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.
Saturday, 12 November 2011
Friday, 11 November 2011
WHERE IS THE EU GOING?
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.
Speech to Islamic conference - Dec '09
Good evening Ladies & Gentlemen
I would like to start by thanking the organisers for making this debate possible and for inviting us to take part.
I am the Chairman of the English Democrats Party. I hear you ask what are my Party’s credentials for being part of this debate? Well the English Democrats are, by far the largest English Nationalist Party. We have some 3,500 members and have stood in most national elections in England since we launched some 7 years ago. In the June elections we got double the votes of our Welsh sister party, Plaid Cymru, and three quarters of the votes of our Scottish sister party, Alec Salmond’s SNP, who are in government in Scotland.
Also, at 279,801 votes in the EU elections, we were electorally the 7th largest party in England and well clear of the next tier of parties. In June we also stood for the first time for a local government directly elected Mayoralty in Doncaster and won! Our Mayor, Peter Davies, is getting us many good headlines by slashing his mayoral salary from £70,000 to £30,000 and being determined to break the strangle-hold of political correctness, and of Labour corruption, in Doncaster and also by following the revolutionary political principle of actually trying to do all the things that he promised to do during the election!
I also may have been invited because I have issued a fatwa against the Liberal Democrats, and Vince Cable, modelled on the fatwa of Osama Bin Laden of Jihad against the West!
But seriously the English Democrats are a Party of the type sometimes called Civic nationalists. Let me explain.
The word “English” means many things. It can mean an adjective: ‘something of England’ like “English countryside”. As a noun, it can mean the ‘English language’ like saying something “in English”. It can also mean a Nation or ethnicity. In our manifesto we address this issue head on and we say:-
“The English can be defined in the same way that other nations are defined. To be English is to be part of a community. We English share a communal history, language and culture. We have a communal identity and memory. We share a we sentiment; a sense of belonging. These things cannot be presented as items on a checklist. Our community, like others, has no easily defined boundaries but we exist and we have the will to continue to exist.”
And we go on to say:-
“The people of England are all those UK citizens who live in England. In electoral terms, the people of England are all those UK citizens who are on the electoral roll of an English constituency. The people of England therefore includes the people of many nations, all of whom share a common UK citizenship.”
Now I am sure you are wondering where I am going with this!?
I am saying that a key need in a society is, and even for it to be properly speaking a society at all, is a sense of belonging. In the national context that is our sense of National Identity. This is the sense that makes people from diverse origins living in much of Northern America think of themselves as “Americans” and indeed not merely to think of themselves as such but to act as such, that is to act as members of a great National Community – a real, living, breathing community, not some artificially created community group beloved of Labour for the purpose of breaking us down into Labour client groups in a multi-culturalist missmash. What we English Democrats say about multiculturalism is:-
“It is fact that during the past forty years people of many different cultures have come to live in England. Our county is in that sense a multi-cultural society.
However, multi-culturalism is an ideology which suggests that a mix of many cultures in one society is desirable and that it is the duty of government to actively encourage cultural diversity within the state. Further, it suggests that all cultures should be treated as equal. A logical extension of that is that all languages, histories and law codes should be treated equally. This is clearly impossible in a unified country. All ethnic groups should be free to promote their own culture identity but the public culture of England should be that of indigenous English. This position is consistent with the rights of indigenous nations everywhere.”
The basis of what we English Democrats are therefore saying about English National Identity is that we want to see a revival of our National sense of belonging and the integration of the People of England into the modern English democratic way of life.
It is also our long standing tradition with, some deep roots in our history, for England to be tolerant to the practise of religious differences. It is no accident that one of our most zealous ‘born-again’ Christian leaders, Oliver Cromwell, the man who could write a report to Parliament after one of his victorious battles, about the enemy, that: “God made them as stubble to our swords”! It is no accident that he was the Ruler who opened England’s doors to Jewish immigration. It is also no accident that a country which has an established Christian Church, and a Monarch who is the “supreme governor” of that Church, should also in practice be one of the most secularist countries in the world. We English are tolerant of religious difference and the English Democrats are in that tradition of true English Liberty.
It follows that, for us, the problem of Islam is not a great problem for those Muslims who are moderate and want to integrate and to see themselves as English Muslims. We welcome that.
The problem is of fundamentalism and of Islamists who want either to convert England into an Islamic state or to have separate legal systems with them being under Sharia Law as a sort of apartheid. This is totally unacceptable to us, but we take the view that this represents a small and unrepresentative but dangerous element within Islam in this country.
It is an element however that needs to be unequivocally confronted not only by the Criminal Justice system when it attempts to stir up hatred and violence or engages in any other criminal activity, but it also needs to be deflated by enabling Muslims, whose home is England, to have the possibility of sharing our sense of belonging to our English National Community.
We have therefore welcomed moderate Muslims who support our aims into our Party and have indeed been attacked by the BNP for having some as members and as candidates.
Personally I find these attacks quite funny because it is not so very long ago that Nick Griffin was meeting Col. Gadaffi and Ayatollah Khomenie to try to get Islamist funding for the BNP to campaign against Jews. But then I don’t think the BNP’s attack on Islam is really about religion, I think it is really a coded attack on immigrants and on immigration.
I say that debates on immigration should not be conducted in that way. I say that all the People of England, whether Christian, Muslim or Atheist have a real interest in immigration being properly controlled and let us do that calmly, dispassionately, but effectively.
And so in answer to the question for debate today “Islamification of Britain Reality or Myth?” English Democrats say that while it is currently something of a myth it must be firmly resisted but in a sensible, moderate, commonsense, tolerant and typically English way which welcomes integration and Muslims should in their turn be expected to integrate into our society and our Nation and let us together create a positive sense of English National Community within England.
Thank you Mr Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen.
I would like to start by thanking the organisers for making this debate possible and for inviting us to take part.
I am the Chairman of the English Democrats Party. I hear you ask what are my Party’s credentials for being part of this debate? Well the English Democrats are, by far the largest English Nationalist Party. We have some 3,500 members and have stood in most national elections in England since we launched some 7 years ago. In the June elections we got double the votes of our Welsh sister party, Plaid Cymru, and three quarters of the votes of our Scottish sister party, Alec Salmond’s SNP, who are in government in Scotland.
Also, at 279,801 votes in the EU elections, we were electorally the 7th largest party in England and well clear of the next tier of parties. In June we also stood for the first time for a local government directly elected Mayoralty in Doncaster and won! Our Mayor, Peter Davies, is getting us many good headlines by slashing his mayoral salary from £70,000 to £30,000 and being determined to break the strangle-hold of political correctness, and of Labour corruption, in Doncaster and also by following the revolutionary political principle of actually trying to do all the things that he promised to do during the election!
I also may have been invited because I have issued a fatwa against the Liberal Democrats, and Vince Cable, modelled on the fatwa of Osama Bin Laden of Jihad against the West!
But seriously the English Democrats are a Party of the type sometimes called Civic nationalists. Let me explain.
The word “English” means many things. It can mean an adjective: ‘something of England’ like “English countryside”. As a noun, it can mean the ‘English language’ like saying something “in English”. It can also mean a Nation or ethnicity. In our manifesto we address this issue head on and we say:-
“The English can be defined in the same way that other nations are defined. To be English is to be part of a community. We English share a communal history, language and culture. We have a communal identity and memory. We share a we sentiment; a sense of belonging. These things cannot be presented as items on a checklist. Our community, like others, has no easily defined boundaries but we exist and we have the will to continue to exist.”
And we go on to say:-
“The people of England are all those UK citizens who live in England. In electoral terms, the people of England are all those UK citizens who are on the electoral roll of an English constituency. The people of England therefore includes the people of many nations, all of whom share a common UK citizenship.”
Now I am sure you are wondering where I am going with this!?
I am saying that a key need in a society is, and even for it to be properly speaking a society at all, is a sense of belonging. In the national context that is our sense of National Identity. This is the sense that makes people from diverse origins living in much of Northern America think of themselves as “Americans” and indeed not merely to think of themselves as such but to act as such, that is to act as members of a great National Community – a real, living, breathing community, not some artificially created community group beloved of Labour for the purpose of breaking us down into Labour client groups in a multi-culturalist missmash. What we English Democrats say about multiculturalism is:-
“It is fact that during the past forty years people of many different cultures have come to live in England. Our county is in that sense a multi-cultural society.
However, multi-culturalism is an ideology which suggests that a mix of many cultures in one society is desirable and that it is the duty of government to actively encourage cultural diversity within the state. Further, it suggests that all cultures should be treated as equal. A logical extension of that is that all languages, histories and law codes should be treated equally. This is clearly impossible in a unified country. All ethnic groups should be free to promote their own culture identity but the public culture of England should be that of indigenous English. This position is consistent with the rights of indigenous nations everywhere.”
The basis of what we English Democrats are therefore saying about English National Identity is that we want to see a revival of our National sense of belonging and the integration of the People of England into the modern English democratic way of life.
It is also our long standing tradition with, some deep roots in our history, for England to be tolerant to the practise of religious differences. It is no accident that one of our most zealous ‘born-again’ Christian leaders, Oliver Cromwell, the man who could write a report to Parliament after one of his victorious battles, about the enemy, that: “God made them as stubble to our swords”! It is no accident that he was the Ruler who opened England’s doors to Jewish immigration. It is also no accident that a country which has an established Christian Church, and a Monarch who is the “supreme governor” of that Church, should also in practice be one of the most secularist countries in the world. We English are tolerant of religious difference and the English Democrats are in that tradition of true English Liberty.
It follows that, for us, the problem of Islam is not a great problem for those Muslims who are moderate and want to integrate and to see themselves as English Muslims. We welcome that.
The problem is of fundamentalism and of Islamists who want either to convert England into an Islamic state or to have separate legal systems with them being under Sharia Law as a sort of apartheid. This is totally unacceptable to us, but we take the view that this represents a small and unrepresentative but dangerous element within Islam in this country.
It is an element however that needs to be unequivocally confronted not only by the Criminal Justice system when it attempts to stir up hatred and violence or engages in any other criminal activity, but it also needs to be deflated by enabling Muslims, whose home is England, to have the possibility of sharing our sense of belonging to our English National Community.
We have therefore welcomed moderate Muslims who support our aims into our Party and have indeed been attacked by the BNP for having some as members and as candidates.
