The strategy was soon undermined. The IRA (Irish Republican Army) launched a war without any authorisation from the Dáil, while the British broughtin brutalirregulars who acted as terror squads.The death toll mounted on both sides. Once more Lloyd George tried to reach a settlement, again seeking to square the circle by ruling in a United Ireland while ruling out any coercion of the six counties to accept it. The Government of Ireland Act in 1920 devised two Home Rule Parliaments, one based in Dublin and the other in Belfast, together with reduced representation in the Westminster Parliament and a Council of Ireland drawn from the two parliaments to reflect the unity of Ireland. Sinn Fein refused to accept the Southern Parliament, while the Ulster Unionists rejected the Council of Ireland but accepted their own Parliament. Ironically, this meant that the one regional level of government in the UK after 1921 was the Unionist-dominated Northern Ireland Parliament.

There was a similar lack of progress in the Empire. In India a few provincial constitutions and much-trumpeted elections did not dent the power of the viceroy or the India office in London, while 1919 saw the bloody massacre at Amritsar where General Dyer oversaw the killing of nearly 400 members of an unarmed crowd. Perhaps because of the brutalising effect of four years of warfare, the excesses being displayed in Ireland seemed to be replicated elsewhere and with the same results. From that point nothing short of independence was acceptable. The India National Congress launched a campaign of civil disobedience in order to secure it.13

Home Rule All Round therefore took off neither in the Empire nor in the United Kingdom. Where the Isles were concerned, the creation of the Irish Free State in 1921 after two years of violent conflict suggested that it was impossible to concede anything less than almost total independence.When a settlement was finally reached, the Republic achieved Dominion status on a par with Canada, meaning that it could move towards full independence if it chose (which it eventually did). It had far more independence than the early home rulers had ever dreamed of, amounting to complete autonomy in finance, justice, administration and education. But in order to secure this it had had to

13 It should also be noted that India suffered disproportionately from the influenza outbreak of 1918, which accounted for over ten million deaths in the country, more than any other country.

give up the six counties, over the future of which a bloody civil war was fought in 1922–3. In 1925 the Council of Ireland that was meant to represent the whole island was formally abolished.

Hence the one instance of home rule to emerge from the events of the early twentieth century was the Northern Ireland Parliament – and it was hardly a good instance, since it was accused of using its powers to rig constituencies, create a police force that was not representative of both communities and tolerate discrimination against the Catholic minority (which made up one-third of the population of the six counties) in housing and employment allocations. Home Rule All Round had ended up as Home Rule in One Place Only, the results of which were to generate protests and later violence in the North for thirty years in the second half of the century.

Unsurprisingly, many concluded that whether it was Ireland or India, the nation state appeared to be the only kid on the block. Solutions in terms of increased autonomy, however defined, were a useless halfway house between regional status and full independence. Support for a wider federal settlement for the two islands that after 1922 made up the UK and the Irish Free State started to fade. This did not mean that interest in more autonomy went away. A petition asking for Home Rule for Scotland, for instance, presented to Parliament in 1949, was signed by some two million Scots (perhaps 40% of the population at that time). However, the so-called Scottish Covenant provoked little reaction in Westminster.14 The halfway house between independence and regional or provincial status seemed unable to provide a viable option. At the time of the Scottish Covenant a Labour government elected after the Second World War was increasingly aware of the fact that nothing short of independence could follow the Empire. British India had just collapsed into different independent nations (more were to follow), with over a million dead.  Nevertheless, it seemed clear that the only option for the future was the jostling pack of independent nation-states, the Hobbesian 'state of nature' transposed to the international realm as outlined earlier in this book.

Hence the development of a sovereignty-sharing system between member states of European Coal and Steel Community and later the European Economic Community did little to make the UK rethink the structure of its own in-

14 See Jack Brand, *The National Movement in Scotland,* originally published in 1978 but re-issued in 2021.

ternal union. As earlier chapters suggested, it was hostile to a system in which sovereignty was shared and did not think that there were lessons to be learned from it. Hence when in the 1970s, shortly after it had joined the EEC, the UK government began to interest itself in forms of devolution for Scotland and Wales, it did not for a moment consider the way power was shared between the UK, France, West Germany and the other countries in what by 1973 was the nine members of the EEC as a springboard for developing new approaches to power-sharing within the UK.

#### **Devolution**

One of the reasons why new approaches to power-sharing within the UK failed to connect with those outside it in the newly formed EEC was that the pioneers of such approaches were deeply hostile to the EEC. The 'original manifesto', as McBride calls it, for a 'four nations' approach to the future of the UK came from a New Zealander, J.G.A Pocock, whose 'British History: A Plea for a New Subject', was first published in 1975. As McBride explains:

The 'Plea for a New Subject' was occasioned by the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) in January 1973 and the consequent demise of the system of imperial trade preference that discriminated in favour of British producers—even if the British in question lived on the other side of the planet.15

The impact of the Common Agricultural Policy on Commonwealth producers was a hotly debated topic at the time of Britain's entry to the EEC. Since the basis of the CAP was to support farmers through a guaranteed floor price together with a common external tariff to prevent that guaranteed minimum price being undercut by cheap imports,joining the EEC would effectively mean making the UK buy more expensive food from Europe rather than cheaper food from the Commonwealth. To those with memories of Empire Free Trade this went against a tradition reaching back nearly a century, where the aim was that Britain's manufacturing exports were received at a discount by her Empire and in return food from the Empire was receivedmore cheaply by the 'mother country'.The economic model upon which this system was based was always a con-

15 McBride, Ian 'J.G.A. Pocock and the Politics of British History,' in Lloyd-Jones & Scull, *Four Nations Approaches to Modern British History: A (Dis)united Kingdom?* p. 40.

troversial one and never fully implemented, since it threatened to discourage industrial development in the Empire outside the UK. But as McBride makes clear, the system could still exert a romantic appeal:

Emotional ties between New Zealand and Britain were strengthened by the islands' unique reliance on the export trade with Britain. Hundreds of thousands of tons of refrigerated mutton and dairy products were sent to Britain annually by steamship. In return, ships from Britain carried books, newspapers and mail to the dominions. More than ever before, the dominions were cultural provinces of London, co-owners—not mere subjects—of the world's largest empire.16

Pocock's concerns about the future of the United Kingdom were therefore tied up with his own sense of being 'British' as a New Zealander. The very fact that Pocock derived so much of his own sense of identity from Britain would now be seen as a failure to appreciate a culture that the settlers had undermined and that deserved to be part of a distinct identity formed in the South Pacific. But one can still see how his desire to untie the complex intricacies of 'Great Britain' might be linked to his awareness of an unravelling 'Greater Britain' that included the former dominions.The last thing he was likely to turn to was the sovereignty-sharing system that had come between his own country and Britain and was upsetting the model upon which trade between the two had been based for decades.

In any case, though the first years of UK membership of the EEC coincided with a new interest in some new kind of 'Home Rule All Round', now described as devolution, the interest produced no concrete results. In the 1970s a Labour government held referenda in both Scotland and Wales on the issue. Wales voted overwhelmingly 'no' (by about 4 to 1) while Scotland was deemed to have voted underwhelmingly 'yes'. The establishment of what was called a Scottish Assembly would only be granted if at least 40% of the electorate voted for it and the numbers failed to reach this figure.17 Resentment over this condition, which was seen as an attempt to stymie the assembly by Labour MPs hostile to devolution, contributed to the Labour government's failure to survive a vote of confidence in 1979 and its consequent loss of power to Conservative governments for eighteen years.

16 Lloyd-Jones & Scull, *Four Nations Approaches to Modern British History: A (Dis)united Kingdom?* p. 41.

17 Bogdanor, *Beyond Brexit,* pp. 104–105.

'Four nation' approaches really took off in the 1990s, in writers like Linda Colley, Norman Davies and Tom Nairn, who were particularly conscious not only of the growth in calls for devolution within the UK itself but also of the dangers of states in the process of decomposition. The 1990s was a time when people were conscious of five wars in the former Yugoslavia, causing tens of thousands of deaths and undermining the complacent boast that Europe since the war had seen half a century of peace. Yet though these writers were wary of Pocock's ideas about the detrimental effects of the 'Europeanisation' of Great Britain upon its former dominions, they did not always differ from him in failing to see a positive development in the move towards sovereignty-sharing in Europe's divided continent.

A further – and this time successful – attempt at devolution was made when Labour returned to power at the end of the twentieth century.There were clear political reasons for doing so.The party was highly dependent on votes in Scotland and Wales, which supplied between a fifth and a quarter of its MPs, to sustain Labour in government. It would be very difficult for it to secure a majority based on English votes alone**.**The failure to make something of Home Rule All Round had been a catastrophe for the Liberals at the beginning of the century. Irish independence meant that 80 Irish MPs who had generally supported the Liberals in Parliament were replaced by a dozen or so MPs from Northern Ireland who supported the Conservatives.The Liberals were never to return to power again (unless one counts the Liberal Democrat-Conservative Coalition government of 2010–2015).18 Labour was afraid of the same thing happening to its own support, and it was right to be concerned. The rise of the Scottish National Party has had an enormous impact on the Labour Party's hopes of returning to power – unless in coalition with nationalist parties – after more than a decade in opposition.

In the new referenda at the end of the last century both Scotland and Wales voted in favour of devolution, though only by a whisker in the case of Wales. From 1999 some form of Home Rule was therefore established in both countries. Scotland received a parliament under the 'reserved powers' model, with legislative powers over all matters that were not reserved to Westminster.

18 Professor Vernon Bogdanor's lecture on 'The Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats', part of a series of Political History Lectures given at Gresham College, London in 2017. It gives a very good account of the traumatic history of the party, although since 2017 there have been some modest signs of revival that might have tempered Bogdanor's rather pessimistic account. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44ir\_D\_hD-M

Wales at first received an 'assembly' rather than a parliament, with powers over a prescribed range of policies, the 'defined powers' model, though it was later 'upgraded' to a parliament (*Senedd*) in 2020, while the 'executives' in both Scotland and Wales became recognised as 'governments.' By way of contrast, a special form of devolution through an 'Assembly' and 'Executive' was created in Northern Ireland as part of the Good Friday agreement in 1998, avoiding terms like 'parliament' and 'government' which might suggest that Northern Ireland was moving towards the status of sovereign state, something resisted for different reasons by both nationalists and unionists.19

Has devolution been a success this time round? In one sense, no. It has certainly not silenced those who would prefer full independence. If anything, support for full independence has grown. In Scotland it led to a referendum in 2014 when nearly half the population (45%) voted for independence. Opinion now appears to be evenly divided. Support for independence in Wales is less but has been growing, amounting to perhaps 20–25% of the population, (a poll in March 2021 put it as high as 40%, but was perhaps an outlier – Dafydd Trystan20 has suggested increasing numbers of people who are 'Indycurious' (!) rather than outright supporters of independence) – while in the different situation of Northern Ireland support for reunification with the South has also grown.21 It is currently favoured by around 40% of the population in Northern Ireland. It should always be borne in mind that more Catholics in Northern

21 Bogdanor, *Beyond Brexit,* p. 237. Bogdanor argues that though Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that could rejoin the EU without having to re-negotiate entry, even

19 See Davies, John *A History of Wales*, pp. 673–685 for an account of the arrival of the assembly and its first years of existence (up to 2005). For an interesting account of the ups and downs of the assembly in the first two decades of its existence, see former first minister Rhodri Morgan's *Rhodri: A Political Life in Wales and Westminster*, chapters 6–10. The book was almost completed when he died in 2017. For the last five years there is a shortage of in-depth analysis so far, but the Institute for Government provides a useful short account of how the powers of the devolved body have changed over time. See https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/explainer/senedd-cymru-wel sh-parliament. There is a very good research briefing of 30th January 2023 produced by David Torrance for the House of Commons Library. It is called 'Devolution in Wales: A Process, not an Event' See https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents /CBP-8318/CBP-8318.pdf

20 Trystan, Dafydd. 'Indycurious and Curiouser: New Poll shows Support for Welsh Independence on the Rise'. The poll was in 2019. Welsh independence movements are associated with a much higher level of support for European integration than their counterparts in Scotland, a view reflected in the keen Europeanism of *Plaid Cymru.*

Ireland are opposed to unification than Protestants favour it, so a simple headcount of the different religious communities will not give you a precise view of how likely it is the North will vote for independence. Brexit may well increase the proportion of Catholics favouring a united Ireland.

