England

Britain, as has often been observed (including, of course, in many articles in OurKingdom), is a country in the grips of a profound identity crisis. This is so much the case that it is even unclear, I would say, what and who we are referring to by the ‘Britain' that is in crisis: who are the British, and what is Britain?

For me, the crux of the issue is the splitting up of the old Anglo-British national identity that was at the heart of imperial Great Britain: the way in which the English have tended informally and instinctively to regard England and Great Britain as indivisible, and as interchangeable names for a single, unitary ‘nation'. Of course, the reality of imperial and pre-devolution Great Britain was never that simple, as Scotland, for instance, always retained many of the institutional trappings and the cultural identity of a distinct nation. But for the English, the English-national and British-state identities merged, making Great Britain (and later, the United Kingdom) to all intents and purposes the proxy-English nation-state.

Devolution changed all of that, once and for all. It was a definitive refutation of the ‘absolute' character of the Union, in both senses: not only the unitary character of the British polity but the ‘union' (merger, (con)fusion) within the English national identity between England and Great Britain. It was this cultural and psychological union that had sustained the political Union throughout its history, as it secured the loyalty and ‘ownership' of the greater part of the UK, which viewed Great Britain as ‘our nation' and the UK as "one of the great creations of this country", to quote Vince Cable's words at this week's Liberal Democrats' conference (The unconscious irony in Vince Cable's statement is that the UK is supposed to be ‘this country' not something that ‘this country' (England) has created!).

But as a result of devolution, it became possible, indeed necessary, to see the UK no longer as the seamless extension of English parliamentary democracy, nationhood and power. And, more fundamentally still, the English could begin to separate their English and British national identities at a subjective and psychological level, precisely because those identities had also been split apart at the objective, political level - with ‘great(er) Britishness' no longer being defined as a continuation and extension of Englishness but as a set of different national identities from which the English identity, too, was differentiated and distinct.

Gareth Young, campaigner for an English Parliament, examines the English Democrats' alliance with the white nationalist England First Party.

On Monday morning Nick Griffin, BNP leader, was interviewed on the BBC's FiveLive Breakfast Show. "Isn't your party full of neo-nazis?" asked Nicky Campbell. "No", said Griffin, "Britain's neo-nazis hate me, they say that I've sold out...They call me a liberal".

One such group that hates the superficially more moderate and 'liberal' Nick Griffin is the England First Party (EFP) who describe the BNP leader as 'fundamentally flawed and psychologically disfigured' and object to Griffin's 'watering down of nationalist principles

Introduction by Mark Perryman , editor of Breaking up Britain : Four Nations after a Union

Breaking up Britain is a book-length conversation between individuals, parties and social movements who with or without borders nevertheless rarely talk to one another. Each contributor presents their own national context for the collection's four themes; post-devolution national identity, models of civic nationalism, formations of exclusion and states of independence. Yet each account, whether based on an English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish perspective seeks to be universal too. In essence this is what a politics of the progressive nation would look like. A civic nationalist politics now exists in Scotland and Wales prepared to push the devolution settlement to it limits, its breaking point. In Northern Ireland Irish Republicanism is now the majority party representing the nationalist community. In England a growing body of opinion and ideas demands that England must find a part to play in this process too. Ten years ago Scots and Welsh voters went to the polls to elect a Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. Northern Irish votes have elected their Assembly too. Breaking Up Britain seeks to chart the past, present and future of this course . A direction towards states of independence in which we will surely witness a reformation of four nations after a Union that has run out of time.

Our Kingdom today features edited extracts from contributions to Breaking up Britain from Arthur Aughey, Mark Perryman and Charlotte Williams. Together with critical responses by Gerry Hassan and Paul Kingsnorth:

Breaking Up Britain is published by Lawrence & Wishart, available from lw books 

A FREE download of Mark Perryman's opening chapter ‘A Jigsaw State' in Breaking Up Britain is available here

Paul Kingsnorth responds to Mark Perryman's call in Breaking up Britain for a progressive English identity.

‘What is Englishness?' is a question I have always studiously avoided answering. I can't stand the kind of lists that are sometimes drawn up by people trying to define ‘our national character', which always seem to come down to either a list of things that an English person should feel an attachment to (real ale, the countryside, David Beckham) or a list of Brownite-style ‘values' (tolerance, democracy, love of queuing) to which all English people should apparently feel equally committed.

