My grandad was a geeat man and of Irish descent. He taught me that loyalty should be based on fair treatment and justice. The Irish of Ulster are getting it, the Scots got it in the 1980s/ 90s and with and SNP government could seeeven more devolution over the next three years, if not full indeopendence.

All thats now needed is parity for Wales and Monmouthshires status resolved. Then a parliament for England can progress and from that perhaps see a Monarch and OPresident (of the seocnd chamber or of a council of state) In such a framework where church/ crown and state are seperate a multi faith UK could evolve into a federal monarchy and perhaps re encompass the 26 counties of the Irish Republic. Then these Isles would have absorbed and learnt from the lessons of the Imperial era since E1 and The union of Crowns of 1603.

Graham Dines has hit upon many issues which are beginning to form a groundswell of opinion throughout England.
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There are many forces ranged against England, from the EU (which wants to replace our country with Euro regions and has already removed the name of England from the offical EU map of Europe), the 'old three' political parties who are in league with the EU, right down to Ken Livingstone who supports St Patricks Day but not St Georges Day.
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North Sea oil is another bone of contention; Graham is quite right in saying it is British oil not Scotish oil. However, our duplitious English-hating government has changed the sea boundaries to place most of the oil fields in 'Scottish' waters. If the boundaries were restored according to international maritime law a very large percentage of that oil would be in 'English' waters. One must ask therefore why was this change made? The answer might well be to provide Scotland with yet more English income when it becomes independent (which it surely will).
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Whichever way you look, be it education, health care, pensioner care, the English are being sort-changed by the Celtic fringe. Only an English parliament can restore democracy and ensure that such inequity is brought to an end.
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Happy St Georges Day to your readers,
Terry Brown
English Democrats

Why not go the whole hog, and push for full English independance? The political imperatives of three hundred years ago should not be allowed to blind us to the realities of our modern situation. The fact is England doesn't need the UK.Yes,it's been a mostly happy union, and yes, in the past it worked well for most parties, but it's time for sentamentality to be put aside in favour of OUR national interest. Factor out the costs to England of propping up the dead eyed ungrateful adolescent economies of the celtic fringe and we find upwards of £5 to £6 billion per annum returning into the coffers of an English government. Imagine if you can, Police on our streets again. More funding for the English NHS. The ability to fund a decent army, navy and airforce. The possibilities are endless.
And who knows. Maybe like all adolescents, when finally pushed out into the real world, our celtic neighbours may begin to have a more adult relationship with their English neighbours, and we can all come to appreciate each other just that little more.

Graham.
Wholeheartedly agree with everything that you have said. We do need an English Parliament and all that is in "the name of Fair" by George we should have it.

Happy Birthday on St George's Day Mr Dines.
On the 17th of January,The member for Birkenhead Frank Field NL put forward an Early Day Motion 670 with these words"That this House notes that those polls that have questioned the English report a clear majority in favour of an English parliament; and further notes that it is this issue, and not Scottish independence or even House of Lords reform, that is the issue that voters now put at the top of their priorities for constitutional reform".
This motion has had cross party support but to this date only 19 English MP's have supported this motion.It is not good enough that our elected representatives at Westminster think so very little of the people who trusted them
with their votes.
I am in favour of a federal uk,but unless these politicians come to their senses soon, I believe there will be a tipping point and the uk will implode in acrimony.
Happy St George's Day to all in East Anglia.

Every year about 50 of us go on a St Georges day celebration. Support is getting stronger, people are getting fed up with being spoon fed anti-England pro Britain, the tide is turning, long live England and the Queen

I fully endorse Dines comments re an English Parliament. Those who object continualy use the word 'fair' - but how can it be fair when MP's empowered by Scottish voters have rights over English voters? Fairness means equality for everyone - that includes the English. We are as much enititled to an English Voice as Scotland, N. Ireland and Wales are entitled to their own voices.
It's about time we shouted loud enough to make our voices heard.

