The Kingdom Islands And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen? William Blake (From the Preface to Milton)

Police poster in London rail station

The United Kingdom can be a confusing place, even for the British. Start with the name. In fact the head of state is a "Queen", not a "King". So perhaps we should call it the "United Queendom." Or, to use gender-inclusive language, the "United Monarchdom". And if you think that that sounds absurd, ask yourself what could be more absurd than an aspiring democracy describing itself in terms of fifteenth century power structures.

If you are not British you may be used to calling this land Great Britain, Britain or England. In fact, the United Kingdom has two parts - Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Without Northern Ireland it would be just Great Britain. Britain (as the name is often abbreviated) is composed of three parts, Scotland, Wales and England, with a population of 60.6M. Until 1999 there was just one government for all three. No more.

England

England is the largest (130,360 sq. km.), most populous, most powerful, richest part of the nation. It has a populaton of 50.7M. And a third of the population of Britain is crowded into the 16 per cent of the land area that is south east England. Its population has increased by more than 10.5 percent since 1971. The difference in wealth between it and the rest expanded rapidly. Between 1995 and 2001, 60 percent of new jobs in the UK were in south east England.

The United Kingdom parliament sits in London, the capital city of England, but unlike Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, England has no representatiave assembly of its own.

Nine million acres of England and Wales are owned by 135,000 people, many of them members of the officially recognised hereditary aristocracy. In Who Owns Britain, published in 2001, Kevin Cahill attributed Ireland’s recent economic advances in part to the wider ownership of land in that country.

Scotland the brave

Scotland's 5 million people now have their own sub-legislature. They already had distinct legal and educational systems. Now the Scottish Parliament has control of domestic policy. Defence, foreign affairs and the broad management of the economy remain the responsibility of the government in London.

Scotland has more representatives in the UK parliament than its population warrants. And these MPs vote on domestic English legislation although MPs for England may no longer vote on laws that apply only in Scotland.

The Scottish Parliament relies on the UK government for its revenue. The grant from the British parliament, which is expected to reach £30bn by 2010. allows it to spend £1,500 more per head on services for the people of Scotland than is spent in England. It has not used its power to levy an additional 3 per cent income tax.

Opinion polls have shown as many as 52% of Scots in favour of independence for Scotland. One suggested that almost 2 in 3 Scots believed that Scotland would be independent by 2009. However, that did not happen. In the first election to the Scottish Parliament the anti-independence parties won 91 of the 129 seats. Scottish National Party candidates were elected to just 56 seats. In 2007 the people of Scotland elected 47 Scottish National Party legislators and 82 from other parties.

The BBC has rejected the idea of a separate news broadcast for Scotland, following lobbying against the change by the Labour Party. Opponents of the idea believe that as national institution the BBC helps to keep Britain united. Scottish newspapers and the Scottish National Party condemned the decision. One member of the Corporation's broadcasting council for Scotland resigned in protest.

"God grant that Marshall Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring.
May he sedition crush
And like a torrent rush
Rebellious Scots to crush
God save the Queen."

A verse from the unexpurgated British national anthem.

Wales

Wales (Cymru in Welsh), where 16 per cent of the 2.9 million population speak, read and write the Welsh language, has a legislative Assembly that gives that nation significantly less autonomy than Scotland. The Assembly has limited powers and no ability to raise revenue.

As with Scotland, the people of Wales are over-represented in the UK parliament. Their MPs also vote on laws for England while MPs for England are unable to vote on the laws for Wales that are made in the legislative assemby for Wales.

The Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru (Party of Wales), surprised many by winning 17 of the 60 seats in the first election to the new Assembly. However, the other 43 seats were taken by non-nationalist parties. In 2008 there were just 15 Plaid Cymru legislators and 44 Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat law makers.

Northern Ireland

Then there are the six counties of Ireland, with a population of 1.7 million, that remained tied to Great Britain when the other 26 counties broke free in 1921.(These six counties are known in Britain as Northern Ireland or Ulster. Supporters of the link with Britain often call them "The Province".)

This union of Northern Ireland with Britain is opposed by nationalists and supported by unionists and "loyalists." When people from Britian, and unionists and "loyalists" from Northern Ireland, talk about Northern Ireland matters they often refer to Britain somewhat oddly as "the mainland", rather than as "Britain." They are apparently fearful that using the correct term will draw attention to the truth that the counties of Northern Ireland have never been integrated into Great Britain in the way in which Scotland and Wales are.

For many years about two-thirds of the population was Protestant and one-third Catholic. This allowed Protestant domination of the Catholic minority. The 1991 census showed that the Catholic population had grown to 40.3 per cent, while 46.5 per cent were Protestants. Catholics are the fastest growing section of Northern Ireland's population. Some population experts have estimated that Catholics now make up 46 per cent or more of the population.

"There's nothing like the monarch. She's the one thing that binds the union together. And what's important is she's not perceived as English."
Steven King, adviser to Unionist Northern Ireland First Minister David Trimble. Quoted May 2002, The Financial Times

The Union flag is no longer flown outside police stations on public holidays. The police force is no longer called The Royal Ulster Constabulary. And police officers no longer have to swear their allegiance to queen Liz Windsor.

