Vexation without Representation

[steepholm]

The British like (or think they like) their constitutions gnarly and assymetrical as an old oak, while being at the same time as airily unwritten as the scent of meadowsweet in summer. Not for them the formulated, Corbusian world of clauses and nested subclauses ("A constitution is a machine for living under"). If this weren't the case, I doubt we'd have let things get to the pass they're in today, vis-a-vis devolution: some people just like having anomalies such as the West Lothian question to chew on. As of today, for example, England is the only nation within the UK to have prescription charges (in fact they're going up). It's certainly the only nation planning to charge students £6-9,000 per year. It's also - very uncoincidentally - the only nation not to have its own form of democratic representation. People generally agree that post-code lotteries are bad things, but this is a post-code lottery on a massive scale. Yet there are no riots in the streets, and nationalist English parties languish on the right-wing fringes of politics in way that isn't the case for their Welsh and Scottish counterparts. Why is that?

Imperial guilt is one commonly-cited reason. It's strange perhaps that imperial guilt weighs so lightly on the Scots and Welsh, both of whom joined in the British Imperial adventure with gusto, but the English have the extra burden of having subjugated the other nations of the British Isles. When the London Eye was lit in green for St Patrick's day a couple of weeks ago, I mused how they would celebrate St George later this month. Paint St Paul's red and project a picture of Shakespeare's head onto the dome? Surely that was the least we could expect. But I'm not holding my breath.

On the other hand... last Saturday the BBC Radio 4 newsreader introduced the sports section by saying that there was good news and bad news. The bad news turned out to be that England had been knocked out of the Cricket World Cup. The good news was that they'd beaten Wales in the football. Note, this was the British Broadcasting Corporation news, broadcasting (amongst other parts of Britain) to the licence fee payers of Wales. And of course it's not hard to think of other occasions on which the English have silently identified the whole of the UK with England (or, in the case of Londoners, with London).

This combination of cringing guilt and preening superiority is not attractive. In fact, I'm fairly sure it's a recognized personality disorder.

You can't cure a malaise of this sort in one go, but instituting an English Parliament does seem an obvious way to begin. That will help get it into the heads of the English that England and Britain aren't the same place, while also giving them the same say over their own affairs that the people of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland already enjoy. While we're at it, perhaps we could have a BBC England as well as BBC Wales, BBC Northern Ireland and BBC Scotland, so that English sporting victories (if any) can be trumpeted to English people without annoying the neighbours. Oh, and an English national anthem that isn't the same as the UK one, for singing at said victories.

Ah, but if you have an English Parliament, the UK parliament will be more or less redundant, will come the objection. What will the UK MPs do, if they're not to spend their time legislating for England? Won't it be a vast duplication of functions with the associated expense and inefficiency? Well, many of the same arguments apply to having the other national parliaments and assemblies - but it's true that the UK parliament won't need to be anything like as big, confined as it will be to legislating on UK-wide matters such as defence and foreign policy. Far fewer MPs with far bigger constituencies would seem to be the obvious solution. As for accommodation, the English parliament might as well sit in Westminster. I dare say it will feature many of the same faces, and it will save the cost of a removal van. The UK parliament, however should move to Strasbourg, where I suspect that a really swanky parliamentary building with associated office space is likely to become vacant in the not too distant future. It will cheer up the French (raw from losing the EU parliament) to feel that Britain is being ruled from French soil, the food will be excellent for the UK MPs, and the rest of us can get on with looking after our own affairs.

Kushti, n'est-ce pas?

Comments

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Problem is, what would abn English parliament be like? England is, after all, the power-base of the present incumbents. So while I agree with your identification of the problem, I'm not keen on your solution (unless the North East can secede and join Scotland, which is an increasingly attractive option).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think that's a definite option - and maybe Bristol can be an enclave of the Republic of Cornwall?

Yes, it's a problem, but the alternative is a system gerrymandered to keep things undemocratic and to protect vested interests. I suspect that an English Parliament would not, in the event, have a permanent inbuilt Tory majority because the Tories would screw up, but either way, I don't see how it can be defensible to say "We won't give you democracy because you might vote the wrong way."

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Rumbled: I am a bad democrat.

[ewein2412]

When I moved to Scotland from southern England eleven years ago I had no idea that I was moving to another country (I am American). It didn't take long to figure it out. And living in Scotland has changed me into a much more nationalist character than I have ever been before.

My children (11 and 13) get a weekly newspaper called First News, which condenses all the news from the past week and presents it in a young-reader-friendly format. Last week the 13-year-old complained to me that all the news reports assume the readers are English and live in England. Coming from a kid who has a very mixed identity herself (growing up in Scotland with an English father and an American mother), I thought this was a pretty damning assessment. It's a good paper, and you can buy it in any newsagent's or supermarket. She won't be the only "Scottish" reader who notices the bias.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Ah, the American tendency to see all things in the Atlantic Archipelago as 'English'! :o)

I'm English (Anglo Italian to be precise) married to a Scot and my MiL complains with much justification about general media bias towards all things south of the border.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

A bunch of us went out for a bite after the Wales/England rugby match and the TV was recapping how heroic England had been and such. We got them to change it to S4C--still biased, but at least from our side. ;)

It really doesn't seem fair that England hasn't got a devolved government of its own. (Or, for that matter, that there aren't more issues devolved as it is; both of these things could be fixed.)