I agree with much of what Andrew Ware says, but multi- anything is out as far as I am concerned. We are English, with a Christian heritage. Other faiths can worship with freedom, but not expect their faith to have any official position in our country. Multi-cultural to me means "shut up about the take-over of your land by aliens"
It may be too late for the UK, but if not I agree that a Federal solution is probably the only answer.
A big question of course is what we shall do with the many who are "British" on paper (and only on paper) but not English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish. Goodbye is my preferred solution.

Agree with all you say Graham,Does any other country on their Saints Day have creatures coming out of the woodwork,decrying every
thing about England and the English?
I am English and very proud to be so,in fact I will go as far as to say I feel sorry for anyone who is not English.So yes indeed "Cry God for Harry England and St. George

"This politically correct culture of doing down the English is producing a backlash."

Not yet it isn't.

The English have traditionally been complacent despite the national pastime of moaning about so much. But once provocation reaches a certain point and our collective back is against the wall the reaction is usually rapid and thorough.

Yes, a backlash is possible and, in view of the Government's inability or unwillingness (there can be no other reason) to listen to the people it purports to represent, is probably inevitable.

If governmental stubbornness continues for much longer, whatever party is in power, we will have the makings of a revolution.

Graham speaks for me perfectly.

An English Parliament with powers at least equal to that of Scotland is now urgently needed and you are to be congratulated for dealing with what is now an urgent issue.

Those who argue that the establishment of an English Parliament would lead to the break up of the union should consider that the process was begun when the 'union' was invalidated by devolution. It now only serves the interests of the peoples of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Why should the people of England remain part of an arrangement that deliberately discriminates against them, particularly in health and welfare?

We must have an English parliament and the prospect of dissolution is no reason to refuse it to us.

Happy Birtday for Monday Graham. I too demand an English Parliament as it is only by having their own parliament that the Scots get the best of everything, paid for by the English.

I completely agree with Graham on this matter. An English Parliament could replace all of the regional assemblies in England which in reality are imposed on us by the EU to further the interests of that outdated bureaucracy.

We also need more bosses to follow the example of businessman Tim Allard in Kent who is giving all of his staff a holiday on Monday and wants others to follow his lead.

Send a card to Mr Cameron!
Dave Cameron has recently stated, in Scotland, "I don't want to be Prime Minister of England". On a different occasion, but also in Scotland, he also called those in England who question the value of the Union 'sour little Englanders'. Please send Dave a card on St George's Day to remind him where most of his Party's voters live and ask him if the Conservative Party, having already been reduced to one MP in Scotland, wants to lose its seats in England as well.

Happy Birthday for Monday Graham.
Crack on mate!
The message is getting out there.
The political clans of the 'three in one' Parties have their faces pointing north to their 4.5 million kinsmen.
They do not seem to notice that 50 million Englishmen are marching to their southern flank to trample them back to obscurity.

England will prevail; she has her face flushed red with the embarrassment of her naive belief in Britain.
It was an expensive lesson but one well learned.

I feel very strongly about this myself and I am sick to death of those who keep rubbing our noses in it, or saying that there's "no need" for an English assembly, that it would indeed be counter productive because it's "a complex issue". What's complex is the tissue, nay web, of absolutely trashy excuses that self-interested politicians continue to spout as "reasons" why England cannot have seperate representation. It's not for OUR good, though, let's be clear about this. It is NOT for the good of the English that we cannot have representation, it is for the good of the minority nations within Britain because they are scared that a devolved England will have too much say over her own affairs and that will affect them adversely. And yet, as Graham points out, the tail is currently wagging the dog and we seem unable to get anything moving in our favour at present. I put this down largely to apathy and excellent management strategies from the leading parties. You know the one, keep them happy enough and distracted from what we're really doing and we can get on with pulling the company down around their ears without them noticing. It works just as well in Great Britain plc as it works in corporate life.

Recently I heard a Welsh person crowing on Radio 4 about how "completely ignorant" the English are about what's going on in Wales and how much power the Welsh assembly actually has and that if we weren't "so ignorant" we might be concerned. I am inclined to agree with him, although this would not be of concern to me were it not for the malevolant contempt of which he referred to the English.