Personally I find these attacks quite funny because it is not so very long ago that Nick Griffin was meeting Col. Gadaffi and Ayatollah Khomenie to try to get Islamist funding for the BNP to campaign against Jews. But then I don’t think the BNP’s attack on Islam is really about religion, I think it is really a coded attack on immigrants and on immigration.
I say that debates on immigration should not be conducted in that way. I say that all the People of England, whether Christian, Muslim or Atheist have a real interest in immigration being properly controlled and let us do that calmly, dispassionately, but effectively.
And so in answer to the question for debate today “Islamification of Britain Reality or Myth?” English Democrats say that while it is currently something of a myth it must be firmly resisted but in a sensible, moderate, commonsense, tolerant and typically English way which welcomes integration and Muslims should in their turn be expected to integrate into our society and our Nation and let us together create a positive sense of English National Community within England.
Thank you Mr Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen.
Speech Sept '09
SPEECH
Pigeon holes
I am not sure where the description pigeon holes came from, although the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary offers:- A small recess or hole (usu. One of a series) for domestic pigeons to nest in; hence any small hole, recess, or room for sitting or staying in 1622 or a cant name for the stocks – 1694 or one of a series of compartments in cabinet, writing-table, or range of shelves, open in front, and used for the keeping of documents, etc., also a wares in a shop 1789 and more like the use I mean to place a label mentally; to classify or analyse exhaustively.
I imagine that it originally meant something very different from what it means to most people now, which is a ready bracket into which we mentally fit things we see or hear or experience. As human-beings it is our natural tendency to put things into a category which will have various associations linked into that category depending on our experiences and culture.
Not all such pigeon holes would necessarily for all people have the same links, but in any given culture it is likely that they would. In fact for a person to regularly allocate things to a different pigeon hole to the one that other people in his or her society had been likely to do might well lead to a diagnosis of schizophrenia, especially if those pigeon holes were linked to emotional categories. Drew Weston in his important book ‘The Political Brain’ which everyone interested in politics should read, says “Of particular relevance to understanding the political brain is the idea that much of our behaviour reflects the activation of emotion-laden networks of association, and that much of this activation occurs outside of our awareness”.
From the days of my legal education I am aware that this tendency of all of us to pigeon hole, particularly what we see in other people quickly into a category and then once we have satisfactorily pigeon holed them not to spend any more time observing them, has serious implications for so called identification evidence.
Just consider this famous case about 15 years ago, where daring bank robbers robbed a bank in a pedestrianised town centre; knowing that they were not going to be able to speed away in a getaway car, they had to think of how to get through the crowds with their “swag”. Somebody who understood this tendency of human nature must have come up with the answer because, having committed their robbery with masks on, they left the bank taking off their masks and walked calmly down the street carrying their sacks of money whilst wearing white plastic hard hats and bright orange safety jackets. When the police asked witnesses whether they had seen these men, almost everyone that they asked said that they had and also everyone had either thought that they were collecting the garbage or they had simply noticed the bright orange coats, but nobody was able to say anything about their faces, what colour their hair was, or even whether they were black or white. Everyone had pigeon holed them as either garbage men or highway maintenance!
Now I hear you ask yourselves how does this information, interesting as it may be, help us with the task before us as English Democrats? Well I would say that it is something we need to bear in mind because whatever happens the book will be judged by its cover and we will be pigeon holed and therefore the real choice before us, is whether we pigeon hole ourselves for the public, or whether we let our enemies do it for us.
As English Nationalists there are only two pigeon holes available, the nasty one – racist, BNP, perhaps even Nazi, or the nice acceptable one, now treated as being perfectly respectable like the SNP, or Plaid Cymru. Think about that for a moment! I suggest that there is only one of those categories, which anyone who wished us well, and the cause of English Nationalism well, would want us to be pigeon holed with!
How do we go about ensuring which pigeon hole we belong to? Well I suggest 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!
Credibility
On the 20th August the English Democrats quietly celebrated their 7th birthday. In that time we have gone from a Party which there were no more than about 20 members present, to a party of a few thousand members which have stood in elections all over England and has now received somewhat over ¾ million votes.
But what we have also done before we were fully 7 years old is won our first significant election because, ladies and gentlemen, we are in power in part of England.
I speak of course of Doncaster. Doncaster is the largest metropolitan borough council in England and although obviously far smaller geographically than the largest elected mayoralty in England, that of Greater London, but nevertheless our Mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies, has greater powers over Doncaster than Boris Johnson does over London.
When Peter was first elected we made the point that we had won a significant election, in our press release, that Peter was now the “Boris of the North”. Peter has recently perhaps, slightly unkindly, described Boris’ position as being that of a political eunuch by comparison to him because Boris’ control over what happens in London is far less than Peter’s influence over what happens in Doncaster.
I am sure when he speaks later many of you will want to ask him about his situation and what his plans are. But I want to focus your attention on one of the things that Peter’s election has achieved for us. Before Peter was elected, although of course we had many people who agreed with what we were saying, many of those would not have come out to vote for us, as I am sure all of you who have talked about the EU elections with friends and relatives, will be able to vouch for. And the reason they did not come out and vote for us wasn’t because they didn’t agree with us, but rather simply because they didn’t think that we were credible, by which I mean electable.
I have often told people a story, and you may well have heard it before, but I think it bears repetition. On the only occasion that I have met UKIP’s Nigel Farrage, at the Bromley by-election count, he told me a highly revealing story about the way people think about elections. He thought that he had been doing quite well in that by-election, where UKIP had spent over £80,000 trying to get him elected to the British Parliament at Westminster that is he thought he was doing well until he knocked on a woman’s door about a week before the by-election and she told him that whilst she totally agreed with everything UKIP stood for and desperately wanted out of the European Union, but she was nevertheless going to vote Lib Dem in order to try to get the Tory out!
Ladies and gentlemen just think about that for a moment. This woman was telling Nigel Farrage, and through him us, that she, and no doubt many thousands of others like her, were willing to vote for the very party that was most opposite to the Party whose policies she believed in, the Euro-fanatic Liberal Democrats, instead of UKIP, simply in order to be voting with a party which might be capable of stopping the Conservative candidate from getting elected! That is the mind-set that we are up against as a political party in trying to get our candidates elected! The only way of getting through that mind-set is to show that we too have a realistic chance of being elected.
In Doncaster today, now, 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!
English Character
At our last meeting, in the Spring at Portsmouth, I was using famous sayings, including Nelson’s “England expects that every man will do his duty” to highlight that what we accept as normal English character is in fact quite unusual for other cultures.
I took my elder daughter cycling to Holland a month or so ago and, whilst waiting to board the ferry to come back, had a good example, which I think will not only be instructive, but also amusing of English character in operation, because in front of me there was father, adult daughter and son family of motorcyclists from I would say Lancashire. We were all in classic style lined up in a queue. Beside us was the empty lane for vans and caravans and as the advertised time for the gates opening to start the process of us getting onto the ferry approached and passed, the family began to grumble its not opening at the advertised time. Then several Dutch cars, instead of joining the back of the queue, drove up on the lane beside us followed by English drivers copying their example. The daughter of the family began to complain loudly as did the father of the family and when the gates then opened, rather late, and the cars in this new queue pushed in ahead of us, the father’s complaints turned to action and he went down to tell off these drivers. He then came back with every appearance of looking as if the job was done, but when he turned around to look to see what was happening he could see that the car drivers were still pushing in and, at this point, also a further gate opened at the head of the lane for caravans and vans, so it was obvious that that lane was going to move more quickly. At which point the father’s and family’s disgust at the queue jumpers boiled over and they hoped on their motorbikes and pushed firmly to the front of the queue, muttering to themselves about queue jumpers.
Not only did the whole scene amuse me and cheer up a trait in our character, which is I think that the English will put up with quite a lot but in the end if we don’t think other people are playing fair will stop playing altogether and make sure we get our fair dues and more and throw over the whole system that we had up until that point been standing up for. I think this little scene also has a message for us about might happen politically in our country because as people turn from grumbling, they move to telling off the British politicians and eventually they will move to barging them out of the way altogether. I think this process has begun in England and Peter Davies’ election is a living proof of this.
Tory leader, David Cameron, was at Christ Church Parish Centre in North Shields on the 10th January 2009 fielding questions from the public. Newcastle’s Evening Chronicle Alastair Craig reported this response.
“One member of the audience complained of the huge differences between services in the North East and Scotland.
She complained that free prescriptions, university tuition and care for the elderly in England should be a priority issue for any Cameron Government.
Mr Cameron responded “I don’t want to do anything that will encourage a sense of English nationalism and distance between the two countries.””
Pigeon holes
I am not sure where the description pigeon holes came from, although the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary offers:- A small recess or hole (usu. One of a series) for domestic pigeons to nest in; hence any small hole, recess, or room for sitting or staying in 1622 or a cant name for the stocks – 1694 or one of a series of compartments in cabinet, writing-table, or range of shelves, open in front, and used for the keeping of documents, etc., also a wares in a shop 1789 and more like the use I mean to place a label mentally; to classify or analyse exhaustively.
I imagine that it originally meant something very different from what it means to most people now, which is a ready bracket into which we mentally fit things we see or hear or experience. As human-beings it is our natural tendency to put things into a category which will have various associations linked into that category depending on our experiences and culture.
Not all such pigeon holes would necessarily for all people have the same links, but in any given culture it is likely that they would. In fact for a person to regularly allocate things to a different pigeon hole to the one that other people in his or her society had been likely to do might well lead to a diagnosis of schizophrenia, especially if those pigeon holes were linked to emotional categories. Drew Weston in his important book ‘The Political Brain’ which everyone interested in politics should read, says “Of particular relevance to understanding the political brain is the idea that much of our behaviour reflects the activation of emotion-laden networks of association, and that much of this activation occurs outside of our awareness”.
From the days of my legal education I am aware that this tendency of all of us to pigeon hole, particularly what we see in other people quickly into a category and then once we have satisfactorily pigeon holed them not to spend any more time observing them, has serious implications for so called identification evidence.
Just consider this famous case about 15 years ago, where daring bank robbers robbed a bank in a pedestrianised town centre; knowing that they were not going to be able to speed away in a getaway car, they had to think of how to get through the crowds with their “swag”. Somebody who understood this tendency of human nature must have come up with the answer because, having committed their robbery with masks on, they left the bank taking off their masks and walked calmly down the street carrying their sacks of money whilst wearing white plastic hard hats and bright orange safety jackets. When the police asked witnesses whether they had seen these men, almost everyone that they asked said that they had and also everyone had either thought that they were collecting the garbage or they had simply noticed the bright orange coats, but nobody was able to say anything about their faces, what colour their hair was, or even whether they were black or white. Everyone had pigeon holed them as either garbage men or highway maintenance!