However, it would be unreasonable to pronounce devolution a failure on this basis. It has certainly increased its popularity in Wales since the very limited support it received in 1999.The granting of additional powers in the generation since it was first introduced suggests that it is something of which people in Wales and Scotland (though not necessarily, as we shall see, Northern Ireland) want more, even though some insist that nothing short of full independence will do. The possibility of developing a system that satisfies all the nations of the UK without dismantling the UK should not be ruled out.

#### **The English 'problem'**

One point that must not be forgotten is that devolution is a matter for England as well as for the other nations. What is often missing from considerations of devolution is an awareness of the level of support on the part of the English for what Gavin Esler called in a recent book the 'end of Britain.'22 What polls there have been on support for Scottish independence, for instance, suggest that opinion in England on the issue is roughly split down the middle. Hence the end of the Union with Scotland is supported by about half the Scots and half the English. This may not be a majority and the general view may be one of indifference – Lord Ashcroft found in 2019 that about 40% of people cared about what happened in Northern Ireland while 40% didn't.23 In the same year another survey showed 20% in favour of Scottish independence and 40% against, with 40% indifferent.24 In England the level of indifference towards or even

in 2018, after the Brexit vote, polls showed that a minority in Northern Ireland favoured reunification – in the poll he quotes, a minority even of Roman Catholics.

22 Esler, Gavin *How Britain Ends: English nationalism and the Rebirth of Four Nations.*

23 Ashcroft, Lord 'England and the Union', Lord Ashcroft Polls.

24 It has to be borne in mind that in England there is a strong perception that the other parts of the UK are 'subsidised' at England's expense. This perception, whether right or wrong, leads many to adopt a 'we'd be better off without them' attitude. Lord Ashcroft makes this point in one of his many useful polling surveys. See https://lordashcroftpo lls.com/2019/10/england-and-the-union/

support for the other 'nations' breaking away from the UK is far higher than it is in the equivalent majority parts of Canada or Spain.

It is not only 'English nationalists,' or those convinced that without the other nations England would be richer, who support the end of the Union. Some who certainly couldn't be called 'right-wing nationalists' seem to think that being on its own could be a wake-up call to bring England to its senses as a post-imperial medium-sized European state. Such a view has been put forward, for instance, by Professor David Edgerton in a podcast broadcast in April 2021,25 even though in *The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History* he made much of the idea that the post-war generation's emphasis upon planning and a strong welfare state had intensified a sense of social citizenship at the UK level, since all parts benefited from the investment and welfare provision on offer.This view would have to be reconciled with Keating's point that a growth in support for self-government has been associated with good times while depressions increased dependence upon the centre.26 One could also suggest that the last quarter of the twentieth century, when rightwing UK governments under Thatcher and Major tended to prefer the idea of the welfare state as a safety net for the poor to the idea of its expressing a clear sense of social citizenship, was a time when that central planning could be maintained only by being transferred to countries – like an independent Scotland – which were intent upon preserving it to its full extent. In any case Edgerton's suggestion in his podcast seemed to be a different one (if just as questionable), namely that cutting out Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland might help to cut England down to size and enable it to feel at ease with itself.

One reason why it is difficult to think of the UK as a 'multi-national state' is that England is so much bigger than the other three parts of it (five-sixths of the UK population live in England). Vernon Bogdanor points to the situation in Canada as the 'nearest equivalent' where about 40% of the population live in Ontario.279 The much greater size of England's population has meant attention is often focused upon how to give extra powers less to the whole country than to parts of England, perhaps through regional assemblies, each of which might

25 https://euromovescotland.org.uk/podcast/brexit-ideology-and-the-decline-of-the-br itish-state/

26 See Keating, Michael *The Independence of Scotland: Self-Government and the Shifting Politics of Union*.

27 Bogdanor, Vernon *Beyond Brexit: Towards a British Constitution*, p. 185.

be considered roughly the same size as the other three non-English nations.28 Progress in this direction has been mixed. In 2004 a proposal for a regional assembly in North-East England was rejected overwhelmingly (by almost 4:1 on a turnout just short of 50%).29 Some people said that the proposal to have the assembly's headquarters in Newcastle alienated other cities in the North-East, but even in Newcastle the vote was 2:1 against. Behind the rejection was a perception that it lacked real powers, in which case it would only add another layer of taxpayer-funded bureaucracy to the administration of the area.

Much more successful has been the creation of 'metro-mayors' by the Conservative government elected in 2015 (with shades of the old metropolitan county councils abolished by the Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher in 1986, and which in turn had been created by a Conservative government led by Edward Heath in the early 1970s – Conservative governments are rarely sure how much power they wish to allow local councils in England). Combined local authorities agreed to a directly elected mayor who would have substantial new powers in certain parts of the country. The metro mayors, like the mayor of London, have managed to raise their profiles, often leading the way in insisting that their areas had special needs (or that their needs had been neglected) during the coronavirus pandemic. They do not have the taxation or legislative powers of the nations outside England in the UK. However, some metro mayors have been able to convince voters that they have a strategic role in bringing together an area (a 'city region' such as Greater London or Greater Manchester) which has not been sufficiently recognised in the past.

Moreover, they raise important economic questions about the distribution of wealth and inequality within England itself which has sometimes led to talk of 'internal colonialism.' Though this charge has traditionally been levelled at the treatment of the nations outside England (for instance in Michael Hechter's revealingly titled *Internal Colonialism. The Celtic Fringe in British National Development 1536–1966*), written in the 1970s as the first moves towards devolution were being taken, one could also consider how far 'internal colonialism' applied within England itself, dominated as it is by the capital and its sprawling home county surroundings. In terms of broad economic strategy,

28 Bogdanor points out that the new metro-mayors introduced mostly in May 2017 made this a more plausible option. See *Beyond Brexit*, pp. 204–206.

29 As Bogdanor points out, this was despite the Labour Party being in favour of the assembly and despite the fact that Labour was the dominant party in the North-East. See Bogdanor, *Beyond Brexit,* p. 106.

there were certainly efforts at both the national and European levels to deal with regional disparities. UK plans included English regions as well as what are now the devolved nations, but there was also growing attention to regional disparities within the EEC (European Economic Community) and later the EU. When in the early 1970s Edward Heath's Conservative government led the UK into the EEC, he laid particular stress upon the need to support what came to be called 'cohesion' policies, addressing the needs of poorer regions with EEC funds (matched funding by national governments was necessary).30

By the 1990s centrally directed planning had fallen out of favour in the UK, and regional development was devolved with all the emphasis on local initiatives and competition for investment from overseas. EU regional policy, on the other hand, continued and two regions within the UK came to be particular beneficiaries of EU regional support. One was the West of Wales, but the other, Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, was at the South-Western tip of England. UK governments remained unwilling to embrace cohesion funds, seeing them as another bad example of central planning – despite the fact that the EU sought desperately to involve regional bodies in decision-making on the funding, often to come up against resistance from national governments, especially in highly centralised member-states like the UK. In the end the main beneficiary of such funds in England, Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, voted heavily for Brexit, partly because UK governments, determined always to focus on the money that was going *to* Brussels rather than the money that was coming *from* it, did very little to explain where the funding was coming from (and did their best to hide the plaques which recorded EU involvement and spending).31 Meanwhile over the last decade a number of dinky little high-profile schemes with names like 'city deals' have reflected attempts to raise the profile of central government initiatives both in the regions and the devolved nations, but the amounts involved have been very small. The key point is that regional disparities inside

30 Heath left the details to be worked out after the UK became a member. As Duff points out, Heath remained 'optimistic that once inside the Community the UK could begin to effect much-needed reform.' Duff, *Britain and the Puzzle of the European Union*, p. 26. But soon after UK accession he was out of power in the UK. Hence it was the new Labour government that in December 1974 reached agreement on the shape and size of the regional development fund (Duff, p. 31).

31 That said, there were numerous high-profile characters who recognised the importance of EU funding. This is a YouTube video of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver thanking the European Regional Development Fund for help in training young people as chefs in Cornwall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgJAY106oz4

the UK remain – the OECD ranks it as having the highest territorial disparities among its member states.

What seems clear is that people have a greater sense of belonging where the city regions are concerned than they do in the case of wider geographical regions. 'I'm from the North-East' means much less than I'm from Newcastle' or 'I'm from Tyneside.' If there isn't a sense of belonging or at least something similar to the national feeling that motivates people in Wales and Scotland to call for more powers, then administrative reorganisation may bring benefits but is unlikely to excite passions. Many people have heard of the old saying: 'You can take the boy out of Liverpool, but you can't take Liverpool out of the boy.' It is more difficult to imagine someone saying: 'You can take the girl out of the North-West region, but you can't take the North-West region out of the girl.'

What one can conclude from thisis thatitmight not beimpossible to divide England into regional blocs of some kind, some of which might be of roughly the same size as Scotland or Wales (London, of course, would be much bigger, but there are issues there over how London should be defined.)32 Regional parliaments would then presumably be put together with the parliaments from the devolved nations. That would avoid the need to create an English Parliament which might look too much like a replication of the Westminster Parliament.

So far little has been done to bring together the devolved nations and the regions, although there has been some talk of the Upper House (House of Lords) being reformed in this direction. Instead, what has been attempted is a policy of giving English MPs a separate identity within the Westminster Parliament. The focus has been on the so-called EVEL principle (English votes for English Laws) where English MPs could accept or veto legislation affecting their constituents before it passed to a third reading, its final Commons stage, at which point it would be voted on by the whole House.33 Introduced by a newly-elected Conservative government in October 2015, EVEL was finally abandoned by another Conservative government in July 2021 – arguably a testimony to how illthought out the proposal was.

32 Vernon Bogdanor provides a wonderful summary of this impossibly tangled issue in one of his Gresham College lectures. See https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/futu re-london-government-mayor-and-london-boroughs

33 See Bogdanor, *Beyond Brexit*, pp. 203–204, where he explains how EVEL worked and some of its drawbacks.

Not the least of its problems was the difficulty of knowing which piece of legislation applied to England (or in some cases England and Wales, and in a few cases England,Wales and Northern Ireland) alone. At first sightit shouldn't have been too difficult.The issue first became controversial after a vote in 2004 over the issue of university top-up fees. These were only to apply to students in England, and yet the imposition of such fees was carried very narrowly (by five votes) in the House of Commons. It was clear that the support of Scottish Labour MPs had been enough to ensure that the bill was passed, and yet the bill would not apply North of the border, where the devolved Scottish Parliament had decided against such fees.Unsurprisingly, the reaction was to feel that this was an injustice that could only be righted if there was some mechanism by which only MPs representing English constituencies could vote on matters affecting England alone. At the same time the increase in powers for the Welsh *Senedd* and Scottish Parliament made it likely that there would be more and more issues which the devolved Parliaments would be dealing with. The more powers that were devolved, the more the 100 or so MPs in the Commons representing constituencies outside England would be dealing with matters that related only to England.34

There were several problems with EVEL. There was the question of identifying what was to be considered England-only legislation, a task which was assigned to the Speaker. The decision might have seemed straightforward, but apparently England-only legislation could have knock-on effects for other parts of the UK. For instance, some argued that according to the so-called Barnett formula, levels of spending on services like health and education in the devolved regions depended upon the levels in England. Therefore, a measure which had the effect of raising or lowering health or education spending in England would not be entirely an England-only matter, since it would affect the overall level of health spending in Scotland and Wales. This argument was used to suggest that in practical terms it was far more difficult to isolate 'England-only' issues than it might seem to be.