So clearly these people are deriving a great deal of satisfaction out of getting one over on us and on the whole we are still letting them. We ARE ignorant because we are being KEPT ignorant by our own politicians who distract us with our own tales of woe on pensions, etc.

We MUST make a stand and we MUST do it soon. We must stop the leaching of England!

I will "cry God for Harry, England and St George" in my heart on Monday and on every other day of the year, and if there is ever a rally in London on a day when I am not at work then I will attend.

Regards,

Pam

Yes. We need a parliament for England. Preferably within the Union, but if those who claim that the Scots will go off in a huff if we get one turn out to be right, so be it.

Well said Graham! I'm sick to death with this country being expected to fall over backwards in the name of political 'correctness' to accommodate every culture, faith, custom and view, when it is at the expense of our own. I used to think that if you were white, male, straight and over 30, then you had no-one to speak up for you. I now add English to that list! Hopefully, for not too much longer if we campaign and rally around the case for an English Parliament ... and make St George's Day a bank holiday!

Thank you Graham! You sure have your finger on the pulse of England.... unlike the shower of politicians that are supposed to represent us. They are far more concerned with the people of Scotland to consider English views.

The world of journalism and media needs more people like you... Our political masters and the mainstream media seem to ignore the "English question"....and seem happy to propagate the status quo.

Times are a changin' though and the citizens of England are waking up to the realisation that we are being treated as second-class citizens within the now obsolete Union. When one looks at the issues within the Union that disadvantage the English (i.e. West Lothian question, Barnett Formula, NHS issues such as free prescriptions in Wales, higher nurses pay increases north of the border etc etc ad infinitum), there is no wonder that there is a demand for an English parliament!

We, the English need separate representation! Just as the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish have. We need a parliament for England and all of her citizens to ensure that the correct decisions are made for the benefit of the people of England.

Happy St George's day and happy birthday. As St George's day is not yet a Bank holiday (travesty!!!) I have booked the day off and I will continue to do so every year from now on...I will raise a glass of English ale and toast England, St George and your good health!

Robin Parsons
Dorset

Very well said Graham!

A very Happy Birthday to you on Monday, how lucky you are to share such a great day with St George. So uplifting to read your positive article, many journalist's would do well to take a leaf out of your book, to coin a phrase!

England must have her own Parliament, the people have voted in favour of this but the figures are denied and the very subject of an English Parliament has been mostly suppressed
in the media until more recently with MP's now waking up to the very unjust facts that its wrong for Scots to be voting on English policies, voting indeed to cause injustice for the English people which they have done with regard to University fees and Foundation Hospitals in England and voted against in Scotland.
The Barnet Formula must be abolished and Scotland must have its total independence.
The very idea of Regional Assemblies must be dumped, how dare this Government push ahead with eliminating our historic county shires, with us for over a thousand years in favour of EU dictatorship. It would be very dangerous to accept RA's, the wrong people could end up dominating a whole area of our country, lock, stock and barrel!

I have to say with some pride, that Norfolk appears to be the unofficial HQ of the ''Support St George's Day Campaign's''.
I campaigned with others outside Norwich Courts with peaceful demontrations in support of Tony Bennett, publican of the Otter Pub in Thorpe Marriot when he was refused an hours extension each year for St George's Day, despite being given extensions without question for the Chinese New Year and St Patrick's Night events at his pub. We persevered outside the Norwich Courts each time with flags and banners, even outside the High Courts in the Strand, London when Tony took his case to Judicial Review and the judge refused St George's Day to be acknowledged as a ''Special'' day. If Tony had won that case, the Government would not be able to deny us a Bank Holiday so this is why it was really refused, those English must be put in their places, no Nationalist pride allowed for them, only the Scots, Welsh and N. Irish can be free to show that!

