1. Building the United Kingdom

Transcription

1 1. Building the United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a unitary parliamentary monarchy consisting of four nations: England, Wales and Scotland (= Great Britain), and Northern Ireland. It is unitary insofar as there is one single head of state, that is the British Monarch (Elizabeth II), hence the Four-Nation State. The construction of the UK has been complex and multifaceted. Differences between different British identities have been solved in adversity, as if the construction of the British state was made in reaction to the outside. 1. British symbols 1.1. Flags: When the flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, that is the Union Jack, was conceived in 1801, it was designed so as to illustrate the union of three nations (England, Scotland and Ireland), so only Wales and the Welsh patron saint, St David, are not represented 1. Since 1959, the Red Dragon (Y Ddraig Goch) has been harbored as the national flag of Wales. Each of the flags making up that of the United Kingdom shows a cross: St George s Cross (England), St Andrew s Cross or the Saltire (Scotland) and St Patrick s Cross (Ireland). Scotland, moreover, has its own Royal Banner known as the Lion Rampant of Scotland so that the Royal Standard actually changes whether it is used in England, Wales and Northern Ireland or in Scotland. Northern Ireland s case is even thornier as St Patrick s Saltire, as it is shown on the flag, has represented Northern Ireland only since 1922, when the Irish Free State became the Republic of Ireland Currency: In existence since 886 AD, the Royal Mint is the body permitted to strike British coins while the Bank of England has issued notes since Similar banks exist in Scotland and Northern Ireland though they issue banknotes of the pound sterling that are almost exclusively used locally, like the Scottish 100 bill. The same rule applies to other British territories (Isle of Man etc.) Emblems: To give substance to their respective national identities, each country in the UK has its lots of symbols, like the Rose (England), the Leek (Wales), the Thistle (Scotland) and the Shamrock (Ireland) or National Holidays. Other symbols exist as attributes more than emblems, like the Bulldog or the Lion passant-guardant supposed to illustrate English tenacity, courage and patience, or the Celtic Harp common to Scotland, Wales and Ireland 2. Each also has a specific motto: Dieu et mon droit ( God and my right ) has been the royal motto of England, and by extension of the UK outside Scotland, since King Henry V of England ( ), House of Lancaster ( ). The use of French has historic reasons finding root in the Norman Conquest (1066). In Scotland, the motto is In My Defens God Me Defend and Nemo me impune lacessit ( No one can harm me unpunished ). 1 England had conquered Wales by force and had incorporated its territory as a result of the Wales Acts of It appears on the coins and coat of arms of the Republic of Ireland. 1

2 Finally, although the UK has its own anthem ( God Save the Queen ) that is used in official ceremonies, it is unofficial and each country has a more or less official national anthem: Flower of Scotland is used in sport competitions and it depicts the nostalgia of a time when Scotland resisted England. Scotland has another unofficial anthem that is Scotland the Brave, used the first time Scotland participated to the Commonwealth Games, in Furthermore, the Welsh anthem, Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau ( Land of my fathers ) dates back to As for Northern Ireland, finally, the Londerry Air is played in the context of the Commonwealth Games only while Ireland s Call is used in other sport competitions. 2. The Four-Nation State 2.1. The Union: Britishness was superimposed over an array of internal differences in response to the contact with the Other, and above all in response to the conflict with the Other. (Colley, Britons, 2005) What is known today as the UK has been progressively built since the 17 th and 18 th centuries: The Acts of Union between England and Wales: Back in the 8 th century, by the time of Anglo-Saxon England, Offa, King of Mercia ( ), one of the Seven Kingdoms comprising the Heptarchy, had kept the Celts out of England thanks to the Offa s Dyke (or Clawdd Offa), a large linear earthwork that roughly follows the current border between the two countries. Offa s successors, however, were more eager to develop relationships with the disconnected Celtic chiefs over the border. It was only in 1400 that rebel Oswain Glyndŵr was proclaimed Prince of Wales and gave the country its national identity, as a result of a ten-year rebellion that ended up as a national war against King of England and Lord of Ireland Henry IV ( ). The Last War of Independence ( ) resulted in English victory. When the House of Tudors ( ), and more specifically Henry VIII ( ), ascended to the English Crown, the King claimed to be of Welsh lineage. Hence Henry VIII took the first institutional step towards the Union of England and Wales in the form of the Laws in Wales Act of 1535 and 1543 and Wales is officially incorporated in Like England, the country was divided into shires and England dominated Wales both politically and culturally, though Henry VIII also authorized the translation of the Bible of the Welsh vernacular language. Wales lost even more of its specificities when, after the Acts of Uniformity of 1662 were passed, imposing religious unity. The Union between England and Scotland: While the North of Scotland was traditionally administered by clans, the South was often at war with England. In the 13 th century, King Edward I ( ) of the House of Plantagenet ( ), also known as the Hammer of the Scots, tried to invade Scotland and managed to steal the Stone of Destiny 3. The English King was first repelled by William Wallace during the First War of Scottish Independence ( ). The revolts which broke out in early 1297 forced Edward to send more forces to deal with the Scots, which resulted in the first key Scottish victory, at the Battle of Stirling Bridge (Sept. 11 th, 1297). But in July, Edward invaded again and defeated the Scots at the Battle of Falkirk (July, 22 nd, 1298). Scotland is invaded a second time in 1314 but Robert the Bruce future King of the Scots defeated King Edward II ( ) at the Battle of Bannockburn (June 24 th, 1314), a battle that naturally carries a great deal of mythological baggage in Scotland. 3 The Stone was given back to Scotland in Edward I is also famous for having expelled the Jews from England as a result of the Edict of Expulsion of

