David Wildgoose's speech to the Campaign for an English Parliament's Future of England debate.

The major parties seem determined to pretend that we in the Campaign for an English Parliament are in some way "not representative" of what ordinary English people are thinking.

On the contrary. We in the CEP and the wider English Movement are the "canaries in the coalmine". Merely the vocal element of a growing body of opinion.

Perhaps more to the point, is in what way can MPs and their parties themselves claim to be representative? After all, the combined Labour and Conservative vote has fallen from 98% in the 1950s to barely 68% at the last election. It used to be that 1 person in 11 was a member of a political party. It is now 1 person in 88. Voter turnout itself is in catastrophic decline. In last Thursday's by-election less than a third of the voters actually bothered to do so.

UK Democracy is in crisis.

Alec Salmond has openly stated that SNP MPs will vote exclusively in Scotland's interests even though their mandate is to act as British MPs in Britain's interests. The same is also true with Plaid Cymru and with the Northern Irish Parties. England is disadvantaged because there are no explicitly English MPs voting exclusively in England's interests. This matters. Issues that affect Scotland are devolved to Scotland and under Scottish control. With the major exception of the Anglo-Welsh legal system the same is also true for Wales. Issues affecting England though are voted on by all MPs at Westminster, including those MPs for whom English issues are not their overriding concern. And not just Nationalist MPs. Many Scottish Liberal Democrat and Labour MPs, including both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, signed the "Scottish Claim of Right", a public oath to treat Scotland's interests as paramount. But as the Bible says, "No Man can serve two masters". Quite clearly, "Dual-Mandate" MPs are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The great claim of Democracy is that if you don't like what your representative is doing, you can hold them accountable for their actions at the ballot box. Unless of course, you are John Reid MP, yet another signatory of the Scottish Claim of Right, representing a Scottish constituency, but placed in charge of the English NHS. Or the Welsh MP Kim Howells, voting to restrict the number of musicians permitted to play together on licensed premises in England and making the comment "the idea of listening to three Somerset folk singers sounds like hell". English culture, English traditions, English issues, but overruled by MPs from outside England and not answerable to voters in England.

No surprise then that Dr Travers of the LSE Research Centre has described England as "little more than a centrally governed colony".

But why should we English tolerate MPs we don't elect forcing health, education and other policies on us that we don't want?

Why should we put up with a government that is so desperate for cash that it is currently indulging in a fire-sale of largely English assets, such as the Dartford Tunnel and the playing fields and cemeteries of English Local Authorities? After all, assets belonging to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are under the control of their respective governments. England though has no such protection.

National Devolution has emphasised the fault lines within the Union. Rather than trying to deny that these exist I believe it is necessary to cement the Union along these lines by creating a federal state - the only practical way of separating what divides us from what unites us.

You may have heard the ridiculous argument that England is too big for a federation to work. This is palpable nonsense. A federation would *address* the problem of an out-sized England because English voting weight would only affect England itself. England is the same size it has always been. If a federation with England wouldn't work then a Union without a federation's protections certainly couldn't - except of course it did, for nearly 300 years before being wrecked.

National Parliaments dealing with the national issues concerning the nations of the United Kingdom would mean that all the citizens of the UK would stand together in the same relationship to the centre, with the same rights, and as *equal* citizens. Just as there is no better way to drive a wedge between us than treating the people of England as lesser-class citizens, there is no better way of reinforcing the UK family by recognising our individual needs but treating us all equally.

However at this point it is also worth asking another question. To what extent is the vote for nationalist politicians also a plea for more control over people's lives and away from a distant impersonal Westminster, or an even more remote European Union?

Because we need to re-invigorate local democracy as well.

Right now, the lowest tier of government in the UK has about 120,000 voters. By constrast, in the United States and Italy it is around 7,000 voters. In Spain and Germany, 5,000 voters. And in France, just 1,500 voters. The proposals to strip yet more powers from local Councils, centralising them in artificial and unwanted "Regions" is precisely the wrong approach. The true purpose of these "Regions" is simply to strengthen centralised control. They are too small to deal with national issues such as the legal system and the laws we all live under, but too large to have local understanding, accountability and crucially, sympathy.

