care and clean syringes to minimise contamination & safe disposal.
2.16.10.3 Maintenance doses for repeatedly defaulting addicts
2.16.10.4 Family Health Visitor Sessions - to ensure children of ex addicts are thriving
2.16.10.5 Employment/Training/Housing referrals and counselling
2.16.10.6 Those who commit criminal offences, and who are found to be using drugs, will be expected to prove that they were not funding their drug use by their criminal activity. Those who fail to do so will be placed on a drug’s rehabilitation programme and will be detained until they have been free of drug use for 6 months. Upon release, they will be monitored to ensure that they remain drug free and will be re-detained if they fail to do so.

"England was “God’s Firstborn” in the formation of the nation-state world"

2011-12-10T10:48:00.004Z

These are the current Royal 'Coats of Arms':- respectively for the Kingdom of England and also the one for the Kingdom of Scotland

The title to this item is a phrase that took my fancy. It appears in the thought provoking article below, from The Scotsman. It is both a gem in itself and is a true statement about England's unusually long existence - we reached union as a nation state in 927 AD - beat that anyone!

Tom Nairn is no friend to English Nationalism but the article is still worth the read. Here it is:-
What future for monarchy in our changing nation?
Published on Friday 9 December 2011 00:00

In the new edition of his book ‘The Enchanted Glass’, Tom Nairn looks at the impact of nationalism on an institution that helped to shape the United Kingdom

THE Enchanted Glass originally appeared in 1988, with the middle-aged Elizabeth II in a pink hat and white gloves waving from its cover; twenty-three years later she’s still waving, and guaranteeing the stability of the British Crown for some years to come. Her son will then almost certainly succeed for a while as Charles III, with grandson William following on. So we find the Crown institution still hard at work re-establishing itself as a twenty-first century enterprise.

Nearly all commentators predict Great Britain’s continued decline, as ex-imperial status turns into increasingly unavoidable marginality, screened by special relationships, the Commonwealth, and other old club subscriptions. The UK has so far striven to keep up appearances, via a kind of half-honourable decline: unwilling negotiations with retreat, rather than outright defeat, the goal; a piecemeal and staged withdrawal rather than mere eviction from the historical stage. However, the climate of accelerating decline brings other changes in its wake.

A very minor one is that a mistake in this book’s first edition is more noticeable. I see now how I failed to focus sufficiently on one key motive for the successful working of “enchantment”: what one could call “surrogacy”, in the sense of an English-identity diversion from standard-issue nationalism to the symbolic supranationality of a Royal Crown and Family. The unusual intensity and emotion of the latter has come from certain peculiarities of the former: as if a communal feeling unable to find appropriate modern expression has been compelled to find compensatory voice in another way, or upon a different (though related) level. Such deeper emotion contains a usually unacknowledged advantage. It absolves the majority English nationality from the customary “-ism” of recent history. No Anglo-nationalism is felt necessary in the standard nineteenth- and twentieth-century form. Of course such feeling manifests itself none the less, in sub-standard form – round the edges, as it were, through panic over immigration, and distrust of “outsiders” and multiculturalism. However, the political expression of such ideas has been very limited, mainly by a “British” National Party tied to extinct racism as well as to state decline.

The resultant problems are the by-product of longer-range historical location. As Liah Greenfeld points out in her classic Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (1992), England was “God’s Firstborn” in the formation of the nation-state world: but this very priority meant that the English would not themselves become just another state, a national polity like all the rest. Naturally the English had to adapt themselves to the world they had set in motion and fostered, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But they did so in two main ways, both of which have now lost most of their sense. One was simply expansion: the “greater England” represented by colonization and the emigration of one generation after another over the era of empire. The other was a “little England” of rurality and imagined roots, supposed to have both preceded imperialism and in some ways persisted through it as an enduring substratum.

The point of monarchy was the way it suited this unique double life. In 1688: The First Modern Revolution (2009) Steve Marcus has shown how the revolutionary improvisations did lead to a make-over: an institution “over and above” mere government was created, but not a form of absolutism. The British “Crown” compromise then acquired quasi-global reach, to preside over a wide variety of countries and cultures. Now the glass’s enchantment reflected back a story that apparently reconciled the spiritual and the material: religion and economic progress, God’s Firstborn cohabiting with free trade, industrial revolution and capitalism. All modern nations have done something like this, perhaps; but for God’s firstborn, monarchy offered the most convenient way of doing the trick – a trump card to be treasured across the age of nationalism and imperialism.

Edwin Jones’s The English Nation: The Great Myth (2000) has described how Protestantism was reinterpreted and mobilised for the task. Alongside Pincus’s 1688, a substantial re-analysis now exists of the context within which both revival and transformation of the monarchy became central to Anglo-British statehood. As “constitutional monarchy”, the Crown mythology was an instrument for holding such a “united kingdom” together. Three-quarters of the latter was of course England; but Scotland, Wales and Ireland remained too significant to be either absorbed or ignored. So crucial was this factor that the later ruling class imported foreign monarchies to make the grade and keep things going, not once but twice. After the 1688 upheaval, the Dutch William of Orange became king, and then (when that line ran out of heirs) princes from the tiny German state of Hanover were invited to take over: the “Hanoverians” of 1714 and later. Queen Victoria was one of them. Incomers can learn ways of making themselves more native than their hosts, and these Germans worked hard at it. They became the “Windsors” during World War I, grafting themselves on to a still successful and expanding multinational enterprise. The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II fifty-eight years ago set new standards for the age of TV and tabloid media, an example which we currently see the future King William learning to emulate.

But he and Queen-to-be Catherine do so in increasingly difficult circumstances. As ever the problem is “England”. The Crown is less popular in Scotland and Wales, and has a different sort of importance for many in Northern Ireland, but maintaining a United Kingdom remains vital, a matter of life and death as well as emotion and flag-waving. On 5 May, 2011, local elections in England coincided with those for the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the devolved authority in Northern Ireland. Power had originally been given to these countries with the aim of strengthening “Britishness”, and carrying on the substance of 1688. But for the Scots, matters couldn’t help appearing quite differently. Their place in the Glorious and Bloodless set-up was fixed by a parliamentary treaty of 1707: an international accord intended to underwrite the monarchical fusion of a century earlier. Thus the new 2011 parliament in Edinburgh can’t help seeing itself as more than an administrative convenience. The Scottish National Party did so well on 5 May, 2011, that Alex Salmond’s resultant government is bound to use its power to (at least) challenge and modify 1707. A referendum on independence has been proposed. This might be lost, of course, like the Quebec one of 1995. But the principle would none the less be established of the right to secede via popular vote at some later time.

At such a juncture, some commentators have suggested another possible outcome: why not replace the “Union” with a federal or confederal structure, a “looser” state form that might (so to speak) carry forward useful aspects of British multinationality? Though attractive to many, the notion simply cannot help forcing the argument back on to the English ground: more than three-quarters of any such body don’t care much one way or another. Not only is there no devolution in prospect for England’s majority, the latter is, not surprisingly, quite satisfied with the de facto authority Great Britain provides, and subscribes energetically to the colourful symbolism which monarchy bestows upon their preponderance.

In Wendy James’s terms, the English are specimens of The Ceremonial Animal (2003), a nation for whom anthropological customs and observances have assumed the role that nationalism has provided in most modern-period states. By contrast, what Plaid Cymru and the SNP offer are aspirations towards this standard national identity “-ism”, akin to most other members of (or candidates for) “the Spirit of the Age”.

It is also sometimes thought Scandinavia offers a model … or a way out. After all, the Baltic countries are also monarchies, where a concretely “national” icon is conjoined with the shared, but more abstract, common ground of social democracy. Is there any reason why the British-Irish realm should not follow that example? What the position fails to acknowledge is of course the difference in background. Apart from the odd problem of establishing Welsh, Scottish and Ulster royal houses, what the unifying centre seeks is different as well. Great Britain’s ideological demands are for a much stronger multinational focus of allegiance: something more like that of the nineteenth-century Hapsburg domain in Central Europe, and befitting a recent Great Power with a permanent Security Council seat.Nor is this disparity likely to be resolved via any change of mind or movement, since it has longer-range or “structural” elements a whole population has inherited and used to define itself.

In this context of break-up, monarchy has become stressed to the limit: each new lapse or misfortune is accompanied by exaggerated flag-waving and over-rehearsed adulation. Prince William and Catherine Middleton, right, can’t help falling into a trap formed of the hysteria of counter-decline and a wilful failure to quit a darkening stage. Prince Charles has already prepared the way for this survival strategy, with his theatre of determined populism: too “with-it” by half, a modernising exhibitionism that deliberately underestimates the factors of tradition and retrospect that national identity requires. His antics have marked a meaningful shift of emphasis, one that appears likely to prevail for some years, once Elizabeth II takes her leave.

However exaggerated and ambiguous, it may be that the Prince of Wales’s posture also echoes deeper shifts under way. Decades of half-apologetic, “ironical” Royalism are likely to leave their own diminished heritage, currently being handed down to the future King William. In 1688, Pincus shows how “like all modern revolutions … 1688-9 was a struggle ultimately waged between two competing groups of modernisers”, which a traditionalist centre ground had to accept. But if the future brings a more self-conscious “little England” with it above all, with the departure of the Scots, then ongoing modernisation (or re-modernisation) could be quite different.

Most formulae for perpetuating the United Kingdom envisage some sort of “federalism” or looser association of equal-status units, and are accompanied by redefinitions of “independence” for Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England. Occasionally this is hopefully modified by notions of regional autonomy, of the kind that John Prescott attempted without success to foster in the English North-East. However, the resounding defeat of that attempt by popular referendum makes the route seem most unlikely. Britannic “confederation” (or whatever) cannot either avoid or minimize English nationalism. Four-fifths of the electorate would be invited to shift allegiance from “Anglo-Britain” to a quite different model, one inevitably according much greater importance to “the periphery” and especially to Scotland.

The simple unlikelihood of this transfer puts Scottish separation and statehood in a perspective that is different and, it can be argued, simpler and more acceptable both in the archipelago and internationally. By comparison with reforming God’s Firstborn this is, surely, a relatively minor change. Furthermore, one survey after another has shown the English public relatively indifferent to the alteration. “Westminsterism” attaches far more significance to Great Power stature and the Security Council seat than do most English or British subjects. Also, the “detachment” of the Monarchy could prove useful, if the institution can distinguish itself more definitely from the disintegrating heritage of Union and Empire. It looks as if the true choice of kings Charles and William will be between burial among the ruins of the ancien régime or some new, more modest function as symbol of “federal” identity chosen to carry on some selected features of such lengthy coexistence and societal interpenetration: the less-than-Great, less-united Kingdom of a European Union member, one that takes “modernization” and formal democracy more seriously.

Republican Monarchy? The term appears self-contradictory, and yet nothing else corresponds to what may be emerging right now, following the decisive SNP victory in the Scottish Parliamentary election. There will be a referendum on Scottish independence quite soon, and Premier Alex Salmond has repeatedly made it clear he does not want outright republicanism to be part of the bid. The future envisaged is therefore one of statehood equality over the former United Kingdom, in which a crowned head of state will remain, as the symbol of partnership and good will, established social and personal relations, and the historic closeness derived from 1688. It should also change and probably moderate the “surrogacy” mentioned earlier, through which English national identity has been transmuted into an adulatory obsession with royalty. One way the English have avoided “little England” (the country on its own) has been the curiously amplified elevation of a regal family dynasty described in this book, informally shared by the peripheral countries. A formal agreement between the periphery and the core-majority, by contrast, could include the acceptance of monarchy in a spirit different from what has so far prevailed. In effect, the replacement of “enchantment” and emotionality by a straightforward calculation of joint benefits and their costs.

What does “resignation” from the former Great Power club (Security Council position, et al) truly mean? The Westminster-British political elite will naturally cling on to it. Without an “ethnically” English resignation from the outward-reaching model, therefore, the change has to come from the periphery, by a return to themselves of the archipelago’s minority nationalities. Fortunately, this seems to be under way, and has been given a great boost by the 2011 elections in Scotland. Different varieties of nationalism there, in Wales and Northern Ireland, are bound in turn to require a novel style of constitution that could certainly include monarchy but of a somewhat different style from the one imposed by (as one might put it) the glamour of backwardness. A distinctly English input would be demanded from the four-fifths majority, as well as the assorted democratic minorities. There’s nothing “little” about this, in any demeaning or has-been sense: merely the acceptance of reality in a rapidly globalizing world. The finality of that imparts a comparable importance to what “we” all are, the distinctive deposit of past time or “history”. First-round nationalism accompanied and voiced first-round industrialization, and it can be argued that second rounds are now in formation, involving not the end but the renewal and advancement of “who we are” – of the collective identities derived from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

• This is an edited extract of the foreword to the new edition of Tom Nairn’s The Enchanted Glass: Britain and Its Monarchy, published by Verso this month.
http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/opinion/cartoon/what_future_for_monarchy_in_our_changing_nation_1_1999437

How Scots think about the Union - the latest poll

2011-12-06T11:50:00.009Z

Here is an article from the Scottish Newspaper "The Daily Record":-

Price of independence: Poll shows majority of Scots would back split.. if it made them £500 better off
Dec 5 2011 By Magnus Gardham

TWO-THIRDS of Scots would back independence if they believed it would make them £500 better off, according to a poll.

