As the British government on behalf of their sponsors, international organisations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank continue to destroy all the achievements of the people of this country, a new future for these islands is now inevitable and unstoppable.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is finally collapsing after 306 years of its dubious existence. The UK which can be said to be the last gasp of the British Empire is presently in the process of disintegrating.
The notion of Great Britain is a little older than that of the United Kingdom of course, but not much...it originated just 103 years before the UK when Scots King James proclaimed himself King of Great Britain.
James was ambitious to build on the personal union of the Crowns of Scotland and England to establish a single country under one monarch, one parliament and one law, a plan which met opposition in both realms. "Hath He not made us all in one island," James told the English parliament, "compassed with one sea and of itself by nature indivisible?" In April 1604, however, the Commons refused on legal grounds his request to be titled "King of Great Britain". In October 1604, he assumed the title "King of Great Britain" by proclamation rather than statute, though Sir Francis Bacon told him he could not use the style in "any legal proceeding, instrument or assurance".
James ignored Parliament in his ambition to rule the entire British Isles and that's how it happened. Great Britain is scarcely any older than modern day North America and the settlement of the New World, although a Gothic past has been invented for it that is shaped largely by Hollywood and also the British film and media industries as they have developed throughout the 20th century.
Prior to the arrival in England of King James in 1603.... England, Ireland and Wales had been united by the 118 year reign of the Welsh Tudor dynasty that ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms from 1485 until 1603, when the canny Scots Stuarts took over.
Both the concept of the United Kingdom (that includes Northern Ireland) and the concept of Great Britain (that doesn't include Northern Ireland) have been marriages of convenience codified in legislation and subsequently created as a unified 'nation' in ways only possible with the spread of literacy and the burgeoning availability of written materials from the 17th century onwards.
Great Britain as a notion was fiercely resisted in seventeenth century England, most famously in the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, but also in a number of other plots, uprisings and intrigues confronting James after he permanently relocated from Edinburgh to London in 1603.
James survived two conspiracies in the first year of his reign, the Bye Plot and Main Plot, which led to the arrest, among others, of Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh.
The politics underlying the whole web of convoluted constitutional arrangements was ultimately the determination of England to remain Protestant and to prevent a Catholic head of state from seizing the throne.
Nowadays we have re-ignited sectarian inter-Celtic violence in Northern Ireland, Scotland is presently contemplating independence, Wales beginning to demand still greater autonomy than the Welsh Assembly already affords it.... and as for England, by far the most populous region of the British archipelago.....here the Anglican Church is imploding on issues like women bishops and gay marriage, which is the only good sign we can report. Politically England has no meaningful identity at all, it is simply the last colony of the fallen British Empire and has become what George Orwell called Airstrip One a military and economic warfare hub for the United States and its NATO allies.
This situation cannot possibly continue, it is ludicrous. England became a unified state in AD 927. England's current population is about 53 million, around 84% of the population of the state called the United Kingdom (and Northern Ireland).
Right now at this time in history when the majority Protestant population in the six counties of Ulster that we call Northern Ireland are again rioting to demand the constant reassurance of the symbol their inclusion in the UK, the flying of the Union flag on Belfast town hall, but not far across the sea in Scotland a head of steam is building around the idea of leaving the UK altogether, to some the logical conclusion of devolved political power to the Scottish Parliament since 1999.
So the political furniture of the British Isles is again being rearranged in epoch making ways. England is today again in turmoil with no political arena for the tensions to be debated and politically addressed.
Of the 650 seats in the British lower house the House of Commons, currently 533 constituencies are in England, 59 in Scotland, 40 in Wales and 18 in Northern Ireland.
In other words decisions made in the British Parliament which only affect England because devolved power means local assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland and the Scottish Parliament are being made by up to 117 MPs, representing constituencies that are outside England and that are unaffected by the decision of their elected representative's vote. Put another way almost one sixth of the House of Commons comprises of MPs who make decisions that exclusively apply to England without any electoral accountability here to anyone and they call that democracy.
This unhappy state of affairs, which means that uniquely in the United Kingdom, England has no dedicated governance which is the political context for the set of circumstances sometimes called the West Lothian Question that has been made sharper by devolution of power in the other countries that comprise the UK.
This is explained in Wikipedia thus:-
On 14 November 1977 Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for the Scottish constituency of West Lothian, asked during a British House of Commons debate over Scottish and Welsh devolution:
"For how long will English constituencies and English Honourable members tolerate ... at least 119 Honourable Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland exercising an important, and probably often decisive, effect on English politics while they themselves have no say in the same matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?"
