English Democrats' David slays Salford Labour’s Goliath!

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

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

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

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

English Democrats' David slays Salford Labour’s Goliath!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robin continued:-

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

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

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

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

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

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

There will be interesting times ahead!


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My predictions are:-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anti- English harassment case update

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

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

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

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

Their contact details are:-

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

Monmouthshire - English or Welsh?

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


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

History of Monmouthshire
Ambiguity over Welsh status

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Murky Transfer from England to Wales

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

English Deep Sea Fishing

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

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

How the politicians betrayed Britain's fishermen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surplus fish are thrown back into the sea, dead

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

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

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

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