Written evidence submitted by Naomi Lloyd-Jones

PhD candidate, History, King's College London,

and co-founder, Four Nations History Network (DSB 06)

Introduction

1. I was invited to submit evidence on the historical background to and precedents for the constitutional changes contained in the draft clauses.
2. My expertise concerns the history of late-19th century Home Rule movements and reactions to William Gladstone's introduction (on two occasions) of legislation to restore a domestic legislature to Ireland.[1] I am also co-founder of the Four Nations History Network,[2] a research community which promotes the understanding of and engagement with 'four nations' approaches to modern 'British' history. It, and my research, stresses the need for a move away from Anglo-centric and/or nation-centric approaches, toward frameworks which recognise the separate histories of the UK's individual parts but also acknowledge the complications of their forming a larger polity, which is, to a degree, still represented as one and governed by a united parliament at Westminster. The views expressed below are my own.

Late-19th century Home Rule

3. Understanding the historical context is vital to the UK Government’s aim of effecting ‘an enduring settlement', as the command paper is subtitled. In April 1886, and again in February 1893, William Gladstone became the first UK Prime Minister to propose the re-establishment of a legislative assembly in Dublin, with control over a number of supposedly definable ‘Irish affairs’. In 1886, he proposed the exclusion of Irish representatives from Westminster, prompting the accusation that he intended to repeal the 1800 Act of Union and effect ‘taxation without representation’. The legislation was defeated, following a revolt within his own Liberal party. Had it passed, it would have violated the core tenet of the Union,[3] that the UK ‘be represented in one and the same Parliament.’ Gladstone’s 1893 bill retained a reduced number of Irish MPs; it passed the Commons but was rejected by an overwhelming majority in the Lords. Gladstone retired from politics the following year and many within the Liberal party sought to distance themselves from such a divisive issue.
4. A third Irish Home Rule Bill was introduced in 1912 by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in the midst of a constitutional crisis. When he introduced his scheme, Asquith told parliament: 'I take up the narrative where Mr. Gladstone was obliged to leave it.'[4] However consciously, the now ex-First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond held the independence referendum on the 100th anniversary of the enactment and suspension of Irish self-government.
5. The term ‘Home Rule’ has re-entered mainstream political discourse. For instance, Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has described the Smith Commission as delivering ‘home rule for Scotland within the United Kingdom.’[5] It has also been used to differentiate the scheme offered in Lord Smith’s report from that which the Scottish Government allege the Scottish people were promised.[6] ‘Home Rule’ has also been arrogated by Westminster parties, and has appeared in incarnations as seemingly diverse as 'Home Rule All Round' and 'English Home Rule.'
6. Gladstonian Liberals typically explained Irish Home Rule as meaning 'a Statutory Parliament – with legislative and executive power in respect to all exclusively Irish matters – subordinate to the Imperial Parliament.'[7] In the Scottish context, this definition was closely appropriated by the Scottish Home Rule Association (SHRA), formed in May 1886, a mere three weeks after Gladstone introduced his first Irish bill. The Association argued for 'the establishment of a legislature sitting in Scotland, with full control over all purely Scotch questions and with an executive government responsible to it and the Crown.'
7. The SHRA was curiously absent in the Scottish National Party’s (SNP’s) pre-referendum rhetoric. The party claims that its origins ‘can be traced back to several organisations advocating Home Rule for Scotland in the 1920s and 30s’.[8] Nevertheless, the SNP and the government it has formed borrow heavily from the same vocabulary that informed the SHRA’s actions. For instance, Salmond has alleged that: ‘The current UK system means that Scotland will always be an afterthought at Westminster.’ The SHRA’s chairman John Stuart Blackie was convinced that: ‘To a metropolitan assembly mainly composed of Englishmen, Scottish affairs will always be looked upon as subordinate and secondary.’ According to Salmond, it is possible to render Scotland ‘subject to Westminster policies against the wishes of our democratic representatives’. If so, then little has changed since the Association protested against the practice of ‘altering the Laws of Scotland by English votes against the voice of Scotland’s representatives’.
8. Much of the recent historical scholarship on Scotland has focused on what has been labelled as ‘Unionist-nationalism’,[9] a seemingly oxymoronic term. It denotes a belief that the Union with England enabled Scots to express their nation’s distinctive attributes within a wider British and imperial framework. As one rejoinder to the SHRA put it: ‘We are by no means a down-trodden race … we have generally got what we wanted.’ It was held that ‘by virtue of the Parliamentary Union, Scotland has infinitely more power than it could have in a separate parliamentary system’.
9. The Better Together campaign attempted to rejuvenate Unionist-nationalism and make it relevant to the era of devolution. Its head, Alistair Darling has said that, while 'fiercely proud of being Scottish', he sees 'the value of being part of something bigger',[10] while Lord Strathclyde suggested in his report on devolution that 'the genius at the heart of the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707 is that it allows both nations to blossom within a shared state.'[11] It is arguable that the command paper and draft clauses represent the apotheosis of Unionist-nationalism. In their preface to the command paper, Cameron and Clegg state: ‘Having a more responsible and accountable Scottish Parliament inside a strong United Kingdom delivers the best of both worlds.’
10. It should also be stressed that we ought to guard against historical inaccuracies. The Liberal Democrats have been keen to emphasise their Gladstonian heritage. According to Danny Alexander, their party has campaigned for a 'federal solution' since Gladstone 'first called for Home Rule All Round more than 100 years ago.'[12] Yet the fact that Gladstone was single-minded in his pursuit of a Dublin parliament and attached meagre value to parallel calls for Scottish and Welsh Home devolution casts doubt on such claims.
11. In his foreword to the command paper, Alistair Carmichael states that ‘for over 300 years’, the United Kingdom has ‘worked, grown and succeeded together in the most successful family of nations the world has ever known.’ The United Kingdom has been in existence for just over 200 years - it was the creation of the 1800 Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. Great Britain was formed in 1707, through the Act of Union between England (and Wales) and Scotland.