A second problem was that EVEL was in practice more an English veto than an English voice. It gave English MPs the right to stop legislation but hardly provided a forum within which they could discuss 'English issues.'

34 Keating suggests that EVEL arose because the UK Prime Minister David Cameron, having promised more powers for Scotland at the time of the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, had to promise 'something to England to compensate for the attention given to Scotland,' Keating, *State and Nation in the United Kingdom,* p. 84.

There wasn't even an English Affairs Committee in Westminster to match the Scottish Grand Committee. English MPs could pile in to stop something being passed but they didn't develop a sense of what 'English concerns' were. They didn't even have 'English-only days' in Parliament.The obvious reason for this lay in the fact that there was no English Parliament to match the Scottish Parliament or theWelsh *Senedd*. English concerns were effectively being tacked on to a body whose primary purpose was to consider the interests of the UK as a whole. One of the most effective criticisms of EVEL was that it would create two classes of MP, those representing English constituencies and those representing other constituencies who would be half-in and half-out of the law-making process. This was inevitable if there was an attempt to create an English Parliament inside the Westminster Parliament rather than separate from it.35

EVEL was condemned as a halfway house towards creating an English Parliament, or what the SNP MP Pete Wishart called a 'quasi-English parliament squat in the UK Parliament', a procedure that satisfied no one.36 It would have made more sense to have established a separate English Parliament somewhere in the middle of the country rather than at its south-eastern edge, a development which would certainly have helped to counter the accusations of 'London-centrism' which leads to the occasional decampment of broadcasters, civil servants and other public officials to other parts of the country. But there is little sign that MPs have thought seriously in these terms, not least because the one thing that would force a re-defining of the sovereignty of Westminster, even more than a reformed and therefore potentially much more powerful House of Lords, is the creation of an English Parliament. If the system is left as it is at present, then 500 or so English MPs can effectively dominate the Westminster Parliament. However, if they were to have a separate Parliament, the Westminster Parliament would have to be reconfigured on federal lines to be a forum for joint working between the different nations. Ironically, the real reason why English MPs don't want an English Parliament is that they fear it would mean a loss of power for them.

35 See Glover, Daniel and Kenny, Michael. 'Answering the West Lothian question? A Critical Assessment of 'English Votes for English Laws in the UK Parliament'.

36 Wishart made the remark on 13th July 2021, when the government had decided to scrap the law it had introduced 6 years earlier. His speech to the House of Commons, before members in various masks to remind us that it was during the COVID crisis, can be found on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0Vi8erLScY

#### **Conclusion**

The chapter began with a survey of 'Home Rule All round' over the last century. It argued that the failure of early schemes to keep both Britain and Ireland inside the United Kingdom, not to mention attempts to maintain the unity of the British Empire, led many in the UK to think that there was no halfway house between a centralised multinational state and independent nations breaking away. Devolution, they came to think, was more likely to encourage separatism than to restrain it.

The forms of governance emerging on the continent through the Coal and Steel community might have suggested this wasn't the case, but those who began to interest themselves in the idea of 'four nations' inside the UK did not – and do not – see much to encourage their efforts at devolution in the emergence of the institutions that eventually became the European Union.

The chapter emphasised that devolution cannot be discussed without considering England. It examined English attitudes, mindful of Keating's remark that 'this combination of Euroscepticism with Englishness would appear to be one of the strongest challenges to the Union.'37 Much of the attention where England is concerned has been upon the installed and then rejected policy of 'English votes for English Laws'. This was too much like trying to graft an English Parliament onto Westminster, perhaps as a way of avoiding a separate English Parliament that might have been seen as a rival to Westminster. As a later chapter will look at in more detail, the most logical way of making devolution effective would be a body (perhaps a reformed House of Lords) bringing together the devolved parliaments and those of English regions or 'city-states' like London and Greater Manchester. Instead of wondering about how to set up an English Parliament, the focus would be upon how to establish a system whereby a dozen parliaments, regional and national, could jointly develop a system for managing the British Union. Joint working, however, is precisely what many fear most. To this point the book will return.

Where progress made to date is concerned, this may appear to be a rather negative conclusion to reach. However, the next chapter will suggest that, perhaps counter-intuitively, the one part of the United Kingdom where devolution has proved most difficult might provide the best indication of how it could be made effective at the UK level in the future.

37 Keating, *State and Nation*, p. 191.

### **Chapter Ten: Home Rule for Northern Ireland?**

In the last chapter it was pointed out that the one instance of home rule to emerge from the events of the early twentieth century was the Northern Ireland Parliament. Quite apart from its origins, it has always been controversial in its workings, accused of acting on behalf of the Unionist majority, manipulating electoral districts to promote unionist representation, and ensuring discrimination in housing and employment. For many in Northern Ireland,it was seen as a case where removing a higher level of government allowed a lower one to act in an irresponsible manner.

Currently the Republic of Ireland consists of 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland. The other six are often known as Northern Ireland or Ulster. Neither term is quite accurate. Historically Ulster consisted of nine counties, only six of which were separated in 1922 when Ireland was partitioned. Of the three that remained in the Republic, one of them contains the northernmost tip of the island. On any geographical definition, part of Northern Ireland is in the Republic.

In fact, geography reflects the lack of solidity, the unavoidable fluidity of what is called 'Northern Ireland.' Its border with the Republic is a meandering worm with no apparent logic to it. It wiggles its apparently unplanned way for nearly 500 miles through lakes, woods, parishes, farms and even homes. But it was designed originally to be the dividing line between the two areas of Home Rule within a single United Kingdom. Lloyd George, Prime Minister when the Irish Free State, as the 26 counties were called at the time, was brought into being, promised those opposed to the division that the six counties would prove to be unsustainable, and the meandering line seemed to reflect that conviction.1 It ended up, however, as an international border between two countries,

1 See Roy Hattersley's biography of Lloyd George, *The Great Outsider,*ch. 33 'God Help Poor Ireland', pp. 530–546. Hattersley suggests that Lloyd George redrew the boundary be-

the Republic of Ireland and (to give it its full title)The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,making it clear that Northern Ireland is an addition to Britain (however much Unionists in Northern Ireland wish to emphasise that they are British).

What lay behind the wiggling line of the border was the desire to create an area in which Unionists had a majority, something they clearly did not have on the island as a whole. The eventual creation of the six counties made it inevitable that there would be a substantial minority (one-third to two fifths) who would be opposed to the creation of Northern Ireland despite having to live there and who would wish to be united with the rest of the island. That clearly coloured the politics of this part of the UK in a way that didn't apply in the other devolved areas.2

Hence, whereas in the case of Wales and Scotland, or London and the cityregions of England, there was a majority desire for more powers to be conferred, in the case of Northern Ireland there was resistance to any conferral of additional powers. From the point of view of the Nationalists, the Unionists only wanted more powers if they could use them to discriminate even more against the minority. From the point of view of the Unionists, it would have the effect of detaching Northern Ireland further from Britain. The situation of Northern Ireland therefore makes it difficult to talk of it as one of the 'four nations' of the United Kingdom (a reference that had become familiar by 2022, for instance when discussing policies to combat COVID-19).3 One can see why Professor Bogdanor refers to 'three nations and a contested province.'4 Nationalists in Northern Ireland do not wish it to be a nation, because that would complicate its future as part of a united Ireland. Unionists would not want to be part of a separate nation,if being a nation was going to cause it to drift away from Britain and the rest of the UK. Technically, as we have seen, the UK is a

tween the Six Counties and the Irish /Free State in order to make the separation 'essentially temporary' (p. 543).

2 As Hattersley points out, Lloyd George seemed to think that this would be an arrangement which ensured that Northern Ireland's existence would be 'temporary'. The result was that 'temporary' meant more than a century and involved a lot of bloodshed North of the border, not to mention the Civil War in the South that followed the agreement.

3 See Bogdanor, *Beyond Brexit,* p. 178. He notes the recent tendency to talk of 'four nations' but argues that Northern Ireland is not a nation, despite the habit of critics of devolution to talk about 'four nations and a funeral'.

4 Bogdanor explains in *Beyond Brexit,* pp. 178–179, why it makes no sense to talk of Northern Ireland as a 'nation'.

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But for many Unionists the emphasis is upon their being British.The last thing they want is to drift into a kind of No Man's Land where they are neither British nor Irish, although this has always been a possibility. In Nairn's words, 'they were always, and they still remain, profoundly and embarrassingly different from the society they imagine they are a frontier *of*.'5 A Protestant U.D.I. remains the last resort that no one wants but which can never be entirely ruled out, 'an almost apocalyptic answer to British perfidy, the awesome threat at the end of the line.'6 Interestingly, there were hints of such a move after the collapse of the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974, when some Protestant paramilitary groups talked of an independent Northern Ireland and even spoke of Catholic participation in the Cabinet. It was a kind of power-sharing from within rather than one imposed from without, hinting perhaps that even Catholic treason would be more acceptable than British perfidy.7

It was the Unionists themselves who brought down the power-sharing Northern Ireland executive put in place by the UK government in the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973 and made it necessary to restore direct rule from Westminster. Unlike in Scotland and Wales, their priority was not for more power to be devolved to their 'nation,' but for their existence as part of the United Kingdom to be guaranteed. The approach was reflected in an election poster on behalf of the Unionists in the election of February 1974 which declared that 'Dublin is just a Sunningdale away.'8 In other words, the form of devolution being offered to Northern Ireland was likely to move it into the orbit of the Republic. The remit of the Council of Ireland, resurrected by the Sunningdale Agreement, was limited to tourism, conservation and animal health, but this was regarded by Unionists as the thin end of the wedge and indeed there were some on the Nationalist side who saw it in precisely those terms, such as SDLP (Social Democratic and Labour Party) Councillor Hugh Logue, who called it 'the vehicle that would trundle unionists into a united

5 Nairn, Tom *The Break-Up of Britain*, p. 224.

6 Nairn, Tom *The Break-Up of Britain*, p. 231.

7 See Nairn, T*he Break-Up of Britain,* p. 244. The whole chapter, 'Northern Ireland: Relic or Portent?' is worth reading.

8 See the research paper for University College, Dublin written by P.J. McLoughlin and Sunningdale Agreement.' entitled '"Dublin is Just a Sunningdale Away?": The SDLP, the Irish Government and the

It can be read online at https://researchrepository.ucd.ie/entities/publication/389d38 ad-7e4e-40eb-88e0-469fc5257da4/details

Ireland.'9 Unionists also welcomed the fact that the end of Sunningdale and restoration of direct rule led to an increase in the number of Northern Irish MPs from 12 to 17.This reflected another approach to dealing with the problem of England not having its own Parliament unlike Scotland and Wales, one which suggests that devolved nations should have fewer MPs at Westminster. Instead of having MPs from the devolved regions voting on fewer issues than their English colleagues, one would simply have fewer MPs from the devolved regions. But it was also welcomed by Unionists who directed their efforts (successfully) towards more power at Westminster as the reward for less power at Stormont.

#### **The significance of the Belfast Agreement**

The breakdown of Sunningdale, the problems of direct rule and the prospect of 'Protestant U.D.I' demonstrate what a very important advance was made in Northern Ireland by the Good Friday agreement of 1998. Coming a generation after Sunningdale, there was a tendency to dub it 'Sunningdale for slow learners', but in important respects it was different.10 One key provision was that it made power-sharing in the Northern Ireland executive mandatory, ensuring that it would no longer be possible for the majority to impose its will on the minority.

