A Question of Administrative Organisation for the Isles

Question
What about Parliaments and Assemblies will you abolish them or will England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have their own Parliaments?

Answer
The entire administrative organisation of the British Isles is a mess. Tinkering with the structure is pointless.  What is required for the old system to be junked and a new system put in its place.

So what are the alternatives?

• Devolution with overall authority resting in London
• A Yugoslav-style Rotation of Capitals
• Syndicalist Popular Assemblies feeding into a Central Government

Devolution

Devolution is the current system.  This method has seen the rise of separatists in Scotland and of wannabe separatists in Wales.  It has also encouraged the anti-English bigotry of the ridiculous Mebyon Kernow fanatics.

Devolution weakens the centre and creates divisions based on geography.  In the British Isles there has long been a toing and froing across areas which were historically distinct nations. 

The people of Ireland were once known as the Scotti, and through their migration the land of Alba became known as Scotland.  Of course the Picts remained and became intermingled, making it futile to claim that there is a 'pure' Scotsman, whether of Pictish descent of of Irish. 

The border between England and Scotland has shifted many times. Edinburgh was once a city in the old country of Northumbria, akin it a part of the north of England. The old country of Strathclyde stretched through the Lake District and included an area which is now called Lancashire.  Try telling Edinburgh folk they are really English!  Try telling Lancastrians they are not! 

Wales as it is today includes areas which were populated by the Irish (ironically the anti-English fanatics in Plaid Cymru's northern strongholds have more in common with the Irish who came before the English, than the Welsh to the south of them). Chunks of Wales were populated by the Normans.

In the areas known as England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, people have intermingled so that if any such thing as a 'pure' angle, saxon, jute, norman, norseman, pict, briton existed, that is no longer the case.  We are all inter-related.  To divide us by geography is pointless, yet that is exactly what Devolution does.


A Revolving Yugoslav-style Administration.

In Yugoslavia, the Presidium ruled.  There was no single President - although in practise under Tito, it was he - and the leadership moved from region to region, with each part taking its turn to be the centre.

Kosovo was one of the regions (the others were Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vojvodina, Serbia, Macedonia). Kosovo was always a flash-point, and following the death of Tito, it became a place plagued by riots. The structure of Yugoslavia held together only for as long as there was no opportunity for it to change. When Slovenia split away, the other regions quickly followed, with the resulting wars and the NATO interference which wrecked that part of Europe.  Yugoslavia was organised in a manner not dis-similar to Devolution, and it fell apart rapidly when the bonds of unity were finally dissolved. 

A Yugoslav style system for the Isles, with the capital shifting from city to city, would be Devolution on a higher scale, and would inevitably see the country fall apart.


Syndicalist Popular Assemblies - Our Preferred Option

A system is possible in which the people select one from amongst them at street level, to act as delegates to represent them all. The delegates at that level form the next tier of representation as district/parish level, and from these a delegate is represented to go to the next level; the process repeated until a National Popular Assembly is formed in which the system of delegated representation means that the people at street level from everywhere, have a say.  At every level, a delegate who does not represent the people, but acts for himself, can be removed instantly.  This can be considered Syndicalism outside the Workplace and of course would be joined by Workers' Councils set up in the same manner.  A Centrally-focused Syndicalist Popular Assembly constructed in such a way could be the embodiment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat which we need to banish exploitation and division.

This model does not allow for divisive regionalism. Every area has the same worth as every other. The idea of the people of Gwynedd demanding from government at the expense of the people of Lincolnshire, or the politicians of Ulster getting more due to a corrupt deal with London, becomes unthinkable.  The people work as one, each contributing according to ability, each receiving as according to need.

But where would the Capital be?

Regionalism has created many problems. The people of Ireland would not tolerate the Capital of the Isles being London. For that matter, to close down the Assemblies in London, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Parliaments in Dublin and Edinburgh, but leave the Parliament in Westminster in operation, would be unacceptable to everyone.  People outside London resent all the wealth and power being concentrated in the southeastern corner of the country. People in the very southeast (Kent) resent their county being impoverished even as it sits next to the capital.  Government in London has to be ended.

Oddly, the administrative centres of Scotland (Edinburgh) and Wales (Cardiff) are in the southeast of each region, and in Ireland Dublin sits on the eastern coast, as indeed does Belfast. Coincidental of course, but still odd.  What is not a matter of irrelevance, is that the people of England resent London, the people of Wales despise the concentration of wealth in Cardiff Bay, and the same goes for the others.  None of these places are suitable for an Administrative Centre for the region they sit it, let alone for the Isles.

The system of Assemblies requires a centre - a single centre, not a rotating one, not a collection of devolved ones.  As we have seen, the current cities which have Assemblies or Parliaments are no good as locations for a central administration. They are resented locally and to give them more authority would be a grave injustice.

We propose that the Central People's Assembly be located in an area which is geographically central for all the peoples of the Isles.  That area is the Isle of Man.  The Island sits between England, Scotland and Ireland, and is only a short trip from Wales.  The Island would benefit from having the Administration of all the Isles moved there, and no-one in the Isles across the sea in any direction has any problem with that area.