Constitutional Policy and Territorial Politics in the UK: Volume 1: Union and Devolution 1997–2007 9781529205893

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Constitutional Policy and Territorial Politics in the UK
Copyright information
Table of contents
List of Tables
List of abbreviations
Preface
1 Introduction
2 Historical Contexts and Organising Perspectives
Historical contexts
Existing organising perspectives
Towards a realist organising perspective
Conclusion
3 Analysing Territorial Politics and Constitutional Policy
Territorial politics and centre territorial management in the UK
The periphery and approaches to territorial constitutional change
The policy process and territorial constitutional change
Conclusion
4 Territorial Politics and Devolution in Scotland
Territorial politics and the origins of devolution
The negotiation and ratification of devolution, 1989–97
Constitutional policy and the Scotland Act 1998
Conclusion
5 Territorial Politics and Devolution in Wales
Territorial politics and the origins of devolution
The negotiation and ratification of devolution, 1992–97
Constitutional policy and the Government of Wales Act 1998
Conclusion
6 Territorial Politics and Devolution in Northern Ireland
Territorial politics and the origins of devolution
The negotiation of devolution and the 1998 Belfast Agreement
Ratification and outcomes of the Belfast Agreement
Conclusion
7 Politics and Devolution in Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007
Territorial politics and devolution in Scotland, 1999–2007
Territorial politics in Wales, 1999–2007
Constitutional policy and the Government of Wales Act 2006
Territorial politics and the 2007 elections
Conclusion
8 Politics and Devolution in Northern Ireland, 1998–2007
The problems of stabilising devolution, 1998–2002
Direct rule and territorial politics, 2002–06
The resettlement of devolution, 2006–07
Conclusion
9 Territorial Politics, Regionalism and England
Territorial politics and the origins of regional reform
The negotiation and ratification of English regional reform, 1994–99
Territorial politics, regional governance and England, 1999–2007
Conclusion
10 Territorial Politics, the Central State and Devolution
Territorial politics and the central state
The central state and adapting to devolution, 1997–99
The central state and managing devolution, 1999–2007
Conclusion
11 Conclusion
A summary of the book’s argument
UK devolution in comparative context and research agendas
References
Index
Back Cover

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CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

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CON ST I T U T I O NAL POL I C Y AND T E RRI TORI AL POL I T I CS I N T HE U K VOLU ME 1 : U N I ON AN D D E VOLU T I ON 1 9 97 -2 007 J O N ATH A N BRA D BU RY

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK Volume 1: Union and Devolution 1997–​2007 Jonathan Bradbury

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1–​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2021 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-5292-0588-6 hardcover ISBN 978-1-5292-0590-9 ePub ISBN 978-1-5292-0589-3 ePdf The right of Jonathan Bradbury to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: blu inc, Bristol Image credit: Alamy/Steve Allen Travel Photography Bristol University Press uses environmentally responsible print partners Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents List of Tables List of Abbreviations Preface

iv vi viii

1 Introduction 2 Historical Contexts and Organising Perspectives 3 Analysing Territorial Politics and Constitutional Policy 4 Territorial Politics and Devolution in Scotland 5 Territorial Politics and Devolution in Wales 6 Territorial Politics and Devolution in Northern Ireland 7 Politics and Devolution in Scotland and Wales, 1999–​2007 8 Politics and Devolution in Northern Ireland, 1998–​2007 9 Territorial Politics, Regionalism and England 10 Territorial Politics, the Central State and Devolution 11 Conclusion

1 7 35 69 103 137 173

References Index

323 341

iii

209 241 273 307

List of Tables 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5

Codes of territorial management and territorial assertion Strategies of central governing and territorial assertion Models of centre–​periphery relationships Summary of Benz’s framework for the study of territorial constitutional policy The Moreno question and national identity in Scotland in the 1990s Constitutional preferences in Scotland in the 1990s UK general election results in Scotland 1979–​97 The 1997 referendum on a Scottish Parliament Reserved powers under Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998 Attitudes to national identity in Wales, 1979–​97 The Moreno question and national identity in Wales, 1997 Constitutional preferences on a Welsh assembly in the 1990s UK general election results in Wales, 1979–​97 Functions devolved to the National Assembly for Wales under Schedule 2 of the Government of Wales Act 1998 Constitutional preferences in Northern Ireland, 1989–​96 Support in Northern Ireland for remaining in the United Kingdom, 1989–​96 Trust in a Stormont Government to act in the best interests of Northern Ireland, 1989 The Moreno question and national identity in Scotland, 1999–​2007 Results of the 1999 Scottish Parliament elections Results of the 2003 Scottish Parliament elections Amendments to reserved powers under the Scotland Act 1998, 1999–​2007 Constitutional preferences in Scotland, 1999–​2007

iv

50 53 55 62 71 71 73 86 94 105 106 107 109 126 139 140 141 175 176 179 181 182

List of  tables

7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 7.11 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6

184 The Moreno question and national identity in Wales, 1999–​2007 Constitutional preferences in Wales, 1999–​2007 184 Results of the 1999 National Assembly for Wales elections 186 Results of the 2003 National Assembly for Wales elections 190 Results of the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections 200 Results of the 2007 National Assembly for Wales elections 203 Constitutional preferences in Northern Ireland, 1998–​2002 212 Results of the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly elections 212 UK general election result in Northern Ireland, 2001 217 Results of the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly elections 224 UK general election result in Northern Ireland, 2005 229 Results of the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly elections 235 Attitudes to national identity in England, 1992–​99 (%) 245 The Moreno question and national identity in England, 245 1997–​99 (%) Attitudes to national identity in England, 1999–​2007 (%) 258 The Moreno question and national identity in England, 258 1999–​2007 (%) Constitutional preferences in England, 1999–​2007 259 Attitudes to the idea that Scottish MPs should no longer 266 be allowed to vote in the House of Commons on issues only affecting England, 2000–​07 (%)

v

List of Abbreviations AIA AM AMS BIC CBI CREST CSA CSG CWA DETR DSWR DUP ECHR ESRC EVEL FPTP GLA GOR IICD IMC INLA IRA IRO JMC LCM LGBT MLA MMP

Anglo–​Irish  Agreement Assembly Member Additional Member System British–Irish Council Confederation of British Industries Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends Campaign for a Scottish Assembly Consultative Steering Group Campaign for a Welsh Assembly Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions Devolution in Scotland, Wales and the English Regions Democratic Unionist Party European Convention on Human Rights Economic and Social Research Council English Votes for English Laws First Past the Post Greater London Authority Government Office of the Region Independent International Commission on Decommissioning Independent Monitoring Commission Irish National Liberation Army Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA) Integrated Regional Office Joint Ministerial Committee Legislative Consent Motion Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Member of the Legislative Assembly Mixed Member Proportional

vi

List of Abbreviations

MOU MSP NAAG NEC NHS NSMC OFMDFM PPP PR PSNI PUP RDA RUC SAT SCC SDLP SNP STV SVR TEC TGWU TUC UDP UKIP UKUP UUP UVF VAT

Memorandum of Understanding Member of the Scottish Parliament National Assembly Advisory Group National Executive Committee National Health Service North South Ministerial Council Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister Public–Private Partnership Proportional Representation Police Service of Northern Ireland Progressive Unionist Party Regional Development Agency Royal Ulster Constabulary Standard Attainment Test Scottish Constitutional Convention Social Democratic and Labour Party Scottish National Party Single Transferrable Vote Scottish Variable Rate Training and Enterprise Council Transport and General Workers’ Union Trades Union Congress Ulster Democratic Party United Kingdom Independence Party United Kingdom Unionist Party Ulster Unionist Party Ulster Volunteer Force Value Added Tax

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Preface I owe a debt to Jim Bulpitt and Barry Jones, who originally stimulated my interest in studying the territorial politics of the UK. Their passion for innovative scholarship and research was an inspiration to everyone who worked with them. I owe a subsequent general academic debt to the participants in the conferences and panels of the Political Studies Association specialist group on territorial politics. I have gained much from hearing about their research, as well as from their feedback on mine. One also, of course, learns from one’s colleagues who research all sorts of things, and in this respect I’ve gained much from departmental seminars and sessions of the Political Analysis and Governance Research Group at Swansea University. Equally, teaching pushes you in a wide range of directions, and I happily acknowledge the great enjoyment I have had over many years from taking student classes in my final year module, The National Assembly for Wales (now Senedd Cymru/​Welsh Parliament), and Masters module, Devolution in Comparative Perspective. Ultimately, this book commits to a particular line of analysis. I am grateful for the comments of the anonymous external reviewer and I hope the book reflects the benefits of the challenges he/​she posed. I  take full responsibility for the views presented and any factual errors that may remain. Stephen Wenham at Bristol University Press commissioned this book, and I am grateful both to him and Caroline Astley at BUP for their professional advice, patience and support. Finally, I would like to thank Kate, Matthew and Thomas. This book was completed during the COVID-​19 pandemic lockdown in the first half of 2020. In many ways it has been a collective effort.

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1

Introduction Acts of Parliament to establish the Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales and Northern Ireland Assembly were all passed in 1998 under the Labour government led by Tony Blair. They provided for significant devolution of power in UK government. In the same year Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) were established as a new focus for English regional governance. Together they all raised questions about the territorial organisation of the state in central government. In the twenty or so years since then the territorial question in UK politics has scarcely slipped down the political agenda, leading to further territorial reforms in all parts of the UK and the ultimate challenge of the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014. The UK’s departure from the European Union, heralded by the referendum vote in 2016, has led to further debate, notably about the future of Northern Ireland and Scotland. Territorial politics and constitutional policy have become key dimensions of UK state development. This book is the first of a two-​volume study which seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of this subject. It focuses on the period from 1997–​2007, addressing the origins and introduction of the original devolution settlements, and the subsequent decade of their development until the end of the Blair governments in 2007. In these years the original devolution reforms followed extensive debate in the 1980s and 1990s, including in Northern Ireland a peace process and talks that led ultimately to the historic 1998 Belfast Agreement. Referenda in each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were held in 1997. The subsequent development of devolution up to 2007 included the move to start at least a debate about further reform in Scotland, as well as more immediately a second Government of Wales Act in 2006. In Northern Ireland the 2006 St Andrews Agreement reset the terms of the original 1998 settlement, and enabled the resumption of devolution in 2007, after the Northern Ireland Assembly had spent more time

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CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

suspended than in session. A referendum on an elected assembly for the North East in 2004 ended in a ‘no’ vote, but the powers of central government offices in the English regions, RDAs and indirectly elected regional assemblies nevertheless increased. One should always be cautious about identifying periods, and the decision to take 2007 as a cut-​off point for the early development of devolution is no exception. Currently, though, this appears appropriate as 2007 was not only significant for the departure of Tony Blair as the UK Prime Minister, but also for the election of a minority Scottish National Party (SNP) government in Scotland, and the elevation to roles in government leadership for Plaid Cymru in Wales, and Sinn Fein and the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) in Northern Ireland. From here on, the politics of nationalism became more central, and the saliency of possible secession, particularly in Scotland, became stronger. In 2009, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) made their landmark breakthrough by coming second in the European elections, making the issue of the UK’s relationship with the European Union (again) a key focus in UK politics. The years up to 2007 appear relatively framed by a working out of the original devolution settlements and their revision after initial operation; this was an era before the onset of qualitatively different debates regarding the possibility of Scottish independence and the challenge of Brexit. In addressing developments up to 2007, it is apparent that there are also common themes of analysis in the existing research literature which have contributed to conventional wisdoms about the significance of these years. First, analyses have emphasised the strong socio-​economic and national identity underpinnings to support for self-​government which made devolution essential in the first place. Second, many analyses nevertheless have stressed the unsatisfactory content of devolution relative to the cases for reform originally made. Equally, and third, analyses have emphasised that the UK’s approach to devolution as a whole was lacking in coordination leading to an inchoate territorial state. Overall, it has frequently been argued that the neglect of UK central government to consider devolution in the round in this period was severely harmful to the chances of devolution being a successful long-​term approach to territorial reform, either from a territory or UK-​wide perspective. This seemed to be reflected in the arrival in power at the devolved level of the major nationalist parties in 2007, less than a decade after the first elections. To illustrate the pervasiveness of this view a New Statesman editorial in September 2019 (New Statesman, 2019:3) referred to ‘the botched devolution settlement’ of 1998–​9 as a source of some at least of the UK’s ills as it tried to deal with the implications of Brexit 20 years on.

2

Introduction

Yet, there has been relatively little in the way of a stocktake of the literature. If this is done, it becomes clear that there are relatively few works that cover the politics of devolution in this period across the whole UK; most studies focus on a single territory. Studies also rarely have an equal regard for both territorial and UK centre perspectives; they prioritise one or the other. A more sustained review of the literature, provided in Chapter 2, suggests that existing studies cumulatively also primarily analyse the subject within a constitutionalist approach. Researchers frequently have rooted analysis in competing ideals that either favour self-​government on the one hand or the reconstruction of the UK territorial state to favour continued Union on the other. In the process they have tended to decontextualise the study of decision-​making from an appreciation of the choices actually facing political actors at the time. In seeking to develop an analysis that reappraises the early years of devolution, it is important therefore to take a UK-​wide focus, and to place an equal focus on territorial and central politics. It is also important to consider how we might move beyond analysis in terms of competing constitutional ideals, taking into account the importance of the contexts to devolution reforms. With this latter consideration in mind this book develops a conceptual framework for organising analysis which is rooted in realism rather than idealism. This recognises the centrality of the conflicts over territorial power that were at the heart of the advent and development of devolution, and accordingly focuses on what was thought possible and doable, rather than what was ideal. Awareness of such conflict is important even in reflecting on the cover of this book. The Ulster banner is a distinct Northern Ireland flag, used by the Northern Ireland Government between 1953 and 1973. It has continued to be used officially in certain contexts such as the Commonwealth Games. Yet, it is recognised that in this era Irish nationalists flew the Irish tricolour, while unionists favoured the union flag. Such disputes over flags were part of the conflict over territorial power that sadly led to over 3,600 people being killed in the Troubles between 1969 and 2000 (Dixon, 2001:23). Accordingly, this book seeks to develop an organising perspective that emphasises the political dimension to the development of devolution, and how actors both at territorial and centre levels sought to get the best outcomes they could in the contexts of expected conflict, constraints and disagreement. Ultimately, such a perspective has to be guided by some explicit conceptual and theoretical choices about how to study political action in relation to territorial issues. To meet this challenge, the book develops a novel conceptual framework for analysis which develops

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CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

categories for the analysis of political resources, territorial approaches to reform, centre approaches to territorial political management, and processes of territorial constitutional policy which builds originally from the pioneering work of Bulpitt (1983). From this framework, four propositions are developed which suggest the underlying structures of power that have shaped or guided how actors have developed their interests and sought to manage the hostile environment around them in their favour. These are explored throughout the book and underpin a novel neo-​Bulpittian thesis of how, why and with what implications devolution was introduced in the UK in these years, a thesis which seeks to challenge constitutionalist conventional wisdoms. These propositions stress, first, that we should reflect actually on the underlying weaknesses of socio–​econcomic and political resources and identity claims –​both in territories and at the centre –​relative to aspirations, and how these structured the approaches of territorial movements for change as well as central responses. Second, in this context we need to appreciate the importance of novel cultivated instrumentalist approaches to how territorial movements sought to still achieve territorial constitutional change though on more limited bases than idealist identity-​based advocates would have liked. Third, equally we need to recognise the importance of how, under pressure to sustain autonomy to deal with other key issues of party and governmental interest, the Blair Governments utilised traditional indirect approaches to territorial management to seek both to efficiently control the implications of devolution while avoiding inflaming territorial dissent further, rather than engaging with and risking more direct approaches to controlling devolution or reforming the constitution as a whole. Finally, we also need to recognise that, contrary to criticism of the incoherence of reforms, there was an awareness both among peripheral and centre political elites of the impossibility of achieving perfect reforms that would sustain a long-​term balance in centre–​periphery relations. Nevertheless, elites at both levels made commitments to achieving reforms on the basis of processes that made the reforms by and large as effective as possible in the circumstances, and capable of commanding a satisficing level of legitimacy in their respective communities. Following this set-​up, the rest of the book provides what one might expect:  an analysis in each part of the UK of the territorial pressures, political contestation, sub-​state territorial approaches, centre approaches to political management, and processes of making devolution policy. There is an empirical interest in trying to show how and why the various forms of devolution were developed in the way

4

Introduction

that they were. Each part of the UK had its own story, its own twists and turns, and the way in which interests were played out followed distinctive political trajectories. Yet, the broad take-​home message is fairly consistent:  that finding resolution of multiple, highly varied, significant territorial problems in the context of significant normative conflict as well as other pressures on government was immensely difficult. In the circumstances, the achievements of both peaceful self-​government and state territorial balance in the UK in this period were relatively strong. Subsequent problems of the constitutional settlements that we have seen since 2007 have been more to do with the continued high wire acts of political competition over territory than unrealistic expectations of original constitutional perfectibility to constrain that competition. Generally, the book argues that the neo-​Bulpittian propositions regarding the nature of political resources, territorial and centre approaches to devolution, and the processes by which devolution was agreed and initially developed, stand up as a basis for helping us to see the wood for the trees in developing this analysis. They do though undergo challenge from the evidence, and acquire nuance and revision as the book proceeds. The book progresses in Chapter 2 by introducing the significance of devolution in the UK in historical context, and discussing the existing literature which has produced the conventional wisdoms on its introduction. Chapter  3 then outlines the realist neo-​Bulpittian conceptual framework, which provides both the categories for analysis which will guide the book’s narrative, and the theoretical propositions which guide its analysis. Chapters  4, 5 and 6 specifically address territorial politics and the introduction of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. These incorporate an analysis in each case of the pre-​1997 origins of the devolution settlements, referenda on public support, and how devolution policies were developed in 1997 and 1998. Chapters  7 and 8 then address territorial politics and territorial constitutional policy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland between 1999 and 2007. Chapter  7 analyses Scotland and Wales, addressing developments in Scottish politics, the move to further reform of the devolution settlement in Wales in 2006 and the significance of the 2007 elections in both countries. Chapter 8 analyses politics in Northern Ireland in the context, first, of the failed attempts to implement devolution in the early 2000s that led to its suspension until 2007, then the St Andrews Agreement in 2006, elections in 2007 and the restoration of devolution in 2007. Chapter 9 then addresses the reform of government in England over the entire period between 1997 and 2007. This includes a focus on the pre-​1997 origins of regional reform,

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CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

before addressing how regional reform was introduced between 1997 and 1999, and then developed between 1999 and 2007. Chapter 10 similarly addresses UK central government and devolution over the whole period, focusing on how the centre articulated Britishness and approached the issues of law making and parliament, intergovernmental relations, and territorial finance in the light of devolution. The book is driven by an overall concern to define an original organising perspective for the study of devolution rooted in a realist focus on political approaches and calculation. All the chapters progress this on the basis of a wide-​ranging reappraisal of publicly available primary sources and the large corpus of published works of contemporaneous primary research. The aims are therefore:  to re-​ interpret known knowledge; to understand how, why and with what implications devolution was introduced in ways that appreciate the realities of choices that were available; and in focusing on all parts of the UK provide a comprehensive analysis in a manner not previously attempted. Inevitably, driven by the concern to gain an appreciation of both territory-​specific and UK concerns, but still limited by word length, all chapters are selective in what they discuss and constrained in the extent of evidence they can consider. It is to be expected that not every reader will agree with the approach taken, and that readers interested in self-​government in one specific territory or a particular aspect of the subject across the UK as a whole may still prefer analysis to dwell longer and indeed differently. There do nevertheless need to be attempts at comprehensive analyses that make choices about the terms in which we understand developments and what was most significant. This is one such contribution, designed to provide a reassessment of the early years of devolution, and their implications for the fate of the nations and regions of these isles, as well as the UK as a whole, in a way that if found plausible also hopefully stimulates challenge, debate and further research.

6

2

Historical Contexts and Organising Perspectives Any account of devolution in the UK since 1997 must start by providing some important preliminary contexts to analysis. This chapter is concerned with three. First, devolution across the UK was a hugely significant political event, which can only really be appreciated by placing it into historical context. Accordingly, section one fulfils the initial responsibility to briefly outline the historical background of the UK state, the nations that have composed it as a territorial union, and previous debates about self-​government and devolution. Second, devolution has also stimulated considerable research, though so far there has been a neglect to summarise and critically appraise the literature. The focus in this book is on organising perspectives for understanding devolution as a whole. So section two offers a summary and appraisal of some key contributions which have helped to develop such overarching analysis. Cumulatively, the argument is made that they have developed what we can understand as a range of constitutional schools of analysis. They are particularly important for the fact that they have also produced what has become a set of conventional wisdoms. These are: first, the relative empowerment of the identity politics of the UK’s stateless nations which made devolution essential; second, the perceived inadequacy of the subsequent devolution settlements viewed from Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and English perspectives; and third, the perceived failure of UK governments to properly address the territorial reform of the state as a whole, intergovernmental relations, and the management of devolution. Finally, the approach adopted in this book needs to be justified. To do so, section three subjects the assumptions inherent in constitutional approaches to critical appraisal and lays the basis for a fresh approach. It argues that the common characteristic of dominant constitutional

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perspectives is that they have privileged the importance of ideas in the study of politics and have neglected the role of interests and constraints. This has produced disputed analyses between writers who have different ideal starting points, and accounts of what happened that are either limited in coverage or appreciation of what was possible. In considering alternative approaches to study, a case is made for pursuing a realist approach that focuses instead on the power politics underpinning the advent and early implementation of devolution.

Historical contexts The territorial complexity of the UK is, of course, immediately apparent in the name, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Unification emerged through territorial unions: first, between England and Wales (1536); then between them and Scotland (1707) to unify the island of Britain; and then between Great Britain and the neighbouring island of Ireland (1800), later revised to Northern Ireland only (1921), to create the UK. In considering the historical development of this complexity this section covers:  first, historical origins of union; second, the politics of Ireland and then Northern Ireland; and third, the political development in turn of Scotland, Wales and England and previous debates about devolution. First, in addressing early origins, we should note that invasion across the British Isles in the ‘dark ages’, medieval and early modern periods was integral to the early development of the UK. England, dominant in land mass and population, emerged from the unification of much of lowland southern and middle Britain under Anglo-​Saxon, Viking and Norman settlement. Meanwhile, the Celtic nations of Scotland to the North, Wales to the West, and the island of Ireland initially developed separately, defined on the one hand by the limits of invader settlement across what became England as well as positively by the settlement of Celtic peoples migrating from the European continent. The Welsh did not successfully achieve their own independent kingdom amid a process of incorporation by English monarchs from the 12th century. In 1536, Henry VIII initiated a formal Act of Union, after which England and Wales were governed from London as one common political, administrative and legal system. After long-​running internal strife, Scotland did succeed in establishing an independent kingdom, though throughout the early modern period there were conflicts between the English and the Scots that periodically saw Scotland come under English rule. There remained English concerns about Scottish alliances with England’s continental enemies and likewise

8

Historical contexts and organising perspectives

Scottish concerns about English incorporation. It was then a chance fusion of monarchies –​when James VI of Scotland also became James I of England in 1603 –​that led ultimately in 1706–7 to the Treaty and Acts of Union under which the Scottish parliament dissolved to make Westminster the parliament for all Britain. Ireland similarly established a unified polity during the medieval and early modern period, but from the point of Henry VIII’s break with Rome there was an integral conflict between Catholic Ireland and predominantly Protestant Britain. Religious differences, and again the potential competing continental alliances that this drew Britain and Ireland into, as well as British interests in land settlement, underpinned British territorial incursions into Ireland from the 17th century. In 1688, the Protestant pretender William of Orange took the British throne, and subsequently asserted a Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, achieving victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Thereafter, while the bulk of Ireland remained Catholic, settlement by predominantly Scottish Protestants gave the Northern counties a distinctive cultural and political outlook. In 1800, the Acts of Union between Great Britain and Ireland reflected the intentions to stabilise British control, and it is at this point that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland became a state (see Birch, 1989; Colley, 1992; Bradbury 1997a). Second, in addressing the territorial complexity to the UK state in the years that followed, undoubtedly the most persistent, high profile problems arose from the role of Ireland, later Northern Ireland, in the UK. This had its roots in the resilience of Irish national identity. Culturally this was most strongly expressed through Catholic observance, Gaelic traditions and language, complementing social and economic as well as geographic separateness from Britain. In the 19th century a movement for national autonomy emerged, and its strengthening electoral representation in what became the Irish Parliamentary Party gradually had a bearing on the voting arithmetic in Westminster. The Liberal Prime Minister, William Gladstone, considered ‘home rule’ as a way of meeting what he considered to be their just demands. He introduced two bills in 1886 and 1893 to establish an Irish parliament to represent what he called Ireland’s ‘local patriotism’ within the context of the UK. However, both of these bills failed to pass through the Westminster Parliament and a later bill of 1912 was initially carried but then suspended and never implemented on the outbreak of the First World War. They were all opposed by Northern Irish Ulster Protestant unionists and at Westminster by Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists.

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The impasse between Irish nationalist demands and Ulster unionism, and non-​reform by the British state, resulted in the Irish War of Independence of 1919–​21. This conflict stimulated new efforts to address conflicting Irish demands. The 1920 Government of Ireland Act established two home rule parliaments, one in Dublin for the bulk of Ireland, and the other in Belfast for the North. The 1921 Anglo–​ Irish Treaty, which sought to conclude the conflict, then recognised Ireland as a distinct Irish Free State and gave it dominion status, but at the same time allowed the Northern counties under the Belfast Parliament to leave the Irish Free State, which they duly did. From this point, the two parts of Ireland followed separate trajectories. The Irish Free State ultimately declared its independence as a republic in 1948, recognised in UK law in 1949. Meanwhile, Northern Ireland remained within the UK, governed by the Westminster Parliament and on more local issues by its own devolved Parliament at Stormont. Northern Ireland had a unionist majority population, but its culture and politics remained defined by the competing identity traditions of Ireland, seen in microcosm in the North. Schools and community associations were organised according to a Protestant–​Catholic schism. Orange Orders celebrated the Protestant ascendancy while Sinn Fein promoted reunification with the Republic. Each summer, the Protestant–​Catholic battles of the late 17th century were commemorated in a marching season. Efforts to establish non-​sectarian parties, notably a Northern Irish Labour Party, failed and a distinctive Unionist–nationalist party system emerged with the official Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) dominant in the Stormont Parliament. For forty years, politics in Northern Ireland were relatively stable but in the 1960s what came to be known as the modern Northern Irish problem emerged. A civil rights movement criticised political, economic and social discrimination against Catholics and promoted civil rights. The Unionist administration sought to engage with reform, but attempts at moderate accommodation were overtaken by the polarisation of unionist and nationalist party politics, the renewed pursuit of the armed struggle for a united Ireland by the provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the emergence in response of paramilitary loyalist groups. By 1972, the situation was so inflamed that peaceful devolved governance was impossible. The UK government imposed direct rule from Westminster, with a secretary of state for Northern Ireland appointed to administer government, and British troops were deployed to attempt to sustain security amid growing paramilitary violence and terrorist attacks.

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Thereafter, the UK government attempted to restore devolved government on a new power-​sharing footing through the Sunningdale Agreement in 1973. This established a Northern Ireland Assembly and a North South Ministerial Council (NSMC), supported by the UUP and the moderate nationalist party, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), as a platform for government which institutionally respected both traditions. However, this was opposed by the DUP, founded in 1971 by the Rev Ian Paisley to represent harder-​edged unionism, and it was brought down by an Ulster Workers Council strike in 1974. While there remained much talk of attempts to restore devolved government on a power-​sharing basis in Northern Ireland, direct UK rule became the interim norm, as did political violence perpetrated both by the provisional IRA in their pursuit of a united Ireland, and Ulster loyalist paramilitary groups seeking to defend Protestant Ulster within the Union. Political stalemate and political violence were the twin components of the ‘Northern Ireland problem’ inherited by UK governments after 1979 (see Boyce, 1991; Boyce (2nd edn), 1996; Hennessey, 1997). The Irish Question, later dubbed the Northern Ireland problem, was a consistent concern of UK politics, but territorial complexities remained evident elsewhere in the state too. To take Scotland first, again even after the Treaty and Acts of Union in 1707 Scotland retained clear hallmarks of a nation. The geographical distance of urban Scotland from urban England, separated by large tracts of rural border areas, and Scotland’s already rich history as a united civil society meant that culturally Scotland had a deep national self-​consciousness. This also took clear institutional form. As part of the terms of Union Scotland retained its own established Church of Scotland, civil law and education system. Later, in the era of considering home rule for Ireland, Gladstone’s Liberal government also introduced the Scottish Office in 1885. This principle of the territorial office of state established the idea of administration decentralisation within the orbit of UK parliamentary government. The minister of government put in charge was by convention a Scottish-based peer or MP, and from the 1920s he/​ she held full UK cabinet rank. The Scottish Office had bases in both London and Edinburgh and came to be seen as the centre of Scottish public affairs, representing both Scottish concerns to UK government and UK concerns to Scotland. After the Second World War, Scotland became one of the ‘standard economic regions’, for which planning data was duly collected and fed into the making of macroeconomic policy. The Scottish Office also developed some distinctive social policies, notably in child health and welfare.

11

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

Scotland was politically represented at Westminster by MPs largely drawn from Scottish branches of the British-​wide state parties, with strong traditions of support for the Liberal Party, Conservative unionism and the Labour Party. By the 1960s, Labour had become the dominant party in Scotland, but it was in this era that support for the SNP started to grow. A catalysing factor was the discovery of North Sea oil, for some a great boon for the UK economy as a whole, for others Scotland’s oil. Debate over independence for Scotland, or alternatively consideration of granting Scotland its own elected assembly or parliament but within the UK, began seriously from the late 1960s. Edward Heath, leader of the British Conservative Party, famously made the Perth declaration in favour of such devolution in 1968, though his party later opposed it. The Labour government under Harold Wilson set up the Crowther (later Kilbrandon) Commission in 1969 to consider the territorial constitution of the UK; this duly recommended devolution all round in 1973. In Scotland, it ignited a strong debate about Scotland’s future and the SNP polled over 20 per cent of the vote in Scotland in the two elections of 1974. Ultimately, the UK Labour governments of 1974–​9 committed to a policy of introducing a Scottish Assembly within the UK, for which they legislated initially in a combined Scottish and Welsh bill. This met significant Conservative-​led opposition and it was defeated in the Westminster Parliament in 1977. Labour then came back with a separate bill for devolution in Scotland, which they managed to pass in 1978. They did so, though, only by including the so-​called Cunningham amendment, which required that devolution had to be supported in a referendum by at least 40 per cent of the registered electorate. This was sufficient to gain the support of Northern English Labour MPs. In the event, the referendum on establishing an elected Scottish Assembly, held on 1 March 1979, resulted in 51.6 per cent voting ‘yes’ and 48.4 per cent voting ‘no’, but on a 63 per cent turnout. Despite majority support for devolution, the application of the Cunningham 40 per cent rule meant that the 1978 Act bestowing an assembly on Scotland was not implemented. During this turbulent political era, public opinion surveys indicated strong majority affiliation with Scottish identity. Edinburgh formed the centre for specifically Scottish professional associations. Even ahead of the devolution referendum there had been a gradual growth of powers under the Scottish Office, and in 1975 the Scottish Development Agency was created. That Scotland voted yes in 1979 to its own elected assembly within the UK is a reflection of the importance of self-​government even at that time. Yet, in this era, a majority of

12

Historical contexts and organising perspectives

the electorate also identified as British, and the cultural, social and economic flows across the British Isles determined that many Scottish voters, while feeling patriotically Scottish, also worried about the economy and jobs and still favoured the overall framework of the British Union. The case for devolution as a revision of the arrangements of that union had not been sufficiently persuasively promoted, nor had it been sufficiently defined as representing the settled will of Scotland to clear the hurdle of the Cunningham clause. This complexity and ambiguity in the potential for Scotland to press for its own parliament again within the UK state was the political legacy that was inherited at the end of the 1970s (Midwinter et al, 1991; Brown et al, 1998; Mitchell, 2003a). Territorial complexities also extended to Wales. The most distinctive marker of national identity that emerged into the modern era was the survival of the Welsh language and its accompanying cultural heritage. By the 1970s, surveys indicated that approximately 20 per cent of the population still spoke Welsh and that in areas of North and West Wales it was the language of everyday communication. Plaid Cymru, the party that has championed independence for Wales, was founded in 1925 originally as a movement of cultural defence of the Welsh language. Of equal importance, though, in defining a distinct cultural heritage have been religious non-​conformism in the 19th century and the development of the South Wales industrial culture of the 20th century. Both experiences sustained a sense of distinct Welsh values, communal loyalties and pride. The geographical closeness of urban Wales to urban England in both the north and south of the country, and East–West communications has meant, however, that migration flows between England and Wales have always been stronger than with Scotland. The weak North–South links within Wales have also meant that there have been internal divisions. Welsh national self-​consciousness has been cut across by local community affiliations and different views of what it is to be Welsh. In this context, there was no inheritance of distinctive civil institutions from the the period prior to the 16th century union with England. The growth of modern national institutions in Wales did occur, but much later than in Scotland. In particular, Wales received a boost with the emergence of Cardiff on the back of the coal trade in the decade before the First World War; national institutions, such as the national museum and library followed, and Cardiff was made the Welsh capital city in 1955. The creation of the Welsh Office as a territorial office of state within UK parliamentary government, and with a secretary of state of Cabinet rank, did not happen though until 1964. Still, with its

13

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

creation and with bases in both London and Cardiff, Wales was provided with an institution that gave some complementarity to Scotland. Wales too was politically represented at Westminster by MPs largely drawn from Welsh branches of the British-​wide state parties, with support for the Liberals and Conservatives but an overwhelming dominance for Labour after 1918. This continued through the 1960s and 1970s, although Plaid Cymru emerged to gain parliamentary representation for the first time in the 1960s, which they then built on in the 1970 and 1974 general elections. In the context of the debate about independence and devolution in Scotland, similar debates developed in Wales, though with significantly less support for constitutional change. The Labour government of 1974–​9 also introduced a devolution act for Wales, though with the same Cunningham amendment that accompanied the Scottish bill, requiring that devolution had to be supported in a referendum by at least 40 per cent of the registered electorate. In practice, Wales came nowhere near supporting the creation of its own elected assembly in the referendum held in 1979. Only 20.3 per cent voted ‘yes’ on a 58.3 per cent turnout. The ‘no’ vote in 1979 was perceived by analysts at the time as a reflection of the strong integration of Wales into the British economy, not least through reliance on jobs in the nationalised coal and steel industries and in public services, as well as the divisions over identity and language. Nevertheless, public attitudes surveys in 1979 still indicated that, on a forced choice, around two thirds of Welsh voters would plump for identifying as Welsh against one third British. Meanwhile the powers of the Welsh Office also grew during the 1970s and a Welsh Development Agency was established to parallel the one in Scotland. Notwithstanding the failed referendum of 1979, the fact of Wales as a distinct nation remained a key element of understanding the UK state as a composite territorial state. Far from dropping off, its significance in the modern era had increased, and stood like the situation in Northern Ireland and the frustrated ‘yes’ vote in Scotland as a key part of the political inheritance for government at the end of the 1970s (Foulkes et al, 1983; Davies, 1994; Bradbury, 2008a). By comparison, England and Englishness were not so important to understanding the territorial dimension to UK politics. While there were many hallmarks of specifically English culture, Englishness as a political identity was not significant and there were no movements for specifically England-​only units of governance. Nevertheless, as debates about Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish dimensions to government developed during the 20th century, debate about regionalism in England did emerge. In the post-​war period the only

14

Historical contexts and organising perspectives

clear developments were the establishment of regional offices by UK central departments, but in the 1960s the region became a focus for debates about government renewal of the welfare state. The minority report of the royal commission on local government published in 1969 proposed around forty city regions, which tried to marry bureaucratic renewal with accountability to a more confined regional community. However, this was not implemented. In practice, the key development was that the concept of indicative planning became influential in the Labour Party. In 1965, the Wilson Labour government introduced eight English regional economic planning councils to implement a national economic planning framework. These lasted until 1979, when they were abolished by the incoming Thatcher government. Throughout this period, regional identities existed but did not develop as political movements, meaning that English regionalism is best seen as a central administrative movement (Hogwood and Keating, 1982; Harvie, 1991). The pressures for distinct recognition in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales though, meant that there was also a territorial dimension to some arrangements at the UK level of government. The numbers of MPs in the UK Parliament representing constituencies from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland relative to population was higher than in England. There was a long-​standing committee which enabled Scottish MPs to debate Scottish civil law, as well as historic Scottish and Welsh grand committees for general debate. From 1979, these were complemented by Scottish and Welsh select committees to scrutinise the work of the Scottish and Welsh Offices. Within the civil service provision for the Scottish and Welsh Offices was as part of a unitary UK civil service, but in Northern Ireland a legacy of the 1920s settlement was its own Northern Ireland civil service. Finally, the territorial composition of the state was explicitly recognised in annual public expenditure allocations. From the 1970s, this took the form of making block grant allocations to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland offices on the basis of the ‘Barnett formula’, which based those allocations on proportionate ratio calculations relative to English levels of expenditure. Generally, these allocations were judged as providing each of the territories with higher per capita spending than in England (Bradbury, 1997a). Overall, we can see that the politics of the UK strongly betrayed its origins as a territorial multinational state throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In acknowledging this historical context it is important though to recognise that it’s implications for the given order of things have been contested. Keating (1988:1) drew attention to the way in which histories tended to be written ‘within national traditions which

15

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

took for granted the existing state order’. Peripheral nationalisms were assumed to be ‘a pathological condition, a malfunction of the modern state, or as an archaic throwback, a temporary regression in political development’ (Keating, 1988:1). In this context, it is easy to recognise how many accounts of modern British history do indeed see the central story of UK politics as still bound up in the projects of governments elected at the centre, mostly concerned with the modernisation of government, economy and Britain’s position in the world. For all the recognition of the UK’s relative decline after the retreat from empire from the late 1950s, there remains in much British history an inbuilt assumption of the UK as a given. The projects of the Thatcher–​Major governments and following them the Blair governments have been key foci of analysis. In this context the multi-​national politics of the UK have often been ascribed an implicit secondary importance; bringing territorial diversity to a still assumed given state. Alternatively, Keating’s efforts to reterritorialise the state in historical context have been important for posing key questions: were not the UK and perhaps many other states forged in the modern period themselves now the archaic artefacts of an age that was passing? In an era of globalisation the location of the demos was passing to the nations closest to people. Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and yes even England, should be treated rather more as the givens of political life, and the UK as a decaying artificial structure imposed on the vibrant national histories that lay beneath. In this vein, Scottish and Welsh studies have seen a flowering of historical work since the 1970s to follow those in Irish studies that have seen their nations as the central focus. In reflecting on this, one simply needs to take forward a critically aware appreciation of the historical context. It remained the case even as the 20th century drew to a close that the UK was a major state with a total population of 59 million; its economy was among the top ten largest in the world; it was a nuclear power and it was one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. As a member of more international organisations than any other state in the world, it continued to have a truly global reach (Clarke, 1992). But it was also the case for many who woke up each morning and thought in terms of the interests of Scotland, Wales or Ireland, that they mainly saw the weaknesses and problems of UK rule. Some of the central facts of exploring the historical context to devolution in the late 1990s are not disputed; we simply need to be sensitive to the different lenses through which they will be viewed. From whatever perspective though, it was appreciated that the debates and developments that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s and

16

Historical contexts and organising perspectives

led to devolution were hugely significant when viewed in historical context. In what had been perceived as the special case of Northern Ireland, power-​sharing government was finally achieved. The Belfast Agreement in April 1998 represented an unprecedented accord between the representatives of unionism and nationalism. They agreed to share power in a devolved elected assembly as part of a tripartite set of structures, including also a North–South ministerial council to facilitate cooperation with the Irish government, and a British–​Irish Council (BIC) to bring together government representatives from across the British Isles. Ratified by referenda in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, the Belfast Agreement was passed into law later in 1998. It ushered in a commitment to democratic government to sit alongside a peace process, where the IRA and loyalist paramilitary groups stayed on ceasefire. The passing of the Scotland Act in 1998, following a referendum in September 1997, represented a historic re-​establishment of the Scottish Parliament after nearly three centuries in which it had not sat. It provided democratic representation of the distinct Scottish civil society that had persisted since Union, and brought an elected basis to an arena of Scottish government that already substantially existed under the arrangements of administrative devolution based on the Scottish Office. In Wales, a referendum in 1997 also resulted in a ‘yes’ vote and, under the Government of Wales Act 1998, a National Assembly for Wales was established for the very first time. This gave representation to the equally discernible traits of a Welsh stateless nation, but one that in political terms had not had either a clear pre-​or post-​union existence. England did not see quite such dramatic reform. Nevertheless, the Blair government introduced RDAs across England, as well as unelected regional chambers. In London, the Blair government also held a referendum on an elected mayor, which resulted in a ‘yes’ vote, leading to the resurrection of London-​wide local government under a mayor and Greater London Authority (GLA). Overall, devolution and regional reform created an elected and governmental framework to the territorial dimension of UK politics and an elected basis for self-​government in a manner never seen before. Nor did it stop there, as devolution reforms required both consolidation and further reform. This included a further Government of Wales Act in 2006, amending the powers of the Assembly, and a further decade of trying to make devolved power-​sharing government in Northern Ireland stable, which culminated in the St Andrews Agreement in 2006 and the re-​establishment of devolution in 2007. The UK –​as a territorial union of nations, whose origins dated back

17

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

to pre-​modern processes of invasion and settlement, and after centuries of acknowledging territorial distinctiveness in a wide variety of ways –​had now given elected political representation to those nations within the context of the state. Instantly, the UK’s engagement with devolution became a major focus for research on how, why and with what implications it was being done. It is to what scholarship has achieved in addressing these questions that we now turn.

Existing organising perspectives The literature on the advent of devolution is highly diverse, and a review is an exercise that hitherto scholars have largely neglected. The approach taken here develops from Gamble (1990), who conceived the general study of British politics in terms of two kinds of approach: first, what Greenleaf (1983:7) called ‘an explicit organising perspective of an adequate historical kind’; and second, ‘theories which present distinct hypotheses that may in principle be falsified’ (Gamble, 1990:405). The focus here is on organising perspectives. Developed on the basis of historical and philosophical methods, these seek to make sense of a wide range of empirical sources to develop overarching analyses. They tend to absorb the findings that result from a wide range of micro political science, and in turn become the overarching narratives within which such work becomes situated. It is in organising perspectives that general theories are developed and conventional wisdoms established. The argument made here is that a review of the literature on this basis suggests that existing organising perspectives in the study of UK devolution can be grouped broadly into two schools of analysis: British school; and Scottish, Welsh and Irish (territorial) school approaches. To take British school writers first, these can be located in what Gamble (1990:406–​11) himself described as the classic British school approach to writing about British politics, which analysed political development primarily in terms of the evolution of UK constitutional norms and a focus on the parliamentary state, the central constitutional doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, and the rule of law. A.V.Dicey (1885) is widely attributed with promoting the concept of parliamentary sovereignty at the end of the 19th century; in lieu of a written constitution it underpinned the understood supremacy of the UK parliament that ‘this sovereignty was unlimited in the sense that there was no division of sovereignty. There was no higher authority than Parliament to which appeal could be made’ (Gamble, 1990:406). The importance of these assumptions explains why the study of the Westminster model has been the key focus for accounts of UK

18

Historical contexts and organising perspectives

politics, and from this a conventional interpretation of British history has developed, which has ‘emphasised the continuity which British institutions had enjoyed since the Glorious Revolution of 1688’ helping to underpin ‘the flexibility and foresight of the governing class and the resulting responsiveness of British institutions to new demands and pressures’ (Gamble, 1990:407). Some key analysts have sought to assess the significance of devolution in terms of developing this British school tradition of writing. The most prominent early writer whose views we can see in these terms is Bogdanor (1999), who identified devolution as a reform of the British constitutional tradition that still maintained the centrality of the Westminster model and was consistent with parliamentary sovereignty. Devolution, he asserted, means the ‘transfer to a subordinate elected body, on a geographical basis, of functions at present exercised by ministers and parliament. These functions may be either legislative, the power to make laws, or executive, the power to make secondary laws’ (Bogdanor, 1999:2). In a discussion specifically of devolution for Scotland, he acknowledged that it: revises the terms of the Treaty of Union. But it does not signify a return to the pre-​1707 condition in which Scotland possessed a parliament co-​ordinate with that of England. That policy is favoured by the Scottish National Party, but it is far from the purpose of the Labour Government which has legislated for devolution. Devolution instead provides for a parliament which is constitutionally subordinate to Westminster. Devolution seeks to revise the Union, not to destroy it. (Bogdanor, 1999:15) Devolution was though a change that led writers to acknowledge the need for a conceptual clarification of the UK’s constitutional tradition to make sense of it. Up until the 1970s, it had been common to conceptualise the UK as a unitary state. However, Rokkan and Urwin’s specification of the UK as a case of a union state rather than a unitary state has been influential. They conceived the union state type as one where: incorporation of at least parts of the territory … [is] through personal dynastic union, for example, by treaty, marriage or inheritance. Integration is less than perfect. While administrative standardisation prevails over most of the territory, the consequences of personal union entail

19

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

survival of pre-​union rights and territorial infrastructures which preserve some degree of regional autonomy and serve as agencies of indigenous elite recruitment. (Rokkan and Urwin, 1982:11) Reflecting on the significant territorial composition of the UK on the basis of four nations, and the movements in the 20th century towards political change, Rokkan and Urwin argued that the UK had always been a prime example of just such a state. In similar vein, then, Bogdanor initially suggested that the granting of devolution in the late 1990s reflected a further adaptation of the UK state within this distinct pattern of union state development (Bogdanor, 1999:14–​15). Bogdanor was not alone in so doing. Mitchell preceded Bogdanor in applying the union state concept to understanding the UK’s relationship specifically with Scotland. It helped to shape his overall analysis of the continuation of institutions of self-​government after the Treaty and Acts of Union in 1706–7, and administrative devolution from the 19th century. It also shaped his understanding of devolution in 1997–​9 as representing a necessary democratisation of Scottish self-​government in response to the perceived illegitimacy of the period of Thatcherite reforms after 1979 (Mitchell, 1996c). Bradbury (1998) argued along similar lines in assessing the historic relationship of the UK with Wales. Assumptions of UK state standardisation had come to coexist with distinct Welsh institutions, as well as assumptions that the secretary of state for Wales should be a Welsh MP. Nevertheless, Bradbury conceived Wales’ union-​state relationship with the UK as one that was relatively ungrounded and devolution provided the opportunity to bring clarity. The concept of the union state has provided the organising framework for a variety of analyses of constitutional change across the UK, notably O’Neil (2004) and Bryant (2006). It is important though to recognise that a common feature of accounts of the UK as a union state was the maintenance still of the centrality of Westminster, and the concept of parliamentary sovereignty; devolution and its development remained subject to the subsequent will of Parliament. Subsequently, Bogdanor (2009) argued that the changes to the UK constitution marked by devolution were actually more transformative than the union state model suggested. He suggested that the devolution legislation along with other constitutional reforms passed by the Blair governments had the character of being fundamental constitutional law. They limited the rights of the Westminster Parliament and revised the founding principle of British constitutional practice from being

20

Historical contexts and organising perspectives

the sovereignty of parliament to the separation of powers. The new constitution therefore was territorially quasi-​federal in nature. He stressed the significance of the commitment in the case of Scotland to not normally legislate in devolved areas without the consent of the Scottish Parliament, and the importance of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council initially as effectively a constitutional court, whose judgements the UK government would be bound to accept (see also Bogdanor, 2001:149–​50). This approach was a challenge to the British school in the sense that it invited recognition of new guiding principles, but it still sustained the UK Parliament as the principal arena for the development of any such new guiding principles. If devolution implied federalism then a British school approach was to embrace still what Rokkan and Urwin called mechanical federalism ‘introduced, as it were, from above by constitutional means’ accommodating a pattern of diversity ‘within a hierarchical system of control, with a centre that is politically and institutionally stronger than any other constituent part’ (Rokkan and Urwin, 1982:11). The conception of devolution as consistent with being an adaptation or renewal of the UK political tradition has also had to make special allowance for the implications of the distinct power-​sharing approach to devolution introduced in Northern Ireland for the nature of representative democracy. Scholars have in fact developed two forms of analysis. First, it has been suggested that devolution has been achieved and union maintained, at least in the short term, through the application of quite distinct principles of democracy, namely consociational democracy, to sustain trust between mutually hostile blocs, as opposed to the majoritarian democracy principles used elsewhere in the UK (Wilford, 2001). Alternatively, other scholars have stressed the integrative ambitions of power sharing, stressing cross-​ community principles, which have the potential to lead over time to a transformation of underlying community hostilities and help stabilise governance in Northern Ireland on a devolved basis similar to the rest of the UK (Dixon, 2005). While the one approach tends to accept the analysis of Northern Ireland still as a special case within constitutional analysis, the other very much looks forward to it becoming comparable with other parts of the UK. All such analysis has represented a consideration of the implications of devolution in terms of a broadening of the conversation within the British school of how the UK constitution and democracy was to be understood afer the late 1990s reforms. It is unsurprising though, given the basic theoretical challenge posed by researchers who have sought to reterritorialise the study of UK politics without the given assumption

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CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

of there being a UK state, and the contested nature of constitutional politics that follows from this, that many analysts have considered devolution in quite different terms. Indeed so. Rival territory-​cenric interpretations have emerged that also work from the constitutional-​ historical-​philosophical mode of thinking but arrive at quite different conclusions. Mitchell’s later work is key to conceptualising what, in contrast to the British school approach to devolution, we may now call rival Scottish, Welsh, Irish/​Northern Irish –​or collectively territorial – school approaches to the study of devolution. Mitchell (2009:1) began by dismantling the certainty of the building blocks of the British school study of UK politics. He suggested that, contrary to British school certainty about the foundations of UK politics, ‘there is no agreement on what constitutes the UK constitution’. He picked up on Johnson’s (2004) classification of the UK as having a customary rather than a codified constitution but that the ‘customary constitution that Johnson celebrates proves elusive’ (Mitchell, 2009:  2). The UK has also been a state without a state nationalist discourse, which meant that in response to the expression of sub-​state national identities, there emerged an alternative discourse of unionism which was nevertheless not expressed as a positive British nationalism. This meant that ‘ironically then the term unionist acknowledges the limited nature of the union’ (Mitchell, 2009:3), and indeed Mitchell emphasises the fact that ‘significantly, the creation of the UK did not mean the eradication of its constituent elements’ (Mitchell, 2009:4). Mitchell, therefore, drew not on a Westminster model tradition of understanding the UK but on a strand of thought he traced back to Ambrosini’s definition of the regional state in 1930s Europe, one characterised by regional autonomy, and of which the UK could be tentatively seen even then as a case. This was logically consistent with the state type that, as we have seen, Rokkan and Urwin (1982) later identified as the union state, and which Mitchell himself was a key scholar in applying in understanding the UK during the 1990s. Yet, in his 2009 book, Devolution in the UK, he had come to understand the concept of the union state as operating not instead of but ‘alongside a dominant unitary state understanding which was often the conceptual lens through which constitutional politics was viewed and which informed and constrained thinking on which reforms were possible’ (Mitchell, 2009:6). This dominant unitary state understanding certainly applied to England, and any potential for a union-​state understanding of the rest of the UK was informed and constrained by it. Consequently, in trying to understand in practice the lack of purchase of the customary

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Historical contexts and organising perspectives

UK constitution in clarifying how the UK should work both before and after devolution, as well as how it should reflect the accompanying diversity in the territorial unions that made up the UK, the union state concept appeared inadequate. It appeared a concept geared towards acknowledging mild diversity only, tethered within what was still essentially a unitary state understanding of UK politics. Mitchell concluded that the concept of the union state was ‘rather ragged in its inability to help us conceive of the United Kingdom after devolution’ and given the much greater variation that was evident after devolution that ‘it is now better to conceive of the UK not as a union state but as a state of unions’ (Mitchell, 2009:6). Highlighting Mitchell’s analysis helps us to locate the significance of specifically territory-​centric constitutional analyses of devolution; that is, that understanding the UK as a state of unions rather than a union state suggests that constitutionally one should consider the UK from the bottom up not the top down, disaggregated with each territory considered in its own terms rather than in the context of aggregated state concerns. This helps us to make sense of a wide range of writers, who sought instead to analyse specifically Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish political development with only a secondary reference to the concerns of the UK. In the case of Scotland, MacCormick (1998) drew attention to the significance of the original treaty of union. If one were to accept the existence of an English constitution with parliamentary sovereignty as its central principle, then one had to accept with it that there was a Scottish anomaly that stood outside it. MacCormick’s view was that if Scotland is a nation it has an inherent right to self-​determination. In this context, devolution was understood as the re-​establishment of the Scottish Parliament, and there was a constitutional basis for devolution proceeding in line primarily with the Scottish will, a fact reflected in the acceptance that any referendum on Scotland was restricted to Scottish voters only. McLean and McMillan (2005:8) similarly emphasised the significance of ‘the Scottish anomaly viz that the treaty of union was a Treaty, which preserved distinctive institutions including the notion of popular (rather than parliamentary) sovereignty’. McLean and McMillan embraced the conception of the UK as a union state, but in siding as well with Scottish constitutional law they held a very state of unions view of the union state that had much in common with Mitchell’s emphasis on the constitutional rights of Scotland that arose from the terms of its particular treaty of union rather than any overriding rights for the UK Parliament. Dicey’s promotion of the concept of UK parliamentary sovereignty was irrelevant, and the reality of politics in Scotland was

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that it operated in its own world. McLean (2010:313) later worked from the explicit conception that the ‘United Kingdom exists by virtue of a constitutional contract between two previously independent states’, and could only be reconstructed on the basis of popular as opposed to parliamentary sovereignty, meaning that an unelected head of state, House of Lords and established church all had to go. In the case of Wales, Rawlings (2003a) followed assumptions that national devolution meant that Wales also should constitutionally be treated as a nation. As a result, within the framework of the legal definition of its powers, the National Assembly should be granted maximum discretion. This underpinned the so-​called Rawlings principles which, inter alia, stated that the Assembly should have ‘Henry VIII powers’ allowing it to amend UK law for Wales in areas that had been devolved, and should not be constrained by UK ministers having concurrent powers for Wales in devolved areas. Equally, the bestowal of any new functions of government for Wales which related to the Assembly’s existing areas of responsibility should also be devolved, and no new functions should be bestowed on the secretary of state when they could be devolved (Rawlings, 2003a:318–​19). This worked from an implicit acknowledgement of the constitutionally more modest form of devolution to Wales that occurred in 1999, but nevertheless worked into its constitutional understanding ideas of national self-​ determination, popular sovereignty and assumptions of the right for an elected National Assembly for Wales to reflect the interests of the Welsh people. Northern Ireland is different in that there are segmented territory-​ only approaches that have interpreted the significance of devolution in different ways. On the one hand, some scholars have articulated what we might call an Irish school approach by interpreting the meaning of the Belfast Agreement in terms of its erosion of British sovereignty. Ruane and Todd (2001:936) quoted O’Leary (1999) as believing British sovereignty to be ‘radically changed’ and summarised Hadfield (1998) as drawing attention to the dilution of the Union. The division of powers and role of the Republic of Ireland meant that ‘the agreement on this view, formally acknowledges British sovereignty, while implicitly emptying it of much of its political and substance’ (Ruane and Todd, 2001:936). In this spirit, O’Leary (2002) considered Northern Ireland to be a federacy as well as a consociational democracy, and henceforth not to be further reformed by the UK government without the people’s consent. From this outlook, the expected direction of travel of Northern Ireland was in terms of the development of new institutional relationships within Northern Ireland. On the other hand, Ruane and

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Todd (2001:936) summarised the strong view within unionism that the Belfast Agreement confirmed British sovereignty in a traditional sense as well as the British character of Northern Ireland, and that nationalists and Republicans had implicitly consented to this. This in many ways suggested a hardened traditional version of British school assumptions, emphasising the purpose of Northern Ireland devolution to be about bringing peace to Northern Ireland, progress and the rule of law within the UK. Scholars therefore have developed rival British and territorial school constitutional analyses of the meaning of devolution, and of its origins and development. In so doing actually all of these scholars by and large have shared the assumption of the importance of identity politics in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to devolution happening. This is generally linked to the UK’s retreat from empire from the 1950s, preoccupations with relative decline economically and strategically, and approaches to state modernisation pursued since the Macmillan and Wilson governments of the 1960s, as well as the particular period of economic and industrial relations crises in the 1970s. It is simply that British and territorial school writers have diverged in their concerns in analysing how and with what implications devolution provided a response to identity claims. British school writers have looked for statesmanlike adjustments of the territorial constitution to accommodate such identity politics while re-​forging the UK state; while territorial school writers have assumed British decline and then assessed devolution in terms of how it transferred the demos to new centres of power. In analysing devolution in terms of these concerns, however, both British school and territorial school writers have been disappointed by what they have seen as the lack of forethought, planning and constitutional coherence that resulted. Territorial constitutional analyses have approached the issue from the perspective of the unwarranted denial of more devolution. For example, in Scotland Paterson (2002) argued that there was the danger of disillusionment settling in at the limited range of powers given to the Parliament, and that the only stable basis for the development of devolution lay in granting substantial extra powers. This was an argument that grew in strength during the 2000s, blending critiques of the limited agendas of the two Labour–​Liberal Democrat coalition governments, 1999–​2007, with critiques of the limited capacity anyway for Scottish devolved governance to develop its own vision of political economy and social welfare. Rawlings (2003a) similarly assessed the design of Welsh devolution as consistently constrained by the limits of Welsh Labour ambition for powers and an

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incoherence in constitutional design that made the operation of what powers had been granted very problematic. This critique also persisted throughout the 2000s. In Northern Ireland, critiques commonly reflected –​on either nationalist or unionist grounds –​the excessive barriers to a clear trajectory for the development of Northern Ireland towards their particular end-​goals. Researchers writing in this vein on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have commonly been informed by evaluative criteria of the extent to which devolution met the needs of self-​determination, popular sovereignty and national will. This does not mean to say that there have been expectations of simple outcomes. In considering the implications of the arrival of the SNP in government in Scotland in 2007, Keating (2009) reflected on a wide range of possible outcomes in developing devolution that may meet the needs of national self-​ determination and popular will and still maintain close association with the UK, including specific forms of federalism, confederalism and sovereignty association. Yet, it was expected that the dynamics of change would be very different from those envisaged by British school writers. In particular, Mitchell (2009:6) envisaged that if devolution were to lead to federalism it would be a version of organic federalism which Rokkan and Urwin (1982:11) had originally defined as ‘imposed from below as a result of voluntary association’ in which ‘control by the centre is limited, having to take cognisance of the large degree of institutional autonomy residing in the constituent parts’. For Mitchell (2009:6) it could embrace ‘even arrangements in which some part attains some measure of independence’. Such analyses consolidated notions of distinctly territorial schools of constitutional analysis, championing the territory-​only criteria that they felt should inform the development of reform  –​and finding the initial settlements of 1997–​99 wanting against that criteria. British school writers have been critical of the way in which devolution was introduced from a rather different point of view. Bogdanor (1999) argued that it was evident from the start that UK central government thinking, which continued to assert the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, was at odds with the reality of what devolution meant. The fact of devolution together with the claim of political leaders in Scotland and Wales to represent the will of their distinct national communities would make the use of parliamentary sovereignty extremely difficult. Bogdanor expected there to be a de facto development of coordinate and independent levels of devolved and UK government, where reference to the will of the people at the devolved level provided the resource which neutralised the statutory

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assertion of UK parliamentary sovereignty. It would establish a quasi-​ federalism in UK constitutional practice, whether UK government liked it or not, in which UK government would develop the practice of not normally legislating for devolved jurisdictions in areas that were devolved. Thus, commenting on Scotland, he observed that ‘relationships between Westminster and Edinburgh will be quasi-​ federal in normal times and unitary only in crisis times’ (Bogdanor, 1999:291). Long periods of not using its statutory authority could even then render the Westminster Parliament powerless over devolved jurisdictions. Bogdanor feared the powerful impulses of separatism, but nevertheless hoped that devolution –​in giving breathing space for national sentiment –​could still in the long term strengthen the UK if it were accompanied by the maintenance of a common sentiment across the state and the development of a codified federal constitution (Bogdanor, 1999; Bogdanor, 2009). The obvious antidote to such anxieties was to look for the development of symmetry in devolution and formal arrangements to cover the new intergovernmental relationships across the state as a whole. However, these were not forthcoming. Hazell (2000) was perhaps the most prominent researcher in the early years of devolution who documented and lamented the apparent wilful lack of symmetry in the devolution settlements and the lack of vision regarding a reform of the state as a whole. He cited Ward (2000) in decrying the separate development of each of the devolution settlements, basing them on different sets of powers, different principles of constitutional relationship to UK government and the monarchy, and a random selection of administrative innovations that were not universally applied. He concluded that it has ‘produced a UK constitution that is so complex that it must be incomprehensible to most citizens, and constitutional incoherence surely contributes to the democratic deficit in the UK’ (Ward, 2000:136, quoted in Hazell, 2000:271). Scholars specifically of Northern Ireland added to this their analyses of a lack of rational development of the devolution settlement. Wilford and Wilson (2000) criticised the lack of commitment to developing mechanisms of cross-​community trust and political working that could help transform hostilities. Trench (2007b; 2007f) drew together the Leverhulme Foundation Nations and Regions Project to suggest that the UK’s state-​territorial government relations had developed in an ad hoc and fragmented manner after 1999. Similarly, Jeffery (2007), the director of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) programme on devolution and constitutional change of the early 2000s, concluded that there had been a fundamental lack of strategic thinking, leaving

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many unanswered questions, including a lack of principles for how the new intergovernmental system should work or how its development should be limited. Rather, the UK government had developed devolution in a piecemeal fashion, following an approach he called ‘permissive autonomy’ which had led to unmanaged divergence (Jeffery, 2009:298). While it operated in a relatively stable manner in the early years, Jeffery argued that the intergovernmental system would be vulnerable to economic downturn or changes in government. Jeffery also criticised the fact that England’s role within the UK was largely unaddressed. It meant that the UK was a lopsided state in which the largest nation had not received devolution. He warned that England ‘is not just an elephant compared to the much smaller occupants of the UK boat, but also an inadequately tethered and potentially wilful version of that beast’ (Jeffery, 2007:96), whose reactions to devolution could destabilise the UK state. Sandford and Gormley Heenan (2020:110), looking back on the advent of devolution, accused the Blair government of ‘the avoidance of formal constitutional debate’, leading to political ambiguity in the formative years of devolution. Different constitutional narratives of what devolution meant were allowed to grow up in London and Scotland, with rival views regarding sovereignty. They argued that this ambiguity over where sovereignty lay was exposed ultimately by the challenges of Brexit when both UK and Scottish governments wanted to assert their sovereignty, but the roots of the perceived impending crisis lay back at the start. This added to the litany of British school writers critical of the Blair governments’ apparently ad hoc and uncoordinated approach to devolution and their failure to engage with state-​wide arrangements utilised in federal states for accommodating regional and national pressures. In both territorial school and British school forms of constitutional analysis it was possible of course to consider that the consequence of such inattentiveness to planning was that strong political forces for separation could build up in the nations and regions, and so that the UK might break up. Few saw this as happening rapidly but nevertheless charted the direction of travel. Mitchell (2009), for example, was subtle in suggesting that the approaches of the UK Labour governments after 1997 to developing devolution released dynamics for potentially major long-​term change. He suggested that the replacement of the old territorial offices of state by new elected devolved institutions should be seen as representing the move from what Mackenzie and Chapman (1951) had labelled autarchic institutions to new autonomous institutions with much potential for seeking

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divergence from Westminster. At the same time, state management as a whole leaned heavily on what Johnson (2004) called the ‘inexplicit principles’ of the customary constitution; there had been no state-​wide constitutional thinking and central government ignored the potential of such mechanisms of dialogue as UK-​wide joint ministerial committees (Mitchell, 2009:220–​1). Mitchell (2009:222–​4) concluded that in the short term the potential for change was masked by a situation of apparent stability as Labour were in power at both UK and Scottish/​Welsh levels between 1997 and 2007, and public spending allocations throughout these years were generous and growing. Equally, there was no certainty about how major questions originally raised by A.V. Dicey (1886) over proposals for Irish home rule would play out in the long term: first, the status of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty against opposing principles of sovereignty; second, perceptions of the legitimacy of devolution and perceived justice from the viewpoints of both the recipients of devolution and the passive observer, the English; and third, whether devolution would provide for a lasting settlement as politicians sought to deal with heightened expectations and increasing awareness of constitutional anomalies. Yet, Mitchell (2009:226) reflected a lot of academic opinion both around the UK and at the centre that assumed a context of the strengthening of identity politics in the late 20th century and was then very critical of the UK approach to devolution, in observing that ever looser union was the most likely default outcome of the UK’s inchoate constitutional embrace of devolution. Of course, this was something that territorial school analysts of devolution observed with an appreciation of the possibilities that ever looser union engendered for more coherent and far-​reaching constitutional change in terms of the rights of stateless nations. For British school analysts, it was something that sustained their unease at the unplanned lurch into the unknown that devolution represented: a step seemingly beyond cautious adaptation in terms of a union-​state model of the UK and instead towards possible disintegration.

Towards a realist organising perspective Constitutional British and Scottish, Welsh and Irish/​Unionist schools of analysis have provided powerful perspectives on the advent of devolution, and a range of critiques of how the Blair Governments introduced and developed reform. Frustrated territorial school and anxious British-​school constitutionalist writing continues to abound twenty years on, rooting the problems perceived from various angles

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to exist today in mistakes made at the start. Yet, there are objections that can be made to this mode of analysis for how well it allows us to appreciate fully how and why the devolution reforms were introduced and developed in the way that they were, as well as for providing appropriate criteria for judging their implications. Indeed, Gamble (1990) raised four common critiques of constitutionalist analysis when applied to British politics as a whole which can be applied here to both territorial and British school approaches to the study of devolution. First, while the best constitutionalist analysis does not neglect the importance of circumstances, interests or behaviour in explaining political change, it does nevertheless privilege the importance of ideas. As Gamble suggests, within this approach ‘institutions are understood as the expression of human purposes, which in turn reflect ideas’ (Gamble, 1990:409). This does not negate its value but it does serve to highlight the neglect of attention to what political actors do; and that we should be mindful of the need to explore approaches where ‘ideas are more often viewed as providing legitimation for political behaviour rather than explaining it’ (Gamble, 1990:410). The same critique can be extended to the territorial and British school analyses of devolution: that they have privileged the centrality of ideas and focused too little on how constitutional ideas have been used instrumentally for political purposes. Hence, there is a need to address what might be gained from pursuing analysis which treats ideas such as sovereignty, national identity, rights and justice as currencies used in the assertion of interests and exchange of power between individuals and groups rather than as determining factors in their own right. Second, given this context it is no surprise that the constitutionalist literature does not spend time on defining a framework for the analysis of political behaviour. Rather the focus of constitutionalist analysis is evaluation of outcomes in the context of normative ideas, which in turn can tend to narrate some outcomes which are aligned to chosen valued ideas more kindly than others. This leaves us to ponder what may be gained from further reflection on how to conceive whose behaviour we are interested in and the interests they were pursuing in helping to understand the motivations and processes that lay behind how and why devolution in its different forms was developed across the UK. This is equally true for a consideration of either the role of mass or elite political behaviour in influencing or shaping the development of devolution. Third, and connected to this, the constitutionalist literature tends to dwell little on the conceptions of the state being employed. It tends to work, therefore, with an implicit assumption of the liberal

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democratic nature of the state and an acceptance that politics is about competing norms of where the primary demos lies, or should lie, and where dysfunctions of the liberal democratic state can be found in the development of the liberal democratic state itself. This can be seen in Scottish and Welsh school normative liberal democratic assumptions of the potential for new politics, democratic renewal and government closer to the people in devolved governance, juxtaposed against the centralised nature of the UK state, broken Westminster, and democratic malaise in UK politics. At the same time, British school writers tend to work with an alternative view still of the potential gain of devolved governance, but one subsumed within a broader view that sees devolution as part of a notion of the democratic renewal of the UK political system as a whole. Such writers also tend to juxtapose the benign values of unity, solidarity and pluralism in the idea of the multinational, liberal democratic UK state against the perceived exclusionary, fragmenting, isolating purposes of separatist nationalism. Again this leaves us with the need to think about what may be gained in analysis from engaging with a more critically aware conception of the state, allowing us to focus analysis on how actors and interests at all levels of government may seek to assert the focus for the demos in relation to the concerns of power as opposed to ideas, with no one normative ideal taken as a priori preferable. Fourth, it is undoubtedly the case that constitutionalist analysis has a concern with incorporating historical context, whether it be by invoking the significance of evolutionary trends in constitutional practice, periods of challenge to previous constitutional norms, or the historical contingency of development and reform which may affect practice. However, Gamble (1990) drew attention to the problems that British school writing still had in engaging with the deep problems of British relative decline and in detaching itself from implicit Whiggish assumptions of the possibility of a narrative of improvement and, indeed, perfectibility. Such a critique could also be levelled at both British and Scottish/​Welsh school writers. Even though they all factor in relative British decline externally as an issue in weakening the authority of the UK over its internal territorial complexity, all the critical analysis of the development of devolution in its early years is grounded in two assumptions: that devolution should be seen as part of progressive modernisation and that it could have been done so much more effectively, that is perfectly or ideally, as a long-​term settlement –​ whether this be to fully articulate the new devolved focus of the demos more effectively, or restabilise the state more effectively –​if it had not been for failure by policy makers. If we are to explore the gains to

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analysis of factoring in historical context, then more attention needs to be given to defining the broader economic, social and political features of both decline and attempted modernisation in the contemporary period as well as the real time constraints on governments both at UK and devolved levels that may have shaped and constrained policy makers in introducing and developing devolution. This would also be to explore how difficult it all was for policy makers and to bring more empathy to their position. Overall, this is to critique the dominant organising perspectives on the politics of devolution as:  first, primarily idealist in their consideration of the causes and implications of devolution; second, lacking in consideration of the role of actor behaviour and interests in actually how and why devolution reforms occurred and were developed; third, normatively charged in evaluating developments in terms of ideal or perfect outturns, whether these be greater devolution from one perspective or greater state stability from another; and fourth, assuming the possibility of managing devolution to ensure progress over time, whether it be for any single territory, or for the state as a whole. The conventional wisdoms of devolution have tended, therefore, to be produced by writers who themselves have been –​implicitly or explicitly –​participants in the debate about how devolution should have been introduced. This is not to delegitimise such work; it springs from a key approach in political science and, as Gamble (1990) acknowledged, requirements in the political class have always existed for practitioner-​relevant debate of ideas. But it is not the only approach, and to open up inquiry it is important that others are invested in. Gamble’s survey of theories of British politics entertained a wide range of possible alternatives to the idealist-​constitutional approach that are relevant to the study of UK politics and devolution. Most immediately, he characterised realism as the main alternative tradition for developing an organising perspective as an approach to ‘writing that has given much greater weight to interests or institutions than ideas’ (Gamble, 1990:410). Beyond that, he cited comparative studies in the fields of political economy, public policy, political attitudes, political ideas, and parties and constitutional development as engines of new theories that could be tested in the UK case. In relating this menu of possible alternative approaches to the field of devolution studies, it is important to note that the latter comparative fields of inquiry have stimulated much innovation. Many studies have been conducted with high levels of methodological rigour. They have, however, been frequently concerned either at the macro level to reconceptualise

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analysis of the significance of devolution within broader socio-​ spatial analyses of global change, or at the micro level to further our understanding of a specific topic only. Meanwhile, there has been a lack of sustained development of an alternative realist organising perspective for studying devolution. As a result, the constitutionalist-​idealist stories that academics have told tend to sustain their ground as the central organising perspectives with which insights from comparative political science then engage. It is timely then to make the choice to invest in a realist approach to studying devolution and UK politics:  to provide an organising perspective which can provide an alternative overarching framework within which we can seek to understand how, why and with what implications devolution was introduced. In seeking to develop an alternative prospectus within this tradition for the study of territorial constitutional change, the prime candidate to work from is Bulpitt, whose Territory and Power in the United Kingdom (1983) pioneered a realist territorial politics approach to studying UK political development. His work remains a respected reference point in the literature, but it has become relatively neglected as a foundational framework for understanding contemporary territorial change. It is not an easy path to pursue, but the gains of developing a realist organising perspective are considerable. We can potentially develop an overarching framework for analysis, which gives due regard to the power politics underpinning the advent and early implementation of devolution. We may also develop more appropriate non-​ideal criteria against which to judge the effectiveness of what both the Blair governments and the various movements for territorial constitutional change did between the late 1990s and late 2000s.

Conclusion This chapter has sought to provide both a historical context to the advent of devolution at the end of the 1990s and a review of the existing literature. Analytically, this has sought to establish that the central characteristics of writing about how, why and with what implications devolution was introduced have been the dominance of views developed within a constitutionalist-​idealist paradigm and, with this, the divergence between what we might call British school and territorial school approaches to analysis. Each has presented equally critical analyses of how devolution was introduced and developed, albeit on different grounds. A  critical appraisal of this contested constitutionalism has identified the limitations of developing analysis

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purely on this basis. It has produced some conventional wisdoms which are partial and open to challenge. In this context, this chapter has concluded by making the case for developing an alternative organising perspective, rooted in a realist appreciation of actor-​based behaviour. Bulpitt’s Territory and Power in the United Kingdom (1983) will be taken as a starting point for thinking about what we focus on and what assumptions we explore. Developing analysis in this way provides potential for standing apart from specifically British or territorially centric normative perspectives, considering instead the actions and decisions of political actors at the UK centre and in territorial arenas. Analysis can consider territorial and centre behaviour with equal weight, seek to clarify what factors were at play in each case, how and why they pursued certain approaches and how they made the decisions they did. The next chapter will take up the challenge of developing this approach.

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3

Analysing Territorial Politics and Constitutional Policy All studies of territorial politics recognise the underlying importance of a cultural identity underpinning the construction and/​or expression of territorial claims. It is simply that a strong vein of literature looks outside the assumption that there is a linear relationship between the expression of cultural identity and the political development of ideas of sovereignty and constitutional rights. Realist approaches recognise that there is an inherent politics to the development of group interests and the mobilisation of territorial support, whether it be for the development of states or sub-​state territorial units (Rothschild, 1981). The rational and intentional behaviours of groups do not take over completely, but they are a significant dimension of how territorial interests are actually led and articulated, what strategies and forms of mobilisation are developed, and how the goals to be pursued are defined (Rothschild, 1981; Barreto, 2009). Approaching analysis within these terms provides us with a fresh opportunity to understand how, why and with what implications devolution happened. It foregrounds analysis of political actors central to the development of devolution operating within specific institutional contexts, developing courses of action in accord with their interests but taking into account ‘the constraints and circumstances they face’ (Gamble, 1990:410). This approach privileges analysis of political elites seeking territorial outcomes in challenging contexts; the motivations of party elites focused on electoral success and political power; and government and bureaucratic elites focused on maintaining competent and effective government. It builds in assumptions that action is driven by power politics, where ideas are part of the currency of contestation, and asks questions about how such contestation is being steered, the nature of political management, and where the real sources of power lie.

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In seeking such an approach to the study of how and why devolution was introduced in the UK in the way that it was, the prime candidate to work from is Bulpitt, whose book Territory and Power in the United Kingdom (1983) pioneered a realist territorial politics approach to studying UK political development. The value of working from Bulpitt is twofold. First, there is an enormous complexity in the issues that researchers try to take account of in assessing territorial politics; this can lead to unwieldy conceptual frameworks which are hard to operationalise. Bulpitt’s is a relatively parsimonious framework of analysis. There is always a danger that a conceptual framework is underdeveloped, but the optimal point is where it is sufficiently plausible in what it encompasses, and its terms of analysis sufficiently varied, so that its application still helps us to see the wood for the trees in a manner that rings true. Bulpitt’s approach has been sufficiently influential to suggest that it achieves this, while its relative neglect against the tide of constitutionalist analysis suggests that, as a recognised classic work, it is ripe for some reinvestment (see Bulpitt, 2008, reissued in ECPR Classics series; Bradbury, 2010). Second, Territory and Power also put forward a powerful interpretation of how UK territorial politics worked up until the early 1980s which assumed development on the basis of realist calculation of various territorial actors, notably parties, and accordingly provides an ideal theoretical starting point for assessing how we might analyse its development to include the introduction of devolution thereafter. It is important to note from the start, though, that while Bulpitt mapped out the study of territorial politics as a broad field of study and recognised the importance of territorial pressures inherent within the UK state, he focused primarily on defining a conceptual framework for the study of the core political actors directing government at the centre. He then derived from this a theory of UK centre territorial management of those pressures because he believed the centre was primarily responsible for determing how territorial pressures were responded to and developed. In hindsight, Rokkan and Urwin’s (1982) equally pioneering comparative framework for the study of territorial politics, developed in the same period, demonstrated that really Bulpitt did leave out too much that was important: most obviously, a focus on problematising the study of the periphery and movements for territorial change. The study of sub-​state territorial movements has, in fact, been the main focus of study within the territorial politics literature since the 1980s, including an emerging literature on the interest-​based and policy priorities of sub-​state territorial politics. There is, then, a need

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to build again from the equally classic work of Rokkan and Urwin (1982) and to incorporate the key elements of such realist analysis so as to study the role and importance of territorial pressures and movements in determing territorial change in a way that complements Bulpitt’s prospectus for studying the centre. Bulpitt also did not problematise how broad territorial strategy was translated into territorial policies and how they achieved some level of successful implementation. There is a need also then to take account of the burgeoning field of territorial constitutional policy studies, which has raised the importance of how territorial policy is actually negotiated and ratified to the effectiveness of political management seen from both a periphery and a centre perspective. This chapter therefore takes on the task of what Bulpitt himself would have recognised as concept repair to engage more fully with the key issues of territorial politics but still within a reasonably parsimonious approach to analysis. The thrust of this is to take equally seriously the tasks of trying to identify: first, territorial reform approaches in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England; second, political approaches to territorial management in the UK centre; and third, key dimensions of the territorial constitutional policy process which determine the effectiveness of political management from either periphery or centre viewpoints. Bulpitt would have bridled at broadening from a primary focus on the centre, but most people would beg to differ. On the basis of this broadened but still relatively parsimonious approach, this chapter will raise a series of theoretical propositions about UK devolution, consistent with Bulpitt’s original theory of how territorial politics in the UK works, which will be explored throughout the rest of this book. To this end, the chapter proceeds in three sections. The first deals with Bulpitt’s original approach and theory of UK territorial politics and centre territorial management and how they could be applied to studying territorial politics and the centre’s approach to devolution in the 1990s and 2000s. The second section readdresses Rokkan and Urwin (1982) and key themes in the comparative literature to construct a framework for analysing the periphery that is consistent with Bulpitt’s approach; it also considers how this framework might be applied to UK territorial politics and territorial movements for change in relation to devolution. The third section then addresses the constitutional policy literature, picking out Benz (2016). He shares Bulpitt’s pessimistic assumptions of how solvable state territorial problems really are, while also providing the most clearly elaborated framework for studying the territorial constitutional policy process that we currently have. The

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conclusion summarises the resulting overall framework and theoretical propositions that will guide the book’s analysis.