The most important part of the agreement lay in its constitutional provisions. Effectively, it enshrined the view that the future of Northern Ireland was an issue for both parts of the island, Northern Ireland and the Republic. Indeed, the Good Friday agreement itself was subject to referenda on both sides of the border. Any further change to the status of Northern Ireland would also have to be subject to referenda both North and South of the border. Essentially, the Irish government recognised that without the consent of both sides a united Ireland would not come about, whilst the UK government accepted that with the consent of both sides it*would* come about. In this respect both governments, the UK and the Irish, were making an important concession. London accepted that the Irish Republic becoming a single 32-county island state was

9 He made these controversial comments in Trinity College, Dublin at the time of the Sunningdale Agreement.

10 The comment came from Séamus Mallon, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998–2001.

acceptable if a majority in both Dublin and Belfast wished it. The Irish Republic accepted – and amended its own constitution to this effect – that a united Ireland could not bypass the wishes of a majority in Northern Ireland.

The Good Friday agreement was a breakthrough after decades of killing on both sides. The brilliance of its design lies in the fact that it has not depended upon persuading one of the two sides that it is wrong or even on securing the sort of settlement where a compromise is reached because both sides give a little. It is more an agreement which allows both sides to proceed as if their position has been vindicated. This applies especially to the border. It has already been pointed out that the border between the six counties and the rest of Ireland wiggles its apparently unplanned way for nearly 500 miles through lakes, woods, parishes, farms and even homes. Vernon Bogdanor is probably correct to say that 'the real border in Ireland is not a line on the map but a border in the mind,'11 but the question is how to deal with it. Faced with two apparently irreconcilable positions, one of which insisted that the six counties must be part of a united Ireland and the other that they must not, the 'solution' in the Good Friday agreement was to make the border of as little significance as possible so that both sides could act as if their position was the real one. A Nationalist, whether or not she took advantage of the option of having an Irish passport, could move seamlessly around the island that she saw as her homeland with access to jobs and benefits like anyone else. A Unionist could tell herself that she was still part of the United Kingdom, a subject of the King, her local MP represented in the Westminster Parliament.The solution to two irreconcilable positions is not to come down on the side of one or the other but to find a way of being able to maintain both.

By and large this has worked.The violence has largely stopped, investment has begun to move in and power-sharing has proved – from time to time – successful. Stormont has received a steadyincrease of powers,including control of policing and criminal justice powers in 2006 and a right to vary the rate of corporation tax in 2014.12 The problem is that there is such a fundamental divide between the two main parties, the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein, who dominate the politics of Northern Ireland (although the recent successes of the Alliance Party have demonstrated a few cracksin that edifice), that power-sharing sometimes breaks down, causing regular suspensions of the assembly. But for the most part there has been a generation of peace.

11 Bogdanor, Vernon *Beyond Brexit: Towards a British Constitution,* p. 243.

12 Bogdanor, *Beyond Brexit,* p. 183.

The trouble now is the aftermath of Brexit. The border has become much more significant as a border between two countries, one of which is a member of the EU and one of which isn't. The meandering line has been forced to become a demarcation point of significance, raising all the questions concerning border and customs checks and whether they can be all be done 'electronically' that characterise discussions of trade between the two parts of the island today. Endless discussions are currently going on about whether and how to shift the border to the Irish Sea, so that Northern Ireland effectively has to follow the rules of the EU internal market and ceases to have the same trade rules as the rest of the UK.13 It is still unclear, with the assembly once again suspended until this problem is solved, what the outcome will be. It might seem as though the problem is a trade issue to which a sensible solution can be found (perhaps through modifying the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol) without endangering the future of peace in Northern Ireland. But such is the sensitivity over the border which the Good Friday agreement sought in its own way to dampen down and even marginalise rather than solve, that anything which forces people to focus once again on the line of separation between those on one side of the border and those on the other is bound to threaten peace.

Furthermore, Brexit has removed the broader perspective within which the 'Northern Ireland problem' could be viewedin European terms as a problem between two member states. The EU has plenty of sensitive borders which are a product of conflict, such as those between different parts of the former Yugoslavia, some of which are part of the EU (Slovenia, Croatia) and some of which are not. EU membership has helped to dampen tensions, if not to remove them.Croatianmembership helped to resolve the dispute between Slovenia and Croatia over access to the Adriatic Sea. There are plenty of EU countries with minorities that were once part of other member states (for instance Hungarians in Transylvania, now part of Romania) and which campaign, for instance, over rights to their language and its use in schools. There are similar arguments from Russian speakers who make up a substantial part of the population of Latvia, not least because the Baltic states were actually part of

13 The whole issue continues at the time of writing with the so-called 'Windsor Framework' supposed to make the situation more acceptable to unionists. A BBC report in April 2023 gives a snapshot summary of developments. See https://www.bbc.com/ne ws/explainers-53724381. However, the problem was clearly recognised five years ago by former Europe minister Denis MacShane. See *Brexit,No Exit,*ch.18: 'Brexit spells danger for Ireland and concern in Scotland', pp. 214–224.

the Soviet Union and not mere satellite states of it like the Hungarians or the Czechs. The EU also has to manage the border between the Turkish-occupied part of Cyprus and the rest. When problems arose over the question of how the border between the Republic and the UK could be managed after Brexit, members of the UK government were quick to study the border between the USA and Canada. They were less keen to study the practices of the Union from which they had just decided to depart. Yet the special arrangements for the border between independent Cyprus and the Turkish-occupied part of the island, or those in the Balkans between Croatia (which is inside the EU) and Bosnia (which is not), would arguably have been more helpful. From an EU perspective, the Irish border is just one of many 'little local difficulties', and one of the advantages of EU membership is that it provides a wider context within which people can set their particular concerns. That advantage has now been closed down by Brexit.

#### **The Future of Northern Ireland**

There are many reasons for supposing that the situation in Northern Ireland is the one that most threatens the continued existence of the United Kingdom, despite the narrowness of the result of the referendum over the future of Scotland in 2014. Most of the attention recently has been on trading arrangements. However, the problems over trade are arguably symptomatic of something that goes much deeper.

For one thing,it would be much easier for Northern Ireland to become part of the EU if it seceded from the UK than for Scotland to do so. Scotland would have to apply as a candidate country, requiring the unanimous consent of all the existing EU members – including Spain, which would be mindful of the possible repercussions for the independence movement in Catalonia. When the President of the European Commission was interviewed on British television shortly before the referendum on an independent Scotland José Manuel Barroso declared that it would be 'extremely difficult, if not impossible' for an independent Scotland to join the EU.14 Barroso(who retired a fewmonths later)

14 He was interviewed on the Andrew Marr Show on 16th February. The comments (naturally welcome to the British government) caused quite a stir. See Corner, *The EU: an Introduction*, p. 43. The former DDR became part of a united Germany without requiring the unanimous approval of existing members, which would be necessary in the case of

probably exaggerated, but there would certainly be difficulties.Though the EU emphasises the need to protect minorities within its member states,it does not support them when they seek to secede. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, would not have this problem. It could simply become part of Ireland, just as the former DDR (*Deutsche Demokratische Republik*), as East Germany was called, became part of a reunified Germany in 1990, bypassing the need to apply as a candidate country.

The currency issue is also less problematic. Northern Ireland would automatically join the Republic as part of the eurozone. Scotland, on the other hand, would be faced with a difficult situation. It would have three choices. It might remain with sterling, which would be bizarre given the fact that it had just voted to be an independent country. It might receive some kind of dispensation to adopt the euro whilst outside the eurozone or even the EU (in the manner of Montenegro). It might adopt a new currency, perhaps the 'Scottish pound', before applying (as a new member state must) to become part of the eurozone. None of these options is simple.

For these reasons, we can see that if one ignores the bitter and possibly violent consequences of such a decision, it remains the case that it would be simpler for Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and rejoin the European Union than for Scotland or Wales (which in any case voted to leave the EU in 2016) to do so. The attraction of being once again a part of the EU, which for Scots would involve all sorts of practical difficulties, would in the case of the Northern Irish be relatively straightforward.

Yet even though the easiest route back into the EU following secession from the UK would be the one taken by Northern Ireland, the Good Friday agreement provides important pointers towards a future constitution of the UK4. Northern Ireland shows how crucial an increased measure of autonomy for the members of the UK will be. Ironically, the very fact that Northern Ireland is the likeliest part of the UK to leave has already meant accepting a degree of autonomy for Northern Ireland which does not exist elsewhere.

In 2017 theUK Supreme Court unanimously held that the consent of Northern Ireland voters was not required to leave the European Union. It had just decided in the Miller case that the consent of the UK Parliament was necessary in order to leave the EU, a majority decision that earned it brickbats of

any applicant country. There was talk at the time of a possible UK veto, just as there is talk now of a possible Spanish veto to an application from an independent Scotland. A re-united Ireland, like a reunited Germany, could avoid any possible veto.

a 'the judges versus the people' kind in the press.15 Yet it did not see why this principle should be extended to the parliaments based in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Stormont (Wales, as said, voted narrowly to leave the EU). Devolution had made it perfectly clear that matters of foreign policy were reserved to the UK Parliament alone.

This was an understandable position, and yet the Good Friday Agreement had taken the decision on the future of Northern Ireland out of the hands of the UK as a whole and had made it a decision in a referendum for the two sides of the Irish border alone. If the continuation of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom is a matter in which Northern Ireland is effectively allowed a veto on its future, shouldn't it have been allowed a veto on its continuing to be part of the European Union? The logic of Good Friday is that decisions on the future of this 'nation' should be subject to the agreement of both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. In other words, both could exercise a veto on the agreement. Surely it would make sense to apply the power of veto to other decisions with profound implications for Northern Ireland, such as membership of the EU. It may be too late to advance that particular argument now, but it is not too late to point out that veto powers for the devolved bodies should be part of any future constitutional changes.

The provisions in the Good Friday agreement anticipate the form which a degree of shared sovereignty might take, both in a future united Ireland and within the United Kingdom. The first of these two is being discussed in the Irish Republic, where a new Citizens' Assembly may be asked to look at the question of a fresh border poll on re-uniting the island. Though in the summer of 2022 the Irish foreign minister declared that such an assembly was not 'on the radar,' and even less so a referendum on the issue, it has not been ruled out further down the road.16

Just as it was recognised in Northern Ireland that only a radical form of power-sharing could make sense in the context of administering the North, so it is recognised in the Republic that only a radical form of power-sharing could

15 See Keating, *State and Nation in the United Kingdom,* p. 69.

16 The Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney made the remark after elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly had given Sinn Fein more seats than the DUP. On the other hand, as Coveney pointed out, the party that made the most gains in the election was the Alliance Party who tried to steer a middle ground. See https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/coveney-says-citizens-assembly-on-borde r-poll-not-even-on-the-radar-1301695.htm

make sense in the context of a United Ireland. Neale Richmond, TD, a Fine Gael politician in the Irish Republic, presented a paper *Towards A New Ireland* at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University,in April 2021, which described itself as setting out a vision 'for a new political system that would retain elements of the power-sharing dynamic in Stormont'.17 It proposed to use some of the ideas for power-sharing in the North of Ireland for power-sharing in a United Ireland. Rather than people from Northern Ireland just entering into the existing Irish state, a new Ireland would be created with power-sharing at its core. A devolved administration would continue in Belfast for 10 years, in parallel to an all-island parliament in Dublin. In a manner that replicated power-sharing in the North, this parliament would elect a speaker and deputy speaker, one of whom would come from Northern Ireland, with the same principles applying to the chairs and vice-chairs of parliamentary committees. If Sinn Fein can sit down with the Democratic Unionist Party in the North of Ireland, then could it not do so in a United Ireland?

Most significantly for the future of the Isles as a whole, the second area in which the Good Friday agreement is important concerns the form powersharing might take inside the UK. Ironically, given the way in which the English constantly described the EU as encroaching upon national sovereignty, what could be learned from the EU in this instance is the point of allowing all members of the UK Union, small and large, a power of veto in certain policy areas. The Good Friday agreement referred to the UK and the Republic of Ireland as 'partners in the European Union'. Constitutional reform might allow the 'four nations' to act effectively as partners in a British Union. However, this will only be possible if the members of the British Union have powers that at present they lack, such as the power of veto where vital constitutional matters are concerned.