Four nations

12. We have also witnessed the emergence of a rhetoric on the 'four nations' of the United Kingdom. Immediately following the referendum result, David Cameron spoke of his relief that the Scots had 'kept our country of four nations together', and when addressing his party conference in October, styled himself as 'Prime Minister of four nations in one United Kingdom.'[13] Gladstone depicted his advocacy of Irish Home Rule as a just response to the constitutional expression of 'the voice of Ireland.' Cameron has interpreted the referendum result as Scotland's vote 'for a stronger Scottish Parliament backed by the strength and security of the United Kingdom.' But he has likewise called for 'the millions of voices of England' to be heard, for Wales 'to be at the heart of the debate on how to make our United Kingdom work' and for measures to ensure that Northern Ireland's 'devolved institutions function effectively.'[14]
13. The 'West Lothian Question' is in many respects a hangover from the 'Irish question' Gladstone tried (and failed) to solve. The fact that Joseph Chamberlain described the issue of Irish representation at Westminster as 'the symbol and flag of the controversy' should not be lost on today's policy makers. In 1893, Scottish Liberals complained that Gladstone's scheme offered Irish MPs 'the opportunity … of putting their hands in the pockets of the Scottish people; and of dealing with their Budgets, and assisting in making Scottish laws'. The SHRA too warned that 'Scotsmen would not consent to be governed by irresponsible [Irish] members'. Yet the SHRA also feared that, without an Irish cohort, Scotland's 72 representatives would be 'left face to face with England's 465.' The SHRA therefore touted ‘the delegation … to each of the British kingdoms of the powers for its internal legislation and administration’ as an ‘obvious way out of the difficulty’ and avowed ‘the problem solved’.
14. However, the SHRA did not advocate parity in devolution. From 1889, annual motions in favour of a Scottish parliament were introduced by the SHRA's President, the Liberal MP Dr Gavin Clark. While these resolutions emphasised the importance of giving 'speedier and fuller effect to the special desires and wants of the respective nationalities constituting the United Kingdom', they rarely sought uniform means for achieving this goal. Clark admitted in 1891 that he had produced a 'vague' motion because 'it may be that the Welsh people do not require what the Scotch and Irish people require'; Scotland and Ireland had 'had Parliaments in the past', Wales had not. Samuel Evans, the Welsh member who seconded Clark's resolution, concurred, adding 'it does not seem to me to be necessary to give identical powers to every part of the United Kingdom.' Clark's vision of Scotland and Ireland as being in the vanguard extended to his attitude toward England: he did not think that 'the English people were in the same frame of mind', for 'England is only beginning to look at this question'. Today, Scotland has a parliament, Wales an assembly, while England remains embedded in and conflated with Westminster.
15. The theory of 'English votes for English laws' allows for a clever reversal of centuries of rhetoric on the injustices of the Union settlements. It enables England to appear the aggrieved, neglected party. William Hague, Leader of the House of Commons, has condemned decades of 'prevarication, postponement and delay' on the 'English question'. Hague has stated that, 'with further devolution to the nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland it is not unreasonable – indeed, it is a matter of basic fairness – to say that the voice of England should also be heard.'[15]
16. According to previous generations of nationalists, England suffered no such deprivation. In 1892, the Irish Nationalist MP John Philip Nolan proclaimed: 'The English people have got Home Rule at present. The English Members are about two to one of all the other Members put together, and they could carry any question they liked through the House.' Even Gladstone gave no quarter to the wit who claimed in a Commons debate that 'English Members are outvoted on occasion by the Scotch and Irish votes.' Gladstone inquired as to whether it was more likely that 70 Scottish MPs could 'exercise as much influence on the determination of English business' as 'the 400 odd Members from England are likely to exercise on Scotch questions.' 'Such is not according to my arithmetic' was his pithy conclusion.
