Not the West Lothian Question - Freedom for England

Upon taking office the judges of England pledge to "do right by all manner of people, after the law and usages of this realm". Gordon Brown's suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus seems to me to be so fundamentally subversive to the common law and usages of this realm that if I were a judge I would have no hesitation in ignoring 42-days detention, especially since this draconian legislation is directed against a certain manner of people. But then what do I know of the law.

I may not be a student of jurisprudence, but I do know what I like, and this exposition of what it means to be English, from the aptly named Tom Paine, is one that I wholeheartedly endorse:

our patriotism is not so much to do with "blood and soil." At its best, it is a matter of values. Those values are rooted in Magna Carta, which set the laws of England above her rulers. They are rooted in habeas corpus, a simple writ which forces our rulers to account for their prisoners and to justify their detention to the courts. These things made Englishmen free long before democracy gave them the right to choose their government. They set limits that even a monarch could not cross. If you don't take pride in them, you simply don't understand what it is to be a freeborn Englishman.

On 11th September in the year 1648 the Levellers presented to Parliament their largest petition, signed by one third of all Londoners. 363 years later, to the day, al-Qaeda attacked mainland America and the subsequent "War on Terror" provided New Labour with all the political justification they required to embark on a comprehensive and systematic erosion of England's hard won civil liberties. Free-born John has been spinning in his English grave ever since.

"Last Sunday was the anniversary of Magna Carta", David Davis informed the Question Time Audience, "and Habeas Corpus, the fundamental thing that we gave away last week, is actually something that underpins what it is to be British". David Davis' view of Britishness is one that Gordon Brown apparently shares:

For there is indeed is a golden thread that runs through British history of the individual standing firm for freedom and liberty against tyranny and the arbitrary use of power. It runs from that long-ago day in Runnymede in 1215 to the Bill of Rights in 1689 to not just one, but four Great Reform Acts in less than 100 years. And the great tradition of British liberty has, first and foremost, been rooted in the protection of the individual against the arbitrary power of first the monarch and then the state.

The 'golden thread' of liberty is of course English, not British; as is the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and Habeas Corpus, a writ that is unknown to Scots law but which dates back to the 1200s in England. For Scots these things form part of their constitutional inheritance, what Tony Blair might patronisingly term a "union dividend". They are not a spiritual inheritance as they are for the English because they do not form part of what it means to be Scottish. I would love to believe that a spiritual connection to the ideals of England - the idea of England itself - is what led English MPs to vote, by a majority of 19 (which would have been more had it been a free vote), against 42-days detention. But who knows, for it seems that the Englishman representing the English constituency of Haltemprice and Howden is content to ape Gordon Brown and couch the debate in firmly terms of Britishness.

For all the merits of his campaign it is depressing that Davis can't (or won't) define his opposition to New Labour's totalitarianism as a freeborn Englishman, to tap into that rich English tradition and appeal to his constituents' Englishness. Would it really be too much to ask for an English MP to appeal to England as England in opposition to Brown's dystopian Britishness, just as Scottish politicians have used Scotland as a bulwark against government control?

Someone needs to speak for England in this civil liberties debate. But who will it be? My past disagreements with the English Democrats have been too frequent to mention, and much of the antagonism - at least on my part - stems from the fact that the very existence of an English nationalist manifesto ties what should be a cross-party case for English self-determination to other policy areas. But in Haltemprice and Howden there is a real opportunity for the EngDems, and uniquely a real need for an English party. Of all of the elections since the English Democrats Party was founded it is this one that presents an unrivaled opportunity to campaign positively for England, to fight for the very heart and soul of England: Our liberty. For the EngDems there is a chance here to slay the ghosts of previous negative campaigns, and present a positive vision of what England should be; a chance to prevent an English election being fought on a "Best for Britain" platform; a chance to make the points of reference English, in defiance of those that claim Magna Carta and Habeas Corpus for Britain.

So much has been made of Brown's shady backroom dealings with the DUP, but the fact that all New Labour's Scottish MPs (with the sole honourable exception of Katy Clark) voted with their boy in Number 10 was decisive. This is not the West Lothian Question because Scottish and Irish MPs do have a constitutional right to vote on reserved legislation. But it is The English Question. It is about English sovereignty - national sovereignty and individual sovereignty - and it's about England's right to contradict Britain as the other nations of the union so frequently do.

I've always described myself as an English nationalist, but not, necessarily, a separatist. Constitutional sovereignty, the right to determine our future, was, I thought, enough. But I must admit that this civil liberties debate has had me seriously considering the case for English independence. To argue that Scots and Irish MPs should not be permitted to corrupt England's proud tradition of individual freedoms is to argue logically that they should not vote on reserved matters. So perhaps the enticingly named Free England might be better suited than the English Democrats to freeing England from the attentions of a prime minister who has never faced the public vote in England.

Any English nationalist party that does join the fray will benefit from the absence of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and UKIP. The field is wide open and the platform will be theirs to take. Questions concerning David Davis' u-turn over his call for an English Parliament will be perfectly valid because the democratic deficit that results from the absence of an English parliament perverts the most important civil liberty that a democratic people hold - the ability to choose and remove the government.

Our Kingdom has a list of Freedoms lost under New Labour. David Davis outlines the issues here.

In all the various revolutions, with their dark and dreary scenes of violence and bloodshed, through which England has passed, the people have clung to their ancient laws with a devotion almost superstitious. -- Samuel Tyler