Furthermore, the Good Friday agreement facilitates power-sharing in a way that the UK has often presented itself as constitutionally averse to.The UK declares its preference for the so-called First Past the Post System and its aversion to coalitions.18 The system in Northern Ireland is an enforced coalition.

17 The paper appeared in *The Political Quarterly,* Vol 94, No 1 (Jan/March 2023), pp. 115–121. https://www.finegael.ie/app/uploads/2021/04/Towards-a-new-ireland-N eale-Richmond-2021.pdf

18 See Bogdanor, *Beyond Brexit,* pp. 190–198. Bogdanor points out that 'Coalition government in Northern Ireland is not, as is normally the case in parliamentary systems, a voluntary choice, but is required by statute' (p. 191).

The first minister comes from the largest party (which used to be the Democratic Unionist Party and is now Sinn Fein) while his or her deputy comes from the second largest party (currently the Democratic Unionist Party). At a time when members of the two main parties in the Republic, Fianna Fail and Fine Gail, were considering whether they could possibly sit down with members of Sinn Fein, such collaboration was being forced on the Northern Ireland executive by the Belfast Agreement. As pointed out above, the structure has had its difficulties (not least a three-year suspension of Stormont from 2017–2020), but it represents an attempt to bridge apparently uncrossable divides which might be compared to the coalition-building approach favoured in many of the countries of the European Union and in some of its own institutions (for instance the Parliament). It could therefore be that a Council including the whole of the UK, or even one encompassing both the Isles and including the Republic, could be managed on this basis. Indeed, there is already such a body established as part of the Belfast Agreement, a British/Irish Council (and a British/Irish Inter-Governmental conference), comprising not only the British and Irish governments but those of Scotland, Wales and the so-called 'Crown dependencies', the Isle ofMan, Jersey andGuernsey. Set up to promote 'the harmonious and mutually beneficial development of the totality of relationships among the people of these islands,' the Council could be the launching-pad for a serious discussion of how the four nations and two nation-states might give constitutional form to that 'harmonious and beneficial development.'19

The EU has no difficulty being made up of 27 states some of which are large (Germany has 80 million inhabitants) and some of which are small (the smallest, Malta, has a population of 400,000, 200 times smaller than that of Germany). Its institutional structure gives added weight to smaller countries in the voting systems adopted (so-called 'degressive proportionality'), in the rotating six-monthly presidency,in the provision of one commissioner per member-state whatever its size and in the need for unanimity on many key issues such as admitting new members or agreeing a new treaty.

It is clear that if UK governments wanted to devise a constitution for a British Union influenced by the structures of the European Union, they would have to give their own 'member nations' far more autonomy than they give them at present. Yet their image of the EU is of an oppressive power threatening national sovereignty which had to be escaped before the UK became a

19 See its website at https://www.britishirishcouncil.org . As Bogdanor points out, it has no member from England (*Beyond Brexit*, p. 198).

mere region of an overweening superstate. Hence the irony of the fact that if a constitutional settlement is to be achieved and the break-up of the UK avoided, Westminster needs to secure the autonomy of its member nations in the way the EU secured the autonomy of its own member states. Such an irony is naturally hard to bear for those who pulled the UK out of the EU claiming that they were being turned into the powerless victim of a centralised EU machine.

#### **The relation of the UK to the Republic of Ireland**

The last chapter pointed out that the failure to achieve a devolution settlement for Ireland had a considerable impact upon attitudes towards devolution (or Home Rule All Round as it was called) in Westminster.The creation of the Irish Free State was part of a process of winning independence in stages. At first it was effectively another dominion, a constitutional monarchy with George V as its King and a governor-general, whose approval was needed for whoever was elected prime minister to take office. It was a halfway house, more than home rule but less than full sovereignty. It needed the Statute of Westminster of 1931, which restricted the rights of the UK to legislate for its dominions, in order to acquire full sovereignty for itself by effectively neutering remaining powers like that of the governor-general and appeals to the privy council. It made use of the crisis over Edward VIII's abdication to abolish the oath of allegiance to the Crown (George VI became 'King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland') and through the External Relations Act to deny the UK any control over its foreign affairs. In 1938it regained control of three treaty ports which had been occupied by the Royal Navy since 1922 and which on the grounds of strict neutrality it refused to make available to the UK during the Second World War. Finally, in 1949, it left the Commonwealth, so that any residual influence of the 'mother country' and its monarch as 'Head of the Commonwealth' was finally done away with.

However, a timeline such as this can be misleading about the relationship between the two nations.The Republic of Ireland is, of course, an independent nation-state, just as France and Germany are independent nation-states. It has its own foreign policy which means that it has chosen not to be part of NATO and yet to remain part of the European Union. Yet the impact of its former ties with what is now the UK remains and is woven into the constitutional arrangements of both nation-states. As Hobsbawm points out, 'the independent Irish Republic, while insisting on its total political autonomy from Britain … in practice accepts considerable mutual involvement with the United Kingdom.'20

Between the UK and the Republic there exists a common travel area which means that people in the UK can travel freely to the Republic and vice versa, seeking employment and receiving benefits, access to health care and voting rights. EU citizens lost this right after Brexit, but the UK made a specific exemption for members of the Irish Republic. In a similar manner, even when Ireland left the Commonwealth in 1949, Parliament treated her citizens as Commonwealth citizens with free right of entry to the UK. When curbs were introduced on immigration from the Commonwealth in 1962, the Republic was exempted from them. Ireland's special status preceded the time when it and the UK entered the EEC/EU and will continue after Brexit.21 The UK allows a degree of inter-governmental cooperation in the case of the Republic of Ireland which it has rejected in the case of other EU nations. One arrangement from which it was determined to seek an opt-out when inside the EU, the Schengen agreement on visa-free travel, was effectively applied to the one neighbour with which it had a land border.

The Good Friday Agreement contained provisions for North-South cooperation and at the very least a consultative role for the Republic. A consultative role means that there is nothing binding in these arrangements, but certain other provisions in the agreement suggest that cooperation may have to go further than this. People in Northern Ireland can choose whether to have British or Irish citizenship or both. If they choose Irish citizenship, they are EU citizens and should be covered by the provisions of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which the UK has not incorporated into UK Law. They would therefore seem to have rights which they cannot exercise in practice. It is difficult to see how this problem can be resolved without some kind of All-Ireland Charter of Rights about which there are ongoing discussions between the UK and Irish governments. Whatever the emphasis put upon the merely 'consultative' links between the two parts of the island, the connections between them, whether in relation to tourism sport, environmental management or even trade union and banking arrangements, are strong enough to make joint decision-making in some areas inevitable. Indeed, it should be borne in mind how many Unionists support these links without wanting a United Ireland.

20 Hobsbawm, Eric *Nations and Nationalism since 1780*, p. 188.

21 See Bogdanor, *Beyond Brexit,* pp. 238–241.

The focus in the early 2020s is still the so-called 'Northern Ireland protocol' and the problems of maintaining seamless trade between the UK and the Republic when one country is inside the single market and the other is not.22 Occasionally recriminations fly between both sides. But it is worth standing back from this and considering the wider picture. One important point concerns the general reliance of the Republic on trade with the UK. This is important, but less so than it used to be. When the Irish Free state came into existence a century ago, 99% of its exports went to the UK. By the time the EEC was formed the figure was around three-quarters. By the time the Republic joined the EEC it was still over one half, but by the time of the Brexit vote it was around onequarter. That is still a significant amount, but the Irish Republic has a much more diversified economy, one much less dependent on the UK than was the case when they both joined the EEC half a century ago.23 One should therefore avoid presuming that the Republic's trade is exclusively with its Northern neighbour.

The second point concerns the continuing ties between the two despite their increasing economic divergence.The fact is that the UK and the Republic of Ireland, two separate nation-states, with very different foreign and defence policies and different currencies, behave towards each other as if they were both part of the European Union. There may be a problem with the freedom of movement of goods between the two, but the freedom of movement of people has been maintained.

In certain key areas the UK has felt constrained to continue to have the sort of relationship that the two countries would have if both remained part of the EU – indeed a closer one even than that, given the commitment to the common travel area. They may well have to reach a common position on rights, whether in terms of the EU Charter or the European Court of Human Rights

22 Now modified by the so-called Windsor Framework. The Egmont Institute based in Brussels provided a short summary of the framework in April 2023, https://www.egmo ntinstitute.be/the-windsor-framework/but it still has to be seen whether it can restore effective government in Northern Ireland.

23 Figures for the 20th Century come from John Bradley's 'History of Economic Development in Ireland, North and South.' For later figures see country profiles from organisations like the World Bank. See the Economics Observatory report which actually traced the level of dependence on the UK since the Republic was formed a century ago. https://www.economicsobservatory.com/irelands-economy-since-independ ence-what-lessons-from-the-past-100-years

in Strasbourg. The UK has recently had difficulties with this body, despite being a founder member of the Council of Europe, which brought the court into being. Current considerations of whether to introduce a British Bill of Rights to replace the UK Human Rights Act, triggered by the European Court of Human Rights' ruling on the illegality of the UK government's plans to deport certain asylum seekers to Rwanda, must continue to bear this Irish perspective in mind. It is all too easy for UK governments, when they hear about rulings from Strasbourg, to rush to the conclusion that 'foreign judges' are interfering in 'UK affairs.' They need to bear in mind that the minority community in Northern Ireland remembers how their rights lay unprotected by UK governments until protests inspired by the American civil rights marches of the 1960s began to change things.They can clearly perceive that the issue of rights needs to be separated from nationality.The 'Irish question' helps to ensure that this perception will not easily be lost now.

#### **Conclusion**

This chapter sought to show that ironically, given the fact that the creation of the Irish Free State was one of the major factors in the failure of Home Rule All Round to succeed, it is what has happened in Northern Ireland that points to a possible way forward towards an effective settlement that might be able to preserve the UK. Devolution to other parts of the United Kingdom arguably began as a way of trying to ensure that they didn't follow the Irishinto seceding. Devolution to Northern Ireland under the Good Friday agreement may help to prevent such a secession if certain features of that agreement, in particular the arrangements involving power-sharing, are taken seriously enough to be replicated elsewhere.

The next two chapters will consider in more detail what constitutional arrangements might be adopted by a UK Union. It will pay particular attention to a proposal from Wales, which perhaps because it voted to leave the EU and because support for independence (though growing) is clearly a minority position, has shown a great deal of interest in what constitutional arrangements might hold the UK together in the future.

### **Chapter Eleven: Wales and the English**

The last chapter suggested that paradoxically it is in Northern Ireland, the one part of the United Kingdom to have received some sort of devolution from a very early time and the one area where it seemed to provoke the most conflict, that the most progressive institutional arrangements have been developed, arrangements that might well be applied elsewhere in the United Kingdom. The next two chapters will look at some serious proposals for constitutional reform that have emerged within the UK, most notably from Wales. Before looking specifically at the Welsh proposals for constitutional reform, it is worth considering some of the historical background in a little more detail. This is not a book by someone who can claim detailed knowledge of the history of Wales, but it is useful to attempt some historical background to the current situation.