But only one in five would want to go it alone if it meant a £500 a year reduction in living standards.

The findings suggest the economy will be key in the run-up to the SNP's referendum, expected in 2014.

Overall, 32 per cent of voters said they were in favour of independence, despite First Minister Alex Salmond's efforts to convince the public.

However, the figure is the highest recorded by the Scottish Centre for Social Research since 2005, when it stood at 35 per cent.

Support bounced back from a low of 23 per cent last year.

The research centre's annual Scottish Social Attitudes survey also showed growing support for a beefed-up Holyrood with wider powers over domestic policy.

Polls expert John Curtice said: "The appetite for a more powerful parliament, including independence, has grown in the past 12 months.

"However, support for independence is still no higher than it has been on previous occasions since the advent of devolution.

"If the SNP are to persuade a majority of Scots to back independence they will need to convince them of the economic case for leaving the Union, and that is a debate that is still to be won or lost."

The poll showed that, at present, 34 per cent think the economy would perform better if Scotland split from the UK, while 29 per cent think it would do less well. The findings sparked a war of words between parties last night.

Deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon said: "This is a big boost for Scotland and independence.

"Now we know that two-thirds of Scots are prepared to back independence on a positive basis.

"Since the reality is that Scotland puts far more into the London exchequer than we get back in return, the 'yes' campaign can and will win the economic case for independence."

But shadow Scots secretary Margaret Curran said: "Far from being the breakthrough the SNP wanted, this shows the vast majority of Scots support devolution and want to see it stronger and better.

Sturgeon and welcomed latest poll "The SNP have been in power for almost five years and each year support for separation is actually lower than when Labour formed the Scottish government."

She added: "Polls like this explain why Alex Salmond won't name the day. There is nothing in the SNP manifesto that stops them calling a referendum now and the only reason for delay is because they fear the verdict of the Scottish people.

"The referendum isn't a test of how much you love our country - every Scot does - but is about what is best for Scotland."

This article moved one of my correspondents to write this to me, what do you think?

"The recent revelation that the Scots would leave the union only if it was financially viable says all that any English person needs to know.

It is obvious that the majority of Scots see Britain as a free credit card. It was money in 1707 and it is money now.

Are we so desperate that we have to pay the Scots to stay in an unwanted union?

Divorce is long overdue in this marriage of convenience.

England must not allow the British Government to negotiate the terms. Cameron with his proud “Scottish blood” is no friend of the English and his British Government seems hell bent on destroying us one way or another.

Even the most complacent of Englishmen must now recognise that we need our own parliament to look after our interests or we shall be taken to the cleaners once again."

The Dead Horse Theory

2011-12-05T16:48:00.003Z

A friend sent me this American item, which tickled my fancy. What do you think? Ring any bells?

The Dead Horse Theory

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that; When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, best strategy is to dismount.
However, nowadays our Politically Correct government often employs more advanced strategies, such as:

1. Buying a stronger (and more expensive) whip.

2. Changing riders.

3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

4. Arranging to trips to other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.

5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.

7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase efficiency.

9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse's performance.

10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.

11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some live horses.

12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

And of course....

13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

How the British Establishment think about England

2011-11-30T01:08:00.004Z

Here are a few quotations which show how the British Establishment think about England:-

Labour – Jack Straw
“The English are potentially very aggressive, very violent”

Labour
John Prescott – “There is no such nationality as English”

Labour - Gordon Brown
“the Nations & Regions of Britain” [Note he means that Scotland, Wales & N Irleand are Nations - England is only a collection of Regions !]

Conservative & Unionist Dave Cameron
“I’ll take on the sour Little Englanders, I’ll fight them all the way”.

Conservative & Unionist William Hague
“English Nationalism is the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism”.

Liberal Democrats – Charlie Kennedy
Said that breaking England up into EU Regions is good because “it is calling into question the idea of England itself”.

Saturday's NC Meeting

2011-11-29T11:59:00.002Z

The English Democrats had our monthly NC meeting on Saturday. Here is a short report about it:-

English Democrats Member’s overview of key discussion points

The National Council of the English Democrats met in Leicester on Saturday the 26th November 2011.

1. Derek Hilling submitted previous minutes and matters outstanding from October 2011.

2. Robin Tilbrook submitted the Chairman’s report including diary of events.

3. The current mail-shot was a resounding success yielding a healthy profit after costs. There was a positive response to the launch of the ‘England Awake’ newsletter. A supply of ‘England Awake’ newsletters will be made available for members to distribute throughout the country. There will be a mail-shot to members and supporters in December which will include a calendar highlighting key dates for 2012. The National Council wanted to thank everyone for their support.

Additional fund raising ideas were discussed including the recycling of printer cartridges. Details of the scheme will be made available to members in the forthcoming weeks.

4. Discussions were held on the structure/ objectives and specific ‘Job Roles’ of the National Council. Submissions are to be completed by the end of December.

5. A date has been set for the election of the Area Chairman for Yorkshire. Interested members are to make contact with National Party Secretary Derek Hilling e-mail your interest to derekhilling@EngDem.org.

Papers for the election will be sent to members during February 2012 with the Spring Conference notice. The result of the election will be announced at the English Democrat Spring Conference.

6. The date of the English Democrat Spring Conference is to be Saturday 10th March (Subject to location availability. Details will be announced during December 2011).

7. The membership application from Eddie Butler to join the English Democrats was accepted.

8. Overview was provided by Stephen Morris on the ‘Elected Mayor’ campaign in Salford.

9. Roger Cooper was approved to be the official English Democrat candidate for the forthcoming Parliamentary By-Election in Feltham and Heston. Chris Newey was approved as the official English Democrat candidate in the forthcoming local council election to be held in Walsall.

10. A report was submitted on the plans and potential candidates including Mayoral candidate for the London Elections scheduled in 2012.

11. The standards committee reported that outstanding matters had been completed. A number of additional areas of focus were discussed and agreed for the forthcoming weeks.

12. Christmas Dinner arrangements were confirmed. The Event was fully subscribed.

13. A number of key initiatives were discussed to promote English Identity. Details will be released at the Spring Conference.

14. Additional promotional stands are being made available for local meetings including supplies of the Information Pack currently available on download from the website.

15. The next meeting is scheduled for the 14th January 2012.

David Ford Lane

English Democrats
Not right not left just English!
www.voteenglish.org
twitter.com/DavidFordLane

Anti-Englishness in High places?

2011-11-27T10:11:00.008Z

In Friday's Daily Telegraph, a paper whose editorial line, since its purchase from the disgraced Lord Black by the hugely rich and aquisitive Barclay Brothers, has been strikingly anti-English, there was published the Article below.

My rhetorical question though is whether it is in any meaningful or any truthful sense valid for the Tories to claim that it is the SNP who are being "vindictive" - or is this a typical example of Tory duplicity?

Isn't it the British Unionist Establishment Parties, all three of which have, at various times when they sought electoral advantage, promised not to introduce Student Top up fees but which have swiftly betrayed the trust reposed in them by the English electorate, once they have got safely into a British Ministerial car?

Wasn't it those Parties, not the SNP, which imposed or increased the Fees "vindictively" only on English Students?

There is one final question:- How long will the English put up with such blatantly vindictive anti-Englishness?

Perhaps the answer lies in last week's Yougov poll result showing 63%, of a GB wide survey, showing unmistakeable signs of a rising sense of English Nationalism. http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/hufq8ro02k/YG-Archives-pol-Europe-181111.pdf

Perhaps it is needless to say that the Daily Telegraph altogether failed to publish the results of that Poll!

Here is the Article:-

Families may 'move from England to avoid tuition fee hike'
The rising cost of a university degree in England could create “fee refugees” as parents move to Scotland and Wales to escape huge debts, it was claimed today.

Families may attempt to move to Scotland or Wales to avoid fee rises in England, said HEFCE.

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

An analysis by the Government’s Higher Education Funding Council for England said families may flee over the border to avoid fees of up to £9,000 in 2012.

Parents living “close to the borders” are among those most likely to relocate to another country, it was claimed, potentially creating “distortive effects on local economies and housing markets”.

A move from England to Scotland could save students as much as £36,000 for a four year degree because of sharp differences in fees policies operated by devolved governments across the UK.

The comments came as it emerged that the Scottish Executive could carry out checks on applicants to ensure they are legitimate residents and not attempting to exploit the generous funding system north of the border.

From next year, English students will be forced to pay up to £9,000 wherever they study but Scottish undergraduates will be given free tuition.

Fees for Welsh students will be fixed at £3,465 and those in Northern Ireland will pay a similar amount, but only if they stay in their own region.

The system has already caused outrage in England, with several students pursuing legal action against the Scottish government amid claims that the fee rises will breach their human rights.

The Scottish Conservatives have branded the plans “vindictive” and warned that it would “stir up resentment in the rest of the UK against Scotland”.

A paper presented to a HEFCE board meeting warns that there “may be issues with families, particularly those close to the borders, seeking to domicile themselves in Wales or Scotland in order to benefit from favourable fee arrangements”.

The report adds: “This could have distortive effects on local economies and housing markets if it occurred with significant numbers.”

Bob Osborne, emeritus professor of public policy at Ulster University, told Times Higher Education magazine that if a family “was living 15 miles from the Scottish border then you can see how they might try to wangle it”.

But he doubted there was going to be a “mass exodus of people from Surrey to Glasgow”.

The Scottish Executive has already said children whose parents move to Scotland for their careers will be eligible for a free university education.

But families who seek to exploit the system by buying a home north of the Border will not. A spokesman said the Student Awards Agency for Scotland will decide on a case-by-case basis, with people not living north of the border for long likely to be scrutinised.

The HEFCE paper also warned that there is a “question of affordability” attached to the reforms for devolved administrations. Most countries are committed to subsidising students’ tuition even if they study outside their home country and budgets may stretched if universities in England put up their tuition fees, it was claimed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/8913671/Families-may-move-from-England-to-avoid-tuition-fee-hike.html

My Oral Evidence to the Kelly Commission

2011-11-23T19:51:00.001Z

The Kelly Committee requested Sir Paul Judge and I to attend to give oral evidence as part of their inquiry into political party funding. After the hearings, I was sent this copy of their transcript of the session.

ROBIN TILBROOK (CHAIRMAN, ENGLISH DEMOCRATS PARTY) AND SIR PAUL JUDGE (JURY TEAM)

SIR DEREK MORRIS: Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming in to give evidence to us. As I mentioned I am standing in for Sir Christopher Kelly who has unfortunately not been able to complete the rest of today’s hearings. He will be reading the record of this meeting in detail though. For that record could I ask you briefly just to introduce yourselves?

ROBIN TILBROOK: Robin Tilbrook. I am the Chairman of the English Democrats party.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Paul Judge. Officially leader and treasurer of the Jury Team.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: Thank you. You have sent us an opening statement which I will not ask you to read out. We will certainly put that into the record. I think the points to do with small parties and Hayden Phillips on the one hand and to do with the honour system on the other will probably come up in question. The other point is a rather more detailed technical point which I think you take and the Committee will consider.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Yes, it is one that is not usually covered in things of this nature. It has been mentioned several times over the years but the previous governments of the day have never actually taken the action that is suggested.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: On the face of it, it does seem to be an anomaly so we will certainly look at that.

As you would expect we have a number of questions; some to do with donations, expenditure, state funding, and so on but I will start with some more general questions. A lot of what we are doing is based on the main parties but whatever we do it is important it makes sense and is fair and reasonable for small parties so it is very useful that you have come along with that perspective. What is your general view of the current state of party political financing of the current regime in the UK?

ROBIN TILBROOK: So far as the general state of party finance is concerned I think it is probably linked to the general health of the main political parties. I was born in the late 1950s and we had a Conservative Party which had 2.5 million paid up members. It is now claiming membership of about 300,000 but if you look at their accounts the amount of money they are actually receiving from subscriptions would suggest a much smaller number of paid up members than that and that is almost certainly the largest membership party of all. What is happening is partly a product of the fact that the main political parties have moved away from engagement with what the public actually wants.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: Why do you think that might be?