He illustrated his point by pointing out the absurdity of a Member of Parliament for West Lothian being able to vote on matters affecting the English town of Blackburn, Lancashire, but not Blackburn, West Lothian, in his own constituency, due to the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 and its effects on Scottish local government.
The name "West Lothian question" was coined by the Ulster Unionist MP Enoch Powell in his response to Dalyell's speech: "We have finally grasped what the Honourable Member for West Lothian is getting at. Let us call it the West Lothian question."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Lothian_question
Here we are in England a country which along with our other UK neighbours have been attacked by the Coalition government's austerity agenda and the deliberate impoverishment of the people to the benefit of the banking and commercial corporate elite, a country that is angry, a country that is increasingly unhappy with the ongoing dismantling of the welfare state while the government commits resources to foreign military adventures with gay abandon.
So the natives here are getting restless. There is no coherent political movement in England which means that the territory has been abandoned to the far right and simplistic single issue parties like UKIP and various neo-fascist groupings who want an outlet for their racism and xenophobia. But here things get interesting because there is what could be called a transitional network in England which is almost entirely unconnected to mainstream politics but which acts politically and environmentally in shaping a new future for the country.
Other than the odd independent candidate in local elections there is really no reason to vote for any party in England, they are all equally out of touch with our reality, all serving other interests that do not favour the mass of the people. No matter how sincere and committed party activists may be the parties themselves are without exception rotten to the core.
Local organisation that is non-partisan, non-aligned and not standing for election will become much more influential, in some ways and in some areas it already has, but the transition process is creating a shadow society and a parallel economy. England needs its own parliament, the UK is a contradiction in terms, it presently is neither united nor strictly a kingdom, but if Scotland goes I can't see why any future English parliament would allow either Welsh or Northern Ireland members to take part, when they already have their own national assemblies and political fora, England doesn't.
Under the unrelenting assault of the Con-Dem/IMF/EU axis powers we need to make alternative arrangements that do not involve the British government, foreign powers or global corporations.
Alternative money systems where there are no speculators, free food production using public urban spaces, local exchange arrangements.... all this is happening now in many places here and around the world, this is the transition agenda and an important historical movement, but to the extent that the centralised state has its own functions one of its primary functions has to be the strategic deployment of health care and welfare resources according to an asessment of needs.
In order to implement subsidiarity which ironically for England has its origins in Catholic social theories and more recently in the founding principles of the European Union, we create localised networks and micro-economic systems that undermine the power of the state and corporate capitalism, but paradoxically this sort of activity is anything but subversive.
The transition movement is the parallel establishment - it is an alternative paradigm, but one broadly consistent with European social policy so it occupies no space on the left-right political spectrum whatsoever and can't be situated in those terms.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is finally collapsing after 306 years of its dubious existence. The UK which can be said to be the last gasp of the British Empire is presently in the process of disintegrating.
The notion of Great Britain is a little older than that of the United Kingdom of course, but not much...it originated just 103 years before the UK when Scots King James proclaimed himself King of Great Britain.
James was ambitious to build on the personal union of the Crowns of Scotland and England to establish a single country under one monarch, one parliament and one law, a plan which met opposition in both realms. "Hath He not made us all in one island," James told the English parliament, "compassed with one sea and of itself by nature indivisible?" In April 1604, however, the Commons refused on legal grounds his request to be titled "King of Great Britain". In October 1604, he assumed the title "King of Great Britain" by proclamation rather than statute, though Sir Francis Bacon told him he could not use the style in "any legal proceeding, instrument or assurance".
James ignored Parliament in his ambition to rule the entire British Isles and that's how it happened. Great Britain is scarcely any older than modern day North America and the settlement of the New World, although a Gothic past has been invented for it that is shaped largely by Hollywood and also the British film and media industries as they have developed throughout the 20th century.
Prior to the arrival in England of King James in 1603.... England, Ireland and Wales had been united by the 118 year reign of the Welsh Tudor dynasty that ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms from 1485 until 1603, when the canny Scots Stuarts took over.
Both the concept of the United Kingdom (that includes Northern Ireland) and the concept of Great Britain (that doesn't include Northern Ireland) have been marriages of convenience codified in legislation and subsequently created as a unified 'nation' in ways only possible with the spread of literacy and the burgeoning availability of written materials from the 17th century onwards.
