Steadfast
Contents - issue 17 Summer 2006

Steadfast Demo
England: the mother of modern sport - Robert Henderson
Letters
Progress for the English Community - Tony Linsell
Birds of the Seashore - Edward Canfield
The Legacy of William Barnes - Don Briggs
Law & Democracy - Lawrence Middlehurst

Letters

English Community Centres
Dear Editor,

I'm firmly of the mind that we English, despite being the largest ethnic group in these islands, desperately need communal centres of our own if we are to survive the "establishment's" desire to define us out of existence. By this I mean communal centres in their fullest sense, not simply places where English folk can meet up, but where our history, culture and traditions can be preserved and passed on to current and future generations.

There will undoubtedly be opposition to these proposals, a fact brought home to me in a recent conversation with Marge Barton, newly appointed High Sheriff of Tyne and Wear. Mrs Barton was mortified at the mere suggestion of such centres, which she believes would alienate the ethnic minorities (now there's a surprise). Given that many of these other ethnic groups already have their own centres shows the absurdity of such arguments, but I've no doubt there are countless other "Marge Barton's" up and down the country who would agree with her.

Steadfast N.E. has already tried to organise a regular venue for local members, sadly with no luck. We had to fight tooth and nail with Sunderland Library just to get a poster displayed on their Community Notice Board, so we know what we're up against. Nevertheless, someone has to take the lead, so why not Steadfast?

Michael Brown
Sunderland

English Icons Scandal
Sir,

How right you were to suspect that the English Icons website is doing "a bit of tweaking here and there" (Editorial Spring Issue). More like wholesale and violent twisting.

The English Icons project is in fact a classic soviet-style propaganda operation whereby a propaganda unit is set up ostensibly to give voice to the wishes of the people but whose real purpose is to produce a pre-ordained propaganda outcome..
In the case of English Icons the pre-ordained propaganda outcome is to portray England and the English as a happy-clappy multicultural heaven. This was signalled by the choice of The Windrush as one of the original panel chosen Icons.
When the first icons which were supposedly determined by the public's nominations and voting were chosen in April they included The Notting Hill Carnival and Brick Lane. I used the Freedom of Information Act to get the actual voting figures. The Notting Hill Carnival was chosen by the panel despite 84.5% of the public voting NO, it is NOT an English Icon. Brick Lane was chosen with a mere 20 people taking part in the vote - 13 voting YES, 7 voting NO. The choice of the two Icons was pre-ordained, the purpose of The Notting Hill Carnival being to include blacks: that of Brick Lane to include Asians.
When these Icons were selected the English Icons section within the Dept for Culture, Media and Sport announced (Daily Telegraph 28 April) that the Notting Hill Carnival and Brick Lane had been included as an English icon because they are "one of the 21 most voted for icons suggested by the public since the website was set up in January". Clearly neither were and have been selected simply to progress the multicultural agenda.

English Incons is also censoring the comments made about icons. Here is the Icon project's director Daniel Hahn writing to me concerning comments made about the Windrush: "Thank you for your e-mail and your continuing interest in our site. At present we have three comments published, and ten which have been submitted and rejected. As you'll see if you browse through the other icons on the site, we are happy to include debate on our site by publishing comments that don't support a particular thing's iconic status; we are not, however, prepared to publish anything we believe to be obviously racist or in any other way offensive, into which category I'm afraid those ten rejected comments fall."
A true political scandal.

Your sincerely,
Robert Henderson
London

An English Parliament
Dear Sir,

As long as the human race survives the English will be remembered. Just as it was the Romans who absorbed the culture of ancient Greece and spread it throughout Europe, it was the English who played such an important part in the spread of European culture to the New World and, as the neucleus of the British Empire, continued that spread throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. We have much to be proud of, and we should certainly take pride in many of the achievements of the British Empire. It had its bad moments, such as the Opium Wars in China, but generally it spread education and modern civilisation to millions throughout the world. One need only compare the corruption, poverty and injustice endemic in the countries of Latin America, with the relative benefits of life in the U.S.A. and Canada to see what a difference the English made. It is almost unbelievable what our ancestors achieved, and we should be both proud and humble knowing that their blood runs in our veins.
But what of the indigenous English now? Over the last few decades there seems to have been a coherent and well-organised plot to destroy the English as a nation. And who is the enemy ? Given the slow, systematic way England has been undermined, and the number of Labour M.P.s who belong to the organisation, I strongly suspect the Fabian Society, possibly backed by the Rowntree Foundation. I sometimes think the ultimate aim is to have the last of the English in reservations like American Indians. We will play with our runes and sell trinkets carrying red crosses, while parties of foreign tourists conducted by ethnic minorities will look at us in curious amusement, and wonder how the mighty are fallen.

It is well to remember that modern Greece is now populated by later invaders; the racial stock that populated ancient Greece is gone. Similarly, the Roman Empire imploded as foreigners invaded its heart. Now, the British Empire is gone, and England, which was at its heart, is being subsumed by the immigrants that have been allowed to descend on us like plagues of locusts.
Immigration is not a bad thing, provided each individual seeking residence is first examined for mental and physical health, for suitable background and useful qualifications, fluidity in spoken and written English, willingness to be absorbed into the English community, and finance to maintain themselves until they have found an income. This has not been done. And it should also be remembered that mass immigration is not a problem for Scotland or Wales, only England. But, it is Scotsmen and Welshmen who control the gates into England. I get angry almost to the point of potential violence when I think of Lord Falconer, a Scotsman grown fat and rich with English money by preferments from his powerful protector, telling the English they can't have their own Parliament, for an English Parliament is what we urgently need.