ROBIN TILBROOK: I think they become more and more remote from what people want on the street and the fact is that the system does encourage that remoteness. There is not much of a link between public support and financial health of the political party and obviously the more money the party receives from the state the worse that is going to be.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: One thing about a political party is not only that it has policies but if it wants to implement them then it needs to get into power and like any good business it needs to connect with its electorate. It is strange that it should have become so remote.

ROBIN TILBROOK: Another bit of evidence of the remoteness is the increasing numbers of people that simply do not bother to vote. That process will be progressively worse if the parties continue down the direction they are currently going. One of my great fears about the process of trying to increase regulation over fundraising is that this is going to be used as an opportunity to gerrymander the funding of political parties which might pose a competition for the main parties. I do not want to see a situation like we have in Belgium where the establishment parties use the funding system to make life as difficult as possible for the Flemish Nationalists.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: We might explore that in more detail in a moment. Paul?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Yes, I agree with all that Robin has said. I think the issues of political funding are part of the wider symptom of people’s disinterest in politics, especially political parties. They do not want to give to these organisations. They will give to charities but they do not have an imagery of political parties as entities that they wish to give to. Even major parties have subscriptions of £10 or £15 a year - 1 DVD sort of thing - but people are not even prepared to pay that amount. So I think it is part of the wider lack of interest and I think the issue of non-voting - less than two-thirds in the general election - to find a way that that 40+% of people are also represented is absolutely key to getting a more vigorous democracy.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: So the present regime is one which is wholly dependent on donations, although there are significant amounts of public money that do go to parties. What particular problems does that create for small and in particular new small parties?

ROBIN TILBROOK: Speaking for the English Democrats those interested in getting the party up and running have obviously donated to the organisation of the party. It would be essential for small parties to be able to continue to operate for there to be no cap on what individuals within the party could give to the party. Certainly the suggestion I have seen talked about of £50,000 as a maximum cap I would regard as an attempt by the establishment parties to make it impossible to compete with them.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: Just before we look at potential reforms I am keen that this Committee understands what the impact - for good or bad - is on small parties at the moment. Are there particular reforms that you think would be right and appropriate that you see as being desirable because of legitimate interest and position of small parties?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: In terms of private funding - individuals, organisations funding - we know it is very concentrated amongst the large parties. Typically Electoral Commission will report 200-odd donations of more than £5,000; some of £500,000 or whatever. This is a very concentrated grouping across all three parties therefore one is looking for that level of donation.

It is very difficult because of the publicity issues and time given to small parties and alternative views, specifically under the Broadcasting Regulations which are based on the electorate and vote under the last equivalent election. In the 2009 European elections UKIP were given a substantial amount of coverage. They were promoted by the BBC to have similar coverage to the other parties because they got 2 million-odd votes in the previous election, and you can clearly see that it moved their share from 7% to 19% within the week that that happened. Similarly when the BNP were promoted to a higher publicity level by Helen Bowman at the BBC, they went up sufficiently and ended up with two MEPs. So I see it more as the publicity side. People do not want to give because they know it is very hard to get the exposure.

ROBIN TILBROOK: If I can just come back from there. I would fully support that. I do not think the problem is the ability to raise money; I would regard that as part and parcel of the whole inevitable situation as to what would happen for a smaller party. But it is true that the possible impact that the small party might be able to make is not based upon the policies that it is putting forward or the approach it is adopting; it is based on other rules around the broadcasting and the way the media operates.

There is a rule that none of the newspapers will accept an advert from a political party except at full card rate whereas if you were trying to advertise nappies you would be able to get a similar advert for very much less.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: That is related to the rules because if they were to give a discount they could be accused of giving a benefit in kind or a benefit in cash indeed to the relevant party. I have discussed the publicity issue with senior people at the BBC - the Director General, the Political Director, etc - and they realise that they do not represent the 40% of people who do not vote but they have not been able to find a formula by which they could activate the other views; whether it is Question Time or the other similar programmes which the BBC run. They are very much locked in to this “looking backwards” system rather than looking forward despite the fact that one of their objectives is innovation in the Royal Charter.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: In this context if you look at the last 40, 50 years it has been very clearly a process of power moving away from the two main parties and you see that both in terms of the percentage of the vote they get but also in the plethora of new parties that have been able to emerge and sustain themselves.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Certainly in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland there is truth to that because the political situation has changed; nationalism has become stronger so people like Plaid Cymru, SNP have obviously done well in those areas. Within England there has been very little other than UKIP and to some extent more recently the BNP, each of which are essentially single-issue parties. We do not have a vigorous democracy in the terms of new parties being encouraged by the total plethora of rules that there are such as publicity. If only three car manufacturers were allowed to advertise their cars on television then probably the sale of those cars would continue to outstrip the sales of the other cars.

ROBIN TILBROOK: I think there is an actual advertising strategy from big businesses to advertise in order to try and raise the hurdle so the small businesses cannot come into that area of the market. In a sense what we have at the moment is something along those lines but it is done by regulation.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: In the commercial world many changes in market share and whatever it is happen because of companies coming from abroad and that is intrinsically not possible with political parties because they would not be acceptable for quite reasonable reasons. So in fact the commercial idea does not work and there has to be other real encouragements to get new views in.

ROBIN TILBROOK: It is true that the proportion of the electorate that are voting for the two or three main parties has been going down but that has not affected their power as such when elected because as we saw with the last Blair general election he got a historic landslide majority with the votes of 21.6% of the electorate.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: I think you take us into areas which are perhaps beyond the remit of this Committee. I suppose the basic reason we are here is because there are widespread concerns about what might be labelled the big donor culture of financial parties. Do you perceive that to be a problem? And if so a problem in reality or a problem of perception only?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: It is undoubtedly a problem firstly of perception. There is no question that all the surveys about trust in politics show that this is an issue where the public believes the system to be corrupt. There has been quite a lot of fuel to encourage that view. The issue with Bernie Ecclestone and Mosley on the advertising on cars; the times when the House of Lords Appointments Commission has turned down various people; the times when things have not been reported properly, both by MPs, the Mayor of London and others. So there have been plenty of newspaper stories in the last five or ten years which would make the average person be rather suspicious of this whole process so I think there is no question in terms of public perception.

In terms of the reality I think we have a pretty uncorrupted system but because of the power which does lie with the governing party in particular it is very hard to know to what extent any influence may be arising because we have very few checks and balances. I do not think there is any example of corruption in a pure sense but donations to parties I think there is some evidence, certainly shown through the honours system - the House of Lords issue which I mentioned in the paper - that money does talk in terms of those appointments. And if it does talk in terms of those appointments then it may talk in other ways.

As well as sitting here in my current role 15 years ago I was Director General of the Conservative Party and I handled all this stuff. I remember well when John Major was Prime Minister there was considerable sleaze around at the time. But I have to say that I never found a single example of policy being perverted in any way. There was a very strict Chinese Wall. I cannot speak now to that but the treasurer’s department, as it then was, operated in extreme secrecy - perhaps too much secrecy - but certainly the politicians were not told where the money was coming from.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: In the absence of any clear evidence of actual wrongdoing, would you accept the argument the present arrangement with large donors certainly creates the scope for it to be a problem? I think you have already said it certainly creates the perception that there is a problem and that the existence of the scope and the perception is enough to mean we have to do something. We cannot really duck it simply on the grounds there is no evidence of actual wrongdoing.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: I completely agree. It is a poison in the political system, there is no doubt. And because the public generally do not want to give to political parties, they have ended up with this very small number who finance very large parts of the political activity.

OLIVER HEALD: I was going to ask Sir Paul: one of the things we are looking at is what the motivation of donors might be. You are in a good position to comment on that because you have been a major donor to the Conservative Party; no doubt you are funding the Jury Team to an extent and of course you are also a charitable benefactor having set up the Judge Business School and other projects. Do you want to comment on what your own motivation has been at particular times and also your experience of other donors who you know well?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: I do believe the honours element is quite important and when one looks at the list of past donors to both of the major parties it seems quite clear that they have advanced in those terms over the years. Certainly the treasurers of the Conservative Party have traditionally become Lords, for instance, and obviously on the Labour side, Lord Levy is a well-known example in an equivalent position, and indeed a number of the Liberal Democrat major donors are now in the Lords. I think that has become a real issue which is why I mentioned it in my opening statement just to make sure it was covered.

I do not think they do it for political reasons in the sense of wishing to get a policy adopted, and this is the other side of the coin. I mentioned the Ecclestone case, and that perhaps is a bit less certain in those terms, but I think generally I do not think the people are trying to specifically get a policy in place but they may be wishing to get access to ministers or shadow-ministers and to try and get a point across. Quite often on an industry basis, whether it is private equity or healthcare or whatever it may be, and that is then very dangerous I think because governments can be accused of moving their policies in a broad sense. Not to help a particular individual but certainly to help a business area with which that individual is concerned and, therefore, by extension eventually to help the individual.

ROBIN TILBROOK: I have a slightly different view on some of the points that Paul has made. On the question of corruption I do not fully accept that our system is corrupt in the sense of bribes, and so on. I do think it is corrupt in another sense inasmuch as it is not a very democratic system and that the corruption that people regard as a corruption or debasement is the fact that political parties they feel simply cannot be trusted to live up to their manifestos. Therefore in effect the corruption that people are complaining about is that the politicians are lying about things and not being honest and honourable about the policies that they put forward in elections and they are not delivering on those.

The nearest we get to corruption in a sense of money changing hands that concerns people is the question of appointments to the House of Lords. Personally I am not concerned if other honours were being sold. The question about the House of Lords is the most important one because they are members of our legislature and, therefore, their system of becoming members of the upper chamber I think your average American would think we are nuts to have people appointed to the Lords on the basis of either past political involvement or having made a large contribution to the ruling party.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: If I may clarify, the take he then describes which is the inherent corruption in the way we do politics, I entirely agree with - the manifestos is the classic example - but that is not, in my mind, linked to the funding question; it is just the way we have to be now.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: In the House of Lords what you suggested in your opening statement was that if someone had donated more than £50,000 over 5 years that they would not be eligible. What of the point that there may be individuals who, through their experience and career, have got much to offer the House of Lords but they are also successful and wealthy and they donate, because you really want to preclude them?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Then they would be candidates to be appointed by the Appointments Commission; not candidates to be appointed by the party leaders.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: So does that suggest there might be an alternative route to dealing with this problem which would be all such appointments would be by that committee and they could look at recommendations from parties but in sanctioning an appointment would need to state publicly - in the case of somebody who had made a bit donation - that this appointment would certainly have been made in the absence of the donation.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: And, as in most cases of the Appointments Commission, they would sit as a crossbencher might be another provision. But I think it needs to be separated from the political leaders because that is where the inherent perception of corruption is.

ROBIN TILBROOK: Our position would be slightly different because we would like to see the House of Lords fully elected.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: That is a further development.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: Again you are slightly outside our remit. I would like to move on to some of the specific ideas for reform. As background to that could answer some background questions about your respective organisations, in particular what size you are and what sort of party membership and how much money do you get and from what sorts of sized donations, just so we have a feel for where you are coming from.

ROBIN TILBROOK: We have currently got a membership of just under 3,500 and I would say the subscriptions just runs the administration of the party. It is not sufficient for the number of leaflets that would be needed in terms of campaigning or paying for party election broadcasts to be made, and so on.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: So for that you are entirely dependent on donations?

ROBIN TILBROOK: We are, yes.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: And they run at what sort of level in recent years?

ROBIN TILBROOK: I am in some difficultly in saying exactly because I have not ever really done the books but I think speaking personally I have probably put in something like £150,000 into the party. I should think there are several others who have put in getting towards £50,000 and there are probably quite a number of others who put in £10,000 to £20,000.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: We have much smaller party membership of a few hundred because, knowing the difficulties of doing that, we approached it in a different way. But I made a donation of £50,000 to kick the thing off. I have also made some loans to the party. We have had one or two donations in the tens of thousands and then quite a few of £5, £10, £15, £20, £50 level.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: Okay, that is helpful. One proposal that Hayden Phillips talked about and a number of people giving evidence to us have referred to is the potential for a donation cap, for example, of £50,000. Some have talked about much more restricted levels down to perhaps £1,000 or £2,000. What are your views on those two very different levels of donation cap?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: We, in our policy statements, supported the Hayden Phillips ideas. He had done a lot of work and talked to everybody. You can play around with the figures but it is as good a number as any. I think £50,000 is a reasonable number. That is not going to be sufficient to influence almost any major policy decision but it is a fair amount for somebody to give. We already have reporting requirements above £7,500 for central gifts and so anything above £7,500 would be reported and a cap of £50,000.