Now I hear you ask yourselves how does this information, interesting as it may be, help us with the task before us as English Democrats? Well I would say that it is something we need to bear in mind because whatever happens the book will be judged by its cover and we will be pigeon holed and therefore the real choice before us, is whether we pigeon hole ourselves for the public, or whether we let our enemies do it for us.
As English Nationalists there are only two pigeon holes available, the nasty one – racist, BNP, perhaps even Nazi, or the nice acceptable one, now treated as being perfectly respectable like the SNP, or Plaid Cymru. Think about that for a moment! I suggest that there is only one of those categories, which anyone who wished us well, and the cause of English Nationalism well, would want us to be pigeon holed with!
How do we go about ensuring which pigeon hole we belong to? Well I suggest 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!
Credibility
On the 20th August the English Democrats quietly celebrated their 7th birthday. In that time we have gone from a Party which there were no more than about 20 members present, to a party of a few thousand members which have stood in elections all over England and has now received somewhat over ¾ million votes.
But what we have also done before we were fully 7 years old is won our first significant election because, ladies and gentlemen, we are in power in part of England.
I speak of course of Doncaster. Doncaster is the largest metropolitan borough council in England and although obviously far smaller geographically than the largest elected mayoralty in England, that of Greater London, but nevertheless our Mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies, has greater powers over Doncaster than Boris Johnson does over London.
When Peter was first elected we made the point that we had won a significant election, in our press release, that Peter was now the “Boris of the North”. Peter has recently perhaps, slightly unkindly, described Boris’ position as being that of a political eunuch by comparison to him because Boris’ control over what happens in London is far less than Peter’s influence over what happens in Doncaster.
I am sure when he speaks later many of you will want to ask him about his situation and what his plans are. But I want to focus your attention on one of the things that Peter’s election has achieved for us. Before Peter was elected, although of course we had many people who agreed with what we were saying, many of those would not have come out to vote for us, as I am sure all of you who have talked about the EU elections with friends and relatives, will be able to vouch for. And the reason they did not come out and vote for us wasn’t because they didn’t agree with us, but rather simply because they didn’t think that we were credible, by which I mean electable.
I have often told people a story, and you may well have heard it before, but I think it bears repetition. On the only occasion that I have met UKIP’s Nigel Farrage, at the Bromley by-election count, he told me a highly revealing story about the way people think about elections. He thought that he had been doing quite well in that by-election, where UKIP had spent over £80,000 trying to get him elected to the British Parliament at Westminster that is he thought he was doing well until he knocked on a woman’s door about a week before the by-election and she told him that whilst she totally agreed with everything UKIP stood for and desperately wanted out of the European Union, but she was nevertheless going to vote Lib Dem in order to try to get the Tory out!
Ladies and gentlemen just think about that for a moment. This woman was telling Nigel Farrage, and through him us, that she, and no doubt many thousands of others like her, were willing to vote for the very party that was most opposite to the Party whose policies she believed in, the Euro-fanatic Liberal Democrats, instead of UKIP, simply in order to be voting with a party which might be capable of stopping the Conservative candidate from getting elected! That is the mind-set that we are up against as a political party in trying to get our candidates elected! The only way of getting through that mind-set is to show that we too have a realistic chance of being elected.
In Doncaster today, now, 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!
English Character
At our last meeting, in the Spring at Portsmouth, I was using famous sayings, including Nelson’s “England expects that every man will do his duty” to highlight that what we accept as normal English character is in fact quite unusual for other cultures.
I took my elder daughter cycling to Holland a month or so ago and, whilst waiting to board the ferry to come back, had a good example, which I think will not only be instructive, but also amusing of English character in operation, because in front of me there was father, adult daughter and son family of motorcyclists from I would say Lancashire. We were all in classic style lined up in a queue. Beside us was the empty lane for vans and caravans and as the advertised time for the gates opening to start the process of us getting onto the ferry approached and passed, the family began to grumble its not opening at the advertised time. Then several Dutch cars, instead of joining the back of the queue, drove up on the lane beside us followed by English drivers copying their example. The daughter of the family began to complain loudly as did the father of the family and when the gates then opened, rather late, and the cars in this new queue pushed in ahead of us, the father’s complaints turned to action and he went down to tell off these drivers. He then came back with every appearance of looking as if the job was done, but when he turned around to look to see what was happening he could see that the car drivers were still pushing in and, at this point, also a further gate opened at the head of the lane for caravans and vans, so it was obvious that that lane was going to move more quickly. At which point the father’s and family’s disgust at the queue jumpers boiled over and they hoped on their motorbikes and pushed firmly to the front of the queue, muttering to themselves about queue jumpers.
Not only did the whole scene amuse me and cheer up a trait in our character, which is I think that the English will put up with quite a lot but in the end if we don’t think other people are playing fair will stop playing altogether and make sure we get our fair dues and more and throw over the whole system that we had up until that point been standing up for. I think this little scene also has a message for us about might happen politically in our country because as people turn from grumbling, they move to telling off the British politicians and eventually they will move to barging them out of the way altogether. I think this process has begun in England and Peter Davies’ election is a living proof of this.
Tory leader, David Cameron, was at Christ Church Parish Centre in North Shields on the 10th January 2009 fielding questions from the public. Newcastle’s Evening Chronicle Alastair Craig reported this response.
“One member of the audience complained of the huge differences between services in the North East and Scotland.
She complained that free prescriptions, university tuition and care for the elderly in England should be a priority issue for any Cameron Government.
Mr Cameron responded “I don’t want to do anything that will encourage a sense of English nationalism and distance between the two countries.””
Speech - April '09
We can get some impression of the character of people by looking at famous sayings
Gengis Khan
1163-1227
“The greatest happiness is to crush your enemy in battle, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who loved him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters”.
Gengis Khan
Old Chinese Proverb
The greatest happiness is to be fishing quietly on a river bank when the body of your worst enemy floats by.
Nelson famous signal “England expects that every man will do his duty”
or his dying words “I thank God for this opportunity of doing my duty”.
Cromwell after Dunbar “God made them as stubble to our swords”.
For the English there is a certain restraint even in the excess that is war. Can you imagine another people being so critical of their high command for bombing Dresden?
We are a people deep in whose culture it is to believe in fairness and justice. Listen to this verse from Rudyard Kipling’s “The Norman & The Saxon” The dying Norman lord is advising his son and heir how to treat Saxons.
“The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite. But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right. When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own,
and grumbles, ‘This isn’t fair dealing,’ my son, leave the Saxon alone.”
I had an email recently from a good friend that I had not heard from for some years who lives in Australia – he said he heard that I had gone completely mad and got involved in politics.
Sometimes it can feel a bit mad to be involved when so many people aren’t willing to get involved but if we care for our cause we have to stick to it until the job is done! Here is a good tale about the ‘Madness of Politicians’.
‘Did I tell you,’ Lloyd George once asked Frances Stevenson his long time private secretary and mistress as they walked together hand in hand along a deserted lane ‘about the last time I nearly got certified? I was driving home from the Guildhall – after a big function – me in the full Privy Councillor rig, the knee-breeches and the silver buckles, sword and cloak! Then the official limousine broke down. Mostyn, my driver, gets out and sticks his head under the bonnet, fiddling around there for about twenty minutes. And you must understand it had been a very long banquet, and the waiter had kept on refilling my glass, the (lemonade) flowing like water.
So I quickly slipped out of the back seat to go – you know – to relieve myself. But before I was halfway through I heard the car door slam – gospel truth – Pussy, my darling – vrmm, vrmm, the car goes off in to the night. “Hey! Come back! Come ba-ack!” Gone! So I hitch up the knee-breaches, straighten the scabbard and flourish the cloak, D’Artagnan was nowhere in it.
I tramped for miles and miles till I came to these great iron gates, extensive grounds inside. I didn’t know what it was.
Mud all over the silk stockings by this time, and a wind had sprung up. I rang the bell and announced: “I am the Chancellor of the Exchequer!” “Oh yes,” they say, very soothing like, “come on in, Chancellor, the rest of the Cabinet have been expecting you! And Napoleon Bonaparte too!”’.
When I first got involved in our cause I had exhausted all the lobbying I could think of doing and been finally told that the Establishment was not interested in England or Englishness so I had a decision to make. Did I shut up and just do what we English do so well grumbling – or did I get involved and try to do something about it? Well you know the answer!
But then I thought, about 8 years ago, that the chances of doing anything were very small but I thought that I could go to my grave knowing I had tried, but now with all of us in this Party together I think we can do it. My feeling is that it is still only a possibility, not yet a probability, but if we all work hard in the EU and County Council elections we may have built up enough momentum to break through in a year or two – perhaps even getting some MPs elected in the General election which is now likely to be in May 2010. So take heart as I do from all the progress we have made - even the stars are apparently with us now!
In 2009 Old Moore’s Almanac on page 6 there is this prediction for UK politics:-
“The United Kingdom”
“Harsh realities will be faced and new values will begin to emerge. We will find our way forward in 2009 with new sense of nationalism that England, in particular, has not experienced for a very long time. And a greater sense of community will begin to emerge, though we will need to manage this carefully.”
Gengis Khan
1163-1227
“The greatest happiness is to crush your enemy in battle, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who loved him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters”
Gengis Khan
Oliver Cromwell April 20th 1653 in dismissing the rump Parliament whose members had been busy feathering their nests at public expense.
“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
'Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
'Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?
Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves gone!
So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the name of God, go!”
It looks like some things never change!
I have here some extracts from an up to date Conservative County Council Elections Briefing Paper
“English Democrats should be regarded as a significant problem. They will not win but could draw off Conservative supporters sufficiently to cause problems, in the same way that UKIP has done in the past.”
“Unlike the BNP which draws 50% of its support from traditional non-voters and the remaining 50% equally from Conservative and Labour, all the polling evidence suggests that the English Democrats take 80% of their support from us.”
“The English Democrats will probably poll between 5 - 8% of the vote between them (fueled by anti-European sentiment which always runs high at European election time).”