Great Britain as a notion was fiercely resisted in seventeenth century England, most famously in the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, but also in a number of other plots, uprisings and intrigues confronting James after he permanently relocated from Edinburgh to London in 1603.
James survived two conspiracies in the first year of his reign, the Bye Plot and Main Plot, which led to the arrest, among others, of Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh.
The politics underlying the whole web of convoluted constitutional arrangements was ultimately the determination of England to remain Protestant and to prevent a Catholic head of state from seizing the throne.
Nowadays we have re-ignited sectarian inter-Celtic violence in Northern Ireland, Scotland is presently contemplating independence, Wales beginning to demand still greater autonomy than the Welsh Assembly already affords it.... and as for England, by far the most populous region of the British archipelago.....here the Anglican Church is imploding on issues like women bishops and gay marriage, which is the only good sign we can report. Politically England has no meaningful identity at all, it is simply the last colony of the fallen British Empire and has become what George Orwell called Airstrip One a military and economic warfare hub for the United States and its NATO allies.
This situation cannot possibly continue, it is ludicrous. England became a unified state in AD 927. England's current population is about 53 million, around 84% of the population of the state called the United Kingdom (and Northern Ireland).
Right now at this time in history when the majority Protestant population in the six counties of Ulster that we call Northern Ireland are again rioting to demand the constant reassurance of the symbol their inclusion in the UK, the flying of the Union flag on Belfast town hall, but not far across the sea in Scotland a head of steam is building around the idea of leaving the UK altogether, to some the logical conclusion of devolved political power to the Scottish Parliament since 1999.
So the political furniture of the British Isles is again being rearranged in epoch making ways. England is today again in turmoil with no political arena for the tensions to be debated and politically addressed.
Of the 650 seats in the British lower house the House of Commons, currently 533 constituencies are in England, 59 in Scotland, 40 in Wales and 18 in Northern Ireland.
In other words decisions made in the British Parliament which only affect England because devolved power means local assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland and the Scottish Parliament are being made by up to 117 MPs, representing constituencies that are outside England and that are unaffected by the decision of their elected representative's vote. Put another way almost one sixth of the House of Commons comprises of MPs who make decisions that exclusively apply to England without any electoral accountability here to anyone and they call that democracy.
This unhappy state of affairs, which means that uniquely in the United Kingdom, England has no dedicated governance which is the political context for the set of circumstances sometimes called the West Lothian Question that has been made sharper by devolution of power in the other countries that comprise the UK.
This is explained in Wikipedia thus:-
On 14 November 1977 Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for the Scottish constituency of West Lothian, asked during a British House of Commons debate over Scottish and Welsh devolution:
"For how long will English constituencies and English Honourable members tolerate ... at least 119 Honourable Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland exercising an important, and probably often decisive, effect on English politics while they themselves have no say in the same matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?"
He illustrated his point by pointing out the absurdity of a Member of Parliament for West Lothian being able to vote on matters affecting the English town of Blackburn, Lancashire, but not Blackburn, West Lothian, in his own constituency, due to the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 and its effects on Scottish local government.
The name "West Lothian question" was coined by the Ulster Unionist MP Enoch Powell in his response to Dalyell's speech: "We have finally grasped what the Honourable Member for West Lothian is getting at. Let us call it the West Lothian question."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Lothian_question
Here we are in England a country which along with our other UK neighbours have been attacked by the Coalition government's austerity agenda and the deliberate impoverishment of the people to the benefit of the banking and commercial corporate elite, a country that is angry, a country that is increasingly unhappy with the ongoing dismantling of the welfare state while the government commits resources to foreign military adventures with gay abandon.
So the natives here are getting restless. There is no coherent political movement in England which means that the territory has been abandoned to the far right and simplistic single issue parties like UKIP and various neo-fascist groupings who want an outlet for their racism and xenophobia. But here things get interesting because there is what could be called a transitional network in England which is almost entirely unconnected to mainstream politics but which acts politically and environmentally in shaping a new future for the country.
Other than the odd independent candidate in local elections there is really no reason to vote for any party in England, they are all equally out of touch with our reality, all serving other interests that do not favour the mass of the people. No matter how sincere and committed party activists may be the parties themselves are without exception rotten to the core.
