A RESPONSE TO DAVID BLUNKETT’S LECTURE
“A NEW ENGLAND: AN ENGLISH IDENTITY WITHIN BRITAIN”
Michael Knowles.
Chairman: Campaign for an English Parliament
Introduction.
On March 14th 2005 David Blunkett delivered the lecture ‘A New England: an English Identity within Britain’ before the Institute of Public Policy Research. It is the lecture of a senior Cabinet minister delivered with the purpose of challenging British Establishment thinking in an area of politics and culture which that Establishment has tried to render taboo for the past one hundred years. I consider the lecture to be historic and seminal in its importance. The subject of England has been suppressed by the British Establishment in order to promote their notion of Britishness and their version of the Union. David Blunkett is purposely challenging this ingrained and highly political attitude with a declaration that there is a distinct English identity, that there are historic and legitimate grounds for English patriotism and that there is a growing sense and awareness of Englishness which not only does not threaten the existence of the Union but which will in fact actually strengthen and re-invigorate it. He firmly asserts that by reason of its history, culture, traditions, character, landscape and seascape England and Englishness are something to be positively proud about. He asserts the right of the people of England to have their distinct and particular English national identity acknowledged within both the United Kingdom and the European Union as those of Scotland and Wales have been acknowledged in the 1998 Devolution legislation. The political and cultural significance of all this is immense.
Contents of this Paper
1. Summary of what Blunkett says in his Lecture.
2. Account of the Challenge Blunkett makes in
his lecture to the accepted status quo thinking
of the British Establishment about England and
Englishness.
3. Explanation of why Blunkett has declared
Support for English Identity and Englishness.
And Why Now.
4. Explanation of the Rise and Emergence of
English Patriotism and Sense of a distinct
English National Identity.
5. Account and Critique of Blunkett’s Political
Response to this new Reality of English
National Awareness and Patriotism.
The lecture in summary:
1.
Belonging to a community is important to people in order to have confidence, self-respect and hope. It confers a much-needed sense of identity. In an age of rapid migration and increased international interdependence, with new forms of political alliance such as the European Union, in a world of flux and change, diversity, openness and pluralism, a shared sense of national identity and community becomes significant. It is critical therefore that we explore what this means for the English and ask if a renewed sense of Englishness is an important component of Britishness.
2.
It is most important that politicians talk about national identity because the sense people have of their national identity is strong and therefore it matters. Furthermore, a feeling of national identity and patriotism can be a progressive and generous force. People are more likely to share things with others where they have a sense of shared identity. For that reason representative democracy first emerged in countries with strong national cultures like Britain. The social democratic left should acknowledge and honour national sentiment and it should address the desire of people to belong to a country with traditions and values. Only by developing a shared sense of national identity can we address the many complex challenges that face us.
3.
Of all Britain’s national identities, English identity is the most elusive. Since the 1707 Act of Union it has been diluted by and confused with Britishness, but we are now witnessing a growing English self-consciousness, as we have seen at the Euro 2004 Football Championship and the Rugby World Cup and in the celebration of St. George’s Day. New challenges such as the form devolution has taken, European integration and increased internal migration are bringing this about.
4.
The necessity now is both to welcome this renewed sense of English identity and to ensure it is an open and pluralistic identity. It must not be exclusive ie defined in terms of opposition to immigration, Europe and foreigners. It must be a progressive notion, both championing Englishness and being a true account of Englishness as expressed in our distinctive history, culture and civic values. England’s national story is much more radical and passionate than it is conservative, it embodies a tradition that is restless and pioneering. English nationalism in contrast with other European nationalisms has long been inclusive in its sense of English identity, outward-looking not inward, emphasising common civic citizenship, adventurous and internationalist. We are an island people who have gone out into the world to learn and explore.
5.
We English have an affinity with our towns and counties which are not based on regions or provinces created as a political or administrative unit and which have never been mobilised as a rallying cry for separation. Instead, they are the building blocks of our patriotic sentiment. Coming from Yorkshire and being English is a statement about our localism and our Englishness.
6.
Englishness for the author means: a deep attachment to English landscapes, the sea; coastlines; urban landscapes: we are an urban people who have crafted; ingenious and varied cityscapes; the English poetical tradition: the English are a poetic people; English music: folk and choral music and traditional English carols; The English democratic tradition: we crafted the Common Law and a gradualist democratic tradition stretching back to the Magna Carta; English radicalism: the author’s list is very far-reaching; and includes English humour: understatement, satire, irony, self-deprecating wit which revels in the absurd and nonsensical
7.
Englishness recognises and gains from diversity and is driven by strong values which unite people of different backgrounds. We should aim for integration with diversity, neither denying English culture or history nor asking people to assimilate to a mono-culture which does not exist and never has done. We do plural identities confidently, proud of one’s local identity like being a Sheffield man or woman and proud of being English, with both within an overarching British identity. A more assured sense of English identity is good for England and for the Union.
8.