The chapter on invasion and expansion in the Isles has already mentioned the process whereby the creation of the 'marches,' the border areas between England and Wales, sought to isolate rather than to subjugate Wales. However, subjugation was to come, as mentioned earlier,in the form of an invasion force led by Edward I in 1277. One important effect of Edward's invasion was the loss of the Law of Hywel (Welsh Law) and its replacement by English Law (something that didn't happen in the case of Scotland). The difference in legal systems was particularly important in the context of land tenure. Welsh law contained *Cyfran,* the custom of dividing land among all male heirs; English law made the eldest son the sole heir.The English system, in a way that anticipated the arguments in later centuries for enclosures, essentially the 'enclosing' of common land so that it was in the possession of one owner, was defended on the grounds that a host of scattered scraps in various hands was not economically viable. But 'economically viable' needs careful defining.The Welsh system meant promoting communities of fairly poor small landowners, but communities where everyone had employment and their own patch of land. Under English law these became communities with a few wealthy estate owners and a large landless proletariat looking for work.1

One advantage of large numbers desperate for work is that they have to take any job on offer. Many Welshmen were recruited into English armies during the following century. The Romans had been quite prepared to hire 'barbarians' for their armies – many had considerable military prowess – and the English had a similar view of theWelsh.The outcome of many famous battlesin English history depended on theWelsh,just asWellington's victory atWaterloo in 1815 was to be dependent on the presence of the Prussians. 5,000 Welshmen fought at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 in distinctive green and white uniforms, while another 5,000 fought in Edward II's army at Bannockburn in 1314. A cynic might say that from the English point of view it was a perfect outcome.  The process did not only apply to Wales. Keating quotes Kumar's account of 43% of Crown forces in 1830 being Irish (an alternative to starving in the potato famine) and 13.5% were Scots.2

As the earlier chapter pointed out, it was in 1901 that people first began to talk of a statute passed during the reign of Henry VIII as an act of 'Union' between England andWales, but this was not an accurate description.The Act was passed in 1536 at the time of the break with Rome that partly inspired it, since the breakincreased fears of civil disorder and French or Spanishinvasion.3 1536 was also the year in which the 'pilgrimage of grace' broke out in Yorkshire before spreading to other parts of the North. Many areas of Wales also rejected the break with Rome and held fast to the Catholic faith.

In this context a desire to pacifyWales was understandable. But 'Union' was hardly the right word for what was happening. Earlier invasions and the reforms passed in their wake had effectively removed anything for the English to unite with. As Chapter Eight explained, what happened in 1536 was an act of

1 John Davies makes this point in his *A History of Wales*, p. 183.

2 See Keating, *State and Nation*, p. 27, quoting Kumar's *The Making of English National Identity.*

rope, and the Tudors had particular reason to be aware that the condition of Wales was such that its coasts were open to invasion.' Davies, *A History of Wales*, p. 219. It was the usual story of the 'back door' to England, the image used for union with Scotland and Ireland by Simms in his *Britain's Europe*(p. 112 in the case of Ireland, p. 32 in the case of Scotland and Ireland together). 3 'By breaking with Rome, Henry VIII was challenging the Roman Catholic states of Eu-

annexation rather than union. Some new counties were created and the border between Wales and England which has survived to this day was brought into being. But since no one thought in terms of what was an appropriate border for a country, they did not concern themselves with the fact that some Welshspeaking districts were put outside Wales or that some diocesan boundaries were not respected by the border. As said earlier, the act made no use of Offa's Dyke, the eighth-century earth embankment designed to mark off the border with Mercia, much of which is still visible today.That was a way of marking off two kingdoms, whereas what happened during the reign of Henry VIII was a way of reorganising one kingdom. Having been penned in by the marcher lords after the Norman invasion, Wales ended up under Henry VIII being transformed into an extension of England. The legal forms used in Wales would be those of English law and Wales would have representatives in the English parliament just like any part of England.

#### **Survival through language and religion**

In the long run, the events of 1536 strengthened the importance of the Welsh language. The Scots could define themselves in terms of having a particular legal and educational system. They could talk about historic boundaries of the Kingdom of Scotland.The Welsh, with their unclear border and the absorption of their legal and educational systems into that of England, would find it more difficult to define themselves in these terms, and therefore the Welsh language became central to their sense of identity.4

It helped that in matters spiritual Welsh remained alongside English. It was important for preserving the language – and it has to be borne in mind that this was not the secular society of today but one in which everyone was required to go to Church. Welsh versions of the Bible and prayer book were made available in Welsh parishes alongside English versions after the break with Rome. By way of comparison, there was no Irish Bible until 1690 and no Gaelic Bible until 1801.5

4 Tom Nairn in *The Break-up of Britain* quotes John Cowper Powys' remark that '…theWelsh National spirit has had to bank itself up in the Welsh language for want of being able to express itself politically' (p. 201).

5 See John Davies, *A History of Wales*, p. 238.

Despite its increasing association with the 'lower orders,' the Welsh language survived. As late as the early nineteenth century it is fair to say that over half, perhaps two-thirds, of the inhabitants of Wales were Welsh-speaking. In most cases Welsh was the only language they knew.6 Could it develop so that Welsh became the national language? This certainly happened in some parts of Europe where the second half of the nineteenth century saw the development of nationalist movements with a distinct emphasis upon language that paved the way for independence later.

The Czech National Revival in the nineteenth century, led by Joseph Dobrovský, Josef Jungmann and František Palacký, is a case in point. This was very much focused on language. German was the official language of the Austro-Hungarian administration and Germanisation of the Czech lands had proceeded apacein the two centuries following the Battle of theWhiteMountainin 1620. Czech, though an ancient language like Welsh, was soon spoken mainly by the lower classes andin rural areas. It was not seenin schools or universities, in literary and academic publications or in the state administration. Yet a national renewal movement associated with these three individuals managed to reinvigorate the language. Dobrovský published a Czech grammar while Jungmann produced a Czech-German dictionary which included borrowings from other Slavic languages and neologisms designed to ensure that Czech had the terminological resources for the latest scientific research to be producedin that language. Jungmann also provided several translations of the classics – such as the works of England's John Milton and Germany's Goethe – to ensure that the world's literary classics would be available in Czech. He was perfectly clear that 'should a social emancipation of the Czech people occur, it must happen through their language's equalization in the Czech lands.'72 Palacký (who currently features on the Czechs' one-thousand-crown note, since they have managed to steer clear of the eurozone) ensured that an academic journal was available for publishing in Czech through the 'Journal of the Bohemian Museum,' linked to the National Museum in Prague.The Czech National Revival ensured that when Czechoslovakia became an independent nation-state in 1918 (the

6 Davies, *A History of Wales*, p. 388. He suggests that 2 out of 3 inhabitants of Wales were Welsh speakers in 1850 and most knew no other language. By 1914 there were more Welsh speakers but they now represented less than half the population – because there had been substantial immigration from England, particularly to the coalfields.

7 See 'The Birth of the Modern Czech Nation' Chapter XI of Pánek, Jaroslav et al*, A History of the Czech Lands* pp. 281–309. The quotation is on p. 298.

Czech Republic and Slovakia were formed out of Czechoslovakiain 1993),Czech could function as the official language and the business of state and the latest scientific research, as well as the education system, could be managed in that language.

This is not what happened in Wales. It is interesting to consider why, given the obvious determination of the Welsh to preserve their language and the fact that the process of industrialisation was common to both the Welsh and (for instance) Czech experience of the nineteenth century, besides which, as John Davies points out, '…in the mid nineteenth century, English speakers were hardly a higher percentage of the population of Wales than were German speakers of the population of Bohemia*.'*8

The answer lies partly in the way the economy of Wales developed.

Despite theimpact of the loss of the Law of Hywel(Welsh Law) after Edward I's invasion upon employment on the land, there had been other job opportunities apart from joining the ranks of those employed to fight battles for the English.The late mediaeval economy was very much based on wool. Because of its many rivers, Wales filled up with water mills for processing cloth (known as fulling mills). From its farms a lot of Welsh beef made its way to England.With its coastline Wales was an important location for trade, not least with Ireland at a time when a high proportion of 'international trade' took place across the Irish Sea.There was also fishing and on a small scale the extraction of iron, copper, lead and coal, and it was this last that anticipated the industrial revolution to come. Welsh coal went to Ireland and South-West England well before the industrial revolution, but there was an enormous expansion of the coalfields at the end of the nineteenth century.9

If the emphasis at the time of the loss of the Law of Hywel was upon the Welsh seeking employment fighting for England against Scotland at Bannockburn or the French at Crécy, the emphasis with the growth in importance of the coalfields was upon the English seeking employment in Wales.Wales was a beneficiary of the economic expansion that came with the industrial revolution and its aftermath, but on terms dictated by England. The mass migration into what became the South Wales coalfields had huge cultural implications. John

8 Davies, John *A History of Wales,* p.407; Morgan, K. *Wales: Rebirth of a Nation.*

9 See Davies, *A History of Wales,* p. 186*.*He writes that the development of the fulling-mill 'gave rise to an Industrial Revolution in the Later Middle Ages'. The coastal trade with Ireland, as well as the south-west and north-west of England, was also important in the 15th century (pp. 206–207).

Davies records how for half a century between 1880 and 1930 between a quarter and one third of the male labour force worked in the coal industry, while the figure can be pushed to about half by including quarrying. Morgan claims that Welsh mines at this time accounted for one-third of all world coal exports.10 In the first decade of the twentieth century, Davies records, Wales was unique among the countries of Europe in having more people moving in than out. 'In that decade,' he writes, 'only the United States excelled Wales in the ability to attract immigration'. Facilities were stretched and riots broke out. 'With such a flood of incomers, some districts became grossly overcrowded'. Davies quotes *The Times* in 1904 reporting that in the Rhondda there was 'the same oppressive atmosphere that one experienced in the streets of Odessa and Sebastopol during the unrest in Russia in the winter of 1904.'11

There were cultural consequences, including consequences for the language. The mines were organised at the British rather than Welsh level, and this was reflected in the concerns of their leaders, including union leaders. At the same time, the influx produced 'anglicisation' and despite efforts by the coalfields to promote the learning of Welsh there was a huge increase in the number of monoglot English speakers. In this context it is hardly surprising that the main threat to Welsh identity and to the Welsh language would be seen as coming from England.

It is true that, as Tom Nairn points out from a Scottish perspective, 'the industrial revolution which so threatened Welsh language and life also gave it a chance of life'.12 It established the language in the industrial valley communities, whatever their need to speak English, and they often used Welsh in order to maintain links with other industrial sectors through their unions and other associations. It also prevented Welsh being associated with 'primitive' rural communities, 'noble savages' who communicated with one another in a strange tongue. Arguably, Welsh was both buoyed up and overwhelmed by rapid industrialisation at the start of the twentieth century.

By 1914, though the number of Welsh speakers had risen to one million, that represented less than half the population and most of them knew English as well. To reach the majority of the Welsh population it wasn't any longer necessary to know Welsh. By the time of the outbreak of the First World War, fivesixths ofWelsh speakers were bilingual.They could be reached by using English

10 Davies, John *A History of Wales,* p. 475.

11 Davies, John *A History of Wales,* p. 478.

12 Nairn, Tom. *The Break-up of Britain,* p. 200.

andmaterialinWelsh no longer had to existin every subject. In this respect one of the ways in which Welsh speakers contributed to the decline of Welsh was by learning English.13

A second difference from the situation in the Czech lands was associated with religion. There was a strong tradition of Nonconformity (Protestantism outside the Anglican Church) inWales, and its leaders were unwilling to use the Welsh language. They saw their evangelising mission as best conducted in English, especially as this was the language of English incomers. Had not St Paul in the first century spread the gospel by speaking and writing in Greek, not in Hebrew or in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth?The demands of the gospel must come before those of the Welsh nation. In the case of the Czechs,it is true that their history was steeped in their own form of nonconformity in the form of the tradition associated with Jan Hus, the fifteenth-century reformer who was burnt at the stake in 1415 at the Council of Constance, and whose fate Martin Luther was keen to avoid when he was 'captured' by friendly knights a century later. Yet the passion for national revival in the nineteenth century was less tied to religious roots in the Czech lands. In Wales, on the other hand, Welshness had been partly hijacked by nonconformity, which not only put an emphasis upon the use of English but forced those who wanted to see the development of a secular Welsh culture to look elsewhere. Inevitably they were drawn more to the secular traditions of the wider world, including those of England.14

This led – and continues to lead – to problems in the key sphere of education. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Welsh language had little more than a foothold. Schools did not have to teach Welsh, and if they did so it was added to an English curriculum. Some of them opted to ban Welsh from their schools altogether. After all, it is not so long since speaking Welsh in a Welsh school was a punishable offence, with the so-called Welsh Not, a stick or ruler or something similar that could be used as a cane. The last recorded use of the Welsh Not as a form of corporal punishment to enforce the use of

13 Davies makes this point in *A History of Wales,* pp. 482–483.

14 Davies suggests that 'in the second half of the nineteenth century, Nonconformity succeeded in 'hijacking' Welshness and a secular Welsh-language culture did not therefore emerge. As a result, the interconnection between chapel-going and Welshness was confirmed, for those who did not sympathise with the values of Nonconformity could turn their backs upon both.' *A History of Wales,* p. 486.