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I'm holding out for a Northern England assembly.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

The Council of the North - but we may have a long wait.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Technically the English were conquered by the Scots first. The Act of Union took place under the Stuarts.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Although there was no invasion (give or take Jamie sext's hangers on and boyfs). Elizabeth I named James VI&I as her successor- all legal and above board :o)

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Just like the Georges. If the Scots can claim the English conquered them, then the same is true the other way around. :-)

Not that I care, being a courtesy English woman.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Perhaps those of us of, shall we say, mixed ancestry, have a more open view on these things?

For myself, I'd have been happier if the Republican Commonwealth had stuck, but there you go- I'm just a little leveller at heart :o)

[fjm.livejournal.com]

well yes.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That makes three of us at least. Is three enough levellers to make a nest?

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I guess we could all join hands and try to contact Thomas Rainborowe :o)

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

As a Maid of Kent (never, ever to be confused with a Kentish Maid, be it noted :o) all I have to say is can we have our Kingdom back please?

Vortigern couldn't have done a worse job than this lot!

[ewein2412]

my husband is a Man of Kent... I see we have much in common!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

It would appear so. Whereabouts in Scotland are you based? My other half is originally from Stirling (well, Torbrex to be precise- just on the edge).

[ewein2412]

we're in Perth - not really "the same area" but not terribly far away, either.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Know it well! Nice part of the world. An old friend of ours hails from Scone.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

You are right about the sports report, of course, but it is an easy slip up for an English person to make when there are 3 million people in Wales, 5 million in Scotland, and 55 million in England. That leaves about 2 million in Northern Ireland I suppose.

It's worse than that. I once met a woman from Sussex who had got to the age of 21 without ever having been north of London. She was surprised that when she went to Yorkshire, it wasn't all crammed with Satanic Mills.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

If it had been a mere slip of the tongue I might have let it go (while still thinking it highly significant), but I presume someone - not necessarily the newsreader - had actually gone so far as to put it in a script.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

The BBC are not always as slickly edited as one might like. I'm quite sensitive to these things, having a Scots ancestry and having lived in Northern Ireland for a while, but most English people might not even spot the gaffe. I hope they got plenty of complaints.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

The worst ever example of an English/British confusion I ever saw was a "little known facts" book informing you that the Encyclopaedia Britannica is not British because it was founded by Scots. It actually said that the British didn't become involved until the place of publication moved to London.

Needless (I hope) to say, this was an American book.

(Many of its other "little known facts" were equally wonky. It said, for instance, that Leonardo didn't paint the Mona Lisa when all it meant was that he didn't give it that title.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Desk, meet head.

[sheenaghpugh]

OTOH, the Anglos are now the only people paying prescription charges!

Re an English assembly, certainly northerners would object to being lumped in with the Deep South; the trouble would be in determining where north starts. I think the Council of the North sat in York, which in my Geordie husband's eyes is definitely south.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

OTOH, the Anglos are now the only people paying prescription charges!

That's where I came in - but really there's no contradiction between the English getting the rough end of the short straw over prescription charges, etc., and at the same time being snotty about the Welsh and Scots (and often forgetting the Northern Irish entirely). I think they don't notice that there isn't an English parliament to protect their interests because at some level they think Westminster is the English parliament.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I've always found that the line from Bristol to the Wash is quite culturally accurate. So Peterborough, Cheltenham, Oxford and Northampton are in the south but Warwick, Coventry, Worcester and Leicester in the north. And York would be an excellent place for the north-thing.

[sheenaghpugh]

Never! Warwick, Coventry, Worcester and Leicester are all in the Midlands!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

And those in the deep southwest, particularly Cornwall, would object to being lumped as southern English!

Those of us in the really deep southeast down in Kent have the problem of the damn Great Wen to contend with too! We are not a suburb of London as many seem to think- small wonder we tend to look across the Channel............

I'm part Italian and we have a wonderful word for this tendency to localism and parochialism (it's just as prevelant there) 'campanilismo'- it's almost untranslatable but means, in effect 'our belltower is bigger than your belltower.' :o)

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Ah, well, if you are going to invoke the Midlands that's a whole new ball game. As a Midlander myself I would say we are pretty much culturally northern, but then, I'm a north Midlander.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

My linguistics teacher used that line as an example of an isogloss, where the sound of the letter /u/ changes. He called it the bugger-bugger line (you have to pronounce the second 'bugger' in a northern way to get the effect, of course!).

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

There's also the barth-bath carstle- cassel thing. Doesn't always work though- I'm a product of the deepest south and tend to say barth, but cassel- the effect of having a grandma from Sunderland and a grandpa from the Black Country (or should I say Soonderland and Black Coontry? :o)

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't there be various regional parliaments in England? One looking after the north, one the midlands, one the SW and one the SE?? I'd guess these various places have different issues.

You're right. It IS ridiculous that the poor English don't have their own regional representations...

But I won't give them any sympathy while they avoid treatment for their personality disorder!!

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

We would need a referendum first on where the Midlands are!

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Oh, boy...

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

We could just re introduce the Civil War Parliamentary associations I guess :o)

That would put me in the Eastern Association!