I recently spoke to an Englishman who had campaigned long and hard against Regionalisation, but was against an English Parliament because, he said, the English and Scots would be fighting each other again. His idea was to go back to having one Parliament for the whole of Britain. This was crass for two reasons : firstly the Welsh and the Scots are not now going to give up the Parliaments that they have campaigned so long and hard to get, and secondly, if the Spanish don't fight the Portuguese, and the Norwegians don't fight the Swedes, then why should the English fight the Scots ?
If the English are to survive as an independent nation we desperately need an English Parliament and positions of power in England to be occupied by English men and women. I recently renewed my passport and saw ethnic minorities working in the passport office. There is currently a case in the paper of an illegal immigrant from Nigeria, given a job in the Immigration Office, demanding sex from a woman for citizenship rights. We can't expect such people to have a love of England, and to approach the question of immigration as would an English man or woman. Similarly, Trevor Phillips recently called for 500 acres of English land to be set aside for Travellers. The bulk of the Travellers are from Eire, and they should return there to seek land for settlement. As an immigrant himself, one wouldn't expect Trevor Phillips to feel strongly about this. Again, it is totally wrong for a man like Peter Hain, who is not English, to have such a powerful say in English affairs, particularly those concerned with the EU. In short, the indigenous English need to regain control of their country.

The fraught question is, of course, who is English. That this is now such a difficult question is, I believe, by design, and it is the question that Tony Shell wrestled with so manfully in the last issue of Steadfast. As an Englishman with ancient pedigree (I have a trace of Huguenot blood from 400 years ago) it is easy for me to say that Englishness is having four English grandparents, or better still eight English great-grandparents, but in the real world we cannot, unfortunately, be so rigorous. I repudiate strongly those who say that the English are a mongrel nation; they are no more mongrel than any other nation, and even the waves of settlers and invaders from Angles and Jutes to the Normans were substantially the same racial stock.
Our ancestors fought and died to create the England we love, the England that is so attractive to foreigners and we have a moral obligation to preserve for the benefit of our children what our forefathers fought for. We English have not done that over the last few decades, and there is much reconstruction to do. We could start by getting an English Parliament, disentangling foreigners from the reins of power, and regaining control of our land.

How to do it is the question. At a time when the three major parties seem to be coalescing into a wiffy-waffy, left/lib homogeneity, we can't expect radical ideas from them. UKIP do not seem to be making any impact, and the BNP, while in some ways promising, is still in a raw state of development. I definitely do not agree with Christine Constable's call for PR. I can see that only resulting in the English becoming just one more ethnic group among a multitude, all jostling with each other in shifting patterns of alliances and tit for tats. I cannot see how the indigenous English could become dominant over the rest in such a system.

Meanwhile, the anti-English onslaught creeps on. Regionalisation continues stealthily, the EU continues to suck away more and more of our sovereignty, the cancer of PC continues to spread, and Prescott's infamous Local Authorities (Code of Conduct) Order 2001 suppresses all democratic opposition to the hundreds of thousands of ticky-tacky rabbit hutches being built to house a population bloated disastrously by immigration.

We need the indigenous English to remember their past, to rediscover who they are, recover their national pride, accept the moral obligations placed on us by our ancestors, and to recover our nationhood and our land for our children.

Yours sincerely,
Roger White
Louth Lincs.

Support for English Parliament grows
To the Editor,

Lord Falconer gave the issue of devolution, or lack of it, a Christmas and birthday present all rolled into one when he rejected calls for an English equivalent of the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly. He single-handedly put the issue to the forefront in the national papers, something that the Campaign for an English Parliament has been trying to accomplish for years!
Thanks to him the Campaign has been approached by the media for comments on the situation and has been quoted in various national newspapers and TV and radio programmes. This put us firmly in the realm of the accepted and the norm. We had at one time considered making Lord Falconer an honorary member but then thought better of it.

The commotion caused in the press by Lord Falconer's comments goaded the Tory Party to forge ahead with their plans for English votes on English matters which in turn has stimulated yet more discussion in the media.
A recent MORI poll showed 26% in favour of an English Parliament, up by 10% on the previous poll in 2003. This support rose to 41% when the respondents were given more information about how Scottish and Welsh MPs can vote on English only issues at Westminster under the current constitutional settlement. As this result has been achieved with very little publicity, imagine the figures if the funding for a national publicity programme became available.

It is worth noting that in Wales only 25.3% of the electorate voted for a national assembly, In Scotland 44% of the electorate voted for a parliament. Surely then 41% in favour of an English Parliament is more than an indication of public support but is in fact a demand for it?

It has been reported that the Government response to the West Lothian Question is not to ask it. I suggest that this is a matter that is not going to go away and whichever of the main political parties that takes up the torch and runs with it will win the next election.

The Campaign has been described as indefatigable which indeed it is. There is clearly support for our point of view and neither we nor this support will go away.

Please visit our website for more information - www.thecep.org.uk

Veronica Newman
National Council Member
The Campaign for an English Parliament

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