ELIZABETH Norton raised a question crucial to our future when she queried the concept of English nationality in the face of threatened regionalism (Citizen: July1).

We have been told that this will bring democracy closer to the people. But as the letter "One rule for One' (Citizen: July 15) indicates this is a move towards completing the bureaucratic web of centralized government in Brussels through a policy of divide and rule. It is intended that all serious decisions will be made there as the national state will be superseded. Consequently our Parliament will be side-lined by this and will reduce to the status of a county council since the intended regions will have direct lines to Brussels as they fight among themselves for subsidies. These payouts will be termed European though they will of course, as now, actually be provided by the British tax-payer since Britain contributes some £8 billion gross and £3 billion net each year. We accept the Scots, Welsh and Irish show pride in their birth; we acknowledge that the French, Argentines etc are proud nations but, by a process of double standards, we have been led to accept automatically by the assumption by our glitteratti that if the English show such feelings we are guilty of xenophobia. In 1940 George Orwell attacked this English self-inflicted self-deprecation when he wrote: "England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality" - The Lion and the Unicorn. Typically it took an Irishman to tell us to snap out of this abject reticence. The historian Colin Toibin said to his English audience "Their pride (that of the French) is wonderful. Why don't you start some of the pride around here. It would be good for you all." - Jeremy Paxman's Start the Week, Radio Four, July 5. Of course with regionalism we would be adding yet another level of costly bureaucracy to government. We have seen in the Citizen how bureaucracy at the local level can result in most untoward matters, while that of a distant centralized Europe has been shown to be corrupt. Westminster represents English needs as a whole and is monitored by select committees and personal MPs while always in the media spotlight. Nonetheless, even within Westminster there has been a process of deception undermining our Englishness and our democracy over many years. Remember Lord Thorneycroft's chilling Orwellian statement in the '60s concerning the insidious process of drawing us deeper into the European bureaucracy when he wrote to Macmillan, "The British people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences - not asked."

F Warren,

Newlands Rd,

Lancs

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