“I think you now need to look to re doubling your efforts, if the English Democrats were to get just 100 or so votes in each seat, you could be in problem.”
Well there is plenty to disagree with for example where we have been making a serious effort in local elections we have been getting up to 35%, but the main point is that if this paper is right, even in its conservative way about our vote, then we probably will get some MEPs elected. If we do then we will have succeeded in establishing England’s First National Party – that will be an historic achievement.
OUR THREE
NATIONS
WALES : SCOTLAND : ENGLAND
PLAID CYMRU
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PARTY
COMMON WEALTH PARTY
1956
The National Parties of Scotland and Wales
In the meantime, the strongest and most self-conscious forces for decentralization in the United Kingdom today are the Scottish and Welsh National Parties.
These are the spearheads of their respective national campaigns for the establishment of National Parliaments and Home Rule, which have, in both countries, already revived a conscious and purposeful sense of national community.
England, whose national culture and existence has not been subjected to comparable threats, has little awareness of national community and is, we believe, the poorer for it.
But we are a nation. That is a historical fact and no laws passed by the Westminster Parliament, nor resputions passed at the annual Conferences of either the Conservative or Labour parties, can in any way alter it. Closing one’s eyes to historical facts is never good politics, even though it may often suit the interests of the party which holds the whiphand in Britain at any particular moment.
English people do not often have to ask themselves what they mean by nationality; but we, who have not the glitter of military parades or even a government to boost our national prestige, have been face to face with the question for a long time. A nation is not a group of people having one language, one government and the same coloured skins. Very few of the nations of the world will fit in with that description, if you look at them closely enough. It is a natural, historical community which binds its members together in a spirit of loyalty and co-operation and which, over centuries of triumph and suffering, has learnt some of the secrets of how to live together for the good of all. It is a community in which past, present and future are of equal importance.
We regard it as the only sure foundation on which we can build a road into the future. If we fail, our children unborn will be the sufferers; for the, twenty centuries of achievement will have crumbled into the dust. And you cannot compensate for that loss by giving the next generation television sets, football pools and hydrogen bombs.
The second fact upon which Welsh nationalism is based is that the freedom of the individual and the freedom of the nation go hand in hand. If a man’s nation is not free, he cannot be free himself.
In the modern world we must learn to live with our neighbours since we can no longer dominate them. This is not a recognition of defeat or failure but a demonstration of our ability to triumph over circumstances which would crush less resilient peoples. Our future is that of a free democracy among free democracies, not of a ruined imperialism seeking to maintain a façade of power in an alien world.
Gengis Khan
1163-1227
“The greatest happiness is to crush your enemy in battle, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who loved him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters”.
Gengis Khan
Old Chinese Proverb
The greatest happiness is to be fishing quietly on a river bank when the body of your worst enemy floats by.
Nelson famous signal “England expects that every man will do his duty”
or his dying words “I thank God for this opportunity of doing my duty”.
Cromwell after Dunbar “God made them as stubble to our swords”.
For the English there is a certain restraint even in the excess that is war. Can you imagine another people being so critical of their high command for bombing Dresden?
We are a people deep in whose culture it is to believe in fairness and justice. Listen to this verse from Rudyard Kipling’s “The Norman & The Saxon” The dying Norman lord is advising his son and heir how to treat Saxons.
“The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite. But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right. When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own,
and grumbles, ‘This isn’t fair dealing,’ my son, leave the Saxon alone.”
I had an email recently from a good friend that I had not heard from for some years who lives in Australia – he said he heard that I had gone completely mad and got involved in politics.
Sometimes it can feel a bit mad to be involved when so many people aren’t willing to get involved but if we care for our cause we have to stick to it until the job is done! Here is a good tale about the ‘Madness of Politicians’.
‘Did I tell you,’ Lloyd George once asked Frances Stevenson his long time private secretary and mistress as they walked together hand in hand along a deserted lane ‘about the last time I nearly got certified? I was driving home from the Guildhall – after a big function – me in the full Privy Councillor rig, the knee-breeches and the silver buckles, sword and cloak! Then the official limousine broke down. Mostyn, my driver, gets out and sticks his head under the bonnet, fiddling around there for about twenty minutes. And you must understand it had been a very long banquet, and the waiter had kept on refilling my glass, the (lemonade) flowing like water.
So I quickly slipped out of the back seat to go – you know – to relieve myself. But before I was halfway through I heard the car door slam – gospel truth – Pussy, my darling – vrmm, vrmm, the car goes off in to the night. “Hey! Come back! Come ba-ack!” Gone! So I hitch up the knee-breaches, straighten the scabbard and flourish the cloak, D’Artagnan was nowhere in it.
I tramped for miles and miles till I came to these great iron gates, extensive grounds inside. I didn’t know what it was.
Mud all over the silk stockings by this time, and a wind had sprung up. I rang the bell and announced: “I am the Chancellor of the Exchequer!” “Oh yes,” they say, very soothing like, “come on in, Chancellor, the rest of the Cabinet have been expecting you! And Napoleon Bonaparte too!”’.
When I first got involved in our cause I had exhausted all the lobbying I could think of doing and been finally told that the Establishment was not interested in England or Englishness so I had a decision to make. Did I shut up and just do what we English do so well grumbling – or did I get involved and try to do something about it? Well you know the answer!
But then I thought, about 8 years ago, that the chances of doing anything were very small but I thought that I could go to my grave knowing I had tried, but now with all of us in this Party together I think we can do it. My feeling is that it is still only a possibility, not yet a probability, but if we all work hard in the EU and County Council elections we may have built up enough momentum to break through in a year or two – perhaps even getting some MPs elected in the General election which is now likely to be in May 2010. So take heart as I do from all the progress we have made - even the stars are apparently with us now!
In 2009 Old Moore’s Almanac on page 6 there is this prediction for UK politics:-
“The United Kingdom”
“Harsh realities will be faced and new values will begin to emerge. We will find our way forward in 2009 with new sense of nationalism that England, in particular, has not experienced for a very long time. And a greater sense of community will begin to emerge, though we will need to manage this carefully.”
Gengis Khan
1163-1227
“The greatest happiness is to crush your enemy in battle, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who loved him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters”
Gengis Khan
Oliver Cromwell April 20th 1653 in dismissing the rump Parliament whose members had been busy feathering their nests at public expense.
“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
'Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
'Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?
Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves gone!
So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the name of God, go!”
It looks like some things never change!
I have here some extracts from an up to date Conservative County Council Elections Briefing Paper
“English Democrats should be regarded as a significant problem. They will not win but could draw off Conservative supporters sufficiently to cause problems, in the same way that UKIP has done in the past.”
“Unlike the BNP which draws 50% of its support from traditional non-voters and the remaining 50% equally from Conservative and Labour, all the polling evidence suggests that the English Democrats take 80% of their support from us.”
“The English Democrats will probably poll between 5 - 8% of the vote between them (fueled by anti-European sentiment which always runs high at European election time).”
“I think you now need to look to re doubling your efforts, if the English Democrats were to get just 100 or so votes in each seat, you could be in problem.”
Well there is plenty to disagree with for example where we have been making a serious effort in local elections we have been getting up to 35%, but the main point is that if this paper is right, even in its conservative way about our vote, then we probably will get some MEPs elected. If we do then we will have succeeded in establishing England’s First National Party – that will be an historic achievement.
OUR THREE
NATIONS
WALES : SCOTLAND : ENGLAND
PLAID CYMRU
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PARTY
COMMON WEALTH PARTY
1956
The National Parties of Scotland and Wales
In the meantime, the strongest and most self-conscious forces for decentralization in the United Kingdom today are the Scottish and Welsh National Parties.
These are the spearheads of their respective national campaigns for the establishment of National Parliaments and Home Rule, which have, in both countries, already revived a conscious and purposeful sense of national community.
England, whose national culture and existence has not been subjected to comparable threats, has little awareness of national community and is, we believe, the poorer for it.
But we are a nation. That is a historical fact and no laws passed by the Westminster Parliament, nor resputions passed at the annual Conferences of either the Conservative or Labour parties, can in any way alter it. Closing one’s eyes to historical facts is never good politics, even though it may often suit the interests of the party which holds the whiphand in Britain at any particular moment.
English people do not often have to ask themselves what they mean by nationality; but we, who have not the glitter of military parades or even a government to boost our national prestige, have been face to face with the question for a long time. A nation is not a group of people having one language, one government and the same coloured skins. Very few of the nations of the world will fit in with that description, if you look at them closely enough. It is a natural, historical community which binds its members together in a spirit of loyalty and co-operation and which, over centuries of triumph and suffering, has learnt some of the secrets of how to live together for the good of all. It is a community in which past, present and future are of equal importance.
We regard it as the only sure foundation on which we can build a road into the future. If we fail, our children unborn will be the sufferers; for the, twenty centuries of achievement will have crumbled into the dust. And you cannot compensate for that loss by giving the next generation television sets, football pools and hydrogen bombs.
The second fact upon which Welsh nationalism is based is that the freedom of the individual and the freedom of the nation go hand in hand. If a man’s nation is not free, he cannot be free himself.
In the modern world we must learn to live with our neighbours since we can no longer dominate them. This is not a recognition of defeat or failure but a demonstration of our ability to triumph over circumstances which would crush less resilient peoples. Our future is that of a free democracy among free democracies, not of a ruined imperialism seeking to maintain a façade of power in an alien world.
Speech - Sept '08
Ladies & Gentlemen & fellow Members of the English Democrats,
I am delighted to welcome you to our sixth Annual General Meeting. We have arranged to meet here again in Leicester as last year’s event went so smoothly and also because David Lane had again very kindly agreed to help organise this conference. My thanks go to him for all his hard work in organising our meeting.
For next year’s Annual General Meeting we will be looking to hold our Conference in a part of the country where we haven’t previously held one of our general meetings and I hope that an Area will want to step in and offer to help organise that.
Last time, last year, when we were here, I was saying that I thought Gordon Brown (picture 1) might well call an Autumn General Election - although it was already beginning to look as if he might have dithered too long. And what difference a year has made to his fortunes! He did not listen to my advice and he is now caught by the credit crunch. Speaking of the credit crunch - it will affect us all, some more than others. What about this picture? (Joke/pictures 2 – Queen & Clarkson).
I would not claim to be much of a public speaker, being out here in front of you is not something that I crave and neither is the limelight. What I do care about is the future of our country and our nation and that is why I am out here - on the basis of: if not me, then whom?