3 Scotland reaffirmed her wish to be part of England in the Declaration of Arbroath (1320) in the form of a letter in Latin submitted to Pope John XXII, dated April 6 th. It became all the more evident in 1346 when King Edward III ( ) crossed the Channel and sailed in Normandy to invade France. The Scots helped King Philippe against the English. This partnership was the result of the Auld Alliance (1165) between the two countries. In spite of these clear manifestations of nationalism, Scotland eventually became united with England when the House of Tudors ( ) left space for the House of Stuarts ( ). King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England ( ). After the Union of the Crowns in 1603 came the Act of Union (1707), that is, the union of English and Scottish Parliaments into a single British Parliament. Thus was Great Britain born. The Scottish Parliament was suspended but the country kept at least three local institutions: its law, its church (the Kirk) and its education system. Annexation and Irish autonomy: In the 12th century, the Normans had partially conquered Ireland. Gradually, the island was settled by migrants coming from Great Britain so that, in 1541, Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland and started a recapture of the island. Due to the Act of Supremacy (1534), moreover, most of these settlers were Protestants, which made contact with the natives more difficult as they were Catholics. They were reprimanded for the same reason after the English Civil War in the 1640s. Increasingly, on Irish soil, penal laws limited the rights of Catholics. The Act of Union (1800), which created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was voted and enforced the following year. The Irish Parliament was disbanded and nationalists were silenced. It was only after the Easter Rising of 1916 that Ireland eventually gained independence from the UK. The Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921) set up the Irish Free State and, in 1949, Ireland became a Republic, severing all ties with the Crown Rising nationalism: The 20th century saw the emergence of cultural and political forms of nationalism in the British Isles. Cultural nationalism: For nationalists, the centralized government in London (Whitehall) cannot make decisions regarding Wales, Scotland or Ireland. In Ireland, the struggle for independence began in the 1880s when Charles Parnell advocated for Home Rule. It was also in Ireland that the first nationalist party emerged with the creation of Sinn Féin in In Scotland and Wales, nationalism was mostly promoted through art and literature. In Wales, for example, there was the Eisteddfod, a national medieval ceremony. In the interwar period (1920s and 1930s), nationalism was about showing off its cultural specificities. Such background eventually led to the creation of the national party of Wales, Plaid Cymru, in 1925 and the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Political nationalism: Since the 1960s, nationalism has been incorporated into mainstream politics. In 1966, Gwynfor Evans became the first member of Plaid Cymru to be elected at Westminster. In 1967, Winnie Ewing of the SNP won by-elections and, in 1968, the SNP won 34% of voters in the local elections. Some groups, like the Thistle Group, advocated for Home Rule partly in response to the growing popularity of the SNP. The Conservative members of the Thistle Group called for a Scottish Parliament with revenue-raising power in a paper called Devolution: A New Apparaisal (1968). The situation in Northern Ireland is worse still, as the tensions between communities grew and the Northern Irish Parliament was disbanded with the introduction of Direct Rule (1972), six weeks after Bloody Sunday, also known as the Bogside Massacre (Jan. 30 th, 1972) The Declaration of Arbroath

