This is a response to Alexandra Runswick's post below about the Ministry of Justice committee meeting on the English question.
Michael Knowles (Cheshire, Campaign for an English Parliament): I certainly found the Unlock Democracy account of the Justice committee proceedings very helpful in various ways. Many elements in it are very perceptive. However, she did make me smile a lot - smile quite cynically, that is. Her 'take', to use the word, is as Establishment as the Establishment figures she directs our attention to. I would say a most urbane account, very acceptable to the Establishment. Very very safe. It really is the sort of stuff they can take for a thousand years. Like water off a duck's back. Possibly it was the manner in which the Unlock Democracy people mixed so happily and easily in the corridor with the Establishment firgures in the half hour we were all kept waiting - a division bell - that told you most about them.
I particularly enjoyed Alexandra's account - critique? - of my input and performance and of the CEP contribution, and then that of Unlock Democracy, to which she belongs. A masterpiece of objectivity, indeed of careful selectivity. Her own organisation's contribution, she says, was "balanced." Peter Facey, the Director of Unlock Democracy - she makes a point of slipping in the title - skillfully walked the tightrope between the "sense of alienation and unfairness" forcefully - i.e. unacceptable and very unparliamentary and plebbish anger - expressed by myself (ah, such delicious snobbery) and the prevailing parliamentary attitude on the other that nothing needs to be done. Yes, there was her Director saving the day, making careful "differentiations", adding a "definition to the English Question" and discussing how local authorities can "draw down powers' themselves rather than be directed by central government." I must say, though I did not quite sense it at the time, I now realise how fortunate I was to have been there to have experienced such a bestowal of tablets of wisdom from on high.
And how ashamed of my contribution I now realise I have to be. Alexandra has done me such a favour. There was the Committee of MPs "trying to engage thoughtfully with the issues of an English Parliament" (which most definitely is not, the UD Director was keen to make clear to them, his organisation's policy. Good Lord, no!) "and how an English Parliament might work in practice" (I was at this meeting, wasn't I? I didn't sleep through it, did I? It was the same one I attended, wasn't it?). But, comments Alexandra, "the discussion wasn't particularly productive." Or in the language of the plebs, the CEP bloke wasn't intellectually or verbally up to it. On the one side, the side Unlock Democracy is at ease with, that of the Committee MPs, there is thoughtfulness and a desire to engage. On the other, well, should I say: the mob, the peasant, the luddite, the great unwashed? Or putting it another way, next time will you please watch your political and parliamentary p's and q's and don't fart in public.
But the best in her account was yet to come. Just a single sentence, an utter gem of snootiness. Snobbery at its finest. The "discussion wasn't particuarly productive because Commitees expect campaign groups to have detailed worked-through policy solutions that it is not always possible to supply." Surely a put-down second to none. Bravo, Alexandra Runswick! The street campaigners, poor things, they just don't think it through; and we mustn't expect them too. Policy solutions from the plebs? Oh my! What an awful thought! By the way, Alexandra, I wonder where they taught you that. But I can help you out. What I would recommend is a short reading list which will address and relieve your deep humanitarian angst for the welfare of the masses and the preservation of the standards of the state: First, my submission to the Justice Committee. Just a mere 10 A4 pages of detailed discussion, sweetly paragraphed, simply to digest. Then two CEP booklets. 'Devolution for England. A Critique of the Conservative Party Policy of English Votes on English Matters' and 'The English Question'. Both 26 pages. All available anytime on request.