Territorial politics and centre territorial management in the UK Bulpitt defined territorial politics as: that arena of political activity concerned with the relations between the central political institutions in the capital city and those interests, communities, political organisations and governmental bodies outside the central institutional complex, but within the accepted boundaries of the state, which possess or are commonly perceived to possess, a significant geographical or local/​regional character. (Bulpitt, 1983:52) This definition did not specify peripheries as specific parts of the state with particular characteristics, and invited instead a focus on all political linkages of a territorial character, power struggles and intrastate relations, and sought to relate them to the objective of defining the overall structure of territorial politics in any given country. Bulpitt’s work is most significant for the fact that it sought to define a framework specifically for analysing the operations of the centre in managing territorial politics, which he then applied to a historical analysis of the UK. His approach provided several key conceptual contributions. First, Bulpitt asserted the importance of incorporating a link between centre–​periphery relations and external affairs. Here he introduced the idea that the centre would always seek to have an external support system that would ‘attempt to minimise the impact of external forces on domestic politics, or ensure that these forces are favourable to the maintenance of domestic tranquillity’ (Bulpitt, 1983:59). Problems in the external support system could provide a considerable dynamic to change in domestic territorial politics. This highlighted a broader point that the centre’s approach to territorial management could not be viewed in isolation from the centre’s other concerns in government. Politics happens in real time, and decision-​making in one area will be constrained and/​or influenced by decision-​making in another. Second, Bulpitt created a set of categories for analysing the centre’s territorial management on the basis of codes of territorial management, strategies, resources, and the form of centre–​periphery relations that may result. Bulpitt defined five instruments available to the centre

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in developing its code of territorial management, each of which could come by itself to define the code overall. For Bulpitt ‘a code is something less than a philosophy of government and yet more than a collection of specific policies. It relates to the accepted rules of statecraft as employed over time by political elites’ (Bulpitt, 1983:68). The instruments that might define an elite territorial management code were first, central penetration, which was minimally necessary to ensure the ability to maintain law and order, the raising of taxes and military capability, but could be taken to more punitive extremes. Second, there was local elite assimilation, or indirect rule through local leaders, who governed on behalf of the centre in a manner largely in accord with the centre’s norms. It was potentially unstable, in that such leaders may depart from centre norms or not command public support, but when working well it enabled ‘a reasonable degree of continuous penetration to be achieved at minimum cost’ (Bulpitt, 1983:61). Third, there was central control of local governments, which varied from simply limiting local government from breaking the law through to imposing a broad range of policy objectives. Fourth, there was organisation mobilisation, by which the centre sought to directly control local affairs through mobilising for its own interests such organisations as parties or trade unions. Finally, there was citizen mobilisation, by which the centre sought ‘to mobilise the citizens of territorial communities to give continuous active support and assistance to the full range of the Centre’s policy objectives’ (Bulpitt, 1983:62). This was the ultimate form of centralisation and in most pluralist polities was only observable during periods of war. On centre strategies, Bulpitt made a distinction between those that were laissez-​faire, regulatory and promotional. The former implied a studied indifference to seeking control over a wide range of economic and social responsibilities. A regulatory strategy involved the pursuit of particular policy aims conducted through arm’s-​length approaches to governing employing mechanisms for compliance, such as contracts. In contrast, promotional strategies raised the potential need for more direct central intervention in the periphery to achieve the centre’s objectives. Bulpitt then itemised six key areas of centre resource capacity that could either help to influence or at least obstruct peripheral forces in the pursuit of the centre’s aims. These were: first, state-​wide unionist culture; second, constitutional rules; third, bureaucratic capability and presence; fourth, a mass state-​wide party system; fifth, the availability of economic resources to reassure the periphery against economic deprivation; and finally, ‘sufficient time to devote to peripheral politics’, free of preoccupations with

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other political priorities, including problems of ‘a difficult or fragile external support system’ (Bulpitt, 1983:63). The suggestion was that a centre aspiring for complete dominance would seek a hegemonic unionist culture, constitutional rules which obstructed periphery articulation, a bureaucracy with strong territorial penetration, a mass party system controlled by politicians at the centre, resources for economic management that could dispel territorial deprivation, and considerable time to devote to peripheral politics. Alternatively, in the context of resource weaknesses the centre might have to or seek to develop more satisficing objectives on these issues. On forms of resulting centre–​periphery relations, Bulpitt identified four possible models. These were, first, the central autonomy model, which ‘postulates a Centre seeking and gaining autonomy from peripheral forces to concentrate on what it regards as “high politics” ’ (Bulpitt, 1983:64–​5). This presumes an ability to leave peripheral government to peripheral forces without damaging the authority of the state, and a capacity to insulate the centre from penetration from peripheral forces which might get in the way of its more pressing concerns. Second, there was the capital city bargaining model ‘in which peripheral groups and governments articulate, defend and satisfy their interests within the institutional complex of the Centre’ (Bulpitt, 1983:64). This suggested more peripheral interference in the centre’s affairs but often in a cooperative fashion and, at the worst, only on issues limited to those of interest to the periphery. Third, there was the central authority model, in which ‘the Centre achieves its aims because peripheral citizens, politicians and officials accept that it has a legitimate right to demand their co-​operation and acquiescence’ (Bulpitt, 1983:64). Here, local elites may help the centre, but there is more continuous need for central assertion in the periphery. Fourth and finally, Bulpitt postulated the coercive power model, in which centre–​ periphery relations are broadly characterised by systematic central intervention and use of threats. Bulpitt’s typologies of centre code, strategy and structure of centre-​perphery relations are summarised in Tables 3.1–​3.3. Overall, Bulpitt’s purpose in specifying a variety of types of central approach that might be pursued in the light of available resources was to get away from analyses which all too easily suggested centralisation on the basis of the constitutional location of powers and then also jumped immediately to conclusions that centralisation was bad. Rather Bulpitt defined ‘a centralised structure of territorial politics’ simply as ‘one in which the displacement of peripheral interests is low’ (Bulpitt, 1983:65). Implicitly, his framework for analysis set up a

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continuum which, in drawing on all his categories of analysis at the one end, conceptualised an approach assuming low concentration on acquiring resources for dominant central control, and therefore an approach which was ideally characterised by a local elite assimilation code of territorial management, a laissez-​faire strategy and a focus on achieving centre autonomy. This would constitute the pursuit of a relatively peripheralised structure of territorial politics in which, having successfully secured peripheral governors that can be relied upon, the centre would seek to peripheralise many areas of government that were not of central political concern. A relatively centralised structure at the other end of the continuum would be characterised by a centre strong in resources and bent on the acquisition of more resources to underpin domination, an inclination to direct central control and possibly organisation mobilisation, adopting a promotional strategy with the result of a central authority model of centre–​periphery relations in which the centre routinely and extensively dominated domestic affairs. Within this comparative framework, Bulpitt provided a historical interpretation of the UK in which he emphasised two enduring features of territorial politics. First, he had a highly sceptical view of the strength of both centre and periphery resources relative to their aspirations and expectations. Territory and Power began from a historical analysis of the essential inchoateness of England, governed by central monarchs who also faced fundamental weaknesses in governing from the centre and developing appropriate satisficing responses. This model of weak periphery/​weak centre and satisficing strategies of territorial management was fundamental to his understanding of the basic structure of UK territorial politics, and he then developed it further in his understanding of the broader centre–​periphery relations of the UK. In the modern period, Bulpitt emphasised the importance of pressures from the periphery, including those of nationalism. Yet equally, he was questioning of their inherent strength, and the extent to which the impact of centre policies encouraging regional development bolstered them. At the same time, despite the growth in the resources of the modern central state, Bulpitt sustained what he saw as a more realistic appreciation of limited centre capacity, that led to ambitions to impose as little direct central control as necessary. Implicitly, Bulpitt left his readers in little doubt that –​from the centre’s point of view  –​centralised structures of territorial politics were difficult, hard to acquire and ultimately unsustainable. Peripheralised structures were the most efficient for the centre, and for Bulpitt were clearly an ideal type aim of territorial governing. The weak periphery/​weak centre paradigm meant, of course, that he was sceptical both of the

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periphery’s capacity to assert itself to fully meet aspirations for strong autonomy or independence, and of the centre’s capacity to seek or achieve centralisation. The second feature of his analysis of the UK was that the Centre’s assumption or pursuit of relatively low resources and tryng to govern through local elites had endured over time. This approach had taken shape in the English court during the troublesome period of sustaining a stable England despite powerful landed magnates and the problematic ‘northern parts’. It was an approach that shaped pre-​Union relations with the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish, and continued after the succession of acts of union which in various ways were forced upon the new UK centre to sustain its interests. The UK centre, like the English centre, sought to keep the estate of the realm stable and successful by focusing on external and economic success while operating domestically as an absentee landlord, and thus giving peripheral elites plenty of autonomy at home. Newly emergent nationalism, particularly in Ireland, and the forces of modernisation at the end of the 19th century threatened to overwhelm this approach to territorial management yet, with the exception of Ireland, such forces had largely passed by the end of the First World War. The fruits of a local elite assimilationist governing code and laissez faire strategy then reached their classic expression in the modern age, in the form of the dual polity between the 1920s and 1960s, a structure of territorial politics during which politics in the centre and periphery occurred more or less in separate compartments. The centre was still able to concentrate on the so-​called ‘high politics’ issues of foreign, defence and macroeconomic policy, with all other ‘low politics’ issues peripheralised to generally reliable sub-​state elites and local government. In the latter part of Territory and Power, Bulpitt recognised that the fragility of the British state’s position by the 1960s meant that promotional strategies to arrest decline became part of the ratchet of government. It was no longer possible for governments to simply assume low centre resources and rely on local elite collaborators to manage the estate competently. They had to achieve observable improvement and this led to several so-​called modernisation projects starting with the government of Harold Macmillan in the late 1950s. Of course, territorial pressures and prospects for devolution cut across such projects. If devolution had actually been achieved in the late 1970s, Bulpitt’s framework of analysis still suggests that it might have been embraced within an approach that continued to assume low centre centre resources, and the ability for the centre to maintain the Union through local elite collaboration simply now in devolved

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institutions. For example, Bulpitt had characterised the UK centre’s approach to devolution in Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972 as consistent with this approach, largely because the UK centre had quite explicitly engaged with the Protestant unionist elite as their local elite collaborators and this hegemony had meant that the Stormont Parliament had been governed with a strong adherence to staying in the Union. It is possible that the same approach could have been taken to devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wales. The key issue, though, was the degree to which the centre could manipulate who controlled devolved assemblies to ensure local elite collaboration. Failure to achieve this would have meant that devolution would be likely to provide a platform for territorial dissidents and be a source of territorial conflict. This would threaten the need for the centre to respond with a changed centre code, either of more direct central control or organisation mobilisation, to impose centre authority or alternatively with an acceptance of its inability to assert control, a move to capital city bargaining in which the new periphery representatives were accepted and allowed to bargain for resources with and/​or at the centre. Overall, then Bulpitt’s analysis of UK centre–​ periphery relations ended with a recognition that the introduction of devolution raised the possibility of moving from one structure of territorial politics to another that was quite different, with potentially great challenges to the stability of the UK. The state, of course, could simply experience yet further secession as occurred with the Republic of Ireland earlier in the 20th century. In reflecting on the value of Bulpitt’s analysis of the UK, it has generally been underappreciated that it was largely endorsed by his leading contemporaries, Rokkan and Urwin. Their pioneering comparative study of territorial politics in Europe (Rokkan and Urwin, 1982), also conducted in the 1970s and early 1980s, sought to understand how cultural, economic and political factors interacted in shaping centre–​periphery relations. Urwin’s own work on the UK as part of the project offered a very similar interpretation of UK territorial politics and centre territorial management. He emphasised that central management should not be characterised in terms of a simplistic view of centralisation; rather the centre had tended to rely on peripheral elites to whom accommodation was made in return for governing the periphery in ways that sustained territorial stability. Urwin argued therefore that ‘there was little systematisation of the process of incorporation other than the basic principles of territorial settlement and compromise, and indirect rule through collaboration with local elites. The tone was one of tolerance and indifference’

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(Urwin, 1982:40). Who influenced who is hard to know, but what is helpful to us here is that Bulpitt added a rich conceptual language for the comparative study of centre approaches to territorial politics, which was complementary to the grand project of Rokkan and Urwin to map Europe’s peripheries and centres, and the centre approaches to political management that guided their development. Bulpitt and Rokkan and Urwin were also agreed that such was the UK structure of territorial politics that any accommodation to embrace political devolution was fraught with danger for state stability. Urwin argued that, in the UK, ‘the presence of (at least) three very different peripheries, with differing concerns and issues, has produced a hybrid state in which the centre’s options may be flexible, but only within very restrictive parameters’ (Urwin, 1982:68). Devolution and other radical options for change ‘would require a fundamental reformulation of the state. Their attractiveness has been limited, their costs high and their outcomes uncertain’ (Urwin, 1982:68). In other words, he suggested that the processes of nation and state building that had coexisted in the past could not easily be reconstructed on new bases without fatally damaging the state. Consequently, he characterised devolution as an option of last resort, only to be taken in a potentially revolutionary situation, such as that which prevailed in Northern Ireland. Of course, fifteen years after Territory and Power was published, devolution was introduced across the UK. In the mid-​2000s, Bradbury (2006a) revisited Bulpitt’s theorisation of the UK centre’s approach under the Blair governments and argued that, just as Bulpitt had foregrounded in assessing the possibility of how the centre might manage devolution in the 1970s, the Blair governments had overall seen devolution as a problemtic challenge and had responded to it by employing traditional territorial management methods. Other things being equal, the Blair governments would not have introduced devolution. Instead, the Blair governments’ main focus was on a revised composite code, the first part of which sought to pursue a promotional strategy both for economic growth and the achievement of social democratic correction of market failure. The second part of the code then still sought to peripheralise ‘low politics’ responsibilities; the aim was to avoid excessive expectations of the centre, by putting out these responsibilities to competent peripheral collaborators, principally in the private sector. Devolution had no role in either part of the code, as on the former it might set up alternative centres that frustrated the aims of the Blair government, and on the latter it might involve peripheralisation that could lead to the very break-​up of the state. Instead, devolution was done largely because of the penetration of the

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New Labour centre by pro-​devolution forces in the party. Thereafter, in seeking to make a virtue of necessity, it became ‘perfectly plausible to evoke devolution as part of a New Labour narrative of a decentralised Britain’ as shown by Aughey (2001:95–​102, referenced in Bradbury 2006a:576). However, Bradbury suggested that faced with the reality of devolution the Blair government centre focused on developing a local elite assimilationist approach to minimise the potential threat of devolution to its broader plans. This was done by intervening over the choice of electoral systems and selection of Labour candidates in the first devolved elections in 1999 in Scotland and Wales to ensure that the new institutions shut out the potential for the SNP or Plaid Cymru ever getting a majority, and that the resulting Labour administrations were shaped by moderate leadership and the need to govern with other parties. Thereafter, a brief preliminary analysis stressed the continuation of the Barnett formula as a means for distributing central finance to devolved administrations, as one of the ‘traditional automasticities’ (adapted from Bulpitt, 1986:27) of UK intergovernmental relations which would help to avoid any explicit politicisation of financial issues. The centre also held onto redistributive powers and gave devolved administrations largely distributive and regulatory powers that followed on from the responsibilities of the former territorial offices of central government. In the early period at least the approach appeared to be successful and ‘there was minimal controversy in intergovernmental relations over policy divergence and performance’ (Bradbury, 2006a:578). The predominance of moderate politics appeared also to limit any pressures for the devolution of further powers, notably in Scotland where most of the concern was focused. Judged against recent history, there was actually an apparent relative tranquillity of UK territorial politics, and it was possible to isolate one key cause of this as the continued employment of traditional indirect rule and centre autonomy methods. Ruane and Todd (2007) also adapted from Bulpitt in their study of Northern Ireland’s move to power-​sharing devolution. They sought to get away from constitutional analysis based on the perceived application of consociational and federacy principles analysis, as well as thin realist analyses simply in terms of nationalist and unionist parties’ responses to political stalemate. They suggested that, at a deeper level, a settlement became possible because ‘there had been a major shift at once in the communal power balance, in the trajectories of the two states and in the guarantees and support offered internationally’ (Ruane and Todd, 2007:442). This provided

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a rupture in path-​dependent processes of intercommunal conflict that opened up the possibility of settlement. Later Todd (2017), in discussing the change in trajectories of the two states, the UK and Ireland, described both the UK and Irish government approaches to political management in terms of Bulpitt’s theorised aims of local elite assimilation to ensure political stability in Northern Ireland to in turn achieve centre autonomy. For them both, Northern Ireland had become a political headache from which they wanted to enjoy some relief by seeing power-​sharing devolution up and running. This is what lay behind their shared coercion of the parties in Northern Ireland to do a deal. Sandford and Gormley-​Heenan (2020:110) also refer briefly to the general significance of the UK Government’s priority of centre autonomy in the early years of devolution; a priority, however, which they criticised for leaving a legacy of contested constitutional claims over where power lay in the UK. The conclusion from this discussion is that Bulpitt’s framework for analysing centre political management in the context of devolution remains a strong one, focusing as it does on an evaluation of resources, codes of territorial management, territorial strategies and resulting models of centre–​periphery relations. Theorisation of the centre as pursuing an approach rooted in resource deficiencies, seeking to impose central control indirectly through the structuring of local elite collaboration, pursuing a laissez-​faire strategy and seeking to achieve centre autonomy in centre–​periphery relations remain plausible propositions. This book provides an opportunity to give this thesis of the UK centre’s underlying approach to the political management of the very considerable challenges posed by devolution a sustained exploration.

The periphery and approaches to territorial constitutional change Rokkan and Urwin (1982) differed from Bulpitt in asserting the need to give periphery and centre equal methodological importance in studying territorial politics. In trying to construct an approach now to studying the periphery in a way that is complementary to Bulpitt’s approach to studying the centre, we need to have a parallel interest in how to assess the resources, codes and strategies of peripheral politics and the resulting structures of centre–​periphery politics as understood from a periphery perspective. Rokkan and Urwin were most helpful in focusing on how to study the peripheral sources of territorial politics and the resources for change they supply. So, in looking at

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how to study resources, it is appropriate to start with some of their categories of analysis. Rokkan and Urwin’s central focus in analysing the periphery in centre–​periphery relations was to assess in any given historical context what they called ‘territorial strain’, determined by two principal variables:  first, ‘cultural distances, whether linguistic, religious or, in a diffuse sense, ethnic’; and second, ‘economic conflicts between regional centres competing for the control of trade and productive resources’ (Rokkan and Urwin, 1982:4). This provided the conditions for determining the extent to which territorial unification was possible or not. They laid out categories for analysis which clarified a range of possibilities for how much strain such factors produced. To do so, they employed two key spatial concepts, namely territorial space and membership space. Territorial space denoted ‘identification with and occupation of a specific geographical area’ and in historical terms was generally the product of ‘dynastic expansion, where a single centre and its elite gain, through conquest, the effective control of large territorial areas’, achieving economic dominance, unity and cultural standardisation. The ideal ‘end result would be a pure nation-​state. The boundaries themselves may be defined as the line within which there are friends’ (Rokkan and Urwin, 1982:8). In contrast, membership space denoted simply ‘membership of a group that possesses, and probably is aware of possessing, some common sociocultural stigmata’. It was the product of the coming together of local groups, on a cultural, economic or political basis, generally for defensive reasons. ‘For a membership space, the boundaries are externally defined: they constitute the line beyond which there are enemies.’ Identity rests with group rather than state (Rokkan and Urwin, 1982:8–​9). Rokkan and Urwin then suggested a four-​type continuum of the nature of centre–​periphery relations in the process of nation-​building defined by the relationship between territorial and membership space. First, in the case of territorial space predominant the state was characterised by political centralisation, economic integration and cultural homogeneity. There were no significant territorial politics to analyse. Second, there was the case of territorial space dominant, but with strong membership space characteristics. Here, in limited areas of the state a distinct membership identity persevered, which may be associated with distinct institutional infrastructure, economic experience and social stigmata, and could underpin peripheral political protest. Third, there was the case of membership space dominant, but with strong territorial space characteristics. This was a state where the greater

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diversity of identities and more equitable spread of resources meant that the strains generated by diverse identities were acknowledged and territorial politics were more routinely characterised by regional tensions and conflicts. In this context, ‘the idea of a covenant, with the acceptance and toleration of diverse identities prevails’ and regional tensions and strains result from the fact that there are ‘one or several competing centres with territorially standardizing ambitions and objectives’ (Rokkan and Urwin, 1982:10). Fourth and finally, in the situation where membership space was predominant there was a miscellany of groupings, politically and culturally defined with their own centres; there was no separate centre, rather membership groups defined the nature and purpose of territorial space and how it mapped politically onto membership space. In applying this framework of analysis, Rokkan and Urwin defined the principal sources of territorial strains in the UK as culturally based in the relations between distinctive communities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on the one hand and the London centre on the other. However, economically, the dominance of London underpinned conditions for territorial unification. Rokkan and Urwin argued that the UK had developed in a manner consistent with their second type of nation-​building where territorial space was dominant, but where there were strong membership space characteristics. Urwin suggested that, in response, the UK centre had employed a strategy of unification that was predominantly centralising but with accommodative characteristics to the distinct politics of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (Rokkan and Urwin, 1982:15). From here, they went on to try and characterise the territorial political orders that would result, but instead of doing so in terms of concepts of power they used a revisionist constitutional systems language. It was in this context that they concluded that the UK developed ‘as an old union state, which tolerated distinctiveness in its various peripheries through a particular style of membership accommodation’ (Rokkan and Urwin, 1982:15). As we have seen, the union state concept was later appropriated by constitutional analysts, though with very little if any reference to Rokkan and Urwin’s underpinning analysis of territorial state–​society relations. This underpinning framework of analysis, though, remains of considerable utility in assessing the bottom-​up cultural resources for territorial movements for constitutional change across Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. The extent of territorial strain and the relationship between membership space and territorial space characteristics are most obviously suggested by data from public attitudes surveys on national identity that in part go back

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to the immediate post-​war period but more consistently across the UK since the 1970s. Rokkan and Urwin did not, however, cover all the potential resources of territorial movements. Bulpitt’s approach to centre resources emphasised not only the importance of culture but also the governmental and political resources of constitutional authority, bureaucracy and the party system, as well as economic power and time. Transposing these to the periphery setting, a strong periphery as well as having strong resources of cultural identity might have one or more of distinct legal-​constitutional legacies to lean on in arguing for change: strong governance and civil society characteristics; a distinctive party system with influential representation for ethno-​regionalist parties; economic credibility; and organisational resources to provide the time and space to press for change. European neo-​functionalist analysis has further stressed the importance of socio-​economic interests rooted in several background conditions: pluralism in social structures, the support of urban industrial elites, a common ideology, and dissent from national resolution of interests. Strong movements should be able to draw on high levels of governmental, political and socio-​economic interest resources as well as cultural resources. Alternatively, peripheral resources may be relatively weak in one or more dimension; this means that, while there is an origin which inspires the movement for change in the first place, there may also be significant resource problems to overcome. There is therefore a range of resources that might in Rokkan and Urwin’s terms contribute to territorial strain and provide the potential for exerting membership space against territorial space in the UK. In each part of the UK they will require further examination. In turning to look at how sub-​state territorial units and movements have sought to assert territorial group interests and mobilise support in the light of such resources, we can see that this has been a major preoccupation of the comparative literature (Beland and Lecours, 2008). From this, we can identify a basic distinction between two approaches. First, a default position for the assertion of territorial interests within a stable state is simple lobbying within the existing state structure through intergovernmental relations in whatever way they are currently constructed. Second, the classic position associated with nationalism and transformation of the status quo is the direct assertion of territorial interests on the basis of identity claims and rights to self-​ government. From there, the discussion of nationalist mobilisation confronts the issue of what kind of mass movement it develops and whether violence is justified in the pursuit of goals. Much of this actually suggests categories of analysis that directly parallel Bulpitt’s

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Table 3.1: Codes of territorial management and territorial assertion Centre

Periphery

Central penetration

Intergovernmental lobbying

Local elite assimilation

Instrumental policy assertion

Direct central control

Emotional identity assertion

Organisation mobilisation

Organisation mobilisation

Citizen mobilisation

Citizen mobilisation

Source: Adapted from Bulpitt (1983)

categories for analysing central codes of territorial management. Hence simple peripheral intergovernmental lobbying on behalf of territorial interests mirrors central penetration of the periphery to get taxes collected. Direct assertion of territorial interests on the basis of identity claims and rights to self-​government mirrors direct central control of sub-​national governments. Finally, one may also say that peripheral organisation mobilisation or citizen mobilisation to develop unstoppable movements for territorial change might mirror similar attempts at centre organisation and citizen mobilisation to ensure the more coercive assertion of state interests (see Table 3.1). Having said that, as we have seen one of Bulpitt’s key insights in studying the centre was to identify the importance of how the centre might establish indirect means of central control, as a result of the fact that simple penetration is not enough and direct forms of control, much less organisation and citizen mobilisation, are difficult and hard to maintain for long. In a similar way, scholars have increasingly had to come to terms with the fact that in modern democratic states, if territorial grievance renders simple intergovernmental lobbying to be inadequate, direct nationalist or regionalist assertion of cultural identity, mobilisation of civil society and the development of mass movements for territorial change may still be very difficult, and states may in turn provide many barriers to change. Rothschild (1981) is indicative of analysis which has accepted that territorial identity sentiments may well exist or have been successfully invented, but for them to be successful they have needed arenas, leadership, mobilisation and goal formation which support their development in the particular contexts where they do exist. Such movements may well pursue indirect non-​ territorial means for the assertion of territorial interests rather than direct identity-​based ones. In the last twenty years, a particular approach has emerged to place less focus on the motor of cultural identity and more on the importance of

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asserting policy goals to achieving territorial change. Beland and Lecours (2005) explored the importance of social policy in particular as a basis of mobilising national identity; they suggested that ‘nationalism represents a powerful force for the decentralisation of social policy because it seeks to make the national community congruent with the community of economic solidarity’ (Beland and Lecours, 2007:406). They argue that nationalist and regionalist movements’ strategies may argue for change on the grounds that they can perform a functional policy purpose better than the existing state (Beland and Lecours, 2008; Lecours, 2012). McEwen (2002; 2006) assessed the importance of the post-​1945 welfare state and National Health Service (NHS) to functionally underpinning loyalties to Britishness, and accordingly, charted the importance of welfare and health care reform in the late 20th century to unpicking those loyalties. The movement for devolution in Scotland subsequently combined arguments for self-​determination and Scotland’s ability to better defend and promote welfare state preferences than the UK in their appeal to the people (McEwen, 2002:181). Further comparative studies have confirmed the importance of instrumental-​ as well as identity-​based arguments for territorial change. In a study of sub-​state nationalist movements in Spain, for example, Maiz (2003) drew attention to the importance of both the emotional and the instrumental elements of justifying nationalism, the former focused on identity and the latter on welfare and democratic participation. Dalle Mulle and Serrano (2019), in investigating the arguments made by movements for secession in Catalonia and Scotland, distinguished between the principled arguments that they had made, based on community and choice, and the consequentialist arguments, based on instrumental gains such as a stronger economy and remedial action to overcome harmful central policies. Movements for territorial change have, in fact, recognised the importance of instrumental-​based cases for some time. Competing in challenging party systems and aware of the weaknesses of the support behind them as well as the strengths, they have grown more pragmatic over how to get what they want. Instrumentalist reasoning may also be accompanied by efforts to develop institutional mechanisms by which to bring about change. Bradbury (2003) highlighted the neo-​functionalist approach to the study of European integration which suggested that suprastate regionalisation had been driven by a supranational elite focused on creating ever-​increasing integration through institutional processes of policy development, more popularly referred to as the European Commission’s community method. This had overcome the obstacles of loyalties to existing nation-​states and the patent lack of deep

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European cultural identity by cultivating supranational regionalisation through institutional policy-​related mechanisms that demonstrated the instrumental needs met by integration. European Commission-​ led processes of institutional build up, policy spillover or spillarounds normalised policy integration and made the case for gradual step by step accretion of further powers. Bradbury (2003) suggested that sub-​state elites faced with resistance might try and create similar institutional bases to cultivate sub-​state regionalisation through institutional policy-​related mechanisms that gradually step by step demonstrated the policy needs met by moving powers from the central state downwards as well. Tannam (1999) and Meehan (1999) pioneered the application of neo-​functionalist theory specifically in the context of Northern Ireland:  that North–South cooperation over EU structural funds policy created an institutional basis for engineering policy integration and spillovers that could gradually normalise all-​Ireland governance. Therefore, we can in fact develop a typology of five peripheral approaches or territorial codes of assertion which overall mirror Bulpitt’s range of options for central codes of territorial management; working from the least assertive and indirect, through to more direct and assertive types (see Table 3.1 again). To summarise, these comprise first, inter-​governmental lobbying, defined as working routinely to meet the periphery’s interests within a steady state political status quo. Second, there is instrumental policy assertion. This involves the indirect promotion of territorial change on the basis of consequentialist or instrumentalist arguments, and/​or the development of change via elite leadership, institutional processes and the cultivation of policy mechanisms to normalise change. Third, there is emotional identity assertion. This seeks to directly control the territorial argument between membership and territorial space interests by explicit representation of territorial identity, and principled and emotional arguments based on national community. Finally, organisation and citizen mobilisation have direct applicability as categories for analysis of the territorial periphery; put simply, in this instance it is territorial movements for change that seek to marshall either organisations of civil society, such as trade unions, or indeed the mass citizenry in support of the cause. Organisation mobilisation can be seen as part of the conventional politics of strong movements for territorial constitutional change, but following Bulpitt citizen mobilisation is more unusual, seen possibly in the successful stimulation of mass democratic participation but also in the context of a call to arms. In considering strategies, if we are to continue with a parsimonious approach then three main candidates emerge, each with a basic

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Table 3.2: Strategies of central governing and territorial assertion Centre

Periphery

Laissez-​faire

Territorial recognition

Regulatory

Self-​government within the state

Promotional

Secession and independence

Source: Adapted from Bulpitt (1983)

modus operandi in setting their aims. These are:  first, simple territorial recognition, which requires a specific focus on the territorial dimension to the issue in hand, for example a policy or government programme; second, self-​government within the state, covering all forms of state decentralisation to membership communities; third and finally, secession and independent statehood. These three strategic categories simplify a wide variety of options, but sustain a clear drawing of distinctions between what movements for territorial change are basically seeking to achieve, moving from the basic to the most advanced. Again we can set these up as contrasting peripheral strategic goals to Bulpitt’s typology for centre strategies –​ laissez-​faire, regulatory and promotional –​all of which refer to the general governing strategies which the approach to centre territorial management is seeking to serve (see Table 3.2). In reflecting on the utility of the categories of analysis for studying the periphery, it is important to consider who might use the available codes and with respect to what intended strategy for territorial development. Some relationships appear straightforward. Those who might use an intergovernmental lobbying code have fairly obvious loyalties to the existing state and are likely to assert territorial interests as an aspect of guaranteeing straightforward territorial recognition within the existing state structure. At the other extreme, users of an emotional identity-​based code certainly would be the most likely to be seeking secession and independence for their territory. One would expect efforts to combine such an approach with organisation and citizen mobilisation, generally peacefully, but of course in many cases this has been accompanied by political violence. Appealing emotionally to identity rights would also be a natural part of the arsenal of those seeking self-​government within the state, though they would potentially be worried that they were not only encouraging some measure of self-​rule but also sowing the seeds for separatist feeling. In contrast, who might adopt a policy instrumental code in arguing for territorial change is a rather more open question. Natural users are regionalists/​decentralists who simply want self-​government within the

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existing state precisely because they believe that the point of territorial change is to give a better chance of achieving instrumental objectives, for example of a stronger economy. Users may alternatively be people who see themselves as small ‘n’ nationalists, but nevertheless do not believe in breaking up the state, and wish to avoid giving legitimacy to explicitly secessionist nationalist ideals. So arguing for change to meet specific instrumental purposes becomes a more politically appropriate language in which to express their aims. State loyalists, though, could also adopt or acquiesce in an instrumentalist code in order to pragmatically adjust to change, and indeed to allow them to control and minimise its implications for the existing state structure. Equally, nationalists committed to superseding the state may also have concluded that more direct identity-​based approaches are unlikely to succeed and therefore might adopt instrumentalist approaches to achieve their aims by stealth. This is an analysis frequently made of federalists at the EU level, in their adoption of the ‘community method’ of developing European integration, and chimes with those who make similar arguments about secessionist nationalist movements in Spain and the UK now. This discussion reveals generally that, of all the available codes of territorial assertion, the instrumental policy code has the potential to become the most compelling, not least because it can become a key setting for contestation and compromise between those advocating the full range of strategic aims. In reflecting on how we operationalise the study of these codes and strategies, it is also important to consider where we should look. There is potentially not such an easily identifiable focus as we have in studying UK central government to analyse centre territorial management. Mitchell (1996a), in his analysis of campaigns for a Scottish parliament, identified the significance in different eras of pressure groups, constitutional conventions, petitions, plebiscites and referendums, political parties and direct action. In modern nation-​state politics, parties have become central to democratic practice and any movement that emerges to lead change from above would most likely involve parties and would be subject to party contestation. Overall, though, institutional mechanisms for pursuing approaches may vary and it is likely that the focus of analysis that matters in defining the key code of assertion and the strategic goal to be pursued is itself the product of political contestation over who asserts the right to most represent territorial interests. Having addressed how we might evaluate periphery resources, and the codes and strategies of territorial elites in asserting territorial

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interests, finally, how might we categorise potential resulting models of centre–​periphery relations seen from a periphery perspective? A basic position is where the periphery has relatively little autonomous power and is to a significant extent integrated into the state. But how do we define models where significant peripheral power has been developed, without having to resort as Rokkan and Urwin did back to constitutional concepts? In this respect, Marks et al’s (2008) development of a regional authority index as a way of measuring the outcomes of devolution reforms in terms of actual power for regions has been crucial. Their index is made up first of four criteria of how regions may develop self-​rule, or greater autonomy: namely institutional depth, policy scope, fiscal autonomy and representation. They also established four criteria of how they may develop shared rule, that is greater influence over governing the state as a whole: namely influence over state-​wide law making, executive control, fiscal control and constitutional reform. They then ascribed numerical scores to these criteria and on this basis have been able to quantify the level of self-​rule and shared rule, and then overall combined regional authority for each region at any time. On this basis, we can draw up a typology of the types of power that the periphery might have in centre–​periphery relations viewed from a periphery perspective that again plausibly mirrors Bulpitt’s types (see Table 3.3). These are: first, territorial integration, where the territory has progressed in power hardly at all. There is little or no territorial self-​rule or shared rule in the state, and indeed central authority can be applied routinely. Second, there is territorial autonomy, where there is self-​rule for the territory free of central control, but no shared rule or involvement in the running of the state as a whole. Third, there is capital city bargaining, where there is both self-​rule and shared rule and the political elites of both territories and the centre therefore do indeed come into constant contact in managing the state as a whole. Finally, there is coercive conflict, where discussions about self-​rule or Table  3.3: Models of centre–​periphery relationships Centre perspective

Territorial periphery perspective

Central authority model

Territorial integration

Centre autonomy model

Territorial autonomy/​self-​rule only

Capital city bargaining model

Capital city bargaining/​shared rule and self-​rule

Coercive power model

Coercive conflict

Source: Adapted from Bulpitt (1983)

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shared rule have been superseded by violent contestation of power between periphery and centre. Having drawn up this framework for analysing the territorial periphery, what propositions can we advance as to how it can be applied to the UK in analysing devolution? In considering territorial codes, Bradbury (2003) argued that earlier movements to justify change in Scotland and Wales and a violent-​force nationalist approach in Northern Ireland had rooted their cases largely in identity-​based arguments. Each of these approaches in their own way had failed. During the 1980s and 1990s, territorial resources (exhibited in identity politics) and background conditions moved somewhat to help territorial movements, notably the galvanising effects produced by the Thatcher governments. Nevertheless, movements for constitutional change after the failures of the 1970s tended to assume relative loyalty or resource problems in politicising identity and obstacles to taking opportunities. Bradbury (2003) provisionally sketched the argument that core territorial elites emerged in each case, employing more indirect instrumentalist policy codes of territorial change. Their strategies also all converged on the objective of self-​government within the existing state either as an end in itself or as a first step. This raised the general proposition that, in developing devolution, all the territorial movements across the UK drew on forms of indirect policy instrumentalism to realise goals of self-​government. In considering propositions for how we might see the resulting structure of centre–​periphery relations from a periphery perspective, Hooghe et al’s (2008:274) applied analysis of regional authority in the UK up to 2006 is also of interest. They concluded that, as a result of the devolution reforms, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all received substantial advances in self-​rule, but very little in shared rule. By 2006, out of possible maximum scores of 16, Scotland and Wales scored 13 and 8 respectively on self-​rule, but only 3.5 each on shared rule. When devolution in Northern Ireland was finally enacted it scored 8 and 1.5 respectively. This was an unusual pattern of regional authority development compared with the other 41 countries in their sample. This quantified measure of regional authority suggests that, seen from a periphery perspective, the structure of centre–​periphery relations achieved across the UK’s devolved jurisdictions was closest to the ideal type of territorial autonomy, characterised by the attainment of strong self-​rule only. Hooghe et al’s figures also appear to bear out Bulpitt’s theorised assessment of the intended outcome from a centre management approach that seeks to achieve centre autonomy, that is the granting of peripheral autonomy for self-​rule, but with as little shared

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rule as possible to avoid capital city bargaining and ensure against any prospect of the periphery interfering with the centre’s conduct of its own high politics affairs. Overall, the intention here has been to draw together a framework for the study of territorial assertion which complements Bulpitt’s more long-​standing framework for the study of the centre. It is constructed deliberately in somewhat similar terms so as to identify the most significant characteristics that influence movements for territorial change, and to help set up theoretical propositions about territorial movements for change that are complementary to Bulpitt’s about the centre. Taken together, this book’s starting points are that at the heart of the development of centre–​periphery relations between the 1980s and 2000s were peripheral and centre approaches both conditioned by the need to achieve their interests despite relative weaknesses in resources. It is suggested that, on the one hand, peripheral elites seeking change, and rooted in an awareness of loyalty problems, adopted novel and more compelling instrumental policy approaches to meet the limited strategic goal of propelling self-​government. On the other hand, the centre, rooted also in an awareness of its own relative resource problems, sought new ways to assert indirect means of control consistent with an, at the most, cautious promotional strategy in order to sustain its own, already well-​understood, centre autonomy aims in managing territorial change. On such a basis, one can theorise that the territorial elites around the UK and at the UK centre were successful in achieving a structure of centre–​periphery relations that combined territorial autonomy and self-​rule on the one hand with centre autonomy on the other to realise a new devolved dual polity that at the time in fact largely suited them all.

The policy process and territorial constitutional change One might stop at drawing up a territorial politics framework for understanding how political actors negotiated their environments to contest and assert power and adopted approaches that shaped the character of UK devolution. Yet, any study of territorial constitutional change needs to understand the significance of the policy process by which specific schemes for change are developed and implemented, a point also acknowledged by Sandford and Gormley-​Heenan (2020:114) in their review of how the UK’s constitutional narrative should be understood. The nature of the process affects the substance of the actual devolution proposals and how elites try and get what they want, their perceived effectiveness in the eyes of those who have to implement

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them as well as their legitimacy in the eyes of all of those affected by them. The process of policy is critical to the chances of success in achieving a balance in territorial relationships that all involved actors will accept, thereby bringing some closure, if only temporarily, to the ratchet of territorial contestation. If we are going to bring process in as well, then we need a framework in which to study it. Processes of territorial constitutional policy have in fact been a concern of a wide range of scholars examining federal or regionalising states, exploring historical institutionalist assumptions of national trajectories or actor-​based explanations (Banting and Simeon, 1985; Ginsburg et al, 2009). Within this literature, Benz (2016) has offered the first comprehensive attempt at a comparative framework for studying how dimensions of the policy process affect the substance of territorial constitutional policy and its success. As we shall see, his assumptions of the broader societal and strategic context actually have much in common with the conceptual framework developed so far in this chapter, and help to sharpen some of the categories for analysis. Placing a focus on policy processes means engaging with something different from broader territorial politics, but in practice what it reveals is part of a continuum of what is revealed about how actors assert interests and negotiate contexts in different arenas of political activity to move from initial ideas to detailed programmes for change. This section duly takes stock of the approach developed by Benz for analysing territorial constitutional policy. In looking at his assumptions first, it is important to note from the start that Benz conceived territorial constitutional policy as something that is inherently difficult. There is considerable scope for normative disagreement over the constitutional norms and rules guiding the system, and the focus of policy has implications for essential sources of the demos and sovereignty as well as for practical concerns, such as executive policy coordination, the accountability of executives to parliaments, and the roles of constitutional courts. In his approach, he sought to assess how success may nevertheless be achieved by treating ‘the way constitutional negotiations are framed and organised … as a most significant condition affecting the outcome of constitutional policy’ (Benz, 2016:5). However, he did not see such framing and organising of constitutional policy as an easy exercise. Following Riker’s (1964) classic discussion of federalism, he assumed that all federations were inherently unstable and that unitary states undergoing regionalisation were theoretically no less so, as all constitutional change involves authority migration. Actors at the regional and state level would each seek to achieve their goals; while it may be hoped that

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there is the potential for agreeing policy that will keep the territorial balance in relations between state and regional levels, this is actually very difficult. The logic of the joint decision trap, and the role played by veto players, can ensure that in practice there are very considerable difficulties in negotiating territorial constitutional policy and in achieving subsequent amendment. Benz’s approach to analysing constitutional policy also started from the assumption that it was important to understand the territorial problem it was seeking to solve. He identified two types of problem. First, performance problems resulted from perceptions of a divergence between the territorial incidence of policy problems and which level of government has jurisdictional power to reduce or eliminate this divergence. Performance problems tend to arise from perceptions of over-​centralisation and fiscal imbalances leading to unfair treatment of the regional level. Performance problems also tend to trigger reforms ‘aimed primarily at tidying up political and administrative processes on order to facilitate policy making and co-​ordination’ (Benz, 2016:20). Second, integration problems resulted from a divergence between community space and jurisdictional scale, where the territorial location of citizen group loyalties does not coincide with jurisdictional power. They tend to arise from claims of insufficient recognition or underrepresentation of cultural or linguistic identity groups, and the desire to have control over policies to assert autonomy or protect them from majority pressures. As a result, integration problems tend to trigger reforms ‘aimed at reshaping the fundamental relations among contending groups’ (Banting and Simeon, 1985:6, quoted in Benz, 2016:20). Debate will tend to be more societally focused, with pressures for change led by regionalist or nationalist movements, and the benefits of reform tend to be weighed much more widely in terms of fundamental change in the distribution of power with the state. The potential for reform in the face of pressures for actual disintegration may be very limited (Benz, 2016:24). Interestingly, in an echo of the literature on territorial approaches to change, Benz was aware of the malleability of how territorial problems could be conceived. Governments or political parties at both central and regional levels could frame integration problems as performance problems, to argue on instrumental rather than identity grounds, to influence what is addressed and how they can get what they want from constitutional negotiation. In turning then to his framework for studying territorial constitutional policy, Benz (2016) sought to clarify those mechanisms which have a tendency to support more successful negotiation and those which

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do not. First, the territorial structure of negotiation was important. This largely focused on whether negotiation is multilateral between the centre and multiple territories across the state, or bilateral between the centre and one territory. He clearly saw the former as the default approach and more inclusive, and implicitly more likely to achieve success for the state as a whole than the latter. Second, Benz identified four types of constitutional negotiation process (see also Benz and Knupling, 2012) which varied mainly on the extent of actors involved. The type involving the least number of actors is the conference. Conferences are taken to be ‘meetings of members of governments. … an intergovernmental mode of negotiations that we often find in federal systems’ (Benz, 2016:36). Commissions then ‘include members from both the parliament and the central and regional executives. Their structure of membership usually mirrors the lines of conflict in the legislature and in the multilevel system, and the members are considered agents of their institution or party’ (Benz, 2016). Both types tend to facilitate the most direct forms of negotiation and in the main ‘foster distributive bargaining’ (Benz, 2016:36). This means that negotiation tends not to get beyond original positions, in the worst cases leading to lowest common denominator agreements or deadlock. Two types then facilitate more discursive negotiation, what Benz called ‘integrative bargaining or arguing’ (2016:36). Committees offer the development of a more expansive arena for discursive negotiation, focusing on including a variety of party opinion, civil servants and experts. Conventions constitute the most inclusive approach. ‘In addition to representatives of parliaments and governments from the different levels, civil society organisations are invited to participate … They not only extend the number of actors with different interests involved in negotiations, but also raise expectations as to the scope and impact of a reform’ (Benz, 2016:36). Either of these types help to get discussion beyond the original positions of central or regional government. By bringing in more varied actors, discussion can go back to first principles, develop new ideas and practical applications, rather than get bogged down in the mutual assertion of interests. Benz then sought to take account of what he called the dimensions of arena differentiation in policy making. First, we need to consider whether constitutional policy is institutionally intertwined or differentiated from normal policy making. If it is the former, then constitutional policy becomes subject to the promotion of departmental policy interests. If the latter, it remains distinct and protected from departmental policy interests, so that it can focus on overarching rule setting and has a greater chance of success. Second, we need to consider

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whether negotiation of ideas or principles is sequentially before or coterminous with discussions of how to apply them. If the former, then it is likely –​unless there is a major ideological controversy –​that agreement on detailed negotiation can be achieved. If the latter, the cluttered contestation of principles and applications is likely to make agreement more difficult. Third, we need to observe whether the constitutional amendment process is vertically integrated, where all issues are debated together in one arena, or horizontally differentiated, where debates are either functionally differentiated by policy issue or socially differentiated by the groups given access to discussion. If the former, then there are possible gains of integrated debate but also likely problems related to the complexities of playing out nested games. If the latter, there are potential gains in getting agreement from reducing the complexity of negotiation tasks by dealing with them separately. Finally, Benz focused on whether constitutional negotiation and ratification proceed in tightly coupled or loosely coupled arenas. In the former, it is likely that the actors negotiating constitutional policy can predict the views of those who will ratify policy and therefore will tend to act as agents bargaining to an agreed deal. They are more likely to accept compromise bargains, though ‘agreements negotiated by these actors reflect the lowest common denominator of party political positions on constitutional amendments’ (Benz, 2016:41). If negotiation and ratification proceeds in loosely coupled arenas, for example where policy is negotiated by elites but ratified by public referenda, the negotiators tend to act more as representatives and discuss more possibilities of reform. This has the potential to lead to greater changes in constitutional policy and stronger legitimacy for its results, but there is a much higher potential for ratification failure, particularly in the context of deeply divided societies. Overall, Benz argued that effective reforms are those where negotiation has been achieved in an arguing mode through inclusive conventions or committees. Equally, the more arena differentiation there is –​externally from the making of other policies, internally in separating out discussion of principles and applications, and horizontally, in discussing substantive issues separately –​the more chance negotiations have of producing an effective policy process. Ratification through loosely coupled means, such as referenda, enhances the chance of reforms being both effective and seen as legitimate. In contrast, he argued that ineffective reforms tend to result from negotiation achieved through lowest common denominator bargaining in conferences and commissions. They have low external, internal and horizontal arena differentiation, and ratification tends to be through tightly coupled

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Table 3.4: Summary of Benz’s framework for the study of territorial constitutional policy Features of territorial constitutional policy making

Poles of relative effectiveness/​ ineffectiveness Effective

Ineffective

Territorial structure

Multilateral

Bilateral

Process of negotiation

Conventions/​ committees

Commissions/​ conferences

  (i) External regarding other policies

Separated

Intertwined

  (ii) Internal principles and detail

Sequential

Coterminous

  (iii) Internal debate of detailed policy

Horizontally differentiated

Vertically integrated

Ratification

Loosely coupled Closely coupled (e.g. referendum) (executive only)

Policy arena differentiation

Source: Adapted from Benz (2016)

arenas which encourage lowest common denominator bargaining and achieve relatively little wider legitimacy (see Table 3.4). Within his comparative study of nine states, Benz covered the devolution reforms in Wales and Scotland between 1999 and 2006 and concluded overall that the nature of the territorial constitutional policy process had led to them being ineffective reforms. This was largely on the grounds that they were embarked upon as bilateral party-​led policy processes, thereby echoing the critique of constitutional analysts discussed in Chapter 2 that the Blair government was at fault for not embarking upon a full-​scale multilateral constitutional reform of the UK (Benz, 2016:144–​52). Benz’s analysis, however, does not fully address the significance of the negotiation processes utilised, the extent of external, internal or horizontal arena differentiation, or the extent to which negotiation-​ratification processes were closely or loosely coupled. Self-​evidently, Scottish devolution was preceded by a multi-​ party constitutional convention, including civil society actors, and all the devolution schemes were ratified by referenda. Therefore, the jury is still out on whether the devolution reforms should be judged as effective as they could be or not; we need to examine all dimensions of the policy processes which created them, and include coverage of Northern Ireland and England as well. Nor does Benz’s analysis continue to maintain the original assumption that territorial problems, such as those experienced by the UK, Spain, Belgium and Canada, are actually very difficult to solve,

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making long-​term, stable solutions somewhat elusive. The realistic expectation is probably more that short-​to medium-​term solutions are the best that states can achieve in such circumstances, before there is some new challenge from the territorial strains that continue to lie beneath. In these circumstances, within the constraints facing them, one might expect rational strategists either in the periphery or at the centre, or both, to want to pay at least some attention to the constitutional policy process and achieve what political legitimacy they can for their reforms. Overall, the intention here has been to draw together a framework for the study of the role of the territorial constitutional policy process in realising the aims of periphery and centre approaches. Benz himself acknowledged that his work needed to be related both to an understanding of changes in state–​society relations that produced the territorial policy problems in the first place (Benz, 2016:17–​19), as well as the approaches that parties pursue specifically in the operation of federal or territorial political culture (Benz, 2016:131–​53). Benz’s assumptions of the sheer difficulty of pursuing effective territorial reform, and how actors may manipulate how territorial problems are to be seen, are both consistent with underlying assumptions in the framework of analysis developed in sections one and two. His work offers clear categories for the analysis of whether centre and periphery actors pursued approaches to territorial constitutional policy that aided effectiveness and legitimacy. From Benz, we do not derive fully clear theoretical propositions for analysing the specific case of devolution in the UK, rather an uncompleted investigation. Nevertheless, in spite of Benz’s own conclusions, it is tempting to contemplate that, after the failure of the 1970s, and in contrast to the often dismissive constitutionalist analyses discussed in the last chapter about how much thought went into developing the detailed devolution settlements, at least some effort was made in developing territorial constitutional policy processes that sought to make the fruits of territorial approaches to change and centre responses effective and legitimate, at least in the short to medium term, and provide a reasonable basis for future adjustment.

Conclusion This chapter has developed a framework for analysis of the territorial politics within a realist paradigm which can be applied to the study of the advent of devolution. It has gone back to Bulpitt’s pioneering work (1983) to develop what amounts to a neo-​Bulpittian approach by paying attention also to the issues he himself did not address.

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Before proceeding further, we need to take stock of the concepts and propositions the chapter overall has raised. First, research needs to identify the nature of the territorial strain, identifying what configuration of territorial space-​membership space is present and the associated territorial problem that it poses. Rokkan and Urwin (1982) suggested four broad configurations of membership-​ territorial space characteristics which are still helpful in characterising broad state–​society relations, and Benz usefully distinguishes between the territorial integration or performance problems they may create. Research then needs to consider the nature and extent of membership space resources in underpinning movements for representing the territorial strain. Key indicators of strain and resources are data on public attitudes positions, that reveal relative choice of territorial and membership space identity and the pressures that result from a range of economic, social and political conditions. In respect of public atttutudes the book accordingly makes usage of data from surveys that have asked the Moreno question, named after the researcher who first asked it, which asks respondents to consider whether they feel a membership space identity only, more than, as much as, less than or not at all in relation to holding a territorial space identity. Second, research needs to focus on the politics of how both the centre and the periphery each made the most of the resources respectively at their disposal. This means identifying characteristics of the code guiding, on the one hand, the territorial approach to constitutional change and on the other the centre’s approach to territorial management. The typology of options suggested in this book are listed in Table 3.1, each giving a clue to how competition over political power in determining the approaches to devolution may have been constructed. We then need to understand how these codes guiding behaviour relate to their strategic goals. For the centre, these assume the existing territorial state structure and how they would like to govern within it. For territorial movements, though, strategies focus on how they approach change. The most likely strategy options for centre and periphery are listed in Table 3.2. Third, we need to address the resulting structures of territorial power, viewed from both the centre and the periphery. These are listed in Table 3.3. Studying devolution within this framework of analysis highlights how its advent was much less rooted in agreement on ideals and much more on the assertion of political approaches and the contestation or interplay between them over what should happen. Finally, research needs to focus on the characteristics of the constitutional policy process, both for the way in which they structure

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the substance of territorial policy that results from the interplay of periphery and centre approaches, as well as how they shape its overall effectiveness and legitimacy. Benz (2016) suggested we pay particular attention to whether reform processes were multilateral or bilateral, the scales of inclusiveness in negotiation, the extent of external, internal and horizontal policy arena differentiation, and how closely coupled negotiation and ratification are. The features and types of constitutional policy making are summarised in Table 3.4. Understanding the nature of the policy process is an important part of painting in how territorial policies are decided, as well as the extent to which its components may at a broader level give them legitimacy. This conceptual prospectus offers a means of structuring analysis of the introduction and early implementation of devolution throughout the book. This chapter has also raised a set of theoretical propositions that seek to shape the analysis that runs through it. First, the discussion has suggested that we should view the backdrop to the development of UK devolution in terms of a resource model of weak periphery–​weak centre relative to expectations. This notes of course the inspiration for change in the first place, but also emphasises how resource weaknesses and constraints as well as interests shaped the political choices and arguments of key political actors both in the periphery and at the centre. Second, in explaining how and why political elites in the various peripheries then sought to achieve constitutional change in the context of resource limitation, it is suggested that there was a convergence on the use of various forms of instrumental policy assertion. This involved a key role for territorial elites in promoting instrumental arguments and functional mechanisms, geared to the aims of gradual, achievable strategies of self-​government within the state and a focus on regional autonomy. For principled devolutionists, this presented a practical route to achieving the reform of the UK they wanted; for sceptical unionists, it represented a means of pragmatically limiting its implications; for small or large ‘n’ nationalists, it represented a means of journeying towards a more ambitious goal by stealth. Third, we should assess the approach of key actors at the UK level –​ namely, in this case, the Labour Party leadership –​again more in terms of deficiencies in the centre’s available political resources than in its strengths. Accordingly, there was a core concern with how the centre’s approach took such relative weaknesses into account in responding to pressures for territorial constitutional change in ways that still sustained the UK union. The proposition is that the centre engaged with devolution by adopting a code of territorial management that sought

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to achieve indirect central control. This aimed to finesse consent to devolved autonomy with efficient central control through local elite collaboration rather than through overt methods of central control. This resulted in a model of centre–​periphery relations which provided a means both to plausibly control the implications of devolution and preserve the union, while also sustaining the centre’s autonomy to focus on other governing priorities. Finally, we should also address the proposition that dominant periphery and UK political elites needed to ensure that they also oversaw a policy process which sought to attain the necessary political legitimacy for its results among both the broader political class and general public. Their central aim in each territory was to reconcile territorial interests to achieve an at least satisficing centre–​periphery balance that provided the best chance for embedding devolution within the UK in the short to medium term. The book now turns to applying this framework and exploring these propositions in reappraising how, why and with what implications devolution was introduced and implemented in all parts of the UK. This is a large empirical task and the book draws on documentary sources and testimony from politicians central to the events of these years, as well as a wide range of secondary sources. Many scholars have already delved in depth either into specific issues across the UK, or into the politics of an individual devolved nation. Therefore, discussion throughout owes a great debt to the work of researchers who have gone before. Every attempt has been made to report authors’ views accurately, while drawing on their work ultimately to make a distinct argument. Overall, the resulting analysis provides a reappraisal which promotes greater explicit appreciation of the significance of power politics in understanding how territorial and centre elites sought to get as much of what they wanted as they could within the constraints facing them. Accordingly, this suggests the need for more empathy with the aims of those on both sides as well as those seeking to mediate. There is a need to recognise that there was no ideal stable long-​term framework for introducing territorial constitutional change acceptable to all apparent in the 1980s and 1990s. Rather, it is more appropriate to work with a non-​ideal normative framework, stressing the goal of a plausible short-​to medium-​term territorial power balance as a basis for judging to what extent devolution reforms may be viewed as a success. Politicians may have not sought or achieved ideal outcomes as defined by those authors largely surveyed in Chapter 2, but they were not devoid of purposeful objectives; rather, they followed plausible

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approaches to achieve their desired outcomes constrained by the contexts they faced. Such an organising perspective has the potential to reset our understanding of the fruits of a wide range of research in relation to a neo-​Bulpittian argument as to how, why and with what implications devolution was introduced.

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4

Territorial Politics and Devolution in Scotland This chapter will address how devolution was introduced in Scotland. Scotland has long had strong identity politics and, despite the negative outcome of the 1979 devolution referendum for reformers, there remained ambitions for constitutional change in the 1980s and 1990s. Nevertheless, there were rival cases for independence and devolved self-​government, sceptical views on the nature of devolution and outright opposition to it. Consequently, we need to start from the assumption that there was no ideal stable long-​term framework for introducing constitutional change acceptable to everyone. Instead, we should understand how devolution was introduced mainly through the prism of power politics, and that actors each sought to achieve their aims as best they could. This chapter duly discusses political contestation over how proposals for devolution were arrived at and seen through into government. The chapter is shaped by the framework of analysis outlined in Chapter 3. Accordingly, it discusses the nature of the territorial strain that Scotland posed for the UK, and the political resources behind territorial change. It discusses the validity of the proposition that, even in Scotland, such resources were actually weak relative to reformers’ aspirations. Throughout, the chapter then addresses the movement for territorial change in Scotland and explores the proposition that in the context of power politics and resource deficiencies it adopted constrained aims and incorporated an instrumentalist approach to achieve them. Equally, the chapter considers how the British Labour leadership politically managed the emergence of devolution proposals, and explores the idea that in the context of similar relative resource deficiencies it adopted a code focused on achieving indirect central control. Finally, the chapter considers the policy process by which devolution proposals were created, both in opposition and in government, and the extent

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to which it contributed to their perceived effectiveness and legitimacy, and whether Scottish devolution overall could be considered to be a successful reform. To address these issues and theoretical questions, the chapter develops chronologically. Section one focuses on territorial politics and the political debate on the constitutional question in Scotland and at the UK centre in the 1980s. Section two then addresses the preparation of devolution policy in Scotland during the 1990s and the significance of the referendum on Scottish devolution held in September 1997. Finally, section three considers the Blair government’s preparation of devolution policy 1997–​8, the Scotland Act 1998 and plans for its implementation.

Territorial politics and the origins of devolution Scotland has a long-​standing potential to pose a territorial integration problem for the UK. The autonomy of Scottish civil society was grounded in a strong national identity, cultural traditions, and an institutional legacy from pre-​Union independent nationhood which was protected in the 1707 Union regarding church, education and civil law (McCrone, 1992; Paterson, 1994; Brown et al, 1998). The modern institutions of what James Kellas (1989) liked to call a ‘Scottish political system’ had taken root with the foundation of the Scottish Office in 1885. Brand and Mitchell (1997:37) noted that over two centuries on from the Treaty of Union there was support for the restoration of some form of Scottish self-​government. The very first public attitudes survey on constitutional preferences in 1947 revealed that about three quarters of respondents favoured home rule or independence, and subsequent surveys showed there there had been a solid majority in favour of some sort of change thereafter. There are, therefore, long-​ term cultural, constitutional, and bureaucratic resources behind Scottish claims for self-​government. Yet we also know that support for movements for self-​government has been conditional, and their success has depended on the rules of ratification. The 1979 referendum on a Scottish Assembly resulted in a majority ‘yes’ vote, but barely so at 51.6 per cent. This represented only 32.8 per cent of the electorate, some way short of the 40 per cent requirement rule in the 1978 Scotland Act. The referendum also occurred during a period in which UK economic policy struggled to address the problems of both high unemployment and high inflation, and arguments were promoted in Scotland that the development of North Sea Oil could make Scottish autonomy more economically

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viable. The legacy of the 1979 vote was an awareness that the potential for the assertion of a Scottish membership space appeared vulnerable to circumstances; political parties were divided on how they would lead Scotland, and the electorate divided over the pros and cons of devolution. What may we make of the territorial problem posed in Scotland by the late 1990s? Survey research indicated that feelings of Scottish national identity regarding Britishness and support for some form constitutional change were both strong. Table 4.1 shows that approximately 60 per cent of respondents consistently saw themselves as more Scottish than British or as Scottish only. Table 4.2 suggests that, during the 1990s, three quarters of people supported some form of constitutional change, with around 50 per cent consistently in favour of some form of home rule short of independence (Brown et al, 1998:159–​62,  211). It would be tempting to suggest on the basis of this evidence that there was now an inevitability about constitutional change. However, there were three problems that made campaigners for reform cautious about public support. First, an expression of Scottish identity could Table 4.1: The Moreno question and national identity in Scotland in the 1990s Respondent feels …

1992 (%)

1997 (%)

Scottish not British

19

23

More Scottish than British

40

38

Equally Scottish and British

33

27

More British than Scottish

3

4

British not Scottish

3

4

None of these

1

4

Source: National Centre for Social Research, Scottish Election Surveys

Table 4.2: Constitutional preferences in Scotland in the 1990s Respondent supports …

1992 (%)

1997 (%)

Independence

23

26

Home rule

50

51

No change

24

17

Don’t know/​no opinion

3

6

Source: National Centre for Social Research, Scottish Election Surveys

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not automatically be correlated to support for constitutional change. For example, surveys showed that the vast majority of Conservative supporters described themselves as feeling at least ‘equally Scottish and British’ while not supporting constitutional change. There were also social divisions over identity. Surveys indicated that ‘Scottish not British’ was felt to a much greater extent by social classes 3, 4 and 5 than classes 1 and 2. Regional variations also showed that Scottishness was felt most strongly in East Central Scotland and the least in North East Scotland (Brown et  al, 1998:  208–​13). Even among those potentially minded to support change, there was scope for them becoming divided over devolution when presented with specific proposals. Second, the issue of constitutional change was of questionable saliency to voters. Brand and Mitchell concluded that the movement for devolution in the 1980s and early-​mid 1990s ‘depended on a strong popular sentiment of Scottishness but one which was not mainly political. Subsequent to the origins of the modern Scottish home rule movement in the 1960s, this sentiment was partially politicised only from time to time by the activities of certain Scottish elites’ (Brand and Mitchell, 1997:36). They cited the 1979 election survey which showed that only 22 per cent of voters said that the 1978 Scotland Act had been very important to how they had voted in the subsequent UK election, with 37 per cent saying it was fairly important and 41 per cent saying it was of no importance at all. Surveys after 1979 indicated that a large majority of voters consistently said that economic prosperity, unemployment, welfare, education and health were the main priorities for voters. As a result Brand and Mitchell (1997; 38) concluded ‘that there was in the early 1990s widespread support for some sort of Scottish responsible assembly, but that it was not an item of the first importance’. Third, there were anxieties over the extent to which concerted promotion of the UK’s existing constitutional arrangements such as had happened prior to the 1979 referendum could significantly reduce support for constitutional change. A  Mori poll in June 1989 had actually put support for independence at 34 per cent and for home rule at 49 per cent. At the height of Margaret Thatcher’s evangelical crusade to promote Thatcherism in Scotland, over 80 per cent of survey respondents supported constitutional change (see Brown et al, 1998:160). In contrast, during the period in which the Major governments adopted policies designed to promote the union in Scotland, support dropped. The proportion of voters who supported constitutional change of any sort in Scotland declined by 10 per cent

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between 1989 and 1992 when Major’s pro-​union campaign was at its strongest (see Bradbury, 1997b:80–​6). A review of background conditions also gives a mixed picture. On the one hand, the degree of pluralism in Scottish society as well as the level of economic and industrial development both provided highly plausible bases for what one might call a healthy demos and a relatively strong economy. Scotland had unquestionably benefited from the EU Single Market programme. There was also a growth in dissent from national (UK) resolution of interests and a relatively high degree of common ideological outlook in articulating that dissent. State and economic reforms conducted by the Thatcher governments 1979–​90 led to the loss of jobs in the public sector and nationalised industries; given the high level of employment in these sectors, trade union reforms were also strongly opposed in Scotland. Cuts in public spending were equally opposed by local government. Indeed, resentment against Thatcherism as an ‘English politics’ was generally crucial to highlighting Scottish self-​perceptions of a distinctively collectivist political culture. This was reflected in party voting behaviour in Scotland between 1979 and 1997. Table 4.3 shows a marked decline in support for the Conservatives from Margaret Thatcher’s first two election victories and a halving of the number of seats in the 1987 and 1992 elections, before eventual total collapse in 1997. Meanwhile, Labour strengthened markedly between 1983 and 1987, holding their vote share thereafter to achieve an even stronger dominance of the party system. The SNP also had a watershed election in 1992, nearly doubling their vote share though not their seats, and competed with Labour in articulating a Left-​of-​centre social democratic vision. Such factors were judged sufficiently important Table 4.3: UK general election results in Scotland, 1979–​97 Labour

Conservative

Liberal Democrat

SNP

(%)

Seats

(%)

Seats

(%)

Seats

(%)

Seats

1979

41.5

44

31.4

22

 9.0

 3

17.3

2

1983

35.1

41

28.4

21

24.5

 8

11.8

2

1987

42.4

50

24.0

10

19.4

 9

11.0

3

1992

39.0

49

25.6

11

13.1

 9

21.5

3

1997

45.6

56

17.5

 0

13.0

10

22.1

6

Source: Adapted from Cairney and McGarvey (2013: 45)

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by Paterson (1998:53) to suggest that while the late 20th century ‘has merely been the latest phase in the process of negotiation within the Union’ for Scotland, it was nevertheless ‘unprecedented since the eighteenth century’. On the other hand, there was a lack of commitment to constitutional change among urban economic elites. Lynch (1998) concluded that business interest associations had an overriding concern that devolution would disrupt integrative market building in the UK, which remained the key economic space for business trade and growth. They had concerns that devolution would create divergence in tax regimes, impact adversely on the regulatory framework for economic activity, lead to a reduction in inward investment, and call into question Scotland’s position in the UK, thereby reducing economic confidence. Business leaders were ‘most keen to avoid disruption to the level playing field of the UK market (Lynch, 1998:90). In a 1996 poll of senior executives in the top 500 companies in Scotland, 63 per cent opposed devolution and only 16 per cent were supportive (Lynch, 1998:86). At the same time, the 1992 Scottish election survey suggested that only 30 per cent of voters believed devolution would lead to economic improvement (Brand and Mitchell, 1997:39). This meant that the main underpinnings of support for change were an awareness of a basic social and economic viability to self-​ government in Scotland, and resentment against rule by Conservative governments based on English votes. Drive came from trade unions, local government, the voluntary sector, charities and the churches. To these were added the interest of new social groups, particularly the women’s movement (Brown, 1998). This brought with it a new emphasis on inclusiveness, which many believed devolution could foster. Combined with the more long-​standing interests of organised labour and local government, the policy purpose of constitutional change became focused on defending perceived Scottish values in the delivery of distributive public services, the social role of the state, and innovation in the processes of policy making. A consideration of such issues overall suggests that Scottish identity and bases for support were strong. Scotland by the mid-​late 1990s was a territory where state territorial space was still dominant, but Scottish membership space was now buttressed by a stronger sense of political distinctiveness. It constituted a medium-​high territorial strain, a serious integration problem for the UK state. Yet, it was apparent that bottom-​up, membership-​space politics still had their weaknesses; even in Scotland, clear backing for constitutional change was not taken as a simple given.

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Territorial Politics and Devolution in Scotland

In this context, the question of who would provide political leadership for constitutional change and how they would develop a strategy to develop a specific scheme that commanded support and make change actually happen remained crucial issues. It is important to recognise that during the 1980s three foci of leadership were in play. First, there was the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly (CSA), established in 1980 to keep the movement going after the failure of devolution in 1979. The CSA floated the idea of a constitutional convention, ideally on an elected basis, and following the 1987 election, when the doomsday scenario of a Conservative UK majority without a Scottish majority happened again, the convention proposal became a key focus for political debate (see Brand and Mitchell, 1997:43–​5). Second, there was the SNP. The party adopted a new policy of independence in Europe, as well as a social democratic position, suggesting how an independent Scotland was the surest way of ending the reach of Thatcherite policies. Following the 1987 election, they dubbed Labour’s MPs the ‘feeble fifty’ and sought to outflank Labour as the defenders of Scotland’s interests. Victory in the Govan by-​election in late 1988 suggested that the party had momentum. By 1987, the SNP also supported the idea of a convention and had designs on trying to lead it. Finally, there was Labour, the most popular party in Scotland. In the 1970s, Labour had supported devolution primarily for electoral reasons to blunt the SNP advance after the 1974 elections. In the 1980s, though there was, as Mitchell (1998a:479) observed, a ‘paradigm shift in Labour thinking’. A growing number of members and elected representatives supported constitutional change, with some being prominent in the CSA from the start. They ‘adopted an increasingly nationalist agenda in Scottish politics in the 1980s’ (Mitchell, 1998a:482), often adopting a rhetoric of national rights to justify change. There remained, though, broadly three positions within the party. First, there was a nationalist Left group who supported a ‘no mandate’ position against the UK government, holding an illegal referendum as a precursor to self-​government, and autonomy from the UK party. This group had the most influence around the time of the 1983 election, when their vision for using devolution to implement a proper socialist programme blended into the party’s broader alternative economic strategy. Later, they coalesced around the creation of Scottish Labour Action in 1988. Second, there was the Labour mainstream, many of whom had previously been anti-​devolution but changed their minds in response to Thatcherism. Mitchell (1998a:486) highlighted the conversion of Robin Cook by 1987, reporting that ‘in the 1970s devolution had been a compromise with nationalism. A decade later,

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he maintained, it had become a means of protecting Scotland from Thatcherism.’ Finally, there was for want of a better term the Labour establishment –​the party HQ, staff, and MPs instinctively loyal to the British Labour Party –​intent on winning the party political battle in Scotland against the SNP, accepting the turn towards devolution but ever-​watchful of its implications. Labour was clearly more of a positive force in leading a case for constitutional change than it was in the 1970s, but the fact of these three positions meant that internal British-​wide party constraints remained. Its leading electoral position meant the approach that the party now took in developing a devolution policy was critical. A key figure was Donald Dewar, who had been a principled ‘yes’ campaigner in 1979 and remarkably held the post of shadow secretary of state for Scotland from 1983 to 1992. Dewar was key to fashioning the party’s commitment to devolution as a reflection of mainstream opinion, both rejecting the demands of the nationalist Left of the party and sidestepping obstructionist elements within the party apparatus. By the 1987 election, devolution had become an accepted part of the British party’s policy commitments. For most of the 1980s, Labour also went alone in promoting its policy and eschewed the convention idea:  first, because the leadership preferred to manage its internal divisions and present a united front; and second, because to work with other parties risked legitimising them and undermining Labour’s dominant party position. Following the 1988 Govan by-​election defeat though, Labour was on the back foot and under heavy pressure internally as it appeared supine before the Thatcher government. Ahead of the 1989 Spring Scottish party conference Mitchell (1998a:490) reports that Scottish Labour Action, supported by the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU), issued New Agenda for Labour in Scotland, demanding what was now called a ‘dual mandate’ approach (unilaterally declaring self-​government on the basis of Scotland voting differently in a general election) and the withdrawal of Scottish Labour MPs from Westminster should the doomsday scenario happen again. Dewar re-​engaged in the rhetorical battle with the SNP, at one point even himself departing from his normally careful language in coining the phrase ‘Scotland, independent within the UK’ to describe Labour’s devolution position. He also initiated Labour’s decision to join a constitutional convention. This was a major decision. Mitchell (1998a:490) concluded that: ‘The convention was a useful tool in changing the party’s image and buying it time, but it had a cost. At some stage it would have to agree a scheme and deliver it’.

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Territorial Politics and Devolution in Scotland

It was in this context that the Scottish Constitutional Convention (SCC) was established in 1989, and thereafter it became the key vehicle for political mobilisation of a movement for constitutional change. It drew together political parties as well as representatives of the churches, trade unions and other social groups. Much analysis has characterised this as the institutionalisation of a strong civil society in its desire for self-​government, reflecting the emotional desire to represent identity (Paterson and Wyn Jones, 1999). It was, however, more prosaically seen as a realistic vehicle for ensuring Labour would genuinely lead the movement for change. The CSA had dropped the idea of new elections to determine the composition of the convention, meaning that its membership would be dominated by existing elected representatives. Given their electoral dominance this guaranteed Labour a leading position, and it was this that enabled Dewar’s decision for Labour to join in late 1988. Given the bitter conflict between Labour and the SNP, the latter decided not to participate, a decision they almost immediately regretted as it left Labour a free run. Labour made sure that they pressed home their advantage. In March 1989, Labour had a three-​line whip for all its Scottish MPs to attend the launch of the convention and all but one –​Tam Dalyell –​signed the founding document, the Claim of Right (see Brand and Mitchell, 1997; Mitchell, 1998a). It would be more accurate, therefore, to describe the SCC as a critical institutional development for establishing leadership in the politicisation of Scottish opinion for a ring-​fenced, pro-​devolution political elite, including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, but not the SNP or the Conservatives. It confined policy development on constitutional change to options of devolution within the UK. This helped further to marginalise the SNP and arguments for independence. It was, then, a critical vehicle for politicising Scottish public opinion from above, recognising the potential vulnerabilities of support. The SCC had three stated aims: to draw up a detailed scheme for devolution; to mobilise Scottish opinion behind it; and negotiate with the UK government to achieve an acceptable scheme. It created a form of collective elite mobilisation that was helpful to delivering some form of self-​government. Yet it also inevitably placed constraints on what form the scheme could be, circumscribed by Labour’s ideas, influenced further by Labour’s own management of internal differences over the scope of devolution, its purpose and how it should be achieved. Labour’s promotion of a devolution policy and its participation in the SCC were still subject to support from the British party leadership. What was the nature of their approach during this crucial phase? Both Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair were highly sceptical of devolution

77

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

other than in the ‘special case’ of Northern Ireland. There remained the unaddressed core contradiction between Labour’s desire to use the central levers of power to pursue social democratic policies and the creation of a new institution that might cut across that project. Kinnock’s time as leader also included bruising battles with the Left in the party, and in Scotland Left and nationalist politics intersected. He specifically equated the devolution lobby with pandering to nationalism. Nevertheless, taking Dewar’s advice Neil Kinnock made a succession of Scottish party conference speeches, committing the party to introducing legislation to create a parliament within twelve months of a general election victory. After initially resisting Scottish Trades Union Congress (TUC) pressure for Labour to join a constitutional convention, he backed it in 1989. As Mitchell (1998a:489) concluded: ‘Kinnock had learned that devolution could not be ignored and that nationalism in his own party could not be dismissed, especially when the SNP was riding high in the polls.’ Whatever the more varied and often more principled reasons there were for Labour supporting devolution in Scotland, Kinnock therefore accepted it reluctantly only as a political necessity. This was for both party management and party competition purposes, amid a deeply problematic agenda in trying to make Labour electable again. Tony Blair espoused New Labour as based around a politics of the community, yet his communitarian vision was never attached to a case for devolution. He made plain both his worries and his pragmatic conclusions over devolution in his memoirs: I was never a passionate devolutionist. It is a dangerous game to play. You can never be sure where nationalist sentiment ends and separatist sentiment begins. I supported the UK, distrusted nationalism as a concept, and looked at the history books and worried whether we could get it through. However, though not passionate about it, I thought it was inevitable. Just as the nation state was having to combine with others in pushing power upwards in multinational organisations to meet global challenges, so there would be inexorable pressure to devolve power downwards to where people felt greater connection. We didn’t want Scotland to feel the choice was the status quo or separation. (Blair, 2010:251) John Smith’s brief leadership between Kinnock and Blair had endorsed devolution for both Scotland and Wales particularly positively,

78

Territorial Politics and Devolution in Scotland

making it actually one of Blair’s strongest policy inheritances. As Blair acknowledged, ‘it was a central part of our programme in Scotland’ and ‘The Scots were notoriously prickly about the whole business’ (Blair, 2010:251). Even if Blair had wanted to change the policy, he had little room to do so as the majority of those closest to Blair in the leadership nationally were senior figures of the Scottish Labour Party, all of whom supported devolution: Gordon Brown, Robin Cook and Donald Dewar. In addition, Lord Derry Irvine, Blair’s former boss in chambers and who Blair later made his lord chancellor, was a passionate supporter. Consequently, Labour’s national leadership consistently from the late 1980s accepted the policy of Scottish devolution. Overall, therefore, in the context of uncertain bottom-​up pressures, Labour emerged as the key focus of elite leadership of the case for constitutional change. The Scottish and British party leaderships both embraced the policy of devolution, though with different emphases: the Scottish leadership focused on the necessity of achieving change, and the British leadership anxious about its implications for a Labour programme and the stability of the state. Electoral calculation, though, bound together people with a wide range of views. However, in the very acceptance of the SCC as a framework for developing devolution policy, both Scottish and British central leaderships made key distinct strategic decisions. In Scotland, it meant embracing involvement in a broader institutional movement to promote devolution under the assumption of the difficulties rather than certainties of achieving broader support. It incorporated the commitment of those who wanted a parliament for policy reasons to avoid Thatcherism, and small ‘n’ nationalists who nevertheless recognised the difficulties of the cause and were prepared to evolve the case for devolution to persuade the public bit by bit to support it. It also incorporated representatives of the Labour Party establishment who viewed the SCC in the rather different light of being a vehicle through which they could mediate the potential tensions between peripheral dissidence and belonging to the UK union; that control of the content of devolution could be achieved and so continued cooperation with the party at the UK level sustained. By working through the SCC, it appears that Labour’s approach in Scotland simultaneously was shaped by a blending of emotional appeal and cultivated instrumental instincts to bring about constitutional change, but centrally recognised the need of the SCC to mobilise a Scottish public in which support for change may be wide but was not obviously deeply felt. It also incorporated through Labour the potential

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CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

influence of ‘devo-​sceptics’ keen to sustain the compatibility of any proposals it might produce with continued union. Meanwhile from a centre perspective, Neil Kinnock’s decision in 1989 to endorse the preparation of policy in the context of the SCC opted de facto for a bilateral approach to developing devolution policy in Scotland, unrelated to other parts of the UK. This, then, set a pattern followed by both Smith and Blair in the period up to 1995. This decision was presumably made in the context of situations in Northern Ireland and Wales which were very different; the former was still driven by paramilitary violence and no expectations of a political settlement of Unionist–nationalist rivalries; and the latter was influenced by much lower expectations that constitutional change might be achieved. It was also politically useful though, as it exempted the British leadership from direct responsibility for developing a policy. Both Kinnock and Blair remained very watchful of the Scottish Labour Party, the Constitutional Convention and how the debate developed, and they still felt it was an arena through which they could influence the development of policy. But ultimately, it coincided with their instincts to largely rely on leadership in the Scottish party to moderate demands on policy and fashion an approach for government that commanded support, while maintaining some autonomy from a policy that was not central to either of their projects for government. In such a way was the British Labour leadership’s approach of maintaining indirect control of how devolution might develop through its Scottish party establishment and moderates formulated.