We only have to look at the appalling state of the public finances to know that harsh cuts are on the way. Last week there were warnings that the UK could lose its AAA credit rating if the next government fails to bring spending under control and to reduce debt. That would result in a sterling crisis, gilt yield falls and sharp rises in interest rates at the worst possible time. The situation we are facing is far worse than that even Margaret Thatcher had to deal with. I was 16 when Geoffrey Howe gave his savage 1981 budget. The son of a Sheffield steelworker. My home areas of Rotherham and Sheffield lost 25% of all their jobs in just a 5 year period - twice as fast as Liverpool suffered. There was no Barnett Formula financial cushion for South Yorkshire.

To implement a severe fiscal tightening without also addressing the current political injustices is a recipe not just for discrediting the Westminster Parliament still further, but also potentially for serious civil unrest, damaging confidence in Sterling along with its attendant economic dangers.

Quite simply, to govern requires the consent of the governed. We need serious reform and this really cannot wait. We need an English Parliament and restored Local Government. And we need this NOW.

David Wildgoose is the vice-chairman The Campaign for an English Parliament.

I was the Liberal Democrat candidate at the 1994 Rotherham by-election where I was privileged to finally meet Richard Wainwright, who had been Liberal MP for Colne Valley. Back in 1977 during the first devolution debates Richard said "For a government to propose that some British people shall have two Parliaments to shout for them, while others are left with only one, is the last word in political debauchery".

During the same debates, the Tory George Gardiner made the following point: "What kind of argument would we confront from the Scots and the Welsh if it were proposed, instead of a Scottish or Welsh Assembly, to set up only an English Assembly, but still to bring the full number of English members to this House or even to increase their number proportionately, to continue to vote on Scottish and Welsh matters, which, in the case of England, had already been devolved to an English Assembly? We know very well that there would be uproar in Scotland and Wales."

Of course, things have moved on from then. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all now have Devolution. As Richard Wainwright put it, they all have 2 Parliaments to shout for them and their interests. The exception, of course, is England. **ENGLAND. Not the "remainder!"** [Andrew George MP had just described Devolution as having occurred to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland leaving only the "disgruntled remainder" and that we needed some means of dealing with the "remainder".]

We have gone past the point of John Major's campaign in 1997 that we had just "48 hours to save the Union". That anti-Devolution battle was lost. The Union survives. It is however still under threat, not least by the growing resentment within England at the second-class citizenship that has been foisted upon us without our leave. Because the people of England have been prejudicially disadvantaged post-devolution, in a way that the Scots and Welsh never were pre-devolution.

"At the very least, the English deserve the opportunity to decide. They should be offered a referendum, just as the Scots and Welsh were, on their constitutional future. Failure to provide that option would be a shocking display of disdain for nearly 50 million United Kingdom citizens". Not my words, those of the Conservative David Davis.

The current situation is not stable and won't last. Reversing Devolution is no longer an option, if it ever was. If the Union is to survive then a positive case for this must be made that addresses the conflicting desires of the people that make up the United Kingdom.

The Campaign for an English Parliament believes that this can be addressed by the creation of an English Parliament to stand alongside those of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

A federal Union will enable us to separate what divides us from what unites us. To get the best of both worlds. Independence on health, education, social policies, to plough our own furrow in a manner we find appropriate. But united as one voice when speaking on the world stage politically, economically and militarily, alongside the social solidarity to help each other out when dealing with such pressing matters as unemployment or the environment.

There is of course one other option for the nations of the United Kingdom, the one that will otherwise inevitably be chosen by default.

Breakup.

Many of you, like me, will have been watching the BBC's recent series of programmes on Scotland. "Dinner with Portillo - Why Should We Care About Scottish Independence?" was broadcast on BBC4 on the 15th September and had a number of well known people openly discussing the breakup of the Union. The majority were actually in favour of such a prospect. Portillo and Clougherty's opinion could best be described as 'Close the door quietly when you leave', an attitude which, if anything, infuriated the Scottish Nationalists even more than that of wanting them to stay and which Hardeep Singh Kholi described as "typical English arrogance".

Hardeep had something else to say as well.

"Why should the English stomach Scots MPs having a say on their political future when the Scots wouldn't for a moment accept the reciprocal arrangement, it would be unconscionable in Scotland?"

Indeed.