So how should Englishness be expressed in political terms? It is widely accepted that national identities are expressed and entrenched through institutions. But there is no appetite whatsoever for an English Parliament while the failure of the ‘Yes’ vote in the North East referendum confirmed the need to express our sense of English identity and shared values at the local rather than the regional level. We English have strong attachments to locality, and historically we have held strong local identities as central to our English character. We have a strong tradition of local democracy. It is in the locality that citizenship is played out and where the great civic tradition is brought to life, be it in the great Victorian city-states, parish council and the counties. Commitment to locality is the expression of English civic identity. English identity is a community identity. Its revival must be bottom-up in such forms as neighbourhood associations, community self-government, city government with city leaders driving economic renewal in partnership with all local educational, transport and commercial organisations. promoting urban renaissance and cultural renewal.
9.
We can build a new sense of English identity as part of a United Kingdom and a wider European Union, an Englishness that can be experienced, asserted and celebrated in the fabric of our existence as a community, in our habits, casts of mind and the culture that we daily create and re-create., to be found in our traditions of fairness and civic duty and our spirit of imagination and invention.
(Lecture concludes).
My Response to the Lecture.
The Challenge Blunkett makes to the Status Quo.
No one should make any mistake about the purpose of this lecture. It is not some self-entertaining excursion on Blunkett’s part into academia or mere theory. It is hard practical politics, nothing less. Neither is he pussy-footing around. He is tackling established attitudes head-on. He has taken a long hard look at modern England, at post-1998 England. England is his country. He places it of course where it is, within the United Kingdom but a United Kingdom that has been fundamentally changed by the Devolution legislation which the government of which he is a Cabinet member introduced in 1998 and which he himself voted for. That legislation expressly gave constitutional recognition to Scotland and Wales as distinct nations within the United Kingdom but did not do the same for England. Instead, it left England in the situation it together with Scotland and Wales were in from 1707 by reason of the Act of Union, namely without any constitutional recognition, without any constitutional existence. The 1998 Devolution legislation not only did not apply in any way to England but it also left England unrecognised.
Blunkett invites us to look at England within the context of our modern world of immense flux, change and diversity, subject to pressures of all sorts which impact sharply upon both the individual and the community. Our world is not a settled world. It is a troubled disrupted world. For that reason he believes a strong sense of national belonging and identity collectively and individually is necessary for stability and well-being.
He then makes the very significant statement, one that amounts to a radical break with Establishment doctrine, that as far as the people of England are concerned that national identity is their English identity and that it is that English identity which has provided and will continue to provide the people of England with the stability that is necessary in this changing and restless world. Blunkett is fully aware, of course he is, that technically the three peoples of England, Scotland and Wales have British citizenship, but what he is asserting quite firmly is that what has historical, cultural and emotional primacy for people is the sense of being English or Welsh or Scottish. That is what matters to them. That is how they identify themselves.
However, he firmly maintains that that does not in any way create a problem for our joint existence as British citizens. He takes the matter even further. He addresses the high dogma of multiculturalism and he suggests a root and branch rethink of it. He puts it in its place as subordinate to shared national identity. He emphatically states that a sense of shared national identity, of belonging to the English nation with its distinct culture and traditions, is essential for the collective well-being of all the people of England irrespective of differences in ethnic origins, religions and politics. He makes the profoundly important statement that people are more likely to share things where they feel a sense of shared identity, and he asserts that only a shared sense of national identity enables people to meet the challenges that face them in this unsettled world.
He has become acutely aware of a fast-burgeoning Englishness. He welcomes it without misgivings. He asserts that it is no threat to the British state or to community relations. He celebrates England’s history and culture as rich, radical, passionate, diverse, inclusive and outward-looking and he invites every person in England, whatever their ethnicity, to make that history and culture their own.
He makes the assertion that England’s story is a story of integration with diversity and he invites all the people of England to make that story their story. What he is saying is that no matter what ethnicity or religion or politics any person in England might have, they must integrate themselves with their fellow Englishmen and women, above all by having that all-important understanding or feeling of one shared national identity, of being English. Englishness, Blunkett is saying, belongs equally to everyone in England and not just those people in England who by reason of their ethnicity and inherited culture naturally assume their national identity is English.
It is possible that Blunkett in this lecture is making no statement as important as this one. For him English identity is and always has been inclusive and comprehensive. However, for many people this is indeed difficult for a number of reasons. They have encountered racism. They naturally find a deep personal and social identification with a religion and/or a culture which has in effect established itself in England only in the last thirty or forty years. They have been encouraged by powerful and persuasive sections of the British political establishment, especially that of the liberal left, and by some of their own leaders, to insist on their cultural differences at the expense of integration. Multiculturalism in the UK, particularly in England, which of course exists naturally in all modern societies, has been exaggerated and exploited to maintain the segregation of communities. This statement of Blunkett’s has immense social and political implications. He is saying that it is in the interests of everyone in England individually and collectively that, no matter what cultural and religious differences there might be, they should consider themselves English men and women. And he gives two profound reasons for this. One, that a sense of common identity is a necessary prerequisite of sharing, and it is on sharing that social harmony depends. Second, that in an age of flux, change and upheaval, such a sense of a common identity is also necessary if we are to meet the many complex challenges that face us.
