Scottish Nationalists to make play for Berwick
The English town of Berwick on Tweed looks set to be a battle between three contending national identities in the General Election. The Scottish Nationalists have indicated that they are considering putting up a candidate for Berwick on Tweed, calling for Berwick on Tweed to “come back” to Scotland. The British Establishment parties will, of course, be putting up candidates to take the seat from the Liberal Democrats on the retirement of their sitting MP, Alan Beith. The English Democrats will also be standing in Berwick on Tweed to campaign to keep Berwick part of England.
Berwick on Tweed was originally an Anglo-Saxon foundation back in the 6th Century as part of the Kingdom of Northumbria, before the Scots even arrived in Scotland from Ireland.
In the late Dark Ages/early Medieval period Berwick on Tweed did change hands several times with the fluctuations of the fortunes of Northumbria, but by English Unity Day on the 12th July 927, Berwick on Tweed was firmly part of England, only to be sold to the Scottish King by Richard I (Coeur de Lion), as part of his fund-raising efforts to raise money to go on crusade. (This is the King who is purported to have said that he would sell London if he could find a buyer).
The next legal change occurred following the Scottish opportunist invasion to loot, rape and burn their way across Northern England when the young Edward III overthrew his mother’s lover, Mortimer, thinking that a teenage king would be unable to respond effectively. How wrong they were was proved at the Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333, in which the Scots suffered a catastrophic defeat. As part of the peace terms they agreed to hand back the legal title to Berwick on Tweed.
Since that time Scottish armies have occupied Berwick from time to time but never with a legal title. The last occasion being in1482, a little before Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas!
It will therefore amuse any impartial observer that Scottish Nationalists would talk about getting Berwick back, when the last time they had any proper title to it was 1333 and the last time they even occupied it was before Europeans had even discovered that there was the continent of the Americas and well before most of the current Nation States of Europe were even thought of!
The strategic importance of Berwick however lies in the effect of North Sea oil and fishing. If the UK does break up and Scotland and England become separate Nation States, then control of Berwick will be of great importance. If Berwick is English, to work out the sea boundary between England and Scotland you will follow the average of the national land boundary, which broadly speaking would mean placing a ruler on Carlisle and Berwick and drawing 200 miles out to sea - all south of that line being English. If you do the exercise you will see that that means that a substantial proportion of North Sea oil and fishing is not Scottish at all, but is English. In fact it goes further than that because the usual international legal convention on deciding the sea boundary is also to follow the geological features which probably places more than half of North Sea oil in English waters and also places nearly all the gas in English waters.
Even ignoring such a strategic point about the position of Berwick, as an English nationalist I would not be willing to see Berwick become part of Scotland without the opportunity to campaign hard to persuade the people of Berwick on Tweed and the whole constituency to remain true to England. Let them sing Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, Boatswain that “in spite of all temptation to belong to other nations, I remain an Englishman!
Below is the article from the Scottish newspaper, The Herald, about the SNPs intentions. What do you think?
We shall be calling for funds so that we can make as bigger splash in campaigning in Berwick as possible! Will you help?
Here is the article:-
SNP could stand for Berwick seat in UK elections
The SNP could stand for Berwick in the UK general elections this May, in a bold but very smart move to gain a spot in the UK-wide television debates.
Christine Grahame, MSP for Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale, has offered to stand for the English seat. She says broadcasters have no plans to include the SNP leadership in any UK-wide debates to be screened in the run-up to May due to their presence being confined to Scotland, but a move to stand in an English seat would automatically provide the party with an ‘across the UK-presence’.
Ms Grahame’s proposal would mean that the SNP could claim to be standing right across the UK because it would have candidates in England as well as Scotland. Ms Grahame believes that would justify a place on the national stage for new SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon when it comes to pre-election leader debates.
Berwick has long been a divisive territory for the Kingdoms of Scotland and England in a historical sense, however more recently, the people of Berwick have become increasingly envious of SNP policies just a few minutes drive over the border including free prescriptions, higher education and travel for the elderly.
Any contest from the SNP for the seat would be seen as a direct attack on the UK establishment and could confidently succeed as many residents of the English constituency could use an SNP vote to voice their discontent with the UK government and may well see it as an avenue from which to introduce fairer local policies and raise issues which matter most to them, being just across the border from Scotland.
Ms Grahame said: “I have offered to stand in Berwick as a candidate so we can get equal coverage on the television because we fight throughout the UK.
“I can still keep my seat in the Scottish Parliament but then they would have to say we stand all over the UK, we should have all our leaders in these debates.”
And this isn’t the first time English-born Ms Grahame has set her sights on Berwick, where she took part in the independence referendum debate in September.
Speaking at the BBC’s pre Scottish referendum ‘Scotland and Us’ debate at Berwick’s Maltings Theatre, she told the audience that Scotland breaking away from England would be good for the area and would stimulate the case for devolution of powers to the north of England.
And in the run up to the 2008 general election she lodged a motion in the Scottish Parliament calling for the town to “return to the fold”.
Standing in bordering English constituencies would certainly frighten the Westminster political elite and would give the SNP a greater chance at strengthening their presence in the UK Parliament.
Border constituencies may be more likely to vote for the SNP as an alternative to the mainstream parties in England, especially with the prospect of a strong SNP contingent at Westminster which would wield greater power and sway over issues affecting those constituencies.”