Local organisation that is non-partisan, non-aligned and not standing for election will become much more influential, in some ways and in some areas it already has, but the transition process is creating a shadow society and a parallel economy. England needs its own parliament, the UK is a contradiction in terms, it presently is neither united nor strictly a kingdom, but if Scotland goes I can't see why any future English parliament would allow either Welsh or Northern Ireland members to take part, when they already have their own national assemblies and political fora, England doesn't.
Under the unrelenting assault of the Con-Dem/IMF/EU axis powers we need to make alternative arrangements that do not involve the British government, foreign powers or global corporations.
Alternative money systems where there are no speculators, free food production using public urban spaces, local exchange arrangements.... all this is happening now in many places here and around the world, this is the transition agenda and an important historical movement, but to the extent that the centralised state has its own functions one of its primary functions has to be the strategic deployment of health care and welfare resources according to an asessment of needs.
In order to implement subsidiarity which ironically for England has its origins in Catholic social theories and more recently in the founding principles of the European Union, we create localised networks and micro-economic systems that undermine the power of the state and corporate capitalism, but paradoxically this sort of activity is anything but subversive.
The transition movement is the parallel establishment - it is an alternative paradigm, but one broadly consistent with European social policy so it occupies no space on the left-right political spectrum whatsoever and can't be situated in those terms.
Transition is officially sanctioned (or at least not opposed) subversion.
In the meantime we do need regime change in Westminster that will establish an English parliament to oversee this process and provide the basic safety-net that any tax raising state has an absolute duty to provide over and above any other function of state.
In the meantime we do need regime change in Westminster that will establish an English parliament to oversee this process and provide the basic safety-net that any tax raising state has an absolute duty to provide over and above any other function of state.
I am optimistic that 2013 will see some advancement in the English Home Rule Movement while changes happen all around all the time, for example, my local park after 2 years of campaigning by the Friends group, recently became more edible with the planting of traditional fruit trees that have not been seen in this area for about a hundred years or thereabouts.
This fruit from our new community orchard will eventually be available to anyone using the park who wants to pick it....similar projects are now planned for other green spaces in the area.
The organisation is from the ground up, but when English activists look to levels above local government there is no dedicated body there, no parliament interested in what is happening here.
The organisation is from the ground up, but when English activists look to levels above local government there is no dedicated body there, no parliament interested in what is happening here.
If we are going to subsidise the state with our taxes we want to make laws for England by people elected in England and answerable for their actions to the electorate. Is it time for an English Spring? ...
'No taxation without representation', England's Camomile Tea Party has now begun?
I hope there is a grass roots movement toward an English Parliament, and I hope is is based around some of the initiatives you mention, I thought an English parliament was the way to go when I lived in England, and that was 20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteRecently, while in conversation about independence with a woman I know she said that Scottish independence is a selfish movement because those who want it only care about themselves and not about the people in the north of England or Wales or any of the poorer areas of England. I think she felt that Scottish independence would mean abandoning ordinary people in England and leaving them to their fate as decided by the heartless Tory coalition. I must admit, I never though of it that way before. I know you don’t have any faith in any of the mainstream parties, and I don’t blame you, but without Scotland (and possibly Wales) the overall vote for the left would be greatly reduced. If England voted for its own parliament, and if voting habits remained the same, the government of England would become progressively more and more right wing. It’s a tricky one, I still want Scottish independence, but she did make me think that maybe people south of the border could be politically worse off.
I think you raise some interesting points Loretta. I agree that under the first past the post voting system the "left" of English politics doesn't get a look in.
DeleteI think that is true now, but potentially would be less true in an English Parliament in my view.
Because all mainstream parties are on the "right" of British politics (I'm not sure that Respect is a mainstream party, but if so it is the exception that proves the rule I think)....there is in most English constituences nowhere for a 'left' vote currently to go.
In the Celtic areas there is a nationalist element to politics that can manifest as either 'left' or 'right'....with the exception of the numbskulls in UKIP (an anti-English party nationalism has not been a big issue in postwar English politics until now.
It is moving more that way now I tnink largely because of devolution in other parts of the Union, but also because the rightwing anti-immigration and xenophobic rhetoric of ALL the major political parties (including Labour) and the gutter press means the 'establishment' cannot be anything other than conservative.
It is the 'established order' that is now being challenged in the face of the collapsing credibilit of the institutions that comprise it, the government, the church, the military and all the other bastions of collapsing Britishness.
I actually believe that 'home rule for England based upon a proportional votong system would radically alter the balance of power in many parts of the country.