Henry McLeish, the former Labour First Minister of Scotland, and the man who saw the Scotland Act through Westminster, was also at that dinner. He has said that the English need a voice and that the current assymmetric devolution cannot be sustained.

The Welsh Conservative Assembly Member David Melding has just published a book Will Britain Survive Beyond 2020?. He says "The best way to preserve Britain as a multi-national state is to accept that the UK...requires a new settlement. This settlement will need to be federal in character so that the sovereignties of the Home Nations and the UK State can be recognised in their respective jurisdictions".

George Monbiot, speaking at the recent Plaid Cymru conference has also called for an English Parliament.

And so on.

Yes, there is plenty of thinking going on in all the major parties.

Apart from one that is.

A party that claims to be set up on a federal basis and which publishes manifestos for Scotland and Wales but not England. A party that has a Scottish Conference, a Welsh Conference, but not an English Conference. The party which has benefited greatly from the Proportional Representation elections to the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments and has the most to gain from an English Parliament that is likewise elected by PR - but which inexplicitly does not support such an outcome. The Party that in the past liked to claim that it was the "big thinker" on constitutional issues but which now sits on the sidelines and pretends that nothing has changed and thus nothing needs to be done.

YOUR Party.

Tom Nairn in his book After Britain said "Blair's Project makes it likely that England will return on the street corner, rather than via a maternity room with appropriate care and facilities. Croaking tabloids, saloon-bar resentment and back-bench populism are likely to attend the birth and have their say." Looking at the news reports of the English Defence League I would say that those are prescient words.

Here are some more, from Neal Ascherson:
"Yes, there is an emerging Englishness which is still thought to be slightly incorrect. Something is bursting to come out. But sadly, the English intelligentsia, or the liberal English middle class, which ought to be leading political developments, ought to be taking over this emerging feeling; saying yes, let's make a democratic, tolerant, forward-looking nation; is just sitting back and saying 'English nationalism, awful, horrible, leave it to the yobs'."

England is being reborn. Some of us are campaigning for that democratic, tolerant, forward-looking nation. For example, I have here some leaflets from the Workers of England Union, a Union recently set up to campaign on behalf of the ordinary working people of England. The back cover says "Join a union that cares for England and its workers". The front cover says "Putting the workers of England first". Yes, England is being reborn, with or without you.

And so my ongoing question to you is, Are you going to join us in that project, or remain with the reactionaries?

David Wildgoose, September 2009

Speech by David Wildgoose to the CEP's "Future of England" Conference, 26 April 2008

It's too easy to look at the world not as it is, but rather as we would wish it to be.

We are all guilty of this, but as rational beings we have to recognise this fact and address the realities as they actually are.

The Union is broken.

More accurately, the Unions are broken, because the United Kingdom was created via a series of Acts of Union between 1536 and 1801.

In 1707 England and Wales were joined by Scotland with an Act, part III of which stipulated "That the United Kingdom of Great Britain be represented by one and the same Parliament".

Part IV of that Act stated "That all the subjects of the United Kingdom shall from and after the Union...have the same Rights, Privileges and Advantages".

But since Devolution in 1998 the people of the United Kingdom are NOT represented by one and the same Parliament. And we do NOT have the same Rights, Privileges and Advantages. There are now distinct differences in for example Health, Education and Old Age provisions between the different nations of the UK, divisions deliberately separated upon national grounds, and deliberately emphasised by nationalist politicians with the successful aim of inflaming national passions.

These divisions are getting worse.

The ongoing saga of the Welsh government's refusal to pay the bills of Welsh patients attending English hospitals has now resulted this week in Bristol's NHS Trust issuing instructions that Welsh patients should not be booked in for surgery or for further outpatient appointments until their bills start to be paid.

The British government also has bills to be paid. So it in turn, has decided to start and pawn English NHS properties, starting in London. Our hospitals - English Hospitals - are being sold off by our Scottish Chancellor and leased back in order to raise money. Not Scottish Hospitals though. No, just like when the Tories privatised England's Water Companies and not Scotland's, England is always the loser.

The powers that be have seen fit to encourage and pander to nationalist sentiment in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by transferring more and more powers to their respective national governments. We are told "Devolution is a process, and not an event". Which no doubt explains why the so-called "Wendy Commission" was set up by the Scottish Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties to debate what additional powers could be transferred to the Scottish Government.