English comes from the 1940s. Even when such barbarism ceased, the problem was that rather than being the medium through which the whole world of learning was opened up across the full spectrum of subjects,Welsh was becoming another language subject tacked on to the rest of the curriculum, where it obviously seemed less appealing and relevant than learning German or French. The most that this foothold in the education system could do was to save Welsh from virtually dying out in the way Breton did.15

#### **Industrial development and English overspill**

Since the battles in the nineteenth century to make sure that Wales was a Welsh-speaking nation in its entirety have been lost, it has become difficult to avoid division between a Welsh-speaking Wales and an English-speaking Wales, one which to some extent reproduces the old division between *puraWallia* and *marchia Wallia*, between 'Wales proper' and the Wales of the Marches. The former, concentrated in the West and North, would clearly support a powerful Welsh *Senedd* and even an independent Wales. The Welsh National Party, *Plaid Cymru*, remains known by its Welsh name rather than any English equivalent, though it is technically the Party of Wales. By way of comparison, few know the Scottish National Party as *Pàrtaidh Nàiseanta na h-Alba,* its name in Scottish Gaelic. But *Plaid Cymru* has its heartlands inWelsh-speakingWales. In Wales overall it can rarely secure more than 20% of the vote (this was its score in the 2021 *Senedd* elections).16

English-speaking Wales, on the other hand, might not consider itself Welsh at all. A far larger part of the Welsh than the Scottish population is made up of people who would consider themselves English even though they have settled in Wales. More than half of the Welsh population lives within 25 miles of the border (the figure for Scotland is 3%). Many of them are more English overspill than Welsh, like the bulging bottom that spreads itself onto the next seat in the train. It is unsurprising that half a century or more ago when there

15 See Davies, *A History of Wales*, pp. 443–444.

16 Keating makes the point well: 'Welsh identity has historically been more linked than its Scottish counterpart to cultural markers, including the language and Nonconformist religion.  Keating, *State and Nation in the United Kingdom,* p. 180.

were several arson attacks linked with Welsh nationalism, the attacks were particularly on this overspill in the form of second homes bought up by the English and unoccupied outside the tourist season**.** 17

This means that people with homes in Wales are not always aware of themselves as livingin another country within which theymust become assimilated. Some of them might be happy to reflect that England and Wales have a single legal system or that their football teams play in the same league, despite their having different national teams (as became more than clear during the world cup at the end of 2022, when both teams played against each other). Others note that there are county cricket teams based inWales.They may even take the view that since they don't speak Welsh the language barrier rules out assimilation and they prefer to have nothing to do with it.Thus, where a hundred years ago Welsh children resented being forced to learn English under the rod of the Welsh Not, now English settlers resent their children being forced to attend classes in Welsh. Where the nineteenth-century nonconformists saw Welsh as a barrier to hearing the word of God, English settlers see Welsh as a barrier to hearing the word of science and technology. Even in schools where Welsh is the medium of instruction, only 70% of secondary school subjects are taught in Welsh. A BBC report entitled *About Wales,* aiming to provide a straightforward and unbiased introduction to the country's education system in October 2014, reported that 'someWelsh medium secondary schools prefer to teach science and maths in English, because this is seen as the international language of science.'18 It is true that the majority of scientific research papers and conferences are in English, but as a reason for teaching maths or science in English thisis highly questionable. It feeds the prejudice that there has been no attempt to 'update' the language in the manner of the neologisms introduced through Jungmann to ensure that Czech had the terminological resources for the latest scientific research to be produced in Czech. The assumption seems to be that were children to learn Welsh they would be forced to have endless discussions about how to harness oxen to the plough or the impact of a harvest moon on maidens' hearts. As the Czechs were only too well aware as members of a Habsburg Empire whose officials spoke German, a sense of social and cultural

17 See a report of 2018 on the Welsh tax base from the Welsh Centre for Public Policy by Guto Ifann and Dr Ed Gareth Poole. The figure given on p. 12 is a little under 48%, but it has grown slightly since then, https://www.wcpp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/ 07/The-Welsh-Tax-Base-\_WCPP-Final-180627.pdf

18 https://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/livinginwales/sites/aboutwales/pages/education.shtml

superiority can manifest itself in a view that some languages lack the resources to act as vehicles for sophisticated ideas. Given the way the English language is currently used, one might be tempted to view this as a bizarre reversal of the truth!

It is often pointed out that the existence of uncontrolled levels of immigration from other parts of the European Union was one of the prime factors behind the success of the Brexiteers in the 2016 referendum vote on whether to remain inside the EU. Few of the Brexiteers, including many of those English speakers who were voting in Wales, thought of how uncontrolled levels of immigration from England to other parts of the UK had proved problematic in earlier times. On the other hand, such an association would certainly have occurred to people who feel strongly about theirWelsh identity and its close association with their language. It is very unlikely that they would feel that identity threatened by the European Union.They are far more likely to think that it will be crushed by the English.

It is hardly surprising that Wales made full use of the opportunities to promote Welsh provided by membership of the European Union. The language had been supported within the European Economic Community (forerunner of the EU) since the Mercator Project which first became a European project through a resolution passed by the European Parliament in 1988. Wales received support from the 1992 European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, which entered into force in 1998, and from the European Charter of Human Rights, which emphasises linguistic diversity in Article 22 and in Article 21 prohibits discrimination on the basis of language. After Brexit the European Charter of Human Rights no longer applies (a problem, as we have already seen, for Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland) and various forms of funding support used to bolster theWelsh language have been lost.19 It is this loss of participation in a wider community of twenty-eight nations with over twenty national languages, and the disappearance of measures to protect minority

19 It is difficult to assess the loss of funding after Brexit. The UK government claims that it has stepped in to make up for any losses, the Welsh government denies that this is so, and neutral observers point out that it can be difficult to count the figures anyway. The Welsh *Senedd* produced a report in 2018 entitled 'Brexit, The Arts Sector, Creative Industries, Heritage and the Welsh language' outlining some of the difficulties. See https://senedd.wales/media/ghdec0xo/cr-ld11940-e.pdf. The UK government insisted that it had made up for any loss of funding after Brexit – this, for instance, is a BBC report reporting the government position in February 2022. https://www.bbc.com/ne ws/uk-wales-politics-60332682

languages, that is bound to influence a large body of opinion in the country. This is a perspective that must be borne in mind when considering the history of devolution in Wales and the measures proposed by the Welsh *Senedd* itself for constitutional reform in the UK, measures which will be considered in the next chapter.

#### **The history of devolution in Wales**

Before the introduction of legislative devolution, Wales received a degree of executive devolution when a Secretary of State forWales was created by Harold Wilson's Labour government in 1964. On the whole Welsh secretaries of state were sensitive to national differences, and in particular to the strong support in Wales for the Labour Party, whoever was in power at Westminster.This may have influenced the overwhelming rejection of devolution by the Welsh in a referendum in the 1970s, as did the fact that for much of this time the same party (the Labour Party) was in power in Wales and Westminster (1964–1970 and 1974–1979).

However, this was to change after Mrs Thatcher's victory in 1979 ushered in eighteen years of Conservative government at Westminster. In 1993, after the Conservative Party had been in power in London for fourteen years, John Redwood became the Secretary of State for Wales in the government led by John Major. He was later to challenge (unsuccessfully) John Major for the Conservative leadership and later still became a prominent Brexiteer.This was unsurprising. He was one of those whose attitude to power was that it should exist at only one level, that of London. John Davies describes him as 'an oddity among Welsh secretaries',20 essentially 'London's viceroyinWales', his mission 'specifically to carry out his own vision – unfettered competition, low taxes, small government and total resistance to any advance in the powers of the European Union'. Other Welsh secretaries (in the 1980s) had toned down the Thatcherite vision out of respect for the different ideological perspective of many in Wales.

Such toning down was often the case in the parts of the UK outside England, especially when a Conservative government was in power in Westminster, but other parties dominated in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. One thinks of Jim Prior's famous remark when he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland under Mrs Thatcher, telling visitors from Britain that 'we're

20 Davies, John *A History of Wales,* p. 666.

all Keynesians here.'21 Redwood's vision was different. He was not accommodating himself to the different views of another part of the United Kingdom. He preferred to think of himself as imposing his vision upon the recalcitrant 'natives', from whom he clearly felt he had nothing to learn. During his period as secretary of state, he did not sleep a single night in Wales and an attempt he made to pretend that he knew the Welsh national anthem by mouthing the words during a public meeting was the cause of much derision.

There were other important influences upon Welsh attitudes to devolution in the 1990s. One was local government reorganisation in 1996, which reduced the two tiers of Welsh local government to one (eight county and thirty-seven district councils were replaced by 22 unitary country councils, thereby ending the squabbles over demarcation of powers between districts and counties).This allowed a Welsh assembly to be introduced without introducing a third tier of government.22 The 'why introduce another layer of bureaucracy?' argument against introducing devolution was therefore less strongly felt.

Another influence was the existence of so-called Quangos (Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisations), something that grew up right across the UK in the 1980s and 1990s.These were frequently attacked for taking powers away from elected representatives (in local and regional councils) and giving it to appointees of the government. In Wales this meant groups of people appointed by the Secretary of State for Wales, spending billions of pounds and employing tens of thousands of people. It was understandable that people might prefer that this money be managed by a Welsh Assembly elected by the Welsh people.

As a result, the Welsh, who in the 1970s had rejected the idea of a devolved assembly decisively, voted by a whisker in its favour twenty years later.This was the closest of all referenda – its majority of 50.1 to 49.9 closer even than that of the referendum on leaving the EU. Yet despite the narrowness of the result, it represented a huge shift of opinion in Wales itself when compared to twenty years earlier.

Since the narrow votein favour of devolution, the 'assembly'(asit was originally called) has steadilyincreasedits powers. In 2006 the Government ofWales Act gave the Welsh government and assembly powers much closer to those of the Scottish government and parliament. A referendum in 2011 on whether to

21 Quoted in Philip Whitehead, *The Writing on the Wall* pp. 388–389.

22 This was The Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, which came into effect in 1996.

extend the legislative powers of the Assembly further was passed by 2 to 1, suggesting that the body had grown onWelsh citizens. In 2017 it received 'reserved' as opposed to 'defined' powers,meaning essentially that rather than exercising all powers specifically given to it,it could exercise all powers not specifically denied to it. To recognise its increased authority, it was finally renamed to recognise its increased powers. It became known as the *Senedd Cymru* in 2020.23 The word might suggest 'Senate' but is essentially chosen as a Welsh word to describe what is called in English the Welsh Parliament, much as the Irish word *Dáil* is used to describe the Irish Parliament.

#### **The problems of sharing power**

An earlier chapter mentioned some of the problems raised by devolutionin discussing EVEL, the so-called principle of English Votes for English Laws. It argued that the principle of English Votes for English Laws can be difficult to apply when it isn't clear exactly which laws apply to England alone. Decisions that apparently apply only to England have consequences outside England, since under the Barnett formula Scottish and Welsh funding is a percentage of that given to England. Hence a decision that might seem on the face of it to concern England alone may have knock-on effects elsewhere.