But having read Mark's chapter, ‘a Jigsaw state', I am left with the feeling that perhaps we need to start trying to answer the question after all. Whether or not Britain ‘breaks up' in the political sense - and I am less convinced that it will ‘inevitably' do so than Mark seems to be - it is clearly already breaking up in the cultural sense. Scotland and Wales today feel more Scottish and Welsh than they did ten years ago, and so it seems do their people. The English, meanwhile, still struggling out from under ‘greater England', as Mark correctly calls the modern British identity, are in something of a fix. Still confused about the difference between Britishness and Englishness, always reluctant in any case to explain and define themselves, changed by immigration and the resulting policy of ‘multiculturalism', the English seem confused.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): In today's Guardian, Ronan Bennett looks forward to The Devil's Whore, Channel 4's forthcoming drama by Our Friends in the North creator Peter Flannery. The series promises a new portrayal of the upheavals of the English Civil War, with characters including the Leveller leaders, Thomas Rainsborough, John Lilburne and Edward Sexby.

As Bennett notes, the radical narrative which sees the Levellers as key figures in an English revolution has become unfashionable among professional historians in recent years.

so-called "revisionist" historians have argued that the civil wars were "an accident", a temporary falling-out among the country's natural rulers. They say a misleading emphasis has been placed on the kind of ideological conflict represented in The Devil's Whore, and they will likely find in Flannery's preoccupations too many echoes of the late historians Christopher Hill and Brian Manning, whom they have criticised for a skewed reading of the period.

Of course, it is more comforting for political centrists to interpret the tumults of the period as an aberration. That way, England's "genius for compromise" is given the authoritative endorsement of tradition, and the role of organised and militant radicalism - from the Levellers to the suffragettes and early trade unionists - can be quietly put to one side. 

Gareth Young (Lewes, CEP): It’s taken seven months from petition end but finally the Prime Minister has gotten around to replying to my ‘Say England’ petition. Since it’s been a while I will remind you of the details of the petition:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop saying ‘Our country’ or ‘This country’ when he is talking in relation to devolved issues such as health, education and housing. If Mr Brown is talking about English matters then he should say ‘England’, even if it is politically inconvenient for him to do so.”

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Ordovicius points us to Red Pepper, where Plaid Cymru Assembly Member Leanne Wood argues that English left have failed to respond to the challenges of devolution.

Labour and many of the left parties have argued that Scottish and Welsh nationalism is regressive – a diversion that undermines British working class unity, which should be opposed. They refuse to acknowledge the inevitability of both countries becoming, at some point in the future, independent.

And when we leave the union, what will England then do? The loudest expressions of English national identity have until recently come from the far right. Often confusing Britishness and Englishness, theirs has been an imperialist, exclusive and racist nationalism, one that progressives rightly abhor.

But there are growing signs of progressive voices in England who are seriously addressing the issue of post-devolution English identity. 

David (Cambridge, Britology Watch): I’d like to draw a new 10 Downing Street e-petition to the attention of OurKingdom readers. This reads as follows:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to state whether he recognises that England is a nation”.

Readers will doubtless have their own ideas concerning the value and purpose of such petitions, especially as those demanding impossible concessions (such as immediate independence for England) abound! However, this one is meant to strike at the real heart of the issue: before we can even address the question of whether England can or should have its own parliament or even independence, we need to establish what, and indeed whether, England actually is.

Gareth Young (Lewes, CEP): The Scottish Claim of Right of 1988 was signed by all the Scottish Labour MPs, with the exception of Tam Dalyell.  In 1997, with the advent of the Labour Government of the UK, one third of that initial cabinet (8 out of 24) had signed that claim and were thus pivotal in influencing the Labour UK Government, which issued the white paper, the Scotland Devolution Bill 1998.

The Scottish Claim of Right acknowledged that the Scottish people have the sovereign right to decide the form of government best suited to their needs.  That 'form of government' must include independence as well as devolution, yet those cabinet members do not seem in any great hurry to hold a referendum on independence. When they signed the Claim quite possibly it never occurred to them that the Scottish people might decide to get rid of them altogether. They should be reminded of it at every opportunity.  Rather than display a willingness to hold a referendum on independence, apart from Wendy Alexander's short-lived "Bring it on!", the Unionists claim instead that because there is a Unionist majority in the Scottish Parliament, the people of Scotland have "voted for the Union". It is just possible that the SNP may gain a majority of the Scottish Westminister seats at the next General Election, and if so that will mean, according to Unionist logic, that the people of Scotland have voted for independence. I'm sure they will try wriggle out of that.

The Scottish Claim of Right was a principled recognition of the sovereign right of the people.  It is hypocritical of Gordon Brown, and others who signed that Claim of Right, to now deny that same sovereign right to the people of England, especially as recognition of the Scottish sovereign right has moved power away from Westminster in a way that has damaged English voters.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Over at Comment Is Free, Paul Kingsnorth reflects on his recent OurKingdom debate with Vron Ware, and re-states his left-wing case for English nationalism:

because the English, unlike the Scottish, the Welsh or the people of Northern Ireland, have no political focus for their concerns, they have nowhere to turn to express them. What can happen when such a focus does exist can be seen north of the border. The last decade has seen a transformation of Scotland, as a direct result of the creation of a Scottish parliament.

