BY JOHN DREWRY
Arise, the 39 United Kingdoms of England!
Most of us now are aware of the ever-tightening grip of tyranny, and the erosion of our liberties, occasioned by ever more remote centralisation. To break it, we need a process which prevents power, both political and commercial, from continuing to rise to the top of a pyramid, from where our little lives are run by a few people who have no human connection with us. Here is my first blueprint.
I suggest a secession, whereby each of England’s 39 original, historic counties makes a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). They are: Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Middlesex, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Warwickshire, Westmorland, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire.
Greater London should disappear, its boroughs reverting entirely to their counties. Inner London, I suggest, would also be subsumed into its surrounding counties.
The 39 historic counties then rebrand themselves as Kingdoms, not for pomp but for local sovereignty, pride of identity and, most importantly, to signify that there is no higher, existential power or diktat. Each is large enough to represent the collective power of its people, focused on their own wellbeing within their own borders, and sufficiently independent to resist getting hijacked by centralisation again.
Each Kingdom then elects its own Lord Protector, responsible for the welfare of his or her people. Election is not for a term, but has an inbuilt recall process which supersedes death or retirement. The democratic way to do this is a database which enables every elector in each Kingdom to register disapproval of their Lord Protector at any time. If or when over 50% of the electorate has thus registered, recall is automatic, and a new election called.
Each Lord Protector appoints his or her Ministers. The goal is survival and revival through maximum self-sufficiency for each Kingdom.
Ready for when the chaos comes
An impending collapse of everything we know is now a common forecast. Certainly, a feeling of doom increasingly pervades our everyday lives. Are we to sit back and hope it doesn’t happen? One thing is for sure. Acting pre-emptively in our personal and collective interests is surely preferable to running around like headless chickens when the chaos comes. Helpless, confused, panicked populations are easily malleable (and disposable). Being prepared is the alternative scenario. This depends on everybody focused 100% on understanding and protecting the essentials of life for their Kingdom, in this order of priority:
- Water
- Food
- Energy
- Health
These would be managed by the first four most urgent Ministers to be appointed in each Kingdom. Would readers agree that a hands-on Minister of Energy in the Kingdom of Kent, for example, would be a full-time job? If so, it exemplifies the nonsense of the current scenario, where a Secretary of State is in charge of, say, Energy or Health for some 70 million people. It’s far too big, and can take no account of realities on the ground. At best, sweeping decisions are made ‘for the greater good’. I’ve yet to meet an individual who has benefited from the greater good. At worst, an ideological maniac ends up in charge, wreaking havoc and destruction. Perish the thought.
All familiar structures and institutions will have disappeared, but the centralised power behind the four essentials of life will try to hang onto the levers. To counter this, we first need to understand a lot more about them. For centuries, we have been lulled into simply depending on them, with few of us knowing in any detail how they are generated, sourced, resourced, processed, distributed or provided to us. We turn on the tap – fresh water flows. We go to the loo – a handle or a button flushes it all away. We trot down to the supermarket – our food is waiting for us. We flick a switch – lights come on, ovens heat up, radiators warm us. We run out of drugs – pharmacies dispense our prescriptions.
When chaos comes, all those assumptions are history. Overnight. No cavalry will ride to our rescue to restore the old status quo. Only we can liberate ourselves, by each Kingdom having taken over the four essentials. But first we have to educate ourselves. Now. While there’s still time.
We, the People, take over the water industry
You can survive just three days without drinking water. So, who owns the water in your Kingdom? Extraordinarily, it isn’t you. The owner(s) may not even reside in this country, let alone your Kingdom. We need to start studying where our water originates, how and where it’s processed, how it’s treated and recycled, how it gets to our taps, where our waste water goes, how our sewers work and where our sewage ends up. This might not turn us into expert water engineers, but understanding how it all fundamentally works enables us to support those who do (both morally, and even physically with basic tasks) when our Kingdom takes over responsibility for its own water supply.