The negotiation and ratification of devolution, 1989–​97 The SCC deliberated from 1989 to 1995. Its papers and debates embraced key arguments among pro-​home rulers and its outputs included early proposals entitled Towards a Scottish Parliament (Scottish Constitutional Convention, 1989) and final reports entitled Key Proposals for Scotland’s Parliament (Scottish Constitutional Convention, 1995a) and Scotland’s Parliament, Scotland’s Right (Scottish Constitutional Convention 1995b). These final reports insisted that sovereignty rested with the Scottish people, and that Scotland should claim a right to self-​government. Nevertheless, it was made clear that it was to be a Scottish parliament within the UK, whose political purpose was to defend and promote Scottish political values, serve the Scottish economy and to take advantage of the Single European Market. An analysis of the SCC’s operations and ultimate recommendations can contribute answers on all three issues of concern in this chapter. How

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Territorial Politics and Devolution in Scotland

did the Scottish movement for constitutional change develop? How did the British Labour centre approach develop in response? Finally, what did the SCC contribute to the legitimation of devolution policy as the new basis of Scottish governance? Scholarship on the SCC has suggested that it included a wide range of civic as well as parliamentary voices (see Lynch, 1996). It separated debate of the constitutional question from other areas of policy making. Debate of principles was a strong feature of the convention’s deliberations, and the proposals that the SCC made were seen to be justified in terms of those proposals. The SCC operated with several strands of discussion regarding different elements of intended reform, including powers, finance, representation and participation. The substance of the final proposals in 1995 were also different from the blueprint for devolution in the Scotland Act 1978 in four particular ways. First, they called for a parliament and not an assembly, which would have primary legislative powers that were not subject to any presumed powers of override at Westminster. Second, they called for a ‘reserved powers’ approach, ensuring a longer list of powers that, by not being reserved, would be devolved, including responsibility for Scottish universities, the administration of social security, industrial development and vocational training. Third, the Parliament was also to have some fiscal autonomy through the power to vary income tax by 3p in the pound. Fourth and finally, a key issue that stimulated much argument was the electoral system. Ultimately, the SCC agreed on an additional member electoral system, which would distribute 57 per cent of seats as constituency seats and 43 per cent of seats on a proportional top-​up basis (Mitchell, 1996c; Brand and Mitchell, 1997). These proposals still sustained important continuities from the 1978 Act. Most significant was the ambiguity over the model of devolution to be used. Scotland’s Parliament, Scotland’s Right declared that ‘Scotland’s Parliament will have a defined range of powers and responsibilities. These will encompass sole or shared responsibility for all functions except those retained to the UK Parliament’ (Scottish Constitutional Convention, 1995b). This appeared to acknowledge the principle of a reserved powers model while, as Mitchell (1998b:70) commented, the convention still wished to specifically list the competences that the Parliament would receive, as to quote Bradley and Christie (1979) it was ‘more practical to have the prospective powers of the Scottish Parliament identified positively’. Wendy Alexander (2005:208), one of Donald Dewar’s advisors after 1997, later commented on the significance of the convention’s support for a defined set of powers, that ‘it is often forgotten that one of Scottish Labour’s objectives in

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CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

1995 during the final revision of the Convention scheme was that the general power of competence for the Scottish Parliament should be stopped’. By general power of competence she meant the ability ‘to range over all areas that were not explicitly reserved to Westminster’. In the convention’s proposals the powers listed for devolution were also not a great extension on the 1978 Act. Scholars also highlight a number of key issues that the SCC failed to address, principally what the arrangements would be for intergovernmental relations, territorial public finance, the mechanism for the resolution of disputes or how the UK Parliament would address the so-​called West Lothian Question. This asked why a Scottish MP might still be able to vote on issues for England in the UK parliament that would be devolved in Scotland and on which English MPs could not vote. They also failed to resolve differences over the role of the secretary of state for Scotland, which the Liberal Democrats wanted to abolish and Labour wanted to retain. A long debate over introducing statutory quotas to guarantee 50-​50 male-​ female representation also led to no agreement, leaving it to parties to make their own decisions over promoting female representation (Brand and Mitchell, 1997:46–​50). Despite this, it is still reasonable to highlight the SCC’s importance in the movement. As Malcolm Rifkind (2005:115), the Conservative secretary of state for Scotland, 1986–​90, later commented, if the public had seen constitutional change as their number one priority and expressed that through large-​scale peaceful demonstrations, even his own government would have had to listen. However, ‘instead of 50,000 demonstrating outside St Andrews House, there were half a dozen people who maintained a lonely vigil outside the old Royal High School. The rest of Scotland went on with its life’. The SCC kept the home rule issue alive. It became an important institution to sustain the devolution movement immediately following the 1992 general election, when Labour had originally been expected to win and didn’t, and the Conservatives under John Major strongly asserted pro-​union policies (Bradbury, 1997b). The SCC provided a bulwark against both non-​reform and what many mainstream campaigners saw as unrealistic routes to reform. In important ways, the SCC played a positive role in putting forward proposals consistently over what became a long period of time, including broaching a fiscal role for a proposed parliament, and an electoral system with a strong proportional component. Having said that, the Labour Party had significant influence which limited the SCC’s innovation and shaped it for their own interests (Labour Party 1995a). First, the convention’s initial proposals in 1990

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Territorial Politics and Devolution in Scotland

actually contained much more far-​reaching fiscal proposals, which included assigning to a Scottish parliament all the revenues from income tax and Value Added Tax (VAT) levied in Scotland, as well as the income tax varying power. These proposals were dropped at Labour’s insistence following the attacks by the Conservatives on Labour’s ‘tartan tax’ plans (Brand and Mitchell, 1997:  48–​9). Mitchell (1998a) has argued that Labour were also central to the decision on the electoral system. While its strong proportional element could be presented as a positive good in terms of representative democracy generally, it also served Labour Party interests. On the face of it, Labour gave away a likely single party majority under a ‘first past the post’ (FPTP) system, but Labour were equally aware that FPTP might in time deliver a single party majority for the SNP. The new system meant that a Scottish parliament almost certainly would always be run by a coalition, which Labour hoped would always include them, with the Liberal Democrats as the most likely coalition partner. But if things went badly and the SNP prospered, it was intended that the system would at least deny the SNP overall control. This was admitted as much by the then general secretary of the Scottish Labour Party, Jack McConnell, in April 1997, when he said that the system was designed to make it very unlikely that the SNP would ever win power (quoted from a press conference, 22 April 1997, cited in Bradbury and Mitchell, 2001:258). The legacy of the SCC, therefore, is a mixed one, but we should not be surprised. Overall, it does appear to provide evidence of how the Scottish case for constitutional change was progressed on Scottish terms and then in quite complex ways. This combination –​ of first, the language of rights, sovereignty and nationhood, second the consequentialist case for a Scottish parliament for the purpose of defending democracy, the welfare state and social democracy broadly against Thatcherism, and finally the involvement of several parties, trade unions and civic organisations –​suggests uniquely in the UK that the case for constitutional change drew on a composite code of emotional representation, instrumental cultivation and organisation mobilisation tied to the strategy of achieving self-​government. However, most interestingly within this, it had an ethos of cultivating support, providing a key forum to develop a debated build-​up of a putative parliament’s authority and the powers it should have, as well as shaping Scottish loyalty to its proposals. We can also see, though, that the SCC operated as a managed process strongly influenced by the Labour Party. This ensured that it was also a vehicle through which the British leadership could progress the application of centre policies of indirect central control

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to guarantee that the SCC proposals did not constitute a stepping-​ stone to independence. In particular, the electoral system proposals were intended to safeguard against providing an unbridled platform for peripheral dissidence, encouraging instead the likelihood of coalition governments being returned that at best provided legitimate local elite collaboration on a new basis, and at worst meant pro-​independence dissidents were still constrained by the power of other parties. As far as possible, the choice of electoral system sought to embed local elite collaboration or, at the worst, tethered peripheral dissidents within the structured characteristics of devolved Scottish government. Through political checks and balances of this kind, as opposed to constitutional ones, the centre could plausibly hope –​even in the challenging context of introducing devolution –​to presume the safety of the British state without having to directly intervene, while also providing for a situation where greater Scottish autonomy could coexist with sustained centre British governing autonomy. It remained the case that, if proposals that came from the SCC looked simply as if they were the product of a shabby Labour Party stitch up, it risked failure for reform at all. It is also important, therefore, to assess the role of the SCC in the constitutional policy process. First, the SCC was a body that had the potential to operate as a convention, the most open type of policy process, highlighting inclusion and deliberation in the making of policy. Second, the SCC achieved high policy arena differentiation:  externally from influence from other policy areas; internally in separating out consideration of principles from actions; and horizontally in separating out discussion of issues before putting the policy proposal as a whole together. This enabled the SCC to appear at least to arrive at coherent reform proposals which went beyond lowest common denominator bargaining, and achieved consensus support among those taking part. As far as it was possible then, the SCC’s final contribution was to give some legitimacy to a scheme for constitutional change both in the broader political class and among the watching Scottish public. The one remaining question as Labour prepared for power in opposition before 1997 was how these devolution proposals would be ratified. The initial position was that endorsement as part of Labour’s election manifesto would be enough. However, the Blair leadership was anxious that the devolution policy could alienate voters both in Scotland and England who might not vote Labour because they opposed devolution. Accordingly, in 1996 Blair reversed party policy on the manifesto mandate to legislate for devolution, and stated that devolution instead needed the separate mandate of a referendum

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vote. Seeking to appease potential skeptics, he also suggested that the parliament would be somewhat akin to a parish council. To safeguard Labour against fresh accusations of being a tax and spend party, he also said that he did not think that in practice the parliament would use its tax varying powers (Mitchell, 1998a: 493–​4). This, and Blair’s other pronouncements, were badly received in the Labour Party in Scotland. It is perhaps indicative of the caution that still existed over whether devolution could command popular support that Blair was criticised for imposing the referendum as a means of trying to wreck devolution. Nevertheless, in the 1997 general election the UK Labour leadership promoted devolution as positively as the Scottish leadership. There was also an awareness that if it was to be done at all, in contrast to the approach of the 1970s, it needed to be done quickly and enthusiastically. In practice, the 1997 general election result in Scotland provided the ideal circumstances for pushing on with devolution. The Conservative vote collapsed to 17.5 per cent. The party lost all of its seats, with Labour as the principal beneficiaries. Donald Dewar was appointed as Labour’s secretary of state amid high expectations and issued a White Paper, Scotland’s Parliament. The new Labour government under Tony Blair rapidly passed a referendum bill in the early summer of 1997, paving the way for a pre-​legislative referendum to be held on 11 September 1997. This time there was to be no 40 per cent rule; all that was needed was a simple majority. The referendum provided an event through which both public attitudes and territorial and centre elite approaches could be observed in a sharply focused manner. The decision to hold it before legislation meant that it was in effect also a ratification specifically of the principles of devolution negotiated in the SCC. In the event, the result of the referendum was heralded as a triumph for the cause of devolution. Compared with the narrow majority enjoyed in 1979, the vote for a parliament was won in 1997 with a 48.6 per cent majority. Even the vote for the parliament to have tax-​raising powers was won with a 27 per cent majority (see Table  4.4). Support for devolution was also widespread. All of the regions and islands supported the idea of a parliament, and only Dumfries & Galloway and Orkney had majorities against tax-​varying powers. There were some quibbles over the smaller ‘yes’ vote over tax-​varying powers, but the victory was still emphatic. Some drew attention to the fact that the turnout at 60.2 per cent was actually lower than in 1979. However, the 1997 referendum was

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Table 4.4: The 1997 referendum on a Scottish Parliament Yes (%)

No (%)

I agree there should be a Scottish Parliament

74.3

25.7

I agree that a Scottish Parliament should have tax-​ varying powers

63.5

36.5

conducted using a 1996 electoral register, and estimates suggested that as many as 500,000 people were denied a vote. Not surprisingly, such a clear victory has often been explained in terms of the strengthening of Scotland as a political community during the 1980s and 1990s. A cross-​party campaign was organised called Scotland Forward. The trade unions, local government and church leaders came out in favour. The print media was almost wholly supportive, with only the Scottish Daily Mail of Scottish-​wide papers promoting a ‘no’ vote. The SNP joined in campaigning for a ‘yes’ vote. The campaign was also helped by the unambiguous nature of what was being presented. The potential of primary legislative and tax-​varying powers was easy to explain. The regional list top-​up element of the proposed electoral system would provide substantial representation for the Highlands, North-​East and Borders, thus diffusing fears that the parliament would be dominated by central belt politics. Orkney and Shetland were set to receive a constituency member each rather than sharing one, as they did for Westminster. Some analyses suggested that the ‘yes’ votes were a reflection principally of underlying sentiments of national identity, the legacy of Thatcherism and the political frustrations that had emerged from Labour being out of office for so long (Bennie et al, 1997; Denver et al, 2000). Brown et  al (1999) emphasised the significance of identity politics in the Scottish electorate and indeed the potential for Scotland to vote for independence in the years ahead. That underlying factors had developed to promote the assertion of Scotland as a political community is beyond dispute. Nevertheless, other analyses scaled down the assessment of political strength represented in the referendum result. First, it is questionable as to how representative of normal Scottish opinion the 1997 vote actually was. The referendum was held in the most advantageous circumstances. It was held while opposition to the years of Conservative government were still fresh in people’s minds and while the Labour government was still enjoying its honeymoon period. Comparisons between polling figures in mid-​1996 and the actual referendum vote show that the ‘yes’ to the parliament went up by 11.3 per cent in 12 months and the ‘yes’ to tax varying

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powers by 10.5 per cent from a figure of only 53 per cent in Summer 1996 (Brown et al, 1999:115). Second, we should note important analyses of the meaning of the ‘yes’ vote and how the yes campaign sought to achieve it. On the basis of the Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends (CREST) survey of voters in the referendum, Surridge and McCrone (1999) argued that a distinction should be made between the importance of affective and effective interests in motivating voters. While affective interests –​national identity –​were an important element in leading Scots to vote yes, there was nevertheless also a strong correlation between voters’ effective interests –​expectation of benefit –​and voting yes. Scots who had long felt a national identity may have come only to vote for a parliament when convinced that fears about its impact on such matters as the economy and trade were exaggerated and it would be in their material interests. Surridge and McCrone’s arguments were reflected in their re-​analysis of the referendum campaign, which revealed that the ‘yes’ campaign actually said rather little about national identity and rather more about instrumental arguments for change. In addition, clear Labour Party cues to relatively non-​thinking Labour voters may well have made a significant difference compared with 1979 when the Scottish Labour Party was divided and gave its supporters no clear lead on how to vote. It is also important to note the implications of the expectation of a ‘yes’ victory for the potential ‘no’ vote. The leadership provided by the SCC had already done much before 1997 to quell potential dissenting voices. At no point did the business community actually convert to majority support, but by the mid-​1990s it had made a pragmatic adjustment to try and minimise the implications of devolution (Lynch, 1998). This deprived the ‘no’ campaign of a major prop. In relation to the referendum itself, the Conservative wipe-​out in Scotland deprived the ‘no’ campaign of any credibly representative leadership. The Conservative Party admitted it was a potential liability by organising the ‘no’ campaign group, ‘Think Twice’, as if it had nothing to do with the party. The ‘no’ campaign also focused on attacking tax-​varying powers, all but admitting that actually they had thrown in the towel on the vote simply on the parliament. Surridge and McCrone (1999) show the lower inclination of ‘no’ voters to actually turn out to vote than those in favour of devolution. There was subsequent dispute over this analysis of the referendum vote. McEwen (2002) acknowledged that Scottish cultural identity was not a significant factor and that, in contrast, instrumentalist welfare arguments were much more significant in mobilising support. Nevertheless, she

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emphasised the fact that the ‘yes’ campaign included themes of Scottish control over Scottish affairs and Scottish solutions to Scottish problems, and concluded on ‘the influence of national identification and the issues of self-​determination alongside welfare expectations’ (McEwen, 2002:81). However, the significance of instrumental arguments to the mobilisation of support behind devolution is hard to downplay. Keating (2012:221) concluded that ‘much of the path to devolution in the 1990s came from a desire to defend the welfare settlement at the periphery from being undermined by the centre’. The implications of Surridge and McCrone’s (1999) more sceptical analysis is to suggest that, if we reconsider the referendum as a prism through which to assess territorial politics and constitutional policy, we by and large confirm earlier arguments. First, while the ‘yes’ victory strongly evidenced the territorial strain that had given rise to the political debate about constitutional change in Scotland in the first place, it was achieved in the context of an awareness still of its potential weaknesses. Second, and related to this, while evidence of the campaign also demonstrated the passion for home rule among those seeking a ‘yes’ vote, there was also strong evidence of campaign strategy that sought to appeal to voters on the basis of instrumental promises, garnering loyalty by appealing to effective interests, rather than simply appealing to national identity. Faced by perceived potential constraints on the electorate to vote yes, we see at work again the method of cultivating support for change more broadly on the basis of a functional case that Scotland would benefit economically and socially from devolution. Finally, in the process, Scottish and British Labour leaderships achieved the devolution policy they wanted while also gaining broader support. The referendum decision in Benzian terms provided the ideal legitimising case of loosely coupled ratification involving the entire electorate. This provided the completion of a general disposition towards arena differentiation in not only negotiating but also ratifying devolution policy. The scale of the victory and the widespread nature of support gave devolution an unquestioned legitimacy. On such terms the Labour Party in Scotland and at the UK level may be regarded as having completed the right to legislate for devolution with a high level of political success. Broadly, over the period from 1989 to 1997 they were presented with an unprecedented territorial challenge which had to be faced up to in some way for fear of it leading to something worse. At the same time, they were also constrained by the uncertainties of whether they would be in power at all at the UK level and if so with what majority, and by the need to develop myriad other priorities. What they proposed to do also appeared to successfully

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mediate the challenge of membership space strains and state change broadly on their own terms. It was thought that this would both develop meaningful self-​government in a manner that represented Scottish demands, but would also be under the control of leaders assimilated to governing mindful of UK government concerns. It also involved a distribution of powers acceptable to UK government, sustaining centre autonomy to act in areas where it wanted the freedom to do so. They did all this in a manner which, on the basis of the referendum result, also gained widespread legitimacy in Scotland.

Constitutional policy and the Scotland Act 1998 The development of devolution policy in government combined, first, the drafting of the White Paper on introducing a Scottish parliament, which preceded the September referendum, and second, the preparation of the Scotland Bill itself. Following the expression of popular support in the 1997 referendum, the bill became part of Labour’s legislative programme in its first year. Although the Cabinet Office was ultimately in charge of coordinating all constitutional reform, Donald Dewar and his Scottish Office officials were charged with preparing both. This was symptomatic of a continued intrinsic bilateralism in the negotiation of devolution legislation. Dewar and his officials set about their work within a broadly clear set of assumptions: that there was an expectation of a Scottish parliament which would provide a measure of home rule, but which the Blair government did not wish either to become a platform for nationalism or otherwise to cut across the Labour programme. Nevertheless, government provided a new context for proposals to be developed into legislative reform. In practice, this proved to be of considerable importance to how Scottish devolution was actually introduced. Dewar had to open negotiations with ministers in all departments that would be affected by devolution, as well as navigate reform through the Cabinet Sub-​committee on Devolution in Scotland, Wales and the English Regions (DSWR), under the chairmanship of the lord chancellor, Lord Derry Irvine. Evidence from those close to these processes suggests that neither were easy. Peter Jones, a prominent Scottish journalist, later recalled that: Although by the time of the 1997 election there was an impression in Scotland that the devolution settlement agreed by the Scottish constitutional convention was set in concrete and just had to be followed through obediently by the government, that was not the case. Some of the new

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Whitehall ministers were entirely new to the devolution debate and they, and their departments, had to be convinced of the need to give away some of their power. (Jones, 2005:123) Derry Irvine also later recalled that the DSWR: was clear from the outset that it was unwilling to rubberstamp the Convention blueprint. Some members of the DSWR were underwhelmed by the Scottish project and every detail was rightly debated closely in committee –​a seamless transition from convention to statute certainly there was not … DSWR was determined that the Scots could not proceed as though their lucky number had come up and what they wanted they could demand. (Irvine, 2005:128) Participants generally suggest, though, that Dewar successfully promoted the strongest model of devolution that he could, consistent with the general principles of devolution established by the SCC. Jones (2005:120) recalled that Dewar ‘wanted the maximum flexibility for the Scottish parliament over the maximum range of subject matter, delivered in the shortest possible time’. In delivering this, Dewar focused on acting at speed in talking to departmental ministers. As Lord Sewel, the Scottish Office Minister in the Lords, later recalled, ‘the obvious tactic was to obtain the agreement of colleagues before the full implications were realised and thereby reduce the scope for any possible subsequent Whitehall fightback’ (Sewel, 2005:132–​3). In then gaining overall agreement in the DSWR committee, he did not get a free pass from Irvine but they did forge a very good partnership. Irvine recalls, ‘Donald and I were equal true believers in devolution’ (Irvine, 2005:128). ‘We came to the committee with a shared view that the renaissance in Scotland’s sense of its national identity demanded the amplest devolution of legislative authority to a Scottish parliament consistent with the maintenance of the Union’ (Irvine, 2005:127). The key overarching issue that Dewar focused on was the very structure of devolution. On receiving the first draft of the White Paper, written by his civil servants on the basis of the SCC proposals, he rewrote it with the key aim of asserting unambiguously a reserved powers model of devolution. Indeed, as Peter Jones commented, it was clear that ‘much of the argument, for example, that the extent of devolution should be defined by stating what was reserved to Westminster rather than by describing what was devolved to Scotland,

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had to be won again inside government’ (Jones, 2005:123). The DSWR did indeed rehearse the arguments between conferred and reserved powers models and came down in favour of the latter. This was critical. As Wendy Alexander (2005:208), Dewar’s advisor, later commented ‘the strength of the [Scotland] Act lies in its departure from the Convention’s support for a defined set of powers for the Scottish Parliament’. She concluded that the ‘Act, in allowing the Scottish Parliament to range over all areas that were not explicitly reserved to Westminster, adopted a more radical approach and thereby took the most important step in giving resilience to the settlement’ (Alexander, 2005:208). Subsequently, Lord Sewel recalled in the DSWR Sub-​ committee: ‘the driving principle that informed decisions on what should be reserved and what should be devolved was simple. Unless a convincing case could be mounted that required policy to be made at a United Kingdom level then it was devolved, and where possible subject areas were treated as whole and not part devolved and part reserved’ (Sewel, 2005:134). Over a period of 11 weeks and 15 meetings, the DSWR Cabinet Sub-​c ommittee redebated everything, including parliamentary sovereignty, Parliament and the West Lothian Question, vires dispute resolution machinery, the tax-​varying power, and powers in relation to EU decision-​making. On some issues there was easy agreement. For example, everyone recognised there had to be changes from the 1978 Act in the sense that ‘it was politically impractical for a continuing secretary of state for Scotland to perform the quasi vice regal role that the earlier Act foresaw’ (Sewel, 2005:130). At the time, Mitchell (1998b:73) drew attention to the fact that the White Paper defined the role of the secretary of state now as about ‘communication between the Scottish Parliament and Executive and between the UK Parliament and Government on matters of mutual interest; and in representing Scottish interest in reserved areas’ (Scottish Office, 1997). On the other hand, members were particularly concerned that the electoral system proposals would create a precedent for UK parliamentary reform. But Dewar ‘was convinced that the Scottish nation in all its variety would not embrace a devolution package which entrenched Labour, and thus West of Scotland, dominance’ (Irvine, 2005:129). The electoral system proposals stayed. There were issues on which Dewar gave ground. For example, powers over abortion law remained a reserved matter. Dewar also acquiesced in the decision under Article 86 to allow the number of Scottish MPs to go below 71, thus paving the way for a possible future reduction to meet any concerns about Scottish representation

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at Westminster after devolution. Other cabinet ministers could not alter the structure of the bill ‘but as time went on and where the white paper was not explicit, Dewar had to make deals with cabinet colleagues’ (Sewel, 2005:137). Overall though, Dewar got a relatively clear, strong model of devolution. Final decisions over powers that would be reserved to Westminster meant that there were significantly more powers left unreserved that the 1978 Act would not have granted. These included the police, the prosecution system, economic development, industrial assistance, forestry, and transport powers, in addition to those the SCC had recommended. Far from Labour’s commitments rolling back when in government under the assertion of targeted central control over the scope of devolution, Lord Sewel (2005:137) concluded that ‘Dewar was able to secure a model of devolution for Scotland that surprised even his pro-​ devolution colleagues’. The legislation then had a relatively easy passage through Parliament, except for initial defeats in the House of Lords over clauses relating to the possible future reduction of Scottish MPs. In looking back on this, it is possible to reflect on the importance of contemporary influences. Mitchell (1998b), for example, gives credit to the influence of the Constitution Unit’s (1996a) proposals for a reserved powers model. It was more important to some observers, though, that there was a true believer in charge when it mattered. Neil MacCormick (2005:142–​5), an SNP-​aligned academic and friend, was of the view that Dewar had originally been influenced by his boyhood awareness of the covenant association proposals for a Scottish assembly, published in 1948. In these, he saw the origins of Dewar’s vision for a strong parliament that went beyond the proposals of the SCC. Dewar had been there in 1979 on the ‘yes’ side and had only accepted other frontbench posts under Blair on the promise that he would have the role of Scottish Secretary if they got into government. After all the discipline of marshalling the forces for constitutional change in opposition for so many years, within the confines of practical politics, he maximised what a Scottish parliament could do. The Scotland Act 1998 still reflected the balance of periphery–​centre interests established in the years of opposition, though undoubtedly with more consolidation of Scottish home rule than UK government might by itself have conceded. Part one was concerned with the establishment of the Scottish parliament, its election, proceedings and powers. Of immediate importance here is Section 28, which confirmed both the Scottish Parliament’s constitutional autonomy by stipulating that the Parliament and its executive may make laws in its area of competence; it also confirmed the right of the UK Parliament

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to continue to make laws on any issue in Scotland, reserved or not. The former was significant as it clarified the legislative competence of the Parliament; the latter was significant as it sustained the formal principle of the supremacy of the UK Parliament. The competence of the Scottish Parliament was defined as all areas of policy that were not reserved to Westminster, which were detailed in two parts under general and specific reservations headings in Schedule 5 of the Act. This list of reserved powers was extensive (see Table 4.5). Even so, it left a great deal that was unreserved and over which the Scottish Parliament now had primary legislative powers. Outside of reserved areas, the Scottish Parliament had a free hand to amend existing Westminster legislation as it applied to Scotland as well as to initiate new measures. This included a very wide range of responsibilities, including criminal justice, the police and other emergency services, economic development, education, health, housing, social work, agriculture, fisheries, the environment, heritage, tourism, sport and the arts. The Parliament had powers to reform the structure and finance of local government, to reform quangos and review public appointments. In addition, the Scottish Parliament had the right to immediately legislate on any new issues that were not covered under issues reserved to the UK Parliament. The Scotland Act 1998 provided for all legislation passed by the Parliament to go to the Crown for royal assent, although there were certain safeguards to ensure that the Scottish Parliament was not passing laws that related to reserved matters. In the first instance, the presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament was charged with checking whether Scottish Parliament bills were ultra vires or not; and in the four weeks after the passage of a bill and before it was sent for royal assent, the Scottish law officers could refer the bill to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. At the same time, under Section 35 of the Scotland Act, a UK government secretary of state for Scotland could issue an order preventing the presiding officer sending a bill for royal assent if (s)he had reasonable grounds for believing it strayed into reserved matters or was incompatible with international obligations or security. There was also the opportunity for Scottish Parliament acts to be sent for judicial review after assent if they were thought to be ultra vires. While these safeguards suggested the continued authority of the UK Parliament, they were all dedicated simply to constraining the Scottish Parliament from pushing the boundaries of devolution, although, in the process, adding authority to the Scottish Parliament in its areas of competence. Crucially, as long as the Scottish Parliament legislated intra vires, there would be no routine UK government powers of

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Table 4.5: Reserved powers under Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998 Reserved powers heading

Reserved powers covered

Part One: General reservations The constitution

Crown, succession to the Crown; UK Parliament; Union of Scotland and England; High Court of Judiciary, Court of Session

Foreign affairs

International relations; European Union; regulation of international trade; international development

Defence

Naval, military and air forces; visiting forces; international headquarters and defence organisations

Treason

Treason law

Public service

Civil service

Political parties

Registration and funding

Part Two: Specific reservations A: Financial and economic matters

Fiscal, economic and monetary policy; currency; financial services; financial markets; money laundering

B: Home affairs

Misuse of drugs; data protection; elections; firearms; entertainment; immigration and nationality; scientific procedures on live animals; national security; betting, gaming and lotteries; emergency powers; extradition; lieutenancies; access to information

C: Trade and industry

Business association, insolvency; competition; intellectual property; import and export control; sea fishing; consumer protection, product standards, safety and liability; weights and measures; telecommunications; posts; research councils; assisted areas; industrial development advisory board; protection of trading and economic interests

D: Energy

Electricity; oil and gas; coal; nuclear energy; energy conservation

E: Transport

Road; rail; marine; air; radioactive materials; disabled people

(continued)

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Table 4.5: Reserved powers under Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998 (continued) Reserved powers heading

Reserved powers covered

F: Social security

Social security; child support; occupational and personal pensions; war pensions

G: Regulation of professions

Architects; health; auditors

H: Employment

Employment and industrial relations; health and safety; job search and support

J: Health and medicines

Abortion; xenotransplantation; embryology, surrogacy and genetics; medicines, medical supplies and poisons; welfare foods

K: Media and culture

Broadcasting; public lending right; government indemnity schemes; property accepted in lieu of tax

L: Miscellaneous

Judicial remuneration; equal opportunities; control of weapons of mass destruction; Ordnance Survey; time; outer space

Source: Scotland Act 1998

delay, amendment or veto. This confirmed a significant measure of constitutional autonomy for Scotland. In the conduct of its powers, the Scotland Act 1998 provided for finance by an annual block grant sanctioned by the UK Parliament. This was to be allocated on the basis of the Barnett formula (an expenditure-​based formula that sought to relate grant funding for Scottish expenditure on a proportionate per capita basis to planned expenditure in England). The Act provided for the Scottish Parliament to finance its work in other ways. First, it was given the power to vary the basic rate of income tax as it applied to tax payers in Scotland by 3p in the pound, either up or down, a facility that became known as the Scottish Variable Rate (SVR). In 1998, this equated to a maximum of approximately £450 million per annum that would still be collected by the Board of Inland Revenue and could be either added to or subtracted from Parliament funding through the block grant. Second, Scottish Parliament powers over local government included the right to gain revenue by withholding the revenue support grant from councils. Powers over local government finance also allowed the Parliament to lift capping powers, reform the system of local taxation from the then property-​based council tax, and to return the setting of the business rate

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to councils. The vast bulk of the Parliament’s annual finance, however, was always expected to come from the block grant. The Scottish Parliament was to be composed of 129 members elected on the additional member (or ‘mixed member proportional’, MMP) basis. Seventy-​three Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) were elected from single member constituencies on a simple plurality basis. Fifty-​six MSPs were then elected as top up regional list members from seven eight-​member regions using the d’Hondt formula. This represented a 57: 43 per cent ratio of constituency-​list member seats. Following a Scottish Parliament election, the Crown would appoint a First Minister in a manner that paralleled the appointment of a UK Prime Minister following a UK general election. The First Minister would then form an executive comprising other ministers that he/​ she had appointed from among the MSPs and two law officers, a Lord Advocate and Solicitor General for Scotland. Overall, the Scotland Act 1998 provided a clear framework for the operation of devolution. The transfer of primary legislative powers and the tax-​varying power broadly meant that the main work of the Parliament would be very similar to that of Westminster. It would primarily be a legislature, with a subsidiary role of enacting the statutory instruments necessary to implement its own law. As part of its remit, the Parliament was given significant powers over elected local government, including legislative power to reform its structure and system of finance, and control its level of expenditure. It was also given powers to reform quangos and to review public appointments. There were three obvious gains from this settlement. First, there was very clear and substantial decentralisation of government to Scotland. Second, in that executive decision-​making was passed from a secretary of state with no direct accountability to the Scottish electorate and to a Parliament with 129 elected members, there was an enormous gain in accountability on the discharge of these powers. Third, because of the referendum result and the powers given by the Scotland Act, the legitimacy of the Parliament to represent Scottish opinion on these matters was high and was credible even outside its immediate competence. The Parliament therefore could become a significant influence for change. In addition, Section 63 provided for the transfer of additional powers through orders in council if and when these were thought appropriate. The Scotland Act amounted then to a constitutional settlement by which the Scottish Parliament was provided with institutional authority, a significant area of policy competence, fiscal powers and finance, and representation. It marked a substantial increase in self-​rule from the era of administrative

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devolution, as well as from that promised by plans for devolution in the 1970s. At the same time, though, the provisions of the Act maintained the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. There was an undertaking through the so-​called Sewel convention not to legislate in non-​reserved areas as a norm, but the UK Parliament did retain the right under the parliamentary sovereignty principle to legislate in exceptional circumstances in non-​reserved areas. Equally, the Scottish Parliament was given no rights regarding UK government; it had no powers to co-​legislate, to share in executive decision-​making or co-​determine future constitutional change. Indeed, the capacity of the Scottish Parliament would still to a considerable extent be dependent on future relations with UK central government. This worked at three levels:  executive, bureaucratic and judicial. In terms of executive relationships, UK government decisions on macroeconomic policy, for example, over which Scotland had no control, would circumscribe many of the domestic matters handled by the Scottish Parliament. The post of secretary of state remained a key link, for if nothing else it was the secretary of state who was to be responsible for negotiating the Parliament’s block grant each year. Equally, as the bureaucracy serving the Parliament remained part of the UK civil service, day to day operations would be still reliant on relations with central departments in London. All matters of dispute over powers between the UK and Scottish Parliaments would ultimately be decided upon by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, a body that was itself an inherited convention of UK level governance. In Hooghe et al’s (2008) terms, the Scotland Act granted very few shared rule powers to the Scottish Parliament. Indeed, overall the Scottish devolution settlement represented a mix of relatively high self-​rule and very little shared rule, a mix that was very unusual in Hooghe et al’s comparative sample, and one reflective of a settlement which mixed clear regional autonomy to act in specified areas with a clear autonomy for the centre from interference in central state affairs. As the legislation for devolution was put onto the statute books, consideration was also given to how the Scottish Parliament would conduct its business. This work was done by a Consultative Steering Group (CSG), which was made up of members from all of the parties in Scotland, as well as non-​aligned experts, and reported in January 1999 (Scottish Parliament Consultative Steering Group, 1998; Brown, 2000). It developed an approach defined by the four principles of accountability, access, participation and equal opportunities. There were ambitions for a Scandinavian-​style active legislature, in which

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non-​executive MSPs would play a key role not only in scrutiny but also in helping to develop legislation and policy. This meant that committees were to be at the heart of the working of the Parliament. Eight mandatory committees were defined under the Scotland Act 1998, including an innovative petitions committee, as well as a range of subject committees, each with a considerable range of scrutiny and evidence gathering powers. The CSG report detailed the intended bill procedure, including provision for pre-​legislative committee examination, as well as impact assessment in terms of equal opportunities, human rights, island communities, local government, and sustainable development. The report’s proposals were comprehensively adopted into the standing orders of the Parliament following the first elections in May 1999. This process was seen as significant as it appeared to give constitutional substance to the ambitions for Scottish devolution to be accompanied by a new politics of inclusivity. Mitchell (1996b) has summed Scottish devolution up as an evolutionary process, adding a democratic base on to what had already been there in the system of government provided by the Scottish Office. From one perspective, this can be seen as a verdict that played down its significance, suggesting perhaps that much more could have been done. In practice, one should appreciate rather more the realistic nature of the gains for Scottish self-​government to democratically control their own self-​government on many areas of domestic policy. These had been hard won over many years of campaigning, and were still reliant at the crucial time on political leadership by Dewar and his team in negotiating the eventual Scotland Act. What was achieved ultimately was at the maximum end of what one might reasonably expect for a movement combining so many disparate views of constitutional change, constrained by the need to mobilise voters on the one hand and negotiate it through UK central government on the other. History will judge that, seen through the lens of contested power between periphery and the centre, the Scots did relatively very well in advancing self-​government in this era. Equally, though, the way in which Scottish devolution was introduced gave enough reassurance for UK government that devolved governance could still be shaped through its electoral system provisions to ensure as much as possible that the new custodians of Scottish self-​government would be broadly collaborative to continuing government within the Union. The provisions of the Act also ensured that the powers devolved were tolerable to the UK centre, there remained the capacity for central power, and devolved government under its future custodians could still be held within the web of UK government. It was a political

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balancing act right through to the end, legitimised by the referendum, and ultimately by the legislative process at Westminster and the CSG.

Conclusion This chapter has sought to provide an analysis of the origins and introduction of devolution in Scotland grounded in the realities of power politics and how key actors developed approaches and made decisions in the contexts in which they found themselves. It challenges the conventional wisdoms that there was a pervasively strong bottom-up identity politics underpinning change; that from a Scottish perspective plans for self-government were inadequately developed; and that the UK Labour Government did not give due consideration as to how to control the implications of devolution for the UK state. The chapter incorporates arguments of how, why and with what implications devolution was introduced which pay attention to what was possible; and it offers an appreciation of how Scottish and UK elites developed approaches under significant constraints, rather than assessing them against the criteria of ideal constitutional outcomes. First, it is clear that in the 1980s and 1990s Scotland did indeed pose a clear integration problem and a medium-​high territorial strain in UK territorial politics. Nevertheless, implications of this were unpredictable and malleable, and support for constitutional change was not seen as something to be taken for granted. Second, in the politics of determining who should represent pressures for change, the Labour Party in Scotland established a dominant position. In so doing, they were propelled by small ‘n’ nationalism within the party, by those who came to believe in the instrumental benefits of devolution, as well as by party establishment concerns to support devolution in a manner consistent within the UK. This led to the development of the SCC and the adoption of a code of peripheral assertion which blended emotional appeals to rights for Scotland as a nation with instrumentalist arguments broadly for the social democratic policy autonomy purpose of devolution; this drew in several political parties and many of Scotland’s civic organisations. The SCC was key in itself as an institutional mechanism for promoting support for devolution and, in the sense that it operated in a context of much public indifference, its ethos was to mobilise support broadly in a manner most consistent with the cultivated instrumentalist code of trying to make it happen rather than simply reflecting popular sentiment. These factors were key to the creation of consensus over proposals for devolution and in preparing the ground for popular support in the 1997 referendum, indeed that constitutional change could happen at all.

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Third, the UK Labour government was not integrally committed to devolution. Rather, its adoption as a policy of the incoming Labour government in 1997 reflected the penetration of the British Labour leadership by Scottish Labour interests and acceptance by Blair that Scottish devolution had to be accommodated. Nevertheless, devolution posed a potentially major threat to UK government; there were few clear prescriptions for how the Labour centre should seek to manage devolution and, in Blair’s words, the Scots were notoriously prickly over how they were dealt with by the UK government. However, the UK centre did develop purposeful approaches to managing the development of devolution, which we can see drew on traditional territorial management approaches. The evidence suggests that the British Labour leadership, supported by the monitoring of policy by the Scottish Labour Party establishment, exerted its influence to ensure it’s priorities within the SCC to structure forms of indirect central control. Key among these were the proposal to have an MMP electoral system in the Parliament in order to make the possibility of an SNP majority government very unlikely (as the Blair government saw it at the time) , and so maintain local elite collaboration even after devolution. This suggests the adoption of what amounted to a code of seeking efficient indirect central control through local elite assimilation, thus avoiding resort to more overt means of central control that could have been counterproductive. In these ways, both Scottish and UK governing elites found their way to reasonably coherent purposeful codes of action that, on the one hand, achieved the strategy of self-​government for Scotland and, on the other, did their best to provide constitutional and political instruments to safeguard the stability of the Union. Fourth, the clarity of the Scotland Act 1998 also enabled an outcome from a Scottish perspective of a new structure of territorial politics, characterised by a significant extent of territorial autonomy. From a centre perspective, the Act established a framework for keeping Scottish devolution politically at a distance, underpinning the continuation by new means of an assimilationalist elite code of indirect central control; at the same time, this helped to sustain the centre’s own autonomy from interference in its affairs by sub-​ national governments and allowed the time to devote to other key issues of politics and policy at the centre. In 1998, there was in fact no rush to try and articulate the results of reform in conceptual constitutional terms –​to define what kind of state the UK now was. Rather, the results were seen in these practical power terms, a dispensation that did indeed look remarkably like a new dual polity arrangement of dual autonomies. Fifth and finally, even within the constraint of a bilateral process of negotiating policy and the context of Labour Party domination of elite

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leadership both in Scotland and in the central political arena, it appears that significant efforts were made to achieve what was perceived as an effective and legitimate territorial reform. The use of the most inclusive mechanism of negotiation –​a convention –​and high arena structural differentiation in the making of policy in the SCC during the period 1989–​95, as well as a loosely coupled approach to ratification using a referendum in 1997, all contributed to widespread acceptance of this devolution policy as effective and legitimate outside the Labour Party inside Scotland. This provided a strong hand for the secretary of state, Donald Dewar, in negotiating the content of the Scotland Act 1998, and facilitated ultimately a relatively non-​controversial legislative process at Westminster to pass what was in the circumstances a relatively strong settlement for Scotland. There was no backlash from among MPs from other parts of the UK; no backlash in public opinion; above all no backlash in England. In the context of Scottish fears of failed reform and centre fears of being overwhelmed by territorial pressures, Scottish devolution should be seen as a reform which did indeed find a balance between Scottish and centre demands that had realistic prospects of at least short–medium term success. Ultimately then judged by the fact that Scotland still posed one of the harder territorial integration problems, and Benz’s pessimism about the prospects for territorial constitutional policy in such circumstances that made ideal models for reform from either Scottish or UK perspectives somewhat unrealistic, it seems reasonable to conclude that the development of Scottish devolution policy by 1999 should be seen in the circumstances as a relatively effective reform.

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5

Territorial Politics and Devolution in Wales This chapter moves the focus to how devolution was introduced in Wales. Here too, there was contestation between arguments for independence, devolution and maintenance of the status quo in the years after 1979. For those seeking change, though, there were very strong doubts. The assumed resource model of weak periphery–​weak centre relative to aspirations appeared even more appropriate in this case, as Wales has always been considered as having somewhat weaker popular support than Scotland for self-​government. Hence, we may reasonably question not only whether it was possible to agree on an ideal solution for constitutional change, but  –​more so than in the case of Scotland –​how a compelling case for change could be marshalled at all. In seeking to reappraise the politics of devolution in Wales in these years, this chapter again focuses on the power politics of how devolution was progressed; the chapter also applies the same framework of analysis focused on understanding how, why and with what intentions devolution was introduced. Duly, it discusses the nature of the territorial strain that Wales posed for the UK and the political resources behind territorial change, considering the extent to which bottom-​up pressures had strengthened or not. It considers the politics of elite leadership of constitutional change and the code, strategy and goals of peripheral assertion applied. In so doing, it explores the utility of the proposition that instrumental policy arguments and mechanisms were at the forefront of the case for change. Equally, throughout the chapter there is consideration of how the British Labour leadership politically managed the development of devolution proposals both in opposition and in government, and again of the code, strategy and goals which it pursued. In so doing, the chapter explores the proposition

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that the Labour leadership adopted traditional territorial management methods to constrain the implications of devolution primarily through local elite assimilation. Finally, the chapter considers the policy process by which devolution proposals were created, both in opposition and in government, and the extent to which it contributed to their perceived effectiveness and legitimacy, and indeed the sense in which Welsh devolution could be also considered in the short to medium term as a successful reform. To address these issues and theoretical propositions, this chapter develops chronologically. Section one focuses on territorial politics and the political debate on the constitutional question in Wales and at the UK centre in the 1980s and 1990s. Section two then addresses the preparation of devolution policy in Wales during the 1990s and the significance of the referendum on Welsh devolution held in September 1997. Finally, section three considers the Blair government’s preparation of devolution policy 1997–​8, the Government of Wales Act 1998 and plans for its implementation.

Territorial politics and the origins of devolution Wales has always had the potential to pose a territorial integration problem for the UK. Its autonomy was rooted in the Welsh language, Anglo–​Welsh struggle prior to the administrative and legal union in 1536, experiences of the Industrial Revolution, religious non-​ conformism, and movements for Welsh home rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet, the sense of territorial distance was not as strong as in Scotland, and Wales was more internally divided over language and national cultures. Working from collaborative research on voter behaviour at the 1979 UK general election, Balsom offered the ‘three Wales’ model as a way of understanding the distinctions between Welsh-​speaking Yr Fro Cymraeg (West Wales), English-​speaking Welsh-​identifying Wales (industrial South Wales) and British Wales (eastern half of Wales) that still existed in 1979 (Balsom et al, 1983; Balsom et  al, 1984; Balsom, 1985). With Welsh language speakers constituting at most 20 per cent of the population, linguistic distance from the English-​speaking UK norm was low; and cultural distance was only really felt in the far west of Wales. To cultural weaknesses were then added other deep lying vulnerabilities in Wales’ political background. It had no history as an independent unified polity to draw on to give a sense of constitutional viability of self-​government; the governing world of the Welsh Office, founded in 1964, was much more recent than that of the Scottish Office and less maturely developed; and, Plaid

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Cymru as an ethno-​regional challenger had gained representation but was still fairly marginal in the Welsh party system. The long-​term political resources of Welsh assertion for some form of self-​government were therefore highly problematic. These problems combined with short-​term issues contributed to the resounding ‘no’ vote in the 1979 referendum (Foulkes et al, 1983). In this context, what may we make of the territorial problem posed in Wales during the 1980s and 1990s? Analysis of public attitudes to national identity and constitutional preferences in Wales is made difficult by the fact that between 1979 and 1997 there was no Welsh election survey after general elections. From what we do know, though, there is evidence of relatively little change in identity affiliations. Table 5.1 shows that in forced choice surveys in both 1979 and 1997 a majority of people chose Welsh identity while a substantial minority chose British. Table 5.2 shows also that in 1997, when voters were asked the Moreno question, there was a greater leaning to feeling Welsh rather than British, but even so still less than half of the electorate considered themselves to be either ‘Welsh not British’ or ‘more Welsh than British’. ‘Equally Welsh and British’ was the plurality winner, an identity set with uncertain consequences. Welsh identity was broadly held, but not as broadly held as in Scotland, and overall Britishness was at least part of the identity of around 80 per cent of the population (Bradbury and Andrews, 2010). There was potentially, however, some reduction in the divisions among those who felt Welsh, arising from the fact that contrary to original intentions Margaret Thatcher’s governments relatively depoliticised the issue of the Welsh language. Thatcher initially opposed a Welsh language television station. However, following Gwynfor Evans’ threatened hunger strike in 1980, she relented and Table 5.1: Attitudes to national identity in Wales, 1979–​97 Do you think of yourself as …?

1979 (%) (n=858)

1997 (%) (n=680)

Welsh

57

63

British

34

26

English

8

6

Other

1

5

Source: 1979 Welsh Election Study and 1997 Welsh National Assembly Referendum survey

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Table 5.2: The Moreno question and national identity in Wales, 1997 Do you consider yourself to be …?

% (n=659)

Welsh not British

17

More Welsh than British

26

Equally Welsh and British

34

More British than Welsh

10

British not Welsh

12

Source: 1997 Welsh National Assembly Referendum survey

S4C was subsequently established. Following the 1988 Education Act Welsh became part of the school national curriculum and in 1993 the Welsh Language Act was passed. The Welsh Language Board subsequently monitored Welsh language development and offered advice to government on policy. Where the fate of the Welsh language had been the pre-​eminent issue for Welsh nationalists and a source of tension within Wales as a whole in 1979, by 1997 it was still highly significant but the political heat had been taken out of it. There is no rigorous data to track public opinion on the constitutional question between 1979 and 1997. However, the greater prevalence of polls by the mid-​1990s suggested that there was a case for saying that, while the holding of Welsh identity had not changed much, its politicisation had. The polls indicated that public opinion had moved quite substantially since 1979, showing more than a doubling of support for the creation of an assembly compared to the 20% support registered in the 1979 referendum (see Table 5.3). A much smaller minority than was the case in Scotland were in favour of independence. The polling data was collected in the immediate aftermath of John Redwood’s tenure of the position of secretary of state for Wales, indicating possibly the key impact of his specific failure to engage in sensitive territorial management. By the mid-​1990s, the possibility of support for Welsh devolution had, though, become more plausible (see Osmond, 1995). Even so, the contemporary perception was that there was still no clear majority support for devolution, with a large part of the electorate undecided. All of the problems apparent in Scotland that might squeeze down a pro-​devolution vote were also present in Wales only more so: difficulties in politicising identity and mobilising support; devolution rarely being voters’ first political priority; how to sustain

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Table 5.3: Constitutional preferences on a Welsh assembly in the 1990s For (%)

Against (%)

Don’t know (%)

March 1994

45

22

     33

October 1994

51

16

    33

February 1995

47

24

29

Source: BBC poll data, collected by Beaufort Research, adapted from Osmond (1995:32)

unity among supporters from a variety of different party backgrounds behind the same goal; and the potential for critiques of constitutional change to change people’s minds. It was generally thought, even among committed campaigners, that Welsh public opinion was at best equivocal and at worst easily lost amid the structural obstacles to making a case for change (Bradbury, 1998). A review of background conditions also indicated a dissonance between desire and capacity. On the one hand, the strongest factors suggesting momentum for constitutional change were a growth in dissent from national (UK) resolution of interests and a relatively high degree of common ideological outlook in articulating that dissent. The Thatcher government’s decisions to denationalise the steel industry and embark on an intensified policy of coal pit closures were met with opposition. The long miners’ strike of 1984–​5 established a strong sense of defending ‘Welsh’ ways of life against a policy conducted by a government strongly identified as ‘English’. It produced new heroes of Welsh folklore, such as Tyrone O’Sullivan, who fought successfully to reopen Tower colliery. This new assertion of Welshness was expressed as strongly among women, who took pride in the women’s groups who were at the forefront of community organisation during the miners’ strike, as among the predominantly union-​conscious male workers. In the 1990s, out of South Wales came a flowering of a new youth culture that was determinedly Welsh in its expression. Consequently, Thatcherism has been assessed as providing a strong ‘other’ against which to unite, juxtaposing a strong sense of a distinctively collectivist political culture defending jobs and livelihoods against the effects of neoliberal policies (Bradbury, 1997b; Bradbury 1998). Local councils, which received real terms funding cuts and were largely run by the Labour Party, became supporters of devolution. The trend during the Conservative governments 1979–​97 to divert more power into quangos under Conservative appointees caused particular resentments in local government (Jones, 1997; Jones 2000b).

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Opposition to Thatcherism as an English politics was reflected also in party voting behaviour in Wales between 1979 and 1997, though with important differences to Scotland. Table 5.4 again shows a marked decline in support for the Conservatives from Margaret Thatcher’s first two elections and a reduction in the number of seats in the 1987 and 1992 elections, before eventual total collapse in 1997. Meanwhile, Labour also strengthened markedly between 1983 and 1987, but then also went on to further step changes in their vote share thereafter to achieve very strong dominance of the party system in Wales. Throughout this period, in contrast to the SNP’s fortunes in Scotland, it is notable that Plaid Cymru’s vote share hardly moved at all, though they did improve their seat haul. As a result, Labour was relatively uncontested in representing the Left-​of-​centre, social democratic alternative to the UK Conservative policy paradigm (Jones, 1997). Other factors, though, weakened the background case for constitutional change. Claims could always be made for underpinnings of pluralism based, for example, on community organisation and working class culture, but the media was relatively weak. Markets tend to exist where there is demand for plurality in provision, and in this case the preference for British media markets had long been clear. Wales had one of the weakest regional economies in the UK, with few company headquarters or large companies, skills shortages and problems of underemployment as well as unemployment. Opportunities connected to the EU Single Market encouraged new private sector growth in the 1980s. Local government leaders hoped that an assembly might also help authorities to capitalise on EU funding opportunities. But such activities did not make up for the jobs lost in the downsizing of nationalised industries and the public sector. Urban business and industrial leaders were as equivocal about devolution as they were in Scotland. Background conditions, therefore, did give some socio-​economic drive to a case for constitutional change based on resentment against rule by Conservative governments and the dissonance between their values in public service development and those perceived in Wales. Drive came from trade unions, local government, the voluntary sector and new social groups to defend Welsh approaches to public policy. However, even the most optimistic campaigner for change in the 1990s would have accepted that, relatively speaking, Welsh civil society was weak, characterised by a lack of strong Welsh centred peak professional organisations in Cardiff. There remained concerns about the relative weakness of the Welsh economy and the effects of constitutional change on the commitment of UK government to support jobs in Wales.

108

newgenrtpdf

Year

Labour

Conservative

Liberal Democrats

Plaid Cymru

Others

109

Vote share (%)

Seats

Vote share (%)

Seats

Vote share (%)

Seats

Vote share (%)

Seats

Vote share (%)

Seats

1979

47.0

21

32.2

11

10.6

1

8.1

2

2.2

1

1983

37.5

20

31.0

14

23.2

2

7.8

2

0.4

0

1987

45.1

24

29.5

8

17.9

3

7.3

3

0.2

0

1992

49.5

27

28.6

6

12.4

1

8.8

4

0.7

0

1997

54.7

34

19.6

0

12.4

2

9.9

4

3.4

0

Note: Figures in the Liberal Democrats column refer to the Liberal Party (1979), the Liberal–SDP alliance (1983–1987) and the Liberal Democrats from 1992.

TERRITORIAL POLITICS AND DEVOLUTION IN WALES

Table 5.4: UK general election results in Wales, 1979–​97

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

Overall, taking all these points together there had clearly been some notable changes since 1979. Surveys suggested movement towards greater support for devolution, though not at all towards independence. However, there was still no evidence of a clear majority in favour of devolution; what support there was appeared vulnerable to changing political circumstances and the effects of campaigning. Equally, while greater dissent against the UK as a level for resolving political decisions coalesced with self-​awareness of a distinctive political culture, other background conditions relating to the underpinnings of pluralism, the strength of the economy and views of the business class did not give Wales confidence regarding self-​rule. By the mid-​1990s, Welsh membership space was being more strongly asserted but state territorial space was much more clearly still dominant. Accordingly, Wales is best seen as constituting a medium territorial strain; a more significant stress on the UK state than in the 1970s, but still vulnerable and contingent. Given this context, the questions of whether political leadership would emerge in Wales, and if so who and with what strategy to make constitutional change actually happen, were perhaps more fundamental questions than in Scotland. There were in theory again three options. Plaid Cymru had long sought to defend the Welsh language and achieve independence for Wales. In this period, they followed the SNP in adopting a policy of independence in Europe, anchoring an independent Wales in the economic support provided by EU membership. Their notion of independence was, however, more ambiguous than that of the SNP, talking of full national status rather than independence. They also adopted a social democratic position and broadened their policy agenda, in the process becoming less specifically associated with campaigning for the Welsh language. In effect, under the successive leaderships of Dafydd Elis Thomas and Dafydd Wigley, they competed for Labour’s ground of representing class and nation. As we have seen, though, they did this with only limited success in UK elections; as a result they did not exert anything like the kind of pressure achieved by the SNP in Scotland (see Jones, 1997; Elias 2010). Second, Wales spent much of the 1980s without anything comparable to the CSA. It was only after the 1987 election, which saw the Conservatives return to UK government with once again Wales voting against them, that a Campaign for a Welsh Assembly (CWA) was finally established. This emerged from discontent among Labour activists at the lack of commitment to devolution by the Labour Party. The CWA was chaired by Jon Owen Jones, subsequently a Labour MP, until 1991 and most of its members were Labour Party members.

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The term ‘assembly’ was deliberately used initially, but from 1993 the CWA evolved into the Parliament for Wales Campaign, supporting both primary legislative and tax-​raising powers to mirror demands in Scotland. There were also thoughts of the CWA developing into a cross-​party/​non-​party constitutional convention, and following the 1992 Conservative victory, the Wales TUC passed a resolution calling for the creation of a Welsh constitutional convention. Morgan and Mungham (2000:87–​8) described the CWA ‘as undoubtedly the most significant coalition for democratic devolution, the nearest Wales ever came to having a cross-​party constitutional convention’. The third option was again the Labour Party. There was little focus on the issue after the 1979 election. The party saw enormous turmoil over Left–Right battles and from 1983 a key issue was the hostility to devolution of Neil Kinnock, MP for the Welsh seat of Islwyn, and Labour’s British leader. Nevertheless, just as strong devotees in Labour’s ranks established the CWA following the 1987 election, the party also turned to readdress the issue (Jones, 1997). The Welsh Executive initiated a review of local government reform, the results of which included a recommendation passed at party conference in 1990 to have ‘an elected body for Wales to deal with the functions of the Welsh Office and its nominated bodies’ (Morgan and Mungham, 2000:86). Accordingly, Labour’s shadow secretary of state for Wales, Barry Jones, developed an outline proposal and the party went into the 1992 general election once again committed to devolution, with large support from among Wales’ Labour MPs. A key figure reflecting changed attitudes was Ron Davies, who was transformed from the anti-​devolution party activist in Caerphilly Constituency Labour Party of the late 1970s to the strongly committed pro-​devolution Labour MP for Caerphilly. Following the 1992 election, Davies became Labour’s shadow secretary of state for Wales, a post he held into government in 1997. However, the Labour Party was not united over devolution. On the one hand, there were activists who argued for a model comparable to Scotland combined with a commitment to a Left political agenda. In 1995, Gareth Hughes established Welsh Labour Action as a parallel organisation to Scottish Labour Action to argue for precisely this position. There were also, though, some Labour MPs who were openly opposed; this included Llew Smith, who espoused Bevanite beliefs in the need for a strong central government to preside over redistribution, and others, like Donald Anderson, who were sceptical of pandering to nationalism. A key difference with Scotland was that, while Labour electorally feared the SNP, it did not feel the same about Plaid Cymru, and this took a lot of the sense of Welsh devolution being a necessary

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policy whatever your opinions out of the debate. The Welsh Executive, therefore, had to sustain engagement with devolution policy in a way that did not empower the Left or split the party. Labour Party Wales remained committed to devolution throughout the 1990s, but there was not the same kind of paradigm shift to the necessity of self-​government seen in the Labour Party in Scotland (see Bradbury, 1998). This had implications for the strategy Labour chose in developing the policy in opposition ahead of the 1997 election. The key issue, as in Scotland, was whether to go alone or foster a collaborative cross-​ party/​non-​party approach. In the case of Wales, Labour decided to go it alone. In June 1992, the Welsh Labour Executive created its own constitutional policy commission, charged with re-​examining policy on an elected assembly. Morgan and Mungham (2000:88–​9) then also identified the Welsh Labour Executive as the key organising body, dominated by party officials and trade union fixers, consistently working against the idea of joining a constitutional convention. This included placing heavy pressure on MPs and members not to attend a Parliament for Wales conference in March 1994 that was widely seen as seeking to initiate such a move. In emerging to lead constitutional change, therefore, Labour did so without wishing to engage in a wider conversation in Wales about how to do it. This placed significant constraints from the start on how they broached the issue; not only was constitutional change limited to the option of devolution, but what would be produced would be entirely shaped by Labour’s ideas, influenced further by Labour’s own management of internal differences. Labour’s decision not to join a broader based constitutional convention led to much criticism (Morgan and Mungham (2000:88–​ 9). In their defence, we should remember that Labour had not ideally wished to join the SCC in Scotland out of fear of diluting party system leadership, legitimising party opponents and bringing internal divisions out into the open, but felt compelled to do so by SNP competition. In Wales, the same reasons for not joining a constitutional convention existed, but in this case there were no such countervailing party competition incentives that might have pushed Labour to support a convention. Labour’s internal divisions in Wales between pro-​and anti-​ devolutionists meant that the internal party management challenges of fashioning sustained support for devolution were also greater than in Scotland. This meant that there was both more opposition to working with other parties, and there were greater incentives to deal with problems in-​house. The limitations of a Labour-​only process on how proposals on constitutional change would be shaped were also simply a reflection

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of the broader weaknesses in societal, economic and political pressures for change in Wales as a whole and the realities of the structure of political power that it produced. If the Welsh electorate had really cared about having a broader base to the debate about constitutional change, they would presumably have voted in greater numbers for the Liberal Democrats and/​or Plaid Cymru, long-​term supporters respectively of devolution and some form of independence. Labour’s promotion of a devolution policy was, of course, subject to support from the British party leadership. What was the nature of their strategy in respect of Wales? Neil Kinnock’s scepticism regarding the threats posed by devolution shaped his initial position between 1983 and 1987. After 1987, though, he appears to have reappraised the issue for three reasons: first, the necessity of Scottish devolution raised a logical question about Wales; second, European social democratic parties had generally embraced regional decentralisation and he could see the issue emerging in Wales; and third, European integration was developing a strong regional structural funds agenda. Kinnock still loathed nationalism, but he backed the commitment to Welsh devolution at the 1992 election. Following Kinnock as leader between 1992 and 1994, John Smith (a Scottish MP) was a more natural supporter of devolution in principle and asked Ron Davies to prepare a scheme similar to Scotland. In contrast, Smith’s successor Tony Blair was not, as we have seen, a natural devolutionist, reflecting the more common instinct of governors at the centre to be profoundly anxious about the implications of territorial constitutional change for the stability of the Union. The dynamics he faced in respect of Wales compared to Scotland, though, were also different in two key respects: first, there were clearly fewer political and party competition pressures in Wales for the policy; and second, Davies was a lone Welsh voice at the centre championing the cause. Morgan and Mungham (2000: 100–​2) record that Blair promised to support Welsh devolution accompanied by inclusiveness (that is, a proportional electoral system) in return for Davies’ support for his leadership bid in 1994. However, once in post Blair appointed Kim Howells, MP for Pontypridd, to the shadow home office team with special responsibility for constitutional reform. Howells was a ‘known anti-​devolutionist, and Davies later recorded that he saw the posting as an attempt by Blair to rein back on the devolution commitment’ (Morgan and Mungham, 2000:100). Howells subsequently attended meetings of the Welsh Executive’s policy commission on devolution in early 1995 and consistently took up a position, supported by some members from the Welsh Executive, which was against the proposed

113

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assembly having primary legislative powers or having an element of proportional representation (PR) in the electoral system. Morgan and Mungham (2000:101) concluded that ‘Howells’ change of tack appeared to hint that the party leadership was seeking to dampen down expectations about the Welsh Assembly’. Blair did not abandon the case coming from the Welsh party for an assembly, but Howells’ role suggests that the British leadership felt it could push back on how powerful a body it would be. Blair’s memoirs unfortunately contain no reflection on his strategic thinking on this issue. Overall, an analysis of territorial politics establishes that, in the context of very uncertain bottom-​up pressures for constitutional change in Wales, Labour again emerged as the focus of leadership of change. The Welsh and British leaderships both embraced change, though in comparison to Scotland with rather less united conviction of the necessity of change in the Welsh party, and rather less anxiety about how they might manage it in the British leadership. Labour’s decision to develop policy entirely in-​house rather than through a constitutional convention also meant that it gave relatively stronger influence to ‘devo-​sceptics’ in shaping policy. It also gave more power to the Labour Party establishment, who wanted to resolve policy on a purely party basis as well as, in reflecting an ingrained loyalism, provide more leverage for British leadership influence than would have been possible in a constitutional convention. The other parties simply looked on. This represented a much narrower elite base than in Scotland for mobilising support. In other words, Labour strategy in Wales was simultaneously shaped by the politics of a more constrained regionalist method to develop self-​rule and the politics of a stronger local elite collaboration to sustain its compatibility with central power than was the case in Scotland. Meanwhile the British Labour leadership, in accepting the Welsh party’s constitutional policy commission role in 1992, opted de facto again for a bilateral approach to developing devolution policy in Wales, just as it had in Scotland. This helped further to confirm an overall approach followed by both Smith and Blair in the period up to 1997; this assumed that the challenges of each part of the UK were so different that a bilateral approach was the only practical way in which to develop policies to solve the problems apparent in each case. In the case of Wales, though, the fact that policy was to be developed entirely through the party gave the British leadership more leverage. The British leadership kept itself directly removed from responsibility for making policy, but it is evident that the role played by Kim Howells suggested that the British leadership considered that the rather weaker

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pressures for devolution in Wales gave them greater scope to directly influence plans for devolution policy and limit the implications for the UK state at birth.

The negotiation and ratification of devolution, 1992–​97 The key focus for policy development on territorial constitutional change in Wales was therefore in the Welsh branch of the Labour Party. There is a limited scholarship on Labour’s preparations, but from the available sources we can gain a picture of some of its main characteristics, shedding light on Welsh and British Labour leadership approaches, as well as the nature of the policy process (see Morgan and Mungham, 2000: 98–​107). The Constitutional Policy Commission, appointed in 1992, did achieve a separation of the constitutional question from other areas of policy making. However, debate of principles was not a strong feature of the Commission’s deliberations, and discussion regarding powers, finance, representation and participation were considered together. The Commission held six public consultation meetings in late 1994, but ‘these sessions were described as “little advertised … low key affairs. They were held on weekdays rather than evenings or weekends –​times which minimised participation” ’ (Osmond, 1995, quoted in Morgan and Mungham, 2000:100). Over the four years that the Commission worked before providing the final set of proposals in Preparing for a New Wales (Labour Party 1996a), deliberation developed slowly and involved a series of disputes. Ron Davies proceeded cautiously, aware that the Welsh Executive wanted to keep tight control over policy development, and that party conference wanted to see extensive consultation within the party. There was also a difficult balancing act to be performed in ensuring both local government and parliamentary Labour Party support. Davies argued passionately for the principle of an elected assembly and that it should embody inclusive politics, but he was careful to argue that it would help the Welsh economy, defend public services and promote Wales in Europe; this reassured critics that the policy to introduce an assembly would at least not be a threat to Labour’s chances of winning a UK general election, and that if an assembly was introduced it would not impose control over local government. After preliminary debate, the first major Commission consultation paper was Shaping the Vision in 1994, which raised the key questions of whether an assembly should have primary legislative and tax-​varying powers, and whether it should be elected by a system other than FPTP. Davies wanted the answer to be yes to all three and lobbied accordingly. He wanted a powerful

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assembly, and an assembly which by being elected with a PR element would enhance inclusiveness, ensure other parties some representation and therefore gain their support. Not everyone saw it the same way. Morgan and Mungham (2000:101) noted in particular the Wales TUC submission to the policy commission, which urged caution. In Policy Commission meetings, attended also by Blair’s constitutional reform spokesperson, Kim Howells, members of the Executive sided with Howells in opposing both primary legislative powers and a PR electoral system. This view ultimately prevailed on the Commission and the Shaping the Vision (Labour Party, 1995b) document that was approved by the Wales Labour Party Conference in May 1995 provided for a set of proposals very similar to the devolution proposals made in 1979. First, devolution would still be to an assembly and not a parliament, and the assumption was that all primary legislative powers would still be held at Westminster. Second, devolution would utilise a ‘conferred powers’ approach focused on executive and secondary legislative powers, under which specific powers to be devolved would be listed. Third, the assembly would have no fiscal powers, and instead would be funded entirely by a central block grant. Fourth, the assembly would be elected in the same way as Westminster, by a simple plurality ‘first past the post’ (FPTP) system. Fifth and finally, it was proposed that committees would be the focus for policy making, with each committee electing a representative to form an assembly leadership group. This latter proposal could be interpreted as both conceptualising the assembly as a local government-​style body which did not undermine Westminster’s authority and as a way of encouraging a new politics collaborative approach to doing things differently from Westminster. Morgan and Mungham (2000:102) concluded that: ‘Labour’s internal debate on devolution had been settled in favour of the minimalists’. Ron Davies was unhappy with Shaping the Vision, and it was also criticised by those in the Labour Party who wanted a stronger model. It was at this point that Welsh Labour Action was established to contest the document. The weight of opinion in the Welsh party and the British leadership were both against reopening the case for a parliament with primary legislative powers, but Davies was successful in winning trade union support to get the policy commission reopened to reconsider the electoral system issue and whether to grant the assembly an additional power to be able to reform the quangos. This was sanctioned by Labour Party Wales in 1996 and Davies set about salvaging what he could of at least the idea of an inclusive assembly.

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It was at this point also that British leadership interests worked rather more to assist Davies. Morgan and Mungham (2000:104–​5) quote a Blair speech in June 1996 in which he said: ‘it is vital that all of Wales feels included in the process of devolving power and feels represented in the Welsh Assembly’. They then suggest that Blair indicated to leadership loyalists on the Welsh Executive that he wanted a PR electoral system for Wales after all, and that they in turn were prepared to do an about turn and facilitate it, in so doing helping to manufacture some party unity over the proposals. By late 1996, proposals had emerged and been agreed for the ‘additional member’ system (AMS) that was eventually used based on 40 constituency and 20 list seats. Blair’s motives for backing this electoral system may simply be taken at face value. There is no specific evidence that the Welsh electoral system decision was seen through the same lens as the one for Scotland. Nevertheless, there is a logic that, having inserted an MMP system into the proposals for a Scottish parliament, a version of it should be extended to Wales  –​simultaneously indicating Labour’s apparently selfless commitment to more pluralist politics to accompany devolution while also creating a system that made strong one-​party control by not just Labour but any party more unlikely. In such circumstances, those who governed Wales under devolution would at least pose fewer threats to the UK, and might work more collaboratively with the centre. Whatever the case, Blair’s embrace of electoral reform allowed some balance within the Labour Party proposals between the pressures from devo-​sceptics and interests reflected on the Welsh Executive for a limited model of devolution, and those for an approach to devolution that nevertheless enhanced inclusiveness. The resulting set of proposals became a settled view ahead of the 1997 general election, and party unity was sustained through a promotional approach which avoided being seen as pandering to nationalism. Rather, the party promoted devolution very much within the mantra of powers for a purpose; devolution was about improving government and democracy, and defending Wales against the perils of Conservative government. There was no justification in terms of the sovereignty of Wales or a claim of right along lines seen in parts of the Labour Party in Scotland (see Davies, 1999). From a Labour Party Wales perspective then, proposals for devolution had been achieved that united the party as best as possible. In conceptual terms we can see this as reflecting the influence of a new instrumentalist code of regionalisation, personified in Davies, seeking to galvanise support for devolution mainly off the back of the perceived policy evils of

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Thatcherism, as well as the continuing influence of a fairly firmly rooted intergovernmental lobbying code in the Welsh party, which presumed the benefits for Wales that would mainly come through a Labour government at Westminster. The compromise between them produced a recipe for self-​government that assured some autonomy but nevertheless reassured party traditionalists of continued central power. The Labour Party Wales Constitutional Policy Commission process clearly operated in such a way as to allow the British Labour leadership strong influence as well. Even though the motives for choosing the additional member electoral system are open to question, this still facilitated the British leadership’s desire to determine electoral system choice in line with traditional territorial management aims to help put reliable political elites in charge of devolved governance, and marginalise more dangerous peripheral dissidents. More so than in Scotland, direct influence via Kim Howells was successfully asserted to limit the legislative and fiscal model of devolution all round. Once the British leadership had bruisingly intervened in limiting the scope of Welsh devolution, it could then expect to retreat from any need to control the resulting Assembly on a regular basis, reassured that the potential threat of devolution to the Union was minimised at birth and central governing autonomy to focus on other matters was preserved. Overall, the outputs of the process still provided a balance, within the party at least, between on the one hand a plausible scheme for self-​government in Wales, and on the other the very successful imposition of a recognition of high politics limits to the extent of self-​government. However, the perceived effectiveness of Labour’s proposals for devolution did not extend outside the party. They were contested in Wales by those wanting a stronger version of constitutional change. Both Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats did their best from the outside to influence Labour’s internal debate. It was later revealed that Ron Davies struck up a political friendship with Dafydd Wigley, the leader of Plaid Cymru, and Richard Livsey, the leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, and that they had met in private to discuss how to progress plans through the Labour Party (Morgan, 2017:199). The proposals were also formally considered in the Labour–​Liberal Democrat consultative committee that Tony Blair convened in the run up to the 1997 general election. In each case, the parties had more ambitious plans: Plaid Cymru for independence and the Liberal Democrats for a new federal constitution. The process through which the proposals were developed also commanded very little respect. Labour’s process had represented a

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conference-​style mechanism of internal party negotiation –​the least inclusive form of negotiation. Although it differentiated devolution policy from other forms of policy, there was little sense of either internal sequential consideration of principles and applications or of horizontally separating out of strands of devolution policy for consideration. So, while the policy process achieved external arena differentiation, it achieved very limited internal or horizontal arena differentiation and consequently was not seen as allowing for rational detached discussion. The preparation of policy followed the logic of internal party bargaining between pro and sceptical positions to achieve consensus, and not the logic of arguing, which might have allowed rethinking of the terms upon which devolution might be introduced. This mitigated against arriving at an innovative or coherent reform, or one that was perceived as providing a legitimate representation of what Wales wanted. In sharp contrast to Scotland, from all sides Labour’s plans in Wales were characterised as a fix, reflecting the outcome of internal power struggles rather than a coherent scheme for constitutional change, based on careful planning or widespread consultation. Set against the background of a relatively weak set of bottom-​up pressures, relatively underdeveloped civil society and outright opposition from some parts of the Labour Party, it was still some achievement that Labour fashioned agreed proposals at all. Consequently, Ron Davies had reasonable expectations that in practice other pro-​change parties would still support Labour’s proposals rather than have none at all. In conceptual terms, this amounted to the likelihood of political elites in Welsh politics grabbing the opportunity of supporting a viable gradual institutional policy approach to change as the best route to success. Nevertheless, the limited proposals and the restrictive policy process meant that Labour’s approach achieved nothing like the level of consensus and support that the SCC did in Scotland. It was a much less auspicious platform from which to try and ensure devolution would actually be delivered (Bradbury, 1998:128–34). How then did this more limited Labour recipe for territorial constitutional change fare in respect of ratification? Despite the weaker ground for territorial change, Tony Blair still took no chances over devolution alienating voters in Wales in an upcoming election. In 1996, Blair reversed party policy in Wales, just as he did in Scotland, to state that devolution could not simply get its mandate from the UK election manifesto; instead, there would be a referendum vote solely among the Welsh electorate. Although the referendum decision provided the opportunity to legitimise devolution policy, this decision was badly received in the Labour Party in Wales, even more so than it was in

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Scotland. This was because pro-​devolutionists within the party knew that support was highly questionable. There hadn’t been anything like the preparations of wider engagement seen in Scotland through the SCC. In such circumstances, they wanted to have a closely coupled ratification process, simply by parliamentary legislation, to ensure it was introduced at all; the fact that Blair had denied this suggested to many that he was trying to find a way to kill devolution. Ahead of the 1997 election, there was considerable pessimism among those who favoured devolution. John Major’s appointment of John Redwood as secretary of state for Wales, 1992–​4, had helped the cause as Redwood had been the most vice-​regal of style in performing the role and had caused resentments. However, he had been succeeded by William Hague, who had pursued a much more emollient style and who married Ffion, a civil servant working in the Welsh Office. Again, it could be expected that Conservative campaigning against devolution would be persuasively put in a referendum, as it had been in 1979. The Welsh media gave very little public space for the promotion of self-​government. Campaigners in Wales looked forward to devolution more with hope than expectation (Bradbury, 1998:134–7). In practice, the 1997 general election gave just as strong a push to the idea of implementing opposition policies on devolution in Wales. The Conservative vote plummeted to 19.6 per cent and in Wales, as in Scotland, the Conservatives lost all of their seats to Labour. Ron Davies was appointed as secretary of state, and he promptly produced a White Paper entitled A Voice for Wales, reflecting Labour’s proposals prepared in opposition (Welsh Office, 1997). Legislation providing for a referendum was passed quickly in July 1997. It was decided to hold the referendum in Wales a week after its Scottish counterpart, on 18 September 1997. Again, there was no 40 per cent rule; a simple majority was sufficient. The referendum was important for revealing more about territorial approaches to trying to ensure a ‘yes’ vote as well as about public attitudes. The referendum in September 1997 was won by the ‘yes’ campaign, but in sharp contrast to Scotland, this was with 50.3 per cent of the vote, a majority of just 6,721 votes (0.6 per cent). Yr ie bychan (the little yes) was achieved against the background of marked East–West divisions. Eleven local authority areas down the western half of Wales and across the South Wales valleys returned ‘yes’ majorities. Ten areas in Eastern Wales plus Pembrokeshire (‘little England beyond Wales’) returned majority ‘no’ votes. Victory was also achieved on a relatively low turnout of just 50.1 per cent. Overall, the result was enough to endorse devolution, yet, the result reflected the fact that

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barely a quarter of the Welsh electorate voted for an assembly, a figure that in 1979 would have doomed devolution to failure. It was questionable how much the result represented a strong Welsh desire for devolution; some immediately questioned its legitimacy. What we are to make of the significance and causes of the ‘yes’ vote is open to dispute. Much analysis has sought to counter comment on the closeness of the result, emphasising instead, first, how the ‘yes’ vote suggested a clear strengthening of Welsh commitment to devolution. Labour not only ran their own campaign but also sponsored a Yes for Wales Campaign. This incorporated Plaid Cymru and Liberal Democrats efforts as well as non-​party support based in the creation of local and sectoral yes for Wales groups, and celebrity endorsements. It is claimed that this had an impact on bringing the vote out, particularly in West and South Wales (Andrews, 1999). In analysing CREST post-​ referendum survey evidence, Wyn Jones and Trystan (1999) point to the correlations between Welsh identity, Welsh birth and Welsh speaking, and ‘yes’ voting. The level of Welsh identification had not grown since 1979, meaning that the change had been more in the extent to which those who felt Welsh identity were prepared to express it politically in support of an assembly. Second, it has been emphasised that this ‘yes’ vote was successfully promoted despite significant barriers. Labour were criticised for blocking a Welsh constitutional convention that could have prepared public opinion from a long way out. It was hard to enthuse people with the idea of secondary legislative powers and the simpler but still not obviously attractive idea of greater accountability in government. It is claimed that Labour also ran a poor campaign in the referendum (McAllister, 1998). The Welsh media did indeed provide a relatively small public space for debate. For example, many households in the eastern half of Wales received their television from English regional television channels. During the campaign, the death of Princess Diana led to a halt in debate for a week, leading to claims that this boosted support for unreformed unionism. Given this background, achieving a ‘yes’ vote at all after receiving just 20.3 per cent of the vote in 1979 has been presented by some researchers as a remarkable achievement (Wyn Jones and Lewis, 1999; Paterson and Wyn Jones, 1999). Other analysis, though, suggests the need for some scepticism. First, it is questionable as to how representative of normal Welsh opinion the 1997 result actually was. As in Scotland, it is hard to imagine more favourable circumstances in which the referendum could have been held; designed to harness anti-​Conservative sentiment and to exploit Labour’s honeymoon period. The Blair government also set

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the referendum day for a week after Scotland specifically to gain a momentum from a ‘yes’ vote in Scotland and to allow a focused media coverage on Wales in the wake of the Scottish vote. While the Welsh media was relatively weak, it was nevertheless almost universally positive about devolution. The insertion of a semi-​PR system into Labour’s proposals was also rewarded by Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats making significant efforts to campaign for devolution. Second, we should also note alternative interpretations of causes of the ‘yes’ vote and how the ‘yes’ campaign sought to achieve it. Wyn Jones and Trystan (1999), analysing the CREST survey data, also found strong evidence for attributing the achievement of the ‘yes’ vote to party cues to vote yes. Labour gave a much clearer lead to its supporters to vote yes, a factor that had a particular importance in South Wales. Curtice (1999) also notes that there was roughly a 10 per cent gap between levels of Welsh identity in the electorate and the actual ‘yes’ vote, a significantly larger gap than was the case between national identifiers and the ‘yes’ vote in Scotland. This suggests that national identity was not an automatic trigger of affective support for an assembly. Given the more problematic nature of political identity in Wales than in Scotland, it seems perverse to raise the importance of effective (or personal instrumental) interests to ‘yes’ voting in Scotland but not in Wales. In considering the campaign it is worth remembering that, in the past, Welsh identity had been a source of much internal division. Since the 1980s, those who wanted constitutional change had promoted a Welsh civic national identity to emphasise common links. During the referendum campaign the three political parties promoting devolution continued this work of de-​emphasising differences by talking of a ‘new Wales’ and ‘new politics’, as a rhetoric promoting Wales as a civic political community to which all could belong. The ‘yes’ campaign otherwise said relatively little about national identity or the Welsh language. Instead both the White Paper on devolution and the campaign emphasised instrumental benefits, in particular for the economy, Wales’s place in Europe, public services and democratic renewal. Overall, it is plausible to suggest that the ‘yes’ campaign sought to increase the numbers of Welsh identifiers prepared to vote yes by screening out as much as possible the negatives of Welsh identity, and then lead them to vote yes through a mixture of party cues and appealing to their effective interests. Curtice (1999:142) echoes much of this analysis in concluding that the ‘yes’ result arose from the expression of a mixture of affective (identity) and effective (instrumental) interests, and that the close result

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was caused by the fact that it was still the case that ‘fewer people in Wales were convinced of either instrumental or the affective benefits of devolution’ than in Scotland. This meant that the future position of the Assembly rested on its ability both to represent more strongly affective identity interests in Wales as well as to meet people’s expectations of policy improvements. As if to emphasise the still relatively conditional grounds on which devolution came into being, Evans and Trystan (1999:109) also reported that there had in fact been a ‘no’ majority in the CREST survey sample. This suggests the lack of a strong ‘no’ campaign, suffering much the same problems as the ‘no’ campaign in Scotland, was key to the outcome of the referendum. With the referendum victory, the Labour Party in Wales and at the British level achieved the right to legislate for devolution with only an equivocal level of success. On the one hand, they had faced up to a territorial challenge that presaged the need to engage with territorial constitutional change. They had fashioned an approach that would give Wales devolution while also sustaining a distribution of powers acceptable to UK government and centre autonomy to act in areas where it wanted the freedom to do so. Supporters still celebrated. On the other hand, they had done this in a manner that only in part gained wider elite acceptance and achieved only narrow majority public support, leaving the policy open to critiques on the basis of inclusivity, effectiveness and legitimacy. In this way, up to 1997 at least, Labour managed the politics of devolution in Wales with basic political competence but still much less successfully than in Scotland.

Constitutional policy and the Government of Wales Act 1998 Following the expression of popular support in the 1997 referendum, the focus turned to preparing legislation to introduce the National Assembly for Wales. Davies had fewer natural allies than Dewar in the cabinet in progressing the Welsh settlement. The legislative process was approached generally by his cabinet colleagues more with the expectation of simply honouring a manifesto commitment than with enthusiastic vigour. The Labour government decided again that a Welsh bill would be prepared separately from other devolution legislation; hence there remained an intrinsic bilateralism to the process and Davies was constrained by the limited proposals agreed in opposition. However, in government Ron Davies, supported by a Devolution Implementation Group composed of ministers and senior civil servants, actually found he had more freedom to evolve the devolution proposals

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than when in opposition. Davies still appears to have had no prospects of reopening the model of devolution, for example, to consider primary legislative powers. Nevertheless, he was mindful of the narrow victory in the referendum; he saw in the process of preparing legislation, the chance to build broader support for his proposals as well as substantively enhance the structure and accountability of the Assembly. To build a broader platform of support, he developed a two-​prong approach to enhancing inclusivity in the process by which legislative proposals were to be developed (Laffin and Thomas, 2000). First, in December 1997 Davies established a National Assembly Advisory Group (NAAG), not simply to advise on how the Assembly would operate but also to advise on the legislation as it passed through Parliament. NAAG had 14 members, including representatives of the four main parties in Wales, the trade unions, voluntary sector, local government and business. Second, Davies established a Leaders Group, including the Plaid Cymru leader, Dafydd Wigley, the Welsh Liberal Democrat leader, Richard Livsey, and Liam Fox, the Conservatives’ constitutional affairs spokesman. Judged in conceptual terms we can see that these steps enhanced the inclusiveness of policy making. The creation of the Leaders Group meant that devolution policy making at this stage broadened to include elements of a commission process, whereby different parties from both the regional and central level were included. NAAG represented the creation of a committee dimension to the process with some civil society interests to bring an arguing dimension to policy development. With the help of NAAG and the Leaders Group, Davies decided to readdress some of the substance of Labour’s proposals regarding how leadership in the assembly would work. His big decision was to abandon the proposal to place executive authority in a local government style committee system and instead place executive authority with a cabinet. There appear to have been two origins to this. First, Welsh Office civil servants in the Devolution Implementation Unit supported greater continuity in approaches to decision-​making by simply moving executive power from a secretary of state and two junior ministers to a first secretary and eight cabinet secretaries rather than a diffuse set of committees. Allied to this were legal concerns over confidentiality of advice to government and of communications in government relations with outside interests, because under the corporate body model technically any member of the Assembly could seek access to them. There were also concerns over the contradiction between a committee-​ based proposal for the Assembly and proposals then being made by the UK government for local government to be given options to move

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away from committee-​based decision-​making to cabinet and elected mayor models. Undeniably, from a centre perspective this constituted a further direct attempt to structure how devolution would be governed according to central civil servants’ preferred ways of working. Second, though, Davies had his own worries that a local government committee approach to decision-​making might lead to the Assembly being seen as a local government style body and therefore needed a cabinet model to suggest the basis for more authoritative, competent leadership. Both NAAG and the Leaders Group were actually sceptical of this change viewed from a Welsh perspective, as it was viewed as contributing to a more inclusive process of decision-​making, and they had to be persuaded by Davies. Even so, their eventual support for the cabinet model made them highly useful legitimisers of the change. The switch to the cabinet model approach to how the assembly would be governed in itself represented an important attempt by Davies to institutionally build up the expected authority and competence of the Assembly, a further indicator of the way in which the arguers for devolution used institutional tools to bolster the case for change (Laffin and Thomas, 2000). The corporate body model for the Assembly remained in the legislation, a product of the influence of the Labour local government lobby in the original plans, but the changes were important for the passage of the bill. Davies was confronted by some scepticism about devolution among long-​standing Welsh MPs and also concerns about whether the Assembly would be competent in the conduct of its duties. There was also considerably more ignorance among English MPs about Wales than about Scotland. Nevertheless, the whipped Labour vote took the legislation through, and the amendment was made at report stage to introduce the cabinet model. Overall, in his legislative development of the proposals in 1997–​8, Davies slightly thickened the sense of inclusivity about the derivation of devolution policy, built up the expected authority of the Assembly, and thus gained legislative ratification. It was still the case, though, that the outputs of legislation in the form of the Government of Wales Act 1998 largely followed the blueprint provided by Labour Party Wales, reflecting as they did a balance between Welsh and UK Labour interests, and were seen as such. The Act was based on a quite different model of conferred powers and executive devolution compared with the Scottish case (see Constitution Unit 1996b; Rawlings 1998). Section one of the Act granted an assembly rather than a parliament. Section two then asserted that the right to make primary legislation in all areas of government

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as they applied to Wales was retained at Westminster, thus asserting parliamentary supremacy in all areas, and the Assembly was granted secondary powers to make subordinate legislation and carry out executive decision-​making for certain prescribed functions. There was no general remit for the Assembly to act without specific devolution of a secondary competence under a Westminster Act. Instead, these secondary powers were defined under 18 headings, representing practically all of the powers previously held by the secretary of state for Wales, and listed in Schedule 2 of the 1998 legislation (see Table 5.5). Under these headings, the Assembly would have discretion to make statutory instruments and executive decisions within the framework of Westminster primary legislation. Section 27 conferred on the Assembly powers to abolish health authorities and to transfer their responsibilities to the Assembly. Section 28 also conferred on the Assembly the right to transfer functions from or to abolish other bodies listed under Schedule 4, notably the Welsh Development Agency, Wales Tourist Table 5.5: Functions devolved to the National Assembly for Wales under Schedule 2 of the Government of Wales Act 1998 Assembly functions Agriculture, forestry, fisheries and food Ancient monuments and historic buildings Culture (including museums, galleries and libraries) Economic development Education and training Environment Health and health services Highways Housing Industry Local government Social services Sport and recreation Tourism Town and country planning Transport Water and flood defence Welsh language

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Board, Welsh Industrial Development Advisory Board, and the Welsh Language Board. In addition, there were a range of bodies where the Assembly might add or alter responsibilities with their consent. The whole of section 6 of the Act was concerned with provisions for the reform of public bodies. Under the Government of Wales Act, no fiscal powers were devolved to the National Assembly. The Assembly was entirely funded by the central Exchequer through block grant, allocated on the basis of the Barnett formula, and –​unlike the Scottish Parliament –​had no power of income tax variation. It simply had budgetary discretion on how to spend its annual block grant, estimated in 1998 at £7.5 billion. Mirroring Scotland, the Welsh Office was largely transferred to become the serving bureaucracy of devolved Welsh government under the National Assembly, although it also remained part of the UK civil service. Under sections 1–​3 of the 1998 Act, powers were devolved to the Assembly as a corporate body rather than to ministers as crown servants. The original intention had been that, in order to carry out these powers, the Assembly would elect a First Secretary, then establish subject committees to reflect party strength in the Assembly and elect subject secretaries to serve with the First Secretary on an executive committee. Following the corporate body principle, the Assembly and its committees would have performed both policy-​making and scrutiny roles. While the principle of devolution to the Assembly as a corporate body was retained in the legislation, as a result of the cabinet model amendment at report stage, the First Secretary was given the power to appoint other assembly secretaries and for the Assembly to delegate its functions to the executive committee. Consequently, in practice this built assumptions of the cabinet approach to executive government into the standing orders of the Assembly, which could only be changed with a two thirds majority. The substantial interest in how decision-​making might be conducted by the Assembly in different ways from the Westminster template nevertheless persisted in informing parts one, three and five of the Act. Part one provided for the electoral system, composed of 60 members, elected on the same mixed member basis as the Scottish Parliament but on a different proportionate basis (67:33 per cent ratio). Forty members were elected from single member seats on the basis of simple plurality, with 20 top-​up regional list members elected from five four-​member electoral regions using the d’Hondt formula. Part three laid down the conditions for committees. The Act stipulated committees that would cover subordinate legislation scrutiny and audit. To these were added committees on equal opportunities and European issues. Section 57

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of the Act then stipulated that there would be subject committees to cover the ministerial policy areas as defined by the First Secretary, and that cabinet members would each be a member of their relevant committee. The Act also created regional committees. Finally, under part five, partnership fora and schemes were seen as central to the external design of the Assembly’s operations. For example, Section 113 required the Assembly to establish a partnership council with local authority representatives. On these bases, then, the National Assembly for Wales was given a unique framework of institutional authority, devolved secondary policy competences, finance, and representation. Many contemporary observers remarked on its similarity with the plans for Welsh devolution in the 1970s and its marked dissimilarity from the principles of devolution for Scotland. This did indeed mean that the Assembly would not operate in a manner similar to Westminster. It was not a legislature; instead its primary role was to bring accountability to executive government and in the sense that it did have a legislative role this was only to deliberate on statutory instruments placed before it by Welsh ministers to act under primary law still made at Westminster. Nevertheless, within executive and secondary legislative powers lay significant capacity to shape key policy areas, notably economic development, health and education. As part of its remit, the Assembly could reform the structure and system of finance of elected local government, as well as control its level of expenditure. It also was given powers to reform quangos and to review public appointments. While the Assembly achieved a lower self-​rule score in Hooghe et al’s (2008) regional authority index than the Scottish Parliament, it still marked a major advance on three of their dimensions of self-​rule –​ institutional depth, policy scope and representation –​and entered the upper quartile of European regional government’s self-​rule capacity (see also Bogdanor, 1999: 254–​64). The Government of Wales Act also sustained the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty, and the UK Parliament had sole right to legislate in both conferred and non-​conferred powers areas. The rules for Welsh–​UK relationships were governed by the same distancing characteristics as Scottish–​UK relationships. There were no powers to colegislate, to share in UK executive decision-​making or codetermine future constitutional change. UK government decisions on macroeconomic policy would circumscribe many of the domestic matters handled by the Assembly. The post of secretary of state was retained to manage relations between UK and Welsh government. As the bureaucracy serving the assembly remained part of the UK civil

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service, day to day operations would be still reliant on relations with central departments in London. All disputes over powers between the UK and the National Assembly would ultimately be decided upon by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. In Hooghe et al’s (2008) terms the Government of Wales Act was strongly focused on granting self-rule powers to the National Assembly for Wales. Indeed, the Welsh devolution settlement represented a similar mix to that for Scotland: relatively high self-​rule (but not as high as in Scotland) and very little shared rule, a mix very unusual in comparative international terms, and reflective of a settlement which mixed regional autonomy to act in specified areas with a centre autonomy free from interference in state affairs from the Assembly. This measurement of self-​rule and shared-​rule power again confirms the theorised expectations of devolution outlined in Chapter 3. Self-​rule  –​and whether it satisfied the territorial strain that had originally inspired the movement for constitutional change  –​was, however, also dependent upon practical consideration of how the Assembly would work in practice. The NAAG report was published in August 1998, a month after the Act received royal assent (Welsh Office, 1998). NAAG’s role was the same as that of the CSG in Scotland and had a very similar focus on trying to develop a new inclusive political style for the Assembly distinct from Westminster. Given the context of devolution being originated narrowly in the Labour Party, though, the closeness of the referendum result and perceptions of the relatively limited scope of the Assembly’s powers, this work took on an even greater political importance. NAAG overall was guided by four key principles set by Ron Davies: efficiency, effectiveness, democracy and responsiveness. The original intention had been to make subject committees central to the Assembly’s work. But the cabinet model decision meant that subject committees would have powers only to assist subordinate legislation and to monitor and review executive decision-​making. NAAG recognised that there was ‘some anxiety about the potential for over-​concentration of power at the centre and concern that the authority of the full assembly should be pre-​eminent’ (Welsh Office, 1998:7). Consequently, NAAG’s recommendations provided for as strong a committee system as possible in terms of resourcing and rights to call evidence and conduct scrutiny. NAAG also proposed programme committees; strong participatory rights for individual Assembly Members (AMs); equality of AM resourcing; and family-​friendly working conditions. Through proposals to make standing schemes for a partnership council with local government, the voluntary sector and for sustainable development,

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NAAG sought to encourage a ‘social partnership’ approach (National Assembly Advisory Group, 1998:55). Finally, they decided upon four regional committees covering North, Mid, South-​West and South-​East Wales, based on Welsh Development Agency boundaries. In many ways the NAAG proposals had strong parallels with those made by the Scottish CSG. Campaigners for devolution welcomed the vision of how the Assembly would work, and this was related to the broader effort to legitimise the Assembly in the public’s eyes. But this was greeted with some scepticism. There was a more downbeat atmosphere around the preparations for the Assembly than were evident for the Scottish Parliament. This was well reflected in the critical reporting of the expected three-​day working week for an AM; despite the closeness of the Assembly to where everyone lived, AMs would still have Mondays and Fridays back in their constituencies. At this point, one may have expected a straightforward transition to implementing the 1998 Act. However, from October 1998, the leadership of the devolution process in Wales changed. Ron Davies resigned as secretary of state for Wales following an incident on Clapham Common in London in which Davies apparently got into the company of men who he did not previously know and ended up being robbed. In circumstances that appeared both farcical and tragic, Davies stepped down and was replaced by Alun Michael. The task of acting upon the recommendations of the NAAG also fell to a new team of commissioners charged with drafting the standing orders of the Assembly. This reported in January 1999 and the standing orders were published in March. Michael and the commissioners did not change course at this point, but as Tony Blair’s appointee and a minister who had not previously been involved in developing devolution, Michael aroused concern among pro-​devolution activists about how the Assembly legislation would be implemented (Bradbury, 2008b:49). Though out of office, Davies still cared deeply about how the introduction of devolution would be seen, and he was concerned to cement it as an effective reform that could lay the basis for further development towards a strong assembly. Accordingly, he continued to be active and played a critical role in narrating devolution policy in this period, even from the side lines, through his famous pamphlet, ‘Devolution, A  Process not an Event’, published in February 1999 (Davies, 1999). This short essay was born out of a seminar held in Gregynog in mid Wales under the auspices of the Institute of Welsh Affairs. In it, Davies stressed the background of the division in Wales over national identity that he had faced, and the mindset in Labour to neither share its power nor reach out to other parties in discussing

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how to represent it. This was best summed up in Davies’ quoting of Cliff Prothero, secretary of the regional council of Labour in 1955, that ‘any kind of devolution required in Wales can be discussed within the confines of the Labour movement’ (Davies, 1999:6). Previous failures of campaigns for a Welsh parliament also highlighted the value of focusing on incremental developments, such as the earlier creation of the Council for Wales and Monmouthshire and subsequently the Welsh Office. Davies observed the key lesson from his predecessors that ‘in securing one advance they nurtured the logic for the next’ (Davies, 1999:3). These were key insights into both the constraints he faced in developing devolution and the lessons he took from history in gradually cultivating change on a needs-​must basis step by step. In responding to the 1987 general election result, he observed that there had been a need for Labour to capture the mood and represent national identity, but not everyone had taken the same view in the Labour Party. In trying to gain agreement for proposals for devolution in the party’s policy commission and Welsh Executive, Davies observed that ‘I was guided by the need to be pragmatic’ (Davies, 1999:5). Of Labour’s approach he said, ‘the policy making process in the party was less than ideal. There was insufficient open and informed debate. As a result the formation of policy was left to manoeuvring and compromise within the innermost circle’ (Davies, 1999:6). Davies had been well aware that the nature of Labour Party policy, constrained by pragmatic adjustment to get agreement, made a focus on inclusiveness essential to gaining public support. He described Tony Blair’s use of the word ‘inclusive’ in his 1996 Welsh party conference speech, at Davies’ urging, as key to stimulating the acceptance of an additional member (AMS) electoral system and the subsequent focus on ‘new politics’ values for the Assembly. This focus on inclusiveness had achieved a lot to enhance the devolution settlement and gain sufficient support. Nevertheless, Davies’ own narration of how devolution had been achieved was one that emphasised social and political constraints, party interest to control the terms of debate, and the necessity of gradualism. What change had been achieved had still been made largely by the Labour Party and was not an ideal settlement. He appeared to accept that the 1998 Act was what one of his successors Rhodri Morgan (2017) later described as ‘half-​ baked’, and what John Prescott, Blair’s deputy prime minister, called a ‘second best settlement’ (Ward, 2015: 22 July 2004). Davies laid out the case for seeing devolution –​even at the very point at which it was being introduced –​as still a process not an event. He itemised issues that would

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need further attention and would entail the need for change, seeing in the addressing of the problems of the current settlement the logic of further advancement. Davies concluded with very much a Labour vision of devolution, of devolution as ‘a means to an end … We can create a country that more fully embodies the values of social justice and equality which have long animated the people of Wales’ (Davies, 1999:15). In such terms, he remained in line with his Labour predecessors that devolution should be developed to a Labour design based around policy purposes. But, in emphasising inclusiveness and devolution as a ‘process not an event’, Davies sought to keep on side both other parties and civil society, so that they would accept Labour’s flawed approach and likely future direction of devolution as necessary for the wider good. Davies’ influence was such that the supporters of devolution from whatever party hue were encouraged to embrace the advent of devolution still generally with optimism, even if they were critical of the specific terms on which it was being introduced; it was a necessary first step that could be built on. Equally, Davies’ slogan warned off anti-​devolution unionists. Nevertheless, nothing could really be taken for granted. The use of its powers had to be grown into, competent government had to be delivered, and the rhetoric of inclusiveness had to be tested. While the Government of Wales Act 1998 and the work of the NAAG reflected the dreams of a pro-​devolution Welsh elite, the assertion of Wales as a strong political community had not really occurred in the establishment of devolution, and it remained highly conditional thereafter. Davies’ intervention, even from his position in the political wilderness, reflected his desire to try and achieve a sort of satisficing effectiveness to the devolution policy that he had introduced in an admittedly ineffective way; its detractors might accept it, if it included a promissory note of future better development.