Of course, the Scottish Parliament is itself the product of decades of political mobilisation. Scottish nationalists had no political focus either until they created one. Perhaps the first step for progressive English nationalists is to figure out how to follow that example.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): It seems the Westminster/Holyrood faultine inside the Scottish Labour Party extends to the question of whether there should be a UK football team at the 2012 Olympics.

Gordon Brown held out that prospect during his visit to Beijing at the weekend:

'I think when people are looking at the Olympics in 2012 - Britain, home of football, where football was invented, which we gave to the world - I think people would be very surprised if there is an Olympic tournament in football and we are not part of it.'

Scottish Labour leadership candidate Cathy Jamieson has proposed an alternative plan:

"One option could be a home nations football tournament with the winners representing the UK at the Olympics."

Jamieson added: "Team GB should include a football team but not at the expense of Scotland's football team. It would be wrong to gamble with the identity of Scotland's team."

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Arthur Aughey recently described English nationalism as 'a mood not a movement.' The English Democrats represent one attempt to change that, but it is an attempt which English nationalist blogger Gareth Young suggests is deeply problematic.

Over at Little Man in a Toque, Gareth documents the party's attempts to build alliances with far-right fringe groups such as Third Way and England First.

"There’s a huge centre-ground of people who vote Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, and it’s those people that the English Democrats need to attract," Gareth writes.

This won’t be achieved from a position in the gutter. The EDP have never taken my advice on anything (which is why I reluctantly write this article), and perhaps they won’t now, but for what it’s worth here’s my advice: Stop meeting with racists, instead you should fight them; differentiate yourselves from ethnic nationalists in the minds of the public, help show that English nationalism is not soft white nationalism; move yourself out from the fringes, focus on the mainstream; stop poaching from other parties, recruit from your own ranks, and; for all our sakes start preaching the progressive nationalist values that I think you believe in, make those your main focus and people will find common ground with you.

It's good advice, but one can't help feeling that a party that needs such basic lessons in democratic politics is unlikely to be the vehicle that remedies England's democratic deficit.

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Voice matters. Indeed having a voice and using it is pretty vital when it comes to being heard by others - the first step to getting what you want. What kind of country is it then that isn't happy with its own voice?

The answer comes in the form of a recent SpinVox survey of several thousand British adults. It reveals that a stunning three quarters of Brits don't like the sound of their own voices! Expressed in this way, however, the findings can be misleading. Disliking one's own voice isn't a feeling shared across the nations of these isles. Whilst the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish are more than happy with their voices, it is the English who most want to change theirs.

Only one regional accent bucks this national trend. Can you guess which one? Clues are: Ant and Dec; "Haway man!"; the bloke who narrates Big Brother.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Former Europe Minister Denis McShane made a particularly interesting contribution to the post-mortem on Glasgow East in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday:

"After Glasgow," he wrote, "Labour has to do more than debate its leadership and see off excited calls by union leaders for challenges to Gordon Brown. Instead the party has to confront an existential problem of its own making: the question of England."

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): In the latest edition of Parliamentary Brief, Arthur Aughey looks at how Ken Clarke's Democracy Task Force has attempted to answer the English Question. Although sceptical on the details, he suggests that Clarke's approach reflects distinctive conservative principles that may point the way to a solution.

English nationalism is still a mood, not a movement, if only because the Conservative Party refuses to mobilise it as such. The taskforce’s objective is to prevent that mood becoming a movement, confirming the Unionism of the Conservative Party, something David Cameron has taken every opportunity to confirm since becoming leader.

If the report becomes party policy, which seems very likely, then the trajectory of Conservative thinking on the ‘English Question’ since 1997 is from constitutional maximalism to constitutional minimalism. It has gone from tentative support for an English parliament, through ‘English votes on English laws’ and Sir Malcolm Rifkind’s idea of an English grand committee,to this taskforce’s present recommendation of certified English bills being considered and voted on by English MPs only in committee and at the report stage.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): A report from the Commons Welsh Affairs Committee looked at one of the most sensitive aspects of devolution this week, the impact on NHS services that have traditionally straddled the English/Welsh border.

As a consequence of the tensions over diverging funding regimes in Wales and England, evidence suggests that there is a perception that the English NHS is subsidising the Welsh NHS. Evidence also suggests that Welsh patients perceive that they are being treated as second-class citizens within the National Health Service. Both suggestions should be addressed immediately by the Department of Health, the Welsh ssembly Government and health service providers to ensure that patients receiving treatment on both sides of the Welsh-English border are treated fairly and equally, and that they believe this to be the case.