4 2.3. Devolution and aftermath: Devolution means that power is delegated from one authority to another, so from Westminster to devolved or decentralized countries in the UK. By the early 1970s, Scotland and Wales wanted to get rid of the Scottish and Welsh Offices, created in 1885 and 1965 respectively to perform a wide range of government functions under the control of a Secretary of State (for Scotland) or a Minister (for Welsh Affairs) in London. Before both were disbanded in 1999, devolution took place in two steps: The 1979 referendum: Against the rising tide of nationalism, especially in Scotland, Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson ( ) appointed the Crowther Commission in 1969 to investigate the question of devolution. The final report, known as the Kilbrandon Report was made public in 1973, pointed to the necessity of debating constitutional reform. The report received little attention and it was only during the Callaghan government (1976-9) that the Wales Act (1978) and the Scotland Act (1978) were passed and Royal Assent was given. In the referendum that took place on March 1 st, 1979, however, all propositions were rejected. The 1997 referendum: As early as 1987, the SNP changed its view on the EEC, which it then saw as a stepping stone for independence. It was not until 1994, with the emergence of New Labour (Tony Blair), that devolution became again. With Blair s victory in the 1997 election (May), a referendum was planned on Sept and, after the results were published, the Scotland Act (1998) and Government of Wales Act (1998) were voted. The former provided for the creation of a Scottish Parliament of 129 representatives, known as Holyrood and the latter created a Welsh Assembly of 60 representatives known as the Senedd. The situation of Northern Ireland, however, did not change though it became more peaceful than during the Troubles. An agreement, known as the Good Friday Agreement or Belfast Agreement, was signed on April 10 th, 1998 and the Northern Ireland Act (1998) was enforced, providing for the creation of a Northern Ireland Assembly (suspended between ). To take part in preparations for the restauration of devolved government in Northern Ireland, the St Andrews Agreement Act (2006) was passed and given Royal Assent, restoring the Northern Ireland Assembly. 3. Parliamentary democracy 3.1. The Glorious Revolution : The Glorious Revolution was a landmark conflict between Parliament and the monarchy. The period was marked was Charles I s beheading (1649) and the instauration of a Republican Commonwealth ( ). It culminated when the Bill of Rights (1689) reaffirmed the fundamental rights of the British people and enumerated the rights of Parliament regarding the monarchy, thus implementing parliamentary sovereignty according to the rule of law. The Revolution was endorsed by a political consensus between the Whigs and the Tories. It made England more peaceful though, in Scotland and Ireland, the Jacobite Rebellions of 1715 and Charles I ( ) was beheaded because he thought he could wield Divine Right of Kingship, that is to say his royal prerogatives, without the consent of Parliament. In 1628, Parliament presented the King with the Petition of Right, invoking Magna Carta (1215) against the divine right propounded by the Stuart monarchs. Parliament was dissolved in 1629 and after years of Personal Rule, Charles recalled Parliament in It became known as Short Parliament as the situation quickly deteriorated and Charles dissolved the body (5 May 1640) after a three weeks sitting. A new Parliament was summoned and lasted until 1660, so it became known as the Long Parliament which presented the Great Remonstrance (1641) to the king, creating a schism within the king s supporters. 4

5 The schism eventually caused a series of Civil Wars in , and between Royalists and Parliament, a period that became known as the First English Revolution in contrast to the Second English Revolution (1688). Such British philosophers as John Milton (The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 1649), Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651) and John Locke (Second Treatise on Government, 1690) tried to account for Charles I s regicide, developing the core of what became known as liberalism. The republican Commonwealth ( ) set up by Cromwell in the meantime was radically against any type of political reform, such as religious freedom, the right to vote for men over 21, annual parliaments etc Wielding parliamentary sovereignty: Throughout the 17 th century, Parliament wielded more power than ever before. But in fact, the arbitrariness of royal power was just replaced with that of parliamentary sovereignty. The Robinocracy was the most illustrative example of that tendency. This political system had been imagined by Sir Robert Walpole ( ), a British statesman who is often regarded as the de facto first British Prime Minister. Thanks to the Septiennial Act (1716), which stated that elections will be held every seven years, the Whigs political elite maintained their privileges and considerably changed the House of Commons, introducing even more placemen. Gerrymandering, moreover, was very unequal at the time: rotten boroughs, had few voters though they sent more MPs than big cities like Manchester or Birmingham. Only a privileged few had the right to vote. Catholics and Dissenters, however, were enfranchised in 1783 only 4. Furthermore, they remained barred from Parliament until At the dawn of the 19 th century, both the American and French revolutions inspired British radicals who began to question the political hierarchy as it excluded the majority of its citizens. The progressive ideas of such Enlightenment philosophers as Thomas Paine (whose Rights of Man was published in response to E. Burke s negative depiction of the French Revolution) inspired the emerging working class. In 1792, the London Corresponding Society gathered more than 10,000 members. After it petitioned Parliament for universal male enfranchisement, political reformer Thomas Hardy ( ), its sponsor, was arrested on charges of high treason. 2. The 1793 petition Individuals who published seditious material were punished, and, in 1794, the writ of habeas corpus was suspended. Britain then went through Pitt s reign of Terror, as Whig leader Charles J. Fox contended after Tory Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger ( ) tightened the treason statute and banned large political meetings as a result of the Two Acts (1795-6) 5. Pitt, who considered himself an independent Whig is remembered for creating the new Toryism and for getting Catholic Emancipation as part of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland out of fear that Irish Catholics would side with the French against England. 4 The Test Acts deprived Dissenters of a few basic rights and barred them from civil service. 5 Also known as the Gagging Acts. The Combination Acts ( ) later banned collective bargaining by British workers. 5