Conclusion This chapter has sought to provide an analysis of the origins and introduction of devolution in Wales grounded in the realities of power politics and how key actors developed approaches and made decisions in the contexts in which they found themselves. Again, in addressing the Welsh case, the chapter challenges the conventional wisdoms that there was a pervasively strong bottom-up identity politics underpinning change; that from a Welsh perspective plans for self-government were inadequately developed; and that the UK Labour Government did not give due consideration as to how to control the implications of devolution for the UK state. The chapter incorporates arguments of how, why and with

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what implications devolution was introduced, which pay attention to what was possible; it also includes an appreciation of how Welsh and UK elites developed approaches under significant constraints rather than assessing their approaches against the criteria of ideal constitutional outcomes. First, by the 1990s, Wales again posed a clear integration problem but one which whilst serious presented a somewhat weaker low-​medium territorial strain in UK territorial politics. Support for constitutional change had grown since 1979, but there remained significant doubts whether this would follow through into mass support. Overall, constraints were much more significant in Wales than in Scotland. Second, in the politics of determining who should represent pressures for change, the Labour Party in Wales –​having adopted a devolution policy –​simply assumed control of how to develop constitutional change by virtue of their domination of the party system. In so doing, they were propelled in part by a small ‘n’ nationalism within the party, but more substantially by those who came to believe in the instrumental benefits of devolution. There was, however, a significant power base in the party that was sceptical of devolution and strongly influenced the development of policy. Labour’s position in the party system and the configuration of opinion within the party led to the decision to develop policy in house rather than through a constitutional convention. This meant that policy was guided by a code of peripheral assertion which combined instrumentalist arguments for the social democratic, policy-​autonomy purpose of devolution with longer standing intergovernmental lobbying instincts to still focus on gaining benefits for Wales through gaining Labour power at the UK level. The readiness of other pro-​constitutional change parties to throw their weight behind a ‘yes’ vote for Labour’s proposals, despite not having had a hand in deciding them, proved key to achieving victory in the 1997 referendum –​a victory that constitutional change could happen at all  –​but it was a much more fragmented movement for self-​government than in Scotland. Third, the UK Labour government was not integrally committed to devolution in Wales just as it hadn’t been in Scotland. Rather its adoption as a policy in 1997 reflected the acceptance by the British Labour leadership of a policy pressed for in the Welsh party and which logically followed on from devolution in Scotland. Devolution theoretically posed a potentially major threat, but the Welsh party branch had been more malleable to central party influence than the Scottish party. Consequently, the British party leadership’s approach in this case included more explicit initial imposition of central control to limit the extent of devolution by insisting on a conferred powers model and the provision of secondary legislative and executive powers rather than a

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reserved powers model and primary legislative powers. For the longer term though, the British leadership still looked to develop mechanisms to achieve indirect control through local elite assimilation. The UK Labour leadership, supported by the Welsh Executive, was ultimately successful in exerting its influence to include an MMP electoral system in the Assembly to enhance pluralist representation and maintain local elite collaboration even after devolution. In these ways, Welsh and UK Labour governing elites adopted codes of action that, on the one hand, achieved the strategy of self-​government for Wales, and, on the other, rather more comfortably than in Scotland, introduced both initial limits on the threat posed by devolution for the Union, as well as instruments for indirectly controlling its development in the longer term. Fourth, the Government of Wales Act 1998 still to a significant extent enabled an outcome from a Welsh perspective of a structure of territorial politics characterised by new-​found territorial autonomy. Equally, from a centre perspective, the Act established a framework for keeping Welsh devolution after the initial set-​up politically at a distance, helping to sustain the centre’s own autonomy from interference by sub-​national governments. In Wales, even less than in Scotland, there was little appetite to try and understand the new arrangements in abstract conceptual terms. The results were seen in practical power terms, a dispensation again looking very much like a new dual polity arrangement of coexisting centre and devolved autonomies. Nevertheless, there was more power still at the centre, where primary legislation would still be made. It was clear that compared to Scotland, Welsh pro-​devolutionists had achieved an outcome at the lower end of their wish list, while central government had embraced devolution in a way which much more successfully limited the development of regional authority. Fifth and finally, Labour could plausibly say that they delivered devolution when it may not have occurred at all, and the holding of a referendum did bring public legitimacy to the outcome. But within the context of a bilateral process of negotiating policy entirely within the Labour party up to 1998, much less was achieved in ensuring that their devolution reform was perceived as effective and legitimate. Labour’s control of the constitutional policy process limited debate and led to perceptions among the other Welsh parties that devolution for Wales had been badly designed. In the development of the subsequent legislation, Ron Davies tried to improve perceptions of Labour’s design of devolution by widening the policy process and making amendments. Davies also sought to promote further devolution as a process not an event. Through this rhetorical idea, Davies summoned up the notion

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of a quasi-​neo-​functionalist dynamic, by which realisation of the shortcomings of institutional change would inexorably lead to further change: that, from learning from his predecessors, ‘in securing one advance they nurtured the logic for the next’ (Davies, 1999:3). In this way, he sought to implant more firmly the development of a code of cultivated instrumental regionalisation to enhance devolved power rather than maintain the older adherence to a code of intergovernmental lobbying of the centre to serve Wales’ interests as a guide for how Labour should gradually enhance devolution in Wales. Davies’ rhetoric was also designed to engender wider goodwill, providing a promise of future development to make up for the lack of wider involvement in the original design and negotiation of devolution. The fact that the 1998 Act did actually substantively still devolve quite a lot of power and enhanced the accountability of government helped to gain buy-​in from other parties for the future. Meanwhile, because primary legislation would continue to be made at Westminster, there were few concerns at the centre about the implications of Welsh devolution. Consequently, under the constraints that politicians laboured, Welsh devolution was introduced with a plausible claim to meet the territorial integration problem posed by Wales in ways that met the strategic objectives of both pro-​devolutionists and dominant unionist political elites in both Wales and the UK centre. Set against periphery and centre objectives, the Welsh reform struck an at least satisficingly effective balance. Nevertheless, there were still clearer grounds for critique of the settlement by other territorial reformers than was the case in Scotland. Welsh devolution stumbled into existence blinking at the light of a new day, with opportunities to establish itself but with a lot of work to do: a contrast with the Scottish Parliament’s more confident rebirth.

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6

Territorial Politics and Devolution in Northern Ireland In turning to Northern Ireland one is immediately faced with the explicit nationalist/​unionist community division and the political violence that seemingly made its politics very different from everywhere else. This meant that achieving peace as well as any sort of constitutional policy that could meet nationalist pressures for change while also being acceptable to unionists was a huge challenge. In such circumstances, Northern Ireland presented itself as an extreme case where no ideal solution acceptable to all was possible. In seeking to reappraise how the peace process and the 1998 Belfast Agreement were finally arrived at, unsurprisingly the chapter again focuses on the realist politics of how each side struggled to get as much of what they wanted as possible in trying to reach a settlement. In conducting this reappraisal the chapter utilises the same analytical framework as previous chapters to reveal the key dynamics of change. First, the chapter places a focus on the nature of the territorial strain provided by Northern Ireland, examining the resources feeding nationalist pressures for change in Northern Ireland on the one hand and sustaining UK rule on the other. The chapter explores the idea that the 1980s and 1990s were quintessentially the era in which the resource model of weak periphery–​weak centre relative to aspirations became evident to participants in the struggle. Secondly, the chapter throughout explores how recognition of such resource weaknesses and constraints as well as interests influenced nationalist and unionist political elite leadership, and the codes, strategies and goals that they each developed. In particular, analysis explores the importance of instrumentalist arguments and mechanisms allied to more limited strategic aims in trying to agree constitutional

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outcomes that were such a theme of politics in Scotland and Wales even in the more visceral atmosphere of Northern Ireland. Third, the chapter throughout also focuses on the codes, strategies and goals pursued by UK central government. In examining the role of UK central governments, the chapter acknowledges that the political violence had meant that a long-​standing approach of indirect control via collaborative local elites in the Northern Ireland Parliament had had to be abandoned in 1972, to be followed by direct UK rule. Nevertheless, the discussion explores how we should analyse UK centre approaches in terms of various phases of efforts ultimately to restore indirect control via collaborative elites and thus the centre’s own relative autonomy from Northern Ireland affairs. Finally, the chapter focuses on the constitutional process which led to the Good Friday Agreement, by which devolution proposals were created, and the extent to which it contributed to their effectiveness and legitimacy. The chapter evaluates to what extent we should see this as a successful territorial constitutional reform. Like previous chapters, the analysis proceeds chronologically. Section one examines the nature of the territorial strain and integration problem posed by Northern Ireland for the UK in the 1980s and 1990s; the power politics of territorial elite leadership both among the nationalist bloc and the unionist bloc of parties in Northern Ireland, and the approaches of the Thatcher and Major governments. Section two then addresses the territorial approaches that shaped the approach of the New Labour government, as well as nationalist and unionist approaches in 1997–​8, the territorial organisation of devolution policy, and the mechanisms of its negotiation leading up to and including the Belfast Agreement in April 1998. Finally, section three considers the ratification of the Belfast Agreement in a referendum later in 1998, the content of the subsequent legislation implementing the Belfast Agreement, and its implications for how devolution would work if put into effect.

Territorial politics and the origins of devolution Following the onset of civil unrest and paramilitary violence from the late 1960s, the breakdown of devolution in 1972 and the failure of an attempt at power-​sharing devolution in 1974, Northern Ireland experienced a long, inflamed situation of territorial crisis that lasted into the 1990s . It was marked by polarised political attitudes between Catholic nationalist and Protestant unionist communities, extensive political violence and direct rule by

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UK government. The UK also met the threat of physical force nationalism propagated by the IRA with the deployment of troops. Most analysts characterised the result as a stalemate which continued to lock Northern Ireland into the Union but was accompanied by seemingly never-​ending nationalist-​Republican inspired political violence. The territorial status quo ante during the Conservative governments of 1979–​97 therefore had a basic parallel with the situation in Scotland and Wales, in that political nationalism was held in check and there was no devolution, but in all the ways in which the territorial strain continued to be expressed and controlled by UK government it was very different. In this context what may we make of the resources underpinning pressures for territorial change and the resulting territorial strain posed in Northern Ireland by the late 1990s? There was evidence still of polarisation. Table 6.1 shows that in the late 1980s and 1990s a majority favoured staying in the UK, while Table 6.2 shows how strongly this was related to religion with an overwhelming majority of Protestants favouring the Union while only a minority of Catholics did so. Somewhat differently phrased questions across National Centre for Social Research surveys suggested that 56 per cent of Catholics supported Irish reunification in 1989 and 47 per cent in 1996, while barely any Protestants did. These attitudes were still reflected politically in a divide in the party system between Unionist parties seeking to represent majority Protestant opinion and maintain Northern Ireland in the UK, and Republican/​nationalist parties, seeking to represent the Catholic population, end UK rule and reunify Ireland. The Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) supported constitutional nationalism and condemned the IRA, while the UUP and DUP distanced themselves from loyalist paramilitary groups. The IRA was, however, supported by Sinn Fein. Neutrals observed simply what they saw as

Table 6.1: Constitutional preferences in Northern Ireland, 1989–​96 1989 (%)

1993 (%) 1996 (%)

Remaining part of the UK

70

70

62

Reunify with Ireland

24

20

24

Independent Northern Ireland

1

1

2

Don’t know/​No answer

6

9

12

Source: National Centre for Social Research

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Table 6.2: Support in Northern Ireland for remaining in the United Kingdom, 1989–​96 Overall (%)

Protestant (%)

Catholic (%)

No religion (%)

1989

70

93

32

83

1993

70

89

36

71

1996

62

85

35

54

Source: National Centre for Social Research

the blight of terrorism that took the lives of unarmed civilians, police officers, British soldiers and paramilitaries. At the same time though we can see that the figures cited in Tables 6.1 and 6.2 and quoted from other National Centre for Social Research surveys indicated substantial but not overwhelming support for Irish unity, and a third of Catholics favoured remaining in the UK. The dream of Irish unity of course rested on the assumption that the Republic of Ireland also wanted unity. In 1991, while 81 per cent of people in Ireland wanted this as a long-​term aspiration, only 41 per cent supported it immediately (English, 2003:357). Analyses of the IRA also indicate a plateau or decline in activism. English (2003:344) suggested that there were around 500 active members in the 1970s. By the mid-​1980s, this had declined to between 200 and 300; one estimate in 1988 suggested that the IRA had no more than about 30 experienced bombers or gunmen, though with perhaps still around 500 volunteers prepared to support operations. Political violence also declined. Figures show that the most deaths in the so-​called Troubles in Northern Ireland happened between 1972 and 1976, when 722 people were killed by the IRA. There was no single year after this that the IRA killed more than 100 people in Northern Ireland (English, 2003:379). In looking at background conditions bolstering the nationalist case for Irish reunification, there was also a mixed picture. Many Catholics distrusted UK government and therefore provided potential fertile ground for arguments for reunification. However, there was a dissonance between the evident pluralism of social structures, and strong economic and urban development in the 1980s in Ireland, and the apparent social sectarianism and stagnant economy of Northern Ireland. The SDLP’s social democratic politics and the socialist republicanism of Sinn Fein and the IRA also contrasted with the dominant neoliberal political economy in Ireland, meaning that there was not an apparent common ideology among those who supported a united Ireland across the island of Ireland. Meanwhile, the UUP and the DUP expected UK direct rule to protect the Union, and were only supportive of

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Table 6.3: Trust in a Stormont Government to act in the best interests of Northern Ireland, 1989 All (%)

Catholics (%)

Protestants (%)

No religion (%)

Just about always

11

2

19

3

Most of the time

35

18

48

32

Some of the time

26

31

21

32

Rarely

12

19

5

19

Never

9

20

1

10

Don’t know/​no answer

8

10

5

4

Source: National Centre for Social Research

devolution if it clearly helped sustain Northern Ireland’s position in the UK. There was also some evidence of a civic regionalism which was supportive of devolution for a new Northern Ireland for its own sake, rather than for how it might serve the purpose of Irish reunification on the one hand or devolution tied to unionist purposes on the other. This was based on social and community organisation across the political divide, for example in the area of developing non-​ sectarian schooling. Table 6.3 shows how much people felt a new devolved government could be trusted to govern in the interests of Northern Ireland. This suggests there was quite strong support among Protestants but much less so among Catholics, although still within a range of opinion, suggesting a preparedness to be persuaded rather than outright opposition. This civic regionalist opinion in favour of a new Northern Ireland was politically most represented by the Alliance Party. There was some basis in Northern Ireland, therefore, for believing in a Northern Ireland devolved governance that might gain support across the community divide, though again not overwhelming. From this evidence, we must still draw the conclusion that the territorial strain in Northern Ireland was high and pressing. Nevertheless, there were clearly also weaknesses and limitations in bottom-​up pressures for the nationalist cause of Irish reunification, and some evidence of civic regionalist politics that wished to supersede the nationalist–unionist conflict. In these circumstances, what were the territorial approaches of elites in Northern Ireland and at the UK centre? During the period 1979–​97 Northern Irish and UK elite approaches actually went through several phases of development, each associated with particular approaches pursued in trying to win or resolve

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the conflict. We need to understand each of these as a backdrop to the eventual peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. The first phase, lasting up to the late 1980s, was grounded in a situation where there still appeared little hope of accommodation. Leadership was fought out along nationalist–unionist lines in the electoral arena. In their respective communities the SDLP and the UUP held the most support. The SDLP favoured ideally a united Ireland but, as a constitutional party affiliated to the British Labour Party, its immediate focus was on establishing fair democratic government on a devolved power-​sharing basis and to establish greater equality for Catholics in Northern Ireland. Its guiding code could be described, therefore, as a mix of affective identity-​based assertion and effective instrumentalist-​based concerns to have devolution to improve government. In contast, the UUP staunchly defended the Union with a focus on protecting the interests of Northern Ireland through influencing UK government. Theirs was a quintessentially intergovernmental lobbying approach to preserving Northern Ireland within the UK, which they would seek to continue if –​for whatever reason –​they had to consider power-​sharing devolution. Meanwhile Sinn Fein, which had its origins in support for the armed struggle of the IRA, entered electoral politics in 1981 both north and south of the border. Sinn Fein was part of an explicitly emotional identity-​based assertion of nationalist Republican politics, involving significant efforts to both unconstitutionally and constitutionally mobilise organisations and citizens against the presence of the UK state. The Republican approach generally from the early 1980s was dubbed the strategy of the ‘Armalite and the ballot box’ (McAllister, 2004). In contrast again, the DUP represented hard line opinion on the Unionist side. They subscribed to a similar intergovernmentalist lobbying to the UUP to serve Northern Ireland’s interests, only more aggressively asserted against UK governments which they did not trust to preserve the Union. Alongside party politics, the mutually antagonistic strategies of violent Republican and loyalist paramilitary defence continued. This situation presented a form of territorial strain that neither UK Conservative nor Labour governments could ignore. It invaded the politics of the centre, consuming large amounts of political energy, intensified when the IRA launched attacks directly against the British state. In 1979, the IRA murdered the Queen’s cousin, Lord Mountbatten. In 1984, they exploded a bomb at the Grand Hotel Brighton during the Conservative Party conference, failing to kill Margaret Thatcher, but leading to five fatalities. In 1991, the IRA

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launched a mortar bomb attack on John Major in 10 Downing Street. Indiscriminate bombs exploded periodically on the English mainland, leading to demands that the centre deal with what became termed in the British media the ‘Northern Ireland problem’. The intense Republican/​nationalist pressure for the UK to leave Northern Ireland, however, was accompanied by intense loyalist/​unionist pressure to stay, making it still the most difficult territorial challenge that the UK centre had to address. In response, the main consistent objective of UK central government was simply, as Tonge (2000:40) put it, ‘a desire to lessen its political and military involvement if at all possible’. In the 1980s, the policy of the UK Northern Ireland Office was still to seek to restore devolution on a basis acceptable to both sides, and then to withdraw both troops and direct political rule by the UK government. In contrast to their strong opposition to devolution in Scotland and Wales, in Northern Ireland then the Thatcher and Major governments did engage with territorial constitutional reform. In this case, these Conservative governments concluded there was no choice but to seek some kind of reform to achieve peace and settlement. Between 1979 and 1990, the Thatcher governments moved through two main approaches (see Boyce, 1996:123–​39; Dixon, 2001:178–​214). The first approach aimed to achieve power-​sharing devolution combined with a strong commitment to the Union and a desire to not give legitimacy to radical nationalism. This meant excluding Sinn Fein from the talks process because of its association with the IRA. Margaret Thatcher’s government also sustained the policy of denying IRA prisoners political status, instead treating them as common criminals. In practice, the first Thatcher government made two attempts to initiate power-​sharing devolution, first in 1979–​80, and then again in 1982. Both attempts failed, with a key issue being that there was little trust between Unionist parties and the SDLP. The SDLP feared devolution would cement Northern Ireland within the UK and Unionists feared it would start a slippery slope towards Irish reunification. The absence of Sinn Fein from the talks process exacerbated underlying problems. The approach to the IRA also proved counterproductive, as it led to IRA prisoners going on hunger strike, a policy which led to the death of Bobby Sands on 5 May 1981, followed by the deaths of nine further hunger strikers. This created an electoral basis for radical Republicanism which had not been there before. Support for Sinn Fein rose in the 1983 general election at the expense of the SDLP, and there was an intensification of sectarian violence (Dixon, 2001: 180–​7).

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These reverses led to a second approach, which still involved the exclusion of Sinn Fein but looked to build greater trust among constitutional nationalists. Key to this was the unexpected turn towards seeking Anglo–​Irish cooperation. This was something that had been encouraged by the SDLP as part of their conditions for cooperating in the 1979–​80 talks. John Hume, SDLP leader and the key figure in moderate nationalism, envisaged that power-​sharing devolution would lead to a peaceful transition to a united Ireland, in which pluralist options such as federal devolution for the North might be entertained (Hennessey, 2000:19). The UUP and DUP strongly opposed this, and the SDLP needed Irish government engagement to support it. Margaret Thatcher held initial talks with the Irish Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, in 1980 and concluded that an Anglo–​Irish process, although unpopular with Unionist politicians, was valuable as it undermined violent Republicanism in the North. In November 1981 an Anglo–​Irish Intergovernmental Council was created, and in 1985 Thatcher signed the Anglo–​Irish Agreement (AIA) with the new Irish Taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald. This established guarantees of equality for Catholics in Northern Ireland and regular consultation for Ireland in achieving these aims. Thatcher’s hopes were met when support for the SDLP recovered at the 1987 elections, and she was better able to defend Sinn Fein’s exclusion from Northern Ireland talks due to its association with the IRA. However, Irish rhetoric celebrated the AIA as institutionalising a North–South dimension to Northern Irish politics. Garret Fitzgerald argued that: ‘The Anglo–​Irish Agreement is the result of the IRA’s performance on the hunger strike’ (quoted in Dixon, 2001:187), and Dixon (2001:187) concluded that ‘the Irish Government exploited the Republican threat to put pressure on the British government to sign the Anglo–​Irish Agreement in 1985’. Hard-​line unionism was enraged. Between November 1985 and 1987, the DUP led a campaign against the AIA, which the UUP felt compelled to join. The Thatcher government reassured Unionist leaders that, in the event of power-​sharing devolution, the scope of the AIA would be reduced to cross-​border security arrangements and economic cooperation (Aughey, 1989). Unionist resistance to the AIA subsided by 1988, but resentments remained, and the non-​implementation of the social reform aspects of the AIA to appease Unionist feeling led equally to SDLP resentments. The government ended up still presiding over direct rule, with no prospect of power-​sharing devolution and continued sectarian violence. For the longer term, though, it was recognised that an Irish intergovernmental dimension could help to bring the parties into talks.

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At this point, political elite leadership of territorial interests in Northern Ireland entered a new phase of development. This ran from the late 1980s up to 1994 and was marked by the possibility of moving to a peace process and constitutional settlement of Northern Ireland’s future (Bew et al, 1997; Hennessey, 2000; Dixon, 2001). Key to this period was the re-​evaluation on the nationalist side of the strategies most likely to achieve territorial change. In part, this was a result of recognising the period as an opening of a window of change. Ruane and Todd (1996; 2007) have highlighted how the long-​held structural conditions of community division in Northern Ireland, the Irish claim on Northern Ireland, and UK defence of sovereignty –​which all determined stasis –​were potentially superseded by new structural contexts. Externally, there was a changing international climate, typified by the moves to end apartheid in South Africa, which made it possible for violent force movements to emerge as legitimate constitutional actors to negotiate peace settlements. Internally, the Irish and UK governments in moving towards cooperation suggested the possibility of negotiated settlement. In large part, though, the re-​evaluation was also consequent upon coming to terms with resource weaknesses. In Republican circles there was an awareness of weaknesses in IRA organisation and fatigue at the human costs of the campaign. British security service infiltration had left the South Armagh Brigade as the only truly potent force in the IRA. High profile attacks hid underlying weaknesses (Tonge, 2006:53–​64). Sinn Fein calculated that the constitutional/​electoral approach was potentially now more viable, especially as the AIA and its unpopularity with unionists indicated that the UK government could be detached from an automatic association with unionist interests. This would mean abandoning the armed struggle, showing an understanding of general Protestant unionist concerns and pursuing a peace policy, but it would be worth the risk if it led to a position of being able instead to negotiate the goal of a united Ireland (see English, 2003). In 1988, secret talks were held between John Hume, the leader of the SDLP, and Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein. The SDLP position was that they now believed that the UK was neutral in Northern Ireland, the main problem was the unionists. They recognised the IRA as a political rather than a criminal movement, but did not condone the use of arms. Sinn Fein was adamant that there would be no end to IRA violence before talks, but it could end if Sinn Fein were let in. The UK should rescind its claim to sovereignty and be persuaders of unionism to a united Ireland. Nevertheless, Sinn Fein understood general unionist concerns, as well as the need for a period of transition

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after a negotiated settlement to avoid a unionist backlash. Adams was sympathetic to the idea of a joint British–Irish authority in an interim period. Overall, the two parties agreed on a pan-​nationalist front of Irish and international pressure to persuade unionists into a united Ireland (Dixon, 2001:218–24; Tonge, 2006:118–22). The Hume–Adams talks indicated (in the terms of our analysis) the beginnings of a retreat by the Sinn Fein leadership from the code based on purely emotional identity arguments married to organisation and citizen mobilisation that had characterised Sinn Fein–​IRA world views. There was now possible convergence between the SDLP and Sinn Fein on a constitutional approach, based instead on emotional and instrumental arguments for change. Sinn Fein was recognising that this need not be a bloody war; rather it would be a more efficient use of limited resources to pursue a constitutional rather than armed strategy. It would make it very difficult to continue to exclude Sinn Fein from talks about Northern Ireland’s future. The UK government may become persuaders of unionism to accept an interim solution, and obstructive unionism in whatever context could leave unionist opinion on the future of Northern Ireland delegitimised because of its intransigence. The SDLP and Sinn Fein would be able to occupy the moral high ground in being prepared to compromise to achieve peace and stability. From there, they might even be able to negotiate on the future of Northern Ireland directly with the UK government. These talks generated huge interest, and a good deal of scepticism. Nevertheless, both were taking great risks: the SDLP in legitimising Sinn Fein among nationalist voters; and Sinn Fein in angering the Republican rank and file (Bew et  al, 1997; Dixon, 2001:223). In response, the Thatcher government took them seriously. Nevertheless, although Thatcher’s secretary of state, Peter Brooke, secretly contacted Sinn Fein to judge what might be achieved, the issue of how to respond to the Hume–Adams talks fell to her successor as Prime Minister from 1990, John Major. Major was more pragmatic and a more natural seeker of consensus, and in contrast to Thatcher’s explicit unionism he sought to play the role of honest broker between unionism and nationalism. O’Leary (1997) still considered Major’s policies as of a piece with Thatcher’s in being defined by continued contradictions and inconsistencies, which still included seeking to maintain UK sovereignty in Northern Ireland and cherishing Northern Ireland’s role within the UK. Nevertheless, O’Leary concluded that Conservative policy went through a process of helpful ethno-​regional policy learning

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that recognised the importance of bi-​governmentalism, cross-​border institutions and parity of esteem. Between 1990 and 1997, Major committed huge political resources in trying to achieve a political settlement in Northern Ireland, exploiting the prop of Irish intergovernmental cooperation and the potential commitment to constitutional politics made in the Hume–Adams talks. His strategy can be summarised as having five main components (see Bew et al, 1997; Dixon, 2001: 214–​59). First, Major aimed to achieve a relative security normalisation as well as a settlement that balanced the interests of unionism and nationalism. Second, he committed the UK centre to an explicit policy of having no selfish strategic or economic interest in the future of Northern Ireland. Third, despite opposition in his cabinet, Major sanctioned secret communications with Sinn Fein that lasted until 1993, geared to agreeing political commitments that would bring about an IRA ceasefire and allow Sinn Fein to participate in all-​party talks (O’Kane, 2004). Fourth, he saw the role of the UK government as that of pushing Unionists into engaging with power-​ sharing devolution, while the Irish government simultaneously did the same with the Republican movement. This was a process that O’Leary (1989) had earlier called ‘coercive consociationalism’. Finally, Major also sought to reassure Unionists that they were not being sold out and that power-​sharing devolution would not inevitably facilitate a united Ireland. Hence, he made commitments that Sinn Fein would not be admitted to talks while the IRA was still committed to violence; that any new deal would not lead to joint authority of Ireland and the UK over Northern Ireland; and that the consent of the people of Northern Ireland was key to defining the future of Northern Ireland (Tonge, 2000; O’Kane, 2004). This strategy was extremely difficult to implement. Even if a talks process could be started, and Major toughed out criticism of dealing with parties linked to terrorists, he faced considerable difficulties in simultaneously convincing both Republicans and unionists that their interests could be achieved through a new deal. In the period up to 1994, the Major government tried to lay the grounds for more productive negotiation by having ongoing talks with the parties, excluding Sinn Fein. Talks held in 1991–​2 were asked to consider a political settlement which would have three strands, one focusing on government within Northern Ireland, a second focusing on the North–South dimension and the third addressing East–West British– Irish relationships. The talks process attempted to act as a galvaniser to the UUP and DUP to engage in negotiation with at least the SDLP. Equally, though, the UK and Irish governments pressed Sinn Fein to

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use its influence to bring about a IRA ceasefire so as to be able to enter the talks. The 1991–​2 talks were difficult but, by the time they were suspended in November 1992, the UUP had accepted the concept of power sharing in a devolved Northern Ireland as well as a meaningful North– South dimension, given the commitment by the Irish Republic to give up its constitutional claim on Northern Ireland. The SDLP was seen by many as playing a crucial role in keeping the Unionists engaged in order to keep the talks going so as to enable entry by Sinn Fein when the time was right. The question of further substantive development, though, came to a head during 1993. In April, the Hume–Adams talks were publicly revealed and with it came the pressure for the more specifically Republican aspirations that the talks had sought to promote. In June 1993, a Hume–Adams document was published with the support of the Irish government. It made the case for a joint authority to govern Northern Ireland. The Irish foreign minister suggested that if the Unionists did not agree to this it could be put directly to the people of Northern Ireland in a referendum. Strategically, of course, the Major government wished to encourage Republican/​nationalist aspirations without losing the new-​found engagement of the UUP, and Unionist concerns grew deeper when the secret talks between the Major government and Sinn Fein were revealed by The Observer in November 1993. Unionism feared a sell-​ out to Republican ambitions for a united Ireland. As a result, Major did not support the Hume–Adams joint authority proposals (Dixon, 2001:227–38). Instead, in December 1993, the Major government along with the Irish government issued the historic Downing Street Declaration: a declaration that underlined the potential for each side to pursue its goals in a political settlement. The Downing Street Declaration was indeed carefully designed to be open to equally favourable interpretation by both Unionist and nationalist interests. It restated the commitment to the ‘no selfish interest’ principle by the UK government and to the idea of renouncing the constitutional claim on the North by the Irish government. Both governments made a commitment to creating inclusive structures of government and guaranteed the consent principle for the people of Northern Ireland to determine their own future. The Declaration was accompanied by statements by both the UK and Irish governments that the IRA would have to decommission its weapons before Sinn Fein could take part in talks. The Declaration, of course, gave the principle of consent to the people of Northern Ireland and not the whole of Ireland, which had been a nationalist goal, nor did it support

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structures that explicitly led to a united Ireland. After a period of clarification, though, there was at least no open opposition from the SDLP and Sinn Fein (O’Kane, 2004; Tonge, 2006:123). The response from the UUP was more equivocal and the DUP rejected it. In the very difficult circumstances the Major government faced, this actually represented a qualified success. The key consequence was that, during 1994, there was finally a lengthy debate in Sinn Fein and IRA circles which led to the decision to abandon the armed struggle and participate exclusively in constitutional and electoral politics. English (2003:  311–​12) revealed that the Sinn Fein leadership had argued that they were in a good position electorally to achieve success through sponsoring a peace process. They stood to gain very strong leverage if the Unionist parties refused to compromise on the future of Northern Ireland; if the Unionists did participate, then Sinn Fein were confident of out-​manoeuvring them. Electoral participation and demographic change were on their side. Dixon (1997a: 14–​15) highlights the fact that ‘the internal debate was divided: the leadership favoured peace; the middle and higher levels did not think a ceasefire would work but were prepared to give it a chance, whereas the grassroots favoured war’. Nevertheless, the leadership won. On 31 August 1994, the IRA declared a ceasefire. In October, following assurances that the UK government had not negotiated a secret deal, the Combined Loyalist Military Command followed suit. The ceasefires were the ultimate achievement of a phase of politics in Northern Ireland where nationalist and unionist strategies on the one hand and UK centre strategy on the other enabled the development of sufficient trust to suggest that a political settlement could be engineered. In terms suggested by Guelke (2007), Major’s big achievement was to move from a politics of criminalisation of the IRA and, by extension Sinn Fein as their political mouthpiece, to a politics of accommodation, in which they were given a voice and the Unionist parties were forced to discuss the future of Northern Ireland with them. Politics, therefore, entered a third phase in this period between 1994 and 1997 when both the SDLP and Sinn Fein were in a position to join discussions of a power-​sharing devolution settlement. This context now required the clarification of the focus for a new gradualist strategy to achieve a united Ireland. In response, both parties looked to the importance, first, of devolution itself to guarantee equality in government in Northern Ireland, and second, to associated North– South political institutions focused on shared economic and social policy interests to provide the vehicle towards normalising all-​Ireland governance. The parties never abandoned their desire to represent

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emotional identity-​based nationalism but, in this phase, one can see the hardening of strategic commitments to electoral and institutional strategies to instrumentally cultivating all-​Ireland governance and the move away from the unconstitutional politics of organisation and citizen mobilisation. On the Unionist side, the UUP were prepared to consider power-​sharing devolution as long as it sustained the ability to maintain the Union. They would of course seek to limit the development of North–South institutions. It was a more demanding route to sustaining Northern Irish interests but potentially worthwhile if it achieved peace. At this point, though, the DUP were not prepared to entertain this. Despite the promise of the ceasefires, the immensity of the task and the conflicting demands of the parties in Northern Ireland proved too much for the Major government; ultimately the collapsing authority of his government prevented Major from seeing though his ambitions. A key problem was the need to keep Republican nationalists engaged if there was to be any chance of sustaining the IRA ceasefire and moving on from there. This led to a number of actions which appeared to favour nationalist interests. First, the Major government agreed with the Irish government to accept the IRA ceasefire as permanent. Second, in February 1995, the UK and Irish governments jointly published the ‘framework documents’ as a basis for all-​party talks on a political settlement. The documents again proposed a power-sharing assembly and a North–South body with significant executive, consultative and harmonising functions covering an extensive list of policy areas. The latter proposal in particular met Republican aspirations, as it left open the possibility that the North–South body could stand alone even if a power-​sharing assembly collapsed. This was strongly criticised by Unionists. Finally, the Major government acquiesced to the Irish government’s argument that decommissioning of weapons by paramilitary groups need only occur after the talks process had got underway. In March 1995, the UK government announced that, for Sinn Fein to enter talks, there was a need only for a confidence-​ building measure of IRA decommissioning and an expression of intent to disarm progressively (Dixon, 2001:251–5). As far as the Unionists were concerned, the Major government had given far too much to accommodate Republican interests. A 1993 opinion poll showed that 74 per cent of unionist supporters were strongly opposed to the UK government talking in secret to terrorists (Dixon, 2001:238), and just 43 per cent supported the Downing Street Declaration (Dixon, 2001:240). UUP leader James Molyneaux resigned in August 1995 to be replaced by David Trimble, then seen as an authentic leader of hard-​line unionism. The UUP

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refused to meet with UK government ministers given their now open contacts with representatives of Sinn Fein. However, the March 1995 statement on decommissioning requirements actually represented the clearest specification of IRA obligations yet. Somewhat ironically, it was interpreted in Republican quarters as the introduction of a decommissioning requirement at the behest of the Unionists which had not previously been there. Given that the IRA had no intention of decommissioning ahead of talks, the statement introduced an obstacle to progress (English, 2003:288–9). Faced with both Unionist complaints of timidity in the face of Republicanism and nationalist complaints at too many demands on them, the UK and Irish governments attempted to make progress by announcing, in November 1995, their intention to launch a twin-​track process of talks on a political settlement and on decommissioning, to run in parallel. The US politician, Senator George Mitchell, was engaged as a neutral assessor to provide a report on the role of decommissioning. His report in January 1996 confirmed that an approach should be pursued of decommissioning progressively during a talks process. All of those involved in talks would have to commit themselves to the principles of democracy and non-​violence. The UK and Irish governments then proposed an elected forum to consider the political settlement, a measure specifically designed to placate the Unionists. However, this initiative was to no avail: on 9 February 1996, a bomb at Canary Wharf in London’s Docklands brought the IRA ceasefire to an end. Resentments had gradually developed in the nationalist-​ Republican movement that their ceasefire had not been properly reciprocated with policy developments. Instead, they had been asked by the UK government for more in the form of decommissioning, suggesting that the UK government ultimately still caved into Unionist vetoes. By early 1996, the Republican-​nationalist leadership decided to accommodate the pressures from those who had been sceptical about a ceasefire. Critics of the Major government suggested that the Canary Wharf bomb was the logical outcome of policies that, while trying to encourage Republicanism, on the central issue of decommissioning played to a Unionist audience. Apologists for the Major governments could stress that the rapidity with which the IRA went back to the armed struggle after a perceived lack of progress suggested the tactical nature of the ceasefire and a lack of unity in the Republican movement. Following the end of the IRA ceasefire, the forum elections in May 1996 delivered a strong vote for the DUP, and later in the summer there was a huge breakdown

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of public order surrounding the loyalist march at Drumcree. Both of these events reflected the deep resentments of unionists at a peace process which they considered to have been driven by a Republican agenda. The end of the IRA ceasefire and the radicalisation of unionism both indicated the extreme difficulties that any attempt to push for peace and political stability faced in Northern Ireland. It led several analysts to conclude on the chronic weaknesses of a likely peace. Bew et al(1997) considered that all the political actors in Northern Ireland lacked an understanding of their supposed external allies and an inability to engage with the realities of the situation. Dixon (1997a; 1997b) concluded that Northern Irish elites did not have the capacity to lead their respective communities. The only route forward was a transformative politics that superseded the community division, although he was sanguine about the chances of this. In the year or so before the 1997 general election, nationalist, unionist and UK centre strategies for peace and a settlement were all abandoned. However, the legacy of this period was still substantial. On the nationalist side, there had been a journey in which Sinn Fein and IRA had been prepared to abandon non-​constitutional, violent-​force nationalism based on organisation and citizen mobilisation. They had joined with the SDLP in a potentially united (pan-​) nationalist strategy of arguing for a united Ireland through constitutional means to emotionally reflect identity claims. Sinn Fein had then embraced a party electoral strategy to represent Irish identity politics and had promoted with the SDLP an instrumentalist strategy of achieving a united Ireland through institutional and policy development of the North–South dimension to devolution to gradually normalise all-​Ireland governance. This involved accepting the partitionist assumptions of power-​sharing devolution in the short term, although ideally the SDLP hoped that the Unionists would drop out to leave them to negotiate with the UK government. If the basis for what they saw as an interim solution could be agreed, then there was potential for a new IRA ceasefire. Equally, there had been a partial journey on the Unionist side to embrace the possibility again of power-​sharing devolution and to assert a new framework to underpin peace while also maintaining an intergovernmentalist approach to maintaining the Union. Historically, it had been the DUP that had been pro-​devolution and the UUP pro-​ integration and direct rule. However, the DUP would not share power with Sinn Fein, and it was now the UUP that considered devolution to achieve unionist ends. This meant that David Trimble held the key to achieving a political settlement that guaranteed remaining in the Union. Viewed by the rank and file as a hardliner, he had the capacity

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to credibly defend moves towards compromise with Republicanism as still in unionist interests, and therefore maintain support. Cumulatively, there had been unprecedented moves to establish the beginnings of a cross-​community, power-​sharing elite in Northern Ireland where competing community leaders could each see potential gains by being seen to promote power-​sharing devolution and a wider peace process. Nationalist leaders were prepared to promote their long-term vision of Irish unity by asserting the centrality of the North–South insitutions; and Unionist party leaders were prepared to promote continued membership of the UK by asserting the centrality of the devolved assembly’s intergovernmental links to the UK. It was a framework for Northern Ireland government and politics that was still capable of revival (see McGarry and O’Leary, 1996). Meanwhile, the Major government had made an historic attempt to reconcile territorial conflict to re-​establish territorial order and re-​ peripheralise the concerns of Northern Ireland, in this case directly engaging with and including Sinn Fein to achieve this aim. This could have benefited Northern Ireland and allowed UK central government to achieve a relative centre autonomy from having to directly manage it. Although the Major premiership failed to deliver a relative territorial stability and re-​peripheralisation of political debate, it had at least established the outlines for seeking the restoration of a sort of terrible balance between the strategies of competing community elites in Northern Ireland, and as a result a relative autonomy for the centre from Irish troubles. Uniquely, in this part of the UK the pursuit of power-​sharing devolution had been seen as essential to that ambition, as despite its potential threats to the Union it still represented the best option for sustaining union and centre autonomy in the context of ending violence. Despite the collapsed policy that Major bestowed to his successor, devolution remained potentially capable of revival.

The negotiation of devolution and the 1998 Belfast Agreement When Tony Blair’s Labour Government took office in 1997 it remained the case that Northern Ireland represented the most pressing territorial strain on UK state stability, and yet the preceding decade had witnessed recognition on all sides that no one interest could win in the short-​ term. As a result there had been substantial adjustments in the code and strategic goals guiding nationalist/​republican political leadership and responses by Unionist leaders and UK Conservative Governments that suggested a settlement might be possible. As we have seen, it did

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not happen, and the questions now arise as to how and why the Blair Government succeeded where the Conservatives had ultimately failed, how and why nationalist and unionist leaders came back to the table, and how devolution policy was organised and negotiated to ultimately get a settlement. It is important to note that Labour’s approach to Northern Ireland had also gone through various phases between 1979 and 1997, with a strong leaning in the 1980s and early 1990s towards being persuaders for Irish unity. However, after he became leader of the Labour Party in 1994, Tony Blair appointed Mo Mowlam as his shadow secretary of state, and they established a cross-​party agreement with the Major governments’ general strategy on Northern Ireland. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives had direct party interests in Northern Ireland and so were both in the position of simply trying to govern in the best interests of the centre. Blair recorded in his memoirs that ‘for British governments of whatever persuasion, the drain on resources and military manpower which Northern Ireland required made any prospect of peace extremely attractive’ (Blair, 2010:158). Blair did have a personal interest, as his mother was from a Protestant farming family in Donegal. He believed the time was right to work for an agreement in Northern Ireland as the Irish state had modernised and was keen to see peace, and prominent US politicians, such as Senator Edward Kennedy, had sensed the chance of peace. Alone among the territorial strains that the UK posed for Blair’s government, Northern Ireland was embraced by Blair as part of his crowded personal high politics agenda. He wished to build on Major’s approach and be the premier who finally solved the Northern Ireland problem. An important help to Blair in doing this was that, following the May 1997 general election, Labour’s large parliamentary majority meant that there was no leverage for either the backbench pro-​nationalist opinion that still existed within the Labour parliamentary group or for any of the Northern Irish parties. Blair was able therefore to continue a bilateral approach to Northern Irish policy with Mowlam as secretary of state, assert a UK government detachment from favouring either side’s interests, and immediately focus on pressing for all-​inclusive talks to get a constitutional policy process underway. The call for new talks received support from the UUP and the SDLP. The government’s line with Sinn Fein was that they could only be included if the IRA redeclared its ceasefire. This was forthcoming on 20 July; Mowlam accepted it, and she declared that all-​party talks would begin on 15 September with the inclusion of Sinn Fein. This was a key development in central strategy to try and broker an accord in Northern Ireland, though unsurprisingly

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it faced major challenges in maintaining the participation both of Sinn Fein and the Unionist parties (Mowlam, 2002). This was less so with respect to Sinn Fein. The election of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, respectively leader and deputy leader, in the 1997 UK general election indicated community support for Sinn Fein’s constitutional approach. The intention was to push very hard for Republican gains in a settlement; if the Unionists vetoed a power-​sharing deal, Sinn Fein would be left with the moral high ground of having participated and been prepared to compromise. There was a general understanding that Sinn Fein would not agree to a deal that made progress reliant on IRA decommissioning. Even so, there was a recognition that among Sinn Fein members there remained concerns that any agreement would amount to accepting partition, would dilute the historic commitment to Irish unity, and suggest that the IRA ceasefire amounted to surrender. The Sinn Fein leadership was deeply committed to participation, but these concerns remained very much in their minds (Dixon, 2001:266–9; Tonge, 2006:122–9). Problems of Unionist participation in the talks, however, were much more substantial. A so-​called rational unionism suggested the potential long-​term gain for the stability of Northern Ireland in the Union if they were prepared to compromise over a form of devolved power-​ sharing. Meanwhile, ‘emotional unionism’ was revolted by sharing power with people who were seen as terrorists. As a result, while the UUP was prepared to take part in talks, the DUP –​joined now by the smaller Unionist party, the United Kingdom Unionist Party (UKUP) –​again would not, on the grounds that they were not prepared to sell out Unionism. There was strong backing for this position in the Orange Order, as well as from some disgruntled members of the UUP. Shortly before the renewed 1997 ceasefire, the IRA murdered two community police officers in Lurgan and this was followed by an upsurge in community violence. David Trimble’s advisors suspected the violence was cynically deployed to inflame emotional unionism sufficiently at this point to make it extremely hard for Trimble and the UUP to enter talks, leaving the arena clear for the SDLP and Sinn Fein, with the IRA now on ceasefire. However, Trimble consistently advised that it would be in the long-​ term interests of unionism to tie Republican nationalism into an agreed deal. He played for time through the summer of 1997, counselling his party against playing into Republican hands, and made the decision to enter talks in September. In that same month, both Scotland and Wales voted for devolution in referenda, normalising devolution as a new feature of UK governance and therefore providing a greater

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background acceptability for it among unionists. In October 1997, Trimble actually received a standing ovation from delegates at the UUP party conference on the understanding, of course, that he was not going to negotiate a replica of the Sunningdale Agreement, the power-​sharing agreement which unionists had opposed in the 1970s. At this stage, the two key parties linked to loyalist paramilitaries, the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), also agreed to enter the talks. Unionism remained divided overall, but their inclusion meant that over 50 per cent of the Protestant unionist vote was represented in the talks thus giving some credibility to the compromise strategy of rational unionism (McDonald, 2000:179–88). The start of the talks was agreed in September 1997 and began in early October under the chairmanship of the US senator, George Mitchell. They were conducted at the Castle Buildings at Stormont, just outside Belfast (see Hennessey, 2000 for a detailed analysis). Talks were arranged according to three strands. Strand one was concerned with government within Northern Ireland, and was chaired by Paul Murphy, the Northern Ireland minister of state, with just UK government and Northern Irish party presence. Strand two was concerned with North– South Irish relations and was chaired by Senator Mitchell with UK, Irish and Northern Irish party presence. Strand three, concerned with British–​Irish relations, was co-​chaired by UK and Irish ministers, again with a trilateral presence (Murphy, 2019:97). Each strand had plenary sessions which identified principles and then later discussed and decided upon how they might be applied. These later sessions followed a large number of bilateral and trilateral meetings at which presentations of ideas and draft texts were made and discussed. The layout of the Castle Buildings, with a large number of rooms, facilitated both formal and informal meetings including one-​to-​ones between parties and leaders. On the nationalist side, the SDLP were the principal originators of detailed provisions meeting nationalist aspirations (Hennessey, 2000). Against this, the UUP deployed specialists in each strand of talks, notably Reg Empey in strand one and Trimble himself in strand two. Paul Murphy in his memoirs records that the strand one discussions were ‘a hard slog but necessary … this constant dialogue meant that people got to know each other well, and very slowly, different types of relationship were formed. It may have taken a long time for Sinn Fein and the Unionists to engage but engage they eventually did’ (Murphy, 2019:99). Indeed, a key outcome of these discussions was a frank recognition of the Northern Ireland problem as one where there needed to be a resolution of identities to stop the fighting. The value of having all-​party talks, including the women’s coalition and the Alliance

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Party, was that non-​sectarian political values were also brought into the discussion. Strand two discussions focused a good deal on European funding and ensuring that new North–South bodies did not disrupt this. These talks served as a necessary building block to getting agreement, but for several months the Unionists in particular were deeply suspicious of the whole process. David Trimble soon came to believe that Mo Mowlam was working to a Republican agenda. By implementing confidence-​building measures such as reductions in troop deployment, she was perceived as making concessions to Sinn Fein that would make it increasingly hard for Trimble and his UUP team to stay in the talks. Trimble also had great problems with David Andrews, the Irish foreign minister, who openly talked of the proposed strand two NSMC as being ‘like a government’. During the autumn, four UUP MPs formally withdrew their support for participation. This was followed by an upsurge in loyalist violence after the murder of Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) leader, Billy Wright, by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) in the Maze Prison. This led Trimble to insist on a direct line to Blair. He believed that Blair was in good faith, and that the new Irish premier, Bertie Ahern, was pragmatic. With their brokering, he believed he could still agree a deal with Republican nationalism that would maintain the consent principle that the people of Northern Ireland would decide their own future, in effect enshrining a Unionist veto on constitutional developments (McDonald, 2000:185–93). Trimble was helped in keeping the UUP in the talks by the publication on the 12 January 1998 of the ‘Heads of Agreement’ document between the British and Irish governments. This was the first significant set of proposals since the ‘Frameworks for the Future’ document in 1995. One section in particular appeared to mark a significant victory for Trimble’s bargaining. The strand two proposals had originally made cross-​border bodies freestanding, allowing them to be interpreted as an embryonic third government of Ireland that could lead to a united Ireland. The new document spelled out the principle of consent: that the Unionist majority would have a veto over change, and that North–South bodies would be under a Northern Ireland assembly. If the assembly fell, then the North–South bodies would fall also. This impressed even the four dissident UUP MPs. While it caused consternation in Sinn Fein, it suggested that Trimble had succeeded in persuading the UK and Irish governments to roll back the most Republican aspect of the earlier proposals, thus solidifying UUP faith in his pro-​agreement strategy. Meanwhile, the calculation appeared to be that Sinn Fein could not simply walk out of the talks (McDonald 2000:195–6).

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Despite the achievement of getting everyone, except the DUP and UKUP, around the table and achieving a certain level of mutual understanding, there was still the problem of actually concluding an agreement between the leaders of the two communities and the UK and Irish governments. Sectarian violence continued as a result both of the assassination of Billy Wright and Republican frustrations over the progress of the negotiations, and between 20 February and 9 March 1998 Sinn Fein was temporarily excluded from the talks as there was so little continuing evidence of an IRA ceasefire. They were finally reinstated by Mo Mowlam to try and give agreement a chance. Amid fears of the process being derailed by continued violence, Senator Mitchell set 9 April, Good Friday, as the final deadline for talks to reach agreement. This provoked frantic activity within the parties and renewed bitter divisions, particularly within the UUP, as moves were made towards a final deal. In the final four days Tony Blair took personal charge of the talks, with a key role also being played by Bertie Ahern, the Irish Taoiseach with whom Blair had an excellent rapport. There were innumerable twists and turns, but the key initiative in this period was the rewriting of the strand two proposals to radically shrink the number of North–South bodies so as to substantially ease the anxieties that still existed among Unionist negotiators over this element of the agreement. In return, the UUP agreed to drop their defence of majoritarian government in strand one and accept power sharing. Sinn Fein’s long list of counter-​demands, which were provoked by the changes to strand two, were assuaged by the offer to release IRA prisoners within two years at the most (Blair, 2010: 165–​76). Agreement on the final detail of the Northern Ireland Assembly only came in the last 24 hours, including the name and number of members of the legislative assembly (Murphy, 2019:101). Ultimately, the negotiations bore fruit on Good Friday, 1998. The gist of the final deal was as follows (Belfast Agreement, 1998). Strand one of the Good Friday (or Belfast) Agreement provided for a 108 seat Northern Ireland Assembly, elected by single transferrable vote (STV) proportional representation, to be responsible for many of the powers then exercised by the secretary of state for Northern Ireland. It was to have a diarchic first and deputy first minister, one from the largest unionist party and the other from the largest nationalist party, leading a 12-​strong executive committee of ministers, with membership based on the parties’ electoral strength. This meant there would be a power-​sharing executive composed of all the major parties, with Sinn Fein probably having two ministers. Other arrangements under strand one related to reform of governance in Northern Ireland, including the reform of

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the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) as well as arrangements for the release of IRA prisoners and the reduction in British troop deployment. Strand two of the agreement then provided for a set of North– South bodies which included an inter-parliamentary association and a consultative forum. The most important though was the NSMC, which was made accountable to the Assembly. The Irish Government also agreed to reform Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution in order to recognise the principle of consent for the people of Northern Ireland on its constitutional future. In practice, this recognised the right of the unionist majority so long as it existed to a veto on reunification. Finally, strand three of the Agreement included provision for a British–Irish intergovernmental conference and British–Irish inter-parliamentary body. Its principal innovation though was a Council of the British Isles (later renamed the British– Irish Council or BIC) which would bring together the heads of the UK, devolved and Irish Governments. The Good Friday Agreement had a good deal in common with the Sunningdale Agreement: its focus on consociational arrangements in the Assembly; an intergovernmental dimension with Ireland; cross-​ border institutions; and the need for consent for further constitutional change. It did, though, have new elements: a confederal BIC; a nudge towards some sharing of sovereignty with Ireland; parity of esteem in identities in Northern Ireland; and in particular the focus on human rights and equality (Tonge, 2000). In the process, the Agreement provided distinct gains for both sides, but it also –​inevitably –​presented enormous difficulties (Wilford, 2001). For Sinn Fein, the power-​sharing principles –​combined with the release of IRA prisoners, the reform of the RUC, and reduction in troop deployment in strand one  –​all suggested obvious gains. In addition, there was no provision in the agreement that IRA decommissioning was required. Strand two could also be sold as providing a road towards reunification, although the subjugation of the North–South dimension to the Assembly and the wholesale recognition of the consent principle tied nationalist negotiators much more to potentially partitionist assumptions in the Agreement than they would have liked. Unionist perceptions were that Sinn Fein had still signed up to the Agreement in the belief that the UUP would opt out of a compromise at the final stage. More critical analysis suggested that by this point the Sinn Fein leadership was in too deep to continue to defend previously cherished principles, and accepted the Agreement, including what were in practice quite weak provisions in strand two, despite misgivings (Tonge, 2006).

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For the Unionists, the major gain was indeed in negotiations on strand two. Proposals for the final agreement from the UK and Irish governments had originally suggested around a hundred North–South bodies to accompany the Ministerial Council. These were whittled down to just six, with North–South cooperation still tied to the principle of consent and the control of the proposed assembly. In this, Trimble was helped by pressure from Blair and the pragmatic influence of Bertie Ahern, who recognised that the Unionists could never sign a deal that on North–South cooperation replicated the arrangements of Sunningdale. At the same time, of course, Trimble’s much cherished principle of consent was respected in the commitment to redraw Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution. For Trimble, the outcome of strand two meant that the Agreement was basically a victory for unionism in constitutional terms. It defended the partition of Ireland and clipped the wings of any institutional framework that sought by stealth to break down that partition. Tonge (2006:124) comments that ultimately: ‘Sinn Fein played little part in negotiating many of these details, and meekly accepted a very limited cross-​border aspect’. The agreement on strand three that added an East–West dimension to counter-​balance North–South cooperation was the icing on the cake. Nevertheless, Trimble faced continuing hostility from the DUP and the UKUP, who did not sign the Agreement. He also faced opposition from hard-​line dissidents within his own party. The principal problem lay in the insufficient guarantees in strand one in provisions regulating prisoner release and the complete absence of a requirement for IRA decommissioning before setting up the devolved institutions. A number of advisors left the talks team, refusing to be associated with such an agreement. At the last moment even Jeffrey Donaldson, one of Trimble’s closest associates, walked away. Trimble tried to get decommissioning written into the agreement but Tony Blair refused to back him, mindful no doubt that its absence was part of the carefully crafted set of compromises that enabled Sinn Fein to agree to sign. Instead Blair produced only a private letter of assurances that he would not support having politicians in devolved government who had connections to paramilitary organisations that were still active. To Donaldson and others, the letter was too vague. Trimble did not necessarily wish to emphasise the necessity of decommissioning but, nevertheless, he took the letter as more of a binding promise. Fortunately, Trimble gained backing from senior UUP MPs and he went ahead and signed the Agreement, hopeful that with their support he could still guarantee the support of his wider party. Trimble later admitted that his obsession with strand two had blinded him

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to the necessity of bargaining harder on strand one. Nevertheless, Trimble never doubted that ultimately the Agreement was a victory for unionism. Sinn Fein had gained much from entering talks, but ultimately Trimble had called their bluff about making agreement that assumed partition for the foreseeable future (McDonald 2000:206–17). He was bolstered by similar arguments made by Paul Bew, Henry Patterson and Paul Teague (1997) in their book, Between War and Peace, which he consulted regularly during these months of intense discussion. In the context of so much previous division, getting an agreement at all was heralded by many observers as a triumph. However, we need to take a step back and understand how agreement was indeed reached and what it meant. In terms of our framework for analysis, we can see that the settlement was undoubtedly achieved through a clear mutual recognition of a territorial integration problem, the solution to which was coerced by heavy pressure from both the UK and Irish governments. The SDLP and Sinn Fein sustained an approach through the Agreement negotiations that focused increasingly on its legitimation of constitutional nationalist politics in the government of Northern Ireland, as well as the development of a platform via the strand two North–South bodies that they still hoped would lead to spillovers in the normalisation of all-​Ireland governance. The fact that the Unionists had actually made an agreement with them, locked them into following this gradualist approach to cultivating devolution as a transition to unification. For the UUP, the Agreement marked the creation of institutions which necessitated devolution and governing with nationalists, including Sinn Fein, but they provided a strong base for unionists to continue to steer Northern Irish relations with the UK centre on an intergovernmentalist basis. The UK centre, meanwhile, was delighted to gain Sinn Fein agreement, but equally looked to shore up the UUP and the SDLP, as the moderate communal leaders that could bed down power-​sharing devolution on terms agreeable to the UK centre. In such a way, the Blair government hoped to have created a new sustainable basis for indirect control through moderate local elite collaboration from both communities. The talks process at Stormont also helped to make it an effective and legitimate settlement. It amounted to a closed government/​party group process hard-​wired by lowest common denominator inter-​group bargaining, which corresponds with the least inclusive policy process type of a conference. Nevertheless, the bilateral organisation of the policy process and the special externalisation of its coordination to non-​UK/​Irish brokers enabled an acceptable level of externality to bring distrusting negotiators together. There was, then, a separation

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of the talks process from other forms of policy making in Northern Ireland, and a reasonable sequential development from considering past grievances and principles to how they might be applied in developing a settlement. Issues were structurally very clearly horizontally differentiated by organising the talks within distinct strands, with different combinations of interests and specific actors involved in each one. This meant that there was also a relatively high level of arena differentiation. Taken together, this served to achieve in very difficult circumstances some innovation and finessing of contradictions in the Agreement, which was expertly articulated as a whole by Mitchell to make it acceptable to the parties involved. Consequently, through a settlement that was the most distinctive of all the UK’s devolution settlements and still very vulnerable to breakdown, politicians found a way to address the territorial integration problem posed by Northern Ireland in ways that met the strategic concerns of nationalist Republican dissidents, moderate constitutional nationalists, key representatives of the Unionist political elite in Northern Ireland as well as the UK centre. The territorial politics of nationalist dissidence, unionist defence and reluctant centre management would continue; therefore, they remained built-​in givens of what was always accepted as only a satisficing way of containing the conflicts in Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, it was still considered the only realistic approach against all alternatives. Against all the odds, and still with opposition from the DUP, the outlines of the terrible balance between the strategies of competing community elites in Northern Ireland, and UK centre desires for some autonomy from Irish troubles, was given substantive form.

Ratification and outcomes of the Belfast Agreement The Belfast Agreement was a considerable achievement, involving as it did both a multi-party agreement and a British–Irish intergovernmental agreement. But there remained much still to do to establish it as the basis for peaceful governance. First, political leaders agreed on the need for a referendum to ratify it both in Northern Ireland and in the Republic. Just as in Scotland and Wales, the Northern Irish referendum is an important focus for reflecting further on the nature of the public attitudes, territorial strategies and the constitutional policy process that led to devolution. Given the community divisions, there was a clear need for pro-​Agreement advocates to get not just an overall ‘yes’, but also a ‘yes’ majority among both Protestants and Catholics. The referendum was held on 22 May 1998. It resulted in a fairly conclusive majority in favour: 71.12 per cent voted yes on an 81 per cent turnout.

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It was accompanied by a 94 per cent ‘yes’ vote on the Agreement in the Irish Republic. A Sunday Times/​Coopers and Lybrand survey on 23 May indicated that in Northern Ireland 96 per cent of Catholics and 55 per cent of Protestants voted yes. Across Northern Ireland, a ‘yes’ majority was achieved in every parliamentary constituency except for North Antrim, where the MP was Ian Paisley, leader of the DUP. The depth and breadth of the support met all the hopes of the pro-​Agreement campaigners and mitigated against the threat of the direct action that had brought down Sunningdale 25 years previously (Dixon, 2001: 272–​4). What did these ‘yes’ votes mean in each community? There was an effort to invest in the idea that it was actually a cross-​community vote for peace evidencing a new non-​sectarian politics (see Mowlam, 2002:224–​54). This sentiment was symbolised by the peace concert held in Belfast on 19 May, featuring U2 and the leading Protestant band, Ash. It produced the ideal media image of Trimble and John Hume’s arms held aloft by Bono, the lead singer of U2. But few were under any illusion that reasons for voting yes were considered through community lenses. Looking at the Catholic community, the strongest unionist critics would say the ‘yes’ vote reflected the belief that the Agreement was a victory. Yet, Sinn Fein and the SDLP did not campaign on those terms. Sinn Fein was relatively quiet during the campaign, but provided strong cues to its voters as it very publicly changed its party constitution to allow Sinn Fein politicians to take up public office in Northern Ireland. The SDLP ran a politically neutral non-​triumphalist campaign that stressed the economic and social gains of peace and political compromise. Equally, the extent of the nationalist ‘yes’ to the Agreement did not prevent the splintering off of the ‘Real’ or ‘Continuity’ IRA from the IRA, to continue to fight for a united Ireland through paramilitary means. Looking at the unionist community, there was more obvious evidence of the extent of divided sentiment, which in the circumstances made a majority of around 55 per cent an extraordinary ‘yes’ vote for unionists. There was concerted opposition from the DUP and the UKUP, which formed the United Unionist Coordinating Committee to campaign against the Agreement, and gained support from young unionists and the Orange Order. Their ‘Have a heart for Ulster’ Campaign sought to play on the emotional sentiments of Protestants to resist the idea of former IRA terrorists walking free from prison and Sinn Fein members serving in government. Five of the nine UUP MPs, many UUP councillors, Jeffrey Donaldson and former leader Jim Molyneaux all campaigned against the Agreement. Nevertheless, Trimble’s Unionist

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‘yes’ campaign was helped by the fact that Sinn Fein did not actively campaign for the Agreement so as not to alienate unionist opinion in the vote. Meanwhile, like John Hume, Trimble was careful to campaign for the benefits of the Agreement for peace and economic and social benefits without reference to identity. Various leading figures also reassured the silent middle-​class Protestant majority, popularly known as ‘Middle Ulster’, who lived east of the Bann. Sir Jack Hermon, former Chief Constable of the RUC, supported the Agreement and by appearing with Trimble in front of Belfast City Hall on 21 May he gave some reassurance to the 13,000 members of the RUC and their families to vote ‘yes’ (see McDonald, 2000:220–41). Tony Blair also praised Trimble for his courageous leadership and made five pledges. He stated that there would be no change in the status of Northern Ireland without the express consent of the people. Power to take decisions would be focused on the Northern Ireland assembly, to which North–South cooperation would be made accountable. Fairness and equality would be guaranteed for all. Those who used or threatened violence would be excluded from government. Finally, prisoners would be kept in jail unless violence was given up for good (McDonald, 2000:236). Even so, it is possible that, had the Unionist ‘no’ campaign been better managed, Protestants might have voted no overall. It is likely that large numbers of Protestants voted yes reluctantly and conditionally, and even then a large minority voted no. The implications of the referendum result was that, for the time being, the pro-​Agreement parties scored a major political success. As a form of loosely coupled ratification involving the entire electorate, the referendum cemented the legitimacy of the Agreement as a basis for devolved government in Northern Ireland. Even so, the claims to underpin a stable divided political community were very shaky. The achievement of agreement over devolution owed everything to elite leadership and a bargained settlement. In the referendum itself leadership of opinion, as in Scotland and Wales, rested more on appeals to functional security, economic and political arguments than appeals to identity. From the beginning, despite popular ratification through the referendum there was a recognition that further strong elite leadership using similar appeals was needed to give any chance for the Agreement to be successfully implemented. In particular, Unionist rejectionism placed immediate constraints over implementation. It would require a fierce defence of the Agreement and its implementation at every step against a clear set of alternative prescriptions. The referendum, therefore, did deliver a clear ‘double yes’ to devolution in the short term, but it nevertheless left open the clear option of the final answer

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still being ‘no’ from either nationalists or unionists somewhere down the line. In the short term though the second challenge that followed the Belfast Agrement and the referendum was to pass it into law at Westminster. This proved somewhat easier. The precise contents of the legislation brooked no further process of constitutional policy making; it had to reflect the deal done at Stormont. In the process, it maintained excepted and reserved powers at Westminster and provided the Assembly with legislative and executive powers in relation to the responsibilities previously held by the secretary of state for Northern Ireland. These were in the areas of agriculture, education, health and social services, economic development, and environment. Nevertheless, crown authority continued to rest with the secretary of state, and effectively devolution was from the secretary of state to the Assembly. There was an expectation that in certain circumstances devolution might have to be reversed, in which case the powers could simply go back to the secretary of state. Finance to the new Northern Ireland Assembly was on the basis of an annual block grant with no tax powers, meaning that the settlement over finance more resembled Wales than Scotland. The Assembly did, though, inherit the Northern Ireland civil service and a number of non-​departmental public bodies, and it became responsible for running a large part of Northern Ireland’s public services. Beyond this, though, in the case of Northern Ireland the manner in which the Assembly was established as a representative body actually received the most attention. There were four key components of the design that amounted to compulsory power-​ sharing arrangements: the method of election of Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs); the election of the Assembly leadership; the composition of the power-​sharing executive; and voting rules in the Assembly plenary and committees. Each worked according to compulsory rules of inclusivity. The Assembly was composed of 108 MLAs, elected on the STV basis. The intention of using multi-​ member STV constituencies was to ensure that in any constituency where there were significant Protestant or Catholic communities each would have an opportunity to return a local representative. Once they entered the assembly, then MLAs had to declare whether they were nationalist or unionist. The election of the First Minister and the deputy first minister were the first things that the assembly had to do. The leadership constituted a synchronised diarchy, in that the First Minister had to be a member of the majority grouping, expected to be a Unionist, and the deputy first

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minister a member of the minority grouping, expected to be a nationalist. Proposed candidates were both elected or indeed rejected together on the basis of a parallel consent procedure. This meant that they both had to be not only elected by a majority of the Assembly, but also by a majority both of Unionist members and nationalist members. Once elected, they could not be removed for the four-​year term of the Assembly; if one resigned, then the other would have to follow, with two new candidates being elected again by the same procedure. The method of the election was a means of institutionalising cooperation within the leadership of the Assembly, and forcing both the leading Unionist and nationalist candidates to compromise or face loss of office in the event of the other resigning. In a similar way, the ten-​person executive also enshrined rules for including representatives of both communities. It was determined according to d’Hondt rules of apportionment intended to produce five unionist and five nationalist ministers, in addition to the first and deputy first ministers. Each of these executive members would be allocated a departmental portfolio, in which they would be able to take departmental decisions without recourse to the rest of the executive. However, within the executive as a whole it was stipulated that there must be unanimous agreement on key decisions relating, for example, to legislation, the budget, interdepartmental cooperation, policies on North–South cooperation, or the BIC. The rules for the executive could not be more watertight in providing for power sharing, in which the leaders of both communities ultimately had a right of veto over decisions. It again forced the members of the executive to compromise if government policy making was to progress. The final key issue was the arrangements for member participation in plenary sessions and committees. These focused on the roles of MLAs in consenting to Assembly decisions on behalf of unionist and nationalist communities. First, MLAs had to ratify executive decisions. This could be done either by the ‘parallel consent’ procedure or by a ‘weighted consent’ procedure. The latter required 60 per cent of those present and at least 40 per cent of both Unionists and nationalists present and voting to support the executive decision. Second, MLAs could call an individual minister’s decision to account. It was feared that departments could slide into being Unionist or nationalist fiefdoms depending on the individual minister appointed. To provide a check on this there was a provision that if 30 MLAs tabled a petition of concern about a ministerial decision, it would trigger the requirement of a parallel or weighted consent procedure for such a decision to be passed. Third, MLAs working in committees, shadowing the work of individual departments, could also call the relevant minister to account.

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The committees were composed and chaired in proportion to party strength and could require the minister to answer questions before them. It was expected that committee scrutiny would be the key to keeping individual ministers working within the spirit of power sharing in their departmental work, and if necessary could provide the basis for a member petition that could call a minister to account within assembly plenary. The logic of this approach was clear: it would expose party ministers who were not prepared to play the game, providing a mechanism for them to be weeded out and replaced by others who were. The Northern Ireland Assembly was accompanied by two other key institutions. First, there was the NSMC, which brought together ministers from the Northern Ireland Assembly and ministers from the Irish Republic to discuss policy on prescribed issues on a common all-​ Ireland basis. It was accompanied by six further North–South bodies responsible for specific policy areas. The existence of the NSMC and all the policy bodies was dependent upon the continued existence of the Assembly. In Republican eyes, the NSMC and associated bodies took on particular importance; they were intended to give practical meaning to the idea of all-​Ireland government and to create the structures that could in time slowly give substance to reunification. Finally, devolution to Northern Ireland was also accompanied by institutional relationships which in unionist eyes cemented Northern Ireland’s place in the UK. A key innovation in this regard was the BIC, which was composed of the executive heads of the British and Irish governments as well as the devolved institutions and crown possessions within the British Isles (such as the Isle of Man and Channel Isles). This was perceived as the East–West component of the settlement, although obviously it also created an additional forum for relationships between state and devolved institutions of the UK and Ireland. Its scope for influence on decision-​making in Northern Ireland was much less precise than the NSMC, but its meetings provided a forum for a British Isles summitry, where issues of common interest could be raised and agreed approaches developed. Overall, the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1998 provided a clear framework for the operation of devolution. In Hooghe et al’s (2008) terms, it provided for an increase in self-​rule. However, the Act also maintained the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, and in contrast to the devolution settlements for Scotland and Wales there was provision for direct rule to be reasserted if necessary. The institutions of Northern Irish devolved government also had no say over UK policy. In Hooghe et al’s terms, the Northern Ireland Act granted no shared-​rule powers. In this way, the arrangements of devolution and the way in which they

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potentially enabled power-​sharing self-​rule were an essential part of UK government strategy to regain centre autonomy as much as possible from the most gruelling of the UK’s territorial ratchets. Again, as in Scotland and Wales, legislation provided a reasonable basis for an outcome that combined territorial autonomy for a Northern Ireland power-​sharing elite with the centre having relative autonomy from routine involvement in politically managing how Northern Ireland was governed; for a generation, such a political duality had seemed impossible. In the Northern Irish case, there was no need for a body like the Scottish CSG or the Welsh NAAG to accompany the legislation. All the work on how the Assembly would operate had been done integrally in the negotiations leading to the Belfast Agreement. This highlighted the sharp differences in the intensity of the territorial strain in Northern Ireland confronted by policy makers. The consociational nature of those arrangements have been highlighted, but there were some similarities to the proposals of the CSG and the NAAG, notably to focus on inclusivity. Meehan (1999) concluded that, while the settlement for Northern Ireland was very different in many ways from those for Scotland and Wales, it shared those concerns with civic regionalism, participation and equality. They all also now faced the same challenges in the implementation of devolution. In Northern Ireland, though, they looked forward with great anxiety. While the Belfast Agreement was indeed a great achievement against extraordinary odds, the challenges of making the settlement hold in practice were still apparent to all.

Conclusion This chapter has drawn together an analysis of the developments that led ultimately to a devolution settlement in Northern Ireland between 1979 and 1998. In so doing the chapter has engaged with a wide range of scholarship which by and large has treated Northern Ireland as a special case in terms of its identity politics, contested communal leadership and the attention it received from successive UK governments, which set it aside from conventional judgements made on devolution elsewhere in the UK. Nevertheless, as in other chapters we have reappraised the nature of the territorial strain imposed upon the UK, and in this case the resources available to the challenge of Irish nationalism. The chapter has addressed the politics of elite leadership both among the parties in Northern Ireland and in UK Government, and has addressed how effective we should see the Belfast Agreement that resulted from negotiations in 1998. The resulting analysis is distinctive ultimately for reinterpreting how and why devolution was achieved in Northern

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Ireland less as a special case and more in similar power politics terms to elsewhere in the UK. The chapter has again highlighted the importance of the problems of bottom-up pressures and territorial elite strategies that as a result developed constrained aims and pursued revisionist codes of peripheral assertion. The centre again pursued a strategy that was focused on achieving indirect control over devolution through local elite assimilation to thereby gain its own relative autonomy. We may again see the resulting settlement in realist non-ideal terms as striking a balance between these constrained periphery and centre strategies as efficiently as it could. Overall, the analysis provides four sets of conclusions. First, the chapter concludes that the territorial strain posed by Northern Ireland opinion in the 1980s and 1990s was best understood as high and pressing, posing the most serious pressures on the state. Nevertheless, even here the bottom-​up pressures for nationalism had limitations relative to aspirations. Secondly, and as a result of this in seeking to represent Irish nationalism, there were competing approaches in Northern Ireland which went through several phases of development in this era. Initially, the SDLP followed a code that blended emotional appeal nationalism with a focus on instrumental concerns and arguments for a better Northern Ireland and the constitutional move to a united Ireland. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein and the IRA. as the most radical Republican advocates of the reunification of Ireland, employed an approach that focused on representing emotional appeal Irish identity combined with unconstitutional organisation and citizen mobilisation and political violence. From the late 1980s into the 1990s, radical Republican politics moved away from the pursuit of Irish reunification via organisation and citizen mobilisation, and converged with the SDLP, initially on a pan-​nationalist attempt to represent emotional identity-​ based Irish sentiment in favour of a united Ireland. Then in the mid-​ late 1990s, the SDLP and Sinn Fein shared the influence of a similar code of peripheral assertion based on legitimising national politics through pursuing change constitutionally, via success at the ballot box, and cultivating the reunification of Ireland through institutional mechanisms, notably in strand two of the Good Friday Agreement which sought to normalise all-​Ireland governance through a focus on common instrumental policy concerns. Throughout this journey, which enabled nationalism in all hues to accommodate itself to weaknesses in the movement and embrace power-​sharing devolution as a transitional stage to a united Ireland, the Northern Irish Unionist parties followed an intergovernmentalist

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code in pursuing a strategy of representing Northern Irish interests within the Union. This was possible with or without devolution, and if power-​sharing devolution had to be embraced there was a keenness to not repeat the mistakes of the Sunningdale Agreement and to ensure that a new agreement would enable the acceptance of partition and robustly sustain Northern Ireland’s position within the UK. Meanwhile, thirdly, the chapter has shown that UK central government policy from 1972 had to impose direct UK rule, but its strategic aim remained to try to establish power-​sharing devolution between nationalist and unionist elites in Northern Ireland so as to at least stabilise governance and ensure peace, and to then achieve a relative centre autonomy from direct engagement with government in Northern Ireland. This proved unsuccessful so long as the Thatcher government sought to exclude Sinn Fein from any settlement in its desire to impose a relatively Unionist view of who should be the local elite collaborators who would run power-​sharing devolution; it was a strategy that ultimately proved successful once that restriction was lifted. When it became evident that an agreement could be done, both nationalist and Unionist elite leaderships strategically engaged with the option of devolution for fear that self-​exclusion would lead to monopoly power for the other in dealing directly with UK government. They each developed approaches to power-​sharing devolution which amounted to embracing codes for how to use devolution in order for each to achieve a long-​term status for Northern Ireland on their terms, whether through nationalist leaning mechanisms of institutional build up and policy spill over in North–South bodies to normalise a united Ireland, or via Unionist aims to normalise devolved governance within the UK. In return, UK central government strategy, underpinned by the late 1990s by a Conservative–​Labour bipartisan consensus, focused on achieving a limited controlled devolution settlement that included Sinn Fein so as to give sufficiently strong support for the credibility of both sides’ methods of long-​term constitutional change to gain agreement. The result of this strategic balance would involve containing the politics of Northern Ireland within what one might see as a ‘stable instability’. Indeed, if nationalist and Unionist elites cancelled each other out in their efforts to direct devolution in each of their respective interests, it had the potential to create a perpetual state of stable instability, the net outcome of which would be the holding of Northern Ireland in a suspended state which de facto remained in the Union. In these circumstances, short or long term, UK government could also successfully achieve peace and political stability in Northern

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Ireland indirectly through the collaboration of the local powersharing elites, and so much to its relief reestablish a relative centre autonomy from having to directly govern and/​or manage the politics of Northern Ireland. Finally, the chapter acknowledges that the territorial constitutional policy process that led to the Belfast Agreement in 1998 was relatively uninclusive, based upon a closed government/​party group process hard-​wired by lowest common denominator inter-​group bargaining. Nevertheless the bilateral organisation of constitutional policy over developing a devolution settlement, externalisation of its co-​ordination to non-​UK/​Irish brokers, and a high level of arena differentiation all served to achieve an acceptable level of innovation and coherence in the agreement. Consequently, through a settlement that was the most distinctive of all the UK’s devolution settlements and still very vulnerable to breakdown, politicians even in the most difficult of circumstances were able to plausibly claim that they had managed the territorial integration problem posed by Northern Ireland effectively. Key to this was that they had met the strategic concerns of both nationalist and Unionist political elites to agree peace while keeping their long-​term constitutional goals alive, as well as meeting the goals of UK government to achieve a relative autonomy from the exhausting ratchet of managing divisions in Northern Ireland. Nowhere in the UK though was the challenge of successfully implementing devolution greater.

