This letter has been doing the rounds of the blogs: Devil’s Kitchen, The England Project, Freedom and Whisky and The Campaign for an English Parliament. Indeed, that’s where I traced the correspondence back to. So here’s the letter, feast your eyes on Neu Labour’s opinion of the English.
“Dear Correspondent,
Thank you for your email.
Neither the Labour Party nor the Labour Government are pursuing the policy towards England or the English that you claim.
England, as opposed to Britain, has an unfortunate history around the world and within the British Isles and please do not say that it is all past.
It is a fact that the right and extreme right in Britain cloak themselves in the English flag, the cross of St.George and claim to be the true representatives of the English.
Wherever there is hooligan behaviour, usually linked to extreme right-wing political groups e.g. at football matches here and abroad, it is the flag of St.George that is displayed and that, I would imagine, is the reason why the MP referred to this type of ‘Englishness’ as a threat to democracy.
Regards,
Terry White
Communications Unit
The Labour Party”
It is a stunning piece of bigoted jeremiad. Replace English with any other nation and there would be righteous uproar. It seems, though, that when it comes to dishing out ignorant jibes, the English are the latest butt of the joke; anything goes. As A A Gill recently demonstrated with his hateful, ignorant and bigoted invective.
While it is perfectly true that English history contains murky episodes (I am reminded of Cromwell’s excursion to Ireland, for example) this is true of every nation state – we all have skeletons in our collective cupboards. Unfortunately, Mr White and his Neu Labour masters are indulging in the most base revisionism – the empire that he obliquely condemns was the British Empire and was overseen by Scots, Welsh and Irish as well as English. The act of Union has benefited all those involved – some Scots and Welsh may seek independence, but in the event will find that their nations lack the economic clout to go it alone. The Union works because we are stronger together, than alone. For this reason, I do not support the idea of an English parliament, just as I no longer support independent quangos in Edinburgh and Cardiff.
It doesn’t matter where the union’s parliament is – move it from Westminster to Edinburgh if you like, I could care less, but if we are to have a union it must be on equal footing. Devolution deprives England of that equal footing – unless you think Scottish MPs passing acts at Westminster that affect the English and Welsh, whereas the opposite is not true at Holyrood is somehow, equal. Some, it seems, are more equal than others.
Going back briefly to the Empire, I do not subscribe to the revisionist view that it was all bad. Sure, to modern day sensibilities, raiding someone else’s country and looting the resources is abhorrent. This country was subjected to similar raids in previous centuries and we became stronger for it. Certainly I do not despise the Romans or Normans because their ancestors came here and subjugated the indigenous population – such a grudge would be wholly inappropriate as the people concerned are long dead. The British Empire for all its wrongs also left behind virtues and a system of government when countries were handed back to their rightful owners. To condemn it as all bad is taking a two dimensional view and judging historic protagonists with modern eyes and an insight to which they were not privy.
I am English. My genes contain lineage that is Scots, Irish and French (that I know about), but I was born English. I am comfortable with that. The Cross of St George is my national flag and I will not have it usurped. And, I utterly condemn people such as Terry White and his masters in the Neu Labour Hierarchy who choose to sully my nation with their inverted snobbery and political correctness and present it as something hateful.
That, it is not.
I originally read this over at DK.
What a stunningly bigoted letter that is. Can you imagine if they’d said that about the French, the Germans, the Spanish or the Italians, for example? It’s utterly disgusting and disgraceful. But then nothing whatsoever surprises me about this shower of totalitarian charlatans.
I am proud to be English. I am also proud to be a member of our United Kingdom. Neither makes me a member of the ‘extreme right’ as some in NuLabour would try to claim.
I believe home rule is a waste of time that will only serve to cost us money and weaken the Union in the end. They’re almost pointless, and very expensive: the Welsh Assembly can’t do a thing, the Scottish Assembly has, in reality, very few overall powers in reality and the Northern Ireland Assembly has been suspended for years.
I bet the rest of the world laugh loud and forcefully when they see the sort of crap that we in the UK (and particularly in England) have to put up with. I mean, really.
Rant over. Thank you.
(bows)
Did Mr Terry White really write that, and is he really an official of The Labour Party?
If so, I see a need for a few fast printers with very low cost per page, plus lots of local delivery men. That would be for just before the next general election.
Best regards
”’Longrider replies: The evidence I can find on the web unearthed other correspondence from Mr White in his capacity at the communications unit. Without further evidence to the contrary, the balance of probabilities suggests that this correspondence is, indeed, exactly what it purports to be.”’
When I was at school we still celebrated Empire Day and were taught to be proud of our country’s colonial past.
Well I now know that some people prospered as a result of British rule and that others suffered, but I doubt if they suffered as much as those in many parts of independant ‘black’ Africa do today.