One semi-technical point: it is not very clear from the Hayden Phillips report what is meant by £50,000. Does that mean per year or per parliament or per five years? I think clarity as to what one was actually talking about would be helpful. But he proposed that it comes in from 2012. Unfortunately the other parties have not been able to agree those recommendations. When we made that, looking at his report, it was fuelled by the cash for peerages issue in 2006 and he was dealing essentially with only the major parties. He really did not mention the minor parties. It is not perceived to be a problem for the extremely obvious reason that the minor parties do not have any power so there is no point in influencing them because it is not going to get you very far.

So when we wrote it we said the Hayden Phillips report recommendations on capping donations to political parties which received government funding should be accepted and enforced. So you want to do it for the ones where there is possibility of policy influence either through being in government or the individual MPs. But for new parties I think the need to encourage new ideas overrides that so if somebody wants to have a go, like James Goldsmith did 20 years ago with the Referendum Party, then I do not think that should be stopped because if you had a £50,000 cap on a new party it could be very difficult to get going.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: So your borderline for coming within that cap would be receipt of state funding?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Or some similar measure but that seems to be a pretty clear measure.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: When you say that for those in receipt of public funding that a cap of £50,000 sounds about right, as you say, Hayden Phillips might not have been very clear but what do you mean by that? Do you mean £50,000 per annum or £50,000 within 1 parliament?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: I would have thought within one parliament because most people do make a single donation. It is fairly rare for people to make two big donations. There are exceptions like David Sainsbury but it is comparatively rare.

ROBIN TILBROOK: I think I would be against that actually. I do not think there ought to be a cap and I think that what we are in danger of having here is an attempt to block off competition. I think the motivation of not having overseas donations from the Commonwealth was introduced by the Labour government with the primary aim of trying to make life difficult for Lord Ashcroft to give money to the Conservative Party and I regard that as a fundamentally corrupt way of thinking about politics. It is a gerrymandering type of idea and I think the talk of having a limit of £50,000 is more about trying to block off, for instance, UKIP being a threat than it is about trying to clear up public life in this country.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: A limit of £50,000, absent any other change which we will come back to, would very substantially reduce the funding of both the major parties.

ROBIN TILBROOK: It would also very substantially reduce the chances of any other party becoming a threat to the main parties. What the main parties would undoubtedly do if there were a limit to donations is that they would take more money off the taxpayer.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Which highlights the point about the government funding of parties or some distinction of existing parties with some form of power against the parties which are not yet in that position.

ROBIN TILBROOK: And of course if they were taking more money off the taxpayer the whole problem of parties not sticking to their word in terms of the manifesto and becoming detached from what ordinary voters want would be far worse.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: Forgive me if this is wrong but supposing the regime that Sir Paul has described was in place, is it not the case that the two main parties would see a very substantial reduction in funding absent, as I say, other changes, but under those rules your own party would not be affected?

ROBIN TILBROOK: If what Sir Paul says was implemented that would be correct but I have to say my trust that that would be what would happen would be very limited because I think the parties who were being asked to regulate themselves by the way they dealt with the legislation, it would be too tempting a target to have the opportunity to block off all competition.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: In terms of what this Committee might recommend - and this is entirely hypothetical - if it were that there should be a donation cap of £50,000 but that it would not apply until such time as a party was in receipt of state funding, would that not allay your concerns that this was just being used as a way to see off new competition?

ROBIN TILBROOK: If that was what happened then obviously I would not have the same concern. I think the average person on the street would still have a great deal of concern at the idea that the funding gap would be made up from milking the taxpayer for more money for those political parties. If money is removed from one area of funding it has to be found somewhere else, and if that is the taxpayers’ picking that up, I think that would be fundamentally wrong.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: Sir Paul, if we had such a regime with a cap it clearly would cut in half current funding for the major parties; it could easily do that. How would you see that problem being addressed in the regime that you propose?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Hopefully it will be part of re-establishing trust with the political parties which is a long-term project of which this is one aspect of the work that you are doing. But it is important that people do have faith in the political parties because they generally are not corrupt but nevertheless the perception is that they are and, therefore, people do not want to give to them. By making them appear more wholesome and taking away this continuing series of criticisms about funding then that is likely to encourage more people to give and from a much wider base. If you could get 10,000 people to give £1,000 that is £10 million so that will fill the gap.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: Would you, perhaps in the future, see increased state funding as part of the solution?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Norman Fowler, then Party Chairman, presented the Home Affairs Select Committee in 1994; this was a question that was then being addressed. I have never personally thought it was a good idea mainly because the electorate are absolutely against it and every opinion poll has said, “We do not want our tax money supporting ‘that lot’” to put it in vernacular terms.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: Mr Tilbrook, if we were to accept the argument that there should not be a cap on donations for the reasons you have said how then should we, as a society, try to deal with what I think we all agree is certainly a perception that big donors can and do buy access, maybe influence and perhaps honours?

ROBIN TILBROOK: I do not think it is the sense of policy, and so on being bought that is the point most people are concerned about. It is that fact that the main parties are not trusted to deliver on what they say they are going to do in elections. The "populist positioning policies" that parties come up with in the run-up to an election, which they have no intention of implementing, that is the area which I think people are increasingly concerned with and it is the area that has led to a dramatic drop in the numbers of people willing to join political parties. People join political parties because they want to do something about politics; they are not going to give money to a political party even if they think it is not in any way corrupt simply because of the lack of financial corruption. I think people who get involved with politics want to achieve something. The lack of accountability of politicians once elected is a severe problem I think. I think the proposal of recall would actually do more to address that than any amount of tinkering with regulation of what funding political parties could have.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: In effect you see the problem and, therefore, the solution in a rather different dimension.

ROBIN TILBROOK: Yes.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: Thank you. David?

DAVID PRINCE: Thank you. Can I talk about expenditure? You said you were broadly in favour of the Hayden Phillips’ recommendations which did talk about reducing and capping expenditure. Are you in favour of expenditure caps and do you think they should be reduced even further? A lot of people have suggested to us that parties spend more than they need to for campaigning and there is scope for a substantial cutback in party spending.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: For the general election there is a limit in the order of £20 million which is not unreasonable. We are very fortunate that we do not have broadcast political advertising because that is what perverts it in America and a number of other countries. Because of that the capability to spend is comparatively lower than the billion dollars that would be spent on a presidential candidate, etc.

The issue of newspaper and poster advertising having to be at full cost does cause problems and if the Electoral Commission or others could agree that it has to be a commercial rate but it does not have to be a full cost rate, that would indeed bring expenditure down on posters and newspaper advertising and things like that which would help everybody.

Away from general elections for by-elections the limits are still pretty complex. I think they could be simplified but I do not think the actual quantum is going to make much difference to anybody. There is complexity between the party and the candidate and who is spending what. It is just a pain to fill in all the various forms basically. But I do not feel that there is a strong need to make big changes on the expenditure side other than those.

ROBIN TILBROOK: The only area that I perhaps flag up in response is the expenditure on by-elections. We have not done a huge amount in by-elections apart from using the Royal Mail free delivery in a parliamentary by-election and our results in by-elections mostly show that, to be fair. The fact is that the main parties do spend a tremendous amount of money on the by-elections and they are allowed to, of course, by the rules and people who are subjected to a by-election get enormously fed up with vast amounts of leaflets being stuffed through their letterbox and people hammering on the door at all sorts of hours. People get absolutely fed up with the whole thing and having more restriction on what could be spent on by-elections probably would reduce some of the ridiculous amounts of impact that ordinary residents have to put up with when there is a by-election.

DAVID PRINCE: Some people have said to us there should be a substantial shift; that people should be allowed to spend a great deal more at local level but I am not hearing either of you suggesting that.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: We know that both the major parties have said they hope to reach the marginal voters seven times during the election. As we know our MPs do not change very much, even when there appears to be great swings. It is most unusual for 20% or more to actually lose a seat. For 80% once you are there and you wish to stay, you are there for as long as you like. Therefore in those 20% of the constituencies there is typically 10% or 20% of targetable floating voters. So if it is 10%, you have got 10% of 20%. That is 2% of the 45 million electorate so those 900,000 voters - poor people - get bombarded with stuff. I do not know of a way in which you could easily regulate that because during a general election it is all happening so fast but it is a consideration. A big chunk of the money goes to a very small number and the posters are put up obviously in the marginal constituencies. It is all perfectly legitimate but the concentration now with all the computer-aided postcode targeting is so strong that it is just a consideration. I need somebody to think through how that could be dealt with but much of that money goes on a very small number of the voters.

ROBIN TILBROOK: As a suggestion there could be a limit on what could be spent in each constituency. We have the national figure but you could not spend more than a certain amount on that one constituency.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: The practical difficulty is that most of that is targeted from the party headquarters; not by the local campaign constituency headquarters.

ROBIN TILBROOK: Paul is absolutely right that if you are unlucky enough to be in a marginal, you do get bombarded, particularly if you are thought to be a potential swing voter in a general election. That is more of an annoyance rather than a useful way of encouraging engagement in politics.

DAVID PRINCE: Sir Paul, I think you indicated earlier on regarding advertising rates that at least the full cost rate does guard against any perception or reality of benefits in kind. I suppose commercial rate would be much more difficult to regulate and control. There is a balance to be struck there, is there not?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: There would and that is why the newspapers go to that extreme because then they cannot be criticised. But as the many marketing matrixes show what the cost per thousand was, if you have the advertisement for the washing powder on the left page and the XYZ Party on the right page they should be broadly similar. Clearly if you gave the political away for almost nothing then that would be a benefit in kind but the measure really should be the commercial rate. I happen to be the President of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and everybody knows that the price that is on the card is never the price that anybody pays in the advertising industry.

ROBIN TILBROOK: We regularly use a broker who sets up our advertising. When he first got involved with us he was absolutely amazed to find we were having to pay multiples of what he would normally expect to be charged for a similar type of advert. It is actually quite a punitive difference.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Just a thought that came to me: it could be at a charity rate or something like that might be a way of having it.

DAVID PRINCE: It is an interesting point and not one I think that we have had put to us before which is why I wanted to come back to it. May I move on to state funding. Do you receive any form of state funding at the moment?

ROBIN TILBROOK: No.

DAVID PRINCE: Do you have a view on the unfairness of that given your relative size and the arrangements that are now in place?

ROBIN TILBROOK: I think actually when I said no to that question the caveat would have to be put in that of course we do get the free delivery of the Royal Mail - that is a subsidy in effect - and also not having to pay for the party election broadcasts which is another subsidy in another way because it is basically a free advert, is it not? You have to pay for the production of it but you do get a free advert. We only get the one if we qualify as opposed to the establishment parties which are more likely to get quite a number of them. One would have to say there is a little element of subsidy already but not as much as is available to the bigger parties. Apart from that we do not get any other subsidy at all.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: That is clearly true for us as well, yes.

DAVID PRINCE: Just to be clear, are either or both of you ideologically opposed to increased state funding or do you think the funding reforms can be carried out in ways that do not involve it and it is undesirable from an electoral point of view?

ROBIN TILBROOK: I would not class it as purely ideological. I think most people are very hostile to the idea of still more funding. Whenever I have talked about the amount of funding that the establishment parties already get people are generally absolutely furious to learn of the kind of money they are getting. I think if they thought there was going to be more money that would encourage still more people to be furious with the way the system operates rather than to engage with it which is the premise on which we have been discussing reforms, is it not? It would not improve public engagement; it would make people more fed up with the current system.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: The state funding at the moment is probably more than the average person believes but I am sure your research staff have given you the various polls and things which show people are much against the idea. If it were to be extended though it would have to be extended on the basis of the electorate; not the voters. If it is just to bolster those who already have power and influence then I think that would be entirely wrong. At the moment the formula relates to number of MPs and number of votes and the short money and things like that. It does not provide any money for the 40% of the electorate who did not vote. If there were to be a pot of £10 million if you add everything together, if that represents those who voted in the general election, one would think there would be another £6 or £7 million for the people who did not vote which perhaps the Electoral Commission or someone of that nature would distribute amongst the other parties.

DAVID PRINCE: What are your views on a gift aid approach; tax relief such as gift aid? Would that make it more acceptable to channel more state funding in? Do you think it is worth the effort?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: From a pure point of view it is proper that there be gift aid in a sense because it ceases to be your income is the same argument that has existed for 300 years on charities. You get your income, you give some of it away to a charity, then it is not your income so you should not be taxed on it is essentially the base point and I see no reason why that should not apply for political donations as well. There could be a difficulty with higher rate tax so it might have to be limited to lower rate tax otherwise it would look like the rich were getting more influence again, etc. But if it was limited to lower rate tax it would be a more acceptable form of state funding because it would be following the money rather than following the number of MPs or number of votes.