I don't think that voters in England are any more intrinsically conservative than in any other part of the UK.
It is just that the voting system is constructed that way and unlike the Scots, or the Welsh ...there is no outsider 'bogyman' to blame and to build nationalist policies of liberation around or against.
I therefore don't agree with the woman you mention, but rather I think Scottish independence would help England and the English, to slip out from under the smothering blanket of Britishness more easily than if the Scots decuide to stay onboard the sinking ship.
And of course, we are not talking about the Berlin Wall here, we are talking about autonomy within Europe and a greater role for regional politics, but the countries of the British Isles are inextricably linked by history and geography anyway, a visit to Corby in the English midland shire of Northamton and Scottish enclave would illustrate my point I think. We are all together in that sense, but that doesn't mean that each are must be free to determine its own policies withi the Art of the Possible I think.
There is a growing sense of national identity in England and I don't mean the boneheads and football hooligans on the far right. I mean a growing pastoral movement and cultural revolution that is going on at a gentle but steady pace amongst the English Middle Classes.
This I think is politically and historically significant. Thanks for your comments Loretta, they are much appreciated.
A great essay AA. I think Loretta addressed the political partisanship question very well so I'll concentrate more on the historical.
ReplyDeleteI find that historical artifact about The House of Common, King James and Francis Bacon quite intriguing, AA, and it shows that even in the era "Divine Kings" the English were already getting sick of unilateral monarchs and their endless desires to be hailed as frigging gods on earth. This disease still manifests itself in the Masters of the Universe in Wall Street and the Neo-Con Vulcans at The Pentagon.
England certainly has a marvelous claim to its own nation-hood. A thousand years ago there was an England, which is a hell of a lot more than any reactionary cowboys in Texas can say for the Lone Star State as a backwater republic and four years as the fat rump end of the Confederate States of Bogus White Supremacy. If that claim could being real representation through a peaceful transition and a new progressive state---that would be remarkable.
When you think about it most of the great movements in the Anglosphere, the abolition of slavery, civil rights for blacks and gay people and votes for women, were all grounded in public movements made up of people who broke through the establishment rather than the establishment "gifting" anybody with any new freedoms. It may be those fruit trees in Birmingham will go down in history like Washington's cherry tree or King Alfred's cakes as a legendary founding of a new paradigm for civilization.
Thanks for your comments Doug, I much appreciate them.
DeleteI think you are right that the history demonstrates an English people getting sick of the Crown.
It is fair to say that they have done that a lot over the centuries, although I think in the past (that is before the 17th century upheavals and the birth pangs of modernity) the fuedal English serfs rebelled against the lords, but often tried to gain the support of the king for their cause... as in the Peasants Revolt of 1381 for example.
If the modernity was indeed 'born' in 17th century England, then it was 'conceived' in the 14th century in the grim wake of the Black Death. This was the true origin of the institutions of the English welfare state, expressed in the Poor Law issued by King Edward III in 1350 and the The Statute of Labourers the following year.
I remember reading a book a little while ago that pointed out that Queen Victoria was the first post-Conquest British monarch not to have at least one serious threat of overthrow from riots, plots and/or rebellions at some point in their reign.
As you say Doug, it was dogged struggle that brought the standards of decency we as populations everywhere have ever achieved.
So far as England is concerned since 1215 in Magna Carta the arbitary power of Kings was curtailed but actually even before that The Charter of Liberties (aka 'Coronation Charter') - was a written proclamation by Henry I issued upon his accession to the throne in 1100. It sought to bind the King to certain laws regarding the treatment of church officials and nobles. It was a landed class version of the Peasants Revolt as the post-feudal class system starts to take shape
So this is a longstanding dispute and this is what David Cameron and the speculators and profiteers that finance the rip-off he conspires with is hoping to dismantle and to turn back the tide of endless demands for justice and fairness throughout history.
They'll be lucky.
Thank you for the civics lesson, or was this the history lesson, or the geography lesson? I have to admit to being mostly ignorant of the goings on in your land AA. I have a hard time keeping up with the craziness here across the pond. Your blogs are always quite interesting and I learn something new every time I set foot in your house here.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you for your kind comments Ms C.....actually, most people who live here are quite ignorant of the 'goings on' too.... so don't feel too bad about it. There is no shortage of craziness around the world I don't think Ms C...I like to examine little bits of it and hold it up to the light whenever possible. Its a hobby of mine I suppose.
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