English Constitution Party to hold independence rally in York

Graham Moore, the leader of the fledgling English Constitution Party (ECP), said the British establishment “absolutely fears the English standing up” and calling for independence from the UK.

Registered in November 2021, the ECP began accepting members in February this year, and Moore said they already have “hundreds” of people signed up.

“We advocate for the voiding, not repeal but the voiding, of the Act of Union. That means that Scotland has complete control over its own nation, and England, we advocate, has an English parliament,” Moore said.

READ MORE: Majority of Labour and Tory voters in England back ending the Union, poll finds

The ECP claims that English common law grants people rights which the UK Government has taken away, with a campaign poster listing 19 such examples. This includes claims that the levying of income tax or VAT is “illegal”, and that English people have been robbed of their right to “remain silent” or their right to a jury.

The voiding of the Act of Union, Moore claims, would see these common law rights returned to the English people. He said it would give both England and Scotland a “clean slate”, with the Westminster parliament and its “London bubble” scrapped.

The party leader further said the ECP stood for “traditional libertarian conservative values – not Conservative with a big C but with a small c”.

“There’s not a problem with conservative values, just the Conservative Party”, he added.

Moore said the ECP considered hating English identity – something he claimed Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP could be guilty of – to be “very British”.

READ MORE: Lesley Riddoch: Is independence for England the next step after Brexit?

“The Soviet Union, the European Union, they’re no different to the British Union,” he went on. “In fact the British Union was the precursor to both of them. If you go back to the USSR you can see what they did, they took people’s nationalities and created this new nationality called Soviet.”

He claimed that putting a British identity over the top of English and Scottish ones was part of a “divide and rule” mentality.

“We consider the British establishment, the British parliament, the British civil service, to be the issue,” Moore said. “Scotland, Wales, England, Northern Ireland, we all get along, the problem is the divide and rule that has always been there from the British. That’s their signature, divide and rule.”

Campaigners wear 'Make England Great Again' hats at an event in London in 2021, before the ECP was founded

The ECP has organised a “Walk in York” on Saturday, August 27. It will start on the city’s Parliament Street at 1.30pm – something that reflects the party’s desire to see a new “light-touch” English parliament established in York.

The English independence march will then head to York’s Memorial Park for 2pm for the start of a two-hour rally.

Asked how many people were expected to attend, Moore said: “This is our first one so we are looking at hundreds.”

He said the idea of the march was “being well-received, especially in Yorkshire”.

The rally will also call for a rise in the UK state pension, which Moore said is so low that it leaves retirees with “absolutely nothing”.

He said: “People work all their lives, get to the end of their working life and they’re in the worst position. They’ve got no money and the British system is forcing them into poverty.

“I speak to people with disabilities who are pensioners et cetera and they’ve got nothing, absolutely nothing. We believe that’s wrong.”

The full UK state pension is currently set to £185.15 per week. The ECP are campaigning to have it raised to match the national living wage, which they say would mean putting it up to £380 per week.