CEP: The future of England

THE National Council of the Campaign for an English Parliament (www.thecep.org.uk), is holding its next meeting at the Friends’ Meeting House, Bull St. Birmingham on Saturday March 21st. It has met every second month since its inauguration in June 1998. One item before it this month will be a paper being presented by its media officer Michael Knowles entitled : the Future of England.
‘If there is one measure carried out by the 1997 Labour Government which we can predict with certainty will be historic it is the devolution legislation of 1998. That legislation terminated the post-1707 situation that politically and constitutionally there was only one UK nation. That legislation explicitly spoke of and established Scotland and Wales as distinct nations and conveyed to them self-government in different degrees. By distinguishing them from England, which of course was both its raison d’etre and intent, by default it established England as a distinct nation likewise. Scotland and Wales have done very well in the last eleven years out of devolution. England however has not only not benefited from it, as indeed the architects of the legislation did not intend it to, but has also in fact been financially and governmentally disadvantaged by it.
‘However, those past eleven years have also proved politically and culturally very useful for England in ways the Labour government of 1997 to 2009 neither anticipated nor intended. They have provided England with eleven years of reflection about its future and have resurrected among the people of England an awareness of their distinct national identity. Every single item of legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly has successively emphasised the difference that now politically and constitutionally exists between them and England. The present UK government, aided and abetted by the BBC, is endeavouring to smother and repress any manifestation of England as a distinct nation, but like King Canute before the incoming waters they cannot hold back the tides of history driven on relentlessly by the force of the 1998 legislation.
‘England is not just distinct and different now from the rest of the UK as a result of the 1998 legislation. Its future as from now will be different too. We in the CEP, which is the only think-tank and campaigning body which has applied itself actively and academically to the issues of England’s future, must conduct debate in England’s universities and political parties about what form the future English Parliament will take, how it will be elected, where it will be located, what its relationship with Scotland, Wales and Ireland will be, and what its relationship with the EU will be. We will have to publish papers on the composition of English government and how after centuries of centralisation it can be decentralised around the whole English nation.
‘The last eleven years have been a period of gestation. Now the rebirth of England is about to happen. In those eleven years the CEP alone has rowed perspicaciously with the tide of history. Now it must give it articulation and expression.’
Contact:
Michael Knowles: CEP media unit.
Tel: 01260 271139 Email: michael-knowles@tiscal.co.uk
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