The whole point of his lecture will have been missed if it is not perceived that it is the sense of an English identity for the people of England rather than a British identity that Blunkett is speaking about. That this is the case can easily be overlooked because for the past three hundred years, ever since the Act of Union 1707, and particularly in the past two hundred years since the Victorian glorification of empire as British and the impact of two world wars the people of England have been heavily conditioned by the UK Establishment to regard themselves as British rather than English. English identity and Englishness have been politically and culturally suppressed. Shots of the English World Cup triumph in 1966 show the crowds at Wembley waving the Union Jack, not the English flag. This effort on the part of the UK establishment persists, notably within the BBC which makes reference to England as infrequent as it possibly can and, while happily describing any famous person from Scotland and Wales as a Scot or a Welshman/woman, usually describes an English celebrity as British.
Likewise, the present government, which made devolution for Scotland and Wales its first major act of policy upon assuming office in 1997, treated England very differently. While giving constitutional recognition to Scotland and Wales as distinct nations, it not only gave no constitutional recognition to England but instead attempted to terminate it as an entity by partitioning it into regions with separate assemblies. Blunkett, however, confronts and defies this political and cultural Establishment policy. I know of no other English politician who has openly and forthrightly made known his love and appreciation of England and English culture as he has in this lecture. It is the sort of thing Welsh and Scottish politicians do every day of the week and get applauded for it. They are allowed to. But not the English. Scottish and Welsh nationalisms are ok. English nationalism isn’t. It’s regarded as something to be ashamed of, apologised for, not just by the Metropolitan left-of-centre politicos and the Guardian set but right across the left and liberal local government strata. They show no hesitation in putting love of England in their racist box. But this is precisely where David Blunkett breaks the mould. He is standing up and defying them. He actually calls upon us English to look first to our English identity as the precondition of social harmony and our anchor and rock in a world of change and challenges. He is saying the unspeakable.
What has caused Blunkett to Rebel like this and to come out in support of an
English Identity and Englishness? And Why Now?
He tells us himself: “Perhaps the best evidence of a rising English consciousness can be seen at sporting venues –by the thousands who can now be seen waving the flag of St George at football and rugby matches. As I found when I was at Lisbon for Euro 2004 last June, there was nothing jingoistic or threatening about those who gathered in the sunshine of the main square and signed a big flag laid across the ground and helped with the ‘fans’ embassy’….Similar outburst of patriotic feeling greeted the English team’s success in the Rugby Union world Championship”.
Now, a politician even of his stature couldn’t speak so positively about England and Englishness like he has unless and until the people of England themselves had. He might want to and he might know perfectly well he has every good reason to and know he should do, but it could be much too big a risk to take. In a democracy politicians daren’t get too far ahead of the pack, certainly not where the pack is the electorate. However, a mere four years after the Scots got their own parliament and the Welsh their own assembly, with a Scottish-born and educated Prime Minister expressly selling Scottish devolution with the statement ‘Scotland is a proud historic nation’ there was the Football World Cup and the Manchester Commonwealth Games. And this island witnessed something it hadn’t witnessed for centuries. The people of England acclaimed their English identity. They shouted it out loud and clear in every street and from every building, on cars and vans and in gardens, on t-shirts and people’s hair and faces, such a huge spontaneous overwhelming demonstration of pride in their own country, such a huge and staggering display of the English flag, as simply was never before known and conceivable in our lifetime. At the Manchester Commonwealth Games when England fielded her own team of athletes, the stadium resounded again and again to the singing of Land of Hope and Glory and the stands were a forest of the English flag.
At the 1966 World Cup Final at Wembley the flag on show was the Union Jack. In 2002 the Union flag was nowhere to be seen. The people of England had re-found their national identity, their national pride. The English flag was everywhere. The people of England had found their voice, silenced for three hundred years. We live at a marvellous moment; and the politicians of all parties would do well to open their eyes and pin back their ears. That is what Blunkett has done. He is very much a politician of the people. He is a working class man He gets his political inspiration and strength from the common people. He has his feet on the ground, his ear tuned to what the people he represents actually feel and want.
Yet he is a Labour man and it is as a Labour man, be it in the politics of Sheffield Council or as an MP in Parliament, that he had been subjected to very subtle indoctrination processes which has been operating since the end of the First World War within the Labour and Trade Union Movement. It is one that has no roots in its pre-twentieth century history, one that would be totally unrecognisable to the toiling and labouring English working class of the Industrial Revolution, the men and women of Peterloo and Tolpuddle, to the London Corresponding Societies, the Chartists, the Match Girls of London and millions more English men and women in the mills, the factories and the fields, on the docks and down the mines. It is a process of indoctrination which has divorced those English men and women who have been active in the Labour Movement from their natural English roots by filling their minds from the first moment of their political birth with the idea that England their country represents oppression, be it international in the form of its Empire or national in the form of its ruling class, and that English patriotism is its worst expression. It is a process that has eroded their attachment to England which is their country. Nothing has so betrayed centuries of the endeavours and the struggle of the English working class as this wholesale repudiation by a self-imposed ideological elite of the people’s love of and pride in their country and its achievements.