(Alfred Picture 3)
David Lane has got a sales theory that all of us can be divided up into some curious categories. One of those categories is “Warrior”. David tells me that he thinks I have the characteristics that he expects to find in a Warrior type. Well the English Democrats, which is the spearhead of the English movement, certainly have battles and a war on our hands to save our country! I am guessing that all of us here are fighters to some extent for our country and of course battle is the best place for a warrior - so I would seem to be well qualified for the task at hand!
As the famous story of King Alfred burning the swineherd’s wife’s cakes shows, even when all seems lost and the whole country is overrun by the enemy, it is still possible for a warrior to turn the situation around, but of course, just as Alfred found, volunteers are always in short supply for battles.
I was watching the Mel Gibson film, Braveheart, the other day, and in that Robert the Bruce is made to say that Scotland can’t win because:- “This country has no sense of itself”.
As an English Nationalist you might think it odd of me to like Braveheart, but this is a good point. Just listen to this extract from the Rough Guide to England:-
The English are the most contradictory people imaginable, and however long you spend in the country you’ll never figure them out. As a glance at the tabloid newspapers will confirm, England is a nation of overweight, binge-drinking reality TV addicts, obsessed with toffs and C-list celebs. But it’s also a county of animal-loving, tea-drinking, charity donors, where queuing remains a national pastime and bastions of civilization, like Radio 4, are jealously protected. It’s a country where accent and vocabulary can stamp a person’s identity like a brand, but it’s also a genuine haven for refugees, with immigrants from more than 100 ethnic backgrounds. It’s a nation that prides itself on its patriotism – yet has a Scottish prime minister, an Italian football coach and a Greek royal consort. Ask any English person to comment on all of this and you’ll get an entertaining range of views. Try to make sense of these, and the resulting picture might suggest something akin to a national identity crisis.
In good faith this travel-writer is saying just what Robert the Bruce was saying but about us English. So I say to you that, as the spearhead of the English Movement, it is not just our job as English Democrats to organise to fight and win elections but also to give England a sense of itself - just like the SNP have done for Scotland.
In building up our organisation, one of the things that we now know - to our cost, is that there are no shortcuts because even though all of us are impatient for our Party and Cause to make even greater headway - and more quickly - it is this very impatience that led your National Council and myself to think that the selection of a celebrity would help get us more publicity in the London Mayoral elections and it is that which finally led us to select Matt O’Connor when Garry Bushell was told that he couldn’t continue to work as a journalist during the London election campaign and therefore he wasn’t able to stand for us. I can tell you now that selecting Matt O’Connor made no difference to us getting any additional publicity except in Scotland and when he did the dirty on us - only then did we get a little bit more coverage - of a hostile nature.
We did however succeed in building up the profile of our Party by being one of only six parties to stand a full slate of candidates in the London Mayoral and Assembly elections. That profile does pay off in dealing with the media. For example: In by-elections we are now getting some coverage – we got David Roberts, in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, several interviews and also onto Newsnight and as we saw in the by-election at Haltemprice & Howden, where Joanne Robinson stood for us, she got several interviews and mentions on the BBC.
We still didn’t get anything like the coverage there that the Greens got, because of course, as we all accept, the media is against us, but we did at least get a much fairer crack of the whip than we have been used to getting in the past.
The importance of building an organisation is also shown by Joanne’s result she got over 7%, she saved our deposit and she nearly beat the Greens into second place - which is significantly better than the results we have obtained in other by-elections because there was a well organised local branch which supported her, and which was able to leaflet most of the constituency.
What else have we achieved in the last year? Well we have had much further progress in discussions of the English question within the media - the Spectator even had its own front page cover in April entitled:- “Welcome back England”, having written England off in a previous edition.
I think it is fair to say that even the Government knows that they have serious trouble with Gordon Brown’s “Britishness” campaign. I was talking to one of England’s Scottish Transport Ministers, Tom Harris, and he told me, as soon as he read I was an English Democrat, without prompting, that he thought that we should have an English Parliament.
Also within Labour I think the comments on 18th June in Parliament of Derek Wyatt MP are worth quoting :-
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this morning, Mr. Chope. It is four years since the Standing Committee on Regional Affairs, the body that is supposed to represent English MPs, has met. We do not have a Grand Committee like the Welsh, Northern Irish or Scottish. The English do not have Secretaries of State, Assemblies or Parliaments. The English have something that has rarely met since 1997: the Standing Committee on Regional Affairs. That is the best that we can do for the largest proportion of voters and the largest number of constituency MPs. That is not appropriate.
Today, I shall make some radical proposals for the long-term reform of the British constitution and public finances. They will set me at odds with the policy of my Government and party, but I am convinced that standing still is not an option. The present arrangements are producing growing resentment all over the United Kingdom, particularly in England. I hope that my party will not trap itself by defending the status quo for ever, as that would put the future of the United Kingdom at risk.
This debate has a simple theme. My constituents are living in a half-finished house that costs them money, and they are beginning to resent it. The half-finished house in our country—the United Kingdom—has, like so many historic houses, grown up over the centuries without a master plan and according to the needs or whims of successive owners. Nearly 90 years ago, after a long and bitter dispute, we gave the neighbouring property to its sitting tenants—although some preferred to go on living with us. We spent the next 70 years or so trying to improve our house to make it a better place in which to live and trying to protect it from outside attack. We made no changes to the structure of the house and all the rooms and facilities were shared among all the residents.
However, in the past 10 years, there has been some major remodelling of the property. We converted the upstairs into a separate flat for the Scots and created another flat with inferior facilities in the west wing for the Welsh. We then persuaded the Northern Irish to live in another flat in the orangery—although many of them wanted to live with their neighbours next door. All that remodelling failed to create any special space for the English. They went on living in the property, but the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish were still free to walk in and help themselves to the fridge and the drinks cabinet. They could even make rules for the English that they themselves did not have to follow. Meanwhile, the English went on paying most of the household bills.
More and more of the English, including many of my constituents, are finding that an uncomfortable way to live. They put up with it when there was plenty of money coming into the house, but now that money is scarcer and outgoings are rising, they are beginning to question it. I propose some restructuring of the property so that we can all live in the way that we want to without imposing on one another. I am also calling for a fair and transparent system of meeting the household bills. That will entail replacing the Barnett formula, which, as we know, was intended to be a temporary expedient that would last six months. However, the formula still regulates the financial relationships between the separate devolved entities of the United Kingdom. Our household settles its accounts through arrangements that were set up in the 1970s for reasons that no one can remember and with results that no one can understand.
Our present constitutional settlement creates anomalies and inequalities. The people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have acquired distinct powers over key public services and other matters that are denied to the English. Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs can vote for policies that apply only to the English and that they have never sought for their own constituents. Despite the recent reduction in the number of Scottish MPs, there are distinct disparities in the value of votes in general elections between different parts of the United Kingdom. The Library note on this debate points out that a Scottish elector’s vote is worth 8 per cent. more than an English one, a Northern Irish vote is worth 13 per cent. more and a Welsh vote is worth 21 per cent. more. Where is the equity in that system?
The people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have used their new powers, particularly in health and education, to make their experience and entitlements notably different from those of the English. Those are funded by a complex and opaque system of financial transfers. To the English at least, it appears that the other parts of the United Kingdom are being shielded from the full financial consequences of their decisions, for example in relation to free personal care for the elderly. In the measured words of Professor James Mitchell of Strathclyde university:
“the current situation in which the Scottish Parliament provides more generous public policies than elsewhere without having to pay the additional cost is leading to a problem of legitimacy in England.”
Before going further, I would like to thank Dominic Webb of the Library’s economic policy and statistics section for two papers of great clarity on the murky subject of the Barnett formula. I have also drawn on the work of David Heald of the university of Sheffield and Alasdair McLeod of the university of Aberdeen.
The financial relationships between the nations of the United Kingdom were created haphazardly and with the minimum of public debate. Money is transferred directly in outright grants to the devolved Administrations. Those grants are strongly influenced by the Barnett formula, which automatically allocates increases in public expenditure to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on the basis of their population. Money is also transferred indirectly by the operation of the UK-wide tax and social security system and through public spending on UK-wide public services, such as defence and diplomacy. Official statistics give us some information about the first of those indirect transfers, but not the second.
Finally, money is removed from the United Kingdom by the European Union and partially returned to each of its different regions.
We have also recently had the Taxpayers Alliance do a report on the Barnett Formula costing English taxpayers £200 billion in the last two decades! I count this as a success as I suggested he do it to Matthew Elliott, their Chief Executive.
David Cameron (picture 4) on the other hand continues to be adamantly against any show of Englishness. In proof, I give you a quotation from a recent article 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”.
So one of the first things English nationalists need to realise about David Cameron is that he will leave them disappointed. The Conservatives have no plans to establish an English Parliament. Nor do they propose solving the so-called West Lothian Question”..
We English Democrats need to bear this in mind when people say to us that the Conservatives might be willing to do something for England. I think that Conservative Leadership is actually our nation’s worst enemy.
Despite this I offer you hope in the words of a 8 year old girl, my younger daughter, who on hearing a famous and thunderous hymn to Imperial Britishness said “Daddy why are they singing Rule Lasagne?”
Despite such signs of hope we shouldn’t under estimate the difficulty of what we have to achieve. What the Glasgow East by-election results show (results picture 5), to my way of thinking, isn’t a huge shift against the two main Establishment parties, Conservatives and Labour, this is a result that shows the power of organisation in this case of the SNP in a coordinated campaign of leafleting and getting people out to vote. It also shows that the Liberal Democrat vote may be a softer vote than anybody has dared to admit or for us English Democrats – dared hope!
In the last year we have, of course, stood in various elections- as one of only 6 parties to manage it in the London Mayoral and Assembly elections - Thank Steve Uncles and the Assembly candidates. The local elections – Thank candidates. We have stood in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election – Thank David Roberts and Margaret Torr – and in the Henley by-election – Thank Derek Alpass. And in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election Thank Joanne Robinson and Michael Cassidy.
What do we have coming up in the next year? Well we know for sure that we have a major opportunity in June of next year with the European elections (draft poster picture 6). We already have, with the help of Steve Uncles and myself, funding guaranteed to enable us to stand throughout all of England. This means that we will qualify for a Party Political Broadcast and all the media coverage which we are entitled to from being a full-contestant.