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7

Politics and Devolution in  Scotland and Wales, 1999–​2007 In returning to focus on Scotland and Wales, this chapter will seek to address how devolution was implemented in the years between 1999 and 2007. It will reconsider the nature of the territorial strains in Scotland and Wales, the power politics of seeking to gain power and guide devolution in each country. It addresses the approaches of the devolved governments and the UK Labour governments in each case to ensure they achieved what they wanted. In Scotland, there was no further major constitutional legislation, although there were some transfers of additional powers. In Wales, there was another Government of Wales Act in 2006. In examining these years, the chapter explores the extent to which the neo-​Bulpittian propositions developed in Chapter 3 hold in the practice of devolution. The expectation is that rational and successful party elites in Scotland and Wales would have sought means to sustain the image of devolution making a difference, evolving, conveying the potential to continue to represent membership space convincingly. Equally, one might expect that the Blair governments, having intervened to shape the framework of devolved government between 1997 and 1999, would withdraw from direct management and seek to enjoy a relative centre autonomy. In Wales, there was an opportunity to ensure the constitutional process behind the 2006 Act was more successful in achieving support across the political class than had been the case with the Government of Wales Act 1998. At the end of the period, in the second set of elections in 2007, the SNP emerged to form a minority government in Scotland; in Wales, Labour’s hold slipped and Plaid Cymru became a coalition partner. Critics have suggested that this reflected the territorial strains that

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the devolution settlements of 1999 had failed to meet; the inevitable frustrations at claims for stronger powers being denied; and proof of the constitutional chickens coming home to roost for a UK centre that had failed to address how to embed devolution properly into a stable UK state. This chapter readdresses the sources of the 2007 emergence to power of those who Bulpitt would have called the genuine peripheral dissidents more in terms of an analysis of the effectiveness or not of political management after 1999. It also reassesses the significance of the 2007 election results in practice to local elite assimilation. To explore these issues, section one examines Scotland, considering: the nature of the territorial strain still evident between 1999 and 2007; the competition over political elite leadership in Scotland; and the territorial approaches pursued both by dominant Scottish and UK political elites in implementing devolution. Section two addresses the same questions for Wales. Section three then addresses the renewed consideration of devolution policy in Wales, the constitutional policy making process adopted, and what resulted in the Government of Wales Act 2006. Finally, section four considers the 2007 devolved elections and their implications for representation and government formation. (For contemporaneous analysis from which this chapter draws see: Bradbury and Mitchell, 2001; Bradbury and Mitchell, 2002; Bradbury and McGarvey, 2003; Mitchell and Bradbury, 2004; Bradbury and Mitchell, 2005; Bradbury, 2006b; Bradbury, 2007).

Territorial politics and devolution in Scotland, 1999–​2007 In the period between the referendum and the first elections to the Scottish Parliament, there was an increase in the proportion of the electorate who identified as Scottish. Surveys recorded a rise from 72 per cent in 1997 to 77 per cent in 1999 in those answering Scottish when forced to choose between Scottish and British. Those who said they were British fell to 17 per cent in 1999 (Cairney and McGarvey, 2013:251). Survey respondents also felt more strongly Scottish, with the proportion who said they were Scottish only rising from 23 to 32 per cent. Civic engagement in the new politics that was expected to surround the Parliament was high (Paterson et al, 2001), and business was ready to engage to enhance the Scottish economy. The sense of the Scottish territorial strain was, if anything, heightened and expressed through expectations on parties ahead of the first elections in 1999. Thereafter, identification with Scottishness remained high until 2003, although feeling Scottish only or more Scottish than British had fallen slightly by 2007 (see Table 7.1).

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Table 7.1: The Moreno question and national identity in Scotland, 1999–​2007 Respondent feels …

1999 (%)

2003 (%)

2007 (%)

Scottish not British

32

31

27

More Scottish than British

35

34

30

Equally Scottish and British

22

22

28

More British than Scottish

3

4

5

British not Scottish

4

4

6

None of these

4

5

4

Source: National Centre for Social Research, Scottish Election Surveys

As the principal architect of devolution, the Labour Party was in prime position to win the first elections and have a chance to meet those expectations. These prospects were enhanced by Donald Dewar’s decision to stand for the leadership of the party in the Scottish Parliament, which was successful. Nevertheless, the party still faced problems in demonstrating its autonomy from the British party. The adoption of the title, Scottish Labour Party, in 1994 had not been accompanied by any constitutional reorganisation of the party since. This was underlined in 1998, when the Scottish party was obliged to adopt the brand of Scottish New Labour. Tensions were most crystallised in the candidate selection process ahead of the 1999 elections. It was widely perceived that the Scottish Labour executive, under strong influence from the British party leadership, blocked the endorsement of Left or nationalist leaning candidates, such as former MP Denis Canavan, for the approved candidate list, thereby ensuring that constituency selections were limited to more moderate candidates (Bradbury et al, 2000). It was also apparent that there was no autonomous Scottish Labour process of manifesto development and that the Scottish Labour executive, which was dominated by party loyalists, endorsed a manifesto for the 1999 elections which represented continuity with British Labour policy in the Scottish Office since 1997. This meant the manifesto by and large echoed New Labour priorities for government across the UK as a whole. The main challenge came from the SNP. Indeed, the surge in optimism surrounding the Parliament actually led to a growth in support for independence during 1998, with opinion polls reporting a range of 48–​56 per cent support for a ‘yes’ vote on independence (Cairney and McGarvey, 2013:254). Consequently, there was an opportunity even in this first election for the SNP to seize the moment. Alex

175

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

Salmond, the SNP leader, offered a relatively radical message, including a manifesto commitment to raise income tax over British levels by 1p in the £, thus reversing the decision by the Blair government to reduce the basic rate of income tax by 1p. This restoration of a proposed tax cut became known as a ‘Penny for Scotland’. The SNP promised to introduce a referendum on independence, but they insisted it was not a first priority and that it would not be held until towards the end of the Parliament’s first term. The anxieties of the British Labour leadership were evident in a campaign highlighting the separatist threat posed by the SNP (Torrance, 2010:178–​80). Overall though, Labour was still seen as the key pro-​devolution party and the authority of Donald Dewar as Labour’s leader proved a significant factor in squeezing support for the SNP (Davidson, 2005). Labour’s vote in 1999 was down on what they had achieved in the 1997 general election, but it was consistent with the general level of recent Labour performance in Scotland. The SNP made significant gains as a result of polling 5–​6 per cent more than in the 1997 British general election. Nevertheless, there were recriminations that they had over-​ pitched in the election for too radical a use of policy autonomy. Labour emerged as the largest party, albeit without a majority (see Table 7.2). This result led to the outcome of a Labour–​Liberal Democrat coalition, with Donald Dewar, the Labour leader as First Minister, and Jim Wallace, the Liberal Democrat Leader as deputy first minister (Bradbury et  al, 2000). This fulfilled Labour’s expectations that the AMS would deliver coalition government while blocking the SNP. By and large, the coalition proved to be stable between 1999 Table 7.2: Results of the 1999 Scottish Parliament elections Constituency vote share (%)

Constituency seats

List vote share (%)

List seats

Labour

38.8

53

33.6

3

56

SNP

28.7

7

27.3

28

35

Conservative

15.6

0

15.4

18

18

Liberal Democrat

14.2

12

12.4

5

17

Greens

0

0

3.6

1

1

Others

2.7

1

7.7

1

2

Source: Accessed on 14 November 2020 at www.parliament.scot/visitandlearn/ Education/16288.aspx

176

Total seats

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

and 2003 and provided competent government, though with little claim to distinctiveness. The most marked departure from UK policy was to abolish tuition fees for university students to be replaced by student payment into a graduate endowment fund. Otherwise, between 1999 and 2001 the administration was increasingly criticised within the Scottish media for largely following a policy agenda set by the Labour government in London (Bradbury and Mitchell, 2001:260–2; Bradbury and Mitchell, 2002:301–2). One cannot know how Dewar may have responded to this because sadly, following illness in summer 2000, he died in October. It did, nevertheless, set the tone for the political ratchet placed on the Labour leadership thereafter to meet demands for more obvious gains from devolution. Following Dewar’s death Labour were beset by problems of leadership succession and all too apparent evidence of central interference from Labour at the UK level. In 2000, Henry McLeish, formerly the enterprise minister, was elected as Scottish Labour leader. McLeish, like Dewar, had also been a Westminster MP, and significantly he had been backed by Gordon Brown, but he set about trying to mark out a distinctive Scottish agenda in two ways. First, he attempted symbolic Scottish branding by letting it be known in January 2001 that he intended to rename the Scottish Executive (the terminology of the Scotland Act 1998) the Scottish Government. Between 2000 and 2001 he flew a number of policy kites that suggested Scottish Labour might wish to do things differently from the UK New Labour government. These included support for the Sutherland Commission’s recommendations on free care for older people and a different approach to the salaries of teachers and NHS staff. He had scant success. Labour at the UK level briefed against the move to adopt the title Scottish Government, the proposal was never publicly made by McLeish and was dropped. The costing of McLeish’s policy ideas was also questioned. In 2001, Alistair Darling, the UK secretary of state for Work and Pensions, opposed the necessary additional UK funding of free care for older people in Scotland. McLeish’s attempt at marking out a post-​devolution Labour approach then came to an abrupt end, as media coverage emerged over the sub-​letting of accommodation he had claimed expenses on while he had been an MP, and in late 2001 he felt obliged to resign (Bradbury and Mitchell, 2002:300–2). Subsequently, he was critical of how Labour failed in these years to adapt to devolution in marking out its own authentic Scottish vision, distinct from British party interference (Brown and McLeish, 2007). Labour’s second leadership election was expected to produce a close contest between Wendy Alexander, again backed by Gordon Brown,

177

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

and the previous loser, Jack McConnell. But Alexander dropped out of the contest and ultimately McConnell won the leadership without challenge. McConnell was seen as more a creature of the pro-​ devolution Scottish Labour Party, not a former MP, definitely not on the unionist wing of the party. From 2001, then, his leadership marked a second chance to try and mark out an authentic pro-​devolution Scottish strategy of Labour leadership. In 2002, he identified his five priority areas as health, education, crime, transport and jobs. The Executive carried through free personal care for older people, stated a clear preference for state delivery of public services over private delivery, and made commitments over teachers’ and NHS staff pay. This policy distinctiveness, though, was compromised by a pragmatic position in practice over private finance and public–private partnerships (PPPs). Although the Scottish Executive, used it less than the UK government, they still did do so in a number of ways; they simply ensured a contractual guarantee from private providers that the pay and conditions of transferred public sector workers would not be adversely affected. Beyond this, the influence of the New Labour policy agenda was exemplified by a focus on the problems of youth anti-​social behaviour and the use of similar measures to those adopted by the UK government (Bradbury and McGarvey, 2003:220–2). Most importantly perhaps, McConnell did not highlight what policy distinctiveness his administration did assert from a New Labour agenda; rather, his rhetoric was marked by a non-​ideological technocratic interest in delivery. He echoed the slogan of the then EU Commission President, Jacques Santer, to ‘do less better’ (Davidson, 2005:188). McConnell was also perceived as largely a machine politician, not particularly committed to collaborative new politics and without the same authority as Dewar. The Parliament repealed the ban on the promotion of homosexuality in schools, but McConnell was one of several ministers who argued against (Mitchell and Bradbury, 2004:332). Despite the Labour–​Liberal Democrat majority, the Parliament voted against executive policies on the smacking of children under three and the closure of Peterhead prison. McConnell then had a running battle with the Liberal Democrats over electoral reform for local government. While he endorsed it as a necessary pre-​condition of continuing coalition after the upcoming election, it was fairly clear that he personally opposed it. Overall, while the coalition established competent devolved governance, it did not provide a bold vision for Scotland. It was criticised both by the business community for a lack of focus on the long-​term future of the economy and by the Greens, Scottish Socialists and the

178

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

Labour Left for the lack of a radical policy agenda. In this context, there remained political opportunities for the SNP. However, Alex Salmond appeared to find it difficult to make the transition from his campaigning role in Westminster politics and stood down as leader in 2000. He returned to Westminster as an MP in 2001 and John Swinney was elected SNP leader. Swinney’s focus thereafter was to try and position the SNP as a potential responsible party of government. Nevertheless, there continued to be divisions between so-​called gradualists and fundamentalists over what priority to place on independence, and the SNP made no decisive move in the polls (Torrance, 2010:209–​29). Going in to the 2003 elections, Labour and the Liberal Democrats had safety-​first strategies and the SNP a toned-​down policy platform. By comparison, the smaller parties stood out for their representation of more radical visions which could tap into frustrations among some voters about the lack of progress on the expectations of the Parliament in 1999. The result was that in the 2003 election Labour suffered reverses, but not catastrophically so, meaning that as the Liberal Democrats retained the same number of seats as in 1999, there was still the basis for a Labour–​Liberal Democrat majority. The SNP also suffered reverses and, while they remained the largest opposition party, the protest votes got sprayed around. The result was not simply a continued Labour–​ Liberal Democrat coalition with a smaller joint majority but also a ‘rainbow parliament’, with substantial increases in representation for Greens, Scottish Socialists and Independents, as the carriers of dissent at the perceived lack of achievement under devolution (see Table 7.3). Table 7.3: Results of the 2003 Scottish Parliament elections Constituency Constituency List vote List vote share seats share seats (%) (%)

Total seats

Labour

34.6

46

29.6

4

50

SNP

23.8

9

21.6

18

27

Conservative

16.6

3

15.5

15

18

Liberal Democrat

15.4

13

11.6

4

17

Greens

0.0

0

6.5

7

7

Scottish Socialist

6.2

0

6.5

6

6

Independent/​ others

3.4

2

8.7

2

4

Source: Accessed on 14 November 2020 at www.parliament.scot/visitandlearn/ Education/16288.aspx

179

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

The outcome of the elections again fulfilled the logic of the pro-​ devolution elite collaboration prepared in the SCC –​that the electoral system, in having a high proportion of list seats, should guarantee avoiding an SNP majority –​and Labour again accepted the Liberal Democrats as a governing partner. The coalition was on shakier grounds, though, as it now had a working majority of only six. Many observers considered the verdict of the election to be that devolution had yet to make a discernible difference and that the parties both in government and in opposition needed to improve their performance (Denver, 2003; Jeffery, 2004). Between 2003 and 2007, however, Scottish Labour continued to struggle in asserting a coherent political vision for Scotland and/​or a distinctive policy agenda. Again the power to vary income tax was not used, and high profile innovations resulted from bargains made with the Liberal Democrats, notably on free care for older people and the introduction of STV for local elections. There was a social democratic hue to the Executive’s policy, but this resulted mainly from not introducing some of the more controversial UK New Labour initiatives, such as foundation hospitals, selective schools and beacon councils. Even so, the Executive used private finance and PPPs on a significant scale in new school and hospital building. The Executive also weakened its commitment to public council housing, encouraging local authorities to consider large-​scale voluntary transfer of housing from council ownership to housing associations (McGarvey, 2008). Overall, as Keating (2010:258–​59) concluded: ‘the Scottish executive was content to follow mostly sensible policies but without firing the imagination or constructing its own narrative to make sense of what it was doing. This contrasts with other stateless nations and regions, where dynamic leadership is able to mobilise social forces around … a process of nation-​or region-​building’. It was on Jack McConnell’s watch also that the long, drawn-​out affair of the building of the new Scottish Parliament took place, the cost rising from an initial budget of £40  million to £431 million (Bradbury and Mitchell, 2005:290). In addition, a series of scandals in the party, including at the local authority level, suggested a sense of decay in Labour as Scotland’s party of government. The cumulative impact of deficiencies in governing style, policy innovation and legislative leadership meant Labour went from frustrating those who wanted to see a distinctive Scottish governing vision and policy agenda to disappointing them. Over the whole period 1999–​2007, the Labour–​Liberal Democrat Executive sponsored minor constitutional amendments through orders in council and statutory instruments under section 63 of the Scotland Act 1998 (see Table 7.4). The biggest transfers were of the strategic

180

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

Table 7.4: Amendments to reserved powers under the Scotland Act 1998, 1999–​2007 Reserved powers area

Transfers to Scottish Parliament

Home affairs

National security (1999 and 2005); elections (2004)

Trade and industry

Research councils (2004)

Transport

Railways (2002 and 2005)

Employment

Health and safety (2005)

Miscellaneous

Equal opportunities (2006)

rail authority powers and powers over the service franchise and track. The political significance of these transfers, though, was marginal and one could not say that McConnell’s administration pushed at the boundaries of the 1998 settlement. The main constitutional initiative actually came from the UK government, when Alistair Darling, by now the UK secretary of state for Scotland, established the Arbuthnott Commission to review the Scottish Parliament electoral system in 2004. Ostensibly this was precipitated by the fact that changes in UK parliamentary boundaries in 2004 reduced the number of MPs and left the UK–​Scottish constituency boundaries non-​coterminous (part of the adaptation of the UK system of government to devolution which will be discussed in Chapter 10), and by the fact that Scotland now had four different electoral systems for different levels of government. But there were suspicions that it was a centre response to concern over the success of the minority parties in 2003. There was debate about a move to STV but, ultimately, the report of the Arbuthnott Commission (2006) in the main defended the existing electoral system, and there was no change. Overall, during the second term of the Labour–​Liberal Democrat coalition it became apparent that the governing code that was implicitly guiding them was an intergovernmentalist one. This assumed the constitutional status quo, did not celebrate policy divergence, or seek further powers. It sought simply to govern competently within the powers they had, and assert Scottish interests regarding the centre in non-​politicised ways. It did not consciously flag the ways in which devolution was making a difference or how it might dynamically develop. This evidently did not chime with public expectations. Levels of support for a devolved parliament or independence remained consistent, with a majority clearly in favour of a devolved Parliament (see Table 7.5). Nevertheless, public attitudes indicated some

181

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

Table 7.5: Constitutional preferences in Scotland, 1999–​2007 Respondent supports

1999 (%)

2003 (%)

2007 (%)

Independence

27

26

24

Devolution

59

56

62

No Parliament

10

13

9

4

5

5

Don’t know/​no opinion

Source: National Centre for Social Research, Scottish Election Surveys

disappointment that devolution had not made more of a difference (see Bromley et al, 2006). The polls indicated support for more fiscal autonomy to enhance devolution. In the mid-​2000s, the SNP were also better equipped to respond to some of the pent-​up frustrations of the electorate over the perceived lack of achievement by the Parliament. This arose initially from Swinney’s resignation as leader in 2004, following his apparent inability to achieve success in political campaigning. The ensuing leadership contest led to Alex Salmond’s return with the rising star, Nicola Sturgeon, as deputy leader. It proved to be a decisive development for the party’s leadership as the party developed a cogent strategy that married a sharper vision of pursuing policy to meet Scottish interests with a focus on the new agenda of constitutional change based on developing the fiscal powers of the parliament. The case for further fiscal autonomy was also made by Liberal Democrat MSPs and also by some Conservatives, who supported fiscal powers on the grounds that it would make the Parliament more financially responsible for its spending decisions if it had to raise the taxes to pay for them. Nevertheless, the SNP were the big winners from the change in the political weather. From early 2006, there was a move in the opinion polls to the SNP and away from Labour that became an established trend through to the election (see Davidson, 2005:236–​46). McConnell and Scottish Labour initially opposed greater fiscal autonomy. However, in the middle of 2005 after Labour had lost seats in Scotland at the UK general election, McConnell announced that it was time after all to reconsider the Parliament’s powers and established a Labour Party review. Meanwhile on St Andrew’s Day in 2005 the SNP, the Scottish Socialists and the Greens joined forces and announced the creation of an independence convention (Bradbury, 2006b:170). From here on, although public opinion did not shift towards support for independence, the pro-​independence arguments made all the political running and Labour was on the back foot on the constitutional question.

182

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

These strategic manoeuvres from 2005 onwards indicated a recognition that heightened expectations after 1999 had not been well met by the essentially steady state intergovernmentalist governing strategy of McConnell’s Labour–​Liberal Democrat administration. It lacked stars, and it had become increasingly evident that the party had been let down by the disinclination of any of the major Scottish Labour politicians who had argued for a Scottish Parliament, other than Dewar, to actually want to serve in it. The dynamism of the mobilisation of support from the pre-​1997 days had been lost. There had also been too much evidence of interference from the Labour leadership in London, which contrasted with the expected retreat from interference after initial intervention. Labour in Scotland appeared too timid to stand up for Scotland in dealings with the UK government; this delegitimised Scottish Labour as the voice of Scotland and made it too obvious that the Labour–​Liberal Democrat coalition was being used, in Bulpitt’s terms, as local elite collaborators. The coalition governments had not done badly, but in a relatively favourable situation, especially given rises in real terms in block grant funding, they had failed to impress. The main story of Scottish devolution in these years was not perceived permissive autonomy or weak intergovernmental relations creating the constitutional space for a weakening of Scotland’s ties to the UK, but simply a lack of cogent political success that provided the political space for the SNP in stealing Labour’s clothes to offer a more dynamic vision of Scotland’s future.

Territorial politics in Wales, 1999–​2007 In the period between the referendum and the first elections to the National Assembly for Wales, evidence from public attitudes surveys appeared to place further pressure on politicians although there was nothing like the heightened expectations seen in Scotland. The most notable survey finding on identity was actually a reduction in those feeling more Welsh than British from 26 per cent (1997) to 19 per cent (1999), and a small 3 per cent rise in those feeling equally Welsh and British (Bradbury and Andrews, 2010:233). Nevertheless, after 1999 there was a slight move towards identification with Welshness (see Table 7.6). What was significant in the 1997–​99 period was the reduction in those opposing devolution outright to 18 per cent in 1999, and a rapid move towards support for more change. While 35 per cent supported the devolution settlement that had been introduced, a further 35 per cent now supported a parliament with law-​making and taxation powers, with 9 per cent supporting independence. Figures indicating

183

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

Table 7.6: The Moreno question and national identity in Wales, 1999–​2007 Respondent feels …

2003 (%)

2007 (%)

Welsh not British

17

21

24

More Welsh than British

19

27

20

Equally Welsh and British

37

29

32

More British than Welsh

8

8

9

14

9

9

5

6

6

British not Welsh None of these

1999 (%)

Source: National Assembly for Wales Election Study, 1999; Wales Life and Times Surveys, 2003 and 2007

Table 7.7: Constitutional preferences in Wales, 1999–​2007 Respondent supports …

1999 (%)

2003 (%)

2007 (%)

Independence

 9

13

12

Parliament with law making and tax powers

35

36

42

Assembly with limited powers

35

25

26

No devolution

18

20

16

Source: National Assembly for Wales Election Study, 1999; Wales Life and Times Surveys, 2003 and 2007

support for an assembly with stronger powers or independence, cumulatively hovering at round 50% of voters, remained at similar levels in surveys between 1999 and 2007 (see Table 7.7). This was not a conclusive shift and the saliency of such attitudes was unclear. But it sustained the need for elites to recognise that that there remained a territorial integration problem that perhaps the Government of Wales Act 1998 had not fully addressed. Approaching the first set of elections Labour remained in prime position here too, having dominated Welsh representation for several decades and delivered devolution. However, three political decisions undermined Labour’s electoral appeal at the 1999 elections (see Jones, 2000a; Jones, 2000b). First, having succeeded Ron Davies as secretary of state for Wales, Alun Michael decided to stand for the position of Labour leader elect in the Assembly. Rhodri Morgan, who had stood against Ron Davies, stood again, and in the ensuing leadership contest Tony Blair supported Michael. This set up a potential dynamic for the British Labour leadership being seen to try and impose a leader on the Welsh party.

184

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

Second, as in Scotland, the British Labour leadership and the Welsh party executive took a close interest in who was approved for the candidates’ list. This was significant not only for determining who would become Labour’s representatives in the Assembly, but also who would become voters in the elected representatives and candidates section of the leadership election electoral college. The exclusion of Tyrone O’Sullivan, the leader of the Tower Colliery miners, from the approved candidates list appeared to suggest leadership aims to exclude Left candidates. The allowance of some loyalist candidates back onto the approved list after appeal appeared to suggest approval of likely voters for Michael (Bradbury et al, 2000). Alun Michael did indeed win the leadership contest, but only as a result of backing by the trade union/​ affiliated society and the elected representative/​candidates sections. As a result, there were strong perceptions of leadership intervention. In the memorable phrase of Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West, Michael was seen as ‘Tony Blair’s poodle’, a far cry from the respected position held by Donald Dewar in Scotland (Flynn, 1999). Following this, the third decision that proved politically significant was to pursue an election campaign in 1999 based on articulating the dangers of nationalism and the need to vote Labour to oppose that. This only served to cement the feeling that Labour Party Wales was being run from London. Perversely, given that Labour had delivered devolution, the party now ran the risk of looking like a party that did not really believe in it. There was also a feeling that the campaign pitch was influenced by the specific need to get Alun Michael elected. Having decided to stand for the Assembly late, he had missed the constituency selections and was able only to find a slot as top of the regional list in Mid and West Wales, the party’s best hope of a regional seat. The contest here was against Plaid Cymru, so an election campaign specifically attacking Plaid was believed to serve his purposes. In practice, all of these decisions played into the hands of Labour’s political opponents. By having a leader perceived as not authentically Welsh, however unfair that was on Michael, and a party strategy and election campaign perceived to be controlled by the British party, the Labour Party did as much as it could to throw away its devolution credentials. Plaid Cymru duly took advantage. Led by a charismatic and competent leader, Dafydd Wigley, Plaid Cymru ran a very effective campaign to broaden their appeal as a party committed to making devolution a success and to promoting job prospects and services. This meant that they sustained their core support while extending into Labour’s heartlands. Accordingly, the result of the first elections in 1999 saw a sharp drop in the Labour vote from that which they

185

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

Table 7.8: Results of the 1999 National Assembly for Wales elections Constituency Constituency Regional vote share seats list vote (%) share (%)

Regional Total list seats seats

Conservative

15.9

 1

16.5

8

 9

Labour

37.6

27

35.5

1

28

Liberal Democrat

13.5

 3

12.5

3

 6

Plaid Cymru

28.4

 9

30.5

8

17

Others

 4.7

 0

 5.1

0

 0

Source: Accessed on 4 October 2020 at https://​business.senedd.wales/​ mgManageElectionResults.aspx

had enjoyed in the 1997 UK general elections, and an equally sharp rise in Plaid Cymru’s vote (see Table 7.8). The unthinkable happened as Labour lost the Rhondda as well as other solid South Wales seats, Llanelli and Islwyn, to Plaid Cymru. Labour was still the largest party with 28 out of 60 seats but failed to get their expected majority, a result Wigley described as an ‘electoral earthquake’ (see Bradbury et al, 2000). A hung Assembly in circumstances where Labour expectations of victory meant there had been no preparations for possible coalition, posed an immediate further challenge to the Assembly. Alun Michael made no overtures for coalition and instead established a minority government. He was helped by the facts that there was no other viable coalition alternative and members of other parties did not wish to bring the Assembly into disrepute by creating deadlock over government formation. Plaid Cymru as the second biggest party group took the critical decision to both vote in Michael as First Secretary and to provide votes to enable the functional working of a Labour executive. In return, Labour backed the election of former Plaid Cymru leader, Dafydd Elis-​Thomas, as the Assembly’s first presiding officer. Even so, Michael’s leadership proved to be problematic in two regards. First, it was apparent that Michael had no interest in further devolution and his style of leadership cut across the politics of inclusiveness that Ron Davies had sought to bolt on to Labour’s limited devolution settlement to gain buy-​in from other parties. Michael’s determination to influence the portfolios of all his cabinet secretaries and his style in the Assembly earned him critiques that he was trying to continue

186

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

the secretary of state approach to governing Wales (Rawlings, 2003b). Second, his statements and cabinet appointments largely suggested a determination to sustain a New Labour influenced approach to governance and policy. The first months of the Assembly, then, were an unhappy period. Michael’s main claim was that because of his strong relationships with the UK Labour government he could deliver benefits for Wales. A key test was the gaining of matched funding from the UK Treasury to EU structural funds, which was a condition for the Assembly being able to access them. However, while Michael insisted he could guarantee match funding, the Treasury, committed to the first of Gordon Brown’s comprehensive spending reviews, delayed in giving such a guarantee. This proved crucial to sealing Michael’s fate. In early 2000, opposition AMs tabled a vote of no confidence in Michael. When the vote was held, Elis-​Thomas as presiding officer, permitted the motion, and in an Assembly session which unfolded somewhat unclearly, opposition AMs united in seeking Michael’s departure, and were joined by some Labour AMs who were not prepared to support him in a motion of no confidence or a motion for reappointment as First Secretary (see Bradbury and Mitchell, 2001:263–4; Osmond, 2000). It was a coup by any other name; one which resulted in Michael’s fall as First Secretary and fairly rapid resignation as an AM to return to Westminster, where he was still an MP. The Welsh Labour executive swiftly responded by appointing Rhodri Morgan as Welsh Labour leader, his legitimacy as leader gained from the individual member vote in the contest against Michael, but otherwise not formally elected. Nevertheless, in February 2000, Morgan was supported in the Assembly vote to become First Secretary, Elis-​Thomas dubbing the day the ‘first real day of devolution’ (Bradbury, 2008b:50). In hindsight, one can see that Michael’s approach sought to play down the idea that there was any territorial strain in Wales’ relationship with the UK that needed to be addressed; to assert devolution more as an event than a process; and to turn his back on Davies’ initiatives to build in more legitimacy to the development of devolution. He offered simply  –​and in even starker terms than the approach followed by Jack McConnell in Scotland –​an intergovernmentalist approach seeking to promote Wales’ interests within an assumed stable territorial dispensation. He saw no need to cultivate support for further development of devolution on the basis of offering distinctive approaches to improve Welsh governance, much less pursue a politics of representing identity politics. His openly collaborative intergovernmentalist approach appeared to be complemented by

187

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

a centre Labour Party approach marked by the assertion of centre authority to have the Welsh leader they wanted, the representatives they wanted, and a policy agenda made in the New Labour image. This was the very opposite of the political duality expected on the advent of devolution that might have seen the British leadership retreat from direct interference. Most of the rest of the Assembly, including many in Labour, did not view this favourably. The fact that Michael in any case could not deliver benefits from his intergovernmental lobbying for matched funding for EU structural funds exposed the flaws in assuming the likelihood of support from UK central government. He had to go, and Labour in Wales and at the centre had to reconsider their approaches. The period between early 2000 and the next elections in 2003 became one in which Labour under Rhodri Morgan, with the changed title of First Minister, stabilised the Assembly’s position and showed the value of devolution. In the same period the UK Labour Government moved back to an approach more in accord with indirect rule and centre autonomy assumptions, irrespective of how much of what Morgan sought to do they disagreed with. There were two dimensions to Morgan’s role. First, he stabilised devolved governance by agreeing a coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats in October 2000. The partnership agreement accepted two Liberal Democrat commitments to free school milk and free NHS prescriptions for people under 25 or retired. Crucially, a further Liberal Democrat request to establish a commission to review the devolution settlement was also agreed (Bradbury, 2000; Osmond, 2001). The partnership government endured until the 2003 Assembly elections. On such bases Morgan re-​established Labour as a pro-​devolution party, one prepared also to open up constitutional policy for revising the 1998 Act to encompass the more inclusive process not possible before 1997 so as to legitimise whatever resulted from such revision. Second, with respect to politics, Rhodri Morgan also moved to underline the functional purpose of devolution to defend perceived Welsh preferences for social democracy against the neoliberal preferences of the UK centre. This was done in a variety of ways. First, symbolically Morgan renamed the party in Wales as Welsh Labour. Second, in a famous speech at Swansea University in 2002, he coined the phrase ‘clear red water’ to suggest the ideological distance between Welsh Labour and New Labour (Morgan, 2002). This emphasised Welsh Labour’s preference for state approaches to public service provision as opposed to the use of the private sector, and the values of community, mutuality and equality of outcome as opposed to simply

188

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

equality of opportunity. Third, in key policy areas between 2000 and 2003, Morgan’s cabinet initiated strategies that defended traditional social democratic approaches. This included ruling out a role for the private sector in the NHS, and a commitment to universal state education based on the local comprehensive school. Welsh Labour opposed the competition model for education pursued by the UK government, abolishing school league tables, standard attainment tests (SATs), and initiatives such as local management of schools and city academies (Bradbury, 2008b). There were also crucial revisions of party procedure, with the Labour National Executive Committee (NEC) devolving to the Welsh party powers to determine its own candidate and leadership selection procedures, power over its own policy-​making process in respect of conferred powers through Welsh party policy forums, and the right to set its own manifesto. As Rhodri Morgan recorded in his memoirs, Tony Blair acknowledged ‘his biggest mistake was blocking me from becoming Welsh Labour leader’ (Morgan, 2017:239), and after Morgan did rise to that position ‘I couldn’t really fault Blair’s conduct in helping make devolution work during the years I was First Minister’ (Morgan, 2017:313) After the fall of Alun Michael, and in contrast to Gordon Brown’s perceived meddling in the politics of the Scottish Labour Party and disapproving responses to attempts to assert Scottish autonomy, Blair’s government gave Morgan the room to define the Welsh Labour brand (Bradbury, 2006c:225–​9). In such ways, then, did Morgan recognise explicitly the continued politics of territorial strain. In contrast to Michael’s approach, Morgan adopted commitments to coalition politics, further constitutional change and the need for policy distinctiveness to meet functional needs. Morgan did not, however, identify what he did closely with Ron Davies’ former approach. He recognised that for Davies ‘one of the deeper meanings’ of a process not an event ‘was that political parties would break up and reform in different coalitions … to form a Red Dragon/​Red flag phalanx to push Wales’ ship of state along’ (Morgan, 2017:198–​9). Morgan’s project was more straightforwardly based around safeguarding the Assembly, maintaining Labour power and economically modernising Wales. Nevertheless, in centre–​periphery relations terms, Morgan’s approach offered a renewed version of an instrumentalist regionalist code and a spikier version of local elite collaboration, but in ways which ultimately the centre could tolerate. For Labour, Wales provided a sharp lesson in the problems to be encountered if government too early assumed territorial integration

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Table 7.9: Results of the 2003 National Assembly for Wales elections Constituency Constituency Regional vote share seats list vote (%) share (%)

Regional Total list seats seats

Conservative

19.9

 1

19.2

10

11

Labour

40.0

30

36.6

 0

30

Liberal Democrat

14.1

 3

12.7

 3

 6

Plaid Cymru

21.2

 5

19.7

 7

12

Others

 4.8

 1

11.8

 0

 1

Source: Accessed on 4 October at https://​business.senedd.wales/​ mgManageElectionResults.aspx

problems were solved. It led to a case of rapid learning and sharp reassertion of the necessity of authentic self-​rule. Morgan’s strategy bore electoral fruit in the 2003 National Assembly elections (see Table 7.9). At the same time that Labour’s vote went down in Scotland, Labour’s constituency vote in Wales increased by 2.3 per cent. Labour’s clearer pro-​devolution, pro-​Welsh position squeezed Plaid Cymru’s pitch to stand up for Wales and Labour won back all the seats in South Wales lost to Plaid Cymru in 1999. They were helped, though, by the fact that Plaid Cymru did not compete as effectively as in 1999. Key was the change in leadership as, following illness, Wigley stepped down as leader to be succeeded by Ieuan Wyn Jones. Wyn Jones was strongly criticised in the party for lacking personal charisma and clarity over what the party stood for. Labour improved its position marginally but crucially to take 30 of the 60 seats. With Elis-​Thomas continuing as presiding officer, Labour achieved a technical majority of one and continued in government (Wyn Jones and Scully, 2003). The 2003 elections cemented Rhodri Morgan’s authority as the First minister who had bedded the Assembly down. Thereafter with favourable public finance settlements and what Cole (2006:176) called the ‘permissive environment’ from UK government, he had an opportunity to lay down a strong record of government. That the business of managing territorial politics was a ratchet that didn’t go away, though, remained apparent to Morgan’s government throughout its second term. First, public attitudes showed increasing support for devolution, and some creeping up of support for independence. There was a preference for further constitutional reform (see Table  7.7). Nevertheless, there was scepticism even among the keenest of

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Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

supporters of how engaged the electorate were with the Assembly. The former chair of the Yes for Wales campaign, Professor Kevin Morgan, described the Assembly as ‘over-​worked, under-​resourced and unloved’, and greeted with much public apathy (Morgan, 2001). Second, in 2005, local candidate selection problems in Blaenau Gwent led to disaffection among party members against perceived party centralism and ultimately the former Labour AM’s wife, Trish Law, was elected as an Independent. The revolt in Blaenau Gwent deprived Morgan of his Assembly majority, and threatened worse as it inspired a broader People’s Voice movement across the Valleys with candidates in local elections. In the mid-​2000s, Labour also started to experience the first concerted critiques of their performance in office. In the run up to the 2005 UK general election, this focused on criticism of NHS performance on waiting lists and waiting times in Wales. Morgan replaced his long-​serving health minister, Jane Hutt, and a ‘second offer’ policy by which patients could be treated in another NHS hospital away from their immediate home was introduced in an effort to reduce waiting times and lists. During the 2005–​06 Assembly session, the opposition parties united in providing alternative proposals for the budget, suggesting the nascent rainbow coalition that the Conservative leader, Nick Bourne, promoted as an alternative to Labour. There was a growing sense of pressure on Welsh Labour to not simply adopt the most plausible territorial strategy but also perform well in it (Bradbury, 2008b). In Wales as in Scotland, Labour was on the back foot in seeking to continue to lead devolved government.

Constitutional policy and the Government of Wales Act 2006 Welsh Labour came under pressure specifically on the constitutional question as soon as the early 2000s. While Rhodri Morgan was strongly in favour of devolution, it is not clear from his memoirs that left to himself he would have actually reopened the issue so soon. He found in the policy areas that they were responsible for that secondary legislative powers were ‘pretty useable’. Whatever his government wished to do, with the help of lawyers ‘if you looked hard enough you could usually find a way of doing what you wanted to do’ (Morgan, 2017:244). However, both the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru wished to improve on the Government of Wales Act 1998, and the setting up of a commission to review the structure, powers and electoral system of the Assembly was made part of the Liberal Democrats’ terms for

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CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

entering into the 2000 partnership agreement. Labour had to accept, and a commission, chaired by the Labour peer, Lord Richard, was duly established in 2002. Labour still had its divisions over devolution, and while the Conservatives had come to accept devolution, they remained somewhat detached on the issue. The process was not driven by identity politics per se, but by arguments for clearing up the perceived weaknesses of the 1998 settlement, helping the Assembly to have both clearer and more powers. Davies’ legacy of the idea of Welsh devolution as a process not an event therefore quickly won out, justified more on the basis of argument at an elite level than any urgent popular demand. By reconsidering Welsh devolution on this basis the approach to constitutional policy continued to be bilateral, focusing purely on what was considered to work for Wales in isolation from debates in the rest of the UK. By 2002, Peter Hain had become the Labour secretary of state for Wales. A progressive supportive of devolution, his approach was to respect the Richard Commission as the focus for debate. The Blair government as a whole was watchful of what was produced but did not lay down pointers or take a proactive role in defining the detail of change. This bilateralism may be said to be a limiting factor on arriving at an effective set of proposals. Nevertheless, the Richard Commission met many of the requirements of effective constitutional policy making. First, it was much more clearly inclusive, amounting to a convention type process of constitutional deliberation, composed of nominees of each of the parties as well as members appointed after open advertisement under Nolan principles. It held a wide range of evidence-​taking sessions and public consultations and worked for two years before its report was published in 2004, thus credibly claiming to have been as accessible as possible to any individual or organisation that sought to have an input into its work. Second, the Commission achieved high external arena differentiation from being constrained by any other policy considerations, and considered principles and applications sequentially. Its provision for inclusiveness and discursive arguing was in sharp contrast to the closed Labour party-​based policy process that led to the 1998 proposals. Laura McAllister, a member of the Commission, claimed it was Wales’ belated version of the SCC (McAllister, 2004; McAllister, 2005a; McAllister, 2005b). The Richard Commission’s report (Richard, 2004)  was certainly well received among pro-​devolution thinkers, but it also gained wider respect as a well-​evidenced and well-​written analysis and set of recommendations (Osmond, 2005). The report comprised proposals on three principal issues. First, and least controversially, the report built on the work of an internal review of Assembly procedure which had

192

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

recommended in February 2002 that the Assembly should operate on the basis of the Welsh Assembly Government, as it would be termed, with the National Assembly for Wales being entirely separate (National Assembly for Wales, 2002). There had been a cross-​party consensus here and in March 2002 this recommendation was implemented. It meant that the hybrid arrangements in which cabinet secretaries, now retermed ministers, would also be members of subject committees came to an end. Committees henceforth had a clear separate scrutiny role. The Richard Commission endorsed this change, recommending a statutory end to the legal underpinning of devolution being to the Assembly as a corporate body. Instead devolution of powers should be to the First Minister and appointed cabinet ministers. The second set of recommendation covered the powers of the Assembly. The report argued that the Assembly had used its powers well so far and that there was a case for extending them, in the process making them clearer. Extension should develop in two stages; first, focusing on expanding the Assembly’s secondary legislative powers; and second, moving towards the Assembly receiving primary legislative powers in the areas for which it had conferred responsibility. It was envisaged that the completion of the first stage would be immediate and the second stage by between 2010 and 2013. It was left open as to whether the move towards primary powers would need a referendum. The report discussed the pros and cons of fiscal powers but decided against a recommendation at this point. The third focus was the electoral system. The existing AMS was achieving reasonably proportional results, but the Richard Commission was persuaded by evidence that highlighted the conflictual relations between constituency and regional list members. This was rooted in perceptions by some constituency members that list members were second-​class members, and some animosity also existed between them over competition in local representation. The Commission also decided that there needed to be an increase in the number of AMs, especially if the Assembly was going to receive more powers. Accordingly, the Commission recommended a change to an STV system and an increase in the number of members to 80, the figure originally identified by the Labour policy commission in the mid-​1990s. While the Richard Commission report (2004) was generally well received as a serious set of proposals, it soon became the subject of political battles. On the one hand, there was an attempt to bid up the meaning of the report. A new pressure group, Tomorrow’s Wales along with Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats, welcomed all elements of the report and pressed for rapid implementation. They questioned the

193

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

need for a further referendum, seeing the 1997 referendum as sufficient legitimation of the principle. On the other hand, figures within the Labour Party bid the report down. There was widespread acceptance of the first set of recommendations relating to the legal change of the focus of devolution. Nevertheless, there was united Labour hostility to a fundamental change in the electoral system (Bradbury, 2008b: 60–1). Rhodri Morgan concluded anyway that the public would not accept a move to 80 members and ‘implementing the recommendation would screw up any chance of getting the other conclusions on law making powers through’ (Morgan, 2017:245). On powers Labour was split. The most sceptical position was voiced by several Welsh Labour MPs who did not see a strong case for more powers; among these some were ministers in the Blair government, including Paul Murphy, Don Touhig, Kim Howells, David Hanson and Alun Michael. Ted Rowlands, the Labour nominee on the Richard Commission, tabled minority dissent to say that, while he did not disagree with the arguments of the report, he did not see good reason for its immediate implementation. On the other hand, Rhodri Morgan and the vast majority of Labour AMs were in favour of more powers (see Osmond, 2005; Bradbury, 2008b). As legislation resulting from the Richard report would have to be taken forward at Westminster, the brokering of positions fell to Labour’s secretary of state in Wales, Peter Hain. Hain’s diaries reveal that he was mindful of the need to have a position going into the 2005 general election. Accordingly, he led a series of consultations during the summer of 2004 within the Welsh party to try and get agreement. These established relatively easy agreement over accepting the corporate body proposals and rejecting electoral reform, but the powers issue required a lot of discussion. Eventually, Hain arrived at ‘a position I thought was deliverable, which Rhodri would accept and which had required a lot of careful negotiation and detailed management with the trade unions, the National Executive of Welsh Labour and the Joint Policy Commission’ (Ward, 2015: 22 July 2004). This was outlined in a Labour policy paper, Better Governance for Wales, which was constructed around the compromise premise that it was not politically defendable to do nothing in response to the Richard report on powers, but that it was best to pursue a gradual approach to gain unity. The Labour policy paper made three principal proposals relating to powers. First, after the 2005 general election both Houses of Parliament would vote that UK Parliament primary legislation should henceforth be drafted in a permissive manner to give maximum discretion as it related to Wales. This would bring consistency and

194

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

clarity to the Assembly’s secondary legislative powers in the areas for which it was responsible under any new primary legislation passed at Westminster. Second, in moving towards the second stage of providing the Assembly with primary powers, there should be an interim mechanism for enabling the Assembly to receive and act upon quasi-​primary powers where there was an agreed need between the Assembly and Parliament. Finally, when the time was deemed right there should be a referendum on whether the Assembly should as of right have primary legislative powers in the areas where it had been given secondary powers only in 1998 (Ward, 2015:22 July 2004). Hain then had to get agreement in the Blair government as well. He prepared the ground by consulting Lord Falconer, Derry Irvine’s successor as chair of the UK Cabinet Policy Devolution Committee, and courting support from cabinet ministers such as Paul Murphy and David Blunkett. A  key issue in gaining support was Hain’s reassurance that the limits of devolution in terms of areas of policy set by the 1998 Act would remain. The Richard report had thrown up pressure for devolution to extend to criminal justice, but Hain feared a cabinet backlash against what would be perceived as a big jump in powers to perceived equivalence with Scotland, as well as a collapse in support from among Welsh Labour MPs if they feared the implication of this would be a reduction in the number of Welsh MPs along similar lines to Scotland. Even so, negotiating the centre was not straightforward. At both the UK Cabinet Policy Devolution Committee and a subsequent full cabinet meeting in July 2004, Hain’s paper was strongly opposed by John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, who ‘was obsessed with the fact that the English regions had got an inferior settlement’, and opposed what he saw as a large extension of the Welsh devolution settlement. Hain ultimately reassured the cabinet that the proposals focused simply on ‘giving the Assembly more power to carry out its existing functions’ by going gradually from secondary to primary legislative powers in the policy areas specified by the 1998 Act, and that this would not happen without a referendum. Hain saw Blair as indifferent. ‘He didn’t mind what was happening in Wales, frankly. He had bigger things on his mind, but he didn’t want a row.’ At a crucial juncture Blair was supportive, with Hain reporting him as saying ‘that he had initially been sceptical about devolution before it had been implemented but now he had seen how it had lanced the boil of nationalism, he was much more supportive’ (Ward, 2015: 22 July 2004). Hain subsequently also got support for the draft Better Governance for Wales Paper at the Welsh Labour devolution conference in September

195

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

2004. Rhodri Morgan recalled that in the construction of this paper, and its development into the 2005 White Paper of the same name, the two of them worked together. ‘It was written by Peter Hain and me, almost like those parlour games where each individual in a pair writes one word and then passes the baton to the other person for the next word.’ (Morgan, 2017:265). Nevertheless, Hain recalls that they differed sharply over the nature of the interim mechanism for moving towards the Assembly having primary powers. Morgan favoured an approach which allowed the Assembly to amend previous primary legislation through its secondary powers. Hain believed that ‘to my mind, this amounted to primary legislative powers by the back door’ (Ward, 2015: 22 July 2004) and that Morgan promoted the idea ‘because he was terrified about the idea of a referendum on full law-​making powers’ (Ward, 2015: 11 December 2004, and January 2005). This intention was also fairly transparent to sceptical Welsh Labour MPs. Instead, Hain’s officials at the (renamed) Wales Office came up with a mechanism for providing what were still technically new secondary powers but under primary acts at Westminster that were simply enabling. This involved an approach by which the Assembly could apply to Westminster for the granting of a new secondary power to act on a specific issue. After due parliamentary scrutiny, Parliament could pass an affirmative resolution vote and, in making a primary order in council through the Privy Council, enable the Assembly to act under this order. Seeing as there was no new substantive Westminster primary law involved, what the Assembly then passed under the order in council amounted to a quasi-​primary law. It offended Morgan to have to go cap in hand to Westminster every time they wanted to do something not currently allowed for by the Assembly’s powers, but for Hain it enabled the Assembly to develop its powers in a quasi-​primary manner, while also allowing Westminster to police the limits of the powers they wished to grant. Hain also insisted that any move to the overall principle of primary powers would need a further referendum. Hain marshalled the support of the devo-​sceptic Welsh Labour ministers, and ultimately Morgan agreed to Hain’s approach in January 2005 (Ward, 2015: 11 December 2004 and January 2005). Hain concluded that ‘we had managed to secure a position where there was a “clear route map” as I described it, towards full legislative powers, but only after a referendum, and only by a careful, stage-​by-​ stage building of consensus along the way’. His view was that the Assembly was still in its early days and public support could not be taken for granted. ‘We really had to tread on eggshells in order to make progress’ (Ward, 2015: 11 September 2004). Hain subsequently got

196

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

what he called his ‘step by step process’ to primary powers signed off by the UK Cabinet Policy Devolution Committee in March 2005, subject to two important revisions. Westminster would not be compelled to accept Assembly requests for the transfer via orders in council of powers through the interim mechanism, and a move to hold a referendum on primary powers would require a two thirds Assembly majority as well as Westminster support (Ward, 2015:24 March 2005). The resulting White Paper, also called Better Governance for Wales, included the legal status recommendations, the agreed approach to the development of powers and, in direct contradiction to the Richard report, a proposal to retain the 60 member Assembly, elected by AMS but without dual candidacy (Wales Office, 2005). Following the 2005 general election, the new Government of Wales bill to put these proposals into effect still received some opposition at the centre. In cabinet on 12 May 2005, when it was included in a draft Queen’s speech, Hain had to defend it against the foreign secretary Jack Straw’s frustration at giving the Assembly stronger powers when Straw perceived its performance in managing the NHS as poor (Ward, 2015: 12 May 2005). In November 2005, Geoff Hoon, leader of the House of Commons, tried to drop it from the parliamentary timetable for 2005–​06 to provide space for emergency counterterrorism and council tax legislation. Hain recalls that ‘this would have been absolutely catastrophic, and probably cause Rhodri’s fragile position in the National Assembly to collapse and his government to fall’. Tony Blair, having been lobbied by both Rhodri Morgan and Hain, ruled that the bill was ‘absolutely essential’ (Ward, 2015: 24 November 2005). With this, Labour’s proposals first, on the legal status of devolution, which followed the Richard report, second, on the electoral system, which did not, and third, the compromise proposals over powers, finally followed through into the Government of Wales Act 2006. Part three of the Act contained the provisions for the interim procedure and part four provisions for full primary powers subject to a referendum. Labour’s proposals on the electoral system were heavily criticised for apparent self-​interest in seeking to defend sitting constituency Labour AMs from opposition candidates, standing for both the regional list and their constituency (Welsh Affairs Committee, 2005). The proposals on powers were also criticised by Tomorrow’s Wales and Plaid Cymru for the insistence on a referendum. Others still critiqued the proposals as rooted in an unclear conferred powers model (Trench, 2007a). However, it is noticeable that the Blair government writ large was not seen as a player in deciding what to do. Equally, the apparent

197

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

compromise position on powers actually realised in practice much of what the Richard report had actually recommended: an accretion of more secondary powers with a view to a move to primary powers by around 2010–​13. It is simply that, across both levels of government, Labour –​left to decide on whether this needed a referendum –​nodded towards sceptical opinion by saying it did (Bradbury, 2008b). Rhodri Morgan, reflecting later on the provision for powers in the 2006 Act, said that ‘to my mind the best way to think of part three is as transforming the assembly into a legislative body, but with L plates fixed clearly on its back bumper. To remove the L plates and get a full licence would require a majority in a referendum’ (Morgan, 2017:279). Public attitudes polling did not suggest that a referendum on the move to primary powers would be won soon, and indeed Rhodri Morgan concluded that the ground had to be prepared with the public over a period of years, a view that was widely if not universally shared. However, the intention to do this was clearly there. This approach suggested the inclination to continue with the gradual cultivation of public opinion on instrumentalist grounds to put into practice through a referendum the powers provided for by the 2006 Act, yet again advancing devolution through the logic of the next step as Ron Davies had articulated in A Process not an Event; what Rawlings (2005) referred to as devolution ‘hastening slowly’. Welsh Labour yet again ultimately controlled the process of devolution by dint of being in government at both levels, and there were departures from the Richard Commission proposals chiefly on the electoral system. Nevertheless, the Richard Commission-​led process, both as a mechanism of negotiation and in its achievement of high arena differentiation and in its strong influence on the outcomes of development of powers in the 2006 Act, achieved a relatively high level of acceptance across other parties compared with the closed Labour Party policy process before 1997. However imperfect some considered the 2006 Act to be, it had created a vehicle for the Assembly to gain powers on an interim basis as well as a route map to primary legislative powers (Navarro and Lambert, 2007). In Benzian terms, this actually indicated a relatively successful constitutional amendment.

Territorial politics and the 2007 elections As the parties approached the 2007 devolved elections in Scotland and Wales, they were conscious of how both UK-​wide and devolved issues might affect the voters. The external realm always had a theoretical importance to domestic devolved elections. To requote

198

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

Bulpitt (1983:59), the centre developed an external support system that would ‘attempt to minimise the impact of external forces on domestic politics, or ensure that these forces are favourable to the maintenance of domestic tranquillity’. Problems, though, in the external support system could have considerable implications for domestic territorial politics. Ahead of the 2007 elections such problems seemed very apparent for the first time. The Blair governments had pursued a global role for the UK as part of its external support system since 1997, including a high profile role in seeking to combat global terrorism after the 9/​11 attacks in the US in 2001. This had initially enjoyed public support domestically, and at a deeper level had supported the domestic notion of the UK as a global power. However, by 2005, the Blair government was being criticised for the increasingly unpopular post-​invasion conflict in Iraq, and for having taken part in the invasion under what transpired to be the false premise that Saddam Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction. The 2007 devolved elections offered an opportunity for voters to make their feelings felt. On devolved issues political debate had followed different paths in Scotland and Wales, guided by Labour’s usage of different approaches to devolution. In Scotland, Labour had pursued an intergovernmentalist steady state approach, not highlighting policy divergence and opposing further constitutional change until it entered the debate on fiscal powers in 2005. By then though, Labour was on the back foot as the SNP appeared a vigorous contender in occupying the same centre-​Left ground as Labour. The SNP had an apparent vision for using policy autonomy better and was leading the constitutional debate. In contrast, after a massive early shock in the 1999 elections and the unpopularity of the Michael period, Welsh Labour had clearly differentiated themselves politically from the British party through asserting the politics of ‘clear red water’ and had initiated the constitutional policy process that led to the 2006 Act. Under Rhodri Morgan, Welsh Labour had consciously re-​adopted the politics of developing devolution for instrumental purposes, emphasising divergence in government and policy. Even so, Labour was a minority government in Wales from 2005 and faced criticisms of government performance. There were clearly opportunities for the other parties as they approached the elections. In Scotland, McConnell actually had a reasonable election, and both Blair and Brown joined the campaign. Labour’s constituency vote dropped by just 2.3 per cent on 2003 and its list vote by just 0.2 per cent. They lost four seats overall. In contrast, both the SNP and the Liberal Democrats campaigned to use the 3p in the £ income tax power in order to abolish council tax. While the SNP did put

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CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

Table 7.10: Results of the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections Constituency Constituency List vote vote share seats share (%) (%)

List seats

Total seats

Labour

32.2

37

29.2

9

46

SNP

32.9

21

31.0

26

47

Conservative

16.6

4

13.9

13

17

Liberal Democrat

16.2

11

11.3

5

16

Greens

0.2

0

4.0

2

2

Others

2.1

0

10.6

1

1

Source: Accessed on 4 October 2020 at www.parliament.scot/​msps/​election-​results.aspx

forward the policy of independence, as one might expect, the party was careful to stress its priority of offering good government. It played down independence as an early priority; instead it would consult the public, talk about the country’s needs, and bring forward proposals for independence late in the next parliament that met public aspirations. In many ways, this was an approach that sought to allow voters who were not pro-​independence to vote SNP in 2007, while appropriating a politics of the gradual development of constitutional change on instrumental grounds to nationalist ends. While Labour clearly did not implode, the SNP’s approach was successful. The SNP came through with a large increase in both their vote and seats to become the largest party by one seat over Labour (see Table 7.10). This was not a majority though, and it is important to realise that the SNP’s success was really based on pulling together all the dissenting votes which in 2003, had returned representation for the Greens, the Scottish Socialists and Independents. Equally, the first local elections using STV were held at the same time and there was something of a fiasco over voting slips which is thought to have affected the result in favour of the SNP in several constituencies. The SNP’s advance in this election was notable, but their achievement of a one-​ seat plurality win over Labour was at least partly due to good fortune. Even then, the outcome of the election for government formation was initially uncertain. The Liberal Democrats made the crucial decision not to form a minority coalition with Labour, leaving Labour with no basis upon which to form an administration. The Liberal Democrats also, however, would not join in coalition with the SNP because of the

200

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

SNP’s pro-​independence policy. The SNP was left with the right, as the largest party, to form a minority single party government, which they did with the informal support of the Greens. What did the outcome of the election mean in territorial politics terms? Of course, it is tempting to suggest that this marked a rise in support for independence, but this appears not to have been the case (see Table 7.5). Analysis of voting behaviour instead tends to emphasise in part the importance of voting against Tony Blair’s policies at the UK level. This was something Blair recognised himself in reflecting on whether he should have stood down as Prime Minister earlier than June 2007: I was concerned about my own position in respect of both the Scottish and Welsh campaigns. I wanted to complete Northern Ireland and set out the forward policy agenda, but I  knew some people, with understandable feeling, thought I  was being selfish in staying on through those campaigns. With a new leader we could have done better, and in particular it is possible with Gordon we would have won in Scotland. (Blair, 2010:651) This was something on which he and Gordon Brown were agreed, as Brown (2017:415) recalls that ‘for purely Scottish reasons I asked Tony to consider the changeover a few weeks earlier, believing that the simple fact of there being a Scottish prime minister would help us to win power in Scotland’. The SNP victory was also in part a product of the consolidation of progressive non-​Labour support behind them. There was a desire for parties to tap into the spirit of anti-​establishment rebellion that was rooted in long-​term industrial decline, economic insecurity and the resentments of a squeezed middle class (Brown, 2017:415–​17). In other words, the voters wanted a change of government rather than independence. The circumstances of being able to form a government –​ of gaining a one-​seat plurality and the disappearance of a pro-​Union coalition –​were also, at the margins, more a matter of good fortune and political choice than anything else (see Johns et al, 2010). The election result and the opportunity to form a minority government gave the SNP a platform to push the issue of further territorial constitutional reform back up the political agenda. Scottish politics now stood to be driven by a party in government which had appropriated the politics of gradual constitutional change and wished to tie it to making the argument for independence. This created a danger

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well appreciated in UK central government. Tony Blair (2010:651 ) recalled that ‘it was very frustrating. I knew once Alex Salmond got his feet under the table he could play off against the Westminster government and embed himself. It would be far harder to remove him than to stop him in the first place.’ At the same time, however, an SNP minority administration would be constrained in what legislation it might pass, it would need to look for the support of other parties to get finance bills passed, and it would not have the votes to launch a referendum bill successfully if the other parties opposed it. From a pro-​Union/​pro-​devolution perspective in Scotland and from a centre point of view, the 2007 election result undoubtedly posed a new challenge, but the constraints of the electoral system still played their role in tethering peripheral dissidents even when they were in charge. In Wales, however, Labour had a much worse election than expected. Their campaign faltered for two principal reasons. First, in the run up to the election a focus on child poverty had developed as the key big idea to channel the ‘clear red water’ purpose of Welsh Labour. Yet, when the election campaign was launched, Morgan dropped this as the key campaigning theme, to be replaced by a series of smaller more easily deliverable promises, including for example the introduction of a Scottish style petitions committee. As the campaign wore on, Morgan’s principal focus appeared actually to be to appeal simply to anti-​Conservative sentiment in suggesting that the alternative to Labour was an all-​party coalition that would contain the Conservatives. While this was an apparent possibility from recent manoeuvring in the Assembly, it did not appear credible to many voters. Second, Welsh Labour’s clear red water message stood to appeal most to the core vote, and consequently had difficulties appealing to centre ground voters. An allied narrowing of Labour’s appeal was the perpetual focus simply on Welshness; many centre ground voters were among those who identified in polls as equally Welsh and British. The clear red water Welsh Labour brand had appeared to work as a necessary antidote to the fiasco of the Michael era in the 2003 election, and for the long term helped Labour to occupy the ground of standing for nation and class. Yet, the Labour vote had only marginally recovered in 2003. In the 2007 election, without a strong sense of practical purpose at its core of what it was for rather than what it was against, it appeared to offer a rather empty agenda. Reflecting in his memoirs, Morgan conceded that: ‘I really did have some potential capital after our 2003 election strategy, though I’m far from sure that I made the most effective use of that capital’ (Morgan, 2017:285). He also recognised that the efforts to scare the voters

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Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

Table 7.11: Results of the 2007 National Assembly for Wales elections Constituency Constituency Regional vote share seats list vote (%) share (%)

Regional Total list seats seats

Conservative

22.4

5

21.5

7

12

Labour

32.2

24

29.6

2

26

Liberal Democrat

14.8

3

11.7

3

6

Plaid Cymru

22.4

7

21.0

8

15

Others

8.3

1

16.2

0

1

Source: Accessed on 4 October at https://​business.senedd.wales/​ mgManageElectionResults.aspx

with the vision of a ramshackle coalition alternative including the Conservatives was ‘not a great and inspiring message to get across, I must admit’ (Morgan, 2017:287). In the election, Labour suffered a dramatic loss of vote share, nearly 8 per cent on the constituency vote, much worse than the supposed electoral earthquake of 1999. All the other parties gained slightly to leave Labour as still the largest party, but on only 26 seats, some way short of a majority (Elias and Scully, 2008) (see Table 7.11). Initially, Labour as the largest party took the lead in considering how it might form another government. A natural potential partnership lay with the Liberal Democrats, yet they ruled out further coalition with Labour, having seen how it had damaged them in Scotland and how the earlier coalition in Wales had also gained them little. Labour then held historically novel talks with Plaid Cymru, but they stalled over Plaid Cymru’s constitutional demands. Then, to the public’s surprise, the option of a so-​called rainbow coalition between Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives became a serious possibility, with Ieuan Wyn Jones as a possible First Minister. Ultimately though, Labour was saved from the ignominy of losing office by a Welsh Liberal Democrat executive split over whether to support a rainbow coalition and opposition from Left-​leaning Plaid Cymru AMs to serving with the Conservative Party. As the rainbow coalition option faltered, Labour agreed the so-called One Wales Agreement with Plaid Cymru that included a commitment to prioritise the holding of a referendum on primary legislative powers. At a special conference of the Labour Party there was considerable acrimony,

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particularly caused by Neil Kinnock’s opposition to the agreement, but both parties managed to get their membership’s support. Coalition discussions finally ended after a month, resulting in Morgan remaining as First Minister, with Wyn Jones as deputy first minister (McAllister and Cole, 2007). The implications of the election in Wales appear less dramatic than those of the election in Scotland. Again there was no apparent heightening of territorial strain, but nor was there a surge for any opposition party. Election analysts have stressed the likely significance of the Iraq war controversy as well as the lacklustre Labour campaign to the reduction of Labour’s vote. The implications of government formation could have been considerable, but in practice Labour did stay in power with the help of problems and misadventure in the efforts to form an alternative coalition. Of course, the election did have territorial implications in leading to an opportunity for Plaid Cymru to have leverage over the programme for government, and specifically the move towards a referendum on primary powers. Yet, Plaid Cymru’s platform was an even more constrained one than the SNP’s. First, the coalition deal actually gave the task to an All Wales Convention of examining the demand for primary powers and making recommendations on when the time was right. Second, Plaid Cymru were as keen to use the deal to legitimise themselves as a party of government as they were to advance constitutional policy. In Wales, even after the 2007 elections, Labour were still to a substantial extent in charge.

Conclusion This chapter has provided an analysis of territorial politics and constitutional policy in both Scotland and Wales between 1999 and 2007. Looking first at Scotland, it has argued that there remained a territorial integration problem with Scottish public attitudes suggesting a territorial strain that still ranged from medium to high. Labour and the Liberal Democrats did well to establish two stable coalition governments up to 2007, yet, the evidence suggests that these governments were guided by an intergovernmentalist code and focused primarily on delivering competent devolved government. They did not appear to make the most of the autonomy won in 1997–​9. Meanwhile, UK centre government strategy in part sustained the approach to focus on indirect control through the additional member electoral system delivering a collaborative set of representatives. However, it also included a series of examples of attempted direct central control that spanned from the set-​up of devolution through to policy disagreements in the early

204

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

2000s. While Labour strategies for making the most of self-​rule at the devolved level and centre autonomy at the UK level both had plausible chances of success, neither was implemented all that well. By 2007, this had created a gap between Scottish expectations of devolution and its reality. Turning to Wales, it would be hard to say that there remained an urgent territorial problem, with public attitudes suggesting a low to medium territorial strain. But Labour in Wales under Alun Michael appeared to be guided by an intergovernmentalist code of devolved governing to the point of appearing to deny the value of having devolution at all. Equally, the British Labour leadership during the Michael period was seen to clearly impose forms of direct central control. This resulted in Michael’s early downfall as First Secretary in 2000. Thereafter Labour in Wales under Rhodri Morgan re-​recognised the basic politics of territorial strain and re-​adopted a more clearly gradualist regional method strategy for developing devolution based on distinctive policy divergence using existing powers and commitment to further reform. Meanwhile, the UK Labour government strategy adapted to accept such spiky local elite collaboration even from its own party branch as necessary to legitimise devolution in practice and did not make the mistake of continuing to meddle in Wales. This strategy was adopted with great plausibility for most of the period up to 2007, maintaining Labour in power. In this context, the Government of Wales Act 2006 plausibly moved devolution on in Wales, while being entirely tolerable by the centre as, even if a future referendum were successful, it would still leave the Assembly less powerful than the Scottish Parliament. The constitutional policy process this time was conducted with the original proposals being developed in the Richard Commission. This produced a very effective policy process and Labour’s approach to implementing the Richard report’s proposals on the development of powers also basically honoured them. Although Labour were criticised for rejecting the Commission’s electoral reform proposals, the Labour Party’s approach to the reform of devolution was received much more favourably across Welsh political elites than their approach prior to 1997 had been. The 2007 elections in Scotland and Wales had historic implications in that they brought the SNP and Plaid Cymru into power. They were generally a great corrective to views in the British Labour leadership, which had grown up during the early 2000s, that devolution had killed nationalism. Even so, the advances made by the nationalist parties in 2007 were held in check by the limits placed on devolution and the system of representation that limited their ability to set new

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CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

agendas without the agreement of pro-​Union parties. The SNP as a minority government had a platform but limits on what it could do with it. In Wales, Labour still dominated government and maintained control over the development of devolution in a way which the UK Labour government could accept. The nationalist parties therefore had an opportunity to shape the leadership of territorial politics, while the constraints of the electoral systems bought Labour and the other pro-​Union parties time for thinking about how they would politically respond. In hindsight, we should see the 2007 election results as more the products of avoidable mistakes in Labour’s territorial political statecraft, and particularly in the Scottish case the SNP improving its territorial statecraft, than of anything constitutional design may have affected. It was a reflection of how challenging devolution was actually always going to be to the maintenance of state stability. The arrival of the SNP and Plaid Cymru in government in 2007 saw the more challenging potential of territorial strain articulated through devolution becoming evident. It was always possible and no constitutional settlement could prevent it. Nevertheless, the political controls put in place in 1998 largely through the electoral systems were still helpful to sustain balance between autonomy and state stability. In this light, it is more pertinent to stress that the early experience of devolution provided key lessons for all the parties on what made for effective approaches to territorial government following devolution rather than on approaches to constitutional design. First, for pro-​devolution or pro-​secession parties in both Scotland and Wales there were lessons in how to conduct devolved governance. There had to be continued awareness of limitations in political resources, but to be seen as authentically pro-​devolution there was a need to proactively assert Scottish/​Welsh interests, related to using the powers of devolution to make a difference, as well as being open to developing the powers of devolution further. There were limits on this; the strategic goal was still in the short to medium term self-​government within the state. There was also a need to present divergence and development as grounded in rational, gradual processes rather than trying to push further sudden, transformative change as the SNP did in the 1999 election. But simply defending the new status quo was not an option, as simple competent government without highlighting difference or further change disappointed electorates. The new centre ground on the territorial question in devolved politics was shaped by a code of cultivating regionalisation through divergence and further reform on instrumental grounds, both dynamic and limited at the same

206

Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007

time; keeping devolution exciting and worthwhile but not turning publics off with naked appeals to identity politics. Labour learned this early in Wales and survived; Labour in Scotland to their cost learned it too late, while the SNP after some false starts successfully adapted. Second, Labour’s experience as the UK government offered a case of learning, or re-​learning, the lesson of the problems caused by trying to exert central power through direct central control. It had its place in the initial start-​up of devolution to try and structure the processes by which devolution would work to enable indirect central control via local elite assimilation in the longer term. But more discretionary acts of direct central political control, evident in Wales in the Alun Michael period and in Scotland periodically throughout the first two terms of devolution, were pretty well always counterproductive. This re-​valorised the more cautious assumptions that the more efficient and effective route to politically constraining the implications of devolution for the Union out in the periphery was through indirect means of local elite assimilation. This allowed the centre to be seen to be respecting devolved autonomy, accepting divergence within limits, while achieving the strategic aim of sustaining the Union and maintaining its own much-​cherished autonomy to act on other matters free of routine domestic political management. The Blair government learned this lesson early enough to make a difference in Wales; however, this was not so in Scotland, leaving the subsequent UK government led by Gordon Brown from 2007 to try and manage the consequences.

207

8

Politics and Devolution in Northern Ireland, 1998–​2007 After the apparently historic achievement of the Belfast (or Good Friday) Agreement in 1998 came the reckoning of whether it could be put into practice. Efforts to implement devolution largely failed and led to a five-​year period of suspension and direct UK rule. Finally, in 2007 devolution was re-​established, after a new agreement at St Andrews in 2006, on the basis of a DUP–Sinn Fein led government. As Tony Blair (2010:178) put it: ‘whereas the agreement could be described as art –​at least in concept –​the implementation was more akin to heavy manufacturing’. This chapter reappraises these tortuous years in terms of the territorial strains that were still present in Northern Ireland, the resources available to the Republican/​nationalist and Unionist party leaderships in Northern Ireland as well as to the Blair governments, and the political management approaches that they each pursued. It focuses on the political imperatives and constraints that determined the Northern Ireland Assembly’s journey between intermittent existence and suspension, and eventually led to the unlikely agreement between the leaders of the extreme representatives of Republicanism and Unionism. In addressing these issues, the chapter is informed by the proposition that both sides in Northern Ireland still recognised their resource limitations in asserting their ideal outcomes in the short term. The SDLP and Sinn Fein still pursued power-​sharing devolution in the short to medium term to realise their long-​term objectives of Irish unity. This was principally to be achieved through electoral success and the cultivation of the North–South institutions under strand two of the Belfast Agreement to normalise Irish governance through instrumental arguments, shared policy development and functional spillovers. Meanwhile, the UUP, as the principal Unionist party, competitively sought to use devolution as a new framework in which

209

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

to sustain an intergovernmentalist approach to governing within the UK, asserting the very different long-​term aim of maintaining Northern Ireland within the Union. If such were their intentions, we need to understand the factors that determined why these political elites for much of the period after the Belfast Agreement stood back from implementing them, and caused or allowed the Assembly to be suspended. Equally, we need to understand how and why they were then able to find agreement at St Andrews and return to power-​sharing government in 2007. The chapter also addresses UK government approaches. Having achieved the seemingly impossible in 1998, and made possible the move to a relative centre autonomy separated from the need to engage in close detailed territorial management of the Northern Ireland problem, how did the Blair governments respond to the successive crises of implementation? Do the ways in which they acted suggest that the UK centre approach remained driven by the basic premise of finding and stabilising appropriate local elite collaborators to achieve a relative centre autonomy? Finally, the chapter is also concerned with the constitutional policy process that produced the St Andrews Agreement. To what extent did its terms and obligations secure legitimacy in the eyes of both communities in Northern Ireland and provide the potential for an enduring restoration of devolution? The chapter is again organised chronologically but returns to key themes in each section. First, section one examines the territorial strain still evident in Northern Ireland after 1998; it looks at the power politics of nationalist and Unionist political elite leadership and the competing territorial approaches they pursued, as well as their implications for devolution up to 2002. Section two addresses the territorial approaches pursued by elite leaderships in the nationalist and Unionist communities, as well as the UK government, during the period of direct UK government rule between 2002 and 2006. Section three then addresses the UK government’s strategy from 2006 and the effectiveness of the 2006 St Andrews Agreement. (Again for detailed contemporaneous analysis from which this chapter draws see: Bradbury and Mitchell, 2001; Bradbury and Mitchell, 2002; Bradbury and McGarvey, 2003; Mitchell and Bradbury, 2004; Bradbury and Mitchell, 2005; Bradbury, 2006b; Bradbury, 2007).

The problems of stabilising devolution, 1998–​2002 The Belfast Agreement in 1998 provided a historic potential basis for the reconciliation of competing community loyalties in Northern

210

Northern Ireland, 1998–2007

Ireland. Changes in the background conditions and group politics of Northern Ireland over many years of paramilitary conflict had created the basis for majorities in both communities, though larger among Catholics than among Protestants, to vote in the 1998 referendum for power-​sharing devolution. There was strong support for the peace process and hopes for good governance. There had been developments in civil society that pointed towards the potential of a post-​sectarian Northern Ireland. It was apparent also that, with paramilitary ceasefires and a peace of sorts, there were greater prospects for the development of the Northern Ireland economy. People also generally trusted the Northern Ireland government bureaucracy, inherited from the Northern Ireland Office, schooled in the culture and values of the neutral career UK civil service but specifically attuned to the issues of governing in Northern Ireland by its distinct development since the 1970s. Nevertheless, even after the Belfast Agreement, the ultimate aspirations of Protestants and Catholics still remained fairly polarised. This was reflected in public attitudes surveys that still aligned Protestants heavily with support for remaining in the UK, and a near majority of Catholics with long-​term support for reunification. Such attitudes remained remarkably consistent in the period immediately after the Belfast Agreement (see Table 8.1). They were reflected in the continued adherence to community loyalties, flags, emblems and practices, including on the Unionist side Orange Order marches. During the 1980s and 1990s, nationalism had come to terms with weaknesses in bottom-​up resources that made victory elusive, and Unionism while wishing to preserve the Union at any cost wanted an end to paramilitary violence. However, as McAuley and Tonge (2010:282) later concluded even ‘more than a decade after Northern Ireland’s “peace deal” ’, communal expressions of identity are still some distance from being seen as benign’. The reality remained that peace and accord were apparently sustainable only so long as the interests and long-​term aims of the two political communities remained credible. Accordingly, the Good Friday Agreement was vulnerable to collapse if the ambitions of either side in that underlying struggle were irrevocably harmed. Both making war and making peace remained equally irrevocably problematic. In this context, how did Northern Ireland’s parties fare in seeking to lead political development in Northern Ireland, and what implications did this have for implementing devolution? In the first elections in 1998 the UUP emerged as the largest party in the Unionist bloc and the SDLP the largest party in the nationalist bloc (see Table 8.2). They supplied the First Minister and deputy first

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CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

Table 8.1: Constitutional preferences in Northern Ireland, 1998–​2002 1998 Catholic (%)

2002 Protestant All (%) (%)

Catholic Protestant All (%) (%) (%)

Remain part of UK

19

85

57

22

83

55

Reunify with rest of Ireland

49

 4

22

46

 3

22

Independent Northern Ireland

10

 4

 6

 9

 4

 7

Other answer

 4

 2

 3

 3

 2

 3

Don’t know

20

 7

13

20

 7

14

Source: Adapted from R. MacGinty (2007:35), Question: What do you think the longterm policy for Northern Ireland should be?