What possibly began to make Blunkett question this ideology in the first place was his experience of the attitudes and practices of immigrant communities in the Yorkshire industrial areas. He and other Yorkshire working class MPs found themselves witnesses to a very strange scene. The mantra and the dogma of standard Labour Party multiculturalism was condemning working class immigrant girls and women to arranged marriages, to confinement to home, kitchen and child-bearing, to a very restricted, indeed oppressive, social life and to an inferior education, and in some cases to no education at all, even to ignorance of the English language itself and all its vast resources. Yet these girls and these women were English girls and women because England was their home and their future. The mantra and the dogma of standard Labour Party multiculturalism was enabling reactionary forces to keep these communities, both men and women, segregated from their fellow English men and women living and working all around them. The mantra and the dogma of standard Labour Party multiculturalism were denying whole communities participation in the rich political and cultural heritage of the country which is their country. The mantra and dogma of standard Labour Party multiculturalism had become an excuse for male domination of women.
Equally bad is what that mantra and dogma have done to the traditional or native working class of England. Multiculturalism has always been a fact of life for all industrial societies, in England as elsewhere. At the same time, over many centuries this country has also created what is universally acknowledged to be a splendid culture. As Blunkett says with true English understatement : ‘there is much we can celebrate about Englishness’. And the English working class hasn’t just contributed to the general culture of the country but has also created its own distinctly unique and universally valued part of it. Blunkett would have been brought up in that culture and have a gut feeling of appreciation of it and being at home within it. The miners, the steel workers, the machinists, the farm labourers, the textile workers of Yorkshire, of the whole of England, industry upon industry, trade upon trade, all had their own ways, their own politics, their own unions, their clubs, their pastimes, their sports and with it all an exceedingly rich tapestry of traditions and values. Not to forget their history of struggle, at times epic in scale, effort and suffering, over two hundred years, for decent housing, a good education for their children, a proper working wage, safe and healthy working conditions, fair and equitable employment rights and the right to vote. It is a history wonderfully recorded by E. P. Thompson in his masterpiece ‘The Making of the English Working Class’ ’ and movingly summed up in the Instruction given by the London Corresponding Society to its travelling delegates in 1796 as quoted by Thompson ‘You are wrestling with the Enemies of the human Race, not for yourself merely, for you may not see the full Day of Liberty, but for the child hanging at the Breast’.
Immigration is almost always into working class areas first and foremost for the most obvious economic reasons, so it is the native working class of any country, and less so the middle classes, who have to make the adjustments, to do the sharing and the living together be it in schools or housing or work. But here in England their situation has been made much worse than elsewhere by the contempt the cultural elite have held them in and by the fact that their culture, and English culture in general, has been represented by the ideology of the exaggerated multiculturalism of the past forty years as a threat to the new cultures coming in and as racist and exclusive when it is anything but. The misrepresentation has been unfair but it has been effective.
The traditional English working class has been made to feel that they do not belong in the very land they created, that their lifestyle is wrong, that their country is not their own. They feel marginalized and neglected and despised. The resentment is deep, it is a hidden river of anger. Multiculturalism has been used against England when it should have promoted everything that is best is English culture and made it available to all the people who have come in, who are now English people.
It has become taboo in Labour circles to criticise such repressive chauvinist practices as making girls and women cover themselves completely, leaving only the eyes showing, under the excuse of it being a cultural practice. Ethnicity and culture have been allowed to justify cruel and discriminatory practices. Women like men live but once and in the short time available to them they should have the same freedom as men to decide what they wear, whom they should marry, what jobs they would do, to obtain the education they are entitled to as human beings.. Culture should not be an excuse for oppression and discrimination. Slavery was a massive culture once. It still is in some parts of the world. Denying women the right to vote was a culture once. It still is in some parts of the world, many of which are the same countries where men control what women wear and do and how they live. It is bordering on the unbelievable that in Britain, the country which produced the Suffragettes and has solid progressive legislation against female discrimination, the Labour Movement uses the mantra of ‘culture’ to justify male suppression of women’s freedom.
It was the culture of the Afrikaners that black people should have far fewer rights, in fact hardly any rights at all, which roused the most of the rest of the world to ostracise them and ban them from international sports and contacts. Yet there are many countries today where women cannot vote, not only cannot wear what they like but can only show their faces, cannot mix with men other than family and husbands, cannot take part in games with men, cannot participate in the Olympics, sometimes cannot participate in games in public at all, cannot go swimming, cannot stroll in the sunshine in the open streets and go into cafes, such simple basic freedoms, like men can. These countries are operating an apartheid system against as many as one half of their populations as evil as was operated in South Africa. Yet they are allowed to get away with it in the name of their culture. The Olympic Movement, which rightly banned South Africa from participation in the Games, turns a total blind eyes to wholesale discrimination against women and lets the countries that practise it field men-only teams. In Britain the Labour Movement, let alone the Labour Government, averts their eyes from the injustice. The Match Girls, the Suffragettes, the women shot dead at Peterloo, the many generations of nameless women who struggled for their rights in harsh and dreadful circumstances, must be turning in their graves. We have let them down. We dishonour their memory.