Similarly, in Wales, Labour and Plaid Cymru have agreed that the Welsh should shortly be given another referendum. This time the question will be about increasing the powers of the Welsh Assembly to match those of Scotland with full primary law-making rights and further separation from England. It is worth noting that Labour MP Kim Howells commented that this would help "nationalists to the gates of independence."

Talking of independence, the SNP-led Scottish government have announced their plans for a Referendum in 2010 on Scotland leaving the Union.

And in Northern Ireland of course, the prolonged violence of The Troubles abated with The Belfast Agreement - an Agreement which provides for repeated referenda, 7 years apart, on whether Northern Ireland should leave the Union and join with the Republic.

It appears the answer to nationalist separatism in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is to pander to it with the declared aim of preserving the Union. If we are honest, looking at the situation as it is, does this seem to be working?

But what of England?

Simple requests for an end to our second-class status and a return to equality for all British citizens by the creation of a matching devolved Parliament for England are demonised as a "threat to the Union". Schools have been instructed - in England only - to teach "Britishness". Jack Straw, when he was Home Secretary, even went on Radio 4 to describe the English as "potentially very aggressive, very violent" and who had used this "propensity to violence to subjugate Ireland, Wales and Scotland".

I suppose it at least admits to a consistent approach, with the same historical distortions being peddled in all 4 of the nations of the United Kingdom. But as for their aim of suppressing the idea of England, you only have to look at this week's St George's Day celebrations to see the rise in English national consciousness in an equal and opposite reaction.

The other approach has been to try and abolish what they perceive as the problem of England by abolishing England. This is best exemplified by Charles Kennedy's speech at the 1997 Scottish Lib-Dem Conference, and his comment "with the advent of English regional assemblies we can start to call into question the existence of England itself".

The proposal to take away local powers and centralise local government into Regional Assemblies was only put to the vote in the North East of England. It was rightly rejected in the referendum with 78% voting against. The Regional Assembly was created anyway. So much for Democracy in England.

But should we be surprised?

The academic and former Labour and SDP MP David Marquand has written about the "wonderful growth of national feeling in Scotland and Wales." However at the same time he also said "Unless and until the English decide who they are, and rediscover the buried republican tradition of Milton and Blake, they will not be fit for self government." Apparently we aren't to be allowed to vote on our future until we can be trusted to vote as our masters want us to.

This is a colonialist attitude.

Representative Democracy is that you elect people from amongst yourselves to represent you and your interests.

Colonialism is when people outside your country send Representatives to govern and make decisions overriding your wishes - such as happened with the imposition of tuition fees on English students by Scottish MPs whose own people were not affected.

England is being abused as a colony, and it is this, and not a return to equality via an English Parliament, that will finally destroy the Union.

It is our duty to see the world as it is, and not how it was, or how we would wish it to be. The Devolution genie cannot now be put back in its bottle. We have to accept this fact and deal with it honestly.

This means one thing.

We have to separate what divides us from what unites us.

If this is done in good faith then I see no reason why a renewed Union cannot be forged. At least, if it is done early enough, and before attitudes have hardened too far on all sides.

But this will require the voice of England to be heard.

Who speaks for England?

Not our *British* MPs that is for sure - with, it appears, the honourable exception of Frank Field.

No, YOU speak for England. Talk to your families, your friends, your work colleagues. Write to local papers, radio and TV stations. Do not allow yourself to be discouraged, to be silenced. The future of England is in all our hands. Rise up, and Speak for England!

Transcript of Speech by David Wildgoose to the Liberal Democrat Fringe, 2008

The Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish have all been granted referenda allowing them to decide how they are to relate to the British State.

We believe the English also deserve that same right.

Our aim is an English Parliament.

We don't have a policy on where the Parliament should sit - because that is not for us to decide, it is for the people of England. The people who, whatever their original origin, identify with England and have made England their home and their future. The People of England. The English.