Well,Mr Blair and co, we are the English and we aint going away, we are made of good stuff.
If you support St George's Day & want it as a Bank Holiday, please sign my petition on the 10 Downing St website. The PM has to answer my question next January, we have until then to get as many names on it as possible. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say in reply to my statement. Please copy and paste the link below and follow the instructions for signing the petition. There are already over 5,000 signatures on there, please pass the link on to others too, thanks.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/SupportStGeorge/

Bruno Peek OBE, also from Norfolk has stared a support St George's Day website www.celebratestgeorgesday.com and he would like us all to raise our glasses at 10.45pm on the 23rd and give a toast to England & St George!
I never miss a chance to promote St George's Day, on radio, or in the press through letters or email, we all must do that. My large flag fly's 365 days of the year in my garden and I shall put several more out this weekend.

Please set an example and do the same. I shall be holding a dinner at a nice hotel in Norwich for 40 people on the 23rd, and we shall definitely be raising our glasses with English pride and no one is ever going to stop us doing that!
I smell rebellion in the air, don't you?
Bring it on!

Happy St George's Day to all at your paper and to all who truly love our land and our way of life, may it last forever.


Julia Howman
St George's Day Campaign
Norwich, Norfolk

Calls for an English Parliament are getting louder and louder.

Pre 1997 it was hard to find anyone that wanted one...now the polls are consistently showing 60%+. We won't be denied for ever!

I support everything Graham Dines has said here, but I would add not to give the English their own parliament is racist. Because we have a Scottish New Labour hierarchy ruling us, we are told everything English is shameful but being from a minority is something to be proud of. Who actually believes this New Labour rubbish?

Give us our own parliament free of foreign interference.

What a joy, to read Graham Dines article and what a pleasant surprise to find that a newspaper actually a allows a commentator to say good things about the English!

Time for an English Parliament.We have been kicked around by the Scottish tartan mafia for to long now.Get rid of Blair,Brown, Reid,Browne,Darling and all the other Brown nosers and install English only defenders of this once great country.

Graham Dines - how right you are and according to the latest ICM poll which has just been released 67% of the population agree with you.

Devolution has brought about major constitutional changes within the United Kingdom. Scotland now has its own parliament, Wales its own assembly. The Scottish Parliament hasn't just given Scotland legislative powers independent of England in such major matters of governance as education, health, transport, law, planning and many more but has established Scotland constitutionally and politically as a distinct country and the Scots as a distinct nation within the UK. The Welsh Assembly has done precisely the same for Wales and the Welsh people.

It is time that England had the same recognition.

www.thecep.org.uk

Graham is completely correct in his assessment and overview of the current situation.
The English people are more tolerant of other "nations" than they tolerate us.
We've put up with this discrimination (financial, political, societal) for far too long and it's about time that we were recognised as others are with our own Parliament.

The transfer of authority to institutions in Scotland and Wales has removed the legitimacy of the British Government to rule England.

England (and Wales) each need a Parliament with powers equal to that in Scotland so like the USA, Australia and Germany we have a proper federal structure to support a federal state. A united England for a United Kingdom.

Happy birthday St George and graham !

To all the commenters above well said.

I thought I was alone but now I know am not .

Dont forget to tell your MP MEP and all the local councillors etc etc .
(see www.writetothem.com)
The snowball is beginning to roll.

Independence for England

Happy Birthday Graham on this St George's Day.

As a present here is Kipling's speech to the
Royal Society of St George 1920.

England and the English

Beyond the Pillars of Hercules, they do things inversely and, perpetually appearing to dig their own graves, by some means erect world-beheld monuments—an example, however, not to be followed by less confident peoples.