Table 8.2: Results of the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly elections First preference votes (%)

Seats

Unionist bloc Ulster Unionist Party

21.3

28

Democratic Unionist Party

18.1

20

Other Unionist parties

 8.3

10

Social Democratic Labour Party

22.0

24

Sinn Fein

17.6

18

Alliance Party

 6.5

 6

Women’s Coalition

 1.6

 2

Nationalist bloc

Others

Source: Adapted from J. Bradbury and J. Mitchell (2001:266)

minister, respectively David Trimble of the UUP and Seamus Mallon of the SDLP. On the evidence of their mutual support of the Belfast Agreement and of working together, this meant that the more moderate pro-​Agreement Unionist and nationalist parties were at the centre of establishing devolution and their leaderships were broadly in tune with the majority public attitudes view that was pro-​power-​sharing devolution. They prioritised making devolution work. In pursuing this shared approach, though, both the UUP and the SDLP were placed under enormous pressure within their respective

212

Northern Ireland, 1998–2007

community blocs by critiques of whether the implementation of the Belfast Agreement would be advantageous to long-​term aspirations. They also faced strong competition from their main electoral opponents in the party system, the DUP and Sinn Fein respectively, who sought to replace them (Hayes and McAllister, 1999). This was particularly the case in the UUP, which had to negotiate the still strong minority Protestant unionist opinion that opposed Sinn Fein being in the power-​ sharing executive while the IRA still existed. Within the UUP, David Trimble faced persistent criticism from prominent colleagues such as Jeffery Donaldson, Martyn Smyth and David Burnside, who were opposed to the Agreement. The party’s internal structures also required Trimble to repeatedly go back to party members to get endorsements of his approach, thus offering opponents the opportunity to veto further accommodations. Trimble was also under pressure from the DUP, which in the 1998 elections had produced a strong second place performance within the Unionist bloc. The DUP represented a grass roots unionism that was less deferential to Unionist leaders who they feared had given away too much to Republicanism and had too little respect for the Orange Order and unionist traditions. They strongly supported the Orange Order insistence on marching in Portadown which had led to the violent annual July stand-​off at Drumcree between local Orangemen and the local Catholic residents association, sucking in paramilitary-​ linked support on both sides since the mid-​1990s. Their gut instinct was to resist change and see the Belfast Agreement as a sell-​out to Republicanism and the manipulations of a British government that could not be trusted (see Patterson and Kaufman, 2007). The SDLP was also under considerable pressure from the start, as Sinn Fein achieved a strong second place in the nationalist bloc in the 1998 elections. Having established a position within the framework of constitutional party politics, Sinn Fein pursued an electoral strategy designed to replace the SDLP as the leading nationalist party in Northern Ireland. They embraced both an equality agenda, which was known to be electorally popular, and political pluralism, recognising their view as one among many. By also standing for election in the Republic, Sinn Fein hoped to eventually be in government on both sides of the border, a position from which they could normalise the electorate in Northern Ireland and the Republic to moves towards Irish reunification (see Tonge, 2007:100–​2). At any point, they might be able to still push Unionism into clear obstructionism and unwillingness to compromise in sharing power, and so emerge as the strongest post-​ conflict reconciliation party able to negotiate the future of Northern

213

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

Ireland directly with the UK government. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness insisted that the IRA would not disband, although the tactical usage of decommissioning was necessary for party advantage as part of its engagement with constitutional politics. A key Sinn Fein focus was the call for the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement, an approach designed to provoke rejectionist Unionism in the DUP and also among parts of the UUP, as it carried with it the implications of progressing North–South bodies and the normalisation of governance on an all-​Ireland basis. Ultimately, this raised the prospect of the negotiation of a sovereignty treaty to bring about national reunification, courting popularity among Catholic voters as a better guarantor of this long-​term aspiration than the SDLP. Sinn Fein’s ability to develop this position, however, was still itself always open to the threat of Republican critiques of the constitutional electoral approach. The Omagh bomb in 1998, laid by the splinter group, the Real IRA, was a sharp reminder of the continued presence of those who believed in armed struggle. This raised problems for Sinn Fein in sustaining leadership over Republican politics, particularly if no obvious gains were made from the constitutional electoral approach, as well as in appealing to moderate Catholic opinion repulsed by Republican violence and reminders of past atrocities. Hence, the potential for compromise between the strategies of the UUP and SDLP coexisted with highly competitive alternative Unionist and nationalist elite positions on either side of them from the DUP and Sinn Fein respectively, and the continued possibility of the return to armed struggle by paramilitary groups. Both sets of political elites, nevertheless, knew that if they pushed each other too hard, then they could be blamed for the failure of achieving power-​sharing devolution and the only thing that would be achieved was a political stalemate, possibly with no power-​sharing devolution, and possibly with a return to violence. If this came to pass, then both the DUP and Sinn Fein were aware that the UK and Irish governments  – ​should they lose patience –​could coerce them with options that were much worse; the key fear for Sinn Fein was ejection from the power-​sharing executive, and for rejectionist Unionists a greater role for the Republic in the affairs of Northern Ireland or, even worse, the repartition of Ireland in which border areas would go into the Republic. The approach of UK central government was to try and ensure the successful implementation of the Belfast Agreement. A  key initial focus was the creation of the governance infrastructure to further promote the conditions for inter-​community bloc security. The most

214

Northern Ireland, 1998–2007

prominent initiative was the creation of the Patten Commission, which in 1999 recommended the abolition of a key icon of unionist culture, the RUC and its replacement by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), designed to appeal as a cross-​community police force, including both Protestant and Catholic officers. It also provided for oversight by a policing board, which encouraged accountability to both communities. Under the Public Processions (Northern Ireland) Act 1998 a Parades Commission was established to try and regulate and broker local agreements over planned marches, predominantly by the Orange Order, which could incite inter-​community conflict. The UK government’s longer-​term aim remained that of gradual withdrawal from close political management. Public and civic support for power-​sharing devolution, as well as the victory for the moderate pro-​Agreement UUP and SDLP in 1998, was precisely what UK central government had hoped for. Even if this was only a politics of a satisficing loyalty to Northern Ireland as a security community, it had the potential to re-​establish conditions for the centre to retreat from direct governance of Northern Ireland. Thereafter, the leaders of nationalist and unionist opinion could guarantee the continued pursuit of their respective communities’ long-​term aims, while cancelling each other out in the battle for ascendancy as they more routinely shared power in the short to mid term. Nevertheless, the critiques within the Unionist and nationalist blocs and the competition that the UUP faced from the DUP and the SDLP from Sinn Fein meant that implementation would remain an immensely difficult task. In practice, UUP and SDLP efforts to implement power-​sharing devolution were only sporadically successful between 1998 and 2002. Following the transfer of powers in 1999, the parties achieved the creation of a power-​sharing executive for three periods, between December 1999 and February 2000, May 2000 and July 2001, and November 2001 and October 2002. In between, direct UK rule was re-imposed, or in the case of July–November 2001, the Executive barely functioned while there were two temporary suspensions. The deep pressures on the Unionist leadership from the DUP during this period were reminiscent of the period of extreme reaction that followed the AIA in 1985. The second and third suspensions in 2001 and 2002, though, reflected more serious problems for the UUP and SDLP. Overall, there appear to have been four principal sources of pressure that eroded the capacity for the UUP–SDLP axis to bed power-​sharing devolution down (Wilford and Wilson, 2000; Wilson and Wilford, 2001; Wilford and Wilson, 2003). First, pressures arose from the fact that there was persistent Unionist debate of the unacceptability of the lived reality of

215

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

devolution under the terms of the Belfast Agreement. Sinn Fein representatives now had the right to serve in government. Former IRA prisoners had been released and walked free on the streets of Northern Ireland. The replacement of the RUC by the PSNI was seen as an attack on unionism and a means through which nationalists might get control over policing. The Orange Order fairly rapidly became implacably opposed to the Parades Commission as a vehicle for regulating marches. Drumcree remained an annual flashpoint of inter-​community conflict. Meanwhile, the IRA, despite its ceasefire, was seen as a still active force, involved in enacting ‘community discipline’ as well as criminal activity (Patterson and Kaufman, 2007). The second source of pressure on UUP–SDLP efforts to bed devolution down arose from the fact that arrangements of the Assembly tended to exacerbate Unionist–nationalist divisions and fostered relatively little new shared political capital. Wilford (2007) suggested that a mixture of structural and behavioural factors led to four key problems. First, the method of executive formation involved a parallel consent procedure to get both Unionist and nationalist MLAs to agree separately to a designated first and deputy first minister; this meant accepting the d’Hondt system for allocating the number of ministries for each party. This perpetuated a mindset based on exclusive blocs rather than on inclusivity in collective decision-​making. DUP ministers refused to attend any of the 58 executive meetings held by October 2002, and even then the DUP regularly rotated the MLAs who served as ministers so as to ensure that they did not becoming socialised to any form of collective behaviour. Second, the fact that ministerial responsibility was then vested in individual ministers rather than the executive as a whole meant that ministers tended to treat departments as their own party’s property. It also allowed parties to act as both part of the government and, in commenting on the activities of departments headed by a minister from another party, also as part of the opposition. This added to the lack of cohesion in executive politics. Third, problems in the Assembly also included poor mechanisms for making the executive accountable. The Assembly’s committees were generally regarded to be weak. There was also a culture of disrespect, most noticeable in the reception afforded by DUP MLAs to Sinn Fein ministers and reporting on the activities of the North–South bodies. Fourth and finally, the emphasis on community bloc and party representation meant there were relatively few MLAs who were focused on policy or scrutiny functions. Wilford (2007) emphasised the tribal and localist orientation of many MLAs, many of whom had dual

216

Northern Ireland, 1998–2007

mandates as local councillors and were often absent from the Assembly while attending council meetings. In such circumstances, it was hard for the Assembly to develop a culture of trust, mutuality and common endeavour. Consequently, the paradoxes of consociational democracy became very clear. In emphasising the centrality of community blocs it locked politics into the priorities of those communities and prevented politicians from trying to transcend them. The Assembly still achieved the completion of 27 bills by October 2002 and the Executive’s programme for government included the introduction of a children’s commissioner and the overhaul of fraud policy; but this only served to underline the potential for the Assembly and self-​government, which still went largely untapped (see also McGarry and O’Leary, 2007). A third key source of pressure on the UUP and SDLP then arose as a symptom of anxieties about the lack of reassuring progress within the Assembly for either of the Unionist or nationalist community bloc’s aims. This took the form of rising political support for both the DUP and Sinn Fein. Ironically, even as the majority of people in Northern Ireland supported devolution as a means to peace, support for the more hard-​line Unionist and nationalist parties grew as communities sought guarantors of their underlying aspirations. Local council by-​election results favoured the DUP and Sinn Fein, and in September 2000 the DUP won the South Antrim by-​election, taking one of the UUP’s safest seats. In the 2001 general election, the DUP won three seats at the UUP’s expense. Sinn Fein actually outpolled the SDLP, winning an additional two seats (see Table 8.3). The possibility that the moderate pro-​power-​sharing parties, the UUP and the SDLP, would find themselves replaced at the centre of the devolution process by the DUP and Sinn Fein following the Northern Ireland Assembly elections due in 2003 was plain for all to see. This was predicted as one of the consequences of consociational Table 8.3: UK general election result in Northern Ireland, 2001 Vote share (%)

Seats (1997)

Democratic Unionist Party

22.5

5 (+3)

Social Democratic and Labour Party

21.0

3

Sinn Fein

21.7

4 (+2)

Ulster Unionist Party

26.7

6 (-​4)

Others

 8.0

0

Source: Accessed on 4 October 2020 at www.eoni.org.uk/​Elections/​Election-​results-​ and-​statistics/​Election-​results-​and-​statistics-​2003-​onwards/​Elections-​2019

217

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

power-​sharing rules and the use of an STV electoral system, which encouraged voters to support the clearest guarantors of community interests (Horowitz, 2001). Nevertheless, such arrangements had been the only means to securing party accord during the Belfast Agreement negotiations. Both Sinn Fein and the DUP also developed proactively as electoral forces to compete credibly with their bloc opponents in ways not previously seen, in particular Sinn Fein as a result of the peace process and reduction in the stigma among some voters of their association with the IRA (Tonge, 2007:102–​4). If all of these were factors were not enough to erode the chances of the UUP–SDLP axis to effectively introduce power-​sharing government, there remained the major issue of disagreement over the continued existence of an armed IRA. The DUP and sceptical UUP backbenchers placed significant pressure on the UUP leadership not to accept the continuation of power-​sharing government, including Sinn Fein, without evidence of IRA decommissioning; such a development was unlikely given Sinn Fein’s insistence that devolution was not reliant on such decommissioning. The DUP and UUP sceptics were convinced that Sinn Fein’s support for the Good Friday Agreement was merely a Republican ploy to lend legitimacy to Sinn Fein without forcing the issue of decommissioning (see Patterson and Kaufman, 2007). Meanwhile Sinn Fein emphasised the UK government’s responsibility to implement the Good Friday Agreement in full and not to cave in to Unionist requirements that were not covered by theAgreement. The combination of these pressures and the specific demands of rejectionist DUP and backbench UUP MLAs on decommissioning meant that matters came to a head during the second period of power-​ sharing in May 2001. David Trimble threatened to resign if there was no progress on decommissioning, and when this did not occur he followed through with his threat in July. John Reid as Secretary of State carried out two 24-hour suspensions of the assembly on 10 August and 22 September, and the operation of the executive and assembly was effectively in limbo throughout the summer and early autumn. In October the other UUP ministers formally resigned. With devolution in crisis and Reid trying to give the parties time, the IRA carried out an act of partial decommissioning. This allowed the Executive to be restored in November 2001 with Trimble re-elected as First Minister and Mark Durkin, the new Leader of the SDLP, as Deputy First Minister. Even so internal UUP opposition continued and because two of Trimble’s UUP MLAs refused to back him, he had to rely on the decision of the normally non-​aligned Alliance Party MLAs to temporarily redesignate themselves as Unionists to give him

218

Northern Ireland, 1998–2007

the necessary votes for him and Durkin to be elected (Bradbury and Mitchell, 2002:309). The significance of the 2001 crisis was reflected in the fact that, over the following twelve months, devolved government occurred against a background of increasing uncertainty and mutual suspicion. Sinn Fein defended apparent nationalist gains as entirely consistent with the creation of an equal society, one in which the communities shared political power, prisoners on both sides were released in recognition of their ‘political’ status, and the police service aspired to impartiality and objectivity. The IRA would only decommission further as part of a broader process of demilitarisation, involving withdrawal of British army units, and it would not be seen to surrender. However, despite acts of partial decommissioning witnessed by independent observers, Unionist critics demanded complete decommissioning or ‘acts of completion’ by the IRA. They denounced partial decommissioning as a cynical gesture and attacked Trimble for appeasing Irish Republicanism. By 2002 sectarian violence was in fact much reduced. As Tonge (2006:141) has suggested, the provisional IRA was on a journey of ‘evolution into a “comrades club”’. The Real IRA and Continuity IRA who continued to believe in the armed struggle posed a threat but they were denounced by Sinn Fein for undermining the Republican electoral and institutional approach, and in the USA pro-Republican opinion sided strongly with the peace process. Nevertheless, there was still much evidence of provisional IRA activity designed to reassure ‘doubters that any IRA “retirement” was from a position of strength’ (Tonge, 2006:141). Consequently, during the first half of 2002 Unionist concerns increased as a result of perceptions of the continuation in nationalist areas of IRA routine punishment shootings and orders for people to leave their homes. There were also allegations of IRA roles in orchestrating street violence in unionist areas, breaking into Special Branch offices at Castlereagh police station, and training insurgents in Colombia. Sinn Fein also refused to endorse the new PSNI or serve on police boards, and it was apparent that the PSNI suffered from low morale and was struggling to carry out its duties. Consequently, by summer 2002 the pressures of rejectionist unionism reached crisis point again, and the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, John Reid, was forced to consider whether the IRA was still on ceasefire. In July the IRA issued a statement which whilst not repudiating its past armed struggle with the British state did offer an apology for the pain caused in the past to what they called

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non-combatants. Its timing was sufficient for Reid to respond in September to unionist pressures by simply appointing an independent monitor to give regular updates on paramilitary activity. Such moves cut little ice with rejectionist Unionism. At a meeting of the UUP ruling council in September it was agreed that UUP ministers would no longer attend NSMC meetings and a motion was passed which declared that unless the IRA announced its disbandment by January 2003 the UUP would also pull out of the Executive. ‘Trimble said that the IRA had to “surrender” to save the political process’ (Bradbury and McGarvey, 2003:228–9). The impending crisis was then accelerated when in October 2002 police raids uncovered evidence of an alleged IRA spy ring operating out of the Sinn Fein offices at Stormont. The five people arrested included the head of the Sinn Fein administration in Stormont, and a Catholic civil servant working in the office of the first minister and deputy first minister. Not only was it presumed that Sinn Fein had gained close knowledge of their opponents’ strategies but that the personal security arrangements of senior politicians had been compromised. Trimble demanded that Sinn Fein were removed from the Executive. John Reid was well aware that to accede to this, leaving the Unionists in charge, would imperil both devolution and the peace process. Instead, therefore, he suspended devolution once again on 13 October, and re-imposed direct rule (Bradbury and McGarvey, 2003:229). In his memoirs Blair characterised the whole period up to this suspension as one of ‘creative ambiguity, during which people moved slowly, warily (and occasionally not at all) from very entrenched positions’ (Blair, 2010:189). The Sinn Fein leadership had made their decisive move to abandon the armed struggle approach, but the IRA was not going to disband until they saw whether the Unionists would commit to the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement. Meanwhile, the Unionists remained divided so long as the IRA remained in business. In this context, the job of UK ministers had simply been to be as creative as possible in keeping devolution operational to build trust and enable the painful consolidation of power sharing to develop. In late 2002 though the Blair Government had to admit that a tactical withdrawal to direct rule was the only option. This occurred with a sense of considerable despair. The territorial strains that underpinned the integration problem in Northern Ireland were still very strong, and the consensus over governance strategies that covered the UUP and SDLP had been outflanked by a more

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hard-​edged nationalist approach of Sinn Fein to assert nationalism, and a harder-​edged politics of Unionism in the DUP that was prepared to reject devolution and assert more strongly the relationship with the UK. The UK government appeared impotent before these divisions and pressures. There was little hope in the short term that the Belfast Agreement could be implemented; yet, the idea that there may be more constitutional policy debate to reconsider how devolution might work better was unthinkable. Each side in Northern Ireland still saw the Belfast Agreement as the key focus of political development, each wishing on the extremes to interpret it in their own way to further their community interests.

Direct rule and territorial politics, 2002–​06 In the period after the 2002 suspension, Northern Ireland entered a period of four years in which the parties returned to a struggle over re-​arguing the terms on which they would enter power-​sharing government. This was intertwined with intra-​communal struggles over which party would lead their respective bloc’s interests. On the Unionist side, the requirement was that the IRA decommission its weapons, guaranteeing security and a future based on democratic government. The UUP struggled hard to maintain its leadership of the Unionist bloc against the DUP. On the nationalist side, the requirement was the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, including strand two, guaranteeing an embryonic development of North–South governance. In this case, the SDLP struggled to fight off the challenge of Sinn Fein. The UK government was caught in the middle, seeking to build confidence on both sides, hoping to shore up the moderate parties as the ones they would most like to work with, but recognising the rising popularity of the DUP and Sinn Fein. The first phase of this period was marked by the UUP and SDLP trying to maintain control (see Wilson and Wilford, 2004). The UUP leadership focused on engaging the UK government to work with the Irish government to coerce Republicanism to concessions that pacified Unionist rejectionism. This meant that, upfront, Trimble and the UUP leadership had to assert an unambiguously hard line. In Autumn 2002, Trimble called for the complete disbandment of the IRA. In response, Sinn Fein was keen to portray the October 2002 suspension as a case of unreasonable Unionist veto. In addition, an IRA statement at the end of October complained of being presented with ‘untenable ultimatums’. The IRA would not disband, and announced that it would break off relations with the International commission on decommissioning

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(Bradbury and McGarvey, 2003:230). The UK government’s general position was to try and sustain devolution and Sinn Fein interest in it; it therefore passed legislation in November 2002 to ensure the six North–South implementation bodies continued on a ‘care and maintenance’ basis despite the Assembly being suspended. Nevertheless, in late 2002, following the suspension, Tony Blair made a key speech in Northern Ireland in which he declared that ‘in place of creative ambiguity there now had to be acts of completion to demonstrate beyond doubt that the past was behind us’ (Blair, 2010:190). This presented Sinn Fein and the IRA with a major challenge, as it was possible that the process of political engagement was in danger of terminal failure, with Republicanism held responsible despite the IRA’s protestations. Adams and McGuinness at least re-stated their view that the armed struggle was over. The prospects for a positive response were helped by Paul Murphy, the new secretary of state for Northern Ireland appointed in the October 2002 re-shuffle. He described the situation facing him as ‘truly formidable’ (Murphy, 2019:127). He started by doing a lot of media work ‘trying to focus politicians’ minds on the need for a fresh start (Murphy, 2019:128) and appeared to focus on encouraging a Republican initiative. The Northern Ireland Police Bill in November 2002 met Sinn Fein requests to strengthen the role of the oversight commission, and allowed ex-IRA prisoners to sit on the police board of the PSNI. In this context, newspaper reports indicated that the IRA was now prepared to commit to comprehensive acts of decommissioning, including giving up arms dumps and ending training, surveillance and punishment beatings by February 2003. This would be on the condition though that not only would the assembly be re-convened but that the May 2003 elections would go ahead. It was likely that such ‘acts of completion’ would be viewed favourably by the electorate, and this might help Sinn Fein to become the main nationalist party after the May elections. This response gave David Trimble and the UUP leadership an opportunity to reassert its strategy of returning to power sharing with fears of IRA activity reduced. However, Trimble knew that if the IRA initiative was insufficient he might yet again fear for his own leadership against hard-​line Unionism within the UUP. The UUP could also yet face defeat at the hands of the clearly rejectionist DUP in the 2003 elections. Trimble tried to regain control of the situation by combining the decision to push for an acceptance of the IRA gesture with getting the British government to delay the expected May 2003 elections until later in the year. This might gradually diminish the momentum for

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increased public support for both rejectionist Unionism and Sinn Fein, as well as giving the UUP and the SDLP respectively the chance to gain credit for their achievements and recover authority in their respective communities. This raised big questions for the UK government, which faced pressure from the Irish government not to delay the elections (Bradbury and McGarvey, 2003:230–1). The UK government’s approach was guided by the desire to bring an end to direct rule and reconvene devolution. Accordingly, there were several attempts at talks to engineer an agreement between the UUP and SDLP that might lead to the restoration of power sharing. A key initiative came with the May 2003 Joint Declaration (Northern Ireland Office, 2003). In its headlines it sought to create a shared mission to restore devolution; in its detail it recommended certain changes to the way that devolution should work. Reforms were proposed that were designed to reduce the structural incentives for executive fragmentation and party departmentalism. The Declaration also advocated the removal of Westminster’s power to suspend the Assembly, meaning that any collapse of the Executive would lead to fresh elections. However, by 2003, both Unionist and nationalist opinion had polarised. The Belfast Agreement had not successfully established Northern Ireland as a security community in the minds of Protestants: constitutional guarantees and ceasefires were not enough while the IRA still existed and continued to be active. There was increasing pessimism among Unionists that Republicanism was winning the argument over whose aspirations devolution would ultimately serve. Even at the time of the joint declaration, UUP members were not convinced of the commitment to ‘acts of completion’ by the IRA or of the good faith of Sinn Fein in helping to bring those about. There was also Unionist fear that the UK government might respond to IRA acts of completion by withdrawing troops and meeting the Sinn Fein agenda to set IRA decommissioning as part of a wider process of demilitarisation. The prospect of current IRA suspects who were on the run also being allowed back to Northern Ireland without charge was deeply controversial. On the other side, UK government assurances to Unionists that the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) would monitor the honouring of the pledge to end the IRA’s military capacity offended Sinn Fein. The UK government, nevertheless, took the plunge and delayed the 2003 elections to try and give the UUP leadership the space to negotiate developments that could allow power-​sharing devolution to be restored. Intensive negotiations occurred behind the scenes throughout 2003, including talks between UK and Irish government

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ministers and a role for the US envoy, Richard Haase. In Autumn 2003, David Trimble and Gerry Adams held talks during which they discussed a set of actions and statements that could allow the restoration of power-​sharing government. With confidence in the British and Irish governments high that this would be successful, Tony Blair announced that the delayed elections would take place in November 2003. In practice, the sequence of staged actions and statements broke down following an IRA act of decommissioning that was announced with very few details. Aware that he could not sell what had happened as ‘acts of completion’, Trimble concluded that it was impossible to justify going back into power-sharing devolution, and was left simply to voice his disappointment (Mitchell and Bradbury, 2004:341). The UUP strategy for regaining the initiative to represent unionism lay in tatters; meanwhile, the SDLP had been eclipsed by Sinn Fein’s tactical manoeuvres to represent nationalist interests. By this point, Sinn Fein was buoyed by the fact that it had also had a small but nevertheless much improved vote in the Irish elections in 2002. Splits in dissident Republicanism also meant that no single Republican armed force had emerged to succeed the IRA, leaving Sinn Fein’s electoral strategy relatively unchallenged. The November 2003 elections still had to go ahead and resulted in an apparent nightmare scenario for those seeking to restore power-​sharing devolution (see Table 8.4). The DUP became the largest Unionist party and Sinn Fein the largest nationalist party; under the Belfast Agreement the two parties were entitled to put forward the candidates for First and Deputy First Ministers. It was ironic that the parties that had been the most important over many years in bringing about the peace process had been punished by the electorate, and support for the moderate unionist/​nationalist centre collapsed. Table 8.4: Results of the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly elections Party

First preferences (%)

Total seats (1998)

Democratic Unionist Party

25.7

30 (+10)

Ulster Unionist Party

22.7

27 (-​1)

Sinn Fein

23.5

24 (+6)

Social Democratic and Labour Party

17.0

18 (-​6)

Alliance

3.7

6 (-​)

Others

7.4

3 (-​9)

Source: Adapted from J. Mitchell and J. Bradbury (2004:342)

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The election results suggested that the prospects for restoring powersharing devolution in Northern Ireland were now very poor indeed (Wilford and Wilson, 2004). The peace process was still intact and there remained a strong will among the public not to see a return to violence. Yet, the movement of support within the Unionist bloc from the UUP to the DUP reflected the fact that Unionists considered the apparent guarantee of Northern Ireland’s place in the Union –​the dropping of the Irish Republic’s constitutional claim and the consent principle –​ increasingly irrelevant. As Sinn Fein appeared to win the arguments within nationalism, unionist support swung behind the DUP’s approach of not sharing power with Sinn Fein without decommissioning and demanding the renegotiation of the Belfast Agreement. At the same time, the movement of support within the nationalist bloc from the SDLP to Sinn Fein reflected the fact that Sinn Fein had successfully used gradual IRA decommissioning to validate the constitutional approach and reap electoral rewards both north and south of the border. The historic compromise between moderate unionism and nationalism to use devolution to achieve peaceful governance while also sustaining the credibility of both long-​term unionist and nationalist visions of Northern Ireland’s future had collapsed under its internal contradictions. The DUP’s apparently uncompromising anti-​ devolution approach to state defence, which asserted that the Belfast Agreement was dead in the water, and Sinn Fein’s neo-​functionalist-​ nationalist strategy to developing devolution towards a united Ireland via the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement (including the establishment of strand two institutions) now squared up against each other. The UK government, in presiding over direct rule again, was aware that the underlying dynamics of Northern Irish society still made a return to a quarantined power-​sharing devolution possible, but that effecting this aim in the context of a divided power-​sharing elite led by the more extreme parties would now be much more difficult, if not impossible. So, in these unpropitious circumstances, the politics of not implementing the Belfast Agreement entered their second phase, marked by the DUP leading Unionism, and Sinn Fein leading nationalism. Many expected that Ian Paisley and the DUP leadership would simply walk away from any new negotiations:  an approach which Sinn Fein hoped would leave them the much desired moral high ground of sole proponents of compromise. However, Paisley surprised everyone by striking a new, more statesmanlike, tone and suggested that –​after so many years of rejecting reconciliation –​he ultimately wanted to be known as a man of peace.

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Paul Murphy recalls that in early February 2004 ‘the DUP gave Tony Blair and me a PowerPoint presentation at No 10 Downing Street. It was professional stuff, and indicated that they would share power with Sinn Fein if criminality in the IRA ceased’ (Murphy, 2019:133). Paisley was looking for a clear transparent demonstration of IRA decommissioning which underpinned realistic prospects of there being no return to violence against the Unionist community. If this was delivered, and one took Paisley at face value, then Paisley now followed Trimble in offering the possibility of a return to power-sharing devolution and further steps in equalisation (Bradbury and Mitchell, 2005:297–8). In such a way, the DUP, having outflanked the UUP, now moved onto the same ground of compromise, simply stressing the security purpose to devolution, as opposed to the UUP’s focus in the Belfast Agreement on the constitutional defence of the Union. This was a critical reconfiguring of the DUP approach, which meant that Sinn Fein would have to continue to bargain to achieve movements on how Northern Ireland was governed in the short term, and to maintain credible long-​term prospects of a united Ireland within the context of devolved power sharing. At this point, though, Sinn Fein also shifted their position over how to move towards Irish unity, an approach which placed less reliance on the restoration of power-​sharing devolution and with it on the establishment of strand two North–South bodies. The party document Rights for All (2004) extended the party’s policy emphasis on equality in Northern Ireland to linking the development of that equality with Irish unity. Sinn Fein called for a Department of Equality in Northern Ireland, accompanied by the creation of all-​ Ireland health and education provision. They demanded the right for people in Northern Ireland to vote in Irish presidential elections, and for members of the Northern Ireland Assembly to speak in the Irish Dail, while also pressing the Irish government to create a Minister for Irish Unity. From here on, while the SDLP remained married to the strand two route to normalising all-​Ireland governance through economic and related policy needs, Sinn Fein’s emphasis turned to promoting Irish self-​determination on the grounds of its instrumental facilitation of rights and equality (Tonge, 2007: 100–​1). As these rhetorical battles were played out, a key role still had to be played again by the UK and Irish governments to incentivise and coerce the interested parties to reconsider the possibility of restoring devolution (Wilford and Wilson, 2005). In February 2004, there were new talks to review the Belfast Agreement. DUP and Sinn Fein representatives would not sit down in the same room, leading to the need for ‘proximity’ meetings with messages shuttled via the UK and

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Irish governments. At Lancaster House, in June 2004, there was a consensus over the areas where revision of the Belfast Agreement had to be made, and from September there was a talks process designed to achieve final agreement. In December 2004, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern announced that ultimately there had been no deal; nevertheless, they published proposals for revived power sharing that could form the basis of a comprehensive agreement. This so-called Comprehensive Agreement included a list of revisions to the Good Friday Agreement that it was believed both the DUP and Sinn Fein were prepared to support in resuming power-​sharing devolution (Northern Ireland Office, 2004). These included, first, DUP ideas which were intended to reduce the scope for ministerial autonomy, and thereby clip the wings of Sinn Fein ministers from pursuing independent ministerial approaches. Sinn Fein largely acquiesced in these proposals. Second, though, the DUP wanted a guarantee of the disbandment of the IRA, and for Sinn Fein to support the PSNI; Sinn Fein was prepared to make some positive responses if, in turn, the DUP agreed to their demand for the devolution of policing and criminal justice powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly. What lay behind the potential agreement was the fact that, given their strategy to commit to constitutional politics, Sinn Fein had to respond to Paisley’s apparent readiness to talk. In the final weeks of the negotiations, it became clear publicly also that the IRA was prepared to commit to acts of completion by the end of 2004, in return for clear DUP commitments to restore power-​sharing devolution on agreed terms by March 2005, including the devolution of policing and criminal justice. Nevertheless, a key sticking point was the requirement by the DUP that there was photographic evidence of decommissioning. Sinn Fein considered this an attempt to humiliate the IRA and refused. Consequently, no deal was done. Following the breakdown of the talks, Sinn Fein issued a statement suggesting that photographic evidence had never been an accepted part of the negotiations over decommissioning and that the IRA would never agree to it (Bradbury and Mitchell, 2005:297–8). Many sceptics wondered whether Paisley had ever really been up for a deal. Rather, it was said, his apparent change of strategy was merely a tactic, suggesting that, if even he had become a man of peace, then why did the IRA and Sinn Fein still justify the possibility of the use of arms! It may have been that Paisley never expected the IRA to accede to his requests, but in the propaganda politics of Northern Ireland Unionism would have won a notable victory. If this was the case, Paisley had some success in outsmarting both the UK and Irish governments, and in putting Sinn Fein on the back foot. An indicator

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of this was clear in Gerry Adams’ renewed effort to reclaim the moral high ground by an impassioned plea on 9 December 2004 for Paisley to meet him in face-​to-​face talks to discuss the impasse. There were further talks in December 2004 over means to achieve transparent decommissioning acceptable to both sides, but they were broken off. Sinn Fein was put further on the back foot by a sequence of events that suggested the IRA was treating efforts at a settlement with some contempt. In December 2004 the IRA was accused by the Chief Constable of involvement in a £26 million robbery at the Northern Bank in Belfast. In January 2005 IRA members were responsible for the killing of Catholic Robert McCartney. The IRA then responded to the campaign by his sisters to bring the murderers to justice by offering to administer its own justice on the IRA members. This only served to confirm perceptions that the IRA was still an active organisation (Bradbury, 2006b:176). Paul Murphy, nearing the end of his term as secretary of state, recorded that in Washington for the St Patrick’s Day celebrations, ‘the feeling towards Sinn Fein was distinctly cool … Senator Kennedy refused to meet Adams, and Senator McCain adopted a very tough tone at the American Ireland Fund Gala dinner’ (Murphy, 2019:138). In the run up to the 2005 general election, Sinn Fein sought to limit the damage by inviting the McCartney sisters to their conference and suspending 12 party members. In April, Gerry Adams publicly called on the IRA to abandon the armed struggle for good (Tonge, 2006:194). Whatever the apparent changes in approach or tactics had been during 2004, both the DUP and Sinn Fein wished to sustain the leadership of opinion in their respective communities during the 2005 UK general election campaign and were wary of doing a deal that might lose them electoral support. Paisley, in particular, risked a reaction in going back on his promise never to sit down in government with people he had labelled as terrorists. Sinn Fein was caught at this point between the need to not to appear like countenancing surrender to Unionism and the obvious disapproval of IRA activities among prominent Republican sympathisers. Neither need to have been worried. The 2005 elections produced further increases in vote share and seats for both the DUP and Sinn Fein at the expense respectively of the UUP and SDLP (see Table  8.5). The changing fortunes in the Unionist bloc were exaggerated by the fact that the inefficient distribution of the UUP vote meant that in 2005 it won only one seat, while the DUP won nine. Trimble lost his own seat and immediately resigned as UUP party leader. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein’s gain of one seat was more modest, suggesting that the IRA’s position, and Sinn Fein’s

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Northern Ireland, 1998–2007

Table 8.5: UK general election result in Northern Ireland, 2005 Vote share (%)

Seats (2001)

Democratic Unionist Party

33.7

9 (+4)

Social Democratic and Labour Party

17.5

3

Sinn Fein

24.3

5 (+1)

Ulster Unionist Party

17.7

1 (-​5)

Others

6.7

0

Source: Accessed on 4 October 2020 at www.eoni.org.uk/​Elections/​Election-​results-​ and-​statistics/​Election-​results-​and-​statistics-​2003-​onwards/​Elections-​2019

perceived connection to it, meant that Sinn Fein continued to make little headway with the Catholic middle-​class vote. Once the election was over though the IRA moved to silence its critics. As Tonge (2006:198–9) observed, ‘by the mid-2000s, even a majority (59 per cent) of Sinn Fein supporters believed that the IRA should decommission all of its weapons’ and ‘only 29 per cent of Catholics believed that it was acceptable for parties linked to paramilitary groups involved in violence to form part of a Northern Ireland executive’. In July 2005 the IRA announced that it was no longer pursuing an armed struggle and instead would seek to advance Republican aims through exclusively peaceful means. In September 2005 the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) reported that the IRA had conducted a fourth and final act of decommissioning, which ‘represented “the totality of the IRA’s arsenal” such that it “has met its commitment to put all its arms beyond use”’ (IICD statement, quoted in Wilford, 2008:80). The act was witnessed by a Catholic priest, Father Alec Reid, and a Methodist minister, the Revd Harold Good, who stated that ‘beyond any shadow of doubt, the arms of the IRA have now been decommissioned’ (testimony, quoted in Wilford, 2008:80). Both the UK and Irish Governments acknowledged this as a significant and final act. They both now hoped to move on to gaining IRA and Sinn Fein endorsement of the PSNI and criminal justice system. Nevertheless, the DUP still responded with scepticism. They highlighted the lack of details of what had been decommissioned and how it had been done. They questioned the lack of photographic evidence and doubted the capacity of the two clerics’ testimony to convince their supporters. They also noted that the IMC Report, also published in September, revealed that the IRA still conducted criminal activities. In the past such DUP scepticism would have been interpreted as expected intransigence, but given Paisley’s changed

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approach it could be seen as reflective of caution in a party edging towards a new accord (Bradbury, 2006b:177). Nevertheless, this DUP rejection was significant for revealing the continuing readiness of Unionist leaders, and at other times nationalist leaders, to continue to play a game of seeking to avoid going into power sharing under the terms of the Belfast Agreement while focusing on ensuring that the other side took the blame. In the meantime, the DUP stacked up its community support, as did Sinn Fein with even greater expectations of electoral success following the IRA acts of completion and the legitimation of its constitutional equality agenda. This situation might have been prolonged indefinitely, but it all too clearly represented failure for UK government. While the DUP and Sinn Fein continued in their battle for the moral high ground, the UK government had to continue to devote large political resources to seeking to try and implement the Belfast Agreement.

The resettlement of devolution, 2006–​07 The impasse in Northern Ireland following Ian Paisley’s response to IRA decommissioning in 2005 led to a decisive phase of activity led by UK central government, now with Peter Hain at the Northern Ireland Office. Irrespective of whether DUP repositioning during 2004 meant a fundamental change of strategy, in practice Paisley had sought to wield a Unionist veto over a return to power-​sharing devolution, a position that reflected the DUP’s original rejectionist strategy. This was something that the UK government, supported by the Irish government, was not going to allow. In April 2006, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern visited Northern Ireland and stated that the Belfast Agreement now had a potentially limited time-​span. The Northern Ireland parties were given a deadline of 24 November 2006 to reach agreement. If they succeeded, then the next Assembly elections scheduled for May 2007 would be postponed for one year to allow the new administration to consolidate its support. If they failed, the Assembly would be abandoned. There would, however, not be a simple resumption of direct rule. Instead, there would be an increase in UK–Irish government cooperation in the government of Northern Ireland. This was an attempt to coerce the DUP to accept power sharing ​for fear of something worse (Bradbury, 2007). The Assembly reconvened on 15 May 2006, but all attempts to make progress failed amid wrangling between the parties. With no progress being made at Stormont, the UK and Irish governments arranged for more intensive negotiations at St Andrews in Scotland

230

Northern Ireland, 1998–2007

in October 2006. These included most of the parties represented in the Northern Ireland Assembly, including the DUP and Sinn Fein, though not all. Physical removal of key personnel to East Scotland meant that the parties were implored to focus on the constitutional issue of restoring power-​sharing devolution separate from all other issues, and to do so within the framework originally defined by the Belfast Agreement. Three days of talks focused on agreeing revisions to the Belfast Agreement and then agreeing key strategic quid pro quo commitments between the DUP and Sinn Fein. This process achieved considerable success (see Wilford, 2008). First, they agreed detailed revisions to strand one of the Belfast Agreement in relation to how the Executive Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly would work. This included a revised ministerial pledge of office, which included placing ministers under an obligation ‘to uphold the rule of law based as it is on the fundamental principles of fairness, impartiality and democratic accountability, including support for policing and the courts’ (Wilford, 2008:82). This was accompanied by a statutory ministerial code which specified the obligations of ministerial responsibility. Procedural revisions included a new requirement for more than three ministers (that is, both Unionist and nationalist) to support the taking of a vote on a decision where ministers could not reach a consensus; the revisions also allowed 30 MLAs (that is, the DUP bloc) to refer ministerial decisions back to the Executive if they did not agree. The DUP favoured all of these reforms, as they would limit perceived Sinn Fein efforts to assert ministerial autonomy. To detached observers they were provisions which could be seen as enhancing the collective decision-​making efficacy of the Executive. Other organisational revisions focused on the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM). No longer would each bloc have to endorse the candidates for both posts. This was considered helpful in not requiring cross-​community consent, so removing a potential barrier to executive formation. It was also planned that some of the executive responsibilities of the OFMDFM would be distributed to other ministers so as to reduce overload on the Office. The power of the UK government to suspend the Assembly would also be repealed. Second, they agreed revisions in relation to strand two and three of the Belfast Agreement. Under the new ministerial code, all North South Ministerial Council (NSMC) and BIC meeting papers would be circulated to the whole executive prior to them taking place, thus allowing for cabinet discussion that might affect ministerial behaviour on those bodies. Ministers would also now have a statutory right to

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attend meetings of either the NSMC or BIC where issues in their portfolio were being discussed. Previously, the First Minister decided who attended, a provision which had allowed David Trimble to block Sinn Fein ministers from attending NSMC meetings. All of these revisions broadly met a Sinn Fein, and to some extent SDLP, shopping list of requirements. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the key quid pro quo commitment involved the DUP agreeing both to going into power sharing with Sinn Fein and to a date for the devolution of policing and criminal justice powers to meet Sinn Fein’s requirements; Sinn Fein, in turn, agreed to support and cooperate with Northern Ireland’s police service and criminal justice system, accompanied by the complete decommissioning of the IRA’s weaponry and an end to its criminal activities to meet the DUP’s requirements. The 18-​page document that resulted was termed the St Andrews Agreement (Northern Ireland Office, 2006). It built on proposals contained in the earlier 2003 Joint Declaration and 2004 Comprehensive Agreement documents. As such, the conditions represented the incremental gathering together of the larger scale strategic and smaller detailed issues that it had become apparent were important to each side in trying to re-​broker a political accord. Wilford (2008:67) is careful to say that it was not an agreement per se, ‘but rather represented the best estimates of the UK and Irish Government of the terms upon which Northern Ireland’s political and constitutional future could evolve’. It did, however, carefully provide for balance in setting the terms of the reset deal as well as a timetable for the re-​introduction of devolution. Sinn Fein was able to emphasise the commitment to devolving policing and criminal justice as evidence that St Andrews committed the DUP to the implementation of the Belfast Agreement in full; the DUP was able to emphasise the procedural changes and agreement to decommissioning as evidence that St Andrews was a new agreement to which they could now agree in contrast to the flawed Belfast Agreement. In terms of our framework for analysing constitutional policy, the negotiations at St Andrews again constituted bilateral organisation of constitutional policy making. They took the least inclusive conference form, meaning that the outcome could be seen in terms of the result of a lowest common denominator bargain between the key parties rather than any fundamental addressing of underlying problems. Yet, the negotiations both physically and substantively were removed from other policy debates, and they picked up on application issues regarding principles agreed in the Belfast Agreement and therefore sustained the sequential logic of that agreement’s negotiation to simply renegotiate

232

Northern Ireland, 1998–2007

some of the detail. They also sustained a horizontal differentiation in considering specific matters separately from each other. Resolution was by party agreement and therefore represented a closely coupled process of ratification. This represented an efficient elite level ratification of the resolution of the problems of the original agreement; such bargained revision did not appear to challenge legitimacy. Rather, it appeared to buttress the DUP and Sinn Fein’s credentials with their respective communities as credible defenders of their interests while sustaining their roles jointly on the moral high ground of Northern Irish political development. It was apparent that the talks at St Andrews had represented a more concerted approach to coerce the DUP to drop its rejectionism and to specify Sinn Fein obligations to meet the DUP halfway. Blair believed the timing had been right because Paisley had recently been ill and, as a man of faith and aware of his own mortality, he wished to leave a legacy of peace behind. He also knew that Paisley considered that Northern Ireland had changed. ‘In the course of late 2006 and early 2007 he heard the people telling him it was time for peace’ (Blair, 2010:195). At the same time, the DUP and Sinn Fein both sensed the potential for a deal. Paisley had become set on the achievement of Republicans giving up on paramilitary activity. He also became aware that the Sinn Fein leadership was under great pressure; if power-​sharing devolution was not restored because of an apparently successful Unionist veto, then those who advocated the return to an armed struggle would be considerably strengthened. In turn, the Sinn Fein leadership became convinced at St Andrews that there were people within the DUP that wanted to go into government and that Paisley was prepared to sell a deal to his party and its supporters; this encouraged them to move on the issues important to the DUP. Paisley came away from St Andrews prepared to finally go for it, and Sinn Fein believed in its real possibility. Following the St Andrews talks, both sides focused not on supporting the agreement per se but on endorsing security being now properly achieved. In reaching out to the public, Gerry Adams talked of putting community divisions into the past and Paisley commented that ‘the days of gunmen in government are over. We will meet the requirements but IRA/​Sinn Fein have got to meet these requirements. When they do we will really be in the way for peace’ (Daily Telegraph, 14 October 2006; see Bradbury 2007:172). They were, then, also each intent on demonstrating the content of St Andrews as being in their respective community’s favour: Sinn Fein presenting it as the implementation of the Belfast Agreement in full; the DUP arguing that it represented a new agreement to replace the discredited Belfast Agreement.

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Both sides faced difficulties in ensuring communal support. The Sinn Fein leadership could not count on party support for the PSNI. There were firebomb attacks on property in central Belfast and dissident Republican paramilitaries sought to undermine a deal. In this period, Denis Donaldson, the former Sinn Fein official who had confessed to being a British spy and had lived quietly in the Republic, was found murdered. Similarly, the DUP membership was very sceptical that Sinn Fein would support the PSNI, or that ultimately the UK Government would insist upon it. Consequently, by November Sinn Fein had only given qualified public support to the St Andrews Agreement, and the DUP remained non-committal (Bradbury, 2007:172). This meant that the parties had failed to establish a government by the deadline originally set by Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern back in April. Nevertheless, the UK and Irish Governments still believed the prospects were good, particularly because of the perceived move by the DUP to support the potential re-establishment of a power-sharing administration (Wilford, 2008:86). Consequently, the UK Government proceeded to pass a Northern Ireland Act in November 2006 to give effect to the St Andrews Agreement, and provided a new timetable for the restoration of powersharing devolution. A key part of the Act was the establishment of a transitional Northern Ireland Assembly with the same membership as the normal Assembly. This met for the first time on 24 November 2006, at which the key requirement was that the DUP and Sinn Fein indicate their readiness to nominate first and deputy first ministers the following March after elections had been held on 7 March. This was ultimately forthcoming but only after a dramatic sequence of events. They started with an attempt by the loyalist terrorist, Michael Stone, to enter the Stormont Buildings with a bag of explosives with the expressed intention of assassinating Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. He was foiled. The day ended with a controversial ruling by the speaker, Eileen Bell, that Ian Paisley’s commitment to honour the St Andrews Agreement if Sinn Fein supported the PSNI and the rule of law amounted to an agreement in principle to support the nominations of a first and deputy first minister when the time came (Bradbury 2007:172–3). At the time the Speaker’s ruling led to considerable criticism, particularly from unionists opposed to the return to power-sharing government. However, at a further meeting of the transitional assembly several days later Paisley confirmed that the ruling was right and that the DUP supported it. This kept the timetable for returning to powersharing devolution on track. Following this essential development,

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the transitional assembly continued to meet until January and Peter Hain successfully developed a programme for government committee. In this context the parties ‘laid some of the groundwork for a new administration, and created, via its six sub-committees, a positive working atmosphere’ (Wilford, 2008:86). The parties continued to work constructively in this context in the early part of 2007. In the aftermath of these developments, though, there clearly remained much still to settle. Even though Paisley had kept the door open for a return to devolution, further progress was obviously reliant on Sinn Fein publicly and categorically supporting the forces of law and order. Discipline within Sinn Fein proved to be strong. The party was already deeply committed to a strategy of accepting a partitioned Ireland in the short term, and using the legitimation of their politics and electoral success both sides of the border as the political route to a united Ireland. As a continuation of this approach, in January 2007 Sinn Fein voted to support the PSNI. This put Ian Paisley on the spot as to whether even with this implied victory he could lead Unionists to compromise. At this point, the 2007 Assembly elections delivered conformation that the DUP and Sinn Fein had become the leading parties in the Unionist and nationalist blocs (see Table 8.6). Armed with this reassurance of their ability to sustain their respective community support, the political leaders followed through on their pre-​election promises to share power, involving considerable discipline both in the DUP and in Sinn Fein. The 2007 elections were followed by the confirmation of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness as the DUP First Minister and Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister respectively. The other members of the executive committee were subsequently elected by MLAs according to the d’Hondt proportionality rule and Table 8.6: Results of the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly elections Party

Vote share (%)

Seats

Democratic Unionist Party

30.1

36 (+6)

Sinn Fein

26.2

28 (+4)

Social Democratic and Labour Party

15.2

16 (-​2)

Ulster Unionist Party

14.9

18 (-​9)

Others

13.6

10 (+1)

Source: Accessed on 4 October 2020 at www.eoni.org.uk/​Elections/​Election-​results-​ and-​statistics/​Election-​results-​and-​statistics-​2003-​onwards/​Elections-​2019

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devolution was finally restored on 8 May 2007. On 31 May, Sinn Fein representatives also took their seats on the policing board. Paisley and McGuinness’ preparedness to appear in public together smiling even led to them being labelled ‘the chuckle brothers’. In the most unlikely way, the DUP and Sinn Fein reached an accord of the extremes. They did so in the context of the territorial strain and integration problem being as strong as it had ever been and the underlying nationalist and Unionist pressures on elites being still the key political variables in Northern Ireland. The DUP and Sinn Fein had sought to pursue competing peace–​governance strategies that sought to commit to power-​sharing devolution, while demanding a great deal of the other and critically seeking to maintain the moral high ground in who was to blame for compromise not occurring. Territorial politics for over four years determined the politics of not implementing the Belfast Agreement. Ultimately, the UK centre made a new push to coerce the parties into power-​sharing devolution and, via a set of constitutional policy negotiations in St Andrews, they were able to make progress. The negotiations succeeded because of the nature of the constitutional policy process, and because its outcome held in careful balance the interests of each side in Northern Ireland. Through it, the DUP was able to insist on a clearer realisation of Northern Ireland as a security community tied to a framework for power-​sharing devolution which they believed kept Northern Ireland in the Union; Sinn Fein was able to insist on the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement, sustaining the argument that power-​sharing devolution was transitional to the creation of all-​Ireland governance via strand two institutions and eventual Irish reunification. In the process, both the DUP and Sinn Fein had the strength to assert their leadership over their supporters. The DUP and Sinn Fein strategically had stolen UUP–SDLP clothes but wore them with greater credibility in such a way as to restore the faith in their respective communities that power-​sharing devolution could bring them not only peace but also victory via competing unionist and instrumentalist/​nationalist approaches to achieve their own competing long-​term constitutional aims. As Paisley and McGuinness posed for the cameras with Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern and Peter Hain on the resumption of devolved government in May 2007, it is unlikely that either thought they were winning on behalf of their long-​term causes; simply they had not lost and they now had the facility again to wage the war by other means. Broader opinion remained sceptical on all sides as to just how stable the hoped-​for stable instability of DUP–Sinn Fein leadership of power-​sharing devolution would prove to be. Nevertheless, given the context of how the deal had

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been done and the more fundamental community anxieties that had been addressed, there were greater prospects for power-​sharing devolution achieving stability and peace than there had been in the early 2000s. Meanwhile, the politician who perhaps wore the broadest smile was Tony Blair, reflecting the centre’s hard-​won realisation of a relative centre autonomy, but more immediately for Blair himself nailing the achievement of peace in Northern Ireland just as he stepped down as Prime Minister.

Conclusion This chapter has provided an analysis of the politics of devolution that unfolded in Northern Ireland between 1998 and 2007. Again it has engaged with a scholarship which has largely treated Northern Ireland as a special case in how it encountered problems of implementing power-sharing devolution. Yet, as in Chapter 6, this chapter has reinterpreted the politics of implementation within the same framework of analysis as the implementation of devolution elsewhere in the UK. This has focused on the continued role of resource deficiencies in nationalist assertion, constrained territorial elite codes of assertion, and a centre code of political management focused on achieving a relative autonomy from the politics of Northern Ireland. The chapter has argued that politics in this era was still best understood as posing a major territorial integration problem for the UK and a high-​urgent territorial strain on centre–​periphery relations. All sides were aware, though, of the relative resource problems that had led in part to the nationalist-​Republican reappraisal in the late 1980s. This had led to a new approach to gaining Irish unity that replaced the twin-​track strategy of the Armalite and the ballot box with a very different twin-​track strategy of cultivating neo-​functionalist spillovers of all-​Ireland governance via strand two of the Good Friday Agreement and the ballot box. At the same time, majority Ulster unionism had accepted power-​sharing devolution to bring political stability and peace alongside continued Union. Nevertheless, devolution lay on shaky ground, with significant minority Unionist rejection of the Good Friday Agreement on the one hand, and a Republican ‘green line’ that participation in power-​sharing devolution did not require IRA decommissioning. In this deeply challenging context, the UUP and the SDLP tried to implement power-​sharing devolution, the UUP guided still by an intergovernmentalist code of tying devolution to continued Union, and the SDLP seeking to implement devolution and develop strand two North–South institutions as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, broader

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nationalist and Unionist elites competed viscerally without resolution over the right to define how the integration problem should be resolved. Power-​sharing devolution was only haltingly implemented up to 2002 and then was suspended for five years. In that time, through a sequence of elections, the DUP and Sinn Fein replaced the UUP and the SDLP as the leading parties respectively of unionism and nationalism. Their victories enhanced the threat of long-​term non-​implementation of the Belfast Agreement and frustrated efforts at an accord. Nevertheless, the DUP and Sinn Fein simply faced the same strategic choices as the moderate UUP and SDLP had done. This involved finessing authenticity in being the voice for their respective communities with seeking to avoid marginalisation from the political process by being seen as the party which vetoed power-​sharing devolution from the perspective of their narrow community bloc interest. If the latter occurred, this would leave the other with the moral high ground with both the wider electorate in Northern Ireland and in dealing with the UK government. In this context, the DUP revised its approach to one of accepting power-​sharing devolution and the adoption of a similar intergovernmentalist code to the UUP if it was accompanied by IRA decommissioning. Sinn Fein broadened its routes to cultivating a path to a united Ireland by placing a new priority on the importance of equality as instrumentally requiring Irish unity to fully achieve it, while still seeing much gain in getting power-​sharing devolution and the associated strand two institutions up and running. Despite partial acts of destroying weapons right up to 2006, the sticking point remained IRA full decommissioning. Throughout this period, the Blair government’s priority remained the bedding down of power-​sharing devolution, assimilating devolved political elites to the norm of maintaining it as a basis for stable governance and peace. An agreement between the UUP and SDLP was generally seen as providing the best chance of success in achieving a power-​sharing self-​rule, but ultimately neither the SDLP nor UUP were able to sustain leadership of their communities. The emergence of the DUP and Sinn Fein to lead their rival communities was not ideal to the centre, but between 2006 and 2007 the UK government seized the initiative to coerce a preparedness to come to a settlement. The negotiations at St Andrews had to focus on a lowest common denominator bargain rather than any fundamental addressing of underlying problems. Yet, the negotiations both physically and substantively were removed from other policy debates, and they picked up on application issues regarding principles agreed in the Belfast Agreement and dealt with them. At the heart of the new balance

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was a trade of technical revisions of the working of the institutions of Northern Ireland governance that the DUP and Sinn Fein wanted, and a quid pro quo over decommissioning and the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement in full. Bargained revisions did not appear to challenge legitimacy, rather they appeared to buttress the DUP and Sinn Fein’s credentials with their respective communities as credible defenders of their interests while sustaining their roles jointly on the high moral ground of Northern Irish political development. In 2007, the DUP and Sinn Fein agreed the adaptation of powersharing devolution and went back into government together. For some this was still hard to take in  –​Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness working together in government –​but within this framework they basically provided continuity. They became the new custodians of a Unionist intergovernmentalist approach on the one hand to sustain self-​ government within the Union, and a nationalist strategy of cultivating Irish unity through instrumental equality arguments and instrumental mechanisms for normalising all-​Ireland governance in the institutions of strand two of the Good Friday Agreement on the other. They were simply more credible actors on behalf of their communities in pursuing these approaches. These conflicting methods at least kept their competing long-​term goals alive while cooperating with each other in the short term. On this basis, stable devolved governance was a distinct possibility for the short to medium term. From a UK centre perspective, the arrival of Sinn Fein at the heart of devolved government in Northern Ireland saw the more challenging potential of territorial strain articulated through devolution becoming evident. As in Scotland and Wales, the rise of the most radical nationalist parties was always possible and no constitutional settlement could prevent it. Nevertheless, the political controls put in place through the power-​sharing arrangements in 1998 were again helpful to the UK centre in limiting the implications of Sinn Fein’s emergence. They were immediately offset by the corresponding role of the DUP at the heart of devolved governance in Northern Ireland. Arguably, the DUP’s presence gave an even greater reassurance of local elite assimilation to ultimately Unionist ends than that previously provided by the UUP working with the SDLP. In 2007, for the first time in nearly 40 years, the UK centre conceived the realistic possibility of being able to step back from direct intervention in the government of Northern Ireland. In reflecting on the broader significance of this early experience of finally implementing devolution, there actually appeared to be much convergence in the lessons learned by pro-​secessionist parties across the British Isles. In Northern Ireland too, there had to be continued

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awareness of limitations in political resources, and in asserting a nationalist strategic goal of Irish reunification there had to be an awareness of the limitations of public acceptance of change. As in Scotland and Wales, the strategic goal in the short to medium term had to be acceptance of self-​government within the state. There was also a need to present divergence and development towards something like secession as grounded in rational, gradual processes rather than trying to push further sudden, transformative change, or as previously in Northern Ireland through organisation and citizen mobilisation tied to political violence. To build electorally, there was a need to be seen as authentically pro-​devolution in the first instance, to proactively pursue a better Northern Ireland first. In Northern Ireland, the SDLP and Sinn Fein had appropriated what amounted to a code of cultivating regional autonomy on instrumental grounds from the start; by 2007, it meant that the gradualist politics guiding their usage of power to try and mobilise support for further change looked at root very similar to their secessionist counterparts in Scotland and Wales. Lessons for other parties in Northern Ireland that came to lead support for devolution were somewhat different. This of course meant a focus on the UUP and the DUP, and primarily in this period the issue was not how you governed but simply if you are going to use devolution to defend the position of Northern Ireland in the Union, then make sure you defend hard. Equally, UK government did not budge from its pursuit of indirect control via local elite assimilation; all that it learned was that this did not require support of moderate parties representing each community bloc. Instead it was possible to achieve it via a local accord of nationalist and unionist extremes. Indeed, in the sense that this made it very difficult for further political outriders to emerge to challenge how parties were representing their respective communities, such an accord if anything made government via local elite assimilation more secure, so long as the ambitions of hard-​line Republican nationalism were contained. And, in 2007, the threat to the Union in Northern Ireland in the round actually now looked less significant even than in Scotland. Irish Republicanism had in effect accepted partition for the foreseeable future and was locked into government with a DUP that it would be extremely hard to out-​ manoeuvre. UK government would keep a watching brief, but between a finally implemented Northern Ireland autonomy and a new-​found freedom for the UK centre from the ratchet of the Northern Ireland problem, a relative political duality in centre–​periphery relations finally had been achieved here too.

240

9

Territorial Politics, Regionalism and England Throughout the period in which devolution was introduced and implemented across the rest of the UK, England was also a focus for considering new structures of territorial government. A lot of academic analysis has been critical of the fact that reform in England was not more far-​reaching, both for not decentralising power more and for not locating it within a coherent reform of the territorial constitution as a whole. However, the reality was that the prospects for finding an ideal reform outcome in England was at least as difficult as it was in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For while, as we have seen, the other parts of the UK experienced significant contestation over ideal models of constitutional change which made agreeing outcomes very difficult, particularly in Northern Ireland, in England there were in fact no really cogent recipes for constitutional reform of English-​wide government that attracted large scale support either during the 1980s and 1990s, or after 1999. Those who went looking for them tended to return frustrated (see, for example, Hazell, 2006a; 2006b). In this context, it was quite possible that there would have been no reform at all, or even for England to be governed in a more centralised manner than before. In trying to explain why some reform did occur and then how we should evaluate it, again it is more profitable to consider the constraints and interests in centre–​periphery relations that were present, the options that were actually possible and the choices made by key actors in the context of the circumstances facing them. In such terms, we again can come to see how territorial structures in England were reformed in a manner that paralleled processes in the rest of the UK; that they were reformed as best they could be within terms set by English political debate at the time.

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The chapter utilises the same analytical framework applied in the chapters on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to consider the key dynamics of territorial reform in England up to 1999. First, the chapter considers the nature of the territorial strain, problem and resources for change present in England. We investigate again whether the weak periphery/​weak centre image rings true, this time in characterising the underpinnings of relations between the English periphery and British centre. Second, the chapter considers peripheral elite leadership in England –​whether through intermediate English elite or English regional elite leadership –​and the codes, strategies and goals pursued. It explores further the thesis that movements for territorial change also in England adopted indirect instrumental cases for territorial reform rather than direct identity-​based ones, emphasising functional arguments and the development of institutional mechanisms for gradual decentralisation, rather than major root and branch reform. Third, the chapter analyses the approach of UK central government, and in particular that of the British Labour leadership both in opposition before 1997 and in government afterwards. Here, we should note that Bulpitt suggested that the English governing code had tended to parallel the indirect local elite assimilation approach used territorially in the rest of the UK. Nevertheless, under modernisation projects since the 1960s, including those of the Thatcher–​Major governments, the overall government strategy was a promotional one, often requiring direct central intervention in the short term to realise central governing projects. Consequently, we should explore the Blair Governments in terms of a new phase or phases in managing English sub-​national governance through a composite approach of seeking to govern indirectly through reliable local elite governors whilst also making them part of more explicitly fulfilling a promotional strategy to engineer economic and social change. Finally, the chapter assesses the policy process by which English reform was developed, the extent to which it may be seen as effective and legitimate, and judged as successful or not in sustaining a new centre–​periphery power balance within England while meeting governing aims. In assessing the implementation of reform in England after 1999 the chapter also considers the extent to which these neo-​Bulpittian assumptions held in practice across these four issues: first, that territorial pressures remained relatively weak; second, that movements for change in this context remained based on incremental instrumental cases to achieve limited but pratical reform; third, that the Blair Governments managed territorial reform in England through local elite collaboration, largely withdrawing from direct control once the promotional goals for

242

Territorial politics, regionalism and England

new territorial institutions had been set to achieve a relative autonomy from the need for close political management; and finally, that sufficient effort was also made in the way that reform policy was developed to ensure effective and legitimate territorial reforms were consolidated to balance English sub-​national pressures and UK central governing aims. The chapter therefore has multiple purposes which it will deal with chronologically. Section one examines first the nature of the territorial strain and problem posed by England for the UK in the 1980s and 1990s; the territorial approaches pursued by political elites on behalf of the English regions; and, in return, by the Major governments and the Labour Party at the UK level in seeking to meet these problems in this era. Section two addresses Labour’s development of constitutional policy that focused on English regional reform between 1994 and 1997 and then when Labour was in government between 1997 and 1999. Section three then examines the nature of territorial problems posed by England, the English regional and UK territorial strategies pursued, and the process and content of the Blair governments’ policies of developing English regional government between 1999 and 2007. Sections two and three both include analysis of the territorial organisation of English regional policy and an evaluation of its outputs as far as such a comparable process of constitutional policy for England can be discerned.

Territorial politics and the origins of regional reform As we have seen in Chapter 2, England historically had been the ‘dog that never barked’ in debates regarding the territorial make-​up of the UK and its constitution (Harvie, 1991). While English identity had strong cultural meanings, most obviously exhibited in distinct national sports teams, in political terms it had long blended with British identity. As a distinct political construct England had not had a formal meaning since the Act of Union with Wales in 1536; such were the everyday assumptions of UK government serving England that there had not been any perception of a need for a set of English-​only political institutions. Of course, England was distinct in the sense that in population terms it heavily outweighed those of the other nations, and putative English regions were instead often more comparable in population terms. This meant that regions became as much a focus of attention in debates on territorial politics, leading to the question of whether England’s needs might be best served not by a national parliament but by regional government, and whether UK devolution would be completed by a set of English regional elected institutions.

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CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

In practice, English regional identities had a somewhat similar status, felt culturally but not politically. Nevertheless, UK central government did find it administratively useful to develop English regionalism from above from as early as the inter-​war period. This took a wide range of forms, from the standard economic regions defined to assist in economic policy making, to the regional administrative offices of a wide range of central departments that developed with the growth of state intervention after the Second World War. There was no standard design to this administrative regionalism though, and it fostered no apparent nascent regional political identities (Hogwood and Keating, 1982). This lack of an explicit English regional political agenda had proved problematic in the 1970s when Labour had last considered devolution. Having promised to introduce elected regional government when in opposition, Labour in government in 1974 acknowledged that there was no public demand and shelved their plans. This had serious consequences as Northern Labour MPs criticised the disadvantage to English representation and opposed the government’s devolution plans. It was this that led to the passing of the so-​called Cunningham amendment, which required a devolution referendum vote to pass a 40 per cent threshold, thus ensuring that the majority ‘yes’ vote in the 1979 Scottish referendum was insufficient to ratify devolution as it did not amount to 40 per cent of the electorate as a whole (Bogdanor, 1979: 206–​14). Despite the English dog not barking, the failure of central government’s plans to deal with English questions of needs and apparent equity in respect of the rest of the UK, even if only as perceived by some of England’s elected representatives, proved critical to the success of the devolution proposals as a whole. What may we make of the territorial problem posed in England by the 1990s? Curtice’s (2006) research on survey evidence suggests that public attitudes to identity in England were fairly static prior to the devolution reforms being introduced in the rest of the UK. In 1992 and 1997, responses to British election surveys indicated that selection of forced choice identity barely changed, with a strong leaning towards British over English identity. In answer to the Moreno question nearly half of responses chose equally English and British. Between 1997 and 1999 there was a notable rise in the assertion of Englishness revealed in responses to both the forced choice and Moreno questions (see Tables 9.1 and 9.2). Even so, the British Social Attitudes Survey, which started asking questions from 1999 on constitutional preferences, indicated a relative indifference to new political structures. In 1999, only 18 per cent wanted an English parliament comparable to that created in Scotland, and only 15 per cent wanted each region in

244

Territorial politics, regionalism and England

Table 9.1: Attitudes to national identity in England, 1992–​99 (%) 1992

1997

1999

English

31

34

44

British

63

59

44

Neither/​don’t know

 6

 7

12

Source: 1992 and 1997 British Election Survey, 1999 British Social Attitudes Survey

Table 9.2: The Moreno question and national identity in England, 1997–​99 (%) 1997

1999

7

17

More English than British

17

15

Equally English and British

45

37

More British than English

14

11

British not English

9

14

Other

5

3

English not British

Source: 1997 British Election Study, 1999 British Social Attitudes Survey

England to have an assembly that ran services like health. In contrast, 62 per cent wanted England to be governed as it currently was with laws made by the UK Parliament (Curtice, 2006:121). Consequently, it is likely that awareness of devolution across the rest of the UK contributed to an increasing saliency of Englishness in England. Responses both to the Thatcher–​Major governments and Scottish devolution also raised some regional consciousness. But there was no popular movement for constitutional change in England. In Benzian terms, neither England nor specific English regions posed a territorial integration problem. If one looked at broader background conditions, there were some signs of support for regional consciousness. Worries about economic development and dissent against the national resolution of policy problems existed and were constructed in manner that broadly equated to a politics of a North–South divide. A  sharpening of this divide was strongly associated with the effects of the privatisation and public spending policies of the Thatcher–​Major governments. Building on previous similarly minded movements, a campaign for a Northern Assembly was established in 1992 to mirror the movements developing in Scotland and Wales. Such Northern dissent also coalesced to some

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degree around a common ideology broadly more favourable to social democratic politics as opposed to Thatcherism. On the whole, these trends were much more favourable to pressing for governmental reform in England during the 1980s and 1990s than they had been in the 1960s and 1970s. A key development that emerged from this at an elite level was that of local authority regionalism, which took the form of voluntary regional local authority associations, based on the eight standard economic regions. They were funded by constituent local authorities and composed of nominated members and seconded officers. They sought to develop joint strategies on economic development, transport and land use planning, and to provide the necessary partnership arrangements for EU structural funds policy development. This represented a significant development in bottom-​up regional cooperation and precipitated debates about elected regional government (Mawson, 1997). Within the Labour Party, a lobby developed specifically to re-​establish some form of metropolitan London government. It was accepted that local government delivered purely by the boroughs following the abolition of the Greater London Council in 1986 was defendable in terms of service provision and local development. It was plain, though, that there were coordination problems regarding London-​wide issues, a lack of collective public voice in influencing London-​wide issues, and a lack of voice for London as a whole as the capital city externally (Sandford, 2005; 207–​11). Urban-​based economic elites also supported more economic coordination at the sub-​n ational level. By the early 1990s, while business had enjoyed many advantages from privatisation, compulsory competitive tendering for public authority contracts and the marketisation of state services, there were concerns about fragmentation. There did not appear to be authoritative agencies at the sub-​national level dealing with emerging transport infrastructure, land use planning and skills needs. Regional Confederation of British Industries (CBI), chambers of commerce, and Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) all pressed for greater attention to specific economic and social needs (Mawson, 1997). This was all important in its own terms and established the English regions rather than England as a whole as a focus for territorial reform, but compared to the situation in other parts of the UK where identity politics underpinned more fundamental territorial integration problems it still represented a relatively low territorial strain. English regionalism still had weak popular roots; the general public by and large had little awareness of perceived regional policy problems and next to no awareness of the partial ad hoc development

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Territorial politics, regionalism and England

of English regional structures by local authorities during these years. There were also no specifically English or regionalist parties comparable to the SNP or Plaid Cymru to highlight the territorial case for decentralisation within England. Equally, the Labour Party had no distinct English or English regional party branches to develop policies for territorial reform in the way that Scottish and Welsh branches of the Labour Party did. In this context, the bottom-​up case for territorial reform in England was largely led by regional local authority associations and business organisations, acting as pressure groups on what government or opposition parties, principally Labour and the Liberal Democrats, might do for England. They stressed instrumental policy needs above all else. What they raised was the need for regional governance in England to address what we might understand in Benzian terms as a set of territorial performance problems, conceived very much in economic and infrastructural policy terms. Regional governance was needed to address the perceived policy deficiencies resulting from Conservative state reforms and the need to make the most of EU regional policy. This suggested a more limited prospectus for territorial reform than that which was raised in other parts of the UK but it was nevertheless still an important one. This more limited pressure meant that it was easier for UK Government to conceive a response in terms of simply adapting UK civil service arrangements. At the same time as they were embracing the radical option of power-​sharing devolution in Northern Ireland, the Major Governments developed a strategy for the English regions focused simply on civil service field reorganisation to meet economic coordination needs. In 1994, ten integrated regional offices (IROs) were established, representing the amalgamation of the previously separate regional offices of the Departments of the Environment, Employment, Transport and Trade and Industry into a single structure. The regions originally covered the North West, Merseyside, the North East, Yorkshire and Humberside, West Midlands, East Midlands, Eastern England, London, the South East and the South West. Merseyside was merged into the North West in 1996 to make nine regional offices. Headed by a senior civil servant, the IROs were to carry out the regional duties of the departments and administer the Single Regeneration Budget for funding urban regeneration by local government. They processed central policy for each region, and fed an understanding of each region’s needs into central policy. However, this strategy was also politically designed to sideline the influence of regional local authority associations in liaising with the European

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Commission over structural funds policy. The Major governments intended the centre to occupy the English regional space so as to meet specific needs in a relatively depoliticised manner, not to provide a joint platform for the voices of local government, which were considered to reflect the political priorities of other parties, primarily Labour (Mawson and Spencer, 1997; Stewart, 1997). The British Labour leadership –​the new centre in waiting –​also considered how to respond to the pressures of English regionalism. As we have seen previously, Blair was not a natural advocate of regional devolution; it was not an essential part of the New Labour vision, and this extended to England as well. However, there remained in the party a social democratic impulse that led them to be concerned to do something about the North–South divide and mitigate regional disparities. This sentiment, and the promotion of English regionalism as the answer, was also represented powerfully in the New Labour court by the deputy leader, John Prescott. Blair owed Prescott a good deal in helping to maintain the loyalty of more traditionally minded Labour members, trade unionists and supporters. Prescott was strongly supportive of Northern regionalism, and had a long track record of devising party approaches to English regionalism, going back to his authorship of the alternative regional strategy as part of the 1983 general election manifesto. Prescott’s advocacy of English regionalism included a preference for elected regional assemblies. There was also an acute awareness of how the failure to provide a coherent English regional policy had derailed UK devolution in the 1970s. In the context of expectations of a small parliamentary majority, even a relatively small group of disgruntled English Labour backbenchers could make life difficult for progressing devolution elsewhere in the UK. Consequently, while pro-​regionalists in England were aware of the British Labour leadership’s caution, it became clear that Blair’s plans for government acknowledged the need to develop an English regional policy that was more substantial than that of the Major Governments. (Bradbury, 1996; Mawson, 1998). Having said that, Labour’s thinking on how to address regional disparities and the North South divide and engage with regional reform does appear to have been solidly couched in New Labour caution. Sandford (2005:31–​2 and 94–​143) has argued that there were two key elements of New Labour’s strategy for domestic government which shaped how they approached policy for the English regions. First, there was no enthusiasm for old Labour ideas of interventionist government. Hence, there was to be no centrally directed regional planning through an infrastructure of regional economic planning

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councils to mitigate regional disparities; instead it was a natural part of the New Labour mix to envisage continuing to use neoliberal supply-​side solutions to help regions improve economic performance. Second, in seeking to improve the performance of sub-​national government they did not envisage any more direct central control; rather they sought to place new pressures at the sub-​national level to push improvements in performance. Sandford emphasises New Labour’s focus on encouraging strategy, scrutiny and civic engagement to improve efficiency. These priorities shaped the party’s plans for local government reform focused on the move to council constitutions, and clearer lines of accountability for council executives, which could be run by elected mayors, via the requirements of strategy development, scrutiny and civic engagement. This kind of thinking then naturally presented itself as a likely influence in developing regional governance. The combination of this approach to regional political economy and relations with potential new regional governance structures appeared to bear out our expectation that New Labour engaged seriously with English regional reform but within the context of having to cautiously meld a more promotional economic and social strategy with an indirect control approach to sub-​national government. In finessing these various strands of debate, the critical thing was that  –​ in sharp contrast to the situation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland  –​in the case of England the British Labour leadership actually found that it fell to them to define policy. This was extremely significant. First, it gave the New Labour centre greater scope for centrally controlling the policy package at the outset and setting the limits they wanted to regional power in England. Second, it also gave the New Labour centre substantially greater freedom to set up the regional structures that would either more or less guarantee local elite assimilation to governing at the regional levels in ways that were amenable to the centre, or alternatively simply depoliticise in the regions the implications of giving regional power. This was not without constraint, of course. Whatever policy they came up with had to achieve buy in from sub-​national advocates of regional change ahead of the 1997 election but it gave the British party leadership substantially more freedom to set the agenda. Overall, therefore, our expectations of English territorial pressures on the centre were partially borne out. Bottom-​up identity based pressures remained too weak to set the agenda for change either at an English-​wide or regional level. Elite debate occurred at the regional not the national English level, and it too was relatively weak in that it largely acted as a pressure on the centre rather than providing a

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focus for autonomous policy development. Even so, they did move beyond intergovernmentalism to put forward an instrumentalist case for governance and with it potential constitutional change. The centre under John Major and the centre in waiting under Blair both recognised the need to do something, but compared to elsewhere in the UK had much more freedom to determine policy for the regions. Major’s response was relatively very limited, inserting a purely bureaucratic regional capacity. The considerations shaping Blair’s team suggested the need for a more significant reform of sub-​national governance to achieve social democratic aims and respond to political pressures, but the expectations here too were for a relatively limited recipe for reform.

The negotiation and ratification of English regional reform, 1994–​99 Preparation of detailed Labour policy began in opposition in the mid-​ 1990s. The autonomy for the Blair leadership to fashion proposals was significant and the cautious way in which Blair sought to use it was underlined by the fact that he did not give the role of developing overall policy for the English regions to John Prescott. This instantly reduced the likelihood of proposals for a big-​bang move to elected regional government. Instead, Jack Straw, first as shadow environment secretary and then shadow home secretary, was given responsibility for developing regional policy while in opposition. He received help from a party regional policy commission set up under Bruce Millan, the former EU commissioner, to consider RDAs; and from Doug Henderson, a Scottish Labour MP, who gauged opinion on the ground to see what regional policies would gain support more broadly within the Labour Party. This approach meant that as elsewhere in the UK plans were developed on a bilateral basis, meaning that what would be proposed for England was not something derived from applying a multilateral approach uniformly across the UK. Proposals for reform needed to chime with what English interests wanted. Nevertheless, it was still a bilateral policy process led by the centre. The proposals that resulted from this process in 1995 and 1996 were quite varied. The Millan regional policy commission proposed RDAs for all regions in England. Beyond that Straw, after initially promising to introduce elected regional government, eventually proposed that in the first instance a new elected authority would only be created for London and that this would combine city-​wide and regional functions, many of which were then carried out by joint boards of borough authorities and by quangos. Elsewhere in England, Labour would

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seek to transpose the pre-​existing regional local authority associations into regional chambers. They would remain bodies composed of local authority nominees and serviced by their constituent authorities, with no legislative or tax-​raising powers. It was envisaged, though, that they might become forums for all the regional stakeholders and would gain powers of oversight over the  IROs, quangos, civil service agencies and privatised utilities at the regional level. The chambers would also be given powers to develop their roles in economic development, transport, strategic land use planning and European policy. Labour’s proposals did though also stipulate that English regional chambers could be transformed into elected regional government if there was evidence of sufficient support. The so-​called triple lock defined three hurdles for a case to move to elected regional government to clear. First, there would have to be agreement within a regional chamber among a majority of constituent local authorities. Second, there would have to be support in Parliament, with one consideration being the need for a predominantly unitary system of local government in the region to guard against the charge of over-​government. Finally, there would have to be public agreement, most likely through a region-​wide referendum (Labour Party, 1995c; Labour Party 1996b; Mawson, 1998: 166–9). Opinion was divided over the significance of these proposals. Critics among regional stakeholders and academics observed that it was a sophisticated way of making the right sort of noises, to suggest serious English regional reform while making the route to elected regional government a very difficult one to travel. This became clear for three reasons. First, during the party consultation process many Labour figures in local government raised their concerns at the potential for elected regional authorities to take power up from local government rather than down from central government. Only in the North East was there a sense in the regional local authority association of it representing a general public with a strong regional identity. There were also disputes in many regions about regional boundaries if a move was made to an elected basis to regional government. Second, an elected regional government would in most parts of England indeed represent the addition of an extra layer of government. It had been expected that the Major government’s review of English local government structure between 1992 and 1994 would produce unitary local government in every area, but in practice it had left local government as two tier in part at least of each region. Wherever elected regional government was introduced, either Labour would have to reopen local government structure reform or take the hit on being charged with

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over-​government if they broke their own second lock on regional reform. Finally, everyone knew that public opinion showed little sign that referenda would be won; the most sceptical observers suggested that the third aspect of the triple lock was a wrecking proposal if every other obstacle to reform failed. Straw’s decision to not devolve any legislative or fiscal powers to the English regions was also criticised for being timid in the face of likely Conservative critiques. The powers that were proposed for the regional chambers were also questioned. Powers of oversight over IROs, quangos and civil service agencies appeared to have no teeth, and proposals for expanded roles were vague. The democratisation and decentralisation gains of regional reform therefore looked uncertain. Both the Campaign for a Northern Assembly and the Association of Metropolitan Authorities criticised the proposals as too timid, and at the 1995 Labour Party conference Northern Labour MPs expressed strong reservation about their treatment compared to Scotland and Wales (Bradbury, 1996; Mawson, 1998:168–9). In response, Labour claimed to offer a realistic approach to reform. Straw talked up the value of what came to be seen as the first-​stage reforms of RDAs and regional chambers. He emphasised the necessity of clearing the triple lock to gain legitimacy for the creation of elected assemblies but said that he fully expected the North East, North West and South West to successfully make it through the triple lock to achieve elected regional authorities. Much reference was made to the similar approach to regional reform in France within a previously unitary system, where politically legitimate elected regional government did finally result. Compared to the apparently stronger commitment to elected regional government prior to getting into office in 1974 and then doing nothing when in office, Labour suggested that their proposals this time were designed to provide a template for a realistic gradual development of English regional government (Bradbury and Mawson, 1997; see also Bradbury, 1996; Mawson, 1998). The reception that the policy proposals received was affected by perceptions of how they were arrived at. If we consider Benz’s framework for assessing the policy process, we can see that it constituted usage of the most limited conference and commission processes of policy making. Indeed, it was largely an internal Labour Party policy-​ making exercise. Labour’s policy process also lacked what Benz called external differentiation, by which it might be hoped the roles and powers of new bodies might be designed on their own terms, free of external consideration about debates in other policy areas. The policy process was conducted formally separately from development

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of other policies while the party was in opposition, but there were no prior assumptions of decentralised responsibilities, which were the case in Scotland and Wales, where responsibilities held by the Scottish and Welsh Offices set the baseline of what would be devolved. Consequently, the exercise was conducted in a manner constrained by policy priorities being developed in other parts of Labour’s preparations for government following a successful election. Equally, the origins of periphery pressures in perceived performance problems meant that there was no particular focus on values and principles of regional devolution in the English regions that corresponded to the sovereignty debates and claims of right that occurred in particular in Scotland. Debate was conducted in terms of problem solving within constrained assumptions of what would be supported, and therefore the internal differentiation of sequentially discussing the values and practical application of those values to role and powers was not present. The process of policy making was, though, to some extent horizontally differentiated by the fact that the Millan Commission focused on regional economic problems and solutions, and other policy debate looked at the broader roles that regional local authority associations could play. Nevertheless, overall, in terms of Benz’s ideal type categorisation of constitutional policy making, Labour’s approach to making English regional policy was relatively uninclusive and was marked by relatively low arena differentiation. To advocates of regional reform outside the Labour Party, notably the Liberal Democrats, the proposed reforms appeared to emanate from a closed policy process and were likely to achieve fairly ineffective results. It was not ideal. That said, there was a general sense that Labour had taken English regional reform policy making seriously. The results represented in relative terms more guaranteed development of the English regional agenda than had been the case in 1970s, and they were flexible. The RDAs and chambers provided obvious gains in themselves and could be the limit of reform if that was what individual regions wanted. Alternatively, they could provide a platform for moving to elected regional government. No uniform policy was being imposed; it was a choice for each region, an offer reflected in the title of Straw’s policy document itself, ‘A Choice for England’ (Labour Party, 1995c). In contrast with the perceived relatively late shift to requiring referenda for devolution reforms, the requirement of referenda to enable any far-​ reaching change in the English regions was built in from the start. On balance, the proposals had the capacity to offer a satisficing approach to English regional reform to meet elite regional demands. Between 1996 and 1997, despite criticism from the strongest regionalist proponents,

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contemporary academic analysis suggested that most of the regional stakeholders accepted the creation of RDAs and chambers as the basis for reform and prepared for their introduction if Labour got into power. At the same time, what was offered remained consistent with what remained in the New Labour centre a conservative mindset about what to give away. In this way Jack Straw, as a key shadow cabinet ally of Blair, acted on a shared natural scepticism about the possible implications of devolution and regional reform (Bradbury and Mawson, 1997; see also Bradbury, 1996; Mawson, 1998). The package of regional reforms was duly adopted by Labour ahead of the 1997 general election. In Labour’s election campaign the perceived need for English regional reform was incorporated into a general critique of the over-​centralisation of the state developed by Conservative governments, and thereby also incorporated into the general theme of New Labour as a force for much-​needed modernisation. Unlike the devolution policies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it was not promoted as a core component of Labour’s agenda; it was not placed on the party’s pledge card in England. Only in London did the promise to create a new elected strategic authority following a referendum really have a substantial political prominence. Of course, Labour planned much of their programme on the assumption that if they managed to win a general election they might still only have a small majority, and the need to assuage some English Labour MPs to maintain support for devolution legislation had been one of the considerations in developing English regional policies. In practice, Labour achieved a 179-​seat majority, which changed the dynamic. How then did Labour turn their pre-​election proposals into actual reforms in the English regions? On one issue they moved without much further debate. As part of its local government reform agenda, directed by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) under Prescott, the Blair government moved rapidly to create a GLA, with a directly elected mayor. It was justified on the grounds of the need for London to have a voice and to enhance its competitiveness (Sandford, 2005:211–​12). A  referendum was held in London in 1998, which resulted in a 72 per cent ‘yes’ vote on a 34.1 per cent turnout. The GLA was duly established following the first elections in 2000 and, despite its development as part of local government reform, it clearly involved the creation of a major elected regional authority. Beyond London, constitutional regional reform policy was also the legislative concern of the DETR, but its development was subject to Whitehall interdepartmental discussions and prime ministerial and

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cabinet approval. Reform was progressed in accord with the promised agenda, but there was awareness that there was no great public clamour about how it was to be developed or likely electoral consequences if the substance of its development was altered. In practice, there were indeed changes in Labour’s original plans. First, a clear conclusion drawn from the narrow win in the Welsh referendum in September 1997 was that public support for elected regional government in England outside London was not a realistic prospect. In Straw’s plans it had been envisaged as only possible if the triple lock was passed, but regionalist advocates had held out the hope that the argument could be made for doing just that in several regions and that elected regional government could yet be established quickly in parts of England. This plan was now dead in the water for the first term of Blair’s administration. Second, Labour did otherwise engage quickly with what might be called first stage reform; the creation of RDAs and establishment of regional chambers. A  consultation paper was issued in June 1997 and a White Paper in November, followed by the Regional Development Agencies Act, passed by Summer 1998. Reform was therefore contemporaneous with devolution reforms in the rest of the UK (see Mawson, 1998:171–3). However, the substance of these reforms did betray additional post-​ election thinking. In particular, English regional policy making had become strongly influenced by business interests and Blair’s general support for a strong role for the private sector in getting things done. Sandford reports that the CBI and chambers of commerce both produced reports in early 1997 identifying policy areas that would all be helped by more coherent regional structures to meet their needs. In a telling quote, Sandford (drawing on Morgan and Mungham, 2000:37) reported Howard Davies, director general of the CBI, reflecting in 1997 on businesses’ favourable experience of the IROs. He stated: regional businesses have definitely welcomed having a single point of call for government in their region. But curiously, rather than appease the enthusiasm for regional autonomy, and make them think the government really does care about the world beyond the M25, the integrated regional offices seem to have had the opposite effect. It’s woken them up to what they have been missing. (Quoted in Sandford, 2005:32) This informed the enthusiasm to press ahead with RDAs, though it also ensured that RDA boards rather than achieving a broad

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representation of regional opinion were to be composed of only 8–​10 directors and were to be private sector led. At the same time, policy thinking had also been strongly penetrated by the concerns of other policy areas. The proposed responsibilities of the RDAs focused on regeneration, land planning and business support but did not include regional selective assistance, seen as key in attracting inward investment to regions, which was kept under the central control of the Department of Trade and Industry. Equally, Labour did not give regional chambers statutory status; rather their establishment was to be voluntary, a choice for each region. Nor were they given prescribed functions or rights to hold IROs, now called Government Offices of the Regions (GORs) to account. Even John Prescott suggested that the chambers needed to operate within a central government framework, influencing central plans and not leading regional plans of their own. The government’s proposals received strong criticism from stakeholders in the English regions. Both the Northern and West Midlands Groups of Labour MPs in Autumn 1997 indicated support for clear moves to elected regional government. The Conservative Parliamentary opposition criticised Labour’s plans for proposing RDAs as the biggest unaccountable quangos the UK had ever seen. Many local authority responses to the June consultation paper argued for larger, more inclusive RDA boards, and for regional chambers established on a statutory footing. The CBI, chambers of commerce and TEC National Council all criticised the proposals for failing to bring forward a clear strategic regional forum (Mawson, 1998). However, in the crowded policy world of the New Labour government the content of English regional reforms was influenced –​ more than devolution for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland –​by inter-​departmental power politics in Central government. Individual central departments were able to bargain for more of what they wanted and to limit and slow down the pace of development. Sandford (2006:176) also concluded generally that ‘faced with a welter of policy priorities (for instance health and education, as well as devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), and following discussion in cabinet committees, the Government elected in 1997 chose not to make English regions a priority’. Consequently, the proposals were signed off by the Cabinet Sub-​Committee on Devolution for Scotland, Wales and the English Regions (DSWR), and little changed between the consultation proposals and the legislation of 1998 that established somewhat weakened versions of RDAs and voluntary chambers, with the triple lock conditions for moving

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to elected regional government. In April 1999, nine RDAs were introduced covering the same areas as the GORs, and between May and September 1999 voluntary chambers were established in all eight regions outside London. In reflecting on this, we have to remember that public opinion support was low and sub-​national pressures within England were sufficiently weak to warrant a description of the territorial strain from England on the UK as still relatively low. Pressures were posed by elite policy stakeholders, though again they remained varied and fragmented. In this context, the regional governance infrastructure established was still relatively substantial. It had a plausible claim to be able to meet regional performance problems and it was capable of further development on the basis of policy needs and institutional processes that could see both RDAs and chambers build their roles. Many English regionalists took this as some progress and there remained theoretical hope that elected regional government beyond London may yet occur. Even so, in the case of England, in large measure because it was dealing with territorial performance rather than integration problems, the centre was able to set up regional governance more exclusively on its own terms. Unelected RDAs with business leadership would ensure local elite assimilation to national political economy objectives on an ideal basis from a centre point of view, almost entirely free of the unpredictability that came from trying to assimilate regional or local leaders who were elected. The centre was also able to clip the power claims of local authority leaders at the regional level by giving chambers no statutory basis. These were the realities of territorial power relations and constitutional policy. The manner in which these reforms were introduced won acceptance at the time. However, only in London –​where what many saw as regional government was introduced as part of local government reform  –​did the future hold some certainty. Of course, city-​wide elected London government had been abolished before, but the legitimacy provided by referendum support gave the new GLA and elected mayor some long-​term stability. In contrast, the nature of the constitutional policy process by which proposals for regional institutions in the rest of England had been arrived at meant that there was considerably less legitimacy to the reforms that were introduced than those elsewhere in the UK. This potentially weakened their long-​term strength as a basis for the development of English regional government from both a periphery and centre point of view. The Blair government therefore presided over a satisficing balancing English dimension to the UK devolution settlement, but one which was heavily defined on

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Table 9.3: Attitudes to national identity in England, 1999–​2007 (%) 1999

2001

2003

2007

English

44

43

38

39

British

44

44

48

47

Neither/​don’t know

12

13

14

14

Source: British Social Attitudes Survey

Table 9.4: The Moreno question and national identity in England, 1999–​2007 (%) 1999

2001

2003

2007

English not British

17

17

17

19

More English than British

14

13

19

14

Equally English and British

37

42

31

31

More British than English

11

 9

13

14

British not English

14

 9

13

14

Other

 7

10

 7

 8

Source: British Social Attitudes Survey

the centre’s terms and therefore was much more open to future central interference or indeed abandonment.