The issue obviously crops up in the context of devolution, since there will be arguments over what is properly within the competence of the devolved governments. This is not the place to examine all the different issues over which problems have arisen, but one example will serve to illustrate the difficulties and raises an issue very similar to the one mentioned in the last paragraph concerning EVEL – rail transport.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century people didn't only go in large numbers to Wales from England for work. The coming of the railways brought English tourists to Wales and especially to the coastal resorts. This was another reason for encouraging the learning of English. Knowing English was obviously an advantage in developing the tourist industry, especially in an age when beach holidays were taken in the Isles rather than abroad (which was

23 As Bogdanor puts it, devolution in Wales has 'proved to be a process rather than an event'. See *Beyond Brexit,* pp. 192–193 where he summarises the process.

overwhelmingly the case before the Second World War and the expansion of commercial flights through the jet engine).24

The shape of the Welsh railways in the 2020s still reflects the nineteenthcentury English dash to the coast. The fact that there was no Welsh government to take part in planning the railway network, while all the UK government did was to approve schemes by private contractors, meant that the railway system that emerged was one of connecting populous areas of England with the Welsh conurbations and resorts they wanted to travel to. Lines appeared running West from the Bristol area to the industrial heartlands of the south and then on to the coast. Another set of lines ranWestwards from the Liverpool area to the North Wales coast. But no lines (until after 1860) ran across Wales itself connecting the North with the South. In its own way the rail network reflected the treatment of Wales as an extension of England rather than as a country in its own right, an approach that can be traced back to the annexation of 1536 and beyond.25

Because it was not a Welsh network but an extension of the English network, to get to the north of Wales from the South by train you had to go into England and then back into Wales. The system was taking the English to the seaside and back rather than taking the Welsh to other parts of their country. Despite some tweaking of lines, it still looks that way in the twenty-first century. Someone travelling from Cardiff to Bangor, for instance, has to go through England twice. A person frequently making this journey in the autumn of 2021, at a time when COVID-19 policies were to require masks to be worn in Wales but not in England, remarked to me that his journey, where the mask was concerned, was a case of On-Off-On-Off-On.26 The demand for devolution to the Welsh *Senedd* of all responsibility for public transport has to be seen in this context.

24 See Davies, *A History of Wales*, pp. 395–396. In effect the seaside holiday took off with the railways in the mid-nineteenth century and ended a century later with the application of the jet engine to commercial flights.

25 See the maps in Davies, *AHistory ofWales,* pp. 398–399. More lines had appeared by 1914 (see p. 399), though not all of them are still in existence a century later. But the most noticeable feature is the difficulty of getting across Wales, particularly from North to South.

26 If you try to get from the Welsh capital, Cardiff, to Llandudno on the North coast, the journey takes five hours and goes through Hereford, Shrewsbury and Crewe – i.e. it snakes in and out of England before eventually returning to Wales. It takes rather longer than going from London to Edinburgh.

Twenty years on from devolution, the Welsh government runs the dayto-day operations of the railways in Wales through its operator Transport for Wales, but railway infrastructure remains the responsibility of the UK Government. Many in Wales would like management of the infrastructure to be devolved too, partly in order to develop the *One Wales* policy, which aims to reduce travel time between the North and South of Wales, and partly for financial reasons.

Research from Cardiff University's Wales Governance Centre found that Wales could have received an extra £514 million investment between 2011–12 and 2019–20, had rail infrastructure been devolved. The problem is the UK government's controversial £100 billion (and rising) High Speed 2 (HS2) rail project, which is designated an England and Wales project, despite none of the infrastructure applying to Wales.27 According to the Barnett formula, funding levels for Scotland and Northern Ireland are based upon the level of funding for England. As mentioned earlier, this was precisely the problem highlighted when discussing EVEL, in that a vote in the House of Commons on some aspect of education or health policy in England alone might nevertheless have ramifications outside England. It might be assumed that policies concerning England alone have 'nothing to do with the devolved nations', but the Barnett formula ensures that they do, because their cost implications will have a knockon effect on funding levels in devolved nations.The issue of HS2 illustrates the point nicely. Because HS2 is very costly, this means that Scotland and Northern Ireland will get substantial extra funding (because their spending has to be proportionate to that in England). But not Wales, which is excluded from receiving additional funding because the rail infrastructure (unlike in Scotland) is not devolved, and so this is seen as spending in England and Wales combined. Hence the calculation that if the rail infrastructure had been devolved, Wales would have received an extra half a billion over the lifetime of the project, enough to finance some substantial projects within Wales itself (for instance a line from Camarthen to Aberystwyth, or the electrification of the main line from London, which stops at Cardiff because of funding problems rather than being continued as far as Swansea). The response from Westminster that passengers using the HS2 would be able to change at Crewe and enter NorthWales

27 https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/\_\_data/assets/pdf\_file/0009/2508372/ WFA\_evidence\_rail 2.pdf The report was taken up by Westminster's Welsh Affairs Committee in an attempt to have the HS2 project re-classified as an England-only project.

more quickly using other trains was hardly very convincing.28 In May 2022 the leader of the Tories in the Welsh *Senedd* declared that he agreed with the argument that Wales should receive such money, but the visiting Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, refused to commit himself.29 In any case, whatever the final shape of the Welsh railway system and its management, it seems clear that a network put in place above all to serve the interests of England needs to be controlled by Wales in order to ensure that it is gradually transformed into a network primarily designed to serve the people of Wales.

Rail transport may not be the most important item in devolution, but it does illustrate how from a Welsh perspective the country might be seen as threatened more by its forced participation in the British Union than by membership of the European Union. Many aspects of its economy have been determined by how far they have served the needs of England, and over the decades this has limited the capacity of Wales to determine its own welfare. Sometimes it has been overwhelmed by English immigration; at other times its infrastructure has been built up to serve English needs; its culture and identity have been threatened by the English language and to some extent confined to a particular part of the country. It has been pushed back into a corner which has served as 'Wales proper', and then incorporated within a greater whole that has smothered it. It has taken part in the industrial expansion that Britain enjoyed in earlier centuries, but without being able to determine its own part in that expansion.

Compared with this, for many people in Wales the EU has been far more of an opportunity than a threat. For one thing, it has been a source of funding. Indeed, there are fears that the end of the EU Structural Funds programme following Brexit will further limit the ability of the Welsh Government to provide top-up funding for railway infrastructure. The EU's regional spending budget gave support to regions where GDP per head was 75% or less of the EU average, and when the UK was a member of the EU this included two regions of the UK, of which one was the West of Wales. It is not clear that the UK government will be prepared to make up the shortfall, particularly as Brexit rode on the back of government claims that money was being poured into the EU and it does

28 See the BBC report in December 2021 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-59596529

29 See this report from the BBC in May 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-polit ics-61495454

not like to admit that substantial sums were travelling in the other direction.30 In addition, the EU was an opportunity to strengthen Welsh identity, particularly through the support given to its language. Such support can come from a British Union too – there are obvious examples of backing given to Welsh at a UK level too, such as the BBC's support for *Creative Wales*. But in the case of the European Union, it is part of a wider process supporting minority languages right across Europe. More generally, it is important to appreciate how, while the UK was part of the EU, devolved governments were drawn into European policy networks and various pan-European networks of sub-state governments such as RLEG, a joint initiative of European regions with legislative powers.31 They ceased to be always engaged in bilateral negotiations with the UK. Now that experience of 'multilevel governance' has been severely curtailed.

#### **Conclusion**

The chapter looked briefly at the way Wales was first penned in by the Marcher lords after the Norman invasion and then effectively invaded under Edward I, ending up under Henry VIII being transformed into an extension of England. It pointed out that because its legal and education systems were effectively those of England,Welsh identity had above all to be preserved through its language. However, it never managed to make Welsh the language of its people in the way that, for instance, Czech was established as the language of the Czechs. Some of the explanation for this lies in an unprecedented number of migrants from England, particularly in the first decade of the twentieth century. It may also have been affected by the strength of nonconformity in Wales.

The chapter then briefly considered the history of devolution in Wales. It suggested that local government reorganisation, the creation of quangos that handled large amounts of money without local accountability and some rather domineering and insensitive secretaries of state for Wales managed to create

30 It can be difficult to know whether the UK has made up the shortfall because it is never a simple question of comparing like with like. It is noteworthy, however, that in April 2023 MPs called for a public inquiry into the economic effects of Brexit. See the BBC report https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65384431. It is interesting that the government response to the MPs' call was to say that Brexit was the choice of voters, not that it was an economically advantageous decision.

31 See https://rleg.eu

support for an Assembly which was overwhelmingly rejected in an earlier referendum in the 1970s.Though the devolution vote was only passed by a whisker in the 1999 referendum, devolution grew more popular in the new century and the assembly (now parliament/*Senedd*) has been able to increase its powers.

For much of its history, Wales has been able to benefit economically from its association with England, but only on terms dictated by the latter.The problem of railway transport illustrates how Wales lacked control of its own railway infrastructure, which was made to serve English needs. The railway lines conveyed English tourists to the coast,just as the coalfieldsmagnetised huge waves of English immigration. Wales was in control of neither.

The UK turned against the EU partly because it was perceived to be unable to 'keep out' foreigners from the EU. The Welsh had been completely unable to keep out foreigners from England. In 2020 and 2021 there were echoes of this under COVID-19, in the inability to keep out English trippers desperate for a bit of beach life or rural relief after their confinement.

Partly because of the effects of English overspill, for many people living in Wales it is clear why the European Union has been seen more as a means of preserving their identity than as a threat to it. Support came from the EU for the Welsh language and for Welsh rural development, while the expansion of the EU in 2004, when new members included many that were roughly the same size as Wales, demonstrated how small and large countries can co-exist within an EU format. It demonstrated that a nation-state of three million would be perfectly viable. If the Baltic states can manage it, so can Wales.

The points outlined in this chapter provide background to proposals for a reformed UK constitution made by the Welsh *Senedd* which are considered in the next chapter.

### **Chapter Twelve: Wales and a British Union**

Many proposals made by governments in Westminster in the light of devolution have been ad hoc and ill thought out. The English Votes for English Laws idea, rushed into being in the wake of the Scottish referendum, was thrown out six years later by another government of the same political persuasion. Proposals for an English Parliament remain undeveloped. The idea of dividing England up into regional groupings has proceeded by trial and error, rejected in the case of a North-East Assembly, embraced more warmly in some of the areas covered by the so-called 'metro mayors.'1 The House of Lords, which might be turned into a second chamber providing representation for regions and nations inside the United Kingdom rather in the manner of the German *Bundesrat*, remains unreformed and entirely unelected.

However, there have been some suggestions for constitutional reform in the UK that have been much more clearly thought-out than the piecemeal proposals outlined by Westminster governments so far. Among the most significant is one from the Welsh *Senedd* which appeared in a document originally published in 2019 and entitled *Reforming our Union: Shared Governance inthe UK.*2 The last chapter considered the history of Wales as a nation and then the history of devolution within Wales. This chapter connects that background with the fact that some of the most interesting proposals for constitutional reform in the UK have emerged from Wales.

Because Wales voted narrowly in favour of Brexit, there isn't the same feeling that the country has been pushed out of the EU againstits will which understandably embitters some of the Scots and Northern Irish. It is also not dominated by a nationalist party in the way Scotland is. The Labour Party tends to

1 See Bogdanor, *Beyond Brexit,* pp. 204–206.

2 See https://gov.wales/reforming-our-union-shared-governance-in-the-uk-2nd-editio n. The document was first published in 2019 and then updated in 2021.

be the most popular party (as the 2021 elections proved, in which Labour took half of the *Senedd* seats). An overwhelming majority of Welsh voters remain Unionist. This has enabled Wales to concentrate more on how to foster Welsh interests inside the British Union than on how to leave that Union. Keating is surely right to suggest that the Welsh Labour government 'is perhaps the only unambiguously pro-devolution government in the United Kingdom and has sought to move towards a form of cooperative federalism in which Wales would be recognised as a full partner in union.'3 Indeed, other Welsh politicians before Mark Drakeford, the current first minister of Wales, have made similar proposals, including Carwyn Jones, his predecessor as first minister from 2009–2018, who after frequent clashes with the austerity policies of the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition between 2010 and 2015 felt that sufficient economic support for Wales could only come through a 'renewed union.'4