Royal Society of St. George: April 1920
I THINK this is an occasion on which it behoves us all to walk rather circumspectly. If you will let me, I will try and tell you why. About sixteen hundred years ago, when Rome was mistress of the world and the Picts and the Scots lived on the other side of the Wall that ran from Newcastle to Carlisle, the story goes that Rome allowed all those peoples one night in the year in which they could say aloud exactly what they thought of Rome, without fear of the consequences. So then, on that one night of the year, they would creep out of the heather in droves and light their little wandering fires and criticise their Libyan Generals and their Roman Pontiffs and the Eastern camp followers, who looked down on them from the top of the great high unbreakable Roman Wall sixteen hundred years ago.
To-day, Imperial Rome is dead. The Wall is down and the Picts and the Scots are on this side of it, but thanks to our Royal Society of St. George, there still remains one night in the year when the English can creep out of their hiding-places and whisper to each other exactly what we think about ourselves. No, it is not quite safe to criticise our masters—our masters who tax us and educate us, and try us, and minister so abundantly to what they instruct us our wants ought to be. Since these masters of ours have not yet quite the old untroubled assurance of power and knowledge that made Rome so tolerant in the days when the Picts and the Scots lived on the other side of the Wall, we will confine ourselves to our own popular and widely recognised defects.

Some of our severest critics, who, of course, are of our own household, have said that there never was such a thing as the English Race—that it is at best the intolerably insolent outcome of ancient invasions and immigrations, freshened with more recent Continental gaol-deliveries. Far be it from me to traverse such statements. I give them on no less authority than that of the late Mr. Daniel Defoe, Liveryman of the City of London, author of Robinson Crusoe and of a pamphlet called The True-born Englishman. He deals very faithfully with the English. So faithfully that, in deference to the susceptibilities of some races, I will not give his version of the Englishman’s pedigree, but in his summing up of the true-born Englishman, Defoe says:

A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction,
A metaphor intended to express
A man akin to all the Universe.


In that last line it seems to me that Defoe slips into a blessing where he meant to curse, because a man “akin to all the Universe” cannot be wholly lost. He must have some points of contact with humanity. And the Englishman has had several.

The Phoenicians taught him the rudiments of shopkeeping; the Romans taught him love of sport by hiring him to fight wild beasts in their arenas. Under the Heptarchy he studied Social Reform, which in those unenlightened days consisted of raising levies on capital in order to buy off the Heathen of the North from taking direct action against English industries. He next took a three-hundred-years’ course of colloquial and Law French under eminent Norman teachers. He did not learn that language then or since, but it left him with a profound respect, based on experience, for his neighbours across the Channel, and a conviction, which time has deepened, that they were the only other people in the world who mattered.

For five hundred years his affairs, domestic and foreign, were controlled by French, Italian, Spanish, with occasional Austrian, politico-ecclesiastical authorities, who tried to teach him that “this realm of England” was but part of a vast international organisation destined to embrace, protect, and instruct all mankind. He escaped from those embraces only to find himself subjected to the full rigours of the Puritan Conscience, which at that time was largely directed by gentle men from Geneva, Leyden, Amsterdam, and the Low Countries. While thus engaged he was, under pretext of union, finally and fatally subjugated by the Scot. A few years later he embarked on the swelling tide of party politics in all their attendant purity; since which he has seldom been allowed to look back, and never forward.

I submit that such a nightmare of national experiences would have driven an unmixed race to the edge of lunacy. But the Englishman is like a built-up gun barrel, all one temper though welded of many different materials, and he has strong powers of resistance. Roman, Dane, Norman, Papist, Cromwellian, Stuart, Hollander, Hanoverian, Upper Class, Middle Class, Democracy, each in turn through a thousand years experimented on him and tried to make him to their own liking. He met them each in turn with a large silent toleration, which each in turn mistook for native stupidity. He gave them each in turn a fair trial and, when he had finished with them, an equally fair dismissal. As an additional safeguard he devised for himself a social system in watertight compartments, so arranged that neither the waters of popular emotion nor the fires of private revenge could sweep his ship of State from end to end. If, in spite of this, the domestic situation became too much for him he could always take a ship and go to sea, and there seek or impose the peace which the Papal Legate, or the Mediaeval Trade Union, or a profligate Chancellor of the Exchequer denied to him at home. And thus, gentlemen—not in a fit of absence of mind—was the Empire born. It was the outcome of the relaxations of persecuted specialists—men who for one cause or another were unfit for the rough and tumble of life at home. They did it for change and rest, exactly as we used to take our summer holidays, and, like ourselves, they took their national habits with them. For example, they did not often gather together with harps and rebecks to celebrate their national glories, or to hymn their national heroes. When they did not take them both for granted, they, like ourselves, generally denied the one and did their best to impeach the other. But, by some mysterious rule-of-thumb magic, they did establish and maintain reasonable security and peace among simple folk in very many parts of the world, and that, too, without overmuch murder, robbery, oppression, or torture.

