The Wessex Regionalists is a minor English regionalist political party in the United Kingdom. It seeks a degree of legislative and administrative home rule for Wessex, an area in the south and south-west of England loosely based on the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the same name.
Lord Weymouth (who succeeded as The 7th Marquess of Bath in June 1992) was the first president of the party, later defecting to the Liberal Democrats[2] although in 1999 he was "still in touch" with the Wessex Regionalists.[7] Subsequent presidents have included the activist John Banks and the former architect Colin Bex.[8]
During the 2015 general election, Bex cast doubt on the official version of events of the 2001 September 11 attacks.[8] During the UK's 2016 referendum on membership of the European Union, the then-president Bex campaigned to leave.[10] He described immigration as a "peaceful invasion", describing "people from all over the world" as "infiltrating" national institutions.[10]Devizes candidate and party leader Jim Gunter, at a hustings shortly before the 2017 general election, advocated a second referendum and, if that were not possible, the "Norway option" of remaining in the single market.[11]
Ideology
Wessex as defined by the Wessex Regionalists
The party has been described as ethnoterritorial,[12] though an earlier study of regionalist and nationalist parties in Britain reached the opposite conclusion, saying that "For regionalism, the legitimacy of the state as a whole is not usually in question; the challenge is to its territorial organisation. This is in contrast to ethnic nationalism (for example, that advocated for Wales), which suggests that the state is not legitimate because it contains different nations."[13] Its platform is based on the creation of a devolved assembly for the region it defines as Wessex.[2] The party defines the counties of Berkshire, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire as being part of Wessex. Whilst this roughly corresponds to the South WestRegion, it also includes the Western counties of the South East Region, and excludes Cornwall, which it describes as being "the last of the Celtic areas to be incorporated into Wessex", and retaining its own identity, as well as a nationalist party, Mebyon Kernow.[14] The assembly has variously been described as having a rotating location in the style of the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot and as being based in Winchester, which had been the capital of the ancient kingdom of Wessex.[15][16] The assembly would take power from Parliament in Westminster rather than from local authorities.[16]
In light of UK government recognition of the Cornish people as a national minority under a European treaty, the party called for greater protection of local produce and what it described as the "Wessex dialect".[15] The party believes that the Wessex region has a distinct cultural identity, which it seeks to promote.[17] It defines this culture as including morris dancing, cider, and the works of various local writers.[2] The party was described in The Guardian as having a "nostalgia for pre–industrial revolution England".[2]
In 2010, party leader Colin Bex advocated a 100% tax rate on the top 10% of earners, with the revenue passed to parish councils.[2]
↑ Meguid, Bonnie M., Institutional Change as Strategy: The Role of Decentralization in Party Competition (2009). APSA 2009 Toronto Meeting Paper. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1450911
↑ Bennett, RJ, 'Regional movements in Britain: a review of aims and status', Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, Volume 3, Issue 1, pp 75-96 (1985)
↑ Xylas, Nick (7 May 2018). "Defining Wessex". Wessex Regionalists. Retrieved 25 July 2020.
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