Territorial politics, regional governance and England, 1999–​2007 In considering the implementation of Labour’s English regional reforms much of the context did not change. Between 1999 and 2007 the nature of the territorial strain that England posed for the UK remained fairly constant. Survey evidence suggested that forced choice identification with Englishness leapt up to parity with Britishness immediately after devolution, but it fell back slightly thereafter, albeit without going back to former levels. Answers to the dual identity Moreno question indicated similar constancy, although there was a slight fall in those feeling equally English and British (see Tables 9.3 and 9.4). The British Social Attitudes Survey also began to ask questions about regional pride. Curtice (2006:134) concluded that there were substantial variations during the early 2000s. While over 60 per cent of respondents said they were very or somewhat proud in their region

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Table 9.5: Constitutional preferences in England, 1999–​2007 (%) Following is best for England

1999

2001

2003

2007

UK Parliament

62

57

50

57

Regional Assemblies

15

23

26

14

English Parliament

18

16

18

17

Source: British Social Attitudes Survey

in the North East, North West, and Yorkshire and Humber, after that only Greater London just made 50 per cent. Meanwhile, while there were some movements in opinion between 2001 and 2003, there was no breakthrough in support for an English parliament or elected regional assemblies. Generally, constitutional preferences in England showed continuity up to 2007 (see Table 9.5). Majority support for the status quo was sustained and there was a relative indifference to the prospect of new political structures (Curtice, 2006). In Benzian terms, England in the early 2000s continued to not pose a territorial integration problem. Rather, as might be expected from the intentions of reform between 1997 and 1999, the focus after 1999 remained on the regional performance problem, representing a still relatively low territorial strain, and how the new developments in regional governance could seek to address them. The RDAs focused primarily on the development of regional economic strategies. The regional chambers, restyled as assemblies, initially had no defined powers or funding and simply had the role of monitoring RDA strategies. Variations in the regional local authority associations, which were the forerunners of these bodies, followed on into varied development of the assemblies. Nevertheless, there was evidence of assemblies successfully developing scrutiny approaches and gaining influence over RDA strategies, and in early 2001 in the East of England the assembly twice rejected the RDA strategy (Sandford, 2006:181). From 2001, the assemblies also became responsible for regional sustainable development frameworks and following a consultation paper, Strengthening Regional Accountability, they were handed £5m a year collectively to increase staffing and scrutiny capacity. Regional-​ minded local government, business and policy actors engaged with this new institutional arena to try and steer governance towards addressing problems specific to their regions and localities. Elite-​led activism also sustained the evolution of broader English regional agendas from within regions, including notable ventures such as the establishment of the North-​East Constitutional Convention in 1999 (see Tomaney, 2002).

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Meanwhile, central departments found the regional level a suitable space to develop governance to help improve regional economic performance and develop the enabling network governance principles of strategy, scrutiny and civic engagement (Sandford, 2005). In London, of course, a new city-​wide elected GLA and directly elected mayor were introduced. Ostensibly a form of local government, in serving nine million people it was hard not to see it as a form of regional government. Sandford (2005:208–14), in his review of regional governance changes after 1997, concluded that while structurally it was distinctive from how the rest of the regions were governed, the preoccupations that informed how it worked showed a lot of similarities. Structurally, it was based around the mayor and the GLA and their oversight of four quangos, operationally acting at arm’s-​length from it. These were the London Development Agency, Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police Authority, and the Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. The focus of the role of the mayor was in setting strategy; the role of the GLA was to develop scrutiny; and the role of both was to harness civic inclusion. In 2000, Ken Livingstone was elected as mayor, standing as an independent after failing to win the Labour nomination, but then subsequently beating the Labour candidate, Frank Dobson. His avowed dedication to socialism ensured that the executive approach to running London government clashed with the politics of New Labour. Ironically, in the one region of England where the Blair government did establish elected regional government, it would be hard to say they created an assimilated local elite. Subsequently, Livingstone was allowed back into the Labour Party and was embraced as the Labour candidate when he stood for re-​ election in 2004. He served two terms as the elected mayor up to 2008. He focused heavily on transport policy, achieving the introduction of the congestion charge to deter car usage in inner London, the Oyster Card for travelling commuters, and articulated buses. He supported the redevelopment of the East End of London, and initiated and promoted the ultimately successful bid to bring the Olympic Games to London in 2012. In such ways, the initiative to introduce a strategic regional London elected authority with leadership by a clear figurehead proved successful. Livingstone promoted policies that enhanced the rights of women, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) and black and minority citizens while also being accused of holding anti-​Semitic views related to his opposition to Israel’s policies against the Palestinian Authority. He opposed the privatisation of the London Underground

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(the Tube) and consequently came into conflict with the UK Labour government. In this, he was unsuccessful (see Sandford, 2005:207–2​ 9). In its second term of office after the 2001 General election victory, the Blair Government also did finally engage with the issue of how it might develop elected regional government in the rest of England in line with public demand. In 2002, John Prescott published the White Paper, Your Region, Your Choice: Revitalising the English Regions (Cabinet Office and DTLR, 2002). This was followed by a so-​called soundings exercise and, in June 2003, Prescott announced that referenda would be held in each of the three Northern regions on whether an elected regional assembly should be created: the North West, North East, and Yorkshire and the Humber. However, in July 2004 the government backtracked on two of these because of a patent lack of interest, and in November 2004 a referendum went ahead just in the North East. What was on offer though was fairly limited. A North East regional assembly would have responsibility for appointing the chair and board for the North East RDA; it would set the regional economic strategy; and it would have an input into other strategic planning, for example on transport and support for small businesses. The ‘yes’ campaign, led by Prescott and supported by high profile businessmen such as Sir John Hall, Chairman of Newcastle United, campaigned on the basis of Northern identity and its economic purpose. The ‘no’ campaign featured among its organisers Dominic Cummings, later Boris Johnson’s special advisor after Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019. The ‘no’ camp argued against the elected regional assembly on the grounds of cost and the idea that it was little more than a talking shop. The result was a shattering defeat for the government, with 78 per cent voting against having the assembly. Some argued that the key reasons for the failure were that public support was never really there, that it appeared like the addition of an unnecessary level of government and was primarily a preoccupation of the elite. Others argued that the limited powers and lack of financial resources envisaged for the regional assembly made it unappealing. Timing also probably played a key role, contributing to the outcome that regional reform did not capture the public imagination in what was perceived to be the most regionally conscious part of England (see Tickell et al, 2005). When the push for elected regional government failed in the rest of England, however, the Blair government shed few tears. Indeed, the centre comfortably embraced continuing with the more limited paradigm of unelected regional governance outside London, and enhanced it in several ways, though not without problems. First, the Blair government developed the role of the GORs, established by the

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preceding Major government. This initially followed a Cabinet Office report in 2000, which criticised the complexity of local and regional initiatives and recommended a larger coordinating role for GORs in supporting and evaluating performance. This led in 2002 to a further seven central government departments establishing a presence in each of the GORs. By 2005, the scope of the government offices and their roles as the regional arms of Whitehall departments had expanded considerably, and they oversaw a total budget of around £8 billion. Secondly, the role of the RDAs was developed. In 2002, in response to pressures from RDA chairs, the various funding streams from central departments for which RDAs were initially made separately accountable were amalgamated into a ‘single pot’, allowing them autonomy in how they prioritised spending in each region. RDA overall expenditure grew considerably to reach approximately £2 billion a year collectively by 2005. The RDAs’ chief focus was on encouraging economic growth, and analyses suggested that they had a beneficial effect. The RDAs also engaged with sustainable development aims, although in this they were less successful. Their roles became ever more complicated as they became responsible for more than 40 different Whitehall funding schemes. Following this, it became somewhat inevitable that there was a tension between being seen as primarily implementing central government aims and the original regionalist aspirations for them to be primarily regionally-​led institutions responding to regional voices. They worked within a specific tasking framework and, to improve accountability, they developed sophisticated impact evaluation frameworks and independent performance assessments. Overall, between 1999 and 2007, RDAs developed as key economic institutions in the regions; nevertheless, they were also widely seen as overstretched in their responsibilities, and there were limited resources devoted to understanding or evaluating their success (see Pearce, 2008; Sandford, 2005). Thirdly, the regional assemblies also became established as significant elite policy-​oriented networks in the English regions. They developed a space for policy debate in a range of areas for which they were not formally responsible, leading for example to the creation of regional housing forums from 2001. All of the regions went on to establish constitutional conventions as broader forums for regional political debate and lobbying. In response, the second Blair government designated assemblies as regional planning bodies in 2004. In 2005, they became responsible for regional funding allocations, and in 2006 they became regional housing boards. They also contributed to a wide range of other initiatives. As the assemblies took on more responsibilities they increased their funding base. By 2004, they had a joint income of £28m, about

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60 per cent of which came from the Department for Communities and Local Government (Sandford, 2005). At the same time though, the assemblies had severe shortcomings, determined in large part by the still limited level of funding. They still had relatively small core staffs; they had weak powers in relations to RDAs; and, while they were intended to provide a regional voice that influenced other bodies, this was often hard to make heard. They had a low profile in Whitehall, so did not demonstrably influence policy at the centre. Overall, they had a limited capacity to influence central government, quango, RDA or civil service agency decision-​making in the regions (Pearce, 2008:108–9). Sandford (2005; 2006) has argued that overall English regional governance took on something of a life of its own in these years, developing on the basis of policy-​based networks of institutional delegates and policy actors. This echoes the arguments of earlier analysts such as Mawson and Pearce, who had charted the strong autonomous sub-​national governance stimuli to regional working since the 1980s, although Sandford (2006:185–​7) highlighted the institutional rigidities that RDAs and assemblies were acquiring by the mid-​2000s. In sharp contrast to earlier expectations that regional elites wanted elected regional government, leading figures in the unelected assemblies didn’t necessarily wish to see themselves as a transitional stage to elected regional government as this might upset the strategies and activities they had mapped out for their regions. At the same time, though, central government interest in utilising regional governance clearly proliferated. A key force behind many of these developments from a central perspective was the chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown. Treasury sponsorship of a series of reviews led to RDAs or the assemblies being seen as the suitable bodies for leading regional development (Pearce, 2008:100). Much effort was also put into developing regional coordination between the GORs, RDAs and the assemblies –​often termed the troika –​including concordats governing relationships, regional partnership groups and a shared focus on sustainable development goals. But, as Sandford (2005) also argues, the regional space became a focus for many Whitehall departments in seeking to improve their own administrative reach, and they were inclined to seek to impose central departmental control over how their ambitions were implemented at the regional level. This increasing complexity in English regional governance led to different perspectives on its implications for the ambitions of regional stakeholders and supportive academics for the development of English regional government. On the one hand, optimists for regional development in the mid-​2000s pointed to the myriad

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ways in which the potential for regional development and supporting regional infrastructure was being developed. On the other hand, research revealed the declining sense of the autonomy of regional governance, and its greater orientation as a creature of central government policies in the regions. Quangos actually increased in scope and importance. A  Treasury review of GORs in 2006 complimented their roles but reflected on their continued deficiencies as regional coordinators and voices. The work of both RDAs and regional assemblies revealed a complex weave of benefits from regional governance, as well as problems of limited regional autonomy and problematic regional coordination caused by too many central departments insisting on their particular departmental aims (Ayres and Pearce, 2004; Ayres and Pearce, 2005; Ayres and Pearce, 2007; Ayres and Pearce, 2009). Pearce (2008) offered a sceptical but nuanced summary view that, after the initial reforms of 1997 and 1999, regionalism was rarely explicitly high on the UK government agenda. As a result, what structures and roles had developed had not been planned, and resulted from ad hoc developments and bargaining at the centre over the use of regional structures for various central department purposes. Regional governance was not coherent across the regions, with the roles and relationships over governance between GORs, RDAs and assemblies unclear. There were also variations across the regions. He argued that:  ‘this accumulation of powers could conceivably lead the key regional institutions to acquire a tighter community of interests, extend their joint capacities, develop a more integrated approach to managing funding and reach a point where political regionalism replaces functional regionalism. But this process is by no means inevitable’ (Pearce, 2008:112–​13). Pearce concluded that ‘the key lesson from the past decade is that Whitehall’s approach will remain uneven and “deconcentration” will only be sanctioned in those areas where there will be the least challenge to central government’ and that ‘the harsh reality is that regional co-​ordination is used mainly to provide a plausible justification of business as usual and sub-​national partnerships are left to negotiate with a patchwork of public bodies with very different levels of commitment to the regional tier’ (Pearce, 2008:113). Overall, then, there was no development of what might be called English regional devolution, and what had been developed was contested as to its significance in meeting regional performance problems. Even so, the lack of a move to elected regional government was not for the want of trying and was ultimately constrained by

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the lack of popular will for it. At the same time, while analyses of the autonomy and capacity vested in regional governance structures differed, English regional capacity through GORs, RDAs, assemblies and regional coordination was developed in this period far more than has often been appreciated. What weaknesses it had were caused not by an indifference by the centre to English regionalism, but rather by the constraints of the varied and fragmented pressures from within the regions themselves which resulted in at best pressure for gradual change only, and then in a somewhat inchoate manner. These constraints were overlain by the effects of the realities of power relations between periphery and centre and the outcomes of battles between centre departments over what could and could not be decentralised. This did though also mean that the settling of further roles on RDAs and Assemblies between 1999 and 2007 was not accompanied by central departments withdrawing to let them get on with it. Instead the gradual growth in the enlisting of English regional governance in the Blair Governments’ promotional strategies for improving social and economic governance in England was accompanied by a cluttered departmental centralism. At the same time, for all the substantive significance of the development of regional governance up to 2007, a key matter remained the lack of differentiation of regional reform as constitutional reform from regional reform as an aspect of other specific policy concerns such as transport, land use and infrastructure development. This meant that arena differentiation of regional policy as constitutional policy from the concerns of other policy areas, which had been weak from the outset in 1997–​99, declined over time. This contributed to a sense of a lack of entrenched legitimacy for English regional institutions and their powers compared to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. What happened to regional capacity was more the result of policy-​making in a range of functional policy areas than constitutional policy on the regions per se. As a result, with the exception of elected regional government in London, legitimised by a public referendum, the Blair governments’ development of regional governance in the English regions remained open to complete change by a new government with little in the way of constitutional or political defence. By the mid-​2000s, the Conservative Party did indeed have the declared policy of abolishing the RDAs and assemblies and starting again. Regional pressures and reform remained the most consistently important dimension of the debate about England during the 1999–​ 2007 period, but it is important to note that as time wore on, there were some pressures relating to England as a whole (see Aughey,

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2007). As we have seen, British Social Attitudes Surveys showed a significant increase in affiliation with English identity between 1997 and 1999, and although this fell back a little during the 2000s, it did not return to pre-​1999 levels (see Tables 9.1–​9.4). Bryant (2010:252) drew attention to the fact that, by 2007, those who felt English only or more English than British accounted for a third of survey respondents. A  Campaign for an English Parliament was established, though in April 2007 a YouGov poll found it had only 21 per cent support. By this point though, the consequences of policy divergence because of devolution were also becoming apparent. Scotland had higher public spending per head than in England, and this was being used to fund free nursing and personal care for older people, free eye tests for all, access to free cancer and Alzheimer’s disease drugs, free prescriptions, and free university education. As we have seen in Chapter 7, while these were an important set of policy innovations the 2003–​07 Scottish Labour–​Liberal Democrat coalition had failed to excite the Scottish public with them. The 2007 British Social Attitudes Survey though revealed that 75 per cent of English respondents believed the Scots should pay for these out of their own taxes. There was also a consistent majority who were unhappy that Scottish MPs could still vote on laws only affecting England, and opinion slightly strengthened as the decade went on (see Table 9.6). In response to these movements of opinion, and particularly the majority view opposing the continued rights of Scottish MPs to vote on laws only affecting England, William Hague as leader of the Conservative Party pioneered an English votes for English laws (EVEL) policy in the early 2000s. This response to what in effect was Table 9.6: Attitudes to the idea that Scottish MPs should no longer be allowed to vote in the House of Commons on issues only affecting England, 2000–​07 (%) 2000

2001

2003

2007

Strongly agree

18

19

22

25

Agree

45

38

38

36

Neither agree nor disagree

19

18

18

17

Disagree

 8

12

10

 9

Strongly disagree

 1

 2

 1

 1

Don’t know/​no answer

 9

11

11

12

Source: British Social Attitudes Survey

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the revived West Lothian Question was included in both the 2001 and 2005 Conservative manifestoes. With the party still out of office, in 2006 the Conservative peer, Lord Baker, attempted to introduce a bill from the House of Lords to remove Scottish MPs’ voting rights on legislation relating only to England. This was also to extend to Welsh MPs in the light of the Government of Wales Act 2006, which had extended Wales’s legislative powers, to address what Baker called the ‘West Carmarthen question’ as well. He was unsuccessful but, in an April 2007 YouGov poll, 51 per cent of respondents said they favoured EVEL. This suggested the potential for a stronger territorial strain coming specifically from the English. Nevertheless, Bryant (2010:264) observed that it was important to recognise that the main devolution effect was on how the English perceived it affected their interests as opposed to their own sense of identity and their need to express that politically. It also remained very questionable as to how salient these issues really were for English voters compared with other priorities. As we can see from Table 9.6, barely a quarter of English respondents felt very strongly about the issue of continued Scottish MP voting rights even in 2007. In these circumstances, by 2007 the territorial politics of England were exciting more interest but remained somewhat indeterminate. In the UK national political arena, some different constitutional policy options were emerging. On the one hand, Labour continued to accommodate the regional elite focus on the gradual evolution of the regional governance tier in line with policy needs, an approach we can identify within our comparative framework as instrumentalist in character. For supporters of English regionalism, this was the regional method par excellence in gradually developing capacity. The main critique of this process came from policy practitioners and analysts, who observed how centralist UK Governments were in dealing with English regional governance structures, and how inadequately entrenched English regional governance still was as a feature of the overall system of government. On the other hand, the Conservatives by 2007 had strengthened in their preference not to deal with sub-​national English performance problems through regional governance structures, which they planned to abolish. It remained to be seen what they would put forward in their place. Rather, the Conservatives placed more of an emphasis on the constitutional aspects of the English dimension to the devolution settlement. However, the thinking was not to create any new controls over policy divergence under devolution across the UK or to create new political structures to represent England, but through a more

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limited mechanism to reduce English grievance against interference by Scottish or Welsh representatives in the making of laws solely affecting England. Arguably, this was merely a different adaptive approach to meet English needs rooted in the desire to give few powers away from the centre and maintain control. In 2007, as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland came to terms with their election results and UK central government adapted to Tony Blair standing down as Prime Minister, Labour’s regional policy still held sway in England. It was based on the development of what was by then an extensive infrastructure of English regional governance, which was still heavily predicated on the centre’s terms. It had its problems, but it maintained a plausible claim to be trying to meet the territorial performance problems posed by England in ways that met the strategic objectives of political elites both in the English regions and at the UK centre at that time, as well as –​so it seemed by 2007 –​sustaining a satisficing balancing English dimension to the UK devolution settlement. Given the distinctive lack of constitutional entrenchment of regional reform in England, however, the Conservatives’ alternative policy approach had every chance of being enacted if there was a change of government.

Conclusion This chapter has considered territorial politics and regional policy in England in the 1990s and 2000s. It concludes that given the lack of strong assertion of English or English regional identities, or support for new institutions representing those identities, the territorial challenge posed by England in this era is best understood in terms of a regional territorial performance problem rather than the territorial integration problems perceived in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In these terms, it posed a relatively low territorial strain. Local authority political and policy elites were the focus for articulating these performance problems and lobbied for reforms of regional governance, potentially leading to elected regional government, all of which sought regional empowerment within the UK state. Even so, given weaknesses in public support, strategic promotion of reform was limited. Such strategies were gradualist, building regional government on developing policy capacity. They embodied an instrumentalist code of developing regionalisation: seeking the assertion of regions as functional policy spaces generally, rather than on the basis of popular identity. In response, the UK central government approach under Labour was guided by the need to do something to address English regional

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disparities, promote more inclusive sub-​national governance, and head off possible English grievances against devolution elsewhere in the UK. In practice, the Blair governments worked on behalf of the English periphery to bring coherence to plans for regional reform that might otherwise not have been there. An elected authority and mayor were introduced for London, and in the rest of England new structures of regional governance were introduced in the form of RDAs and unelected regional chambers (later assemblies) to work alongside the central civil service government offices of the regions created under the Major Governments. Nevertheless, this infrastructure of English regional governance was still considerably weaker than in other parts of the UK. The Blair governments were able much more unilaterally to set the limits to regional autonomy. There was also, then, a focus on placing the main responsibilities at a regional level with business appointees, bureaucrats and coopted local government experts. All of these represented relatively optimal choices of regional elites to assimilate regional governance to centre aims and objectives. At the same time, though, individual central departments wanted to sustain strong levers of control or influence over policy. This was consistent with the development of composite indirect and direct central control imperatives in UK governance in England (discussed in Chapter 3). Regional reform was developed only in part through a distinct territorial constitutional policy process and with limited success. The process was bilaterally organised, its negotiation mechanisms were largely exclusive, and overall there was relatively low arena differentiation in the imperatives that drove the central design of regional governance from central aims in other policy areas. This meant that it was not widely perceived as an effective reform. The fact that regional governance was developed at all, and included the possibility of elected regional government, bought some support from other pro-​regionalists. Nevertheless, these weaknesses in the policy process, particularly the lack of external policy arena differentiation, meant that the development of regional governance was not respected as a distinct constitutional process by UK central departments. This meant that central control was more routine in the short term, and in the long term with the exception of the GLA, regional governance institutions were not in any understood sense entrenched, in distinct contrast to the devolution reforms elsewhere in the UK. In the implementation of regional governance reforms after 1999, peripheral and centre strategies showed considerable continuity, while the implications of the policy process by which regional governance was

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developed became more pronounced. The elaboration of instrumentalist pressures for regionalism and the centre’s readiness to shape these to their own ends did lead to expanding roles for regional governance, but it did not lead to elected regional government. The work of the so-called troika of GORs, RDAs and regional assemblies encountered increasing incoherence and co-​ordination problems, as well as routine fragmented central departmental control, while still being vulnerable to abolition. Regional pressures for development and how the centre responded had to a considerable extent become bound up in individual sectoral policy debates, for example on planning, infrastructure or housing. Consequently, by 2007, English regionalism had become part of normal policy as opposed to being in any significant sense a distinct constitutional policy. This determined how the structures and powers of the English regions would be developed, with an uncertain future. Indeed by 2007, there were new pressures within England that suggested the need for an alternative focus on the protection of English interests in the context of devolution settlements across the UK. This raised renewed debate about dealing with the West Lothian Question in the UK Parliament, and meeting English interests as a whole rather than on a regional basis. Overall, in the period after 1997 and with the constraints that politicians and policy makers laboured under, English regional governance was introduced and developed with a plausible claim to try and meet the territorial performance problems posed by England in ways that met the strategic objectives of political elites both in the English regions and at the UK centre at that time. It also appeared by 2007 to have still sustained a satisficing balancing English dimension to the UK devolution settlement as a whole. Regional governance in England was though developed within a far more centralist paradigm than devolution in the rest of the UK. Equally, the characteristics of the policy process by which English regional governance was progressed had the weakest claims to constitutional policy status, and accordingly the approach in England was probably the least stable of all across the UK; it was still open to the whim of central government to either expand or contract as it wished. On this basis it is reasonable to claim that how best to deal with England remained still not a pressing matter in 2007, but the lack of the consolidation of the regionalist approach left it strangely more open compared to the rest of the UK. The territorial politics surrounding constitutional change in each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all had posed potential existential threats from the start, and the challenges of nationalist dissident elites which had all arrived by

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2007, threatened to make this a reality. Yet, despite this, the institutional checks laid by the centre in the founding devolution legislation and the constraints that nationalist elite leaderships faced, contributed to a continuing balance in centre–​periphery relations that held devolved self rule within a still relatively stable duality to UK governance. Nationalist separatism may yet break through but still at this stage the rules of engagement in how collaborative devolved elites and the centre may continue to seek to finesse self-​rule within state stability were relatively well understood, even in the most starkly conflictual context of Northern Ireland. Territorial politics in England in the 1980s and 1990s had not represented an existential threat to the UK. They didn’t in 2007. Yet the opportunity had been there to more coherently and successfully establish regional structures to provide authentic voices in dealing with England’s specific performance problems, which matched those of the devolved jurisdictions and helped to balance competing periphery and centre interests at least plausibly. It remained highly questionable in this case  –​ostensibly still the easiest of the cases  –​ whether that opportunity had been taken.

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10

Territorial Politics, the Central State and Devolution Thus far, this book has placed a focus entirely on territorial politics and constitutional policy as it affected each of the constituent nations and regions of the UK. The approach of central government to territorial management has been examined in each case as a key aspect of centre–​ periphery relations. This chapter will now place a principal focus on how the Blair governments developed the central state in the light of devolution. It explores the role of territorial pressures and constraints in thinking about adaptation at the centre; the availability of political resources in shaping approaches to reform; choices over the use of those resources; and the policy process adopted in making those choices. In so doing the chapter considers to what extent the evidence supports the proposition that following Bulpitt the Blair Governments sought to fashion an approach also to the development of the central state in the light of devolution that maintined a centre autonomy model of centre–​periphery relations. The implication is that they sought this goal both to assist the successful embedding of devolution in ways amenable to the state as a whole, as well as maintaining effective UK government across all its priorities, not simply territorial management. To address these issues and explore the validity of this thesis, section one examines the territorial politics contexts to how the Blair governments approached central state adaptation. Section two then addresses the approaches established by the Blair governments between 1997 and 1999 to articulating a vision of Britain after devolution, organising the making of law and the role of Parliament, intergovernmental relations, territorial finance, and approaches to future territorial constitutional reform. Section three then readdresses how these contexts and approaches developed between 1999 and 2007. It should be noted that the chapter draws in both sections two and

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three on the published work of Trench, which was based on extensive interviews in Whitehall in the early 2000s, and reconsiders it within the book’s framework of analysis.

Territorial politics and the central state In considering how the Blair governments approached central state adaptation, we need an appreciation of the pressures they were under to reform. Such pressures potentially could come from either a periphery or a centre perspective. To take a periphery focus first, it is possible that territorial strains could have exhibited pressures to influence the state-​wide governing of territorial space as well. This could be through asking for reforms of how the state as a whole is constituted, or specifically more shared rule for regional governments in UK government, or simply changes in central governing approach. As we saw in Chapter 3, there are four possible dimensions of shared rule, relating to law making, executive coordination, fiscal power, and power over constitutional policy. In the period 1997–​99, however, it would be very hard to suggest that these were matters of any great concern to the general public in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or the English regions. There were some pressures at the elite level, but not ones that were terribly compelling. Among the nationalist ethno-​regionalist parties –​the SNP, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Fein –​there was a logic to seeking influence on the central state to assert territorial interests. Both the SNP and Plaid Cymru supported the development of a machinery of intergovernmental coordination, aware of the significance of intergovernmental summits for building up the state-​like authority of provincial government. They also supported an elected House of Lords. Nevertheless, issues of reform of executive coordination or of the House of Lords were low saliency compared to the priorities of self-​government. Sinn Fein was distinct in taking no interest at all in any of these issues. Their elected MPs did not take up their seats in the House of Commons, for to do so required the taking of the oath of allegiance to the Crown, which they promised at each election not to do. Among other territory-​only parties in Northern Ireland –​the SDLP, the UUP and the DUP –​there was considerable desire simply for UK government to engage with them to support the political and peace processes, though the DUP of course opposed devolution in 1998. Among territorial branches of British-​wide parties, any agenda of reconstituting the UK in fundamental ways as a result of devolution was anathema to the Conservative Party at all levels. The Liberal

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Democrats in Scotland and Wales coalesced with the national party in seeking a federal constitution, and the prospect of becoming coalition partners with Labour in the new devolved administrations, particularly in Scotland, gave them some leverage. Nevertheless, the constitutional priority of the Scottish Liberal Democrats was electoral reform; at the centre, after Labour’s crushing victory in 1997 the Liberal Democrats’ hopes of significant influence were thwarted. This left the Labour Party, and it is tempting to suggest that this meant that there was inevitably little pressure, as this would be seen as the business of the state-​wide party branch. Yet, as Trench (2007e:166) revealed, his interviews with civil servants in the early 2000s showed that, in the 1997–​99 period, Donald Dewar was concerned that UK policies on reserved matters would affect Scottish government and so wished ministers of the new Scottish government to be able to sit on UK cabinet committees to defend Scottish interests, just as ministers in the previous Scottish Office had done before devolution. This offered a recipe for clear, shared rule in intergovernmental executive coordination. This is a fascinating glimpse into the mindfulness of someone who by then was an experienced statesman in the likely implications of devolution. Nevertheless, such pressure on the centre appears to have been rare. In turning the focus on to the centre, we find that there were some voices during the late 1990s raising the need to consider fundamental territorial state reform, principally to recast the UK as a federal state. These included the Liberal Democrats, pro-​federal think thanks, and some scholars (see Hazell, 1999). But it would be difficult to suggest that this provided a compelling federal policy network that had a realistic chance of influencing an incoming Labour government. Development of thinking along these lines faced three substantial problems. First, debate of the territorial organisation of the UK among political representatives was conducted principally in terms of adaptive options to UK parliamentary sovereignty focused on devolution. These options also had long histories of distinct debate in each part of the UK. Second, the wide variance in pressures in each part of the UK seemed to defy the construction of a uniform symmetrical framework to encompass them all. Finally, the UK central political arena did not explicitly consider territorial political issues to any great extent, and so there was a collective lack of central knowledge on what new ideas might work across the state as a whole without causing potential harm. Above all, fundamental territorial state reform would have necessitated opening up debate of how Westminster and Whitehall worked, a venture for which the political class was not prepared and

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which could have caused Labour immense problems both electorally and organisationally. In this context, fundamental  –​in this case, federal  –​options for state reform should largely be seen in the late 1990s as having been hypothetically possible options for reform only, whereas options for devolution while maintaining the parliamentary state at the centre were the most historically plausible options. To adopt Broschek’s (2014) concept of a territorial reform pathway in territorial state reform as the dominant body of ideas seeking to amend the existing structure of government, in the late 1990s for the UK the reform pathway that had some history to it was asymmetrical devolution, making any consideration of state-​wide federal reform at that time hard to conceive as practical politics. There were, of course, also major challenges facing Labour at the centre and crowding out proactive engagement with such issues. Having been out of office since 1979, the most fundamental of these was to make itself electable, with a major focus, given its sustained success in Scotland and Wales, to make itself electable to English voters. The New Labour project as it was finally presented to voters in 1997 involved a carefully blended set of commitments to promote and run an enterprise economy successfully: tax excessive profits and invest wisely in public services, notably education and the NHS; reduce and combat crime; and, rebuild the UK’s external relationships, including with the European Union. Seemingly unremarkable in themselves, the effort it took for Labour to shed the image of being a statist, profligate tax and spend party, not strong on law and order or defending the UK’s interests in the world, and to be able to craft this agenda credibly were colossal. While it did contain social democratic ambitions, the project as presented to voters in 1997 had to be presented as modernisation in no way born in Left-​wing politics. Labour under Blair considered that it had to tack to the centre and avoid scaring the electorate. New Labour could not afford to promote a preference shaping agenda of radical change, which was deemed too risky for a party out of office for so long, but instead an orientation to preference accommodation, working to ameliorate the defects of Thatcherism but within the neoliberal economic paradigm that she had made popular. In courting support and preparing for government, Labour had also faced a wide range of pressures for other constitutional reforms which had gathered in response to nearly two decades of Conservative government. These included electoral reform, modernisation of the House of Commons, controls on party funding, the replacement of the House of Lords with an elected second chamber, reform of the civil

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service, and the reform of local government to make it more democratic and accountable. Charter 88 and other groups campaigned for the incorporation of the charter for international human rights into UK law, as well as freedom of information legislation to protect the rights of individuals over the storing of data. The Labour Party is a party that by definition is focused on issues of economic and social justice, and is not therefore intrinsically committed to constitutional reform like the Liberal Democrats or intrinsically skeptical like the Conservatives. Labour had debates on these issues with a wide range of views and more equivocal conclusions (Bogdanor, 2001). Nevertheless, the party went into the 1997 election with promises on all of these issues, presenting themselves with considerable pressures to achieve workable beneficial reforms that commanded support both in the party and in the country beyond the lobbying of campaigners. In practice, Labour not only achieved office and stayed in office, it also introduced a lot of constitutional reform. However, some major issues remained unresolved, notably electoral reform at Westminster; other issues were only partially addressed as they ran into political controversy, such as House of Lords Reform, or practical policy objections, such as freedom of information. Jack Straw, in a retrospective paper in 2010, cautioned the need for realism in appreciating what Labour did achieve. He noted that ‘it is of course easy to promise constitutional changes in opposition but somewhat harder to deliver them once in power’ (Straw, 2010:358). Responding directly to criticism that Labour should have gone further and tied everything together in a grand plan, he responded that Labour did not start from a constitutional blank sheet of paper. Nor had previous major reforms, such as the Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights, been all encompassing grand plans; rather they had been specific revisions to the constitutional framework. He commented that ‘to produce the environment for a single holistic strategy has always taken seismic, often violent change, through war, occupation or revolution to trigger it (Straw, 2010:359). Equally, the many constitutional reform issues were all the subject of separate debates. His view was that, in keeping with constitutional tradition, Labour had been ‘a renovator’ not ‘an architect’ and that they had produced ‘a series of incremental, tailored responses to particular problems, each with complex histories of their own’ (Straw, 2010:359). In adapting to devolution at the centre then, the Blair governments faced few cogent pressures either from the periphery or at the centre for far-​reaching reform. They also lacked the time and space to think in broader terms. Their assumptions also were of an essentially unreformed central state anyway. In his memoirs, Blair considers the implications of

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devolution almost exclusively in terms of what happened to the specific territories involved, principally Scotland or Northern Ireland, and not its implications for the UK state as a whole. Blair undoubtedly worried about devolution –​‘I think it was the right thing to do. I hope it was’ (Blair, 2010:253) – but beyond that it was not the subject of any further reflection other than in terms of the development of party political battles at devolved elections, particularly in 2007. His understanding of the UK territorial constitution was also clearly grounded in the principle of parliamentary sovereignty as ‘of course, constitutionally, in theory whatever powers Westminster bestowed, it could usurp’ (Blair, 2010:251). The constraints and assumptions informing this approach received some sympathetic analysis from James E.  Alt, professor at Harvard. Looking back on the Blair legacy on constitutional reform, he commented that of course it is true that in the UK in these years: no one has risen to the challenge of writing the equivalent of the Federalist Papers to provide uniformity and coherence. … but to call the situation unstable because so much remains to be worked out is somehow to miss the point of the first decades after the ratification of the American constitution: even though it was more uniformly authored and adopted (more) all at once, years of decentralised political entrepreneurship revealed what it actually meant. It will be no different in Britain where gradualism and adaptation have always been seen as important aspects of constitutional evolution. (Alt, 2009:229) Hence, the Blair government’s approach at the centre was informed by caution and gradualism. Fearing the unknown political consequences of more far-​reaching state reforms, it is plausible to expect that any government introducing devolution in the late 1990s, having carefully dealt with the political pressures of each case, would be reluctant to take on more than it could handle. Any mistakes could all too easily be exploited by party political opponents at the centre, and perhaps more importantly by ethno-​regionalist parties in the periphery seeking to bring the whole state down. This is to confirm that politics (specifically, in modern times, the politics of party competition), and not written constitutional rules, were actually the principal dynamic that would shape the meaning of devolution. In the UK case, everyone knew that the underlying territorial integration problems were chronic rather than acute, which was what made devolution so fundamentally threatening

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to the UK state, making the management of possible political pressures always the key issue. As the Blair government considered adaptation of the central state on these terms, key questions arise as to how it then thought about the political resources that Bulpitt identified as key in supporting central territorial management. These included:  first, how it successfully could assert a unionist culture; second, how it could ensure that the constitutional framework for law making at the very least did not help territorial interests; third, how it could also ensure an effective bureaucratic management of intergovernmental relations; and finally, how it could manage financial resources so that the devolved governments did not perceive economic deprivation. How the Blair governments fashioned answers to these questions is central to revealing the governing code that guided UK central government through this unprecedented challenge of territorial management.

The central state and adapting to devolution, 1997–​99 We need then to explore how, against a background of relatively little pressure to reform the central state and within the heavy constraints they faced on time and potential pressures of party competition, the Blair government developed an adaptive approach to territorial and central state development in the light of devolution. A  review of the evidence suggests that Labour gave significant thought to five key issues in crafting their overall approach  –​Britishness and the future of the Union, the constitutional framework for law making, intergovernmental relations, territorial finance and approaches to further territorial constitutional reform. Labour’s approach on each issue appears to have involved respect for devolution while sustaining considerable continuity with past practice in the operation of central government. This section looks at each issue in turn. First, Labour had to consider what devolution meant for the idea of Britain, and articulate a politics of sustained union compatible with the obvious new privileging of sub-​state identities that went with devolution. Scholars interested in Gordon Brown’s engagement with Britishness from 2004 make much of a lecture given in Downing Street as early as December 1999 by the historian, Linda Colley. She put forward the idea of post-​devolution Britain as a citizen nation, associated with inclusive, universal values of civil rights, equality of opportunity, political participation and empowerment that treated all people across the state the same. They were rooted in landmarks in British history, such as Catholic emancipation, the 1832 Great Reform

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Act, votes for women in 1918 and independence for India in 1947. She considered that ‘Britishness is a synthetic and capacious concept with no necessary ethnic or cultural overtones’ (Bryant, 2010:255), which provided an overarching complement to the patriotic identities of Scottishness, Englishness and Welshness as well as competing versions of Irishness. In practice, Blair and Brown decided to say relatively little about Britishness at this stage; there was certainly no concerted public campaign around what ‘Britain’ now meant. But what this shows is that they were engaged with this from very early on and recognised its importance. The difficulty in striking the right tone is reflected in the fact that Colley offered for future usage a vision of the role of Britain that did not appear competitive with sub-​state identities, and thereby not appear oppressive in the implementation of devolution. Possibly, at this very early stage, it was considered that saying anything at all would hamper the successful bedding in of devolution. Second, Labour mapped out a very clear approach to the constitutional framework for law making and central–devolved relations. As Trench suggests, this could be straightforwardly seen in the founding acts of devolution. This included a clear division of legislative responsibilities. On the one hand, this included ‘the assumption that devolution would accentuate the existing autonomy of the territorial departments’ (Trench, 2007c:50), and that devolved powers would be ‘exclusive’ and in each case ‘extensive’ (Trench, 2007c:54). On the other hand, the founding legislation was also clear on reserved powers in the Scottish case, reserved and excepted powers in the Northern Irish case, and in using a conferred powers model for Wales in retaining a considerable range of powers at the UK level. The vast majority of powers devolved were in the infrastructure and social domains, leaving high economic, welfare, constitutional, and foreign and defence powers at the central level, an approach typical of the global trend towards devolution. Underpinning this division though, in each of the founding acts could be found the reassertion of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, maintaining the statutory right of the UK Parliament to override acts of the devolved administration if in the final analysis it wished to. The significance of this on a practical basis was significantly moderated by acknowledgement of the division of law-​making powers in the founding acts and legislative acceptance of the ‘Sewel convention’, which stated that Westminster would not normally legislate for devolved matters without the consent of a devolved legislature. This meant that parliamentary legislation in devolved areas was intended only to be on extraordinary occasions, or when

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the devolved administrations wished to be included in a UK law being made initially only for England. Nevertheless, the theoretical supremacy of UK parliamentary sovereignty was given a continued and unambiguous statutory basis. The devolved administrations were also given no role in making UK parliamentary law. Although House of Lords reform was another key issue at the time of devolution, a quasi-​federal idea of second chamber reform in fact never became a key source of debate in the UK. As Trench concludes from interviews in the early 2000s, Whitehall officials were intent on a limited conception of the law-​making role of the devolved administrations. He suggests that ‘implicit to this was the belief that they would function (but only function) within the spheres of autonomy granted to them’ (Trench, 2007c:50). Constitutional specialists are, of course, given to raising the issue of the West Lothian Question as a fundamental problem for central policy makers to address in considering the law-​making implications of introducing devolution. This is because of the theoretical unfairness of continuing to allow MPs from devolved jurisdictions, such as the one from West Lothian in Scotland, a vote over UK parliamentary law for England when that right is not reciprocated for English MPs over devolved law on the same issues. It can create cases where the party with a UK majority in the House of Commons may rely on Scottish MPs, in this case, to pass law that might only have effect in England (see Bogdanor, 1999). Tony Blair’s (2010:251) view was that ‘it was a perfectly sensible question … to which there is no logical answer’. He noted, though, the overwhelming preponderance of English MPs if they wished to assert an English view, and that the question was politically important mainly as a constitutional fig leaf behind which a recalcitrant House of Lords might hide in justifying the rejection of devolution legislation. This explained his support for referenda to defend devolution against them using it ‘as legitimate grounds on which to camp’ (Blair, 2010:252). In 1997–​99, the Labour government was disinclined to ask a question that could not theoretically be answered, but which practically they were determined to play down. This was not least because it aroused no particular opposition among English voters at that time, and there were no grounds for believing it would definitely become a high saliency issue in the future. As a result, Scottish MPs retained full voting rights in the House. Bogdanor (1999: 235) summed this approach up neatly as an example of ‘where the will to conciliate is present, special treatment may, by containing centrifugal impulses, help to preserve the unity of a country when the urge to symmetry would destroy it’. Nevertheless,

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Article 86 of the Scotland Act contained the provision to allow the number of Scottish MPs to go below 71, allowing the government in the future to legislate for a reduction. This wouldn’t reduce the rights of MPs and it wouldn’t solve the West Lothian Question, but it might reduce perceived unfairness if resentments grew. This approach was of a piece generally with the Labour government’s desire in adapting the constitutional framework for law making not to dilute the capacity of the UK House of Commons yet to simultaneously acknowledge the territorial diversity of the UK and represent the UK as a whole. Both the Scottish and Welsh Grand Committees, the parliamentary committees established for deliberation purely by Scottish and Welsh MPs respectively, were retained. Equally, given that the posts of secretary of state for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were to continue, then so too was provision for parliamentary questions to them and select committees to scrutinise their work. Westminster remained the primary law-​making legislature for Wales, whether through England and Wales bills or Wales-​only bills. The government took the view that, irrespective of devolution, in the operation of both Houses of Parliament it would remain business as usual. In these various ways, while respecting devolution, Labour sustained the power of the UK Parliament and the capacity for its members to act as UK Members of Parliament on equal terms, free of any new explicit roles as national territorial representatives at the centre. The third key issue Labour addressed in adapting the central state to devolution was how to manage intergovernmental relations. Again, Labour’s approach was developed fairly clearly. It was rooted in established ways of working between Whitehall departments and the former territorial offices of central government, and then adapted to dealing with the devolved administrations. There were four components to the approach, each of which built upon each other:  territorial bilateralism; the continuing role of territorial secretaries of state; civil service adaptation; and the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Territorial bilateralism was fundamental. The very fact that the devolution settlements were asymmetric meant that a built-​in key component of Labour’s UK central approach, developed between 1997 and 1999, was that day-​to-​day relations with devolved administrations were primarily also on a bilateral rather than multilateral basis. It was necessitated by the distinct arrangements, issues and responses from central government that were possible arising from three very different settlements. Bilateralism ensured a key continuing role for the territorial secretaries of state. In the period 1997–​99, a strategic focus on

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devolution was embraced within the constitution secretariat in the Cabinet Office, and other Whitehall departments set up desks devoted to adapting to devolution. Nevertheless, it followed that, with three very different devolution settlements, there was a continued need for territorial secretaries of state to manage them in central government; each was expert in the specific constitutional and political dynamics of the relationships in each particular case. The lack of executive responsibilities meant that the former Scottish and Welsh Offices were dissolved and replaced by the Scotland and Wales Offices, staffed on a very small scale. But it was intended that the Scottish and Welsh Secretaries would meet the First Ministers of the devolved institutions on a regular basis and at the centre would play a part in negotiating the block grants from the Exchequer budget. The Northern Ireland Secretary also had his/​her responsibilities slimmed down to Assembly relations, management of law and order and oversight of the peace process, but was ready to resume executive responsibilities if the Assembly faltered. As Trench (2007e:175–​6) notes, the secretaries of state were pivotal in liaising between levels of government through weekly meetings and contact. They were copied into most Whitehall correspondence to devolved administrations, and spoke on the latter’s behalf at the centre. It then followed that the civil service adapted to recognise distinct territorial administrations on a similarly differentiated basis. This was summed up in the revision of the civil service code in 1999 to say that officials owed their loyalty to the administration which they were serving, not to a single UK government. At the same time, however, civil servants remained members of the home civil service. This set up a potentially contradictory relationship between loyalty to different levels but, as Trench observed, the expectation was that this would produce a mix of accountabilities which civil servants were likely to feel manageable given their backgrounds in serving specific central departments and the civil service as a whole. This simply moved the experience onto a mix of serving devolved government and the fact that ‘accountability within the civil service and its professional leadership still ends in Whitehall’ (Trench, 2007c:69). From 1998, the Labour government also developed an MOU as an overarching agreement with all the devolved administration; this was agreed by them and published in 1999. This did not create legal obligations but instead assumed that most issues of central–devolved intergovernmental relations would be dealt with through the ‘normal administrative channels’ (Trench, 2007c:61) and would be based on the so-​called 4 Cs of communication, consultation, confidentiality and

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cooperation. Within this framework concordats were agreed between individual Whitehall departments and the devolved institutions to provide a basis for day-​to-​day working relations. This provided for an approach to intergovernmental working based on no surprises and dealing with issues on a regular ‘as and when’ basis. Trench’s interviews with civil servants in the early 2000s revealed that this approach to intergovernmental relations made for considerable continuity in relationships over territorial administration from the pre-​devolution era. The MOU and concordats, in enshrining interdepartmental Whitehall working practices, helped the Whitehall departments to still consider the devolved institutions as if they were departments of government, simply in a different geographical location. In practice, it was hoped that officials would be able to deal with most issues where there might be a dispute between central government and a devolved institution, just as officials generally dealt with disputes between departments in central government. Trench (2007c:63) concluded that: unstated but implicit in what many officials have said in interview is that the existing ‘operating code’ for managing relations between Whitehall departments (or between Whitehall and the territorial offices) would continue to apply. While devolution may have created different governments accountable to different elected bodies, the relations between them would still work in much the same way as they had when all were part of a single government accountable to Westminster. The general thrust of these four overlapping developments was that the approach to intergovernmental relations was built on developing a capacity that was essentially customised to the needs of working with each devolved administration; that capacity was built on maintaining a strong politically accountable focus for brokering between levels; a strong bureaucratic focus; and, through the MOU, a strong specific problem-​solving  focus. Much attention in other writings has been placed on new institutions of intergovernmental relations that were created by 1999, namely the Joint Ministerial Committee (JMC) and the new role for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to act as a quasi-​constitutional court. It is important to note, though, that these bodies were never intended as central components of the Labour government’s plans for managing intergovernmental relations. The JMC was only established

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as a response to Donald Dewar’s request, discussed in section one, for Ministers in the devolved Scottish government to sit in UK government cabinet committees so that they could influence decisions that down the line would affect Scotland. Central ministers and officials wished to avoid this and ‘the idea of the JMC in its plenary and functional forms was formulated instead, as a substitute for such cabinet committees’ (Trench, 2007e:166). In the process, the JMC was not given a specific statutory role, could not reach decisions that were in any sense binding on UK government, and was not a mechanism for dispute resolution. In a rather different way, the territorial constitutional court role for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, was largely seen as a necessary default mechanism to resolve disputes that couldn’t be resolved by any other means. The focused bilateral structure of intergovernmental relations, however, was specifically intended to ensure that such a default mechanism was hardly ever needed; problems were expected to be solved much earlier than that, generally by officials, and rather more commonly in extremis by the territorial secretaries of state seeking to broker compromises. In this light, we can see that criticism of the Blair government’s approach to intergovernmental relations was in fact built on the normative assumptions that it should require strategic high-​profile engagement at the centre of central government in managing intergovernmental relationships and that it should be conducted on a multilateral basis through JMCs. Central policy makers by and large instead were sceptical of the potentially adverse consequences of being seen to have a strong centre, which by highlighting a strong central view could stimulate further territorial tensions. Equally, they were sceptical of giving multilateral platforms on which devolved administrations could create a powerful collective voice that stimulated territorial division from the bottom up. Instead, the components of the UK centre’s bilateral approach appeared to have much in them that sustained individualised respect for the needs of each devolved territory, while sustaining strong levers of central power which even Trench (2007c:60) concluded were means of managing intergovernmental relations that ensured central government kept the upper hand, and were strong in comparison with many federal states. They were levers of central power that sought to politically and administratively manage intergovernmental relationships in ways that maximised efficiency and consensus and depoliticised territorial politics by focusing management in dispersed, issue-​based, everyday ways. The adherence to bilateral mechanisms of intergovernmental relations as adaptations of territorial office roles in the UK cabinet

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and officials’ behaviour within a still unified home civil service were also complementary with the approach to the role of UK Members of Parliament after devolution. That is to say, in adapting to devolution, the UK centre took care not to fall into the trap of creating openings for the further representation of sub-​state membership space politics that could make the already high threat level posed by devolution to the UK state worse. The fourth key issue Labour addressed in adapting the central state to devolution was then territorial finance. Under the approach to territorial funding before devolution, the Treasury negotiated annual settlements with the territorial offices of state, theoretically on the basis of the so-​called Barnett formula. Established in the late 1970s, this determined that funding for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should be based on the expenditure allocated for England in any given year, distributed on a population basis. This was to ensure similar levels of spending per head. It was an approach that had two key problems. First, it had never worked like that, with historically much higher levels of spending per head in Scotland and Northern Ireland. A big part of the reason for introducing the Barnett formula was to provide a mechanism to move gradually towards convergence in expenditure per head but, by the late 1990s, the Barnett formula had largely failed in this objective. Second, it was also an approach which in any case stimulated criticism for continuing to use an expenditure-​based formula in a world where most central governments sought to equalise sub-​state finances on the basis of their perceived needs. Even in 1979, the Barnett formula had been perceived as a temporary measure. Most scholars considered that the UK at some point needed to undergo a thorough-​going reform of territorial finance to make allocations to the territories on a needs basis rather than an expenditure basis (Bell and Christie, 2007; Trench, 2007d). Mclean and McMillan (2005) advocated the adoption of an Australian-​style Commonwealth Grants Commission to take the issue out of the political arena and do this. In deciding upon the post-​devolution approach it was, of course, built into the Scottish settlement that there would be an income tax-​ varying power, but it was recognised that this had relatively marginal implications for the overall Scottish budget, and was hard to use without significant preparation of public opinion. It meant that central finance would be the key resource for all the devolved administrations. Trench (2007d:89) records from interview evidence that, in 1997, the decision over what to do in allocating central finance was actually taken remarkably quickly, before even the first meeting of the cabinet

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sub-​committee on devolution to Scotland, Wales and the Regions and before any extensive debate among officials across central departments. The decision was also seemingly taken personally by Gordon Brown as chancellor of the exchequer, though presumably with Treasury advice. In the process, as Trench observes, Brown actually took three decisions. These were to fund devolved administrations through a block grant, to use the existing baseline of spending for the allocation of the grant at the start of devolution, and to add to the baseline using the Barnett formula. The Labour government at this time was sticking to its election promise to follow Conservative plans for the first two years, but from 1999 they expanded expenditure, particularly on health and education, both devolved responsibilities in all three devolved jurisdiction. This followed a comprehensive spending review in 1998. It meant that in the first year of devolution actually all the devolved administrations received real terms increases in territorial spending allocations against the pre-​devolution baseline. McLean became a vociferous critic of the fact that from a state-​wide perspective Labour had ducked the need to address change (see Mclean, 2005). By sustaining a Barnett formula-​based block grant, it tied the finance of devolution by the coat tails to UK government decisions about spending in England, and took no account of need. On the other hand, several commentators recognised the advantages of the decision. Trench (2007d:92) reported that officials in 1997 considered the issue of funding devolution potentially one of the trickiest that they faced. Continuity actually offered simplicity in the context of the scarce resource of time. It also had some clear benefits for the devolved administrations. It guaranteed them autonomy in how to spend the block grant once it had been allocated. This actually contrasted with the often routine controls placed by central government departments on the use of central grants in many federal systems. As already mentioned, it also came with the sweetener of real terms increases in funding through the block grant. From a central government perspective, this kind of devolved autonomy was also far preferable to autonomy provided for in fiscal devolution. Variation in tax regimes could give the potential down the line for nationalist parties to play politics either in competition or disputes with the centre. In contrast, as Trench (2007d) and Bradbury (2006a) have both observed, directly picking up a term used by Bulpitt, the Barnett formula provided an ‘automasticity’ in the allocation of territorial finance. It gave no platform for public negotiation or dispute over financial allocations; instead, it provided for an accounting mechanism by which original Treasury decisions on

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expenditure in England were automatically translated on an annual basis into funding totals for each of the devolved administrations. Whatever was decided for the former framed the latter, giving little basis even in times of possible future spending cuts for a sense of the devolved administrations being relatively worse off than anywhere else. The fact that the statement of funding policy would also be done unilaterally by UK government, with the devolved administrations then simply getting the so-called Barnett consequentials, meant that the approach to territorial finance also remained strongly integrated into the UK system of public finance. It allowed the Treasury to continue to pull the levers on how spending went up or down. Bell and Christie (2007) argued that, for all the up-​front spending autonomy it gave the devolved administrations, the fact that overall block grant funding followed the shape of overall UK public spending in areas of policy that were devolved meant that there were certain rigidities built into how devolved administrations might spend their allocations. For example, if a devolved administration very markedly diverged in levels of health spending, then it was likely to become a political issue requiring public explanation. In many ways it is likely that the Treasury’s lead role in territorial finance meant that in this area of central state adaptation, provision for practical levers of central control was most strongly asserted. It extended also to putting direct controls on borrowing for the devolved administrations, closing off one of the biggest financial problems of devolution globally, namely the unrestrained accumulation of regional debt for which ultimately central governments have had to pick up the bill. Not so in the UK. Even so, the greater spending power per head that in practice came with block grant funding for the devolved administrations and complete freedom on how to spend it were significant gains that could underpin policy divergence. Despite recognition of the advantages of continuing with Barnett formula block grant funding, it remains a conventional wisdom that at best it was an approach that was living on borrowed time and ideally territorial finance should have been reformed in 1997–​99. However, irrespective of the technical challenges of engaging with reform, the constraints of time, as well as fears that the SNP would exploit more far-​reaching reform of territorial finance as Scotland being short-​ changed, effectively ruled out any such reform for a generation. No one in the 1997–​99 period thought that any reform of territorial finance to adopt a needs-​based formula that might result in reduced funding for Scotland was practical politics. Equally, it is important to say that in the meantime, and for that generation-​long period of settling down

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devolution, the approach the centre adopted on territorial finance held the prospect of a series of mutually reinforcing benefits. It gave the devolved administrations autonomy in spending decisions, and where there were the biggest risks to the stability of devolution –​Scotland and Northern Ireland –​it gave administrations substantial resources. At the same time, it retained for central government a great deal of power over finance and expenditure, including the power to prevent debt. Crucially, the methods of block grant, Barnett formula-​based allocation also held the prospect of depoliticising issues of finance: its automatic processes of allocation avoided the creation of a high politics of territorial finance and effectively hid central power. It was also an approach that kept the devolved administrations out of the centre, sustaining a unitary sense to UK public expenditure management that paralleled the centre’s approaches to Parliament, law-​making and intergovernmental relations. No new platforms for territorial representation at the centre were created that might inflame territorial politics and drag the Prime Minister and the government as a whole into the resolution of battles over money. Overall, the approach avoided administrative upheaval. It was indicative of a conservative approach to embedding devolution generally, but it was conservative with a purpose. The final area that needs to be addressed in considering Labour’s adaptation of the central state to devolution is the issue of how they handled the prospect of further constitutional reform of devolution. The devolved administrations had some rights in respect of defending the new status quo. In the case of Scotland and Wales, the expectation was that the Parliament and Assembly could not be dissolved without consent and future reform of powers would require processes within each territory. This represented some recognition of sharing decision-​ making with the centre, though again only on a bilateral basis. In the case of Northern Ireland, the founding legislation to the Assembly established the right for the UK government to unilaterally suspend it in certain circumstances. Beyond that, the centre in fact retained undiluted central control over further new reforms and it is important to remember that this had two dimensions to it. First, under each of the devolution settlements the issue of the internal constitutional arrangements for the electoral system and executive–legislature relations remained under the control of the UK Parliament. Second, in all the devolution settlements the issue of whether the devolved administrations would receive any further powers was also retained as a reserved power or in the Welsh case was not conferred. This could work both ways, of course. It gave central

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government the discretion to transfer additional functions if it wished to, with the agreement of the devolved administrations, and opened up the possibility of selective further devolution of powers in areas not key to central government. Nevertheless, it did mean that the UK Parliament effectively had a veto over any plans for the further devolution of powers that came up from the devolved administrations that the centre did not agree with. These two levers of central power were each important in their own ways. The central power over devolved electoral systems sustained the centre’s ability to influence how votes were turned into representation, with prospects for facilitating elected devolved governments least threatening to overall UK territorial stability and the current government’s particular governing strategy. The central power over the transfer of powers gave the centre the backstop discretion to adjust the settlement in accord with pragmatic needs, but if push came to shove to place a block on territorial political manoeuvres of a more threatening kind. Overall, in considering reform at the centre consequent upon devolution, the Blair government had the advantage of little explicit pressure coming specifically from interests in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or England. But they also had relatively little time to address big issues, and they were aware that the penetration of the national party system was absent in Northern Ireland and was potentially threatened by nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales. In this context, clearly Labour did pursue an adaptive paradigm in beginning to narrate Britishness after devolution and in defining central approaches to law making, intergovernmental relations, territorial finance and further constitutional reform. Their approaches involved adaptation within the framework of well-​established institutional and procedural conventions, informal cultures of centre politics and bureaucracy, automasticities of public finance and bilateral approaches to territorial constitutional reform. In these circumstances, however, the choices they made were still very important. After reviewing the evidence, they appeared to consistently focus on achieving three key objectives. First, they sought to sustain respect for devolution:  whether through not seeking to assert Britishness over the stateless nations’ identity politics; respect for practical autonomy in the use of devolved legislative powers; a focus on the practical problems of each devolved administration in their own right in intergovernmental relations; full autonomy in the use of block grant finance; and a provision to provide for further devolution of powers by agreement with the administrations and on a basis of consensus.

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Second, they sought to calm down or depoliticise the potential for conflictual territorial politics after devolution, both in devolved–centre relations and at the centre. This meant not promoting an equivalent increase in the shared rule characteristics of the state, which might emphasise territorial representation in law making at the centre, co-​executive control, or co-​control of territorial finance. Indeed, there was a conscious effort to avoid creating new platforms for the collective assertion or mobilisation of territorial forces by reasserting the unity of Parliament; emphasising bilateralism over multilateralism in intergovernmental relations; and sustaining an automasticity approach to territorial finance. Third, the Labour government’s choices sought to underpin the centre’s adaptation to devolution by creating a strong framework of central power. This is actually acknowledged in much of the detailed empirical judgements of key researchers such as Trench. There has, of course, been a tendency to combine this with criticism that central management was not even stronger, including the development of a dedicated unit at the heart of central government for coordinating devolution policy, the establishing of accountability audits or controls over divergence, and that the absence of these somehow made central management not strong overall. Unfortunately, this misses the point that it was considered that central power had to be hidden within the velvet glove: over-​assertion of the centre would reignite the very territorial politics that had stimulated devolution in the first place and might yet threaten the state and the centre’s capacity to govern. The centre preferred to sustain its framework of central power through controlling the framework of law making, intergovernmental relations, territorial finance and further constitutional reform through the apparently fragmented institutions of Parliament, territorial offices of state as part of cabinet government, the Whitehall village, and specifically Treasury control. Central power, if not hidden, was depoliticised and bureaucratised within continuities in the operation of integrative mechanisms of UK institutional practice, all in plain sight but assumed, unexpressed, never pulled together to stimulate the need for debate. In Bulpittian terms, these were classic mechanisms of asserting a framework of central power within which to contain peripheral politics, while limiting the centre’s direct need to engage in reform of the management of day-​to-​day relations, and so insulate themselves to focus on other priorities in central government, and they all survived the centre’s adaptation to devolution. In looking at the constitutional policy process by which the centre adapted to devolution in these various ways, a consideration against

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Benz’s categories of analysis suggests that as a discrete area of territorial constitutional policy overall central approaches to law making, intergovernmental relations and territorial finance do not fare well. The common characteristics were the usage of a closed internal government approach to thinking it through and the endorsement of prior principles and adapted prior practice. These implicit constitutional policy processes achieved relatively little arena visibility let alone arena differentiation from the regular policy processes of government; they also received no explicit public or parliamentary ratification. The overall approach to the reform of the central state in the light of devolution was formed from a mixture of non-​decisions, mild adaptations and developments from past convention and practice; leaving what was done potentially open to future political challenge either at the centre or from territorial movements. Nevertheless, claims for effectiveness and legitimacy can be made primarily on the basis of the fact that each of the central approaches to law making, intergovernmental relations and territorial finance were incorporated within the bilateral devolution settlements, ratified by referenda. From a central point of view Labour between 1997 and 1999 appeared to have achieved most of what was strategically needed for effective territorial management in a highly efficient manner. At the same time, there were few objections either in devolved or central government at the consensus that such measures seemed to underpin. How the central state adapted to devolution was not a salient territorial political issue anyway; few political and policy practitioners kicked up a fuss about what was done. At the time, the relatively successful depoliticised adaptation of the centre’s arrangements to devolution reflected the fact that the periphery’s interests lay in developing self-​ rule, and political debate around the centre was engaged most with other things, principally, the unfolding of the main themes of the New Labour project. The adaptive approach to the centre’s dealing with devolution was most significant for not igniting new problems in territorial politics, while sustaining the centre’s autonomy to act on the things that most people considered more important.

The central state and managing devolution, 1999–​2007 Between 1999 and 2007, the matrix of peripheral and central pressures and central government preoccupations considered at the advent of devolution altered barely at all. Political pressures and debates in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland did not shift from their primary focus on autonomy or self-​rule to solve territorial

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integration problems, nor in England to address regional performance problems. Constitutional preoccupations of reformers pressurising the government at the centre remained focused on reform as they saw it of essentially a unitary parliament and civil rights. Both in the periphery and at the centre, then, the potential issue of more wide-​ranging central state reform to take account of devolution was for the most part one of relatively low saliency. The Labour government under Tony Blair also won two further general elections in 2001 and 2005, essentially on repeating the disciplined formula of marrying competent management of a low inflation economy with investment in public services, a consistent flow of criminal justice legislation, and the balancing of central authority with respect for social groups, including now respect for the autonomy entrenched in devolution in Scotland and Wales. The centre’s role in seeking to assist the implementation of devolution in Northern Ireland was itself time-​consuming. Externally, the preoccupation of the Blair government with the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq absorbed huge amounts of energy and political resource. The Blair governments were relatively activist in addressing all of these issues at home and in external relations; quintessentially, they leaned on the inherited assumptions of a centre autonomy code that prioritised keeping such issues as devolution at a distance, so as to maintain the centre’s freedom and resources to act on these matters of more central concern to the government of the state and party re-​election. Unsurprisingly then, there was much continuity in the approaches to unionist culture, constitution and law making, bureaucracy and intergovernmental relations, territorial finance and future approaches to territorial reform established between 1997 and 1999. As time went on, politicians at the centre did air that vision of Britain as a citizen nation first articulated in 1999 by Linda Colley. The most high profile and regular purveyor of this vision was Gordon Brown, the chancellor. He made two major speeches on the subject, the first in 2004 and the second in 2006, the latter also partly a response to the 7/​7 London bombings perpetrated by British-​born Islamic terrorists. Brown’s consistent themes were the idea that respect for cultural and ethnic diversity could coexist with a common Britishness based on values that all Britons share. These included liberty, duty (or responsibility), fair play (or fairness), openness, creativity and internationalism. Such values had been evident in many ‘episodes, events, institutions, practices and persons’ which ran like a ‘golden thread’ through British history, defending liberty against arbitrary power (see Bryant, 2010: 255–​6). In 2007, Brown also published a Fabian pamphlet with fellow Labour

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cabinet minister, Douglas Alexander, marking the tercentenary of the Scottish Union. In it, they made the case for the Union on the basis of family ties, shared economic interests and common values. Brown’s efforts earned him the sobriquet the Bard of Britishness, and he was critiqued from several perspectives. Aughey (2007:209–​12) felt that the citizen nation vision underplayed Britishness in conceding the association of patriotism as a primary interior national identity to Scottishness, Englishness, Welshness and competing forms of Irish identity. This left Britishness as a secondary exterior identity. Aughey believed that British identity was instead generally hybridised. Writing specifically in relation to England, he argued that ‘it has been the degree of interpenetration of the citizenship and patriotism within Britishness –​and not the absolute distinction between British (civic) and English (patriotic) –​that was the efficient secret of political union. This was a subtle ideal which worked in a fit of absence of mind, so absent mindedly that most people still have difficulty in describing it properly’ (Aughey, 2007:211). Similar arguments could be made about why significant numbers of people chose Scottish/​Welsh/​Irish equally with British to answer the Moreno question in surveys, rather than choosing one over the other. The approach was, though, also critiqued as being too assertive. Keating (2009:66–​71) observed that those primary nations, such as Scotland, had become sites themselves for the negotiation of long-​held distinctive cultural affinities, citizenship renewal, multiculturalism and universal values in re-​visioning national identities. He made the simple accusation that ‘UK politicians are trying to build a unitary national tradition and identity in the wrong era’ (Keating, 2009:68). Journalists regularly also simply pointed out that, as a Scottish politician, Brown had personal reasons for wanting to assert Britishness and identify himself with it to sustain the legitimacy of him succeeding Tony Blair as UK Prime Minister. He was widely lampooned for publicly supporting England in the 2006 football World Cup. Many of these critiques appeared rooted in a determination to delegitimise even a relatively softly articulated Britishness as old-​fashioned, oppressive or foolish. Of course, it cuts both ways in battles over identity in territorial politics. There was no particular reason why Britishness should not sustain a role in popular identity formation. In Brown’s particular approach, it complemented his own very strongly held Scottish identity, and he would dispute any idea that his Britishness sought to impose itself as a unitary identity in competition with his Scottishness. Public attitude surveys in 2007 showed a varied picture with 93 per cent of Northern Ireland Protestants, 57 per cent of people in England,

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and 51 per cent of people in Wales still seeing themselves as at least equally British if not more so than Irish, English or Welsh. This fell to 30 per cent of people in Scotland (2006) and 19 per cent among Northern Irish Catholics. Even in Scotland, though, less than 40 per cent considered themselves Scottish only (see McAuley and Tonge, 2010; Bradbury and Andrews, 2010; Bryant, 2010; Keating, 2009). Continuity was also sustained in the Blair governments’ approach to law making and devolution. Parliament absorbed into its business on average one Welsh-​only bill per year and adopted Welsh-​only clauses into several more. It continued to legislate for Northern Ireland during the long periods of direct rule. Even in respect of Scottish devolved powers, the UK Parliament remained an important legislature. Indeed, Scottish legislation and the use of Sewel motions, renamed legislative consent motions (LCMs), actually became ‘the over-​r iding concern’ (Trench, 2007e:185). LCMs were not expected to be used routinely, but between 1999 and April 2007 they were adopted on 79 occasions by the Scottish Parliament to allow the UK Parliament to legislate for Scotland in devolved areas. Keating and Cairney (2009: 41) concluded that, in most cases, LCMs were on ‘rather technical matters’ but there were instances of more significant examples, namely in respect of civil partnerships legislation. The evolution of parliamentary procedure and behaviour in relation to devolution otherwise occurred mainly on the basis of practice. In one important respect in relation to law making, UK government did move from its original position in responding to issues raised by devolution. The second Blair government decided that the per capita over-​representation of Scotland was no longer supportable, and, as of the 2005 general election, the number of Scottish MPs was reduced from 72 to 59. Nevertheless, Scottish MPs retained full voting rights in the House. This approach echoed the approach taken to the reduction of Irish representation in the context of home rule earlier in the 20th century, and represented a satisficing remedy only to the West Lothian Question, simply reducing the sense of potential unfairness of representation by reducing their numbers. The fact of Scottish MPs continuing to exercise their full voting rights aroused some controversy when Scottish Labour MPs helped to pass controversial education legislation for England. There were also notable cases of Scottish MPs taking ministerial posts in the UK government for policy areas which were devolved in Scotland, for example John Reid accepting the position of secretary of state for Health. This did not particularly arouse opposition, though, and was a rare case. More indicative of parliamentary adaptation was the trend towards MPs from

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Scotland and Wales generally switching in their roles in debates and on select committees to focus more on non-​devolved issues (Russell and Bradbury, 2007). Developments in intergovernmental relations if anything were even more muted. Indeed the central coordination arrangements put in place for introducing devolution were wound down, leaving a small constitutional secretariat (Trench, 2007e:177). Most central departments also removed their devolution desks after the initial adaptation phase. The retention of separate territorial offices of state proved to be short lived. In 2003, the devolution team from the constitution secretariat and the Scotland and Wales Offices were all included in the newly created Department of Constitutional Affairs. From 2003, the posts of secretary of state for Scotland and Wales were also seen as part-​time posts, combined with other cabinet positions. Nevertheless, the Scotland and Wales Offices retained their separate external identities and the essential role of the secretaries of state in the bilateral relationships between UK government and the Scottish and Welsh governments remained. Otherwise, after 1999 central departments successfully routinised detailed engagement with devolved administrations on a bilateral basis and absorbed it within the conventions of informal political relations and civil service culture. The permanent secretaries in Scotland and Wales developed the convention of attending the Wednesday permanent secretary meeting in London (Trench, 2007e:183). Jim Gallagher, director general for devolution in the UK Cabinet Office and the UK Ministry of Justice, later reported that devolution was introduced with ‘surprisingly little political or administrative disruption’ (Gallagher, 2012:198). Generally it might be said that this was because civil servants took forward the ‘civil service culture of co-​operative working’ which they developed as they moved around departments and between Scotland and London, and which they carried on into the post-​devolution era (Gallagher, 2012:199). The MOU drafted in 1999, and first published in 2002, went through several iterations down to March 2010, all written in very much the same tone, encouraging cooperation. But more practically, the lack of disruption was because ‘the new devolved administrations were built on the pre-​existing administrative institutions … the business of government was to be carried out within roughly the same functional boundaries by the same departments and officials as before, albeit with new and more numerous ministers’ (Gallagher, 2012:199). In the main, the UK government approach facilitated a culture where the informal basis for doing business in the Whitehall village

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could embrace devolution. Leading civil servants in central government were easily satisfied that the behaviour of civil servants in the Scottish Executive and National Assembly maintained the ethics of the UK civil service, emphasising neutrality and expertise, as well as a loyalty to its unity. Central department officials were able to deal with most issues where there might be a dispute between central government and a devolved institution. There were no court cases arising from disputes over competence between central government and the devolved institutions. Between 1999 and 2004, only one act of the Scottish Parliament was challenged by UK government and referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as it appeared to infringe the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (Trench, 2007e). Nevertheless, there was criticism by the House of Lords’ review of intergovernmental relations of the lack of coordination of devolution issues within central government (House of Lords, 2002–​03). Trench (2007e:177) considered that this problem had become further embedded by the mid-​2000s. There was no single office whose responsibility it was to define the principles governing intergovernmental relations to which both central departments and devolved administrations could refer. As a result there was variation in both process and outcome between departments, and some departments were able to be hostile to the devolved administrations, including the Departments of Trade and Industry and of Environment, Transport and the Regions, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and the Home Office. This was a problem as ‘in the absence of routinized and systematic means for managing relations with the devolved administrations much depends on frequent but adhoc interaction’ (Trench, 2007e:178). Trench suggested that relations over legislation conducted on this basis led to ‘an increasingly convoluted, even unwieldy set of legislation’ hard to comprehend ‘or even find’ (Trench, 2007e:191), and cited the example of the inconsistent principles governing Welsh legislation. Sometimes these were generously framed, other times not. It also meant that devolved administrations were also not consulted on occasions when they should have been, notably on the higher education White Paper in 2003, and the decision in 2005 to create a supreme court, which was to supersede the role of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in devolution dispute resolution from 2009. Trench’s view was that this was all avoidable, given the considerable resources at the UK civil service’s disposal. Even so, Trench concluded that between 1999 and 2007 following the bilateral approach ‘the practice of intergovernmental relations in the UK to date has been highly consensual and co-​operative’ (Trench,

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2007e:161). He also acknowledged the political benefits, concluding that UK government ‘is able to derive significant advantages from being able to conduct bilateral relations with the devolved administration, rather than to approach them as a group. This significantly reduces the challenge that the UK faces from them’ (Trench, 2007c:72). It was also apparent that the centre’s approach still enabled it to maintain control and use its superior constitutional resources when it wanted to, ensuring that ‘devolved autonomy is real, but can be constrained at a variety of points by the UK Government’ (Trench, 2007c:72). Relatively few further powers were actually transferred between 1999 and 2007 and those that were remained within limits acceptable to centre. This suggested that, in practice, central government’s approach to intergovernmental relations helped in avoiding politicised territorial issues, and that permissive autonomy as far as it existed related to relatively minor transfers within bounds still controlled by central government. Devolved administrations also benefited from the centre bilateral approach. They found that it led to mutual understanding on an issue by issue basis, and enabled them to largely achieve their objectives working through administrative channels and the territorial offices. There is no doubt that the fact that Labour were in power at both levels in Scotland and Wales led to a greater informality than there might have been, but for civil servants there was a confidence that their approach was geared to working with each other across the levels whichever political party was in power (Trench, 2007e:175–​7). There were some major disputes that were political, notably over the Scottish policy decision in Autumn 2001 to provide free personal care for older people, to which UK government was opposed as it contradicted their policy for England (Trench, 2007e:165), but the more common experience was low level disagreements, which were resolved by civil servants. Overall, the general pattern of cooperative intergovernmental relations appeared to follow from a routine understanding that devolved administrations should be free to act within their own autonomy, and that central departments simply focused on areas of agreement when there was any dispute (Trench, 2007e:192). This suggests that civil servants were not routinely constraining; rather, they found ways of resolving issues at lower levels to avoid creating platforms for politicised intergovernmental relations or being drawn into committing a lot of resources to dealing with relationships. Broadly, the evidence suggests this was a successful approach from a centre perspective, if the aim was to follow the maxims of respecting devolved autonomy, avoiding platforms for the politicisation of territorial issues, and achieving

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bureaucratised efficiency in intergovernmental relations so as to preserve the centre’s political energies for other priorities. JMCs, also provided for under the MOU, had not been part of the UK government’s main vision of how intergovernmental relations would work. Gallagher confirms that JMCs were indeed in limited use between 1999 and 2007. The plenary JMC, chaired by the Prime Minister, met only a few times between 1999 and 2002. Sub-​ committees were formed, but ‘no one knew what they were for’ (Gallagher, 2012:201). Instead, the political congruence of Labour being in power at both UK and Scottish/​Welsh levels meant it was often better and easier to sort things out politically through informal means and bilaterally. Gallagher observed that relatively soon ‘little purpose was seen to be served by JMC, and after 2002, they fell into desuetude’ (Gallagher, 2012:201). Rhodri Morgan (2017:195) observed more prosaically that Tony Blair simply ‘got bored’ of chairing plenary meetings. As a result, JMCs only consistently occurred on a subject basis and where there was a clear functional need. The main one that kept going was JMC (Europe), which met four times a year in advance of EU Council of Ministers meetings to agree positions. There were also ‘finance quadrilaterals’ and JMCs on knowledge economy and health until 2001, and on poverty 1999–​2000 before a last meeting in 2002. There were also quadrilateral meetings on agriculture. JMC economy never met (Trench, 2007e). Critics of the relative neglect of JMCs would suggest that this was symptomatic of UK central government unnecessarily putting itself on the back foot in relations with the devolved administration, allowing centrifugal pressures to emerge in an unmanaged system of intergovernmental relations (Jeffery, 2007: 2009). UK government in practice as well as in theory did not, however,see JMCs as a generally good basis for developing intergovernmental relations apart from on specific issues, such as the EU where it helped develop common positions. This contrasted with the UK government’s continual commitment to holding BIC meetings, which were seen as important to supporting devolution and the peace process in Northern Ireland. Otherwise, UK civil servants would by and large counter that it was in fact a highly managed system; it was just that it was done bilaterally, at lower levels and without fanfare wherever possible, and very little was given away of any importance legislatively or intergovernmentally. The approach to territorial finance also showed relatively seamless continuity. For an issue which in federal systems produced annual intergovernmental tensions, the UK approach operated in an automatic

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and straightforward manner, generating very little political dispute. As Trench recounts, the Treasury also did not consult devolved administrations on intended expenditures in reserve, and there was no general consultation over central budgeting. Treasury officials were used to acting quite remotely and this continued here (Trench, 2007d:106). All that devolved officials had to do was to monitor that they were getting what they should be, and deal with specific issues raised by spending reviews and the UK reserve. Interaction with Treasury officials was ‘limited in frequency and scope’ (Trench, 2007d:97). Yet financial relations also went very well, helped by year on year real terms increases. Mitchell (2003b:18–​19) suggested that the Treasury under Labour were more assertive in implementing the Barnett formula. The process of determining territorial finance became more transparent, and the annual operation of the Barnett formula took account of changing population estimates for each part of the UK. However, in practice the significance of these developments was tempered. Wales’ block grant allocation was helped by almost £300m between 2000/​1 and 2003/​4 being added to the baseline to help lever in EU objective one funding. There were further additional payments of over £100m a year up to 2007–​08. Trench speculated that, despite a theoretical commitment to the Barnett squeeze, the Treasury did not want to prioritise it in the devolution implementation period. Rather, the ‘objective one’ support became a convenient way to give Wales extra money to counteract the squeeze (Trench, 2007d:104). Similarly, in Scotland analysis has suggested how UK government found ways to support the costs of the Scottish policy to provide long-​term care for older people (see Bell and Christie, 2007:83; Trench, 2007d:104). All researchers on financial relations appear to have been struck by the power of central government, and specifically the Treasury. All queries by the devolved administrations had to be raised directly with the Treasury, and the decisions that resolved territorial finance issues ‘overwhelmingly favour the centre’ (Bell and Christie, 2007:85). The Treasury was very powerful as a key source of finance, organisational resources, lobbying resources and information (Trench, 2007d: 108), and overall ‘remains enormously powerful in relation to the devolved administrations’ (Trench, 2007d:110). Trench commented that Treasury officials did not think of themselves in that way; rather, they had important responsibilities and expected to be followed but they saw themselves as careful and dutiful. They sought to use their power ‘cautiously and with restraint’ (Trench, 2007d:112). Crucially, the Treasury did not stop devolved administrations from using the block grant as they wished.

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In the final area of future approaches to territorial constitutional reform, the Labour government presided over continuity except for giving up the right to unilaterally suspend the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2006, thus providing more legal equity to the rights of the devolved institutions to have a say in deciding their own existence. The further powers that were transferred between 1999 and 2007 have already been reported in earlier chapters. While significant for devolved government, in no cases did these powers amount to what the centre in Bulpittian terms might define as erosion of freedom to act in high politics areas. It conveyed a sense of a biddable, flexible centre within the limits of sustaining central power. Overall, the central state approaches on Britishness, law making and Parliament, intergovernmental relations, territorial finance and further territorial reform established in 1997–​99 appear to have been sustained through the period up to 2007. Some observers may not have agreed with them from a variety of perspectives, but it is important to recognise that their consistency confirms an original coherence. These mechanisms involved adaptation within the framework of well-​ established integrative institutional and procedural conventions; cultures of centre politics and bureaucracy built on bilateralism and problem solving; automasticities of territorial public finance, geared towards sustaining funding with minimum fuss; and consensual approaches to territorial reform. The gradual abandonment of JMCs, far from suggesting a breakdown in an approach to intergovernmental relations, represented a dropping off of what the centre had originally included only reactively in 1997–​99 and in providing potential mantraps they were glad to play down. As a result, central approaches sustained the three strategic aims established in 1997–​99: first, to sustain an overall respect for devolution and leave the devolved administrations the space necessary to exercise genuine autonomy; second, to sustain the myriad of ways in which territorial politics could be held steady and intergovernmental relations depoliticised, with much of the work being done through officials across departments and levels of government; and third, to sustain the framework of central power, which kept the devolved administrations out of the central state, but to use it in efficient, depoliticised, non-​ confrontational ways. On this basis, the Blair governments sustained a reasonable record in territorial management. During a period in which UK central government was convulsed with many major priorities of foreign, defence, macroeconomic, criminal justice and welfare state policy, the Blair governments devoted what time they had to bedding in devolution reasonably coherently; they avoided providing a narrative

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of central control that peripheral nationalist parties could exploit; and the frameworks of unionism, constitution, bureaucracy and economic support were all maintained in ways designed to sustain for the centre the resources necessary to manage territorial relations competently. As noted in the previous section, the implicit constitutional policy process by which the centre had originally adapted to devolution had not performed strongly against Benz’s criteria for effective policy. Its legitimacy at the centre lay in its relationship to past convention and practice and the devolution legislation dealing with each territory of the UK; however, this did not entail UK-​wide overall agreement on how the central state related to devolution, leaving what was done open to future political challenge. By 2007, there were more voices criticising Labour for not engaging with more systematic reform of the centre and the constitution as a whole. For example, academics at an ESRC Devolution and Constitutional Change programme conference in London 2006 asked the then lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, whether even if the circumstances had not been right in 1997–​99 to undertake wholesale reform had things not now changed, particularly in the light of Conservative pressure to address the perceived needs of England by introducing EVEL procedures in the House of Commons? Falconer’s reply stressed that devolution had been about addressing the interests and problems of Scotland and Wales, managing the relationships between the new institutions and Parliament via the territorial secretaries of state, and preserving the Union through good governance. There had been problems, but by and large this had worked well. They were going to continue with this approach ‘not on obsessing about administrative architecture’. He felt strongly that the raising of the West Lothian Question and proposals for EVEL misunderstood devolution. Devolution ‘was not to change the role of the national parliament. It was to provide the Scots and the Welsh with the constitutional protection which the English, as over 80% of the population and over 80% of the MPs did not require’ (Falconer, 2006). The territorial constitution was now more balanced, and to focus on enhancing representation for England, potentially ending up with debates about an English Parliament, would be to dangerously unbalance it again. His pithy conclusions were that ‘we are not about constitutional symmetry. We seek practical change for practical goals … devolution strengthens the union of the United Kingdom; English votes for English issues would wreck it’ (Falconer, 2006). This answer in defence of Labour’s approach reflected the view within government that constitutional adaptation, within the constraints

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that Labour had faced in this era, had in fact worked and they were very reluctant to disturb it. There was a confidence at this time that devolution had quelled the challenge of nationalism. There had been advantages in England staying quiet in helping to do this; clearly the Blair government found the Conservatives politicking on behalf of England unhelpful. Despite the theoretical advocacy by many in Falconer’s academic audience of broader state-​wide reform to achieve something like a federal constitution, it would still be hard to say it was a salient territorial political issue by 2007. Relatively few political and policy practitioners had in fact kicked up a fuss about what had been done. At the time, the relatively successful depoliticised adaptation of the centre’s arrangements to devolution reflected the fact that the periphery’s interests lay in developing self-​rule. Political debate around the centre was engaged most with other things, principally, the unfolding of the main themes of the New Labour project. In this context, the adaptive approach to the centre’s dealing with devolution was most significant for not igniting new problems in territorial politics, and seemingly bedding down devolution in the context of many initial fears about its implications for the UK as a whole.

