Flying the flag for an English voice

EVERY Wednesday at around 2.30pm Cyning Meadowcroft dutifully arrives outside the House of Commons in his dusty blue van. Within minutes the spirit of St George is invoked. A flurry of English flags are blowing in the shadow of the Churchill statue and a large placard proclaims the Englishman's personal crusade: ''A Parliament for England!''

The 34-year-old carpenter from deepest Buckinghamshire is the founding president of the two-year-old English Parliament Movement (EPM).

He has been making the hour-long journey down the M40 for the past year and his devotion to the cause is reminiscent of the zeal of those Scots who kept vigil day after day, month after month from an unassuming cabin on Edinburgh's Calton Hill.

Mr Meadowcroft's aspiration is that enough politicians filing past him to get to the weekly Prime Minister's Questions will consciously, or even subconsciously, take in his devolutionary message and act.

But a year after the Scottish Parliamentary elections, Mr Meadowcroft believes the ''sleeping giant of English consciousness'' is beginning to stir from its slumber. ''Interest is snowballing,'' asserts the father-of-three confidently. ''The current constitutional structure hides the clear and evident fact that England now needs its own Parliament.

''We don't have a clear body of people who look after England the way the Scots and the Welsh have.

''The culture is there and the history is there. It's an insult to the memory of the men and women who died for their country and helped give democracy to much of the world that while everybody else is getting democracy, it's being denied England. It's utterly wrong,'' he insists.

Mr Meadowcroft feels that the EPM - now with a membership of 100 plus and rising - is gaining ground and might even spawn its own political party in the run-up to the General Election.

The aim would be to take votes from the Tories in a bid to spur them into strengthening their stance on a Parliament for England.

The EPM leader has given up on Tony Blair, whom he believes is intent on fracturing English nationalism into English regionalism and selling the nation for a few euros to the bankers of Frankfurt.

Some might regard Mr Meadowcroft ( original Christian name Roy but he changed it to the Anglo Saxon handle of Cyning) as a prime specimen of what England produces so well - the loveable eccentric. But his voice is not a lone one and Parliament is, of course, well-stocked with lovable eccentrics.

Prior to the devolution referendums, it was estimated only a handful of non-Liberal Democrat federalist MPs believed in an English Parliament. There are now said to be as many as 60 who support the idea.

One respected advocate, Tony Worthington, the Labour MP for Clydebank and Milngavie, said earlier this year that a Parliament for the English was now ''inevitable'' and needed to be realised to stem the rise of ''ugly nationalism'' among the English.

Officially, the Tories are opposed to an English Parliament, believing it would simply overshadow the Parliaments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and so undermine the Union.

William Hague said recently: ''Once a part of a united country or kingdom that is so predominant in size becomes nationalistic, then really the whole thing is under threat.'' He prefers a simple ban on Scots, Welsh, and Irish MPs voting on exclusively English matters at Westminster.

However, there are other Conservatives who feel that the West Lothian Question must be answered.

Former Tory Home Secretary Michael Howard described the current constitutional settlement as ''absolutely intolerable'' and ''fundamentally anti-English''. (He's Welsh by the way.)

Another former Tory Home Secretary (and Welshman by birth) Kenneth Baker went a bit further, declaring: ''The reality is that the Union we have known for 300 years is over.'' He argued that the only real solution now was for the establishment of an English Parliament.

Only last month, the ex-Conservative Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath said Scottish MPs being able to vote on purely English matters was untenable and concluded: ''I think we should go into an English Parliament.''

Labour's answer to appease the sleeping giant is the creation of an English Grand Committee, in which only English MPs will debate purely English matters. MPs passed the move but it has been labelled ''a puppet Committee with an in-built Government majority''.

The Blair plan will effectively be an Englander's talking shop, where they will be able to let off steam but decide nothing: a sop.

However, underpinning all this muted talk of an English Parliament is the fundamental question - do the English care about having their own Parliament?

The answer is, of course, no. Perhaps, the English feel that they already have their own Parliament at Westminster, where the vast bulk of business is already Anglocentric. Doubtless tomorrow there will be a few people proudly wearing red roses, eating roast beef and conjuring up images of Laurence Olivier reciting the famous ''St Crispian's Day'' speech from Henry V. But by and large the spirit of John Bull does not stalk the streets of England just yet.

One circumstance that could push it rapidly up the political agenda is that following the next General Election, the Labour majority is mathematically based on the MPs it has in Scotland and Wales.

If the Tories were to have the majority in England but see Mr Blair getting his Bills through on the back of the Celts, then the currently muted row over the English Question would become deafening.

The phrase ''democratic deficit'' would be resurrected - but this time the oppressed majority would be the English.