In May 1998 over 70% of the Northern Ireland electorate voted in favour of having a degree of governmental autonomy through an Assembly in which nationalists and supporters of union with Britain would share power. They also voted to have a council of ministers from north and south of the border to promote cross-border policy making. In December 1999 the internal government of Northern Ireland was passed from London to the Assembly. At the same time a governing executive composed of Unionist, "loyalist" and "nationalist" ministers took office. But in October 2002 the British government suspended the Assembly following claims that a Sinn Fein spy ring had been discovered in the Assembly building. The case against the alleged spies collapsed but it was not until 2007 that a new Assembly was elected.

The other islands

Britain is the mainland for some small nearby islands that are British but not part of the UK. The adjacent Isle of Man and Channel Islands are not actually parts of the UK. Although the people of these islands are British, the islands are self-governing "Crown dependencies." The Channel Island of Jersey issues its own versions of the British passport and British currency. It has a distinct legal system and its natives speak a French patois.

You might expect these islands to be an embarassment for a nation that often assumes the superiority of its ways. The social systems of some of the islands have been described as feudal.

On the Isle of Man, which has a population of 80,058, the local government was having law-breakers beaten long after the British government had decided that such punishments were barbaric. Homosexuality was illegal until a European Court of Human Rights Ruling and pressure from Britain forced a change in the law.

The Channel Islands were occupied by the Nazis in World War II. Some of the islanders collaborated with the occupying army by identifying Jewish neighbours and other islanders who resisted the occupation. This conflicts with the British conceit that while the French may have allowed in the German army and the Germans may have persecuted the Jews, such things could never have happened in Britain. Although you may never have needed a passport to visit, the special status of these islands has allowed the British to maintain their sense of themselves as unconquered and uncowed by the Nazi regime.

The tiny Channel island of Sark was, until 2008, Europe's last feudal state. It had had been governed under a feudal system since it was established 400 years ago when queen Elizabeth Tudor issued its "royal charter". The island’s governing chamber had been composed of 40 landowners and 12 elected deputies. But in April 2008 the British Privy Council approved legislation to replace this with an elected parliament of 28 in order to comply with the European human rights convention. However, the feudal offices of Seigneur and Seneschal remain. The first is an heredity "lord" who leases the island from Britain’s hereditary head of state and the latter the chief civil and criminal judge who also presides over the parliament. There is no divorce and women members of the parliament have to cover their heads.

The Isle of Man, despite its poor record, has agreed to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into its law. The Channel Islands have been exempted.

In January of 1998 the British government ordered an enquiry into the regulation of the banking systems in the islands. These allow companies registered there to avoid filing annual accounts or disclose their ownership. All of the islands are havens for businesses and individuals that want to avoid British taxes. They tailor their tax rates to help them do this. The Financial Times estimated in early 2000 that together with Bermuda and the Cayman Islands these dependencies cost Britain £1bn a year in tax revenue.

Jersey, with a population of 88,2000, has 11,800 working in financial services. It has 80 banks from 16 countries and 335 investment funds. Guernsey is similarly well provided with financial institutions. About 10% of the population work for them. Sark has a population of only 575 and no motor cars, but 23,000 businesses are registered there. One Sark resident has been registered as a director of 3,000 companies. The Isle of Man, which has population of 80,058, crams 1,781 banks, 192 insurance companies and 102 investment funds into its few square miles.

Local politicians sit on the boards of banks that they regulate. The islands' banks are also alleged to be much used for money-laundering. Drug dealers from Britain and Ireland are ferried by taxi from the airport in Manx, Isle of Man, to the island's discreet banks, carrying bags full of cash.

According to British press reports in June 2000 only pressure from the British government kept the Channel Islands and Isle of Man, together with the overseas territory of Gibraltar, off an OECD financial task force list of countries accused of failing to stem money flows from drug trafficking, embezzlement of international aid and other organised crime through their banking systems. Instead they were placed on a list of states whose actions were under surveillance. By March of 2002 the two Channel Islands had joined the Isle of Man in agreeing, in the words of the Financial Times, "to improve transparency and exchange of information providing rich nations did the same." In 2008 a European Union "white list" of financial centres which had what the Financial Times called "top quality anti-money laundering controls" omitted the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. Instead they were given an intermediate status allowing EU states to treat their standards as acceptable if they chose.

The Isle of Man now has tax information exchange agreements with Britain and Germany. Jersey has similar agreements with Britain and 10 other countries. And Guernsey and Britain also have a bilateral agreement. However, according to the Financial Times such agreements, which require a strong case to be made against the person under investigation, are little used.

Jersey, a prime holiday resort, also has a serious narcotics problem. The head of the island's Alcohol and Drugs Service estimates that out of a population of 85,000 there are 2,000 heroin users. However, the stress that Jersey puts on rehabilitation rather than punishment, means that the waiting time for detox programmes is only 48 hours.

Colonies & erstwhile colonies
A different kingdom
The national anthem

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