I doubt it was in such terms but I believe that it was along these lines, if only inchoately and imperfectly that Blunkett and other colleagues recognised this for the perversion and the hypocrisy that it was and they took action against it. They tackled the issues of arranged marriages and they supported refuge houses for women fleeing this oppression. As Home Secretary he introduced citizenship courses and citizenship rituals. He and his colleagues broke the mould. They challenged the Labour mindset. They broke free of the straitjacket of an oppressive and exaggerated multiculturalism.
His Lisbon experience, a kind of Road-to-Damascus experience, took him one crucial stage further. He discovered something I suspect he once knew but had been re-educated to forget, that the English working class actually love their country and that their patriotism doesn’t turn them into the racist thuggish stereotypes of standard political and cultural indoctrination. It hit Blunkett square between the eyes that love of one’s country is a most natural and laudable expression of identity, community and roots, as natural and laudable in England as anywhere else, and in England as anywhere else, it can be, and should be, and actually is, inclusive, tolerant, progressive, forward-looking and open.
But why has this emergence of English patriotism and awareness of English
national identity happened now?
As I have said., it was in the summer of 2004 in Lisbon that he had his road-of-Damascus experience about Englishness and English patriotism However, I wish to suggest that it was an event which occurred six years earlier, in 1998, that made that experience possible, namely the legislation which introduced Scottish and Welsh devolution, legislation which he voted for,
Mr Blair wrote in his Preface to the Scottish Bill White Paper that Scotland ‘a proud historic nation’ should have a devolved parliament. Devolution 1998 was founded on nationhood. It was on the grounds that they were distinct nations within the UK that Scotland and Wales got devolution. Blunkett like every other member of his party watched when Cabinet members of his government danced jigs with Scots Nats and congratulated each other as fellow Scots when the referendum vote came through. Arm in arm they all stood together on platforms, Labour ministers with members of the SNP which till then they had always derided as Tartan Tories. Blood is thicker than water. As distinct nations within the Union Scotland and Wales got devolution. Blunkett’s own country got absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, Blunkett voted for it.
I have asked why was it that it is only in very recent years that there has been the amazing unprecedented outpouring of English patriotism such as we have all witnessed, which Mr Blunkett experienced, obviously to his great astonishment, in Lisbon last year. I entertain no doubts about what the answer to that question is. It is the nature of Devolution 1998. The 1998 devolution settlement will be what the Blair government will be remembered for when all else it has done has faded from memory. It is constitutionally the most important event in the history of the three nations of this island since the Act of Union of 1707.
The establishment of a parliament for Scotland and an assembly for Wales was the acknowledgement by the UK government that Scotland and Wales are constitutionally and politically distinct nations, separate legal identities, within the United Kingdom. “Scotland is a proud historic nation” declared Mr Blair in his Preface to the Scotland Devolution Bill White Paper. “The Assembly will be the forum for the nation, able to debate all matters of concern in Wales” states the Welsh legislation (.1.15).
England was left out of the 1998 Settlement altogether. It wasn’t given an iota of devolution. It is of course a distinct nation within the United Kingdom just like Scotland and Wales; indeed it is oldest unified nation in Europe, but as from 1707 it has had no political or constitutional existence or recognition. Neither did Scotland and Wales. But as from 1998, whereas politically and constitutionally the UK, Scotland and Wales exist, England doesn’t. In the island of Britain today there are three governments representing three constitutional and political bodies. There is the Scottish Parliament, there is the Welsh Assembly, there is the United Kingdom Parliament. They represent Scotland, Wales and the United Kingdom Constitutionally and politically just those three exist. Constitutionally and politically England does not exist. That situation, and its implications, constitutes the English Question.
Then there is the West Lothian Question which makes England’s situation even more constitutionally and politically unfair, unjust and unacceptable. The way in which devolution in 1998 was devised has enabled Scottish MPs to initiate legislation and to vote on legislation which affects England only (eg. foundation hospitals, university top-up fees), without reciprocation for English MPs in relation to Scotland. Furthermore in all such matters Scottish MPs are not accountable to their Scottish constituents either for the legislation they initiate or for how they vote. Dr John Reid when he was Secretary of State for Health did not have to answer to his constituents for whatever measures he introduced because his writ ran in England only. Beside which, the Scottish Parliament, having responsibility for health in Scotland, had repudiated foundation hospitals, so there was the constitutional absurdity that Dr. Reid was imposing something on England which his own Hamilton constituents through their MSPs had themselves rejected. Likewise Mr Darling as Secretary of State for Transport has jurisdiction for England only. Whatever he decides on the expansion of airports or building new motorways or satellite surveillance of cars will apply to England only, not to Scotland and to his own Edinburgh constituents. Constitutionally it is nothing less than grotesque. This democratic deficit imposed upon England is structural.