Conclusion This chapter has addressed how UK central government considered central state reform in the light of devolution. It concludes that the territorial integration problems across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and performance problems across England, imposed few pressures on how the central state or the state as a whole should be organised. There were also relatively few reform pressures at the centre, and there was a plethora of other constitutional reform areas, each with their own problems. The Labour Party had faced immense pressures in making itself electable and Tony Blair’s government now had a wide range of key issues to address in establishing a governmental record. In as much as the Blair governments had the time and space to consider central state reform, they were also still fundamentally constrained by concerns over the potentially destabilising consequences of devolution, and anxieties over the uncertain consequences of wide-​ranging reform. In this context, they articulated a civic Britishness that sustained the purpose of the UK while seeking to complement a diversity of national and cultural identities. They oversaw approaches to the central institutions of government that adapted them to devolution in relation to law making, intergovernmental relations, territorial finance and further territorial constitutional reform. These approaches involved

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adaptation within the framework of well-​established institutional conventions, informal cultures of centre politics and bureaucracy, automasticities of public finance and bilateral approaches to territorial constitutional reform. Across all areas, the evidence points to the approaches being informed by a desire to respect devolved autonomy, relatively depoliticise territorial politics, stabilise intergovernmental relations on a bilateral basis, and define a framework of central power, free of devolved influence at the centre that was used in efficient, non-​confrontational  ways. The approaches to intergovernmental relations and territorial finance appear to have been largely accepted by the devolved administrations. The centre’s approach treated them on an equal footing with other central departments, an approach which provided the devolved administrations with channels for representing their interests. While constitutionalist critiques have criticised the centre for not using its central powers more to develop coordination, manage and limit policy divergence, or develop more multilateral forms of intergovernmental relations based on JMCs, criticisms from among practitioners were more muted. Labour’s system on the whole suited everyone, above all the civil servants. Equally, there was no certainty that a more centralised and multilateral approach would have achieved the same results either in the short or long term, and may indeed have provoked reactions or provided platforms that politicised intergovernmental relations in ways that reignited the territorial tensions that everyone knew still lurked beneath the surface. Overall, if we now consider this evidence in terms of Bulpitt’s framework of analysis, we see much to support the continuing relevance of his theory of territorial management. The Blair governments appear to have been influenced by the need to make the most of uneven resources. Time was in short supply, and 1997–​99 as the correct timing for major central state reform was very questionable. The erosion of the nationwide party system by nationalist parties made the challenge of framing central behaviour so as not to provide them with political opportunities a likely high wire act. Unionism had been quiet for some time and could not be vigorously asserted without risk in creating a territorial backlash. Constitutional, bureaucratic and economic resources were in larger supply but had to be utilised in ways that made sense across the piece. Taken together, the Blair governments were not able to credibly seek dominance over devolved administrations; nor did they try to. Within the constraints they faced, the Blair governments had to seek what Bulpitt had observed of most of their predecessors, namely more satisficing objectives.

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Earlier chapters provided evidence in Bulpittian terms of what we know about the Blair governments’ choices over the code of governing and centre strategies adopted in managing devolved administrations within their respective territories. In all cases, the Blair governments by and large eschewed all the stronger forms of control, namely direct central control of devolved administration behaviour, organisation mobilisation or citizen mobilisation, and suffered when they did try and exert control. Instead, they largely focused on maintaining what Bulpitt called minimum central penetration –​in short the continued ability for the central state to maintain law and order and collect taxes –​ topped up by a specific interest in sustaining local elite assimilation in the new institutions. This focused on influencing electoral system choice to maximise the election of local leaders, most likely to govern in accord with centre norms, or at least depart from those norms in ways relatively unthreatening to state stability. In so doing, they also eased off on promoting their own New Labour governing strategies in the devolved territories, enabling different political choices. But equally, through efforts to develop local elite assimilation they aimed to ensure that such choices would not cut across UK governing strategies in ways that were damaging. If we now bring evidence of the Blair governments’ territorial governing code and strategies in the periphery together with their organisation of political resources at the centre, we can see that the overall structure of territorial politics pursued after devolution very clearly ruled out two options. The Blair governments were not engaged with trying to assert central authority, an approach that would have involved extensive commitments to organising and controlling both within territories and in relations with the devolved administrations governing them. This was not sustainable and was fraught with problems given the dangers of inflaming territorial politics. Equally, there was no move to embrace capital city bargaining as a mode of politics, in which the devolved administrations were invited directly into central politics and government to help guide the state as a whole. This would have been counter to all that the Blair governments wanted to achieve in state development. Instead, we see the choice again of a centre autonomy model of territorial politics, which ‘postulates a centre seeking and gaining autonomy from peripheral forces to concentrate on what it regards as high politics’ (Bulpitt; 1983; 64–​5). This did not mean that a framework of central power did not exist, and it is important to re-​emphasise that all the devolution legislation asserted the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, and the centre responded to territorial pressures by

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granting powers and agreeing issues only within limits. But this approach presumed that to a large extent in the operation of centre–​ periphery relations the centre sought to leave peripheral government to peripheral forces without damaging the stability of the state, and to insulate central government from peripheral forces which might get in the way of it being able to pursue its other pressing concerns. Setting up government in this way could no doubt still have been done better, but on the whole viewing it in this way makes sense of not only how the Blair governments adapted the centre to devolution, but also why they did so: to minimise the potentially highly destabilising consequences of devolution.

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Conclusion This book set out to displace certain conventional wisdoms that have developed in the literature on the introduction and early development of devolution in the UK. These have suggested first, that there were strong cases of identity politics propelling cases for self-​government around the UK in the late 20th century; second, that the settlements of self-​government granted in 1997–​99 were unsatisfactory for each part of the UK; and third, that the UK government’s approach to thinking about the territorial organisation of the state as a whole was neglectful and lacking in foresight. The book has attempted to reappraise the politics of the advent and early development of devolution in three essential ways: first, by taking a fully UK-​wide perspective; second, by taking a serious interest in both territorial and UK centre points of view; and third, by theoretically engaging with concepts and ideas that can help shape an organising perspective for developing a fresh analysis of what we should acknowledge was a deeply complex period of political development. The bedrock of the book has been to suggest that dominant organising perspectives in the existing literature have been predominantly idealist-​ constitutionalist, rooted in the assumptions of what have been termed here as competing British and territorial schools in the study of UK devolution. These perspectives have tended towards inherent criticism of what was done, if and when it did not conform to their ideals of how devolution should have been developed. Consequently, the book has also sought to be novel in adopting a realist approach, designed to understand the contexts in which actors approached devolution and how they were duly constrained in what options they had and approaches they could take. It has inherently sought to be empathetic to the realities of trying to forge major territorial change and, in turn, manage territorial challenges in situations of political contestation, rather than appraising them against ideal criteria.

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The book specifically has reinvested in the important but still relatively neglected realist analytical framework for the study of UK territorial politics of Jim Bulpitt, principally by making it serviceable for the equal study of centre and periphery in the determination of territorial politics, and by marrying the study of broad factors of territorial politics with the detailed study of territorial constitutional policy. The conceptual framework for the study of resources, codes, strategies and resulting structures of centre–​periphery relations, and for the study of the effectiveness of territorial constitutional policy outlined in Chapter 3, is nevertheless deliberately still a relatively parsimonious one. This has been to allow the complex development of each part of UK devolution to retain their place on the page, while still locating them in a fresh overall organising perspective. In this Conclusion, we now need to take stock of the analysis that has resulted, how we may consider its comparative significance, and how we may approach future research. Accordingly, the first section focuses on summarising the book’s arguments, and the second focuses on placing them into comparative context as well as the future research agenda they suggest.

A summary of the book’s argument The book has provided four sets of conclusions. First, the examination of territorial strain, the nature of territorial problems and the characteristics of background conditions gives us a lens through which to evaluate critically the social, economic and cultural context to territorial politics. Territorial strain varied in intensity, with Northern Ireland and Scotland offering in their different ways the greatest pressures; pressures in Wales and the English regions were somewhat less but still significant. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all presented primarily integration problems; England presented performance problems. In each case, there were movements in background conditions, particularly against accepting the state level as a good place for resolving concerns, which underpinned challenge to the central state. Nevertheless, crucially in all cases there were weaknesses in the identity politics, and the broader resources of territorial challenge that they provided, relative to what territorial movements needed to make change happen. The initial dynamic in each part of the UK was indeed the still weak periphery relative to aspirations; it is in this context –​of the relative weakness of resources rather than strengths –​ that we should view the problems territorial movements still had in engineering territorial constitutional change across the UK.

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The second set of conclusions relate to the approaches used in the movements for territorial constitutional change in exploiting the support they did have and overcoming those weaknesses that still existed. As part of the reality of how territorial change happens it is to be expected that in the particular case of the UK that all territorial movements emerged out of party political contestation and self-​ interested party choices, and then had to define approaches heavily determined by party constraints. In Scotland and Wales, the Labour Party successfully seized this role in the 1990s. In Northern Ireland, nationalist and Republican parties provoked the challenge to the UK, but Unionist parties ensured that they had as big a say on any territorial constitutional change that actually happened. They also had to work within constraints in trying to be successful. At times, territorial reform strategies in the 1980s and 1990s were led by emotional appeals to identity-​based nationalism or small ‘n’ nationalism, but ultimately what was significant about this era was a convergence on seeking territorial goals through embracing, to a greater or lesser extent, arguments and mechanisms consistent with instrumental policy-​based approaches to territorial assertion. These strategies emerged in different ways and took different forms. In Scotland, such an approach emerged out of the SCC, blending ‘claim of right’ arguments with the case for defending social democracy and promoting the Scottish economy and public services. The strength of the elite case made for devolution was such as to bolster Donald Dewar in securing a clear reserved powers model of devolution in 1998. In Wales, a weaker set of proposals was made by the Welsh branch of the Labour Party. Nevertheless, again the secretary of state, Ron Davies, did his best both when in office and after leaving office to promote Welsh devolution as a process not an event that would secure more constitutional change gradually over time by instrumental methods of developing powers bit by bit. In Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein abandoned the violent force approach of the IRA. The SDLP and Sinn Fein ultimately both focused on electoral progress in the Assembly and on strand two of the 1998 Belfast Agreement as their vehicle for normalising all-​Ireland governance. This would exploit the build-​up of the NSMC and its associated bodies as embryonic institutions of all-​Ireland governance and focus on developing policy competences and spillovers to insist more gradually, by instrumental creep, on the logic of Irish unity. In England, it was in the regions that the quite explicitly functional pressures for new forms of governance emerged to address economic

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performance problems. In this case, the Blair government itself made up for the weaknesses of bottom-​up pressures by working out the gradual method by which English regional governance would be developed, again bit by bit. Approaches to territorial constitutional change after 1999 also changed over time and went through different forms of leadership. In both Scotland and Wales, administrations that took office in 1999 took no interest in further territorial constitutional change. In the Welsh case, under Alun Michael this was combined with an apparent lack of interest in policy divergence to suggest a very dramatic switch to what amounted to an intergovernmentalist approach in 2019–​20, easily interpreted as subservience to central government. Michael’s tenure was short and his successor, Rhodri Morgan, asserted an approach that included a recommitment both to further gradual territorial reform and to ideologically based policy divergence. In Scotland, under Jack McConnell, an approach was followed of developing policy divergence, where there was a point to it, within the 1998 settlement. It might have cohered for longer, but by the mid-​2000s he too was open to the interpretation of following primarily an intergovernmentalist code, and duly failing to excite the Scottish public. In 2007, Labour and the Liberal Democrats lost power to an SNP administration intending to offer a more compelling overall divergent vision for Scotland. In Northern Ireland, time effectively stood still during the long suspensions while the Unionist and nationalist parties re-​argued the terms on which power-​sharing devolution and strand two North–South governance could take place. This basically amounted to the DUP taking over Unionist leadership from the UUP by insisting on IRA decommissioning; at the same time, Sinn Fein took over leadership from the SDLP, by being the key to finessing the appearance of IRA compliance with DUP requests while insisting on the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement to include strand two arrangements. It took them until 2007 to get there. Across the territories, then, there was much political contestation over power, churn as political leaders (particularly in the case of the Labour Party, branch leaders) tried to assert approaches that put a stop to further constitutional change, and in the case of Northern Ireland political wrangling born from complete distrust. All the movements for territorial change were different in detail. Nevertheless, what cohered was the consistent tendency towards approaches that acknowledged relative resource weaknesses and limited their aims in the short term so as to gain achievable strategic goals of self-​government within the state. They rooted change in the meeting

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of people’s instrumental needs so as to gradually get their way to bring about constitutional transformation. Equally, in each case, even when approaches strayed away from such strategies, territorial politics in the periphery stabilised over this ten-​year period, with elite leaders reasserting regionalist methods to seek further step by step territorial constitutional change as part of the mix required to represent the territorial strains still felt in each part of the UK. In each case, too, their preferred model of resulting centre–​periphery relations was generally territorial autonomy or simply self-​rule, with little desire to transform the state as a whole through an insistence on shared-​rule powers. Within the constraints of the web of quiet (or in Northern Ireland loud) unionism, movements sought and achieved forms of centre–​periphery relations of the same territorial autonomy type; they sought from the bottom up to achieve a new political duality to UK territorial politics. The third set of conclusions relate to UK central government. The UK centre was also in part defined by the pursuit of party power, and the key party at the UK level ready to address territorial constitutional reform  –​the Labour Party  –​faced large challenges and anxieties after 18 years out of office when they prepared for the 1997 general election. They crafted a modernising message and agenda but the essence of New Labour was cautious adaptation of the status quo to ensure electability; they were not radical on Left–Right issues, and equally they could not be radical on territorial constitutional issues. They did not have the political autonomy to engage with rewriting the whole UK constitution, even had they wanted to and thought it a good idea. Nor did they have the political resources necessary to impose central authority and coerce varied territories to accept a multilateral solution, especially given other priorities. The chances of this success would have been low, and in some ways such an approach at the time was unthinkable given the depths and range of territorial problems the UK centre faced. Hence, the Labour Party at the centre both in opposition and in power after 1997 adopted bilateral approaches to devolution being prepared within territories, giving it the best chance of finding acceptable solutions. Again though as part of the reality of how territorial change happens it is to be expected that the British Labour leadership both in preparing for power and in office sought to bargain or negotiate in terms of the interests of central governing. The Blair centre’s interventions when they did occur were targeted. These were first, to lay down limits on the devolution of power broadly to powers in the social union, leaving powers again broadly in the economic and political unions of the UK still with central government, including

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ultimate powers over further constitutional change. Second, they sought electoral systems and governmental arrangements that set institutional rules that helped to facilitate local elite collaborative governments or at the worst still contained or limited nationalist aspirations for breaking up the UK. In this way, the centre followed an approach that had the best chance of meeting gradualist territorial strategies for change halfway, wherever that could be found, while still developing indirect forms of control over who was in charge of devolved governance, to ensure as much as possible that the development of devolution sustained state stability. Again, these approaches took varying forms. In Wales and Northern Ireland, the British Labour Party leadership was able to put stronger limits on the extent of power devolved compared with Scotland; in the Welsh case, this meant intervening directly in internal Welsh Labour branch debates to support devo-​sceptic opinion to ensure a conferred powers and secondary legislative model for devolution. In both Scotland and Wales, the Blair leadership had a decisive influence in the introduction of MMP electoral systems not only to sustain (so they hoped) the best chance of Labour plurality in the devolved institutions, but also to ensure against single party majority power, and thus against (so they hoped) single party nationalist power at any time. In Northern Ireland, they accepted the use of PR-​STV, even though it raised the possibility that this might lead to extreme parties winning the respective communal blocs. In return, this electoral system choice helped to placate both Unionist and nationalist parties in agreeing to arrangements within which, much more importantly, whoever was elected was committing to seeking to achieve Republican or Unionist aims by fundamentally peaceful means. The Blair governments were inconsistent in the extent of their central intervention. It was one thing to intervene initially in helping to set up the framework for devolved government, for example in determining electoral systems, and possibly also over candidate selection procedures. However, it was quite another to continue direct central party intervention into manifesto development and campaign direction of branch Labour parties in both Scotland and Wales in the 1999 elections. In Wales, the British leadership got its fingers badly burned with the 1999 election result and watched as Michael was deposed in early 2000, but it learned its lesson. The British leadership stayed out of Welsh party affairs thereafter and as a result Welsh Labour was able emerge as an authentic Welsh party brand and even survive in power through the difficult elections of 2007. In Scotland though, the Blair governments’ interventions in Scottish politics proved deeply counterproductive to

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allowing the Scottish branch to emerge as authentically the party of Scottish devolution. Truly, the Scottish Labour elite were absentees, committing the sin of making Scottish devolution non-​negotiable at Westminster but with barely any of them actually wishing to serve in the Scottish Parliament. Even so, as landlords they kept turning up, and the Scottish party paid the ultimate price both for being neglected and then interfered with by losing power in 2007. In Northern Ireland though, the Blair governments simply went through ten years of helping to set up the framework in which devolved government was to be established with stability, and then withdrawal from direct involvement in governance was a much clearer aim. Whatever the rates of progress, whatever the uneven experience of learning the problems of over-​interference, the first eight years of devolved governance confirmed to the centre if they needed it, that consistently, the frameworks of central power and a stable union were actually best helped in practice by withdrawal from attempts at close control. Whatever the gains that were made in blunting attempted policy divergence, the losses that were suffered in terms of justifying the positions of nationalist parties as the only authentic representatives of territorial strains were larger. Only in England, where the territorial problem was a performance problem and central intervention was part of the political practice of ensuring the implementation of governmental programmes, did centralism where it occurred not lead to territorial integration problems and adverse reactions to the Labour Party on the ground. The offence was only felt by public policy practitioners who perceived that performance could all have been achieved so much better with better regional coordination and less fragmented central department interference. Central government was, though, much more consistent in its utilisation of resources of central power in how it adapted the central state in the light of devolution. In their articulation of Britishness and approaches to adapting law making and representation in the UK Parliament, intergovernmental relations and territorial finance, the Blair governments followed three key maxims. These focused first on respecting the use of devolved power by the devolved administrations in their own spheres of responsibility. Second, they used bilateral, issue-​based or automatic mechanisms for conducting relations with the devolved administrations to as much as possible depoliticise issues to matters of bureaucratic problem solving and avoid multilateral platforms for territorial conflict. Finally, they avoided the development of specifically territorial platforms for representation, joint law making or co-​executive decision in central

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government, instead maintaining the unity of UK governance and incorporating relations with devolved administrations within a Whitehall culture of practical governing. In such ways was central autonomy also more routinely preserved to enable the continued focus on the other major priorities of the Blair governments in international, European, economic and social affairs. These conclusions are significant because existing studies tend to critique the constitutional and intergovernmental arrangements put in place after 1999 as a basis for instability of devolution in the Union. Overall, we should recognise again that the centre’s management of devolution was always going to be a high wire act as the opportunities for the dynamics of devolution to lead to more centrifugal pressures was always great. Yet, in many ways the well-​established patterns of administrative devolution, and how UK central government dealt with the territories in that context at the centre, created path dependencies that the centre could use to great effect in working with them now they were geographically removed to their national capitals. It meant that quite clear frameworks of central constitutional power were inserted into the 1998 legislation. With the exception of Northern Ireland, where the Belfast Agreement deliberately included institutions that provided the potential for different constitutional endpoints, there was no ambiguity about parliamentary sovereignty or where powers lay. The centre’s dealings with devolved administrations up to 2007 operated comfortably within that: meaning that policy divergence was inevitable and acceptable; but it was divergence within acceptable bounds that, on many occasions, led to reconvergence as UK government borrowed from devolved innovation. This relationship had its weaknesses, but overall it produced a very effective bilateral devolved governance machine that allowed by and large both central departments and the devolved administrations to achieve their aims, did not offend politicians wary of devolution in the central arena, and did not offend politicians wary of the centre in devolved arenas In contrast though, it was in the explicitly political arena, where party organisations and politicians did not have route maps to work from, that mistakes were made in inflaming peripheral political arenas –​either through indifference on the one hand or too much interference on the other. The successes of the SNP and Plaid Cymru in 2007 were a product more of political misadventure in the hurly burly of trying to sort out effective party approaches to devolution than anything to do with the devolution settlements and intergovernmental relations. In other words, it was politics and interests not the constitution that mattered.

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The final set of conclusions relate to the importance of constitutional policy processes to the resolution of conflicts in centre–​periphery relations. Approaches to the detailed development of devolution policy were followed which, by and large, made the best efforts to achieve territorial balance under the constraints that they faced. The policy processes in Scotland and Northern Ireland achieved sometimes high, but at least sufficient, levels of inclusiveness in their mechanisms of negotiation. They were also constitutional policy processes that were conducted with relatively high external policy arena differentiation from the constraints of thinking in non-​constitutional policy areas; as well as relatively high internal arena differentiation between considering principles and their applications. This ensured the production of devolution policies that were seen at least as coherent and effective among the parties involved at the devolved level and central government. In the Northern Ireland case the finessing of competing aims was in fact an extraordinary achievement. The extensive use of loosely coupled ratification processes, namely referenda, also gave the different policies their own legitimacy. Even in the most problematic policy processes between 1997 and 1999 in Wales and Northern Ireland, efforts were made to mitigate weaknesses to achieve devolution outcomes seen as at least satisficingly effective by use of referenda. The possibility of long-​term frameworks for territorial balance was always an illusion; the achievement of them at all, even in the short term, was something to be reflected on as a victory for both reformers in the periphery and governors at the centre. In England, however, it was difficult to have an effective policy process at all, as the representation of English regions lacked the coherence of the other parts of the UK. Consequently, the policy process in central government was far from inclusive; it allowed the centre to heavily determine the content of policy; and (apart from the use of a referendum in the failed attempt in 2004 to intiate elected regional government in the North East) used closely coupled ratification purposes by parliamentary act or simple executive decision. The key problem for the long t​ erm was the lack of policy arena differentiation of regional reform per se from other UK Government policies with a regional dimension, for example transport or land use planning. As a consequence, Labour’s English regional governance reforms had little sense of being entrenched in practice and represented more the discretionary deconcentration of central government, a trend which could ebb and flow still primarily according to the priorities of central government. In sum then, following a realist approach to the study of the advent of devolution in the UK has therefore necessarily foregrounded the

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competition of interests between all the actors involved and the constraints and problems they faced. Everywhere has its own story, but a key feature of this analysis has been to suggest that, at the heart of the indeterminacy of territorial politics in the UK, was the basic dilemma that all the peripheries and the centre were weak relative to their aspirations, capacities and/​or responsibilities. The peripheries all had to find satisficing forms of a regionalist method to try and engineer power away from the state to their respect nation or region. Meanwhile, the centre employed satisficing forms of central control to try and respond effectively to hold the state together without inflaming territorial tensions even more, either in the devolved arena or the central political arena, as this might have involved it in endless micro-​management of relationships. Ultimately, the structure of centre–​periphery relations which resulted was one of dual autonomies for both the UK’s peripheries and the centre, as the centre sought to manage the implications of devolution indirectly to preserve its own autonomy to do other things. Such a new devolved dual polity was not ideal for the UK state as devolution remains an inherently destabilising force. But, as had been the case with the classic dual polity era of governance which Bulpitt had described between the 1920s and 1960s, it was the least bad form of territorial governance in holding back the forces of modernisation. A great deal of attention was also paid to how processes of devolution policy occurred, even in the least edifying case of Wales, so as to try and maximise buy-​in from wider elites and publics to policy outcomes that were never ideal from anyone’s point of view. On this basis, the devolution policies of the Blair governments and key actors in each part of the UK, with the exception of England, achieved reasonable levels of effectiveness against the more appropriate criteria of finding short-​to mid-​term balances on issues for which finding long-​term constitutional solutions to meet everyone’s needs was very difficult, if not impossible.

UK devolution in comparative context and research agendas An assessment of territorial movements in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England along the lines provided here resonates with a revisionist strand already evident in the comparative study of nationalist and regionalist movements. As discussed in Chapter  3, scholarship will always acknowledge the identity politics that is at the root of all territorial challenges to existing state structures. But comparative

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study has already acknowledged in various ways the significance of instrumental policy arguments and mechanisms to mobilising territorial movements, gaining public support and making territorial change happen. What has been lacking is an approach to specifying this type of territorial change within a general framework for analysis, and an extended treatment of a range of movements that in different ways exemplify its influence and the political outcomes that result. In offering a framework for analysing territorial peripheral assertion and in its exploration of how we might conceptualise the operation of territorial movements for change in problematic contexts in each part of the UK, this book provides a contribution to trying to do that. In contrast, the assessment of the UK centre’s approach to managing the advent of devolution may still look odd when judged in comparative context. Jeffery’s (2007) agenda of the unfinished business of UK devolution provides an easy way in to the British school critique of the UK centre’s approach to territorial constitutional design that still hangs in the air. He asked what he called seven unanswered questions. Four related to how UK central government might respond to territorial pressures: how would the centre prepare to prevent territorial cleavages that might lead to political mobilisation? What limits would the centre set on asymmetrical devolution? What limits would the centre set on territorial policy variation? How would the centre stop spillovers from political debate in England from destabilising the rest of the UK? He then asked three questions that directly related to what central government could proactively do from the centre: how would they re-​explain the purpose of the Union? How would they improve intergovernmental relations? How would they create a set of normative values which could underpin public understanding of when state-​wide priorities should come before specific territorial ones, to ‘balance the tensions between centrifugal and centripetal strands of public opinion’ (Jeffery, 2007:99). There is no doubt that these are all pertinent questions and, for sure, viewed comparatively against states such as Germany with relatively stable territorial politics and a federal constitution, the UK’s approach in trying to address such issues with the advent of devolution in the late 1990s can appear deficient. But the UK is a state built on the shifting sands of diverse and strong territorial identities. In the late 20th century, the problems of territorial integration in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and of unequal regional performance in England, all came to a head after a long period of relative decline and modernising neoliberal policies which intensified long-​standing territorial fissures. The UK became a state where political territorial management was an inherently

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major challenge. It was not alone; in states such as Spain and Canada with strong contradictions between, as Rokkan and Urwin (1982) put it, membership and territorial space loyalties, they faced similar challenges. Accordingly, to place the approach of the UK centre into comparative context, one needs to start from the premise that there were in reality no easy answers to any of Jeffery’s questions in the late 1990s and it is more productive to compare the UK centre to other centres suffering similar predicaments. What to do? In this respect, Basta’s (2018) comparative analysis of approaches in Spain and Canada is refreshing for taking comparative territorial management as opposed to the construction of constitutional systems seriously. He has tried to identify both how centres can get territorial management wrong, and how they can get it plausibly right. In looking back through the practices of Spanish and Canadian territorial management over the last few decades, he observed that to give no autonomy or obstruct autonomy for territorial minorities was to incite the periphery. Territorial minorities asserted themselves even more powerfully. But to give autonomy together with some form of symbolic recognition was to incite the central political arena. Parties and politicians at the centre took an interest in defending their powers and competing with the periphery. Either approach created reactive sequences which potentially destabilised the state either from below or from above, and consumed the central government in efforts to politically manage the outcome. Both Spain and Canada have suffered from such sequences. Basta also observed, though, that where autonomy was given without some form of symbolic recognition, this was more likely to plausibly meet the requests of territorial minorities without offending the central political arena. Over a period of time there can then be a self-​reinforcing sequence of autonomous government locating itself within state structures and the symmetrisation of the state. Where Spain and Canada have seen relatively settled outcomes, it has been where regional autonomy has been granted from the centre without great fanfare. Viewed comparatively, then, against Canada and Spain where governments have sought to politically manage serious territorial challenges, and when there is a need for an approach that does not set off reactive sequences that intensify the potentially existential threat of devolution to the stability of the UK either from below or above, the UK centre’s approach can begin to make more sense. In answer to Jeffery’s questions, it was self-​evident that territorial cleavages were already strong and would remain so. To set explicitly centrally controlled limits to devolution in any one part of the state or to set limits on

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policy divergence through grant-​related administrative controls was to invite the accusation of denying autonomy in practice, developing conflictual intergovernmental relations and providing more text for nationalist mobilisation. The way to hold the politics of England in check was not to impose artificial central constitutional designs made logical by the needs of the rest of the UK; rather, it was to address the actual concerns of the English in the same way that devolution met the concerns of other parts of the UK. Equally, for the centre to re-​explain the purpose of the Union provided the ultimate ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ challenge. To actually talk about it at all risked being interpreted as centralist against devolution on the one hand, or selling Britain short on the other. What the comparative federalist critique of the UK’s approach to intergovernmental relations amounted to was a normative preference for statutory multilateral intergovernmental relations. But in a UK context, the provision of high level multilateral platforms was to provide new symbolic recognition for the devolved nations, a platform from which they could develop collective positions and offend the central political arena. Generally, if the UK centre did have to grant autonomy or impose any form of control over the periphery it was better to do both without fanfare. The one issue on which UK central politicians could act without potentially stirring up centre–​periphery relations with uncertain consequences was on addressing declining trust in the UK Parliament and giving some normative underpinnings to the assertion and acceptance of statewide priorities when required. A feature of the period from 1997 was indeed modernisation of the House of Commons and reform of the House of Lords, though with questionable benefits for political trust. The realist approach developed in this book shows the complexity of political development between the 1980s and 2000s as both territorial and centre political elites had to make choices in these contexts that didn’t do more harm than good to their causes. It is informed by a series of theoretical propositions based on Bulpitt’s original work on centre territorial management but extended to analysis of territorial movements for change and the means in constitutional policy processes by which both the centre and territorial elites sought to gain effective change and legitimacy. These propositions in each case suggested that, whatever strength in resources territorial and centre elites worked from, they were always weak relative to what they wanted to achieve. Territorial movements in practice were trying to play strong hands despite often not having the cards; and the UK centre –​in a manner very reminiscent of Basta’s observations of the dilemmas of governments

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in Spain and Canada –​was trying to finesse the use of its resources in a manner that didn’t offend the periphery, didn’t offend the central political arena, kept the state as stable as possible, while also focusing on its many other high politics priorities. In comparative terms, then, one is drawn to the conclusion that the UK’s embrace of devolution and its early years were marked largely by an approach that did indeed, on the centre’s account, amount to trying to grant autonomy without imposing new explicit central controls on the periphery that would have incited more dissent, or granting further forms of political recognition that might have offended the central political arena. It is a case explicitly of trying to avoid a reactive sequence of territorial turmoil. The neo-​Bulpittian propositions explored in this book help us understand the actual nature of the territorial challenge for autonomy itself and the specific central political management approaches used to try and achieve this, as well as how successful they were in doing it. It is in this comparative context that we can understand the specific empirical conclusions of the book. Each of these has its own importance in reflecting anew on the significance of these years for the future territorial politics of the UK. Such comparative reflections, of course, also suggest a future research agenda. One obvious focus for further attention is the role of the constitutionalist debate outlined in Chapter 2. The views espoused by writers in the debate between British and territorial constitutional writers have in practice formed part of the conflicts present in UK territorial politics; they have developed arguments that can be or have been used by those either siding with the need to assert greater central control or alternatively more self-​government for nations and regions. The grounds for perceived confusion over where sovereignty lay after devolution was also not something created by UK central government in 1997–​99 and was not perceived to be present before 2007; rather ambiguity over the constitutional meaning of devolution is a perspective created by nationalist parties on the ascendant since 2007, promoted by territorial school writers who have sought to find grounds for interpreting devolution from a territorial point of view, and subsequently worried over by British school writers who want the centre to get its act together. There is nothing wrong with being the stuff of politics, but it does mean there is room for analysis of how researchers play an active role. A second agenda is to reappraise the contributions of both meta-​ social science perspectives on the one hand and micro-​political science on the other to the study of UK devolution. The particular objective of this book has been to develop an organising perspective

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of an adequate historical character for the study of UK territorial politics and devolution; it has therefore omitted consideration of other approaches to study. Both are, of course, valid. Meta approaches tend to stress the political economy and political geography contexts to territorial rescaling, the role of globalisation and European integration in structuring domestic politics, and frequently a focus on patterns of governance. All that appears particular may be rendered but an epiphenomenon of broader political, social and economic phenomena. On the other hand, micro political science treats an aspect of UK devolution, whether it be for example the study of public attitudes, party competition or territorial finance, as a case in the comparative study of that topic. Clearly, there is a value in exploring how such topic-​focused research speaks to efforts at big picture analysis of UK devolution. Finally, we should recognise that, from whatever perspective, the introduction of devolution in the UK was the beginning of a new phase of territorial struggle, contestation over power, and dilemmas over the choices to be made in territorial manoeuvre and central political management. By 2007, for all that had happened, the new devolved dual polity was consistent with a still relatively stable territorial state. However, following the 2007 elections that installed the SNP in government in Scotland, Plaid Cymru as a coalition partner in Wales, and Sinn Fein at the heart of the Northern Ireland government, territorial strains and the demands on territorial management only intensified. Further new appraisal must, of course, focus on the events that followed, but it is important that scholarship on UK devolution continues to return to what the advent of devolution meant and the terms in which it is analysed as a necessary part of renewing both how we study the subject and understand what happened and why.

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Rawlings, R. (2005) ‘Hastening slowly:  the next phase of Welsh devolution’ Public Law, 824–​52. Richard, Lord I. (2004) Commission on the Powers and Electoral Arrangement of the National Assembly for Wales, Report of the Richard Commission, Cardiff, National Assembly for Wales. Rifkind, M. (2005) ‘A worthy opponent’ in W.  Alexander (ed) Donald Dewar: Scotland’s First First Minister, Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, pp 111–​18. Riker, W. (1964) Federalism: Origins, Operation, Significance, Boston, Toronto: Little Brown. Rothschild, J. (1981) Ethnopolitics: A  Conceptual Framework, New York: Columbia University Press. Rokkan, S. and Urwin, D.W. (1982) ‘Introduction:  centres and peripheries in Western Europe’ in S.  Rokkan and D.W. Urwin (eds), The Politics of Territorial Identity: Studies in European Regionalism, London: Sage. Ruane, J. and Todd, J. (1996) The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland:  Power, Conflict and Emancipation, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Ruane, J. and Todd, J. (2001) ‘The politics of transition? Explaining political crises in the implementation of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement’, Political Studies, 49, 923–​40. Ruane, J. and Todd, J. (2007) ‘Path dependence in settlement processes: explaining settlement in Northern Ireland’ Political Studies, 55, 2, 2007, 442–​58. Russell, M. and Bradbury, J. (2007) ‘The constituency work of Scottish and Welsh MPs: adjusting to devolution’ Regional and Federal Studies, 17, 1, 97–​116. Sandford, M. (2005) The New Governance of the English Regions, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sandford, M. (2006) ‘Facts on the ground: the growth of institutional answers to the English Question in the regions’ in R. Hazell (ed) The English Question, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp 174–​93. Sandford, M. and Gormley Heenan, C. (2020) ‘Taking back control, the UK’s constitutional narrative and Schrodinger’s devolution’ Parliamentary Affairs, 73, 1, 108–​26. Scottish Constitutional Convention (1989) Towards a Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh: COSLA. Scottish Constitutional Convention (1995a) Key Proposals for Scotland’s Parliament: A Report to the Convention from the Executive Committee, Edinburgh: COSLA.

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339

Index A abortion law  91 Act of Union 1536  8, 243 actor-​based behaviour  33–​4, 58 Adams, Gerry  145–​6, 147, 148, 155, 214, 222, 224, 228, 233, 233–​4 affective interests  87, 122–​3, 142 see also emotional identity assertion Ahern, Bertie  157, 158, 227, 230, 236 Alexander, Douglas  294 Alexander, Wendy  81, 91, 177–​8 All Wales Convention  204 Alliance Party  141, 156–7, 212, 218–​19, 224 all-​party talks  147, 150, 156 Alt, James E.  278 AMS (additional member systems)  96, 117, 118, 127, 131, 176, 193, 197 Anderson, Donald  111 Andrews, David  157 Andrews, L.  121, 183 Anglo–​Irish Agreement (AIA)  144, 215 Anglo–​Irish Intergovernmental Council  144 Anglo–​Irish Treaty 1921  10 anti-​Conservative sentiments  202 anti-​establishment rebellion  201 anti-​social behaviour  178 Arbuthnott Commission  181 arena differentiation  60–​1, 62, 65 arm’s-​length approaches  39 Association of Metropolitan Authorities  252 asymmetrical devolution  276 Aughey, A.  45, 294 automasticity  45, 287, 290, 291, 301, 304 Ayres, S.  264 B Baker, Lord  267 Balsom, D.  104 Banting, K.  59

Barnett formula  15, 45, 95, 127, 286, 287, 288, 289, 300 Basta, K.  318, 319 Battle of the Boyne  9 Beland, D.  49, 51 Belfast Agreement 1998 (Good Friday Agreement)  17, 24–​5, 142, 153–​68, 169, 209, 210–​23, 225–​7, 230–​7, 239, 309, 314 Bell, D.  288, 300 Bell, Eileen  234 belonging  3, 16–​17 see also identity politics Benz, A.  37, 58–​63, 65, 88, 101, 198, 245, 247, 252, 253, 259, 292, 302 Better Governance for Wales  194, 195–​6 Better Governance for Wales (White Paper)  197 Bew, P.  145, 146, 147, 152, 161 bilateral negotiation  analysing territorial politics  60, 62, 65 and the development of a central state  282–​3, 285–​6, 291–​2, 296, 297–​9 English regions  250 Northern Ireland  154, 156, 171, 232–​3 Scotland  80, 89, 100–​1 Wales  114, 123, 134, 192 Blaenau Gwent  191 Blair, Tony  communitarian politics  78 on JMCs  299 links to Ireland  154 Northern Ireland  157, 164, 209, 220, 222, 224, 226, 227, 230, 233, 236–​7, 312 Northern Ireland talks  158, 160 reflections on devolution  278 regional devolution  248 sceptical of devolution  77–​8 Scottish devolution  78–​9, 80, 100, 202 territorial politics and the 2007 elections  199 timing of departure  2, 201

341

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

Welsh devolution  113–​14, 117, 119–​20, 121–​2, 195, 197 and the Welsh leadership  184, 185, 189 on the West Lothian Question  281 Blair governments  analysing territorial politics  4, 44 conclusions on  311 development of central state  273–​306, 313–​14 English regions  17, 242, 250, 254, 255, 257, 260, 261–​2, 265, 269 Good Friday Agreement  158–​62 Iraq conflict  199, 293 lack of multilateral reform  62 Northern Ireland  153–​62 Scotland  84–​5, 89, 311–​12 Wales  192, 295, 311 block grants  45, 95–​6, 97, 116, 127, 165, 183, 283, 286–​7, 288, 289, 300 Blunkett, David  195 Bogdanor, V.  19, 20–​1, 26–​7, 128, 244, 277, 281 border areas  11 bottom-​up  pressures  analysing territorial politics  23, 48 English regions  246, 249 Northern Ireland  141, 169 Scotland  74, 79, 99 Wales  114, 119 Bourne, Nick  191 Bradbury, J.  15, 20, 45, 51, 52, 56, 73, 81, 82, 83, 105, 107, 112, 175, 176, 183, 185, 186, 188, 189, 191, 198, 248, 252, 254, 287, 296 Bradley, A.W.  81 Brand, J.  70, 72, 74, 75, 82, 83 Brexit  1, 2, 28 Brighton bombing  142–​3 British identity  243–​5, 258 British–Irish intergovernmental conference ​ 159 British–Irish inter-parliamentary body ​ 159 British nationalism  22 British school approaches  18–​21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 317 British Social Attitudes Survey  258, 266 British–​Irish Council (BIC)  159, 166, 167, 231–2 Britishness  279–​80, 290, 293–​4, 303 Brooke, Peter  146 Broschek, J.  276 Brown, A.  71, 72, 74, 86, 87 Brown, Gordon  79, 177, 187, 189, 199, 201, 207, 263, 279, 280, 287, 293, 294 Brown, T.  97

Bryant, C.A.  20, 266, 267, 280 Bulpitt, J.  4, 33, 36–​48, 49–​50, 53, 55, 63–​4, 174, 199, 242, 273, 287, 291, 304, 305, 308, 319 Burnside, David  213 business interests  English regions  246, 255, 257 Scotland  74, 87 Wales  108, 110 by-​elections  75, 76, 217 C Cabinet Sub-​committee on Devolution  89–​90, 91, 256 cabinet-​style arrangements  124–​5, 127, 129, 193 Cairney, P.  73, 174, 175, 295 Campaign for a Northern Assembly  252 Campaign for a Scottish Assembly (CSA)  75, 77 Campaign for a Welsh Assembly (CWA)  110–​11 Campaign for an English Parliament  266 Canada  318, 320 Canary Wharf bomb  151 Canavan, Denis  175 candidate selection  Northern Ireland  166, 175, 224, 231 Wales  185, 189, 191, 192 capital city bargaining model  40, 55, 57 Cardiff  13–​14 Castle Buildings, Stormont talks  156 Catalonia  51 Catholicism  9, 10, 138, 139, 140, 141, 144, 163, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 229 CBI (Confederation of British Industries)  246, 255, 256 ceasefires  149–​50, 151, 152, 154, 155, 211, 216, 219​,  228 Celtic peoples  8 central authority model  40 central autonomy model  40 central penetration  39 central state development  273–​306 centralisation  39, 40, 41, 43, 48, 59, 254 centre territorial management  38–​46, 56–​7 Chapman, B.  28 Christie, A.  288, 300 Christie, D.J.  81 Church of Scotland  11 citizen group loyalties  59 citizen mobilisation  39, 50, 52, 53, 152, 169 citizen nations  279, 293 civic regionalism  141

342

Index

civil law  11, 15, 50 civil rights movements  10 civil service  and the development of a central state  283, 296–​7 English regions  247, 251, 252 Northern Ireland  15, 165, 211 Scotland  97, 297 Wales  124, 128–​9 civil society  analysing territorial politics  49, 52, 60, 62 Scotland  70, 77 Wales  108, 119 Claim of Right  77 Clarke, M.  16 ‘clear red water’  188, 199, 202 coal industries  14, 107 coalition governments  and the development of a central state  274 Scotland  25, 83, 176, 178–​9, 181, 183, 200, 204 Wales  186, 188, 202, 203–​4 coercive consociationalism  147 coercive power model  40, 50, 55–​6 Cole, A.  190 collectivism  73, 107, 216 Colley, Linda  279, 280, 293 Combined Loyalist Military Command  149 commissions  60 committees  analysing territorial politics  60, 61 Northern Ireland  166–​7, 216 Scotland  98 Wales  116, 124–​5, 127–​8, 129–​30, 193 Commonwealth Grants Commission  286 communication, consultation, confidentiality and cooperation (4 C’s framework)  283–​4 communitarian politics  78 comparative studies  32–​3, 36, 46–​57, 58, 62, 316–​21 competences, devolved  81–​2, 92–​3, 126–​7 compliance mechanisms  39 Comprehensive Agreement 2004  227, 232 comprehensive spending reviews  187, 287 compromise bargaining  61, 225 conceptual framework  3–​4 confederalism  26, 159 conferences  60, 119 conferred powers (Wales)  116, 125–​9, 197, 280 consensus seeking  146

consent principle  148, 160, 166 consequentialist arguments  51 Conservative Party  and the development of a central state  274–​5, 287, 302 English regions  252, 254, 256, 265, 267 and Irish ‘home rule’  9 Northern Ireland  139, 143, 146–​7, 154, 170, 219 Scotland  12, 72–​5, 77, 85, 86–​7, 182, 200 Wales  107–​11, 117, 120, 124, 186, 190–​2, 203 West Lothian Question  266–​7 consociational democracy  21, 24, 45, 147, 159, 168, 217 Constitution Unit  92, 125 constitutional incoherence  27, 270 constitutional policy  English regions  253 Scotland  89–​99, 180–​1 Wales  123–​32 Constitutional Policy Commission  115, 116, 118 constitutional reform  and the development of a central state  289–​92 English regions  265 Northern Ireland  159 public support in Scotland  70–​3 Consultative Steering Group (CSG) 97–​8, 129–​30 contestation  35 Continuity IRA  219 conventions  analysing territorial politics  60, 61 Scotland  75, 76, 101 Wales  112, 133, 192 Cook, Robin  75, 79 corporate body principle  124, 125, 127, 194 Council for Wales and Monmouthshire  131 Council of the British Isles  159 coups  187 covenants  48, 92 CREST (Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends)  87, 121, 122, 123 cross-​party working  86, 111, 112, 193 Crowther Commission  12 cultural distances  47 cultural identities see identity politics Cummings, Dominic  261 Cunningham amendment  12, 13, 14, 244 Curtice, J.  122–​3, 245, 258

343

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

D Dalle Mulle, E.  51 Dalyell, Tam  77 Darling, Alistair  177, 181 Davidson, L.  176, 178, 182 Davies, Howard  255 Davies, Ron  111, 113, 115–​16, 117, 118, 120, 123–​4, 125, 129, 130–​2, 134–​5, 184, 186, 189, 192, 198, 309 decentralisation  45, 53–​4, 96, 113, 241 decline narratives  31–​2 decommissioning weapons  148, 150–​1, 160, 214, 218–​19, 221–​5, 227, 229 democracy  21, 31, 50, 83, 151 Department of Constitutional Affairs  296 ‘Devolution, A Process not an Event’ (Davies, 1999)  130–​1, 198 Devolution for Scotland, Wales and The English Regions (DSWR)  89–​90, 91, 256 Devolution Implementation Unit (Wales)  123–​4 devolved powers  and the development of a central state  301 distributive powers  45 Northern Ireland  280 regulatory powers  45 Scotland  81–​2, 92–​3, 94–​5, 96, 126–​7, 280 Wales  115, 116, 124, 125–​9, 193–​4, 196, 197, 198, 204, 280 Dewar, Donald  76, 78, 79, 81, 85, 89–​90, 91, 92, 98, 101, 175, 176, 177, 275, 285, 309 d’Hondt formula  96, 127, 216, 235 Dicey, A.V.  18, 23, 29, 152 direct rule (Northern Ireland)  138–​9, 140–​1, 144, 170, 207, 215, 220–​30 dispute resolution  82, 91, 315 distributive bargaining  60 Dixon, P.  3, 21, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 163 Dobson, Frank  260 dominion status  10 Donaldson, Denis  234 Donaldson, Jeffrey  160, 163, 213 Downing Street Declaration  148, 150 Drumcree  213, 216 ‘dual mandate’ approaches  76 dual polity  42, 57, 100, 134, 316, 321 DUP (Democratic Unionist Party)  1998 elections  213 1998–​2007  238–​9, 240 and the development of a central state  274

direct rule 2002–​06  221, 222, 225, 226, 227, 228–​9, 230 founding of  11 Good Friday Agreement  160, 163 negotiation of devolution  158 origins of devolution  139, 140–​1, 144, 147, 149, 150, 151 ratification of devolution  163 resettlement of devolution 2006–​07 231, 233, 234, 235, 236 St Andrews Agreement 2006  209 stabilising devolution 1998–​2002  214, 217, 218, 221 vote share  212 Durkin, Mark  218–​19 E East of England region  259 economics  Blair governments  44 and the development of a central state  286–​8, 300 English regions  245, 246, 262 macroeconomic policy  97, 128 Northern Ireland  140, 147, 211 Scotland  70–​1, 73, 74, 94–​5 Wales  108, 116, 128, 187 education systems  England  295 Northern Ireland  141 Scotland  11, 81, 177 Wales  106, 189 electoral systems  conclusions on  311 and the development of a central state  289–​90, 302 devolved elections  45 Labour Party  277, 311 Northern Ireland  145, 158, 165, 216 Scotland  77, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 91, 96, 100, 178, 180, 181, 200, 295 Wales  115, 116, 117, 118, 127, 131, 134, 185, 193, 197–​8, 205 Elias, A.  203 Elis-​Thomas, Dafydd  110, 186, 187, 190 elites  analysing territorial politics  39, 40, 42, 61 English regions  246, 249–​50, 257, 259, 262, 263 Northern Ireland  43, 141–​2, 145, 152, 153, 162, 164, 169, 214, 236 realist focus  35 Scotland  74, 77, 79 supranational elites  51 territorial elites  56, 57 territorial space  47

344

Index

Wales  114, 119, 123, 132, 133, 134, 205 emotional identity assertion  analysing territorial politics  52, 53 Northern Ireland  142, 146, 149, 152, 163, 169 Scotland  79, 83 Wales  122–​3 emotional unionism  155 Empey, Reg  156 English, R.  140, 149 English identity  14–​15, 243–​5, 258, 266–​7 English Parliament  259, 266, 302 English regions  14–​15, 195, 241–​71, 315 English votes for English laws (EVEL) policy  266–​7, 302 equality  132, 159, 164, 188, 213, 226 ethno-​regionalist politics  49, 146–​7, 274 EU (European Union)  Council of Ministers  299 federalism  54 New Labour  276 policy spillover  52 Scotland  73, 91 Single Market programme  73, 80, 108 structural funds  187, 188, 246 Wales  108, 110 European Commission, community method  51–​2, 54 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)  297 Evans, G.  105, 123 external differentiation  252–​3 F Falconer, Lord  195, 302, 303 federacies  24, 45 federalism  20–​1, 26, 27, 54, 58, 60, 118, 275–​6, 319 female representation  82 First Minister  Northern Ireland  165–​6, 211–​12, 218, 224, 232, 235 Scotland  96, 176, 283 Wales  188, 190, 193, 204, 283 First Secretary  127, 186, 187 fiscal policies  and the development of a central state  286–​8, 300 English regions  252 Northern Ireland  165, 288–​9 Scotland  82–​3, 182, 286, 288–​9, 300 Wales  127, 193, 300 Fitzgerald, Garret  144 Flynn, Paul  185 Fox, Liam  124

‘Frameworks for the Future’  157 future research agenda  320–​1 G Gaelic traditions  9 Gallagher, Jim  296, 299 Gamble, A.  18–​19, 30, 31, 32, 35 general elections  2007 elections  198–​204, 205–​6 English regions  254 Northern Ireland  154, 211–​12, 217, 229 Scotland  73, 82, 85, 176, 179 Wales  105, 108, 109, 117, 120, 131, 184, 185–​6, 190 Gladstone, William  9, 11 global role for the UK  199 globalisation  16 Good Friday Agreement  see Belfast Agreement 1998 Good, Revd Harold  229 Gormley Heenan, C.  28, 46, 57 Govan by-​election  75, 76 Government of Wales Act 1998  17, 123–​32, 134–​5, 184 Government of Wales Act 2006  17, 191–​8, 199, 205, 267 Government Offices of the Regions (GORs)  256, 257, 261–​2, 263–​4, 270 gradualism  131, 149, 161, 179, 205, 213, 240, 268, 278 Grand Committees  15, 282 Greater London Authority (GLA)  17, 254, 257, 260, 269 Green Party  77, 176, 178, 179, 182, 200, 201 Greenleaf, W.H.  18 Guelke, A.  149 H Haase, Richard  224 Hadfield, B.  24 Hague, William  120, 266 Hain, Peter  192, 194, 195–​6, 197, 230, 235, 236 Hall, Sir John  261 Hanson, David  194 Harvie, C.  243 Haughey, Charles  144 Hazell, R.  27 Heath, Edward  12 Henderson, Doug  250 Hennessey, T.  144, 145, 156 Henry VIII  9, 24 Hermon, Sir Jack  164 high politics  40, 42, 57, 118, 154, 289, 301, 305

345

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

historical contexts  8–​18, 31–​2 Hooghe, L.  56, 97, 128, 129, 167 Hoon, Geoff  197 House of Commons  266, 274, 276, 281–​2, 302, 319 House of Lords  92, 274, 277, 281, 297, 319 Howells, Kim  113–​14, 116, 118, 194 human rights  159, 277 Hume, John  144, 145–​6, 147, 148, 163, 164 hung Assemblies  186 hunger strikes  143, 144 Hutt, Jane  191 I identity politics  analysing territorial politics  25, 29, 56 Britishness  279–​80, 290, 293–​4 comparative studies  316–​17 conclusions on  307 and the development of a central state  279–​80 English regions  243–​5, 249–​50, 251, 258, 266–​7 European  52 identity rights  53 membership space  47–​8, 64 Northern Ireland  142, 152, 164, 168–​9, 211, 295 policy processes  59 and realist focus  35 Scotland  12–​13, 69, 70, 71, 74, 86, 174–​5 Wales  104, 105–​6, 121–​3, 183–​4, 187, 192, 202 see also national identity IICD (Independent International Commission on Decommissioning)  229 IMC (Independent Monitoring Commission)  223 inclusiveness  Northern Ireland  171, 315 Scotland  74, 315 Wales  113, 115, 124, 125, 131–​2, 192 income tax powers  81, 83, 95, 176, 180, 199 Independents  179, 191, 200 indicative planning  15 industrial development  81 INLA (Irish National Liberation Army)  157 instrumentalist approaches  analysing territorial politics  4, 51, 52, 53–​4, 56, 57 English regions  247, 250 Northern Ireland  169

Scotland  83, 87, 88, 99 Wales  117, 122, 133, 189, 199 integrative bargaining  60 integrative market building  74 intergovernmental lobbying  50, 52, 53, 118, 133, 135, 142, 188 intergovernmental relations  analysing territorial politics  45, 49–​50 and the development of a central state  279, 282–​5, 290, 296–​8, 304 English regions  250 Northern Ireland  147, 153, 159, 161, 169–​70, 239 Scotland  181, 205 Wales  187 IRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army)  Canary Wharf bomb  151 ceasefires  147, 148–​9, 151–​2, 155, 228 decommissioning weapons  148, 150–​1, 160, 214, 218–​19, 221–​5, 227–​8, 229 direct rule 2002–​06  221, 227 historical contexts  10, 17 Labour governments  155 origins of devolution  139, 140, 142–​3, 145 pursuit of a united Ireland  11 stabilising devolution 1998–​2002 213–​14, 216, 218, 219–​20 ‘surrender’  220 Ireland Act 1920  10 Irish Free State  10 Irish Parliamentary Party  9 Irish Question  10–​11 Irish tricolour  3 Irish War of Independence  3 IROs (integrated regional offices)  247, 251, 252, 255–​6 Irvine, Lord Derry  79, 89, 90 J James VI of Scotland/​James I of England  9 Jeffery, C.  27–​8, 299, 317, 318 Johns, R.  201 Johnson, N.  22, 29 joint decision trap  59 Joint Declaration 2003  223, 232 Joint Ministerial Committee (JMC)  29, 284–​5, 299, 301, 304 Joint Policy Commission  194 Jones, Barry  111 Jones, J.B.  107, 108, 111, 184 Jones, Jon Owen  110–​11 Jones, Peter  89–​90, 91 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council  21, 97, 129, 284–​5, 297 jurisdictional issues  59

346

Index

K Keating, M.  15–​16, 26, 88, 180–​1, 244, 294, 295 Kellas, James  70 Kennedy, Senator Edward  154, 228 Kilbrandon Commission  12 Kinnock, Neil  77–​8, 80, 111, 113, 203 L Labour Party  2007 elections  199–​204 conclusions on  310–​11 constitutional reform  277–​8 and the development of a central state  273–​306, 310 devolved elections  45 English regions  244, 246–​56, 267, 268, 269, 312, 315 indicative planning  15 London mayors  260 Northern Ireland  10, 142, 153–​62, 170, 311 political resources  65 proportional representation  83 and regionalism in England  15 Scotland  12, 73, 75–​80, 91, 99–​101, 175–​83, 207, 275, 298 Wales  14, 107–​32, 133, 184–​5, 202–​7, 311 Labour Party Wales  185 laissez-​faire strategies  39, 42, 53 Lambert, D.  198 last resort, devolution as  44 Law, Trish  191 law and order  39 Leaders Group (Wales)  124, 125 Lecours, A.  49, 51 legislative consent motions (LCMs)  295 legislative powers  English regions  252 Scotland  92–​3 Wales  128, 134–​5 see also devolved powers; primary legislative powers; secondary legislative powers Leverhulme Foundation Nations and Regions Project  27–​8 liberal democracy  31 Liberal Democrats  coalition governments  176, 178–​9 constitutional reform  277 and the development of a central state  274–​5 English regions  247, 253 pro-​federalism  275 Scotland  77, 82, 180, 181, 182, 183, 199–​200, 275, 310

Wales  109, 113, 118, 121, 124, 186, 188, 190, 191–​2, 203 Liberal Party  11, 12 Liberal Unionists  9 Livingstone, Ken  260–​1 Livsey, Richard  118, 124 local elite assimilation  and the 2007 election  174 analysing territorial politics  39, 40, 41, 42–​3, 45–​6, 66 Blair government  45 English regions  242, 249, 257, 260 Northern Ireland  46, 169, 239, 240 Scotland  84, 100 Wales  114, 134, 205, 207 local government  central control of local governments  39, 50 English regions  246, 249, 251, 254, 260 Scotland  95, 178, 180 Wales  107, 108, 111, 115, 129 London  48, 254–​5, 257, 260, 265, 269 see also Greater London Authority (GLA) London mayors  17, 260 London metropolitan area  246 low resources assumption  42 loyalist paramilitary groups  10, 11, 17, 139, 142, 150, 160, 213, 214 Lynch, P.  74, 81, 87 M MacCormick, N.  23, 92 Mackenzie, W.J.M.  28 Macmillan, Harold  25, 42 Maiz, R.  51 Major governments  English regions  245, 247, 248, 250, 251, 269 IRA bomb  143 Northern Ireland  143, 146–​9, 150, 151, 153, 154 Scotland  72–​3, 82 Wales  120 Mallon, Seamus  212 Marks, G.  55 mass movements  49, 50, 52 match funding  187, 188 Mawson, J.  246, 248, 252, 254, 256, 263 McAllister, I.  142 McAllister, Laura  192 McAuley, J.  211 McCain, Senator  228 McCartney, Robert  228 McConnell, Jack  83, 17​8, 180, 181, 182, 183, 199, 310 McCrone, D.  87, 88

347

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

McDonald, H.  155, 157, 164 McEwen, N.  51, 87 McGarvey, N.  73, 174, 175, 180 McGuinness, Martin  155, 214, 222, 234–​5, 236, 239 McLean, I.  23, 24, 287 McLeish, H.  177 McMillan, A.  23 media  Northern Ireland  163 Scotland  177 Scottish devolution  86 Wales  108, 120, 121–​2 Meehan, E.  52, 168 membership space  47–​8, 64, 71 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)  283–​4, 296, 299 meta-​social science perspectives  320–​1 metropolitan regional government  246 Michael, Alun  130, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 194, 199, 202, 205, 207, 310, 311 middle classes  164, 201, 229 Millan, Bruce  250 Millan Commission  250, 253 miners’ strike  107 minimum central penetration  305 ministerial codes  231 Mitchell, J.  20, 22–​3, 26, 28–​9, 54, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 78, 81, 82, 83, 85, 91, 92, 98, 158, 300 Mitchell, Senator George  151, 156, 162 MMP (mixed member proportional) systems  96, 100, 117, 134, 312 modernisation  42, 242, 276 Molyneaux, James  150, 163 Moreno question  64, 71, 105, 106, 175, 184, 244, 258, 294 Morgan, K.  111, 112, 113–​14, 115, 116, 117, 118, 191 Morgan, Rhodri  131, 184, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 194, 196, 197, 198, 199, 202–​3, 205, 299, 310 Mori polls  72 Mountbatten, Lord  142–​3 Mowlam, Mo  154, 157, 158, 163 multilateral negotiation  60, 65, 250, 291 multinationalism  31 Mungham, G.  111, 112, 113–​14, 115, 116, 117 Murphy, Paul  156, 158, 194, 195, 222, 226, 228 N National Assembly Advisory Group (NAAG)  124, 125, 129–​30, 132

National Assembly for Wales  17, 24, 110–​11, 116, 117, 118, 123, 126–​32, 183–​4, 186, 190, 193, 205 National Centre of Social Research  139, 140, 175, 182 National Executive Council (NEC)  189 national identity  analysing territorial politics  48 Britishness  279–​80, 290, 293–​4, 303 English identity  243, 258 Northern Ireland  142, 146, 152, 164, 169 Scotland  71, 86, 87, 90 Scottish identity  12–​13, 70, 71–​2, 74, 86, 87, 90, 174–​5, 294–​5 Wales  105–​6, 121–​3, 130–​1 national rights rhetoric  75 nationalism  analysing territorial politics  41, 42, 49, 54, 59, 65 and the development of a central state  290, 303 English regions  271 Northern Ireland  138–​48, 152–​6, 169, 211, 215, 236 Northern Ireland Assembly  165–​6 Scotland  75, 78, 79, 99, 175, 200 stabilising devolution 1998–​2002  216, 217, 220–​1 Wales  106, 111, 113, 117, 133, 185, 206 Navarro, M.  198 negotiation  analysing territorial politics  60, 61–​2 Northern Ireland  153–​62, 225–​30 Scotland  77, 80–​9, 91–​2 Wales  115–​23 neo-​functionalism  49, 51–​2, 135, 225, 237 neoliberalism  107, 140, 188, 249, 276 neutral parties  151 New Labour  analysing territorial politics  45 and the development of a central state  276, 292 English regions  248, 249, 254, 256, 260 Scotland  175, 178, 180 Wales  187, 188 New Statesman  2 NHS (National Health Service)  51, 191, 197 NHS pay  177, 178 NHS prescriptions  188 9/​11  199 ‘no mandate’ positions  75 ‘no selfish interest’ principle  148 Nolan principles  192

348

Index

non-​violent principles  151 North East region  251, 259, 261, 315 North Sea oil  12, 70 North West English region  252, 261 North-​East Constitutional Convention  259 Northern Assembly  245, 252 Northern Bank robbery  228 Northern identity  261 Northern Ireland  137–​71, 209–​40 Bulpitt  43 conclusions on  310 direct rule 2002–​06  221–​30 disillusionment with devolution  26 historical development of  10, 17 lack of symmetry in devolution  27 negotiation of devolution and the 1998 Belfast Agreement  153–​62 ratification and outcomes of the Belfast Agreement  162–​8 resettlement of devolution 2006–​07  230–​7 reunification with Republic  139 shared rule  56 stabilising devolution 1998–​2002  210–​21 territorial politics and the origins of devolution  138–​53 territorial school approaches to studying devolution  24–​5 transitional assembly  234–​5 Northern Ireland Act 2006  234 Northern Ireland Assembly  11, 158, 164–​8, 209, 212, 227, 231, 234, 301 Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1998  167 Northern Ireland Office  143, 223, 230, 232 Northern Ireland Police Bill  222 ‘Northern Ireland problem’  143 Northern Labour MPs  244, 252, 256 Northern regionalism  248 North–South consultative forum  159 North–​South divide (England)  245, 248 North–South Inter-parliamentary association  159 NSMC (North South Ministerial Council)  11, 157, 159, 167, 220, 231–2, 309 O Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM)  231 older people’s care  177, 178, 180, 298 O’Leary, B.  24, 146, 147 Omagh bombing  214

One Wales Agreement  203 O’Neill, M.  20 Orange Order  10, 155, 163, 211, 213, 215, 216 organisation mobilisation  39, 52, 83 organising perspectives, existing  18–​29 Osmond, J.  106, 115, 187, 188, 192 O’Sullivan, Tyrone  107, 185 override powers  81 P Paisley, Rev Ian  11, 163, 225–​6, 227, 228, 230, 233, 235, 236, 239 pan-​nationalist approaches  146, 169 Parades Commission  215, 216 parallel consent  166 paramilitary loyalist groups  10, 11, 17, 139, 142, 150, 160, 213, 214 Parliament for Wales Campaign  111, 112 parliamentary sovereignty  and the development of a central state  275, 278, 280–​1 Northern Ireland  167, 314 organising perspectives  18–​19, 20–​1, 23, 26, 29 Scotland  91, 97 Wales  126, 128–​9 parliamentary supremacy  93 parliaments versus assemblies  81 partnership governments  188, 191–​2 Paterson, L.  25, 74, 77, 121 Patten Commission  215 peace processes  145, 147, 149, 151–​2, 154, 163, 170, 211, 233, 236 peaceful demonstrations  82 Pearce, G.  263, 264 ‘Penny for Scotland’  176 People’s Voice movement  191 perfectibility  31 performance problems  59, 64, 247, 253, 257, 259, 264, 267–​8, 270–​1, 293, 308, 310, 313 permanent secretaries  296 permissive environment  190 Perth declaration  12 Plaid Cymru  1999–​2007  185–​6, 197 2007 elections  197, 205–​6 coalition governments  203 and the development of a central state  274 emergence of  13, 14 Government of Wales Act 2006  191 and Labour  45, 111 Leaders Group (Wales)  124 origins of devolution  104–​5

349

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

political leadership for constitutional change  110–​11 pro-​devolution  113, 118, 121 vote share  108, 109, 186, 190, 203 pluralism  analysing territorial politics  39, 49 Northern Ireland  140, 144, 213 organising perspectives  31 Scotland  73 Wales  108, 110, 117 Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI)  215, 216, 219, 222, 234, 235 Policy Devolution Committee (UK Cabinet)  195, 197 policy processes  English regions  252–​3, 262, 266, 270 frameworks for studying  57–​63, 64–​6 Northern Ireland  216–​17 Scotland  80–​9, 174–​83 Wales  127, 192, 205 policy spillover  52, 161 political prisoners  143, 158, 159, 160, 164, 216, 219 popular sovereignty  23–​4, 26 powers for a purpose  117 power-​sharing (Northern Ireland)  1999–​2007  210 direct rule 2002–​06  221–​30 negotiation of devolution and the Belfast Agreement  17, 155, 156, 158, 161 organising perspectives  21 origins of devolution  138, 143, 144, 147–​8, 149–​50, 152–​3 ratification and outcomes of the Belfast Agreement  165, 169–​70 resettlement of devolution 2006–​07  230–​7 stabilising devolution 1998–​2002 213–​14, 215, 217–​18 Sunningdale Agreement  11 Preparing for a New Wales (Labour Party,1996)  115 Prescott, John  131, 195, 248, 250, 254, 256, 261 presiding officers  93 primary legislative powers  and the development of a central state  282 Scotland  81, 94–​5, 96 Wales  115, 124, 193–​4, 196, 198, 204 prisoner release  143, 158, 159, 160, 164, 216, 219 private finance  178, 180 programme for government committee  235

progressive modernisation  31, 201 promotional strategies  39, 42, 44, 53, 242, 265 proportional representation  Northern Ireland  158, 165 Scotland  82, 83 Wales  113, 116, 117, 122, 127 Protestantism  9, 10, 11, 43, 138, 140, 141, 145, 156, 163, 164, 211, 212, 215 Prothero, Cliff  131 public expenditure allocations  15, 29 Public Processions (Northern Ireland) Act 1998  215 public support for reform  English regions  246–​7, 252, 257, 265 Northern Ireland  215, 240 Scotland  79, 181–​2 Wales  103, 106–​7, 113, 120–​1, 190 see also referenda public–private partnerships (PPPs)  178, 180 PUP (Progressive Unionist Party)  156 Q quangos  93, 96, 107, 116, 250, 251, 252, 256, 260, 263, 264 quasi-​federalism  21, 27, 281 quasi-​primary law  195–​6 quotas  82 R radical nationalism  143 ratification of policies  analysing territorial politics  61, 62 Northern Ireland  162–​8, 233, 315 Scotland  70, 84–​9 Wales  119–​23 rational unionism  155, 156 Rawlings, R.  24, 25–​6, 187, 198 Rawlings Principles  24 RDAs (Regional Development Agencies)  17, 250, 253–​4, 255, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 269, 270 Real IRA  163, 214, 219 realist focus  3, 6, 8, 29–​33, 35, 307, 318–​19 redistributive powers  45, 111 Redwood, John  106, 120 referenda  English regions  251, 261, 315 London regional governance  17, 254 Northern Ireland  148, 162–​5 policy processes  62 Scotland 1979  12, 69, 70, 72 Scotland 1997  17, 84–​9, 101 Scottish independence  176, 202

350

Index

Wales (future)  197, 198 Wales 1979  14, 105 Wales 1997  17, 119–​23, 133, 194, 255 regional assemblies  248, 259, 261, 262–​3, 264, 269, 270 regional authority indexes  55, 128 regional chambers  251, 253–​4, 255, 257, 259 Regional Development Agencies Act 1998  255–​7 regional economic planning councils  15, 17, 248–​9 regulatory frameworks  74 Reid, Father Alec  229 Reid, John  219–​20, 295 Republic of Ireland  10, 24, 147–​8 reserved powers  Northern Ireland  165 Scotland  81, 91–​2, 93, 94–​5, 97, 181 Wales  134, 193 resource weaknesses  40, 65, 137, 145 reunification politics (Ireland)  140, 141, 159, 167, 169, 211, 212, 236, 240 Richard, Lord  192 Richard Commission  192, 193, 194, 197, 198, 205 Rifkind, Malcolm  82 Rights for All (2004)  226 rights to self-​determination  23 Riker, W.  58 rival territories  22 Rokkan, S.  19–​20, 21, 22, 26, 36, 37, 43, 44, 46–​57, 64, 318 Rothschild, J.  35, 50 Rowlands, Ted  194 royal assent  93 Royal Commission on Local Government (1969)  15 Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)  159, 164, 215, 216 Ruane, J.  24, 45, 145 S Salmond, Alex  175–​6, 179, 182, 202 Sandford, M.  28, 46, 57, 246, 248, 249, 255, 256, 259, 260, 263 Sands, Bobby  143 Santer, Jacques  178 satisficing strategies  41, 253, 257, 304 school milk  188 Scotland  69–​103, 174–​83 conclusions on  309–​10 and the development of a central state  275 disillusionment with devolution  25 historical development of  8–​9, 11–​12 moderate politics  45

policy processes  62 quasi-​federalism  21 representation in Westminster  15 shared rule  56 territorial politics and devolution 1999–​2007  174–​83, 204–​5 territorial school approaches to studying devolution  23 union state concepts  20 welfare state  51 Scotland Act 1978  70, 72, 81, 82, 91, 92 Scotland Act 1998  17, 89–​99, 100–​1, 177, 181, 282 Scotland Forward  86 Scotland’s Parliament (White Paper)  85, 89, 90 Scottish Constitutional Convention (SCC)  77, 79, 80–​9, 92, 99–​101, 112, 180, 309 Scottish Development Agency  12 Scottish Government (re-​branding Executive as)  177 Scottish home rule movement (1960s)  72 Scottish identity  12–​13, 70, 71–​2, 74, 86, 87, 90, 174–​5, 294–​5 Scottish independence  2, 12, 86, 182, 200, 201 Scottish Labour Action  75, 76 Scottish Labour Party  79, 80, 83, 87, 100, 175, 177–​8, 312 Scottish Office  11, 12, 15, 17, 70, 91, 275, 283, 296 Scottish Parliament  2007 elections  199–​200 building of  180 and the development of a central state  297 negotiation and ratification of devolution 1989–​97  81 powers of  21, 23, 93 re-​establishment after three centuries  17 Scotland Act 1998  91 Scottish Socialists  178, 179, 182, 200 Scottish Variable Rate (SVR)  95 scrutiny  and the development of a central state  282 Northern Ireland  216 Scottish Parliament  98 Wales  129, 196 Welsh Assembly  127 Scully, R.  203 SDLP (Social Democratic and Labour Party)  139 1998 elections  213 1998–​2007  240

351

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

and the development of a central state  274 direct rule 2002–​06  221, 223, 224,  226 negotiation of devolution and the Belfast Agreement  154, 156, 161, 169 origins of devolution  11, 140–​9, 152 referendum 1998  163 resettlement of devolution 2006–​07  232, 236, 309 stabilising devolution 1998–​2002 211–​12, 214, 215, 217, 220 secondary legislative powers  116, 121, 128, 133, 191, 193, 194–​5, 196, 198 secret talks  145–​6, 147, 148 secretaries of state/​shadow secretaries of state  and the development of a central state  282–​3, 296 Northern Ireland  146, 154, 158, 165, 222 Scotland  76, 82, 91, 93, 97 Wales  20, 24, 106, 111, 120, 126, 128, 192, 194 security normalisation  147 security services  145 select committees  15 self-​determination principles  26, 49 self-​government within the state  53 separation of powers  21 separatism  27, 28, 31, 53, 176 Serrano, I.  51 Sewel, Lord  90, 91, 92 Sewel convention  97, 280–​1, 295 Shaping the Vision (1994)  115, 116 shared rule  centre–​periphery relations  55, 56–​7 and the development of a central state  291 Northern Ireland  167–​8 Scotland  97 Wales  129 Simeon, R.  59 Single Regeneration Budget  247 Sinn Fein  1998 elections  212 1998–​2007  238–​9 and the Blair government  154–​5 Castle Buildings, Stormont talks  156 concessions to  157 constitutional/​ electoral approach  145–​6 and the development of a central state  274 direct rule 2002–​06  221–​3, 225, 226, 227–​9

exclusion of  143, 144, 147, 158, 170, 213 Good Friday Agreement  159, 164 identity politics  142, 169 and the IRA  139, 143 negotiation with  147–​8, 149, 150, 152, 153, 157–​8, 160–​1, 170 popular support for  217 raids  220 referendum 1998  163 resettlement of devolution 2006–​07 231, 232, 233–​4, 235, 236, 309 reunification with Republic  10, 213 secret talks  145–​6, 147 socialist republicanism  140 St Andrews Agreement 2006  209 stabilising devolution 1998–​2002  215, 216, 217, 218, 219 Unionism  213–​14 vote share  229 Smith, John  78–​9, 80, 113, 114 Smith, Llew  111 Smyth, Martyn  213 SNP (Scottish National Party)  1979–​97  73 1999–​2007  45, 173–​4, 175–​6, 178–​9, 182 2007 elections  26, 199, 200, 202, 205–​6 and the development of a central state  274, 288 electoral systems  83 origins of devolution  12 political leadership for constitutional change  75, 77 referendum 1997  86 Scottish independence  200 social democratic politics  and the development of a central state  276 English regions  246, 248 in Europe  113 Scotland  73, 75, 78, 99, 180 Wales  108, 110, 133, 188, 189 social justice  132, 277 social partnership approaches  130 solidarity  31 South Africa  145 South West English region  252 sovereignty  association  26 confusion  320 English regions  253 Northern Ireland  145, 146, 159, 214 Scotland  80 Wales  117 see also parliamentary sovereignty

352

Index

Spain  51, 54, 318, 320 St Andrews Agreement 2006  17, 209, 210, 231, 232–​7 state of unions  23 statecraft, rules of  39 Stone, Michael  234 Straw, Jack  197, 250, 252, 253, 254, 255, 277 Strengthening Regional Accountability  259 strikes  11, 107 Sturgeon, Nicola  182 STV (single transferable vote)  158, 165, 180, 181, 193, 200, 218, 311 sub-​state territorial politics studies  36–​7 Sunningdale Agreement  11, 156, 159, 163, 170 supranational elites  51 supreme courts  297 Surridge, P.  87, 88 surveys  English regions  245, 258 Northern Ireland  139, 163 Scotland  70, 71, 72, 174–​5 Wales  105, 106, 121, 122, 123, 184 Sutherland Commission  177 Swinney, Alex  179, 182 symmetry in devolution  27, 276 T Tannam, E.  52 taxes  and the development of a central state  287 elite territorial management  39 English regions  266 Northern Ireland  165 Scotland  74, 81, 83, 85, 86, 87, 91, 95, 176, 180 Wales  184 teacher pay  177, 178 territorial constitutional policy studies 37 territorial integration  analysing territorial politics  55, 59 English regions  245, 246–​7, 259 Northern Ireland  161, 171, 236, 237 territorial offices of state  11, 13, 28, 45 territorial recognition  53 territorial reform pathways  276 territorial school approaches to studying devolution  22–​9, 30, 36, 38–​46 territorial space  47–​8 territorial strain  analysing territorial politics  47–​8, 49, 64 English regions  257, 258 Northern Ireland  139, 141–​2, 153, 168, 169, 209, 236, 239

Scotland  74–​5, 173, 174, 206 Wales  110, 129, 133, 173, 187, 189, 205, 206 Territory and Power in the United Kingdom (Bulpitt, 1983)  36, 41, 42, 44 terrorism  10, 140, 147, 155, 199, 293 Thatcher, Margaret  and English regionalism  15 IRA bomb  142–​3 Scotland  72, 73 Wales  105–​6, 107, 108 Thatcher governments  English regions  245, 246 identity politics  56 Northern Ireland  143, 144, 146, 170 Scotland  20, 75–​6, 79 Wales  107–​8, 117 ‘three Wales’ model  104 Todd, J.  24, 45, 46, 145 Tomorrow’s Wales  193–​4, 197 Tonge, J.  143, 145, 146, 147, 159, 160, 211, 213, 218, 219, 226, 228, 229 Torrance, D.  176, 179 Touhig, Don  194 trade unions  52, 76, 77, 86, 107, 108, 112, 116 Trades Union Congress (TUC)  78, 111, 116 transport  92, 260–​1 Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU)  76 Treaty/​Act of Union  9, 11, 20, 23, 70 Trench, A.  27–​8, 197, 274, 275, 280, 281, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 295, 296, 297, 298, 300 trilateral negotiations  156 Trimble, David  150, 152, 155–​6, 157, 160–​1, 163–​4, 212, 213, 218, 220, 221, 222, 224, 228, 232 triple lock  251, 252, 256–​7 Troubles  3, 10–​11, 140 Trystan, D.  121, 122, 123 tuition fees  177 U U2 concert  163 UDP (Ulster Democratic Party)  156 UKIP (UK Independence Party)  2 UKUP (United Kingdom Unionist Party)  155, 158, 160, 163 Ulster banner  3 union flag  3 union state concepts  19–​20, 22–​3, 48 Unionist parties  139, 143, 149, 153, 154, 155–​6, 160, 169, 209, 212, 224, 309

353

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK

United Unionist Coordinating Committee  163 urban elites  74, 246 urban regeneration  247–​8 Urwin, D.W.  19–​20, 21, 22, 26, 36, 37, 43, 44, 46–​57, 64, 318 UUP (Official Ulster Unionist Party)  1998 elections  212–​13 1998–​2007  240 1999–​2007  209–​10 and the development of a central state  274 direct rule 2002–​06  221, 222, 223, 224, 226, 230 Good Friday Agreement  161 negotiation of devolution and the Belfast Agreement  154, 155, 156, 157, 158 origins of devolution  10, 11, 139, 140–​1, 142, 144, 147–​8, 149, 150, 152 ratification and outcomes of the Belfast Agreement  163 resettlement of devolution 2006–​07  235 stabilising devolution 1998–​2002 211–​12, 214, 215, 217, 218, 220 vote share  212 UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force)  157 V values  31, 253, 293 VAT  83 veto powers  59, 95, 166, 221, 233, 290 violence  citizen mobilisation  53 constitutional actors  145 direct rule 2002–​06  226 nationalism  49 negotiation of devolution and the Belfast Agreement  155, 157, 158 Northern Ireland  138–​9 origins of devolution in Northern Ireland  138, 142, 143, 144 peace processes  147 ratification and outcomes of the Belfast Agreement  164 shared rule  56 stabilising devolution 1998–​2002  213, 219 Voice for Wales, A (White Paper)  120, 122 W Wales  103–​35, 183–​207 2007 elections  202–​4 conclusions on  309–​10

constitutional policy and Government of Wales Act 1998  123–​32 constitutional policy and Government of Wales Act 2006  191–​8 cultural heritage  13 devolved powers  280 disillusionment with devolution  26 historical development of  8, 13–​14 internal North–​South divisions  13 negotiation and ratification of devolution 1992–​97  115–​23 representation in Westminster  15 Scotland  298 shared rule  56 territorial politics 1980s and 90s 104–​15 territorial politics 1999–​2007  183–​91 territorial school approaches to studying devolution  24 union state concepts  20 Wales Office  196, 197 Wales Tourist Board  126–​7 Wallace, Jim  176 Ward, A.  27, 131, 195, 196 weak periphery/​weak centre  41–​2, 65, 103 weighted consent  166 welfare state  51, 88 Welsh Affairs Committee  197 Welsh Assembly  see National Assembly for Wales Welsh Assembly Government  193 Welsh Development Agency  14, 126 Welsh identity  13, 121–​3, 130–​1, 183–​4, 202, 295 Welsh independence  110, 184 Welsh Industrial Development Advisory Board  127 Welsh Labour Action  111, 116 Welsh Labour Executive  111–​12, 113, 115 Welsh Labour Party  188 Welsh language  13, 104, 106, 110, 121, 122, 127 Welsh Language Act 1993  106 Welsh Language Board  127 Welsh Office  13, 14, 15, 104, 120, 127, 129, 131, 283, 296 West Carmarthen Question  267 West Lothian Question  82, 91, 267, 270, 281–​2, 295, 302 West Midlands Labour  256 Westminster model  18–​19, 20, 81 White Papers  89, 90, 120, 122, 197, 255, 261, 297

354

Index

Wigley, Dafydd  110, 118, 124, 185–​6, 190 Wilford, R.  21, 159, 215, 216–​17, 221, 225, 226, 231 William of Orange  9 Wilson, Harold  12, 15, 25 Wilson, R.  215, 221, 224, 226 women  74, 82, 107 Women’s Coalition  212 Wright, Billy  157, 158

Wyn Jones, Ieuan  190, 203, 204 Wyn Jones, R.  77, 121, 122 Y Yes for Wales campaign  121, 191 Yorkshire and Humber Region  261 Your Region, Your Choice: Revitalising the English Regions (Cabinet Office and DTLR, 2002 )  261

355

“This vital book provides an original perspective on the practical and complex details of devolution as an ‘idea’ of constitutional practice.”

Jonathan Bradbury is Professor of Politics in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University.

This is the first of a major twovolume work which provides an authoritative account of devolution in the UK since the initial settlement under New Labour in 1997.

JON ATH AN BRAD BURY

This first volume meets the need for a comprehensive, UK-wide analysis of the formative years of devolution up to 2007. It offers a rigorous and theoretically innovative re-examination of the period that traces territorial politics from the origins of initial settlements in Scotland and Wales and the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland to early maturity. It also addresses reforms in England and how the UK as a whole adapted to devolution. Bradbury reviews the trajectory of devolution, the factors that influenced it and its subsequent impacts. Using a novel framework the book sets a significant new agenda for thinking and research on devolution.

CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY AND TERRITORIAL POLITICS IN THE UK • VOLUME 1

Arthur Aughey, Ulster University

ISBN 978-1-5292-0588-6

@BrisUniPress BristolUniversityPress bristoluniversitypress.co.uk

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CO NST I T U T I ON AL POL I C Y AND T E RRI TORI AL PO L I T I CS I N T HE U K VOLU ME 1 : U N I ON AN D D E VOLU T I ON 1 9 97 –2 007 J O N ATH A N B RA D B U RY