Some Kingdoms may need to share water supply in practice and by agreement. And for the longer term, I would direct you to some very old planning concerning our canals. They were, of course, superseded by faster forms of transport, but their more ambitious intention was eventually to link up all our waterways, natural and man-made, across the whole country, so that every part of it had constant access to fresh water. Perhaps that is still a good idea for the United Kingdoms to consider.
We, the People, take over the food industry
You can survive about three months without food, but you wouldn’t want to. Neither would you be prepared to. But to avoid food riots, we all need to know far more than we do about how food gets to our tables, so we can collectively manage it without strife among us. Study source, storage and distribution now. When the chaos comes, we need to know already where the food is and where it’s coming from.
Meanwhile, the truth is that each Kingdom has enough land to grow and rear its own food. Farms within its borders, as in olden times, can produce fruit, vegetables, milk and meat for their indigenous populations, not for vast food distribution conglomerates, but for local markets as well as for local collection and delivery.
Additionally, again as in olden times, many of us have plots, allotments and ‘waste ground’ enabling us to grow things, as well as rear chickens, for example. This kind of independence needs to be fostered now, to eliminate reliance on factory farming and vast, remote food chains because, when the chaos comes, ‘just in time’ will become ‘just not in time’.
Every Kingdom with a coastline should exploit its 12-mile fishing zone, again to predominantly feed its own indigenous population, not to work for some mass processor or remote distributor.
There is bound to be a degree of healthy surplus-sharing between Kingdoms, but the common cause should be benign independence and rejection of existential, conglomerate, controlling forces.
We, the People, take over the energy industry
The horrendous task of taking over the energy industry on a Kingdom-by-Kingdom basis cannot be overestimated. It is already difficult to find the real truth about our energy supplies, where they come from, what storage facilities there are, how and where it is generated, processed and distributed, how close to massive blackouts we’re already sailing. We’d better get to know it before the chaos comes. We should also “rage, rage, against the dying of the light” in the words of Dylan Thomas, because our current energy dilemma and costs are totally unnecessary.
There are over 180 billion tonnes of coal beneath our feet in the now-dormant coalfields of Northumberland, Durham, N&S Wales, Yorkshire, Scottish Central Belt, Lancashire, Cumbria, E&W Midlands, and Kent.
Onshore oil & gas fields are in the Wessex-Channel Basin, Weald Basin, Worcester Basin, Cheshire Basin, East Midlands Province, West Lancashire Basin, NE England Province, Northumberland Solway Basin, Midland Valley of Scotland, and Orcadian Basin.
Offshore oil & gas are available in the Southern North Sea, Central North Sea, Moray Firth, Northern North Sea, West of Shetland, and the Irish Sea.
We could be digging and drilling our way back to energy prosperity. Instead, we tilt at windmills.
We, the People, take over the health industry
The concept of a free health service available to everyone at point of need was and is a noble one. The root of the problem is the National in National Health Service. Although its noble cause is reflected in the premise that if it’s for everyone then it must, ipso facto, be national, it opens the door for centralised control and a vast bureaucracy. Which is what we see today, with extra layers of control like hospital trusts, hugely-paid CEOs, DEI managers, and armies of administrators, adding massively to the cost of patient care with little tangible evidence that they improve or enhance it.
Each Kingdom will need to take control of its own health service, with patient care provided by what will probably look more like the emergency field hospitals in battle zones. For we will indeed be battling to save and protect our people. Management in each hospital consists of an experienced Matron and his or her senior nurses. Auxiliary nurses can be recruited from the general public and learn on the job. They don’t need degrees to wipe bottoms. Florence Nightingale nailed it when she discounted registration, certification and qualification in favour of her one, true mark of a good nurse – character.
We all need to know far more about the source and manufacture of essential drugs and medicines. How many and how much are or can be made on our own turf? We need to reopen the vast knowledge about natural remedies, so deliberately blackened and abandoned by the pharmaceutical industry because you can’t patent them.