Since 1998 2400 acres of undeveloped Green Belt land in England have been built on each year, more than 15 square miles, more than a city the size of Lincoln. The Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, is engaged in a programme to demolish thousands upon thousands of solid Victorian terraced houses in the North. He is likewise engaged in enforcing the building of some 3 million more homes in the East and the South East of England at enormous cost to the environment and the countryside. Yet England unlike Scotland and Wales has no institution of its own whatsoever in which such important matters of concern, of huge significance for the health and the environment of the English nation, can be debated, and the power of the UK Government Executive and its development agencies in the form of the unelected regional assemblies can be held to account and checked. Thanks to the Scottish Parliament Scotland’s elderly have free residential care, its students do not pay tuition fees and its pensioners and disabled have free unlimited bus travel with no time restrictions. The Welsh Assembly has reduced prescription charges and will abolish them by 2007. In addition, because of the Barnett formula each Scottish and Welsh person enjoys £1300 more UK government expenditure on such vital services as health, education, social services and housing as a person in England. The Wilson government was persuaded to introduce the Barnett Formula in the 1960s by the argument, strongly pressed by Glasgow’s Labour MPs, that it would keep the SNP, and Scottish nationalism in general, at bay and defeat any push for Scottish independence. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. The Scots certainly benefited from it. And it has been the people of England who have paid for it. Scotland runs a tax revenue deficit. England subsidises Scotland to the tune of £7.7.billion a year.
However, neither that subsidy nor the Barnet Formula was the tipping point that brought about the sea change in English national awareness and the recent amazing emergence of English patriotism that we are witnessing today or it would have happened much earlier. What tipped the scales was Devolution 1998. Let me reiterate this one crucial aspect of Devolution 1998. It left out England altogether. Politically and constitutionally it resurrected Scotland and Wales from the vault of history, conferring on both, but above all on Scotland, distinct political benefits and financial benefits even in excess of those given them by the Barnett Formula. England not only got nothing, but it still continued not to exist politically and constitutionally. Politically and constitutionally England is nothing else than that part of the United Kingdom which is not Scotland and Wales. England remains in the realm of the political undead.
The very existence of a Scottish Parliament and a separate Welsh Assembly bellowed separation from England at the people of England. The two institutions let it be known loud and clear, they shouted it from the rooftops, that the Scots and the Welsh were distinct nations, with powers of self-government apart from the UK government, and with their own representation in the European Union over and above their participation in the UK presence in Brussels. All that did not fall on deaf ears. Since 1998, gradually, fumbling their way, the people of England have woken up to the injustice of the English Question, to the injustice of the West Lothian Question, to the injustice of the Barnett Formula, to the injustice of Devolution 1998. That is why there has been this sea-change in England. This is why, when it was totally absent from the Wembley crowds at the 1966 World Cup Final, indeed absent almost altogether for nigh on three centuries, the English flag has re-appeared, and re-appeared in incredible abundance, waved with exuberance and passion, at the Manchester Commonwealth Games and the Football World Cup in 2002, at the European Football Nations Championship in Lisbon and the Rugby World Cup in 2004, and at the Ashes in 2005. The people of England have re-discovered their distinct existence, buried though it had been for three hundred years under the veneer of British citizenship. They seized every moment to show they had re-discovered it, and those moments were sporting moments, when an English team was playing.
It was at such a moment, in Lisbon in 2004, that David Blunkett, Member of Parliament for Sheffield Brightside and UK Home Secretary encountered it, and despite all his decades of British-orientated indoctrination he was big enough and open enough to understand it, to welcome it and to embrace it. He acknowledged the distinct national existence of England and Englishness. In so doing he knowingly challenged, indeed, he actually repudiated, one of the most deep-seated and fundamental political and cultural attitudes not just of his own Party but also of the UK Establishment in general. David Blunkett expressed positive pride in England and Englishness. An immense break with Labour Party and UK Establishment attitudes and policy. A lesser light than he might well have found himself politically extinguished for saying what he has said. But he did not stop there. He drew a conclusion from it all. It is the final consideration of this paper.
David Blunkett’s Response to the New Reality of English National Awareness
and English Patriotism.
And a Critique of his Response.
As I have described, he embraces it as something very good and very positive. He does so in very considerable detail as shown in the summary of the lecture above. However, the crucial step he takes, the one he leads up to, the one which indicates that he is indeed responding to the realities of the 1998 Devolution legislation and what that handed to Scotland and Wales, the one that all too obviously matters to him most, is to ask the question: ‘How should Englishness be expressed in political terms?’
For him to ask this question has pretty well set him apart from most, possibly not all however, of the rest of the Labour cabinet. The situation is quite complex but it might be fairly accurate to say that on the issue of English devolution there are three Labour Party camps. There is that of Blair which is not opposed to the idea of English patriotism and the rise of English awareness so long as it remains strictly non-political, confines itself to sport and innocuous forms of culture and does not seek any political expression whatsoever, particularly not in the form of an all-English political institution like an English Parliament. In that way it is no threat to the status quo, no threat to the Union as it exists and as Mr Blair wants it to remain. In effect this camp would be content to see England reduced within the Union to the status present day Middlesex has within England, namely just a sporting nomenclature but politically non-existent.
