October 2005 Quarterly Report

3 December 2005

In two general elections the British Declaration of Independence has made considerable progress with remarkably slender resources. We now have sitting MPs across the party divide, irrevocably committed to asserting British sovereignty and democracy by voting for the BDI Bill, and to reclaiming their own honour. They need our help to achieve a majority so they can reveal themselves and campaign on the issue.

Of course, we have made mistakes too and learned lessons for the future. A frank account is given in the Quarterly report below.

BDI is the only campaign, which goes right to the root of Britain's constitutional betrayal. Its work is done relentlessly and out of the glare of publicity. Please help. Good people have spent so much energy and money to no useful effect over so many years that it is hard not to become despondent. But the BDI is achievable, as we have shown in two elections - all of BDI's effort is concentrated on the only people with the power to deliver us, our MPs.

BDI pays no salaries or wages, none of your support and contribution will be wasted. It is 100% on target 100% of the time.

Thank you for your continued support.

Yours sincerely,

Lynn.

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BDI Quarterly Report October 2005

In my youth I was told that, in order to make democracy work, I had to 'demand honour of my MP' and hold him to account. His job was to hold the Executive (the Government) to account and the Executive holds the Civil Service, which runs the Country, to account.

We are embarked on that very task and I am grateful that there are so may of us united in this endeavour. Once we have given our MPs the strength to be Honourable again (rather than harried and bullied by technocrats as they now are), we will once again have a Sovereign Country under the Rule of Law, governed with the consent of the inalienable sovereigns – the People.

Having allowed the experiences of the election come into focus, I want to tell you of some of the dilemmas we faced, mistakes we made and to identify the areas where we need to direct our efforts in the next few years. I hope to prompt responses from fresh minds and so strengthen our campaign. Consequently, this first quarterly report is necessarily long. We will be sending quarterly reports electronically, charting the progress of the BDI, and probably send special communications in the run up to the next General Election. These reports will contain as much information as I am able to place in the public domain.

The BDI was developed and 'polished' over a considerable period – 1992 to 2000, and it proved such an effort to birth, for there first had to be a complete understanding of The British Constitution and how it was subverted, that we had little time to devote to considering the implementation of the strategy before the 2001 election, which was the first time the finished article was deployed in earnest.

I want to put on record my thanks for the wonderful contribution of the late Norris McWhirter during these years in particular – a man of outstanding honour and probity and the most meticulous man in the business. The Guinness Book of Records is never challenged and because of that same attention to detail, the BDI will not be either. It is my sadness that he will not see the bonfires set alight across the country from hilltop to hilltop in celebration at the resurgence of a British Parliament, as he longed to do.

We stand on the shoulders of giants!   

2001 Election

Power reverts to the electorate only at elections, so it is only then that politicians are in thrall to us and we can "demand honour of them'. The BDI is a very innocuous looking document, the principles of which ALL politicians always publicly acclaim. The idea was to call their bluff and invite them to commit in writing to those principles. Those politicians who had signed the BDI would campaign on the issue, promoting the BDI to the public on TV and the hustings, exposing those who refused to sign. Routinely, anti-British anti-democratic individuals stand on false platforms to get elected, but the BDI sorts the wheat from the chaff because it eliminates all the grey areas – you sign or you don't!

We believed it would come as a surprise to many people that some candidates standing for a seat in the Westminster Parliament refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of the People. The difficulty they would face in explaining why they would not sign was important. For the first time they would be responding to our positive agenda, giving our BDI candidates a huge electoral advantage.

We had not anticipated that it would come as a surprise to so many candidates that their party machines refused to allow them to sign the BDI (then SMD). So what we discovered in 2001 was that there are many honourable candidates and MPs from across the political spectrum, who are like hostages to their party machines. We aim to strengthen these Honourable Members so that they can behave in the way they wish and that we wish them to do.

Enoch Powell said that the British people only want two parties, and that this is healthy. When it counts – i.e. at General Elections, they vote en masse for one or other of the two main parties. At other times (when it does not count because there is no power involved – EU, Council, Assembly elections) they often register their discontent by voting for protest parties.

Our unique strategy allowed people to remain with their political allegiance but committed to the British Constitution. It was a direct challenge to those who have hijacked our parties and an intelligent attempt to recover them. It also cuts the extremist parties out of British politics – which is a positive and powerful achievement in itself. 

The party machines went into over-drive, exposing their true agenda by threatening candidates who were considering signing the BDI. For instance, we have copies of five emails sent to Conservative candidates: three from Francis Maude and two from Angela Browning. The 'Big Beasts' do not fear the 'truth', unless those saying it have the resources and status to command the attention of the British public. The BDI uses the candidates of the main parties to bring the issue onto the hustings and TV throughout the election, thus riding piggy-back on the resources of the main parties. So much can be done with few resources. Our enemies recognized the power of the BDI and did their utmost to nip it in the bud.

