Time to begin defining an English future

In response to A National Conversation for England I thought I had better clarify my position.

The Guardian's Ros Taylor asked whether an independent England "would better safeguard our rights, or is it a red herring in the battle between the individual and the state?"

Ros seems to have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the debate because, as Paul Kingsnorth points out, the case for English independence wasn't discussed (or even mentioned so far as I can recall).

Ros believes that the national question is a distraction from the convention's main purpose:

to thrash out how much power the state should have over the individual. The idea of creating an independent England, with or without a Human Rights Act or a bill of rights, may have a certain utopian appeal to those on the right as well as the left. But appeals to nationhood, as Alibhai-Brown pointed out, are the very stuff that oppressive anti-terrorist legislation feeds upon. It is the right to opt out and reject a given identity that many of the campaigners at the convention today prize most. Could English citizenship really bestow that? On current evidence, I doubt it.

This doesn't accurately reflect the argument that I made. I wasn't arguing for human rights for England or legal citizenship for England, I was arguing that we need a national conversation to decide what it means to be English. Is there an idea of English liberty that can be invoked to protect our liberties?

Rights are all well and good, but essentially they are a contract between the individual and the State. Rights are there to protect you from the State. Liberty is something more abstract. Liberty is the absence of laws, freedom from interference, perhaps, even, the absence of a State or controlling influence. Rights may enhance our liberty, but in England we haven't really discussed what liberties we want, and nor do we have a forum in which to discuss it.

There is a poverty of thought and expression in England, we lack the liberty to define ourselves as English and to express ourselves as English for fear of the consequences (usually being called 'racist' by Guardian readers or accused of 'trying to break up the Union' by Telegraph readers). This is unhealthy.

…in general the English live in a miasma of what Isaiah Berlin called “negative liberty”: their collective aim is to be free of interference, not to define the future. “Negative liberty” has become the currency of the dispossessed - “whatever”, say the English today when they’re told something they don’t like, and “whatever” is exactly what they get and what they are ready to accept, so long as everyday life lies undisturbed. - Andrew O'Hagan

To define the future as Englishmen and women is not to deflect from the battle between the individual and the state because national identity is an historic relationship; it is important to both our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of the State.

As for "appeals to nationhood" being "the very stuff that oppressive anti-terrorist legislation feeds upon". Well, perhaps. But we are discussing appeals to nationhood in defence of liberty. What else will defend liberty if not the people acting as one? And what else is it that terrorists and totalitarians target if not national peoples and the States that act in their name? Unless we ask 'D'ou venons nous, que sommes nous, ou allons nous?' then how are we going to understand what we mean by liberty and prevent ourselves from repeating the mistakes of the past?

I would suggest, Ros, that you read my speech with the above in mind.