There is then the regional assembly camp led by John Prescott and supported by Gordon Brown, and indeed by Charles Kennedy for the Liberal Democrats, all three of whom are not English, and by a strong caucus within the Labour Movement which identifies anything English with racism. It is a collective of people who for their own national reasons, or for cultural and political reasons, would terminate England by partitioning it into competing regions. Their strategy was to start with regional assemblies with limited powers, powers which in fact amounted to nothing more than yet another round of English local government re-organisation, but on which they would build to achieve the abolition of England through a process of partition into regions. The regions they intend to create correspond to those prescribed for England by Committee of the Regions of the European Union. It is of some very considerable importance to observe that whereas England would lose its national identity by this process of partition, Scotland and Wales would keep theirs because in their case they each constitute a designated European region. In their case, to their immense cultural and political advantage, region and nation coincide. Interestingly, and significantly, the BBC has organised itself on these same lines. There is BBC Scotland and a BBC Wales but no BBC England. Instead of a BBC England it has departments corresponding to regions for what is now England.
David Blunkett emphatically rejects these Prescottian-Brownite-Kennedy-EU-BBC regions for the most significant of reasons. ‘They do not express our sense of English identity’ he states in his lecture. His statement is a profoundly political and cultural one, and full of insight. This Prescott/Brownite camp wants to create new regional identities in pIace of the historic English national identity which, as we have seen, is rapidly re-establishing itself in the face of Scottish and Welsh devolution. However, their camp suffered a huge rejection, possibly terminal, by the people of England’s North East in the November 2004 referendum
There is finally the position taken by David Blunkett himself. As he expresses it as in this lecture, it is one in some respects quite similar to that adopted by Tony Blair but with one monumental difference, a difference which will turn out to be of historic significance. And I mean precisely that –of historic significance. Blunkett, as we have seen, positively and very proudly endorses Englishness in all its many aspects and achievements. Blair would not object to that. It makes him very uncomfortable but he can put up with it. However, Blunkett goes on to an inference. He asks a question which both the Blair and the Prescott camps, and indeed the whole UK Establishment, fear and oppose. He asks: ‘So how should Englishness be expressed in political terms?’
This is the last question the Labour Party, and indeed almost the whole of the UK political and cultural Establishment, wanted asked when they framed their devolution legislation. It is the last question they want asked now. It is the elephant in the room which they have studiously chosen to ignore. It is the powder keg they themselves put there when they framed that legislation. It is a deduction from existing premises as forceful as any Euclid devised. In its way it is the eternal question which any political system has to confront, namely, how to deal with a popular movement? How to control it? What expression to allow it which will not threaten existing structures of power? Specifically, how can Englishness be allowed political expression when the people of England are 80% of the Union population without them threatening the very existence of the Union itself? How can Englishness have political expression without it posing an equal threat to the high dogma of multi-culturalism? How can Scotland in the vision of the Gordon Brown-Charles Kennedy axis escape English domination as they see it within the United Kingdom if instead of being terminated by being partitioned into regions England gets national political and constitutional recognition?
Let me repeat the question David Blunkett asks: ‘How should Englishness be expressed in political terms?’ His answer to his own question and my comment on it provide the conclusion of this paper.
Firstly, he makes a most important point: ‘It is widely accepted that national identities are expressed and entrenched through institutions’. Again, this is dynamite. What, I ask you, are ‘institutions’? And if an identity is national, what institution can properly express and entrench it except a national one?
He moves on to consider three alternative institutions to see which might fit the bill as far as England is concerned. He repudiates two and accepts one. The first possibility he considers is an English Parliament. He dismisses it out of hand. ‘There is no appetite whatsoever for an English parliament’ he informs us. That is all he says about that possible institution. No evidence that there is no appetite for an English Parliament is provided. No reference is made to the opinion polls taken in the last 7 years since Scottish devolution which flatly contradicts his assertion. To employ a well-known remark, it is a truth universally known -to sociologists, scientists and indeed anyone concerned with hard evidence -that when a politician makes an assertion without supplying even a scintilla of evidence, and then moves on rapidly, then the truth is, he hasn’t a leg to stand on and he knows it.
The second possibility he considers is regional assemblies. ‘’The failure of the Yes vote in the North East’ he states, ‘confirmed to me the need to express our sense of English identity and shared values at the local rather than the regional level’. I have already provided his assertion that the sense of Englishness which English people possess is not met by the idea of regional identities. Note however the sleight of hand he employs here. He rejects regionalism as the political expression of Englishness –in my opinion rightly. He rejects an English Parliament. But he does not consider any other nationwide alternative. Instead he goes for another option altogether. “The English,” he states, ‘have strong attachments to locality’ states Blunkett. ‘We English have a strong sense of commitment to our locality and have historically held strong local identities”. He argues that Englishness has to find its political expression in pride and achievement in local democracy and progress. “Our shires and cities have long historical pedigree as seats of local government”.
