Requests to the Library of the House of Commons to reveal the number of catholic members have always met with the response that no information is available.

Recently a Roman Catholic presenter on the Today programme was suddenly dropped to make way, it was said, for another named individual who had been performing competently in the United States.

Eightytwo MPs took it upon themselves to complain to the BBC about the removal of Ed Stourton whereupon he was reinstated not as a presenter but as a reporter. This was plainly a face-saving fudge.

These 82 MPs acted in concert and clearly constituted a common interest group. In this case that interest was the preservation of a catholic voice in a flagship opinion-forming BBC progamme. So we can surmise, with a degree of confidence, that there are at least 82 catholic MPS in the House of Commons. This raises three questions 1. Why is their presence covert? 2. Is it appropriate that the Pope should have such representation in the British House of Commons? 3. Is it important anyway?

Any operation that has to be covert is likely to be suspected of not being in the interests of those from whom it is concealed. Anybody who has any knowledge of British history will know that for centuries the Roman Catholic Church has nursed an ambition to recover the position of dominance from which it was toppled by King Henry VIII. They will also know that the experience the British have had of catholic dominance and their determination to hang on to it was not a happy one. These are good enough reasons for concealment.

Catholics will maintain that harking back for centuries is unhealthy. Times have changed they will say but have they? The reprehensible behaviour of catholic priests and friars actively involved in the slaughter of non-catholics in Croatia during World War II is well documented. They were overseen and directed by a much promoted Archbishop Stepinac, later Cardinal, who is apparently destined eventually for sainthood. The massacre which occurred in Rwanda was perpetrated by Catholics against Protestants. This aspect of the story is never mentioned. It is always represented as a conflict between Hutus and Tutsis which is true as far as it goes. Catholic priests were involved with the IRA giving comfort and absolution to bombers and murderers. Who knows what their involvement has been in the turbulent history of South America where they have been dominant since the incursions of Spain and Portugal in the 16^th century. Behaviour of the past continues into the present and cannot be ignored.

To answer the second question it is necessary to consider whether catholic MPs really do represent the Pope or not. Unfortunately they must. Whatever they may say they are bound in obedience to the Pope on pain of excommunication.

Catholics have always maintained that it is their beliefs which are discriminated against - essentially their religion. This has never been more than partially true. There was widespread opposition to the Papacy in mediaeval times. It surfaced first in England with John Wycliffe (1324-84) it continued with John Huss in Bohemia, with Martin Luther in Northern Germany and with Zwingli and John Calvin in Switzerland amongst others. There was opposition to priestly mystery and superstition but just as much, if not more, to the opulence, corruption and depravity of the Church. John Wycliffe maintained that priests were irrelevant that there was no need of an intermediary between man and his maker.

In England that opposition crystallized into rejection of an external authority. King Henry VIII insisted that there was only one sovereign in his realm. After a relapse into catholic savagery in the reign of Bloody Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth I returned to her father's line with some urgency as the Pope of the day had issued instructions that she should be assassinated, offering bounty in this world and the next for anybody who would carry out his wish. The issue became what it is today not a matter of religion but of allegiance.

If a choice had to be made between allegiance to the Crown or to the Pope which would it be? Would not preservation of his immortal soul be a powerful persuader for the catholic? So catholic MPs have a higher authority to whom they must answer and that authority is not their constituents or indeed within the United Kingdom.

If proof is needed we have had, in recent months, during the embryology debates proclamations by catholic Archbishops in both Scotland and England to the effect that catholic MPs were required to vote against the proposed legislation. Whether or not all such MPs obeyed the call is of less importance than that these clerics were brazen enough to make these instructions public and to take it for granted that they had the authority.

Does it matter? I suggest that it does particularly when political elites are actively engaged in organizing things in such a way that they no longer answer to their constituents even to the limited extent that once they did. In the post democratic era control by the people has become even more of a pretence. One individual politician may be rejected but another will be elected and that is good enough for the system to go its own sweet way.

If politicians have a covert common interest and there are enough of them anything is possible. There is already a body numerous enough to have a profound effect on voting if wielded effectively. There is nothing the population at large can do that is until they recognize the problem and dismiss the political elite which is still occasionally in their power.

Toleration by the political elite and its concealment of this catholic common interest has to be contrasted with its attitude to some other groups. There would appear to be no depths of chicanery to which the elite would not stoop to prevent the election of representatives from BNP or UKIP, whose only offence is an avowed intent to restore and preserve the freedom and integrity of the United Kingdom.

Parliament in Britain is no longer sovereign but it does still give legitimacy to law made elsewhere. If villains not only make the law but also enforce it who can sleep safely in his bed?