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The deep roots of English centralism ... and localism

One of the key challenges for localists is that England has been a unitary country for a very long time.    Accounts vary, but it is widely accepted that King Athelstan was the overlord who first achieved the unification of England at the beginning of the tenth century.    Bits of territory later drifted off and then drifted back again but by the beginning of the eleventh century there was a definitive English state; a unified territory for William of Normandy to conquer.   Subsequent civil wars have produced division on political rather than territorial grounds. This is a challenge for localists because, while Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have some claim to differentiation within the UK, for a millennium England has been a single political unit where Cumbria   is notionally the same as   Cornwall   and Liverpudlians are theoretically indistinguishable from Londoners.     The foundation of England, having pre-dated the post-enlightenment penchent for written constitution
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The Localist's History of England

History is written by the victors, which is why much of our taught history is about the doings of the nation state, overseas battles and the politics of a few hundred square yards in Westminster.  When David Cameron stood behind his locked gates in Downing Street in September 2014 and said he had learned the lessons of the referendum for Scottish independence, irony hung in great swathes from the trees in St James Park and clouds of incredulity formed across the rest of the country.  It is not that the politics of the nation is not important; simply that it is not everything. Much of what accomplished in the public sphere is not accomplished in Westminster.  In fact, central government delivers little or nothing compared with the local people who daily serve their communities through local institutions and as individuals.  The true story of the nation, and its real future, lies with those people and institutions.  It is time we rewrote English history from the point of view of lo
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