I would just point out again to show just how important organisation is because, if we were to miss out just one Region of England we would then not be entitled to any coverage.
But in fact we can confidently go forward knowing that the English Democrats will be able to stand fully covering England. This will also be a good opportunity for as many of our people as possible to stand as county council candidates (wherever the Government still hasn’t abolished the County Councils), because our European election coverage should help get them good results as well. In any county where we get beyond 1/6 of the seats being contested by our candidates there we will also be entitled to additional local coverage.
I would take this opportunity to just remind us all why we want to stand in the EU’s Parliamentary Elections. This is of course not at all because we are in support of the EU Parliament or the EU project. When we think how much the EU costs England and how the EU’s regionalisation project is being used as a weapon to try to destroy the sense of Englishness, no English Nationalist could easily be a Europhile.
No, the purpose of us standing in the European elections is because it is the easiest election of all in which to get full coverage, even as a smallish party, and even as a growing one! If we can fund a leaflet drop in each Region (which will cost about £25,000 per region) then we also get a state subsidy worth over £1m for free delivery to every house and business in England.
The purpose of us standing is also because the proportional representation system allows us the best chance of getting somebody elected and when we do get somebody elected the resources that it will give us to professionalise our party will be very great. If we are lucky enough to get people elected, which will no doubt depend on how much of a campaign we can manage to finance, any MEP we have elected will have a team of four full-time paid Party activists.
We do not propose to fall into the same trap as UKIP has fallen into. We will have only one of our MEPs at a time regularly in Brussels to check whether there are proposals coming forward that all of our MEPs should try to make a special effort to oppose. Apart from that, we will use the position of MEP as a platform to campaign full time in England where it counts.
Going back to warriors and battle, (picture 6) I would remind you of the ancient Chinese, Zen Buddhist, teaching of, Sun Tzu, Master Sun, in his famous book The Art of War which I am told is virtually compulsory reading for all Far Eastern business people and politicians. Can you see from these quotations why we should be standing in the European Parliamentary elections?
Master Sun says:
“By taking equipment from your own country but feeding off the enemy you can be sufficient in both arms and provisions.”
Cao Cao, a Disciple says:
“Armaments are taken from the homeland, provisions are taken from the enemy.”
Master Sun also says:
“Therefore a wise general strives to feed off the enemy. Each pound of food taken from the enemy is equivalent to twenty pounds you provide by yourself.”
Ho Yanxi, another Disciple says:
“If you use the enemy to defeat the enemy, you will be strong wherever you go.”
So much or battle and organization.
One of the things about battling away is that it is very wearing. I think we should thank all of our NC members here. I am also sad to say that two of our National Council members are standing down, although I am very grateful to them both for all the work that they have done over the years.
If I can mention first Fred Bishop (Fred Bishop picture 7). Fred has worked hard for the good of the Party and to try and building up an organisation in the West Midlands. He was also very active in supporting our Monmouthshire campaign last year. Thank you Fred.
Our second person stepping down from the National Council will be also someone well known to you all, Christine Constable (Christine Constable picture 8), who after six years of unremitting effort and considerable personal cost, is stepping down to, understandably, spend more time with her family.
Christine has been an absolute tower of strength and an indispensible ally in helping to build up the English movement. She will be greatly missed and I hope she will miss the thrills and spills of the Cause enough to want to come back soon.
Lastly ladies & gentlemen, I thought I could do no better in reminding us all why we are here other than to read the letter of one of our members who is unable to be here today, Mrs Doris Richardson of Godalming:-
“This is just to say I am unable to attend the meetings as I am 92 years old and also do not please waste Democrat funds sending me all the large brochures. I can help by sending the occasional cheque, but am in no position to take part. I agree with all the Democrats stand for and are hoping to achieve and wish to make it clear that my membership will continue and hope you will please note although I cannot be with you, I am wishing the Party every success in the following years.”
Picture 1 – Gordon Brown picture
Picture 2 – Queen & Clarkson etc.
Picture 3 – Alfred picture
Picture 4 – Cameron photo
Picture 5 – Glasgow East Results
Picture 6 – Draft EU election poster
Picture 7 – Fred Bishop photo
Picture 8 – Christine Constable
I am delighted to welcome you to our sixth Annual General Meeting. We have arranged to meet here again in Leicester as last year’s event went so smoothly and also because David Lane had again very kindly agreed to help organise this conference. My thanks go to him for all his hard work in organising our meeting.
For next year’s Annual General Meeting we will be looking to hold our Conference in a part of the country where we haven’t previously held one of our general meetings and I hope that an Area will want to step in and offer to help organise that.
Last time, last year, when we were here, I was saying that I thought Gordon Brown (picture 1) might well call an Autumn General Election - although it was already beginning to look as if he might have dithered too long. And what difference a year has made to his fortunes! He did not listen to my advice and he is now caught by the credit crunch. Speaking of the credit crunch - it will affect us all, some more than others. What about this picture? (Joke/pictures 2 – Queen & Clarkson).
I would not claim to be much of a public speaker, being out here in front of you is not something that I crave and neither is the limelight. What I do care about is the future of our country and our nation and that is why I am out here - on the basis of: if not me, then whom?
(Alfred Picture 3)
David Lane has got a sales theory that all of us can be divided up into some curious categories. One of those categories is “Warrior”. David tells me that he thinks I have the characteristics that he expects to find in a Warrior type. Well the English Democrats, which is the spearhead of the English movement, certainly have battles and a war on our hands to save our country! I am guessing that all of us here are fighters to some extent for our country and of course battle is the best place for a warrior - so I would seem to be well qualified for the task at hand!
As the famous story of King Alfred burning the swineherd’s wife’s cakes shows, even when all seems lost and the whole country is overrun by the enemy, it is still possible for a warrior to turn the situation around, but of course, just as Alfred found, volunteers are always in short supply for battles.
I was watching the Mel Gibson film, Braveheart, the other day, and in that Robert the Bruce is made to say that Scotland can’t win because:- “This country has no sense of itself”.
As an English Nationalist you might think it odd of me to like Braveheart, but this is a good point. Just listen to this extract from the Rough Guide to England:-
The English are the most contradictory people imaginable, and however long you spend in the country you’ll never figure them out. As a glance at the tabloid newspapers will confirm, England is a nation of overweight, binge-drinking reality TV addicts, obsessed with toffs and C-list celebs. But it’s also a county of animal-loving, tea-drinking, charity donors, where queuing remains a national pastime and bastions of civilization, like Radio 4, are jealously protected. It’s a country where accent and vocabulary can stamp a person’s identity like a brand, but it’s also a genuine haven for refugees, with immigrants from more than 100 ethnic backgrounds. It’s a nation that prides itself on its patriotism – yet has a Scottish prime minister, an Italian football coach and a Greek royal consort. Ask any English person to comment on all of this and you’ll get an entertaining range of views. Try to make sense of these, and the resulting picture might suggest something akin to a national identity crisis.
In good faith this travel-writer is saying just what Robert the Bruce was saying but about us English. So I say to you that, as the spearhead of the English Movement, it is not just our job as English Democrats to organise to fight and win elections but also to give England a sense of itself - just like the SNP have done for Scotland.
In building up our organisation, one of the things that we now know - to our cost, is that there are no shortcuts because even though all of us are impatient for our Party and Cause to make even greater headway - and more quickly - it is this very impatience that led your National Council and myself to think that the selection of a celebrity would help get us more publicity in the London Mayoral elections and it is that which finally led us to select Matt O’Connor when Garry Bushell was told that he couldn’t continue to work as a journalist during the London election campaign and therefore he wasn’t able to stand for us. I can tell you now that selecting Matt O’Connor made no difference to us getting any additional publicity except in Scotland and when he did the dirty on us - only then did we get a little bit more coverage - of a hostile nature.
We did however succeed in building up the profile of our Party by being one of only six parties to stand a full slate of candidates in the London Mayoral and Assembly elections. That profile does pay off in dealing with the media. For example: In by-elections we are now getting some coverage – we got David Roberts, in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, several interviews and also onto Newsnight and as we saw in the by-election at Haltemprice & Howden, where Joanne Robinson stood for us, she got several interviews and mentions on the BBC.
We still didn’t get anything like the coverage there that the Greens got, because of course, as we all accept, the media is against us, but we did at least get a much fairer crack of the whip than we have been used to getting in the past.
The importance of building an organisation is also shown by Joanne’s result she got over 7%, she saved our deposit and she nearly beat the Greens into second place - which is significantly better than the results we have obtained in other by-elections because there was a well organised local branch which supported her, and which was able to leaflet most of the constituency.
What else have we achieved in the last year? Well we have had much further progress in discussions of the English question within the media - the Spectator even had its own front page cover in April entitled:- “Welcome back England”, having written England off in a previous edition.
I think it is fair to say that even the Government knows that they have serious trouble with Gordon Brown’s “Britishness” campaign. I was talking to one of England’s Scottish Transport Ministers, Tom Harris, and he told me, as soon as he read I was an English Democrat, without prompting, that he thought that we should have an English Parliament.
Also within Labour I think the comments on 18th June in Parliament of Derek Wyatt MP are worth quoting :-
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this morning, Mr. Chope. It is four years since the Standing Committee on Regional Affairs, the body that is supposed to represent English MPs, has met. We do not have a Grand Committee like the Welsh, Northern Irish or Scottish. The English do not have Secretaries of State, Assemblies or Parliaments. The English have something that has rarely met since 1997: the Standing Committee on Regional Affairs. That is the best that we can do for the largest proportion of voters and the largest number of constituency MPs. That is not appropriate.
Today, I shall make some radical proposals for the long-term reform of the British constitution and public finances. They will set me at odds with the policy of my Government and party, but I am convinced that standing still is not an option. The present arrangements are producing growing resentment all over the United Kingdom, particularly in England. I hope that my party will not trap itself by defending the status quo for ever, as that would put the future of the United Kingdom at risk.
This debate has a simple theme. My constituents are living in a half-finished house that costs them money, and they are beginning to resent it. The half-finished house in our country—the United Kingdom—has, like so many historic houses, grown up over the centuries without a master plan and according to the needs or whims of successive owners. Nearly 90 years ago, after a long and bitter dispute, we gave the neighbouring property to its sitting tenants—although some preferred to go on living with us. We spent the next 70 years or so trying to improve our house to make it a better place in which to live and trying to protect it from outside attack. We made no changes to the structure of the house and all the rooms and facilities were shared among all the residents.