ROBIN TILBROOK: I would start from the perspective that gift aid was not actually state funding. It is a giving up of some of the tax take, which is not quite the same as state funding, if I understand what you mean by gift aid correctly, so I would not be opposed to that at all. I think that would be a useful thing to happen. Going back to the question earlier about state funding we have to bear in mind the fairly appalling example of the way Belgium operates its rules on political parties. Its manipulation of the state funding rules and also capping private donations which establishment parties use to try and cut off competition; in this case the Flemish Nationalists. Because they are challenging the idea of Belgium they are then regularly finding they are being told they are no longer recognised as a political party and therefore do not receive any state funding. And their rule is now that you are not allowed to give any money to a political party so the only way a political party can get funding is by state funding. So you have, in effect, a manipulation by the Belgium establishment to try and prevent democratic political expression of views that they do not approve of.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: If there is a document you can send us with some detail on that it would be very useful. Denise?

DAME DENISE PLATT: I want to turn to the regulatory framework. As small parties what is your view of the current framework?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: It is not bad. We fill in our forms for the Electoral Commission. They are still all rather higgledy-piggledy; the date is written in different ways on different forms and nobody has ever gone through it and tried to make it easy to fill in. I think that is one thing. The categories of expenditure cause a lot of problems because they are different for by-elections, general elections and annual accounts. There is absolutely no reason for them to be different; it wastes a lot of accounting time recoding everything and for small parties that is a real pain. I have already mentioned the reporting of by-elections and the anomaly and that is because the PPRA 2000 Act is fairly clear but the candidate part of it stems from an earlier Act and it has never been put together. If one compares it with the Charity Commission, which is broadly a similar thing, it is probably no worse.

DAME DENISE PLATT: Okay, it could be a bit more coherent.

ROBIN TILBROOK: I agree that it is not coherent in that you have forms from the Electoral Commission and also forms from the Returning Officers; they do not match each other in any sense. I personally regard it as a bureaucratic rigmarole that actually does not really achieve very much. It is not particularly painful to comply with it once you know that you have to but what does it actually achieve? I think that is rather difficult to say.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: The Northern Ireland question: you have to report separately for Northern Ireland. We do not do anything in Northern Ireland so we just do a nil return but for accounting and all the rest of the annual accounts it all has to be done twice. Assuming we believe the peace settlement in Northern Ireland is now with us it seems to me that there is no reason why the Northern Ireland aspect should be a completely separate register. We do not do that for Scotland or Wales. It was done because there are different disclosure requirements because people were worried that if somebody gave £10,000 to a party somebody might come around and shoot them and all that sort of thing. But assuming we believe that is now gone then it seems to me totally duplicative to have a separate register for Northern Ireland.

ROBIN TILBROOK: I thought there was a rule on foreign donations in order to keep Sinn Fein on board.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Yes, you can donate from Ireland to Northern Ireland. You cannot donate from Ireland to Great Britain.

DAME DENISE PLATT: Yes, we have been and taken evidence in Northern Ireland. So what you say is not unfamiliar from things that we have heard. The issue about the Returning Officer documentation and the Electoral Commission documentation: we have received evidence from Returning Officers who feel that there should be one set of documentation that goes straight to the Electoral Commission online. Would that be something you might support?

ROBIN TILBROOK: On the basis of where we are at the moment some of our candidates would need somebody else to file that for them because they would not be online and I suspect that would be true of all political parties in the end. Somebody would have to do it. If you have bureaucracy within the political party of election agents, and so on then maybe they would support that but if it had to be online as a rule then I think that would be a slight problem but if there was the system that you could do it online and you could post it in, then that would ensure that even those candidates without agents or internet access could still do it.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Yes, online should be an option but not compulsory but I think the majority would do it but there will always be exceptions and I think sending it to the Electoral Commission makes a lot more sense than sending it to the Returning Officer who really has no idea because these things happen so rarely. It is meaningless for them to have it.

DAME DENISE PLATT: That brings me to my next question: we have received evidence that the regulatory burden about reporting donations and expenditure is too onerous for small parties.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: These small parties must have huge numbers of donations so they are very lucky I guess!

DAME DENISE PLATT: You do not have enough to make it onerous?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Sadly we do not have that problem!

DAME DENISE PLATT: We have also heard that parties without central compliance functions feel disadvantaged. It all comes down to the definition of small though, does it not?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: Yes, if it could be simplified and make the candidate, the by-election, the general election, the European election and the normal running all using the same codes and things, that would make it much, much easier.

ROBIN TILBROOK: It would probably be helpful if there was an effort to stand back a bit and try and work out what actually needs to be reported and what is just bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo to make life difficult. Very small parties are going to find that it is onerous. Once you start to have people volunteering to be the treasurer then at that point it might not be quite such a problem.

DAME DENISE PLATT: Do either of your parties have a compliance officer?

ROBIN TILBROOK: We have a party treasurer.

SIR PAUL JUDGE: We have an auditor obviously.

DAME DENISE PLATT: What changes would you like to see to the regulatory framework in addition to simplifying it?

SIR PAUL JUDGE: I think having an Electoral Commission is a good thing, like having a Charity Commission is a good thing. It should just be made as user friendly as it can be.

ROBIN TILBROOK: The problem I see with the Electoral Commission is we have this fairly expensive structure but it has virtually no teeth. If you have a problem, for example, with the returning officer being awkward about something, you ring up the Electoral Commission and they say, “They should not be doing that but we cannot do anything about it”. We have a website run by a UKIP supporter which calls itself the English Democratic Party. There is no such registered party and because there is no such registered party the Electoral Commission says, “We cannot do anything about it”. I think it is probably rather expensive and not really achieving a great deal but I think part of the reason why it was introduced was partly about transferring power from the local parts of the party to the centre. So we now have a single national nominating officer and that means that local parties can no longer get their own candidate forced through against the wishes of the centre of the party.

DAME DENISE PLATT: So that is power over how local elections are run; more power than currently?

ROBIN TILBROOK: For instance, if we had a coherent election administration system where returning officers were part of the Electoral Commission system you have then some organisation nationally that is holding the election system to account. That obviously would be of some use and you would not get different practices occurring in all sorts of different parts of the country, and when you have a question of impartiality of how an election was being run locally you have an organisation that can easily step in.

DAME DENISE PLATT: And somewhere to make a complaint.

ROBIN TILBROOK: Yes, and you would have some independent body whose job it was to run elections.

DAME DENISE PLATT: Okay, thank you very much.

SIR DEREK MORRIS: Is there anything you want to say to us that has not been elicited by our questions before we close? Right, thank you very much for coming along. That concludes this hearing and indeed our hearings for the day.

My Evidence to the Kelly Commission on Political Funding

2011-11-23T19:00:00.003Z

I was asked to give evidence to the Kelly commission. This is the one which has just recommended a raft of measures which would give the Establishment yet more of our money!

Here is my FOLLOW-UP SUBMISSION

When I and Sir Paul Judge attended the committee, the acting Chairman asked me to get verification of what I was saying about the Belgian situation. I have therefore had it verified by Vlaams Belang.

Mr Tomas Verachtert, Vlaams Belang's information officer has confirmed the following:-

BELGIAN POLITICAL MANIPULATION OF PARTY FUNDING RULES

The Belgian Establishment has restricted raising Party funding by private donations and has then manipulated state funding to attack the democratic rights of those that challenge the Belgian State’s legitimacy.

In national identity terms Belgium is split between the Flemings and the Walloons (French speaking). Belgium exists as a state because the 19th Century imperialist powers created it as a buffer to contain France and so it was created without regard to the Nationalist aspirations of the people thus unwillingly corralled.

In 2004 the predecessor of Vlaams Belang, Vlaams Block, the leading Flemish Nationalist Party, was “convicted” of violating a Belgian “anti-racism” law after its political opponents had made drastic changes to the relevant legislation to redefine “racism” to include any expression of Flemish Nationalism. What the Belgium Government in effect did is to blatantly adjust the legislation in such a way that they could have Vlaams Blok condemned.

The initial trial, that ended in 2004, led to Vlaams Block being heavily fined and thus financially crippled, as no private funding could be received to pay the fine. Vlaams Block therefore ceased operation and a successor was created -Vlaams Belang.

In May 2006 the Walloon Parties (French speaking) and the Flemish Socialists and Greens started a legal procedure against Vlaams Belang party on the grounds of them being “racist”. Their aim is to deprive Vlamms Belang of government party funding. If successful, this would cost Vlaams Belang 2 million euros p.a. and make it financially unviable.

This latest process was formally legally initiated in October 2006, by the Belgian “Council of State”. Half the members of the General Assembly of the State Council (which will decide whether state funding will be cut off or not) is French-speaking, and many of them are also politically appointed or have clear ties to a Belgian Establishment political party.

Vlaams Belang have been fighting the whole procedure by challenging all French-speaking judges on suspicion of bias. These challenges have not yet been dealt with, but have now been extended to all judges of socialist leanings. Recently a “Commissioner of Audit” has judged that the prosecutors must produce evidence that anti-racism laws have been violated 60 days before the suit was filed. Nevertheless Vlaams Belang’s opponents are proceeding with their legal proceedings.

The effect of this cynical manipulation of democratic norms is to undermine not only the democratic legitimacy of the Belgian State itself but also to illegitimately politicise the Belgian Judiciary."

Polls show Muslims now more 'British' than the English!

2011-11-20T19:16:00.007Z

Today we have some very interesting and, from the point of view of English Nationalists, highly encouraging newspaper reports. This is because there has been a YouGov opinion poll which shows that the tide of Englishness is surging whilst support for Britishness is being washed away even in its former safe haven of England.
Here is a link to the poll itself >>> http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/hufq8ro02k/YG-Archives-pol-Europe-181111.pdf.

The Yougov poll results were commented about on the front page of the Scotsman's Sunday newspaper, Scotland on Sunday, which said:-
"English move away from being British - Calls for an English parliament are growing
By Eddie Barnes
Published on Sunday 20 November 2011 00:00

THE British identity is in steep decline south of the border with the number of people who would describe themselves as English over British soaring, a poll has revealed.

The study found that the number of people in England who would now describe themselves as English rather than British rose to 63 per cent, as opposed to 41 per cent in 2008.

The YouGov poll also discovered that just 20 per cent of the UK population preferred a British identity to any other, down from 42 per cent three years ago.

The poll, taken last month, appears to show that English nationalism is on the rise at the same time as Scottish nationalism is the predominant force in politics north of the border.

It prompted warnings of a shift that could threaten the Union.

The findings were last night seized on by campaigners for a separate English Parliament as further evidence that there was now a major social shift developing across the country.

And John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, said that a weakening of “Britishness” in England could have massive repercussions for the future of the Union.

He said: “Adherence to a common sense of ‘Britishness’ is often thought to be a vital part of the emotional glue that helps keep the Union together. That glue has long since lost much of its strength in Scotland. If it has now been eroded in England too, the long term prospects for the Union would seem rather bleak indeed.”

The SNP said that the figures showed there was a desire for a new “equal relationship” between Scotland and England, with the nations standing on their own.

The figures in the new YouGov poll on English and British identity are a marked change on previous polling undertaken in recent years.

Of 1,700 adults around Britain, 2 per cent said they were “mainly” European, 19 per cent said British, 1 per cent said Irish, 5 per cent Welsh, 8 per cent Scottish and 63 per cent said English. In 2008, asked which best described how people felt about themselves, 42 per cent said British, 1 per cent said Irish, 4 per cent Welsh, 8 per cent Scottish and 41 per cent said English.

The new poll, published in this month’s Prospect magazine, was carried out as part of a wider study on British attitudes to Europe.

It was claimed last night that the increase in ‘Englishness has been fuelled in part by resentment about perceived Scottish “freebies”, especially concerning university tuition fees, soon to rise to £9,000 a year south of the border.

Calls for an English “parliament” are growing. Labour MP Frank Field has now laid down a parliamentary motion calling for the pros and cons of such a devolved chamber to be examined.

Eddie Bone of the Campaign for an English Parliament said: “People may not understand the Barnett Formula (which provides the block funding grant to Scotland), but they understand the issue of prescription charges, elderly care, NHS cuts and particularly tuition fees. There is a real feeling among young people in England now that they are being treated very badly. ”

He added: “What is coming out is that more and more people identify themselves as English and that they are subsidising the rest of the UK.”

SNP Ministers have pointed out that Scotland generates more tax revenues than its per capita share in an attempt to scotch the “subsidy myth”. But recent polls have shown a growing discontent in England about Scotland’s share of public spending.