6 3.3. Towards more popular sovereignty? Quite paradoxically enough, Parliament power was wielded at the expanse of its citizens. The whole Radical movement that had been sweeping across the UK since Paine s Rights of Man (1792) was allowed to spread after 1824, when policies of repression were abandoned and the Combination Act repelled. Progressively throughout the 19 th and 20 th centuries, pressure for reform came from the top and bottom of society: The working class: At the bottom there were reform societies such as the Hampden Clubs, a radical and debating organization created in to campaign for universal suffrage and vote by poll 6. Reform became inseparable from radicalism, especially in the press. In 1817, for example, the Weekly Political Register fought for the abolition of rotten boroughs and placemen. In 1819, one of the biggest meeting of the manufacturing classes in Manchester, gathered some 60,000-80,000, was repressed when cavalry charged into the crowd, leading to the Peterloo Massacre. The event led the Tory government of Robert Banks Jenkenson, 2 nd Earl of Liverpool ( ) to enact the Six Acts to repress radical ideas, though they had a relatively mild impact. In the 1830s and 1840s, the political debate focused on Chartism, a typical radical movement which campaigned for universal suffrage and parliamentary reform. Though the Whig government of Charles Grey, 2 nd Earl Grey ( ) made a few concessions to preserve the social order, such as the Great Reform Act (1832) which enfranchised some sections of the middle classes, the Chartist movement climaxed in 1848 when a petition was submitted to Parliament, gathering some 2,000 signatures, and rejected. It was not until the Trade Union Act (1871) that trade unions were officially acknowledged. The political and social inclusion of the working-class was only implemented in 1918, as a result of the Representation of the People Act. Women: As early as the 1830s, women campaigned for the right to vote and presented many petitions to Parliament accordingly. In so doing, they managed to gain a few rights like the right to keep their children after a divorce (1837). Philosophers like John Stuart Mill ( ) supported their claims, the latter would even later propose an amendment to the Reform Bill (1867) enfranchising women. In 1897, as the situation had barely changed, regional militant organizations united to create the National Union of Women s Suffrage Societies led by Millicent Fawcett ( ). In 1903, the Women s Social and Political Union, a more militant branch of the organization, emerged under the direction of Emmeline Pankhurst ( ). As women actively participated to the Great War after 1914, it became obvious that they should be enfranchised. The Representation of the People Act (1918) gave women over 30 the right to vote and the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act (1918) enabled them to stand for election. The franchise was extended to women over 21 in Limitations to universal suffrage: It now may be argued that parliamentary democracy in the UK really began in And yet, some sections of the population, however, are still excluded from power. In Northern Ireland, Catholics are not much represented in Parliament as Protestants resort to gerrymandering to insure the majority. Until 1968, moreover, only those who paid local taxes were authorized to vote. In the whole UK, until 1948, owners could vote multiple times, depending on the number of properties they had. Though plural voting no longer exists in the UK, people like convicts have not been able to vote since the Forfeiture Act of In 2011, the Conservative government of David Cameron ( ) enforced the interdiction, despite the fact that it violates the European Convention on Human Rights. 6 Hampden Clubs were dissolved by Parliament in 1818 as they were suspected of planning on insurrection. 6