17. It is interesting that while the command paper pledges that 'changes to inter-governmental working will be developed collaboratively by the UK Government and the three Devolved Administrations', it makes no mention of the Wales Act 2014 or of the Corporation Tax (Northern Ireland) Bill introduced in January 2015. The SNP has said that there is 'no good reason why' Scotland should not have corporation tax powers and criticised the UK Government for the varying timescales it has proposed for Northern Irish and Scottish tax devolution.[16] The three main pro-Union Westminster parties have said that they are committed to introducing a new Scotland Bill after the May general election. Recent polls have indicated that the SNP will return a substantial cohort to Westminster; the party has said that the more seats it wins, the more power Scotland will have. The result is likely to bear on the shape a future Scotland Bill takes. Hung parliaments are not a new phenomenon in UK history: in 1886 Gladstone's critics accused him of introducing Home Rule to secure the Irish nationalist support necessary to form a working government. Irish nationalists again held the balance of power in 1912, when Asquith introduced his Home Rule bill. Nor are Coalitions an historical anomaly: in 1886, the Conservatives joined forces with rebel Liberals in an attempt to maintain the Irish Union, an arrangement formalised in the 1895 Conservative (led)-Liberal Unionist government.
18. Clause 2 of the proposed Scotland Bill inserts in the Scotland Act 1998 the following: 'it is recognised that the Parliament of the United Kingdom will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament.' The 1886 Government of Ireland Bill stipulated the opposite: 'With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this Act mentioned it shall be lawful for Her Majesty the Queen, by and with the advice of the Irish Legislative Body, to make laws of the peace, order, and good government of Ireland, and by any such law to alter and repeal any law in Ireland.'[17] Nevertheless, where this 'safeguard' was once seen as paramount, the partitioned Irish Free State was one of the Dominions listed in the 1931 Statute of Westminster, which stated: 'No Act of the United Kingdom passed after the commencement of this Act shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to a Dominion as part of the law of that Dominion…'.[18] That the Irish Free State was classed as a Dominion bears out the irony in Gladstone's proclamation that 'the problem of responsible government has been solved for us in our colonies.'
19. It should be asked whether the UK Government intends to insert clauses recognising the Sewel convention in future Wales and Northern Ireland bills. Why was no such clause inserted, post-Smith Commission, in the Wales Bill? In addition, how would this affect plans for English votes for English laws? Would Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs be expected to be governed by a comparable convention in their conduct at Westminster?
20. Likewise, will the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies be recognised as permanent parts of the United Kingdom's constitutional arrangements, as the Scottish Parliament is in Clause 1? If so, on what footing would this place the Westminster parliament? And where would an English 'Grand Committee' or the like fit in this scheme? It will be pointed out that the UK does not have a written constitution: in this decade of anniversaries, it is worth noting that Gladstone described his first Irish bill as 'a Magna Charta for Ireland.'
21. Gladstone was adamant that Ireland must come first; his followers, where they advocated an extension of self-government beyond Ireland's shores, invariably contended that Ireland's unique circumstances necessitated that it be granted Home Rule ahead of the other nations. The Smith Commission was a response to the unique circumstances of the Scottish referendum, yet there has been no attempt to put the UK's devolved administrations on an equal footing. This is not to suggest that all future transfers of power be made concurrently, but rather to point out that what we have now is far from 'Home Rule All Round'; instead, it is closer to the scheme outlined by Clarke in 1891. Will a future Scotland Bill be considered in its four nations context?

February 2015