Field added last night: “I was against devolution but once it went through, it seems to me the issue is unfinished. And the people being under-represented are the English, simply because they are the biggest group. I would have thought the next stage is for an English parliament, with a Federal parliament for the UK which undertakes collective action.”

Here is the link to the full story >>> http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/english_move_away_from_being_british_1_1975522

There is also this from the BBC' favourite academic commentator on Voting Trends:-

"John Curtice: Long-term prospects for ‘Britishness’ appear weak
By John Curtice
Published on Sunday 20 November 2011

“ARE you English or British?” “Why both. What’s the difference?” Such conversations about national identity are often thought to be commonplace south of the Border. Residing in by far the largest part of the UK, people in England often talk as though Britain and England are but one and the same place.

So should we take much notice when a YouGov poll discovers that three times as many people in England say they are “mainly English” than say they are “mainly British”?

Well, adherence to a common sense of “Britishness” is often thought to be a vital part of the emotional glue that helps keep the Union together. That glue has long since lost much of its strength in Scotland. If it has now been eroded in England too, the long-term prospects for the Union would seem rather bleak indeed.

There are, though, some caveats about YouGov’s poll. When they try to find out people’s identity, polls typically ask how their respondents how they “think” or “feel” about themselves. After all, an identity is a label or badge that people apply to themselves and towards which they feel a degree of emotional attachment. Such a wording helps get at that.

In their latest poll, YouGov just asked people whether they were mainly English, British or whatever.

Such an approach might be thought to invoke a factual description rather than an identity. Yet if that were all YouGov’s poll was picking up, we would not anticipate that which description people chose would make much difference to the views they expressed on other subjects in the poll. But it did. Those who described themselves as English had a distinctly more “nationalist” outlook.

Fifty-seven per cent of them said they would vote in favour of leaving the European Union. So YouGov’s poll does seem to have picked up something of a genuine “little Englander” mood south of the Border – stimulated perhaps by the recent travails of the eurozone.

And if it is a mood that is willing to contemplate the “break-up” of the European Union, might it not be willing to consider the dissolution of the domestic Union, too?
• John Curtice is Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University"

Here is the link to the full story >>> http://www.scotsman.com/news/cartoon/john_curtice_long_term_prospects_for_britishness_appear_weak_1_1975538

Also the Scotsman did a "VoxPop" article:-

"Question of nationality divides Union Street
Published on Sunday 20 November 2011

ARE the English feeling less British? We visited historic Union Street in Plymouth – which connects the city centre to the Devonport naval shipyard – to find out.

Sean Lodge, 24, a medic in the Navy from Plymouth: “I describe myself as British but in future English people will be more likely to describe themselves as English. It would benefit England if Scotland were to be independent. We pay high taxes to subsidise tuition fees and cheap prescriptions in Scotland which we don’t see the benefits of.”

Kizzy Dowding, 20, a shop supervisor from Plymouth: “I describe myself as English rather than British. If Scotland wants to be independent they should go for it. Scotland has its own parliament so I don’t see why it can’t.”

George Peart, 48, a plasterer, originally from Newcastle: “I describe myself as British as it is all encompassing. Britain as a whole has its customs and traditions and I feel a sense of pride at being from Britain, not just England. Being from Newcastle I feel closer to Scotland than people living in the South. But Scots have always considered themselves to be independent.”

Vilma Glanville, 80, a retired auditor for the Ministry of Defence: “I would describe myself as English and I always have. My family are English and that’s where my heritage is. Scotland gets a lot of advantages that we don’t. They can sit in our parliament but we don’t have a say in theirs.”

Here is the link to the full story >>> http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/question_of_nationality_divides_union_street_1_1975531

Interesting as the ongoing change in English people's idea of their national identity is, in many ways it is even more interesting to see what type of people still see themselves as British. The Daily mail, reporting another Poll, puts it this way:-

"Muslims 'are more patriotic than most British people'
British Muslims feel a greater sense of national pride than the average UK citizen, according to the results of a new poll.

While 79 per cent of the Britons quizzed said they agreed with the statement 'I am proud to be a British citizen', the figure rose to 83 per cent among Muslims.

And Muslim Britons were also found to be significantly more optimistic than most with just 31 per cent agreeing with the notion that Britain's best days are in the past compared to an average of 45 per cent.

National pride: A group of Muslim women enjoy a stroll in Regent's Park. A new survey has found Muslims to be more patriotic than the average British citizen

The figures are, to some extent, understood to reflect a reaction to the hostility and distrust felt by many British Muslims in the post 9/11 world.

There is also the belief that Muslims are more able to appreciate the political freedoms UK citizens enjoy as they can trace their family roots to far more oppressive and non-democratic regimes.

British-Pakistani boxer Amir Khan, one of the most prominent flag wavers among the nation's Muslim population, often speaks in interviews about his sense of national pride.

The poll of 2000 people, taken by the think tank Demos, was designed to find what symbolises the best of Britain.

The report found: 'This optimism in British Muslims is significant as - combined with their high score for pride in being British - it runs counter to a prevailing narrative about Muslim dissatisfaction with and in the UK.'

Perhaps the answer to this may be found in a further comment in the article:-

"Around half of people questioned for the survey said they believed Britain benefited from being a multicultural country."

Here is the link to the full story >>> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063828/Muslims-patriotic-British-people.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

An interview with the leader of the English Democrats

2011-11-19T22:39:00.004Z

I recently did an interview for "Politics UK". Here it is:-

Friday, 11 November 2011
Black/Tilbrook - an interview with the leader of the English Democrats

1. What are your Party's 3 main policies?
The English Democrats are seeking reform of the British Constitution to create a properly functioning democracy for the People of England. Thus we are campaigning for an ‘English First Minister, Government and Parliament with at least the same powers as the Scottish ones’.
We also want to protect our nation and national culture from the EU, so we are campaigning for a referendum on coming out of the EU. We would campaign in that referendum for a vote to leave.
We also want a properly functioning border controls which prevent mass immigration and efficiently deport illegal immigrants.
Here is one of our PEBs which makes our points well. Click here>>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mI8678VyRM

2. Should smaller parties have a "vision" or a manifesto?
The English Democrats have a full manifesto which can be found here >>>http://www.voteenglish.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=196&Itemid=558

3. Should we have a referendum on the EU, if yes, when?
Yes and as soon as possible (see 1. above).

4. What is you're party's "route" into mainstream politics (eg. local elections, Scottish, Euros...)
The English Democrats fight elections throughout England whenever we can. Our first significant victory was winning the Elected Executive Mayoralty of Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council. We also are now starting to win District/Borough Council elections and won tow in May. We also have several Parish/Town Councillors.

5. Would you say you are on the left, the right, the center or another third way?

The English Democrats’ slogan is that we are:-
“Not Right, not Left, just English”!

6. What is your policy on university tuition fees?
The English Democrats have always opposed the unfair discrimination against English students which the current system imposes. Click here to see a video clip we did on this >>> Students http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCnFhToPsKA&feature=related
And for a more jokey take on the same topic, click here >>>
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PbibPOjQf-4&feature=related
This unfairness will be much worse next year when the tripling of the fees to £9,000 takes affect.

7. What is your own personal view on ‘benefit tourism’?
It is the duty of a properly functioning state system of politicians and bureaucrats to ensure that tax payer’s money is not wasted and is only used for the benefit of our country. This is one issue amongst many where the current system lets us all down.

8. Under your leadership, where do you see the Party in a year’s time?
I expect the English Democrats to continue to grow and to become more effective as the political campaigning arm of English Nationalism. In a few years time I hope that we shall find that English Nationalism has become the mainstream but there is no doubt that it is on the rise and part of the reason for that is our distribution of over 25 million leaflets!

9. Why should there be an English parliament?
There should be an English Parliament because it is the only fair and logically coherent response to devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Click here for a clip on this issue >>> "Why an English Parliament?" http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=M8g-HoqJwM0&NR=1
It is so obviously the only answer that our political opponents don’t usually even try to openly argue against it. They resort to the usual political tricks of obstructionism and evasion.

10. What one thing would you change about the British political system?
The key issue for any democratic nationalist is that the political system should be the democrat i.e. voice of the nation. So I would change the British system radically to enable English Nationalism to be given a democratic forum for the expression of the sovereign will of the People of England. Garry Bushell made agood point for us in this clip >>> http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hUjzoVbmBnE&feature=related

Thank you for inviting me to take part.

Here is the link to the original site >>>
http://bazpoliticsuk.blogspot.com/2011/11/blacktilbrook-interview-with-leader-of.html

INTRODUCTION TO THE DIRECTLY ELECTED COUNCIL LEADER (AKA MAYORAL) SYSTEM

2011-11-13T10:12:00.002Z

Introduction
The possibility of having directly elected Executive Mayors (Council Leaders) was introduced in the Local Government Act 2000.
THE UK currently has 13 directly elected mayors.
Several Mayors are Independents and are not beholden to an Establishment Party. Ken Livingstone won in London as an Independent after the Labour Party refused to endorse him. Stuart Drummond, Hartlepool United’s club mascot H’Angus the Monkey, won in 2002 on the back of a jokey campaign. He has been re-elected twice since and is doing an excellent job for his town. Former senior policeman Ray Mallon won in Middlesbrough as an Independent in 2002 and won re-election in the recent election by a landslide. The first elected mayor of Mansfield in 2002 was the Independent candidate, Tony Eggerton, who has since been re-elected in 2007; his victory led to Independents eventually being the majority on the council. The first elected mayor of Bedford was also an Independent. Other mayors have been elected from political parties not forming the majority amongst councillors.
The Choices
The choices for models of political leadership within local governance are:-
1. Elected Mayor The Mayor is directly elected by all the local authority’s voters and serves for four years. He or she would choose up to 10 councillors as cabinet members. The mayor cannot be removed from office by councillors, which makes sense as he or she was not appointed by the councillors. Advisory overview and scrutiny committees hold the mayor and cabinet to account and assist in policy development. This is the most democratic option as it gives the people the choice.
2. Strong Leader By contrast to the directly elected Mayor, the Leader is secretly elected by the councillors of the local ruling party. The Leader appoints a cabinet and has all the same powers as the Elected Mayor. As a result of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act, by 31st December 2010 councils must adopt either an “Elected Mayor” or a “Strong Leader” system. The Strong Leader system means that the Leader is appointed by the council (in reality the ruling party) for four years. The Leader is therefore beholden for his position to the largest party on the Council and so answers to them and not to the wider electorate.
This choice is the one preferred by local political elites because it gives them power over the people with the least chance of effective opposition.
3. Councillor Committees This is the old Committee system and was widely criticised as being too slow and too lacking in transparency and has now been fazed out as an option.
The Mayoral System

A directly elected Mayor can take decisions with a Cabinet (of councillors) appointed by the Mayor.

A directly elected Executive Mayor would be elected for a four year term by all residents eligible to vote in local elections.

The local authority’s “Executive” (or “Cabinet”) is made up of between three and ten councillors, including the elected Mayor. Elections for Councillors continue as normal.

Councillors have a role in the scrutiny of the Mayor’s decisions on major issues, including the council tax and major policy decisions. Committees of Councillors continue on planning, licensing and regulatory functions. In other matters the Mayor is free to decide how decisions are made, and the Mayor takes most decisions on a day to day basis instead of committees of councillors.

Councillors who are not members of the Cabinet would continue to have some important functions, including representing their local communities. They can monitor and comment on the performance of the Mayor and Cabinet – the scrutiny role referred to above.

• The Mayor provides highly visible local political leadership
• The Mayoral system provides a single, accountable leader directly responsible to the voters
• The mayoral system leads to faster decision making
• It gives the Mayor power to get policies into place quickly
• A fixed four year term ensures some continuity combined with direct accountability to voters

In Torbay the Elected Mayoral system has recently caused the Councillors to abolish the whip system as it is no longer necessary.

How to get a Mayor System for your Local Authority

The mechanism by which local authorities can move, from whichever governance system that they now operate, to the clarity of a directly elected executive mayor is by local referendum. The local referendum can be triggered:- First by the councillors voting for it (highly unlikely! – (turkeys/Christmas!); Second by the Secretary of State ordering it; Or, third, and most useful from our point of view, by a public petition. The petition threshold is surprisingly easy to cross, requiring the signatures of 5% of the registered electors. In most local authorities this is less than 5,000 signatures.

The consequences of obtaining a petition are governed by the Local Government Act 2000, which decrees that in the event that a petition validly signed by 5% of the electors calling for a referendum on a directly elected executive mayor being received by the council’s returning officer, there must, by law, be a local referendum.

