Managing difference:

1
Managing difference

• Territorial identity and constitutional change in
  the UK

2
Recap

• States manage or handle difference in
  different ways
• Elite accommodation, power-sharing
  consociational democracy are one way
• Devolution, decentralization, federalism are
  another
• Appropriate to some but not all circumstances
• Can recreate the problem in a different way

3
Other strategies include

• Suppressing it
• Dissolving it an larger more diverse society
• E.g allowing cross-cutting cleavages to dissipate
  conflicts
• Fusing into a new identity
• Accommodating it minor, or even major, ways

4
UK

• Long history of constitutional change
• Yet somehow amorphous
• No founding moment
• No single document
• Instead, a constitution which has accumulated
• And changes in different ways
• Sometimes response to circumstances
• Sometimes response to pressure
• Or culmination of conflict
• Sometimes evolves
• Occasionally by design

5
Examples

• Magna Carta
• Bill of Rights
• Act of Settlement
• Reform Bill of 1832 (The Great Reform Bill)
• Parliament Act of 1911
• Home Rule
• Devolution
• Reform of House of Lords, Courts

6
UK as a union state

• Origins in extending control
• Wales (incorporated 1535-42)
• Act of Union (1707) brings Scotland under the
  English Parliament
• Act of Union (1801) incorporates Ireland
• Presumption
• All can be governed under a single parliament
• But not necessarily in the same way or with the
  same laws

7
Accommodating Scotland

• Scots surrender their parliament in 1707, but
• Retain their own church
• Their own legal educational system
• Their own currency

8
The Scottish Office

• Established in 1885
• Replaces various local boards
• Secretary for Scotland from 1892
• Secretary of State from 1926 (cabinet rank)
• A form of administrative devolution
• Laws were made in Westminster
• Reviewed by Scottish MPs in the Scottish Grand
  Committee
• But administered from Edinburgh by the Scottish
  Office

9
Quid pro quos

• Scotland over-represented in Westminster
• Had a disproportionate of MPs
• Now reduced, but not entirely
• National story
• A Union State
• Union Jack
• Great Britain rather than England
• Scots are partners in the British Empire
• They run it

10
Asymmetrical union

• Wales
• brought in earlier
• Conquest in 13th c
• Incorporation 1535-42
• Some accommodation to language religion
• But Welsh Office and Secretary of State for Wales
  not established until 1964
• Narrower competence than Scottish Office

11
Today

• Competences of Welsh Assembly narrower than the
  Scottish Parliament
• No tax varying powers
• can pass only secondary rather than primary
  legislation

12
Ireland A failure of accommodation?

• Under Lord Protector
• Colonization
• Act of Union (1801) fails to deliver Catholic
  emancipation
• 19th c political reforms extend suffrage
• Enable Irish to organize
• accord a measure of power
• under Parnell, Irish MPs hold the balance

13
Home Rule

• British fail to grant home rule in timely
  fashion
• 1885
• attempt under Gladstone splits Liberals
• Liberal Unionists join Conservatives
• 1910-1914 Almost there but
• Curragh Mutiny (1914)
• encouraged by A. Bonar Law (Leader of the
  opposition
• Ulster Protestants mobilize arm
• WW I intervenes
• 1920 beyond too little, too late?

14
Some questions

• Why could the UK accommodate Scotland but not
  Ireland?
• Scotland
• Partnership in the Empire?
• Separate legal educational system provide
  opportunities for elites to advance
• Mediating role of Scottish office

15
But,

• Was this Scottish settlement deliberate or by
  chance?
• Is this a good way to do constitutional change?
• Could a similar settlement have worked in
  Ireland?
• Could the British deliver it?
• Why did the Scottish settlement come unstuck?