One secret of the success of the English was, perhaps, their imperturbable tolerance. A race that has been persecuted, or—what comes to the same thing—bored, by every persecuted refugee to whom they have ever given an asylum, naturally learns to tolerate anything. Their immensely mixed origin, too, made the English in a very real sense “akin to all the universe”, and sympathetic in their dumb way with remote Gods and strange people. Above all, their long insular experience of imported brain-storms had taught them that men should not try to do better than good for fear lest worse than bad might follow. And there has been enough of worse than bad in the world for the last few years. Our national weakness for keeping to the easiest road to the latest possible minute sooner than inconvenience ourselves or our neighbours has been visited upon us full tale. After ninety-nine years of peace the English were given ninety-six hours in which to choose whether they would buy a little longer peace from the Heathen of the North, as some of their ancestors had done, or whether they would make peace with them as our King Alfred made it with the Danes. It was a race that had almost forgotten how to say “No” to anybody who said “Yes” in a sufficiently loud voice. It seemed as if it had quite forgotten that it had broken a Church, killed a King, closed a Protectorate and exiled another King, sooner than be driven where it did not want to go. But when its hour came, once again it decided to go its own way, and once again by instinct. For it had prepared nothing—it had foreseen nothing. It had been assured that not only was there no need for preparation against war, but that the mere thought of preparation against war was absurd where it was not criminal. Therefore, through the first two years of the war, it was necessary to throw up a barricade of the dead bodies of the nation’s youth behind which the most elementary preparations could be begun.

There has been no such slaughter of the English in English history, but the actual war was no more than a large-scale repetition of previous national experiences. If an Elizabethan Statesman (or adventurer) could have returned to England during the war he would, I think, in a very short time have been able to pick up his office work almost where he dropped it. His reports and his maps would have been a little more detailed, but he would have been surprisingly abreast of the whole situation.

Where the old English influence had struck deep all the world over, he would have seen help and comfort hurried up to all the fronts from all the world over without count or tale, without word or bond to limit or confirm it. Where the old alien influences that he knew so well had persisted, or where the new influences directed by the old were at work, he would have seen, as he would have expected, all help for the war denied, withheld, or doled out grudgingly, piecemeal at a high price. He would have recognised that what held firm in the days of the Armada held firm at Armageddon: that what had broken beneath his hand then was rotten in our hand now. Bar a few minor differences of equipment, he would have felt just like any sailor or soldier returning to some bitterly familiar job of sea-patrol or trench life between ’14 and ’18. Like those men he would have taken for granted a great deal upon which other nations might have wasted valuable thought and attention. Our stories of Coronel and Zeebrugge, of the English county battalions not one year old that died to the last man as a matter of routine on the fronts that they were ordered to hold, would have moved him no more and no less than the little affair of Sir Richard Grenville off Flores, in the Revenge. That troopers of County Yeomanry in Mesopotamia, picked almost at random, could, single-handed and by sheer force of character, control and conciliate in a few days a turbulent Arab village, would have amazed him no more and no less than any tale of Panama, or of our first venture across the world, told him by Sir Francis Drake or any forgotten captain of the same age. Being of the breed he would have known the breed and would have taken the work of the breed for granted.

And herein, as I see it, lies the strength of the English—that they have behind them this continuity of immensely varied race-experience and race-memory, running equally through all classes back to the very dawn of our dawn. This imposes on them unconsciously, even while they deny or deride it, standards of achievement and comparison, hard perhaps, and perhaps a little unsympathetic, but not low—not low—and, as all earth is witness, not easily to be lowered. And that is the reason why in the things nearest our hearts we praise so little and criticise so lavishly. It is the only compliment which an Englishman dare pay to his country.