Click here for the original >>>
http://scottishstatesman.com/snp-could-stand-for-berwick-seat-in-uk-elections/
I believe Blair already altered the border years ago, so effectively the economic zone for Scotland already encompasses a good deal of what had till recently been English oil and gas fields. Also many years ago the then government gave a large chunk of the North Sea to Norway, this heralded Norway's economic rise, they extract oil from Britain's continental shelf which in the International Law of the Sea would be British economic territory.
ReplyDeleteVery interested to hear about Norway, which government did that then? Scotland is no surprise as the Irish/Scots Blair hates the English with a vengeance and his wife probably has Irish anti-English blood as well. Have just read in my book on Scandinavia that the Norwegians are now so rich that they are too lazy to do dirty jobs any more and are importing factory workers even over the border from Sweden, let alone the rest of the world. Have just read a piece written in 2005 by Age Concern about our aging population and the need for younger labour to support them. The conclusion was that if just one in ten of the 60-70 year-olds were allowed to work then there would be no need to import labour from all over the world. But then the English would want a decent wage and it would not cause the perpetual housing shortage that Cameron and his developer and estate agent chums want.
DeleteMy other comment didn't get through, perhaps it was off key, namely that with the "far right" making nail bombs and the security forces spending all hours God sends looking for Islamic terrorists and blacks complaining that they are the victims of our institutionally racist and brutal white police force Berwick will seem like a storm in a teacup when Enoch's predictions come true and we descend into an perpetual inter-racial war, all because of the Nazi pluralists and their City of London backers.
Am just reading a book about 1913. Even then there was a vast gap between rich and poor in London which was just wedded to the obscene rush for money; whereas Berlin concentrated on employment legislation and fair play and Paris on a civilised lifestyle. By the way, where did that English expression fair play come from?
I knew a lady who came from Berwick and she was quite adamant that she was not Scottish. However, in view of the hatred with which the politicians are viewed, certainly north of Birmingham and the worse it gets the further north you go, the people of Berwick may be lured into a country which is more democratic and compassionate. The answer is to have an English parliament with the same values and quick.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I meant the Westminster bunch of course. An example of what scum they are is that they are not only discussing TTIP in secret but the discussions are to be kept secret for 30 years until they have left office or are long dead. This all sounds a bit like Heath's EEC negotiations, the details of which were only revealed later when Heath claimed the EU had been the intention all along but he had made no secret of it. You will probably find that European politicians are in the pay of the same people who bribed Heath to comply.
DeleteMeanwhile the American Senate has blamed Russia for all the Ukraine problem and said they must give the Crimea back. And Kiev is talking about joining NATO pushed on by Washington and the Heart of Darkness in the square mile. These psychopathic Satanists are engaged in total Orwellian doublespeak and a war with Russia is no problem to them as long as they end up ruling the world, even if it is reduced to a pile of rubble. They want to force Russia to hand over Sevastopol to NATO. You will probably find the Senate are being bribed by the same people as those bribing Europe's politician into going along with their evil world domination plans.
Just another aside on the unworkability of the pluralist dream; I learned yesterday that a former soldier had been jailed for making a nail bomb with the intent possibly of using it against one of the many communities of "New British" who have established themselves here in the last 60+ years. I think his sentence was to be for two months. The brevity of his sentence at once sparked uproar amongst the "Muslim community" who branded him as a terrorist and worthy of the same life imprisonment that an Islamic terrorist would have received. It is possible indeed that said gentleman having fought in Muslim lands and might have had them in his sights.
ReplyDeleteHowever, sadly and despairingly I can only reach one conclusion, namely that if there had never been a large and burgeoning Muslim community or any other community, of which we never had any prior to 1948 unless you count the Jewish community then this ex-soldier would never have made his nail bomb and would never have been destined for a prison cell and his "far right" grouping would probably never existed. But that would have been two simple. It is all just like communism, no matter how many thousands die, live in fear or are condemned to live in a totalitarian police state in which the pluralist consensus cannot be questioned the Pluralist Nazis will make it work even if they destroy Europe utterly in the process. England was such a peaceful and happy land and now it is riven with friction and tension and conflict as in all pluralist societies. By the way, is a certain brand of pain relief medication the first to come up with a t v advertisement in which an indigenous white lady is in the minority, or was that that one last year about having a t v licence? As an elderly gentleman said to me, " I don't understand it, we are going to be black". It seems as if it is almost here.
Berwick is just the sort of place where the English Democrats should be standing candidates. Campaigning in such constituencies on the Scottish/English and Welsh/English borders would allow us to highlight how devolution is disadvantageous to the the English, a situation made worse by not having a dedicated parliament to speak on their behalf.
ReplyDeleteSteve, Ilminster
Steve, there is no point in tinkering around the edges. The EDs must throw all their resources at the English heartland, i.e., Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Doncaster was absolutely the right place for a spring board. Skegness should be fertile ground. It is not possible to build in areas such as Berwick and the Welsh Marches. Campaigning in such thinly populated places would waste scarce resources and be a "nine day wonder". There is no alternative to the long hard graft of getting councillors in adjacent towns such as Doncaster, Rotherham, Scunthorpe, Lincoln, Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby, Wakefield, Leeds.
DeleteYorkshire and Lincolnshire are fine English counties but I am not sure I agree with your description of them as "the English heartland". Campaign in Doncaster, Rotherham, Scunthorpe, Lincoln, Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby, Wakefield and Leeds by all means but there is a pretty big area of England south of Nottingham which should not be overlooked.
DeleteSteve, Ilminster