We should all learn and practise first aid. Perhaps education would serve us better by replacing erroneous gender indoctrination with first aid instruction from age five, so future generations grow up knowing how to look after each other.
The United Kingdoms of England
39 historic counties declare themselves Kingdoms, each with a Lord Protector. If this sounds a little like the United States, there is a fundamental difference. There is no President, Prime Minister or overlord, elected or otherwise. Each Kingdom is where the power stops. In practice, they would have to collude on matters of national law, as well as foreign policy, so there would be a parliamentary first chamber of debate, replacing our current, bloated House of Commons with a House of 39 Lord Protectors (i.e. a House of Lords). The decision to make or change a national law would, however, have to be unanimous, to prevent diktat by a majority over a minority. This is true democracy. It is also why true democracies have just a few, essential laws.
Furthermore, to prevent the House of Lords from becoming a powerhouse or diktat itself, there would be a second chamber, a House of Commoners (i.e. House of Commons) to approve or reject any proposed legislation from the House of Lords. The new House of Commons would replace the current, bloated House of Lords, with a ‘jury’ of 39 (one summoned from each Kingdom), which is refreshed every month (similar to the continual summoning of court juries). ‘Verdicts’ would be decided by simple majority. Thus, a vertical system of law is replaced by a virtuous circle, whereby final ratification is returned to the people. The new House of Commons would also be the final court of appeal, ditching Blair’s Supreme Court.
Wales, Scotland & Northern Ireland
My ideal blueprint would be for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to be part of this initiative, but that would obviously be their decision as entities in their own right. Wales has 13 historic counties, Scotland has 24 and Northern Ireland has 6. However, on average they are smaller counties than England’s, and therefore less capable of self-sufficiency. Wales might decide, for example, to declare South Wales, mid-Wales and North Wales as Kingdoms. It would be a matter of choosing the balance between self-sufficiency and numerical representation in Parliament. For simple mathematical convenience, let us suggest that the 39 Kingdoms of England are supplemented by a collective total of 26 Kingdoms from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, thereby creating the 65 United Kingdoms of Great Britain. Truly powerful, democratic unity, a tenth the size of the current, bloated House of Commons, and about a thirteenth the size of the current, bloated House of Lords.
Money
When the chaos comes, currency as we know it will have collapsed. This may be the cue for introducing CBDCs. Make no mistake, CBDCs are a euphemism for digital ration coupons. Something far away will decide how many coupons you get, where you can redeem them and what you can acquire with them. The velvet glove will appear as the saviour. The iron fist will enslave you. Behave or else.
Only independent Kingdoms can avoid this. What they use for money is a speculation too big for this article. In theory, any currency can be invented as an agreed and accepted means of exchange, within a Kingdom’s borders and across Kingdoms. Barter, e.g. 100 chickens for a cow, is largely impractical.
But let me float some radical thought on this matter. When the chips are down, YOU are the currency. Your contribution to society IS the currency. Price is replaced by value, and value is a constant, relating to people’s abilities and personal resources. Some will be more skilled and able than others. But if we’re able-bodied, we can all fetch and carry.
You cannot begin to calculate the amount of energy released by everyone working to the same agenda. So perhaps in a truly enlightened society, we don’t need money at all. In that case, you may ask, what about the difficult, dangerous and mucky jobs? My answer is that, of necessity, heroes will rise to the occasion. But it perhaps teaches us that we have never sufficiently revered those who dig underground for us, clear away our garbage, and unblock our sewers.
John Drewry has a background in marketing, owning and chairing an advertising agency for many years. He also holds an Equity card as a stage director and actor, and is Patron & Presenter for the Nursing Memorial Appeal. His anthology, ‘REASON IN MADNESS – 5 short stories about the unpredictable & irrepressible human spirit’ is available at Amazon.