In evidence to the Committee, First Minister Rhodri Morgan explained why North Wales in particular is still heavily reliant on specialist services based in England:

The population of North Wales is one thirteenth of the population of the North-West of England, therefore the relationship with even the small/medium centres, like Chester, but certainly with Merseyside and Greater Manchester in the provision of health services is totally different from the relationship between South Wales, which as two million people, and the greater Bristol areas, which would also have about two million people.

David (Cambridge, Britology Watch): There has been much discussion recently – including on Britology Watch – about whether English nationalism can be reconciled with progressive politics; and whether progressives need to espouse the nationalist cause, associate it with left-of-centre values, and thereby prevent it from falling into the hands of the far right.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): As Gareth Young reports below Ken Clarke's Democracy Task Force has come up with a new answer to the West Lothian Question

The current devolution settlement contains long-term risks to the Union. The Democracy Task Force recommends to David Cameron a modified version of ‘English Votes for English Laws’, incorporating English-only Committee and Report stages but a vote of all MPs at Second and Third Reading. We believe that this proposal can remove the main source of English grievance at the current devolution settlement without some of the risks to political stability that critics have seen in proposals for a completely English procedure. (Answering the West Lothian Question)

Gareth is none too happy with this "crude technical" solution, but how have others reacted?

Gareth Young (Lewes, CEP): Ken Clarke's plans to solve the West Lothian Question, have been greeted with predictable disdain by most political commentators. Typical was Iain Dale who declared that "England deserved better":

From what I have seen I cannot in any way defend this so-called solution. It is not even a half way house. Either you believe that England should have devolved government or you don't. If you do, then you either believe in English votes on English measures or you believe in some form of English Parliament.

But Iain Dale is wrong. Not that England deserves better, of course she does, but because neither Clarke's solution NOR English Votes on English measures are for people who believe that England should have "devolved government" (or "English government" if you prefer). Instead both are crude technical devices that attempt to right the democratic deficit brought about the very absence of English government. Clarke's contrivance is contrived to such a ludicrous degree precisely to avoid even the pretence of an English parliament that EVoEM seems to offer, and the consequent threat that such a democratic English body would pose to the Union when Scots object to it on the grounds of their own irrelevance. Indeed, as Clarke went to pains to point out on the Today Programme, his solution "means that the government retains control of the agenda; it retains control of the money." Scottish MPs would vote on the second reading of an English bill - "which is the vote on principle on the bill" - thereby ensuring the legitimacy of any cabinet government that contained Scottish ministers. But as Malcom Rifkind points out Clarke's mechanism would not have prevented the disgraceful actions of Scottish MPs during the Foundation Hospital and Top-up Fee legislation, even if last week's English Planning Bill amendment, scuppered by Brown's non-English MPs, could have been carried by English rebels. Under Clarke's scheme the English will be denied the affirmative expression of national identity afforded to the Scots; instead English MPs will speak for England only negatively - by wrecking UK Government legislation through the of tabeling ludicrous amendments, or the deleting of English clauses at committee stage. But fear not, for as Clarke points out the UK government retains control, and:

"at the final stage all the UK members would vote so if the English have transformed it to a way that is unacceptable to the Government the government could ask its majority to veto and abort the measure."

Or in other words if the English have transformed the bill to a manner that is acceptable to the English, the government could abort the legislation. Malcolm Rifkind does offer a slightly more sensible alternative to Clarke's madness:

There could be a requirement that at Second Reading and at Report stage, for a vote to be carried on amendments to an England-only Bill, the vote, to be declared carried, would need a majority both of the House as a whole and of MPs representing English constituencies.

Though one has to ask Rifkind why, if the English can veto the UK Government, should we bother letting the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish vote at all; why not just let the English draft and vote on their own legislation instead of muddling up UK Government and non-English MPs in the process? The simple answer to that question is "The Barnett Formula", a funding mechanism that provides Scottish MPs with the constitutional right to vote on English legislation by dint of the fact that English domestic legislation determines the block grant due to Scots as an inflated percentage of what is available to the English. Naturally Ken Clarke does not even bother to address the Barnett Formula.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon):The gradual emergence of a distinct English nationalism in the wake of devolution has proven problematic for all the main Westminster parties, but perhaps none more so than the Labour Party. It was interesting therefore that last weekend's Compass Conference featured a seminar entitled An England for All: Can a progressive patriotism ever be inclusive?

It proved to be a lively and well-attended session. In the chair was Mark Perryman, editor of the new anthology Imagined Nation: England after Britain, reviewed below by Arthur Aughey.

"This debate is not being driven by the English," Perryman lamented. "We now live de facto in a disunited kingdom."

OK's Anthony Barnett suggested that the debate has moved beyond technical issues like the West Lothian Question, arguing that "the English as a people must have the opportunity of being offered their own Parliament.