Letter: Now for the West Lothian Answers

Sir: In Andrew Marr's discussion of the devolution question (19 March), as in Robin Cook's recent remarks on the subject, the same automatic dismissal of the possibility of an English assembly appears. No counter-arguments are produced: Andrew Marr merely dubs it "Utopian".

I have an explanation for this absence of argument. To accept an English assembly would be for the first time to acknowledge the equality of Scotland, Wales, and England. It would be to throw off the last imperialist illusion.

I believe as a patriotic Englishman that an English assembly would be a revivifying proposal, which would have the same effect on Wales and Scotland without any danger of sliding into fascist nationalism, since a common valuing of the differences of each would emerge in this late historical admission of equality, this last surrender of old colonialism.

This both solves the West Lothian Question in the very best way and also gets rid of the British Empire at long last. It is that which is still a block to a true valuation and development of our English national culture. It would not break up the United Kingdom. On the contrary, the refusal to countenance equality is what would lead to its collapse.

Dr EDMOND WRIGHT

Cambridge