I used the phrase "identify with England" very deliberately, because that sense of identity is crucial. Nationalism is the expression of that identity, and it is important because the nation state is the largest grouping of human beings for which there is a definable "We". People are willing to pull together in the national interest in a way they are not prepared to do in the interests of any larger, more amorphous gatherings. Wartime is probably the most obvious and extreme example, but in these more enlightened times a better example would be the lesser sacrifices that are willingly made to ensure our poor, old and infirm are taken care of. The taxes we pay to educate our children, or to maintain our transport links are paid in the national interest because they are seen to benefit us all. And it goes without saying that when our taxes are handed over to improve roads, infrastructure and so on elsewhere, for example in ...Europe..., then there is widepread resentment. They are "other", they are not "us".

This is a powerful sentiment, this idea of "We", "Us" as opposed to "Them" and "Other". It is not for nothing that "Sinn Fein" means "We Ourselves". For there to be a nation, there has to be a national identity. The people of a nation have to see themselves as "We", sharing a common purpose and a common future, together. Living in the same State, even with the same democratic rights and freedoms as the other members of that state, is simply not enough.

Here in England though, we don't even have that.

In Scotland it is the Scottish Government that decides what is taught in Scottish schools. That decides that Scottish students should not pay tuition fees. That decides that road and bridge tolls should be scrapped.

Here in England there is no English government to decide what England wants. Instead we have a British Government, headed by MPs from outside England, whose constituents are largely unaffected by their decisions. A "British" government telling us what we must do, and even over-ruling us when we, in the form of a majority of MPs from English constituencies, disagree - such as happened with Tuition Fees and also with the imposition of Foundation Hospitals.

The other Home Nations have rejected the Union Parliament in Westminster in favour of self-rule in those matters that most concern ordinary voters. They are different, and they will do things differently.

The English aren't allowed to be different though. We are being told that we are "British", and any attempt to assert an English identity is frowned upon, and actively discouraged if not even suppressed. Schools in England - only - have been instructed to teach "Britishness". And during the last world cup the Deputy Chief Constable of Wales refused to allow the English flag to be displayed, instructing his officers to order their removal. And yet a Welsh flag on the back of a car in England is considered perfectly acceptable.

There is no reason why people should be forced to choose between Britishness and Englishness/Scottishness/Welshness/Whatever. But that is what is happening now. Polls all show a steady rise in separatist attitudes across the UK, most notably in England. A sizeable percentage of the people of England are in now favour of complete Independence for England - as you've just heard Professor Curtice on my right say, around a fifth. Or at the very least, for the ejection of Scotland from the UK. This has not gone unnoticed by Alec Salmond and the SNP who have been gleefully encouraging this viewpoint, aided and abetted by the (Labour) Welsh First Minister who has openly declared that his aim is to "make the English jealous". But what matters with these attitudes amongst the English is the trend. Because ten years ago, nobody would even have thought to ask if the English would want to leave the Union. Now it is a matter of debate.

Henry McLeish, the former First Minister of Scotland, and the man who saw the Scotland Act through Westminster, has just spoken to the Calman Commission on Scottish Devolution. He has said that the English need a voice, and that he doesn't think that our current assymmetrical devolution can be sustained. Furthermore, and I quote: "We must move towards some balanced framework, a quasi-federal framework, where it can make some sense rather than the English feeling aggrieved. At the end of the day, their grief and their anger spills over on to us."

In an interview with the Yorkshire Post in November 2006 Tony Blair acknowledged that if people in England were asked if they wanted a Parliament like Scotland's they would overwhelmingly agree.

So why haven't we been asked?

Why is this not Liberal Democrat policy?

The other devolved assemblies are all elected by Proportional Representation so as to guarantee that all opinions are properly represented. There is no reason to assume that an English Parliament would be any different. The devolved assemblies deal with the issues that most concern ordinary voters, perhaps as much as 70% of the business of Parliament. There is no reason to assume that an English Parliament would be any different.

I was a founder-member of the Liberal Democrats. If you'd asked me back in 1987 whether I would have been in favour of the matters that most affect the lives of people on a day-to-day basis being dealt with by MPs elected by Proportional Representation, thereby ensuring a strong Liberal Voice in those decisions, then of course I would have said Yes.

So the question I have to ask you is, Why are you not in favour of this?

A political party is a vehicle for like-minded people to influence the direction that society takes. There is an enormous amount to be gained for the first party prepared to stand up for the second-class citizens of the Union, the English. So I have to ask you all, Why is the party that has the most to gain from the creation of an English Parliament not actively campaigning for one?