In 2001 we did not have the time or resources to appeal to the electorate to exert pressure on candidates to defy the party machines, which is a critical part of the BDI strategy. So we did what we could ourselves, concentrating on the candidates once they had been revealed. This left very little time before the election and the attention of candidates was focused on the election, so our positioning could not have been worse. 

Nevertheless, four people, £20,000 and very little time produced eight MP's in parliament. We forced several Fifth Columnists to reveal themselves and decided that we could not publicise those who had signed because they would have been deselected before the next election.

In terms of getting a majority in parliament to pass the BDI Bill, we failed, but we broke the ice and we have the thin end of the wedge firmly in place. One of our MP supporters offered to lay the Bill before parliament. As we did not command a majority it would have been a futile exercise, a failure. Perhaps we would have had a picture in The Times and you would have known their names, but that is not our objective. We refused the offer and marked the card of the person who wanted the BDI to fail! The BDI is not into gesture politics.

2001 – 2005

I regret to say that these were personally turbulent years, and we let the BDI ride.

2005 Election.

Every MP and candidate remembered getting the invitation to sign the BDI in 2001 – so while many of our friends remain hazy about it, on the field of play we have arrived!

In the run up to the 2005 election, we invested more money and developed a website with a 'canvassing facility' where the public could pledge their vote to candidates who had signed the BDI. We hoped that these numbers, which we regularly submitted to each candidate would exert pressure in those seats where the outcome was close, forcing them to sign.

But we had not left enough time or done enough work to make the existence of BDI sufficiently well known, so once again we could not muster the numbers to give even those candidates who had signed the confidence to canvass on the issue openly and obtain the electoral reward. We could not market the canvassing strategy widely enough for the numbers in each constituency to reach the critical point – 3,000. We had no 'fighting fund' available for advertising or other activities, and the TV Companies ensured we got no platform. High profile politicians and Members of the Upper House who supported us privately were not keen to be publicly associated in case we 'failed'.

Because the candidates are revealed by their parties only just before the election and time was short, we fell into the very same trap as in 2001. We could not get the attention either of candidates or the electorate in the numbers that are required. We did overcome a number of obstacles that we had encountered in 2001. For instance, we sent the invitations to sign the BDI to all MPs days before Blair prorogued parliament. Last time the Labour party waylaid most of the invitations at party collection points and did not pass them on. The Liberal party wrote to all its candidates advising them not to open the BDI envelopes. Obviously they were impressed by our argument and decided they could not risk their candidates, who believe themselves to be Liberal and Democratic, being impressed too. As one Lib Dem did sign the BDI – having mistakenly opened the envelope – from their point of view they were right to try to shut us up completely.

In 2005 therefore, we had only 1350 or so candidates to deal with after the election had been called, having dealt with the erstwhile MPs already. Partly because of this we succeeded in obtaining more signatures than in 2001 even though we lost some signatories who stood down, like John Wilkinson who has been a stalwart and deserves to go on record as such.          

Post 2005 General Election

We do not intend to repeat the 2001-2005 lack of progress. This means that we need to work consistently throughout this parliament.

We need to meet MPs and explain the BDI to them. To our horror, we have discovered that some of the brightest and most reliable of MPs do not understand it. They think that we are taking power over them whereas we are, in fact, furnishing them with power over the whips and party machines. We need to explain the political solution to the political problem. Others have been schooled by the parties to such an extent that they are effectively cloned functionaries. But if we win a critical number, the 'others' will follow unquestioningly those whom they perceive to be the winners. It MUST be us!  

We need to work quietly behind the scenes, guaranteeing confidentiality for those who sign. I am quite prepared to reveal those high profile 'anti-EU' campaigners who refuse to sign and thus compound our difficulties. We have a six year record now of maintaining confidentiality and protecting our friends. Perhaps we should start attacking our enemies more openly and thoroughly – no prisoners. If we attack, we must win. For too long those propounding our argument have been seen as losers.

So BDI Central is a Whips Office. When we have a critical number, we will reveal the names of the signatories to each other and, if we obtain a majority in this parliament, we will have the Bill presented to Parliament AND PASSED. Otherwise we must work to obtain enough signatories for our candidates to be able to campaign on the issue at the next election – calling the bluff of the anti-British, anti-democracy faction. If they do this, I know they will win.

In order to achieve this we need:

1.      Personal introductions to MPs. I need to see them all privately and for 15 minutes, preferably at Westminster.

2.      To be really effective we need three thousand pledged votes in every constituency. Mention the website to your friends and get them to pledge their votes. Sign up friends who are not on email themselves.

3.      Make sure your MP knows that you know about BDI and will support him enthusiastically if he signs – especially if he is not the candidate of your 'natural' party i.e. you would switch your vote. This is of enormous interest to politicians!

Lynn Riley 

www.bdicampaign.org