However, in the past 10 years, there has been some major remodelling of the property. We converted the upstairs into a separate flat for the Scots and created another flat with inferior facilities in the west wing for the Welsh. We then persuaded the Northern Irish to live in another flat in the orangery—although many of them wanted to live with their neighbours next door. All that remodelling failed to create any special space for the English. They went on living in the property, but the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish were still free to walk in and help themselves to the fridge and the drinks cabinet. They could even make rules for the English that they themselves did not have to follow. Meanwhile, the English went on paying most of the household bills.
More and more of the English, including many of my constituents, are finding that an uncomfortable way to live. They put up with it when there was plenty of money coming into the house, but now that money is scarcer and outgoings are rising, they are beginning to question it. I propose some restructuring of the property so that we can all live in the way that we want to without imposing on one another. I am also calling for a fair and transparent system of meeting the household bills. That will entail replacing the Barnett formula, which, as we know, was intended to be a temporary expedient that would last six months. However, the formula still regulates the financial relationships between the separate devolved entities of the United Kingdom. Our household settles its accounts through arrangements that were set up in the 1970s for reasons that no one can remember and with results that no one can understand.
Our present constitutional settlement creates anomalies and inequalities. The people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have acquired distinct powers over key public services and other matters that are denied to the English. Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs can vote for policies that apply only to the English and that they have never sought for their own constituents. Despite the recent reduction in the number of Scottish MPs, there are distinct disparities in the value of votes in general elections between different parts of the United Kingdom. The Library note on this debate points out that a Scottish elector’s vote is worth 8 per cent. more than an English one, a Northern Irish vote is worth 13 per cent. more and a Welsh vote is worth 21 per cent. more. Where is the equity in that system?
The people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have used their new powers, particularly in health and education, to make their experience and entitlements notably different from those of the English. Those are funded by a complex and opaque system of financial transfers. To the English at least, it appears that the other parts of the United Kingdom are being shielded from the full financial consequences of their decisions, for example in relation to free personal care for the elderly. In the measured words of Professor James Mitchell of Strathclyde university:
“the current situation in which the Scottish Parliament provides more generous public policies than elsewhere without having to pay the additional cost is leading to a problem of legitimacy in England.”
Before going further, I would like to thank Dominic Webb of the Library’s economic policy and statistics section for two papers of great clarity on the murky subject of the Barnett formula. I have also drawn on the work of David Heald of the university of Sheffield and Alasdair McLeod of the university of Aberdeen.
The financial relationships between the nations of the United Kingdom were created haphazardly and with the minimum of public debate. Money is transferred directly in outright grants to the devolved Administrations. Those grants are strongly influenced by the Barnett formula, which automatically allocates increases in public expenditure to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on the basis of their population. Money is also transferred indirectly by the operation of the UK-wide tax and social security system and through public spending on UK-wide public services, such as defence and diplomacy. Official statistics give us some information about the first of those indirect transfers, but not the second.
Finally, money is removed from the United Kingdom by the European Union and partially returned to each of its different regions.
We have also recently had the Taxpayers Alliance do a report on the Barnett Formula costing English taxpayers £200 billion in the last two decades! I count this as a success as I suggested he do it to Matthew Elliott, their Chief Executive.
David Cameron (picture 4) on the other hand continues to be adamantly against any show of Englishness. In proof, I give you a quotation from a recent article 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”.
So one of the first things English nationalists need to realise about David Cameron is that he will leave them disappointed. The Conservatives have no plans to establish an English Parliament. Nor do they propose solving the so-called West Lothian Question”..
We English Democrats need to bear this in mind when people say to us that the Conservatives might be willing to do something for England. I think that Conservative Leadership is actually our nation’s worst enemy.
Despite this I offer you hope in the words of a 8 year old girl, my younger daughter, who on hearing a famous and thunderous hymn to Imperial Britishness said “Daddy why are they singing Rule Lasagne?”
Despite such signs of hope we shouldn’t under estimate the difficulty of what we have to achieve. What the Glasgow East by-election results show (results picture 5), to my way of thinking, isn’t a huge shift against the two main Establishment parties, Conservatives and Labour, this is a result that shows the power of organisation in this case of the SNP in a coordinated campaign of leafleting and getting people out to vote. It also shows that the Liberal Democrat vote may be a softer vote than anybody has dared to admit or for us English Democrats – dared hope!
In the last year we have, of course, stood in various elections- as one of only 6 parties to manage it in the London Mayoral and Assembly elections - Thank Steve Uncles and the Assembly candidates. The local elections – Thank candidates. We have stood in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election – Thank David Roberts and Margaret Torr – and in the Henley by-election – Thank Derek Alpass. And in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election Thank Joanne Robinson and Michael Cassidy.
What do we have coming up in the next year? Well we know for sure that we have a major opportunity in June of next year with the European elections (draft poster picture 6). We already have, with the help of Steve Uncles and myself, funding guaranteed to enable us to stand throughout all of England. This means that we will qualify for a Party Political Broadcast and all the media coverage which we are entitled to from being a full-contestant.
I would just point out again to show just how important organisation is because, if we were to miss out just one Region of England we would then not be entitled to any coverage.
But in fact we can confidently go forward knowing that the English Democrats will be able to stand fully covering England. This will also be a good opportunity for as many of our people as possible to stand as county council candidates (wherever the Government still hasn’t abolished the County Councils), because our European election coverage should help get them good results as well. In any county where we get beyond 1/6 of the seats being contested by our candidates there we will also be entitled to additional local coverage.
I would take this opportunity to just remind us all why we want to stand in the EU’s Parliamentary Elections. This is of course not at all because we are in support of the EU Parliament or the EU project. When we think how much the EU costs England and how the EU’s regionalisation project is being used as a weapon to try to destroy the sense of Englishness, no English Nationalist could easily be a Europhile.
No, the purpose of us standing in the European elections is because it is the easiest election of all in which to get full coverage, even as a smallish party, and even as a growing one! If we can fund a leaflet drop in each Region (which will cost about £25,000 per region) then we also get a state subsidy worth over £1m for free delivery to every house and business in England.
The purpose of us standing is also because the proportional representation system allows us the best chance of getting somebody elected and when we do get somebody elected the resources that it will give us to professionalise our party will be very great. If we are lucky enough to get people elected, which will no doubt depend on how much of a campaign we can manage to finance, any MEP we have elected will have a team of four full-time paid Party activists.
We do not propose to fall into the same trap as UKIP has fallen into. We will have only one of our MEPs at a time regularly in Brussels to check whether there are proposals coming forward that all of our MEPs should try to make a special effort to oppose. Apart from that, we will use the position of MEP as a platform to campaign full time in England where it counts.
Going back to warriors and battle, (picture 6) I would remind you of the ancient Chinese, Zen Buddhist, teaching of, Sun Tzu, Master Sun, in his famous book The Art of War which I am told is virtually compulsory reading for all Far Eastern business people and politicians. Can you see from these quotations why we should be standing in the European Parliamentary elections?
Master Sun says:
“By taking equipment from your own country but feeding off the enemy you can be sufficient in both arms and provisions.”
Cao Cao, a Disciple says:
“Armaments are taken from the homeland, provisions are taken from the enemy.”
Master Sun also says:
“Therefore a wise general strives to feed off the enemy. Each pound of food taken from the enemy is equivalent to twenty pounds you provide by yourself.”
Ho Yanxi, another Disciple says:
“If you use the enemy to defeat the enemy, you will be strong wherever you go.”
So much or battle and organization.
One of the things about battling away is that it is very wearing. I think we should thank all of our NC members here. I am also sad to say that two of our National Council members are standing down, although I am very grateful to them both for all the work that they have done over the years.
If I can mention first Fred Bishop (Fred Bishop picture 7). Fred has worked hard for the good of the Party and to try and building up an organisation in the West Midlands. He was also very active in supporting our Monmouthshire campaign last year. Thank you Fred.
Our second person stepping down from the National Council will be also someone well known to you all, Christine Constable (Christine Constable picture 8), who after six years of unremitting effort and considerable personal cost, is stepping down to, understandably, spend more time with her family.
Christine has been an absolute tower of strength and an indispensible ally in helping to build up the English movement. She will be greatly missed and I hope she will miss the thrills and spills of the Cause enough to want to come back soon.
Lastly ladies & gentlemen, I thought I could do no better in reminding us all why we are here other than to read the letter of one of our members who is unable to be here today, Mrs Doris Richardson of Godalming:-
“This is just to say I am unable to attend the meetings as I am 92 years old and also do not please waste Democrat funds sending me all the large brochures. I can help by sending the occasional cheque, but am in no position to take part. I agree with all the Democrats stand for and are hoping to achieve and wish to make it clear that my membership will continue and hope you will please note although I cannot be with you, I am wishing the Party every success in the following years.”
Picture 1 – Gordon Brown picture
Picture 2 – Queen & Clarkson etc.
Picture 3 – Alfred picture
Picture 4 – Cameron photo
Picture 5 – Glasgow East Results
Picture 6 – Draft EU election poster
Picture 7 – Fred Bishop photo
Picture 8 – Christine Constable
Speech PM Sept '06
AFTERNOON SPEECH
30.9.06
Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow English Democrats and guests.
As you may know I am a solicitor. I wonder if you have heard the joke about how they bury dead solicitors? No – well it is said that solicitors are buried not 6 feet down but a full 12 feet down – because deep down we are quite nice!
I hope that I won’t have to put you to that trouble just yet! The English Democrats are vibrant and getting on with our mission to use the political process to campaign for England, Englishness and the people of England.
In England there is no English National press, all the so called “Nationals” are British Nationalist and they don’t want to report English National issues in case it rocks the British boat.
Well ladies and gentlemen we are here to rock that boat, we want reform but we only want what has already been given to the other nations of the United Kingdom, that is our own Parliament to deal with our own domestic matters. Also we want an end to unfair extra subsidies to Scotland and Wales paid for by us. We are continuing with our campaign and we are now having success in bringing that message to the people of England. We will later be showing a BBC film that our Vice Chairman, Christine Constable, appeared in and also I appeared on Newsnight, which will also be showing. We have had increasing success in getting press coverage also. Here are some examples. We have also secured a convert to our Party who has left the Conservatives to join us. Councillor, Paul Rogan in Caulderdale! We have also stood during the last year in local elections and in a parliamentary by-election. In the local elections we have done very well for a new party. We had Paul Adams, a town councillor, elected last Autumn and in Doncaster we came second with 21% based on a single leaflet. Paul Adams experience shows that if we did more leafleting we can be sure that it would convert to even greater electoral success.
