A speech at the first Goldsmith Memorial Lecture on 22nd May 2007, at University College in London.
To read the text please click on the link to the “Governance of Britain” page of the Britain Watch website.
To read the text please click on the link to the “Governance of Britain” page of the Britain Watch website.
Lord Alderdice, leader of the Northern Ireland Alliance Party, manages to discuss devolution and what he calls the “totality of relationships among these islands” (article, March 17th) without once mentioning England.
Likewise, Robert Jackson, the Conservative MP, managed to write a long letter about national identities (March 14th) without once mentioning the English people, although there was plenty about Scots, Welsh and Irish.
Judging by these and many similar writings, a visitor from outer space would never realise that the English not only exist, but constitute by far the great majority of the population of the United Kingdom.
Lord Alderdice, Mr Jackson and others evidently take for granted the English people’s continue acquiesence in their virtual obliteration by the media.
It is also assumed that the English will always subsidise parliaments, assemblies, language support systems and endless arrays of quangos in parts of the British Isles that are forever proclaiming their differences.
With a Socttish parliament only a matter of months away, the time is now long overdue to settle the “West Lothian” question once and for all. The English people do not want their country broken up into artificial “regions” as part of a devolution fudge to help keep the Labour Party in power.
There is now no stopping point between a unitary state and a proper federal constitution that is remotely democratic.
Only the restoration of a Parliament for England will do.
The Commission for Racial Equality’s attitude to the people of this country is well indicated in Jean Coussin’s letter (Dec. 18th).
The English, Scots, Welsh and Ulster people who constitute about 95 per cent of the population are referred to as “white”, like so many pots of paint, whereas the two principal immigrant groups are carefully dignified with capital letters.
We are all British citizens, but when matters pertaining to racial origin are concerned the ancestral owners of this land are entitled to be referred to by their proper names, which in my case is English.
In your report (10th March) of Mr Powell’s address to Cambridge University Conservatives, your correspondent once again describes the native people of this country as white, like so many tins of paint, while dignifying the ethnic minorities by their, mainly national proper names – West Indian, Indian, Pakistani, etc. We, the ancestral owners of this land do not even merit a capital letter.
Why does your paper continue to refer so slightingly to our own people in this way? Do you not appreciate that this language usage is deliberately fostered by the race lobby to create a situation in which English people will not be identified as such, and therefore will have no particular claim on their own country England, which is named after them (not the other way round) incidentally.
Needless to say the Welsh and Scots are looked after by the media; in TV, radio and newspapers they are almost invariably referred to by their proper names.