A speech to a Conservative Party lunch on 20th September 2002, at the County Hotel, Bramhall, Greater Manchester.

To read the text please click on the link to the “Nationism” page of Britain Watch.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 24th June 1999.

Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, made it clear in his Belfast speech last week that the concerns of Irish republicans, dedicated to wrenching the United Kingdom apart, are as valid as those of Unionists, dedicated to upholding it (report, June 15th).  The Unionists are portrayed as the obstacle to setting up devolved government because they decline to do what no other democracy has ever done, namely admit into government a party linked to a terrorist organisation.

As one act of appeasement of the IRA follows another, the Sinn Fein proportion of the nationalist/republican vote rises in step.  In the 1992 general election, which ushered in the “peace process”, the proportion was 28 per cent; in the recent Euro-elections (with a Northern Ireland turnout of almost 60 per cent) the proportion has risen to nearly 40 per cent.

The unambiguous plan for the handing over of arms by the Kosovo Liberation Army announced by Nato contrasts with the endless prevarication over the same issue by Sinn Fein/IRA.  Imposing moral principles on Serbia by virtually risk-free bombing is one thing.  Upholding democratic principles in the face of an opponent such as Sinn Fein/IRA, able and willing to inflict real damage – well, that for Mr Blair is evidently a different matter altogether.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 27th November 1998.

Tom Utley suggests that English Conservatives should forsake the establishment of an English parliament in order to “fight shoulder to shoulder with Donald Dewar” to preserve the Union of England and Scotland (article, Nov. 20th).

There is a persistent belief among the well-to-do English political class that if only we, the long-suffering English people, would appease and subsidise a bit more, the beneficiaries will be deflected from their settled purpose.  As in Europe, Northern Ireland and now Scotland, such appeasement merely whets the appetite for more.

There has been little sentimental attachment to the Union in Scotland for years.  If in due course people in Scotland vote to break the Union with England, it will be because the sentimental attachment to a separate Scots state will have taken precedence over a hard-headed calculation of the disadvantages which separation will bring.  These include the loss of career opportunities – in the Armed Forces, science, corporate business, media – which would follow the Scots’ transfer of citizenship from a major to a minor state.  The cost of the offsetting jobs – all those new embassies for instance – would be borne 100 per cent by the Scottish taxpayer.

While probably a majority of English people today would prefer the Union with Scotland to continue, this could change rapidly once the manifest unfairness of the new constitutional arrangements becomes full visible.  England does not need the Union to support it.  It is a powerful nation of 50 million people, the sixth largest economy in the world, and contains all but two of the strategic industrial and military installations of the United Kingdom.

The re-establishment of the English parliament, while indispensable for democratic fairness to the English people, will also give status to Scotland as a partner in a proper federal United Kingdom.  It should therefore receive the support, not disapproval, of those people such as Mr Utley who support the Union.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published around the 21st August 1996.

The capacity of this “government” to tie itself in knots is apparently unlimited.  The idea being advanced by Sir Patrick Mayhew (report, 19th August) that the proposed voluntary identity card/driving licence should not bear the national flag for fear of offending an anti-British minority in Northern Ireland would be dismissed as ludicrous in any other country.  Instead of pandering to members of this minority the government should tell them that if they don’t want British citizenship with its privileges and duties, they should give it up and take our Irish papers.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 27th October 1994.

Anne Applebaum (article, Oct. 25th) is right to point out that, unlike the Palestinians, the Catholic Irish do have their own state, but she is wrong to say that the fight in Northern Ireland is over a “resource-free tract of land”.

On the contrary, by hard work and dedication over the centuries, the Protestant people have created the network of efficient well tended farms which has so distinguished Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland.  In addition, the Unionist population has made contributions to British technology, and to the British Army out of all proportion to its numbers.

Despite the mayhem and economic sabotage systematically carried out by the IRA, northern Ireland continues to deliver the best secondary school results and to have one of the most skilled and willing industrial workforces in the whole of the United Kingdom, as I have direct reason to know.

For a government to say, as this one does, that it is neutral about whether such citizens go or stay is a shameful disgrace.  Perhaps it cares more about mineral rights.  If the Republic of Ireland finally manages to get its hands on Northern Ireland, it would also obtain rights to around 1,700 square miles of the Continental shelf.

A letter to the Times which was published around 30th August 1984.

As is not unusual in articles on Ulster, Phillip Whitehead (August 28th) talks of the Ulster Unionists’ “fear” of joining the Republic of Ireland.

Individual Unionists will speak for themselves, of course, but in my view Unionists see their Britishness and specifically, loyalty to the Crown, as fundamental to their national consciousness.  Doubtless most present Labour party politicians find this difficult to comprehend, being themselves pretty lukewarm about these concepts, but a large number of Britons on the mainland recognise and respond to the devotion of the Ulster majority to their British heritage in the face of terrorism and the grudging support from the Government at Westminster.

Phillip Whitehead correctly discerns that there are two nationalisms in competition for space in Ireland.  What he does not seem to recognise is that one of the nationalisms is British – ours.

It is about time that the fight against terrorism in Northern Ireland should be seen as our fight, not just some local squabble, with the British Army holding the ring.  The Unionists in Ulster are, by and large, descendants of English and Scottish settlers from the seventeenth century.  Proportionately they occupy much less territory in Ireland than the nationalists.  The legitimacy of their political status is older and greater than that of most states in the New World and not a few in Europe.

Ulster people have made their full contribution to British national life, most notably in the military and technological spheres.  Besides our people there, the land itself, the corresponding continental-shelf mineral rights and airspace are valuable assets for the United Kingdom which should be vigorously, not half-heartedly, defended against acquisition by the Republic of Ireland.

Contrary to much political and media opinion the Republic of Ireland, whatever the views of its individual citizens, is not a particularly friendly state.  Throughout its sixty years’ existence as free state and republic it has taken a generally anti-British stance in foreign affairs and has consistently acted as a haven for wanted terrorists.  In EEC matters it is usually ranged against Britain.

To surrender Northern Ireland to it would be another abject British defeat and seen as such by friends and enemies alike.