What precisely is Blunkett doing here? His answer to his question: “How should Englishness be expressed in political terms? is not a form of a national political institution like Scotland and Wales enjoy. Instead he puts forward an answer which would maintain the status quo whereby England has no political and constitutional existence and Englishness finds no new political expression. What he proposes for England and Englishness instead is an idea now being promoted under the term ‘Localism’. He defines localism variously as: ‘a revival of community identity’, ‘a renewal of local government in new and imaginative ways’, ‘city leaders driving forward economic renewal’ , ‘urban renaissance in our core cities’ and ‘civic pride being restored’.
What is Blunkett up to? Localism is nothing new at all. It has been a feature of every person’s existence since time began. It is no more a feature of life for a Lancastrian English man or woman than it is for a Scot who is a Glaswegian or a German who is a Rheinlander or a Spaniard who is a Madraleno, or an American who is a Texan or any other human being from anywhere whom you might care to name. Every human being is local and pride in one’s locality is common the world over. So what is Blunkett up to?
What it tells us is that he has put his toe in the water but is still afraid to dive in and swim. Despite the huge break he has made with Labour Party ideology in speaking up for England and for Englishness, he just dare not accept the logic of his position. The next step, a step out of the Labour womb, is too much for him –as yet. He still feels himself bound in the grip of the Labour Party, indeed UK Establishment, mind-set, namely its determination to find any way at all to avoid an answer to the English Question that would give formal political recognition to England as a distinct nation.
Labour does not want to tread that path for a number of reasons The shallowest and most undemocratic reason some Labour Party members give is their fear that an English Parliament might be Tory-controlled. Another is the post-war phenomenon that Labour identifies Englishness and English patriotism with racism. This attitude is most abhorrent. It is most unfair. It is not applied by Labour to Scotland or Wales, only to England. What it reveals is a deeply flawed and fractured insecurity about their own identity among the English left-of-centre intellectual class be they in parliament or in academia.
To his immense credit Blunkett’s lecture is about trying to liberate the Labour Movement from this psychotic condition and replace it with a positive attitude towards England and English identity. He is challenging one of the deepest prejudices of the post-war Labour Movement. He is taking an axe to a very cherished totem pole. He is taking it back to what he would maintain are its origins. David Blunkett is in fact setting out a stall for a purpose. He is asking a question which has been taboo in Labour circles since the Scottish and Welsh White Papers of 1997, namely, how should Englishness find political expression. The vast majority of Labour thinking to date has been to deny or deride Englishness or wish it didn’t exist. Lord Irvine, former Lord Chancellor, famously remarked that the way to deal with the English Question arising out of Scottish and Welsh devolution was not to ask it. Blunkett has asked it. The genie is out of the bottle and will not be stuffed back in. He has acknowledged the existence of Englishness and English identity. He has described both in the most positive terms, celebrating what Englishness means with a most glowing account.
But that and ‘localism’ is as far as he is prepared to go, at least at present. He just cannot yet take the next logical step that Englishness must have its political expression on an all-England level. He will know as well as anyone that Englishness isn’t local. Englishness is national by definition. The political expression of Englishness, which is what Mr Blunkett is calling for, has therefore to be a national one. If Englishness is to find political expression, which he says it must, it will have to be in the form of an national institution such as an English Parliament. And the same applies to Wales of course. Scotland just cannot continue to be the only nation of this island of Britain that has its own parliament and with it some 70% independence within the Union. England and Wales must have political and constitutional equality with Scotland within the UK.
On March 14th Mr Blunkett delivered a seminal lecture. A historic lecture. However, he must now accept the implications of what he has said, as must all the UK political and cultural establishment. They must all have the courage, the vision, the imagination and equally the sense of justice to accept that equality of treatment of the three nations is both a fair and a logical development of Devolution 1998 and is not in any way a threat to the continuation of the Union. It will just be a different Union, releasing new vitalities and a new dynamism within its three component nations. If in fact a word of warning is to be uttered, it is that the injustice to England, and indeed to Wales, of that 1998 devolution settlement might well prove the real threat to the harmony and balance, possibly even the very existence, of the Union.
Mr Blunkett entitles his lecture ‘A New England’. My criticism of one aspect of the lecture is that in proposing mere ‘localism’ as the engine of change, he is advancing not only something that isn’t new or special but also something that in no way has the power to meet the requirements of the dramatically changed UK of 2005. Localism is local. It cannot substitute for the national which is part and parcel of any person’s sense of identity, especially the English people who are the oldest unified nation in Europe. What confronted Blunkett in Lisbon last summer was for him as a Labour man the startling fact that love of England is a vibrant part of English people’s self-identity. Where else should democratic politics start other than with identity?
The engine behind the ‘New England’ which he describes with such positiveness and enthusiasm has to be up to the job. I defy anybody to show me, given the nature of the 1998 Devolution Settlement, what else that engine of change can be other than an English parliament with the same powers as the Scottish parliament. As he himself has said repeatedly in the lecture, England is a nation and not just a conglomeration of localities. Its spirit, as he says, is Englishness and that is national, not local. There can therefore be only one answer to his historically important and very perceptive question: ‘So how should Englishness be expressed in political terms?” The expression can only be for the nation of England to have its own national parliament.
English Commonwealth 