January’s issue of BBC History Magazine includes an interview with Professor Linda Colley, described by Wikipedia as “a historian of Britain, empire and nationalism”. It’s a very revealing article, to the extent that Colley articulates what are the common, unconscious prejudices of the metropolitan chattering classes – the MCCs – towards the past, present andContinueContinue reading “Wise Men (and Women) From The East?”
Category Archives: Devolution
Distant Thunder
“We have just received a document which has been given to the world under the title of a ‘Statement of Certain Scottish Grievances’… The two most important heads of complaint are, that a revenue of £5,764,804, raised in Scotland, is transmitted to England and disbursed for Imperial purposes, and that the representation of Scotland isContinueContinue reading “Distant Thunder”
Constitutional Engineering: Fail
British parties of the far Right are often treated as interchangeable. No-one on the Left can be really bothered to explore what nuances separate them. But the differences can be quite significant. Clearly, the English Democrats want a centralised England, having given up any hope of a re-centralised Britain: they’re a rearguard party that regardsContinueContinue reading “Constitutional Engineering: Fail”
Our Friends in the North
For successful autonomist movements, politics is a spiral. There are achievements. There are also setbacks. But campaigners learn from them and when the debate begins again they have already moved it up to a higher level than it occupied before. We can see that process at work in all the Celtic nationalist movements. None isContinueContinue reading “Our Friends in the North”
No Heritage Soon
Where did the inspiration come from for our National Health Service? Historians have a habit, given that Nye Bevan was a Welshman, to look to Wales, to the miners’ and metalworkers’ mutual aid schemes at Tredegar and elsewhere.Wessex has at least as good a claim. The Mechanics’ Institute at Swindon, opened in 1855 and paidContinueContinue reading “No Heritage Soon”
Keep Calm And Cut It Down
So Andrew Mitchell has at last resigned over his altercation with a police officer in London’s Downing Street. Those who battled in vain to defend him helpfully stressed how stressful the job of helping to run the country is just at this moment.Then why not make it less stressful by spreading the workload? Alex SalmondContinueContinue reading “Keep Calm And Cut It Down”
Keeping Up With The Joneses
A letter in the Bristol Evening Post this week berated the ‘South West’ zone’s MEPs for not stemming the flow of Bristol jobs across the Severn. The problem is real enough, as south Wales has long benefited from regional development money in one shape or another. But to define the problem as being about howContinueContinue reading “Keeping Up With The Joneses”
Whose England?
Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget.For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.G.K. Chesterton, The Secret PeopleTen years ago last month a petition of 50,000 signatures calling for a Cornish Assembly was delivered to Downing Street, to the home of a Prime Minister renowned forContinueContinue reading “Whose England?”
Wessex Regionalists 