If the majority of those that vote in the referendum are in favour, then there must be a directly elected mayor. The law therefore enables the vested interests of local ruling parties and councillors to be swept aside. Such petitions therefore have legal consequences which are unlike most petitions, which are merely an expression of protest by people and which are, unless they are in the interests of the ruling party, usually ignored.

Electoral Advantages

Mayoral elections are a much more of a level playing field between all candidates than the usual run of English elections where the three Establishment parties have tremendous advantages in terms of money and organization.

In Doncaster, for example, while the English Democrats had been campaigning over the previous four years we had few other advantages except a hard hitting entry in the mayoral booklet (which is sent by the local Returning Officer to every elector as part of the system of mayoral elections) Also there is the Supplementary Vote System which in Doncaster enabled us to win on second preferences. As the BBC news coverage of the election did not even mention us, or our candidate, once during the campaign it is clear that mayoral elections are winnable solely by effort on the ground (and an excellent candidate!).

In addition the result of winning a mayoral election is that, subject to the restraints of his office, the successful candidate is in power in that local authority. It follows that it is also much more practical for a small party or for an independent to gain control of a local authority through the directly elected mayoral system than any other electoral strategy. The effect of doing so is strategically important as it undermines the British Establishment parties.

Robin Tilbrook

PO Box 1066,
Norwich, NR14 6ZJ.
TEL: 0870 0624555
www.englishdemocrats.org.uk

Speech PM Sept '10

2011-11-13T10:09:00.000Z

AFTERNOON SPEECH

Ladies and Gentlemen

We are the English Democrats Party and as democrats we should always be campaigning to improve how democracy works in England.

As democrats we believe in the sovereignty of our people, the sovereignty of the English Nation, rather than the old idea of the monarch in Parliament as being the sovereign.

That is why direct democracy - like having referenda on issues is very much part of our agenda.

As a lawyer, I also prefer to be involved in initiatives that have real legal teeth and using a petition to campaign for a directly elected mayor has real legal teeth.

If you get the signatures of 5% of your local authority’s electors, then there must be, by law, a referendum on having a directly elected mayor.

If the majority of the local electorate vote in favour of having a directly elected mayor, then there must be by law a directly elected mayor. So Ladies and Gentlemen our discussions now will be about our Party’s initiative to push for directly mayors throughout England.

Ladies and Gentlemen as I stand before you I can tell you that we, as a Party, have now registered our petitions with every relevant local authority in England that does not either have a directly elected mayor already, or has not conducted a referendum on it in the last 10 years. The law does not allow a second referendum within 10 years of the previous one.

This is a really exciting initiative which the English Democrats are spearheading and which could make a dramatic difference to the way local governments are run up and down the country.

We have registered with every District Council, every Borough Council, every Unitary Council, every County Council and every City Council.

Where you can run the campaign yourselves and get the signatures I would urge everyone of you to get involved. Also wherever possible encourage activists from other parties and those who are independents in local government to do likewise.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to be able to introduce our next speaker, Professor Colin Copus from the De Montfort University in Leicester.

Colin is the leading academic commentator on directly elected mayors and has written this book which I would recommend to you all.

It certainly helped broaden my understanding of what a directly elected mayoralty may be able to achieve.

Colin has come to explain some of the constitutional and political significance of what we are trying to achieve. Ladies and Gentlemen, without any more ado, will you please welcome Professor Colin Copus.

Ladies and Gentlemen, our second speaker on this important issue is our own English Democrats Mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies. The London centric, the Financial Times, described him as “the Boris of the North”. Although I should say that Peter always likes to describe Boris Johnson as the “Peter of the South”.

Peter is here to tell us about the advantages of the mayoral system for local government and for our democracy in England.

Speech - Sept '10 am

2011-11-12T22:11:00.001Z

MORNING SPEECH

Good Morning Ladies & Gentlemen

Welcome to Nottingham and Robin Hood country!

I am delighted to be able to greet you all on this, the 8th Annual General Meeting, since we were launched on August 20th 2002. In those 8 years this Party, and the English movement generally, have made great strides forward. I just want to take a moment or two to reflect on that because we often lose sight of what progress we have made in our quite understandable anxiety to improve further.

What we are attempting to do, Ladies and Gentlemen, is something that in its true meaning is little short of revolutionary!

We are attempting by peaceful, moderate, reasonable, legal and thoroughly democratic means to create from its foundations up an entirely new structure – an entirely new political party - which will be the voice for the English Nation.

In those 8 years we have spent a considerable sum of money, certainly in excess of £400,000, and we have spent a great deal of time and effort. As I look around this room I can see many of those who have put in what is well beyond the call of duty into this Cause and into trying to make it succeed.

We have shown in this recent General Election (as we did in the EU one last year, with 279,801 votes) that we are currently England’s 7th largest party. With 107 candidates (which was more than the SNP and Plaid Cymru put together), we got 64,826 votes. Our percentage in this election if it had been spread over the whole of England’s 533 seats, would have worked out at an averaged equivalent of 324,064 votes nationwide.

I think that we are now on the very cusp of making a breakthrough to being an established political party and an effective campaigning force for the English Nation.

So as we reflect on how far we have come we should thank those members who are here and also, in their absence, all those members who have helped us get where we are by campaigning, leafleting, standing in elections and taking part in building our organisation.

Could I ask our last year’s National Council Members to stand up. Ladies and Gentlemen, our National Council meets once a month and members of our National Council give their time and travel freely for the Cause and richly deserve our thanks.

Now could I please ask all those who stood in the General Election and helped us get not only 64,826 votes, but also the essential Party Election Broadcast and coverage in the broadcast media that we would not have got if we had stood less candidates.

Ladies and Gentlemen could I ask those parliamentary candidates who are present to stand up. They gave their time to the Cause freely and also in many cases spent significant amounts of money to make it possible and they richly deserve our thanks.

Last, but by no means least, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have quite a number of people who have stood in local elections. Standing in local elections isn’t as expensive as standing in parliamentary elections, as there is no deposit and the amount of leafleting is far less, but nevertheless it is a very important part of getting the message out there. Ladies and Gentlemen I would ask those who stood in local elections to stand so that we can thank them also for their time and effort for our Cause.

The reason why we are as near the cusp of breakthrough as we are is because in all these years we have been building our “brand awareness”. I am speaking in marketing terms. There is a marketing theory that unless someone has heard something about us at least five times, they do not actually fully register that they have heard of us, but after the fifth time they are likely to say to themselves that they have heard of us and perhaps will then consider supporting us.

All our hard work on building our brand awareness is working but please do remember that when you are discussing what the English Democrats are about, do compare us with the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru and not with the BNP. If you say we are not the BNP, not racist and so on, all of that is true, but it does create the wrong associations in people’s minds and involves you in a detailed explanation. Whereas if you simply say that we are like the Scottish National Party or Plaid Cymru for England then you are triggering different associations in people’s minds and then people are usually interested in hearing the details of what we are about – instead of pigeon holing us in a bad and dangerous pigeon hole!

In order to make the actual breakthrough to winning elections we do have to move from where we are at the moment which is simply leafleting for elections to actually canvassing electors. In election winning terms there can be no substitute to talking to as many electors as possible. Many parties do six “sweeps” of their target constituency. Each time taking note of waivers, supporters and opponents and making sure that supporters are followed up on election day to see they have in fact voted and also avoiding any further leafleting of opponents as they do not want to encourage them to vote.

Let me give you a quotation from another Chairman, “Be resolute, fear no sacrifice, and surmount every difficulty to win victory”. Chairman Mao Tse Tung.

Ladies and Gentlemen one of the things you might also like to consider that shows that we have had some success is the fact that a Commission to consider the West Lothian question (which I think should more properly be called the English Question), is an item that has been expressly agreed in the Coalition pact. Of course what has been agreed between them is that the issue will be kicked into the long grass and that the Commission will no doubt take many years to report, but the fact that the West Lothian question now has special prominence and that it has had to be treated in this way shows that we are making headway and that we are worrying the Westminster Establishment.

It is also interesting that even Labour have now been saying that they need to become a more English Party.

Both David Milliband and that darling of the left, John Cruddas, have said as much, along with a number of other Labour MPs.

As I have said the General Election showed us as being the 7th largest Party in England in terms of popular support. Ladies and Gentlemen, this has been achieved without any serious financial backing and with all the money raised from the pockets of Party members. If we are to be able to make that breakthrough we do need to raise more money and I would consider this issue to be one of our most serious challenges. I think all of us who have canvassed know that on the street there is tremendous potential support for this Party, but we do need the money which will enable us to be more organised and to do all that we need to do in terms of electioneering.

Ladies and Gentlemen building our name recognition branding in the political market place has cost many hours of hard work by our activists and, as I have said, has cost at least £400,000 of our Party Members’ money and Ladies and Gentlemen I have to tell you that we need much more to make the difference.

Ladies & Gentlemen, I don’t know if you have heard about the two young men, Jack and Bob, whose car got stuck in a torrential downpour in the Lake District a few years ago?

Luckily they were near a farmhouse and so asked the lady who answered the door if they could stay the night.

“I realise it’s terrible weather out there”, she said “and I have this huge house all to myself, but I’m worried neighbours will gossip if I let you stay in my house”

“Don’t worry,” Jack said to her. “We’ll be happy to sleep in the barn. And if the weather improves, we’ll be gone at dawn”.

The lady agreed, and the two men waded over to the barn and settled in for the night.

Come morning, the rain had cleared up, and they went on their way.

About nine months later, Jack got an unexpected letter from a Cumbrian solicitor. It took him a few minutes to understand it but he finally worked out that it was from the solicitor of that attractive widow he had met on that wet weekend.

He went round to see his friend Bob and asked, “Bob, do you remember that good-looking widow from the farm where we sheltered in the barn up in the Lake District?”

“Yes I do”, replied Bob

“Did you happen to get up in the middle of the night, go up to the house and pay her a visit?” asked Jack

“Yes,” Bob said, a little embarrassed about being found out. “I have to admit that I did”.

“And did you happen to use my name instead of telling her your name?”

Bob’s face turned bright pink and he said, “Yes, Sorry mate. I’m afraid I did. Why do you ask?”

Jack replied “Well she just died and left me all her money.”

So could I please urge that if any of you are in that kind of situation, please could you say that your name is “English Democrats” because we could really do with having the legacy!

Ladies and Gentlemen, let us now ookin around us at the political situation we now find ourselves in.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have had a look at Nick Clegg’s recent speech to the Liberal Democrat Conference and it may surprise you to hear me say it but “I agree with Nick” when he says “Britain in 2010 is anxious, unsure about the future, but Britain in 2015 will be a different country” - but not, I think, for the reasons that he gave!

Looking around the world, Coalition Governments lead often to a realignment of politics. Let me give you an example. If you look at the Coalition Government formed in 1916 and which went on until 1922. It led to a dramatic realignment of politics. If you consider that the Conservative Party before the First World War was something of a rump of extremists with their then leader being involved in gun-running to Northern Ireland, but by 1922 the boundaries of what it meant to be Conservative had changed dramatically. So, for example, a man who had been one of the leading lights of the Liberal Party and had for some years been regularly a Liberal Cabinet Minister, I mean Winston Churchill. By 1922 he had become a Conservative and the Liberal Party itself was left as a small rump which never held power again, until one might argue this year.

Churchill had originally, when he first entered Parliament, been elected as a Conservative but he had ratted soon afterwards. In 1922 he was accused of ratting again and he said that “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat”!

So what I say is that Nick is right that it will be a different country by 2015 because of the likely realignment of politics – that may well not suit Nick!

Turning to Labour, interestingly Labour didn’t suffer as much of a collapse in support as it seemed possible they might have done at some stages in the run up to the election. I think this was partly due to David Cameron’s brand of Conservatism, and to it not being at all clear what he stood for, but also that Labour voters turned out to be as deeply tribal about supporting Labour as any Conservative votes are about voting Conservative.

However buried under the AV Referendum is a clever move by the Conservatives, which is to equalize the size of the constituencies.

Labour’s chances of winning an election will be dramatically reduced by this as the current electoral system has been very skewed towards Labour victory and of course the Boundary Commission which had been appointed during Labour’s time in office had been increasingly pro-Labour. The new arrangements will also give Cameron the opportunity of replacing them with his appointments.

The AV Referendum itself could be of interest to us because although both Labour and Conservative strategists believe that the alternative vote system will help to entrench support for the three main parties and discourage support for other parties, their calculations are based on voters voting exactly the same way as they currently vote. But if you actually look at the way people vote, when given the alternative, then the picture is not so clear cut. Consider how many votes UKIP get in EU elections as opposed to their results in General Elections and, indeed, consider the fact that when second preferences were counted in the Doncaster Mayoral election - we won!

