I’m perpetually incredulous that so few people are annoyed about the Norman Conquest. People who get apoplectic about EU regulations or health and safety legislation seem to view the wholesale theft of Saxon lands and murder of thousands as a quaint milestone in English history. The classic book 1066 And All That was written as humour. But there’s nothing funny about genocide and expropriation, even at the distance of a thousand years.
The Normans were an occupying force every bit as brutal as the Nazis in Europe. The euphemistically-named ‘Harrying of the North’ was ethnic cleansing on a grand scale, with up to 100,000 Saxons massacred. The entire governing class was killed or exiled. Ninety-five per cent of the indigenous population’s land was expropriated. Normans took over the church in England. They removed the limited rights for women that existed in Saxon society. Unlike the Romans with their aqueducts, viniculture and public health, the Normans just turned up and stole everything. Their only real legacy, apart from garlic and square churches, is the system of monarchy, aristocracy and landed estates which still weighs heavily on British society. Bloody Normans.
The idea of the ‘Norman Yoke’ ran deep in radical thought for much of our history. The medieval chronicler Orderic Vitalis first mentions the phrase: ‘And so the English groaned aloud for their lost liberty and plotted ceaselessly to find some way of shaking off a yoke that was so intolerable and unaccustomed.’
In the turbulence of the English civil wars, the idea of a Norman Yoke reemerges in the works of John Lilburne and Gerrard Winstanley. The Levellers in particular saw the monarchy and the ruling elite as the heirs to Norman theft and murder. The idea can be seen later in the works of Thomas Paine, and even Thomas Jefferson.
Walter Scott in Ivanhoe invented a Saxon rhyme which ran:
‘Norman saw on English oak,
On English neck a Norman yoke;
Norman spoon in English dish,
And England ruled as Normans wish’
Every painfully slow move towards democracy in Britain, from Magna Carta, to the Chartists, to the Reform Acts, to the Suffragettes, can be seen as a steady erosion of the Norman Yoke. At every stage, democracy has been won, not given, by political campaigners in the face of establishment opposition.
It’s worth remembering all this when we come to think about the government’s plans to introduce ‘Individual Voter Registration’. The plans may cause millions of people to drop off the electoral register. It is right to end the system of household registration, which is open to abuse and fraud. But the changes as conceived are more flawed than the problem they are intended to fix. A cynical person might even suspect that the government is not too bothered to see millions of voters, mostly young people, poor people, and people from ethnic minorities, drop out of our democracy. The Electoral Commission reckons it could be as high as 30 per cent in urban areas. Those groups are unlikely to vote for the Conservative party. When the community charge was introduced, hundreds of thousands of people disappeared from the register because they thought there was a link between the register and the new tax. Tory ministers back then didn’t seem overly concerned.
This morning, the political and constitutional reform select committee, chaired by Labour’s Graham Allen MP, called for the government to make it a criminal offence to fail to complete a voter registration form. It suggested the penalty could be phased out after five years once the new system had become established. Graham Allen has said: ‘Getting individuals to take responsibility for their own votes is the right thing to do, but it needs to be done in the right way. There are real risks in moving to a new system, not least that people with the right to vote could fall off the electoral roll in large numbers.’
There is a growing concern at Westminster that the government is about to perpetuate a colossal crime against democracy. Nick Clegg has said he will make sure it doesn’t happen, so we should be really worried.
No government owns our democracy; it belongs to all of us. Anything which undermines it, whether intentional or not, must be resisted. David Cameron’s ancestors stole our land – now he’s after our vote.
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Paul Richards is a former special adviser and writes a weekly column for Progress, Paul’s week in politics
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And lets not forget the 30 odd Norman families to whom the conquered nation was distributed and who were responsible for the savage repression. I would really love to do a project analysing the role and power their descendants play in todays Britain.
I might have written this myself. I’ve been banging on about what the Normans ever did for us for years. What they ever did for us was leave the intractable legacy of our (adopt an American accent here) cute little “British Class System”. That’s the one that Tories are always determined to re-instate/maintain (the natural order) and we on the other side have been equally determined to undermine and level. See David Crouch’s “The Normans” for a flavour of what Tory/Norman values really mean. Those 30 odd Norman families (some of them are very odd they’re so inbred) that Terry Molloy talks about are still pulling the strings behind the scenes. Instead of voting we’ll all be swearing oaths of fealty. See you all down the old strip farm!