As you know, our standards of achievement and comparison do not appear on the surface; nor are they much in men’s mouths. When they are, they are mostly translated into terms of sport or the slang of our various games. But whenever the English deal in earnest with each other, or with the outside world, those standards are taken for granted. And it is by the things that we take for granted without word that we live. It was taken for granted during the war that every day was St. George’s Day, on one or other of our seven fronts.

And now, we and our kin, after these great years, are sick, dizzy, and shaken—like all convalescents, a little inclined to pity ourselves, a little inclined to stay as long as possible on a diet of invalid slops, and a little more than inclined to mistake the hysteria of convalescence for the symptoms of returning life and thought. Here also instinct tells us that the weight, the range, and the evenly spread richness of our national past should ballast us sufficiently to navigate through whatever storms—or brain-storms—there may be ahead. And we are threatened with several.

One school of thought, Muscovite in origin, holds, as the Danes held twelve hundred years ago, that rapine and scientific torture will elevate our ideals, which up to the present have merely taught us to try to do our duty to our God and our neighbour. Others are content to work for the organised bankruptcy of whatsoever is of good repute, including the systematic betrayal of our friends, very much on the same lines as some people used to panic after every Crusade and every visitation of the plague. We are further promised an unparalleled outbreak of education, guaranteed to produce a standardised State-aided mind. The Church evolved almost a parallel system in the Middle Ages, which, much to her surprise, produced the Reformation.

Lastly, lest we should ever again lapse into our “pathetic contentment”, the breed which organised at a week’s notice to achieve the impossible and achieved it—by earth, sea, and air achieved it—is now, as a reward, to be ruthlessly reorganised in every detail of its life, walk, and conduct. That great work was begun by William the Conquerer, Anno Domini 1066, and has been before Committee or Commission ever since.

Norman, Papist, Cromwellian, Stuart, Hollander, Hanoverian, Upper Class, Middle Class, Democracy, have each in turn tried their fleeting hand on the “man akin to all the Universe”. From each in turn he has taken what he wanted; to each in turn he has given a fair trial; and, when he has quite finished, an equally fair dismissal.

What will he do in the future?. We are too near to the dust of the main battle to see clearly. We know that England is crippled by the loss and wastage of a whole generation, and that her position, from the civil point of view to-day, is the position of our armies in the darkest days of the war. That is to say, all leave is stopped for any man who can manage to stand up to his job, no matter how sick or stale he may feel himself to be, and there is undreamed-of promotion for untried men who, simply because they are not dead, will now have to face heavier responsibility, longer hours, and criticism that certainly will not grow milder as the years pass. But no miracles have occurred.

This world of ours, which some of us in their zeal to do better than good have helped to create, but which we must all inherit, is not a new world, but the old world grown harder. The wheel has come full circle. The whole weight of the world at the present moment lies again, as it used to lie in the time of our fathers, on the necks of two nations, England and France. The sole force under God’s good Providence that can meet this turn of our fate, is not temperament, not opportunism, nor any effort to do better than good, but character and again character—such mere ingrained, common-sense, hand-hammered, loyal strength of character as one humbly dares to hope that fifteen hundred years of equality of experience have given us.

If this hope be true—and because we know the breed in our hearts we know that it is true—if this hope be justified, our children’s children, looking back through the luminous years to where we here stumble and falter, will say to themselves: “Was it possible—was it possible that the English of that age did not know, could not see, dared not even guess, to what height of strength, wisdom, and enduring honour they had lifted their land?”

But we will be circumspect! My lords, ladies and gentlemen—for what there is of it—for such as it is—and for what it may be worth—will you drink to England and the English?

Brilliant Graham, more power to your elbow! I'm with you 100%

Pete. Bexley

Well said, does no one want to be ENGLISH any more!!!!!