Looking wider afield, while the Greens got a parliamentary seat in Brighton and will therefore inevitably get more coverage in future parliamentary elections, nevertheless they came nowhere near winning in their other target seat of Norwich and they actually had a dramatic reduction in their votes elsewhere in the country. I would also say that Brighton is a very unusual seat with a very unusual social mix and therefore perhaps in a way it may show the high water mark of what the Greens can achieve.

So far as UKIP is concerned, they are of course in another leadership election with it seeming likely that Nigel Farage will become Leader of their Party again. Many of you will know that we, as a Party, did try to have an electoral pact in place for the General Election so that Eurosceptic parties would not stand against each other and had a meeting with Lord Pearson and members of UKIP’s NEC, after which it became clear that in fact UKIP wasn’t seriously campaigning to win seats in the General Election, but was instead campaigning to get more votes because they think that Party State funding will be apportioned in future on the number of votes. Their leadership is really their NEC and it is controlled by their MEPs and so is more interested in fighting EU elections than in winning Westminster seats.

The BNP of course are warring amongst themselves, following their poor showing in the General Election. They appear to be in deep financial trouble as well.

All this leaves the English Democrats as one of the few smaller parties that made any headway in the General Election. So my message to you, Ladies and Gentlemen, for the coming year is another one of Churchill’s famous sayings which I suspect was a reference to the way the army worked in the trenches in the First World War, where the Commander in Chief regularly issued orders of the day to try and encourage the troops to greater exertion and sacrifice. Churchill’s version of the order of the day, was “That the order of the day is KBO” – Keep buggering on!

Consider every time we make contact with people we are raising our profile. Consider what has happened with the BNP over the last few years. As recently as the Uxbridge by-election on the 31st July 1997, the BNP was beaten by the Monster Raving Loony Party and really had no national profile.

D Sutch Official Monster Raving Loony Party 396 1.2%
I Anderson British National Party 205 0.6%

Consider that our Party has now reached the point where in a number of parts of the country we have reached a critical mass, where instead of what happened originally within our Party, which was that members of the National Council had to get involved in encouraging people to stand in local government by-elections, now it is just happening without any input from the National Council. This helps us as a Party maintain our impetus between big elections.

Consider also that in this conference we have an exciting new initiative to announce to you Ladies and Gentlemen which I am very excited about and which I think positions our Party very much on the ground of what we are really about - which is improving democracy in England.

That initiative is for petitions for referenda to have directly elected Mayors running local government everywhere in England.

In the afternoon of this conference we have got Professor Colin Copus, who is the leading academic commentator on directly elected mayors and Peter Davies, our elected Mayor, going to speak to us about the Mayoralty.

I and others who have already got some experience of running these campaigns will be talking about the nuts and bolts of how you can make it happen where you live, but the results that we have obtained in terms of local coverage, has really been beyond our wildest dreams.

Ladies and Gentlemen let me tell you that when I launched the petition for a mayoralty in Brentwood Borough Council, I not only got full page coverage, the lead editorial, but also a letter published in the leading local paper.

Ladies and Gentlemen, that coverage was more coverage on that one issue than I had got locally in all the years of campaigning. The mayoralty campaign is an issue where we can get genuine interest from local papers. It is a local issue, it is about democracy. It will get our name out there in a way that campaigning on our more national orientated issues is beyond the remit of local papers.

We know from long experience that it is very hard to get national coverage for what we are saying because the national media is British or EU’ish in its leanings and it is also usually tied into one or other of the Establishment parties.

Referenda for elected mayors is an issue, Ladies and Gentlemen, where I think we can make real headway and I hope, once you have heard what we are planning, you will be as excited about it as I am.

Now Ladies and Gentlemen with those thoughts in mind I turn to our agenda for today.

Speech Spring Conf. '10

2011-11-12T11:40:00.001Z

SPEECH

Thanks

We are about to enter the General Election. We intend to put up 120 candidates and have already got over the threshold of 89 so that we can guarantee a Party Political Broadcast and news coverage. But what are we to do in the Campaign?

Well I think one of the best comments on political campaigns was made by Labour’s Roy Hattersley

- ‘when you are absolutely sick to death of repeating the same line over and over again, that is the point at which it is beginning to penetrate the public’s consciousness’, and he went on that that is when you need to keep on repeating yourself!

What is that line for the English Democrats? - Well I don’t need to tell any of you here about the need for an English Party to fight for England’s interests. But last Conference I talked about how do we go about ensuring which pigeon hole we belong to? Well I suggested first that whenever we compare ourselves with other nationalists or any other political party the comparison should involve the SNP and Plaid Cymru so that people know that we are measuring ourselves up alongside them. Second we should talk about being democratic nationalists, like the SNP and Plaid Cymru. Third if somebody tries to compare us with the BNP we should simply say that we not like the BNP but we are like the SNP and Plaid Cymru, simply trying to do our best for our country. I would say that I have experimented myself with this approach and find it works.

It is not just with journalists that we need to make sure that we pigeon hole ourselves, but also very much with members of the public, who are also likely to pigeon hole us with the BNP, with the sub-text associated with the endless school teaching about Hitler, if we don’t ensure that we get put into a more acceptable category. Once you are established in a category, it is a psychologically difficult task to get someone to place you in an alternative one, especially if you haven’t clearly thought which of the available categories you wish to be put in.

This is a significant part of the explanation why it simply doesn’t work, when canvassing to try to engage in a full discussion about the rights and wrongs for England. Your first job is to get us into a category, either when you are canvassing or in your leaflets, from which people are then willing later, if at all interested in what we are trying to say, to thinking about the detail of the issues.

So in all we do from now on let us remember, when trying to discuss what we are about with new people or in designing leaflets that we need to categorise ourselves in the right pigeon hole. Fortunately the Scots have done most of the work for us and the pigeon hole is already there although it is not the pigeon hole that people will put you in if you don’t make the effort to get us into the democratic nationalist pigeon hole, rather than the nasty nationalists one!

Pigeon holing works also in campaigning against others (Dave Cameron Lard/Gordon Brown Lard). What we have now In Doncaster today, is that we can say, hand on heart, and with total sincerity, that we are a Party that can get elected and to a significant position too. Peter Davies has also shown that when elected to significant positions, English Democrats can make a real difference. But the important point to get across to people who might be wavering as to whether or not we would be a wasted vote is that, we can get elected! We have got elected! And we will get elected! So their vote if given to the English Democrats won’t be wasted and if elected we will make a difference!

As you all know, and as Michael Wood, in his book “In Search of England, 1999” said the modern English state was not created in one go. It is a product of a long – and continuing – process, but its roots lie in the Anglo-Saxon period.

The Anglo Saxons created England; the Normans and their successors attempted to create Great Britain, not succeeding half so well, despite their long attempts to dominate the cultures and societies of Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

It was the Normans who tried to subdue the whole island, and their failure has finally been acknowledged in the late twentieth century. England, on the other hand, is the creation of the Old English. It is something real to go back to, unlike so many modern countries whose attempts to build such allegiances have had to be fabricated. This is not to say that it doesn’t need reform now; not least the system of democracy itself – for who now would claim the English are better off than, say, the Germans? But it has a long and distinguished pedigree, which, contrary to the modern critiques, is more than the product of history than myth. It goes back to Gregory the Great, Bede, and the Old English and Norman lawmakers, and for a country on a small island off the shores of Europe, its practical achievements in history have been considerable.

A momentous event took place in 927 following a campaign in Cumbria when Athelstan was acknowledged King of all of what has been ever since “England”.

“The meeting, which took place aet Eamotum (‘at the meeting of the waters’), was set against the backdrop of a significant Roman fortification (Brocavum), much of which was still standing at the confluence of the Lowther and Eamont rivers, at the site which became Brougham Castle, two miles south-east of Penrith. The Roman fortification had guarded the junction of the roads to Carlisle and the cross-Pennine route. This place represented the limit of Athelstan’s empire in terms of direct government and so, in time-honoured style, he was meeting his subjects on the borders of his kingdom.

Aet Eamotum, Athelstan, in imperial style, accepted the submission of Constantine of Scotland and stood godfather to his son. Owain of Strathclyde and Ealdred, the ruler of the independent English state of Bamburgh, gave their pledges too.”

But almost as significant an event took place in 937 The Battle of Brananburh.

We are not sure where the battle occurred but the strongest case appears to be for Templeborough in Brinsworth near Rotherham argues Paul Hill in his interesting book “The Age of Athelstan Britain’s Forgotten History.”

There is an old Yorkshire proverb which goes:

When all the world shall be aloft
Then Hallamshire will be God’s croft
Wincobane and Templeborough
Will buy all England through and through
Castleford, to the north of this site, is whre Olaf would have been based before the battle. Here five wapentakes; (hundreds) converge and it is the place where Ricknild Street crosses the Aire. Athelstan would have been at Aston. The battle took place, says Cockburn, around Brunesburh and was finally decided at Morthen (which means ‘slaughter field’), after which the pursuit (which took all day) was to Maltby and Balby and the escape was up the Aire to the Humber.

South of the confluence of the rivers Don and Rother was a strategic fort on Waite Hill, called Brynesford in the Domesday survey. There was later a ditched manor house here.

Here is the modern translation of the famous poem in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle.
“Here King Athelstan, leader of warriors,
Ring-giver of men, and also his brother,
the aetheling Edmund, struck life-long glory
in strife around Brananburh, clove the shield-wall,
hacked the war-lime, with hammers’ leavings.

The nation of Scots and seamen
fell doomed. The field darkened
with soldiers blood…
____

Five young kings lay on the battlefield
put to sleep by swords; likewise also seven
of Olaf’s jarls, countless of the raiding-army
of seamen and Scots. There the ruler of
Northmen, compelled by necessity,
was put to flight, to ship’s prow,
with a small troop.

They left behind to divide the corpses,
To enjoy the carrion, the dusky-coated,
Horny-beaked black raven
And the grey-coated eagle, white rumped,
Greedy war-hawk, and the wolf,
Grey beast in the forest. Never yet in this island
Was there a greater slaughter
Of people felled by the sword’s edges”

So Ladies and Gentlemen it was not far from here that one of the crucial battles that created the English Nation State occurred and now we have a new battle, a political battle and the first round has been won here in Doncaster with the election of our Mayor – Peter Davies.

WHERE IS THE EU GOING?

2011-11-11T16:09:00.003Z

Over the last few months we have seen a developing crisis over the EU’s Euro currency project. I couldn’t help noticing that when the crisis started to bite many Euro-sceptics were commenting that they thought that the Euro would be the death of the whole European Union project, but personally I thought there was good reason to wait and see. After all the Euro was never primarily an economic project, it was always a political project to drive the EU further down the route of becoming a single State. The crisis of the sort we have seen developing had the potential to be exactly what EUphiles needed to cause the Member States to stumble into yet further integration in order to redress the crisis.

The pattern that seems to now be emerging is that the members of the Euro Monetary Union are stumbling into an ever closer union of Euro-Zone within the EU and may emerge from the crisis with little residual sovereignty but with a large enough block vote to outvote all others within the EU. This thought is alarming enough in itself for any Euro-sceptic Englishman, but the further thought follows from that is what will the relationship between the Euro Monetary Union zone be with peripheral members of the EU who are not part of the zone.

This article is of interest in this context >>> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8881749/Dithering-over-euro-crisis-is-leaving-Britain-without-a-role-in-Europe.html

A possible comparison can here be drawn with the development of British rule in India prior to the Indian Mutiny. In a period from Clive’s crushing of the French challenge for supremacy in India up until the Mutiny there was a continual process of assimilation of states outside the core zone of British rule whenever the opportunity arose. It is not too much to say but for the shock of the Mutiny and the changes in policy which that caused, the net effect in due course would have been direct rule of all of what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma. I believe that we can expect a similar process to occur within the EU but by more clandestine means than was commonplace for 19th Century imperialism.

I notice that there is increasing concern about how the City will be regulated. If France and Germany are successful in undermining the special pre-eminence of the City of London, they will have dealt a devastating blow to what remains of the economy of the “UK”. There will be some transfer of activity to Paris and Frankfurt, but the primary effect will be to reduce the capacity for independent action by what remains of the UK governmental system.

The one politically encouraging possible side effect is that any serious damage done to the City will be the potential dramatic impact on the Conservative Party. In the run up to the General Election the Conservative Party had a war chest of £49 million, the overwhelming majority of which was donated by City businessmen. As the Conservative Party now has perhaps only 50,000 paid up members it is no longer a mass party and needs massive donations in order to maintain its position within the political system. It may be this thought, as much as the size of the back bench rebellion, which is propelling Cameron into being more proactive.