It is, of course, all a huge effort and no-one should under estimate the large scale of the task facing us. We owe a great debt of gratitude not only to those who have stood for us, without whom none of this would have been possible, but also it would not have been possible without a great deal of hard work and generous donations by many people, some of whom are here today. They know who they are and on behalf of you all I thank you.
I do think that we owe a special debt to our candidates. We need more of them for the future. I can tell you that David Jordan who is the head of BBC political programming has assured Christine Constable and I that if we get anyone elected even to local government then the BBC will give us significantly more coverage.
Let us therefore give thanks to those of our Election candidates who are here today. Please give a round of applause to each one of those who are here today as I ask them to come up to receive the certificate of thanks from our party!
-ooOoo-
Without all your efforts we would not make the huge progress that we have!
We all know that we can’t expect any favours from Labour or the Lib Dems but some people think that the Conservatives may become pro-English. This is a fantasy.
1. Cameron - Scottish
Self-love
He is a self-made man, and he worships his creator. (Disraeli on John Bright).
2. EVEL
3. Barnett Formula _____________ it reminds me of
Conducting a Case
If the facts are on your side, hammer on the facts… if the law is on your side, hammer on the law… if neither is on your side, hammer on the table…
4. Logos
The New Conservative Logos
(Conservative Logos)
Returning to all that we have done over the last year, I should of course mention our joint enterprise with the Campaign for an English Parliament – the meetings in the House of Commons of the English Constitutional Convention. We are pushing forward with this and getting Patrons involved so we can to reproduce the success of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. The Patrons who have signed up so far are :-
Mr Hugo De Burgh, Lord Hylton Robert Kilroy Silk, The Earl of Mar & Kellie, Professor Simon Lee, Professor Jeremy Dibble, Bishop Michael Reid, Mr Iain Dale, Mr N Addison, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, Roy Faiers Esq, John Horam MP, Jervis Kay QC, Mr Garry Bushell, Professor Roger Scruton, Dr Vernon Coleman and Mr Peter Facey
Please let Christine or me know if you know of someone else suitable and have their address. Best of all we have Canon Dr Kenyon Wright, a convert to our cause!
Explain
The lesson is therefore taken from the Gospel according to St Luke, Chapter 15 beginning to read out the 7th verse, “Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance”. Here endeth the lesson!
Our cause is building the connections which need to be made for it to succeed. Professor Aughey 1996 First Flying of St George Cross.
But ladies and gentlemen I believe that all this effort which we are making and all the elections in which we are standing and all the leaflets which we are distributing – all this is having an impact – a truly tremendous impact just look at this:-
(MORI Poll)
Explain 41%.
Explain our result for EDP
Credibility Colin Reed and _________ ____________
We are now being taken seriously by the National and local media. The National media still don’t like us but we do have coverage from Regional and local media so all of you who work away at writing letters to the press; keep doing so especially to your local and regional press and radio and television stations; Keep mentioning the English Democrats. We need everyone in the country to know of us and what we stand for. Until that happens we cannot finish the first stage of our Party’s development which is making contact with all English patriots everywhere.
Next year we have local elections – eplain.
We have Monmouthshire and we have 1st May demo.
We have started to worry all those who hate the English Nation and I promise that while there is breathe in my body and, I believe, breath in the bodies of all of us here, that we will continue to worry them as we press forward with our campaign. Last year I quoted Field Marshall Haig’s Order of the day of“Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end”.
But this year given the progress we are making on the publicity front, I would like to quote first from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when Brutus says to Cassius
“Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe;
The enemy increaseth every day;
We, at the height, are ready to decline,
There is a tide in the affairs of men
which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
omitted all the voyage of their life
is bound in shallows and in miseries
on such a full sea are we now afloat;
and we must take the current when it serves
or lose our ventures.”
Brutus is not only describing his situation but also the situation of the enemies of England and of Englishness. I would like to think we are like Horatius on the bridge in The Lays of Ancient Rome from Thomas Babington McCaulay who was born near here in Leicestershire.
The situation was the army of Lars Porcena of Clusium is approaching and the bridge over the Tiber must be chopped own or Rome is doomed:-
“Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his father
And the temples of his Gods?”
Horatius fought against apparently overwhelming odds and he won and, I firmly believe, so can we – and let’s do all we can to do so!
(Robin Hood)
Let us also take courage from Robin Hood and his merry men who also succeeded against all the efforts of the establishment.
30.9.06
Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow English Democrats and guests.
As you may know I am a solicitor. I wonder if you have heard the joke about how they bury dead solicitors? No – well it is said that solicitors are buried not 6 feet down but a full 12 feet down – because deep down we are quite nice!
I hope that I won’t have to put you to that trouble just yet! The English Democrats are vibrant and getting on with our mission to use the political process to campaign for England, Englishness and the people of England.
In England there is no English National press, all the so called “Nationals” are British Nationalist and they don’t want to report English National issues in case it rocks the British boat.
Well ladies and gentlemen we are here to rock that boat, we want reform but we only want what has already been given to the other nations of the United Kingdom, that is our own Parliament to deal with our own domestic matters. Also we want an end to unfair extra subsidies to Scotland and Wales paid for by us. We are continuing with our campaign and we are now having success in bringing that message to the people of England. We will later be showing a BBC film that our Vice Chairman, Christine Constable, appeared in and also I appeared on Newsnight, which will also be showing. We have had increasing success in getting press coverage also. Here are some examples. We have also secured a convert to our Party who has left the Conservatives to join us. Councillor, Paul Rogan in Caulderdale! We have also stood during the last year in local elections and in a parliamentary by-election. In the local elections we have done very well for a new party. We had Paul Adams, a town councillor, elected last Autumn and in Doncaster we came second with 21% based on a single leaflet. Paul Adams experience shows that if we did more leafleting we can be sure that it would convert to even greater electoral success.
It is, of course, all a huge effort and no-one should under estimate the large scale of the task facing us. We owe a great debt of gratitude not only to those who have stood for us, without whom none of this would have been possible, but also it would not have been possible without a great deal of hard work and generous donations by many people, some of whom are here today. They know who they are and on behalf of you all I thank you.
I do think that we owe a special debt to our candidates. We need more of them for the future. I can tell you that David Jordan who is the head of BBC political programming has assured Christine Constable and I that if we get anyone elected even to local government then the BBC will give us significantly more coverage.
Let us therefore give thanks to those of our Election candidates who are here today. Please give a round of applause to each one of those who are here today as I ask them to come up to receive the certificate of thanks from our party!
-ooOoo-
Without all your efforts we would not make the huge progress that we have!
We all know that we can’t expect any favours from Labour or the Lib Dems but some people think that the Conservatives may become pro-English. This is a fantasy.
1. Cameron - Scottish
Self-love
He is a self-made man, and he worships his creator. (Disraeli on John Bright).
2. EVEL
3. Barnett Formula _____________ it reminds me of
Conducting a Case
If the facts are on your side, hammer on the facts… if the law is on your side, hammer on the law… if neither is on your side, hammer on the table…
4. Logos
The New Conservative Logos
(Conservative Logos)
Returning to all that we have done over the last year, I should of course mention our joint enterprise with the Campaign for an English Parliament – the meetings in the House of Commons of the English Constitutional Convention. We are pushing forward with this and getting Patrons involved so we can to reproduce the success of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. The Patrons who have signed up so far are :-
Mr Hugo De Burgh, Lord Hylton Robert Kilroy Silk, The Earl of Mar & Kellie, Professor Simon Lee, Professor Jeremy Dibble, Bishop Michael Reid, Mr Iain Dale, Mr N Addison, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, Roy Faiers Esq, John Horam MP, Jervis Kay QC, Mr Garry Bushell, Professor Roger Scruton, Dr Vernon Coleman and Mr Peter Facey
Please let Christine or me know if you know of someone else suitable and have their address. Best of all we have Canon Dr Kenyon Wright, a convert to our cause!
Explain
The lesson is therefore taken from the Gospel according to St Luke, Chapter 15 beginning to read out the 7th verse, “Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance”. Here endeth the lesson!
Our cause is building the connections which need to be made for it to succeed. Professor Aughey 1996 First Flying of St George Cross.
But ladies and gentlemen I believe that all this effort which we are making and all the elections in which we are standing and all the leaflets which we are distributing – all this is having an impact – a truly tremendous impact just look at this:-
(MORI Poll)
Explain 41%.
Explain our result for EDP
Credibility Colin Reed and _________ ____________
We are now being taken seriously by the National and local media. The National media still don’t like us but we do have coverage from Regional and local media so all of you who work away at writing letters to the press; keep doing so especially to your local and regional press and radio and television stations; Keep mentioning the English Democrats. We need everyone in the country to know of us and what we stand for. Until that happens we cannot finish the first stage of our Party’s development which is making contact with all English patriots everywhere.
Next year we have local elections – eplain.
We have Monmouthshire and we have 1st May demo.
We have started to worry all those who hate the English Nation and I promise that while there is breathe in my body and, I believe, breath in the bodies of all of us here, that we will continue to worry them as we press forward with our campaign. Last year I quoted Field Marshall Haig’s Order of the day of“Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end”.
But this year given the progress we are making on the publicity front, I would like to quote first from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when Brutus says to Cassius
“Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe;
The enemy increaseth every day;
We, at the height, are ready to decline,
There is a tide in the affairs of men
which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
omitted all the voyage of their life
is bound in shallows and in miseries
on such a full sea are we now afloat;
and we must take the current when it serves
or lose our ventures.”
Brutus is not only describing his situation but also the situation of the enemies of England and of Englishness. I would like to think we are like Horatius on the bridge in The Lays of Ancient Rome from Thomas Babington McCaulay who was born near here in Leicestershire.
The situation was the army of Lars Porcena of Clusium is approaching and the bridge over the Tiber must be chopped own or Rome is doomed:-
“Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his father
And the temples of his Gods?”
Horatius fought against apparently overwhelming odds and he won and, I firmly believe, so can we – and let’s do all we can to do so!
(Robin Hood)
Let us also take courage from Robin Hood and his merry men who also succeeded against all the efforts of the establishment.
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