One legacy of the Normans is Britain itself. Alex Salmond is best placed to remove the Norman yoke from Scotland’s neck, and possibly England’s too.
Oh, dear – if Paul Richards and the others cannot forgive the Normans (1000 years ago) what hope for the
Danes (Vikings) and the Italians (Romans). Talk about hold a grunge. Let go of it, Paul. Cameron’s the enemy because he’s a Tory not because his ancestors were Norman (not citation, given I notice).
Agree wholeheartedly with the first half. However I have no problem in folks being responsible for registering their own vote – it is their own vote after all. Want more people interested in politics and democracy give them some democracy. The next great democratic revolution will be direct democracy where the people can influence policy directly rather than relying on cloned bent party politicians. At a parish level at a county level and at a national level. It’s how I dream of a new English parliament.
If you actually knew your history instead of casting around to find someone to hold up to be blamed – you would know that many of the Saxons still held onto their lands and their titles.
It was the Normans’ that gave us Magna Carta and Habeas Corpus, and that idea that the people should not be taxed without having some representation – While French was the language of the court the English language eventually pushed it out of existence.
It was the mixing of the cultures in an island that created the unique English character and to try and dredge up a 1000 year old grudge makes you look as stupid as some of the rabid Scottish nationalists – but why should I be surprised? It was after all a Labour Government that seemed determined to wipe the history of England off the map, to label all that is uniquely English as British and to cosy up to the other home nations with a ‘aren’t you super and aren’t the English rotten?’ attitude.
I shall never forget Jack Straw, and others of his ilk with comments like ‘the English are not worth saving as a race, with their propensity for violence’ – and I shall never, ever forgive them: and idiotic commentators here with their ‘it’s the 30 families fault m’lud’ are equally pathetic. You are not interested in giving England even a modicum of self government you are merely attempting to score political points and most of the unimpressed will see straight through you.
“self government” , ‘revenai ‘ surely we are governed by global ecomomy,procurement of resources,border battles,humanitarian responsibilities and responses,attempts to maintain status at global peak achievement endeavour (space,atomic research,medical research,science/technologies etc etc ) National identity is surely well down the list in the modern world ? Tax collection and wealth distribution that runs society is after all ,in a democracy,
an administrative exersize not one which is primarily concerned with cultural identity ?
A healthy democracy depends on every adult having the right and the ability to vote.
Most people of voting age have a driving licence and/or a passport. The next logical step would be to set up what exists in most other European countries – a register of who is resident in each local authority area (linked to some kind of national database).
This could be linked to a national ID card (or not). For reasons I don’t fully understand – many liberals and lefties are vigourously opposed to the idea of ID cards (although I’m not sure if they drive without a licence or travel abroad without a passport …)
If we had a register of residents in each ward then there could be AUTOMATIC voter registration, which is to say that everyone eligible to vote would automatically be included on the electoral register, and would receive an individually addressed invitation to vote in every election.
I blame the LibDems and the NO2ID brigade for spreading paranoia about ID cards.
A smart ID card system could incorporate driving licences and facilitate travel within Europe (effectively replacing passports for most people).
A national register of residents could also be integrated with an opt-out system for donating organs. As I see it, the potential benefits are endless …
I understand the requirement of a passport/ID card to enter another country but not for the purpose of leaving this one. An opt-out system for donating organs would explain why I need a passport to leave the country I and my constituent parts belong to the ruling class of this state despite the abolition of slavery and the ownership of people some 200 years ago.
What did the various Germanic tribes , Angles, Saxons, Jutes etc, do to the Britons who controlled this land before their arrival? Under the Normans the Cornish language regained territory lost to English.
The Normans used a massive amount of Breton warriors in the conquest of England. Perhaps those Bretons saw it as a chance to regain THEIR LANDS lost to Saxons. Of note is that the Normans put a Breton, as Earl, in charge of Brythonic Cornwall.