scotland and northern ireland: constitutional questions, connections and possibilities

Graham Walker

Scotland and Northern Ireland: Constitutional Questions, Connections and Possibilities

IN HER SUBMISSION T O THE OPSAHL HEARINGS ON THE NORTHERN Ireland problem in 1993, the literary and cultural critic Edna Longley made a simple point about the ‘Anglo-Irish Agreement’. This term for what was a pact between the UK and Republic of Ireland governments is, she argued, a misnomer: ‘[It] obscures the contested area, and panders to the belief - in both London and Dublin - that the UK is coterminous with England.” Longley later urged that the Northern Ireland problem should be viewed more widely, in its proper context as part of the ‘melting pot’ of cultures of the two islands, Britain and Ireland.*

Such a sentiment might be expected to command widespread endorsement in Scotland more than anywhere else. Yet Scotland has largely gone along with the interpretation and the conceptuali- zation of the Northern Ireland question in the fashion outlined above. Scots have not notably objected to the way ‘Anglo-Irish’ has become such an accepted term in relation to initiatives on Northern Ireland. The implicit assumption that the problem is essentially one for London and Dublin to sort out has been allowed to prevail in Scotland as much as anywhere else for want of a substantial and distinctive contribution to the debate on the issue. In spite of, or because of, the fact that the most resonant echo of the Northern Ireland conflict is to be found in Scotland, no significant contribution to this debate from a Scottish perspective has emerged.

Scots may be too acutely aware of, and sensitive to, the ‘Ulster’ type of problems and tensions in their own midst to wish to risk the exacerbation of them by getting too involved in debates about Northern Ireland. The raw sectarianism on display at the Monklands

’ See A. Poll&, A Cifizen’s Inquiry, Dublin, Lilliput, 1993, pp. 339-41. * E. Longley, ‘Challenging Complacency’, Fortnighf, 315 (March 1993).

22 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION

by-election of June 1994 seems to have reinforced such fears in many people’s minds.3 In this context the ‘distancing’ of Northern Ireland makes sense.

Less charitably, such attitudes can also be interpreted as a failure to confront one of Scotlands major social and cultural divisions, leading to an inability to contribute something distinctive and possibly constructive to the Northern Ireland situation. Certainly, it is somewhat anomalous that as a confident and assertive national consciousness has been in evidence since the early 1980s, Scots should have been apparently willing to allow all things ‘British’ in respect of matters Irish to be reduced to ‘English’. Against a background of cultural nationalism on the upswing, it is ironic to observe that many Scots seem indifferent to the cultural affinities between Scotland and Ulster, a phenomenon which could and should be regarded as eminently non-sectarian.

Given the common ground between them, it is also notable how little, at least until recently, the Scottish and Northern Irish constitutional questions have been linked and discussed t~ge ther .~ Again, there are strong historical and political reasons for this, not least the semidetached status of Northern Ireland from the British political process. Yet it is precisely this unique constitutional experience of Northern Ireland since 1921, when at its inception as a unit it received its own devolved legislature (prorogued in 1972), which is of particular interest to contemporary debates about devolution for Scotland or wider ‘all round‘ constitutional change for the UK as a whole. Both the Scottish and Northern Irish constitutional debates today converge strikingly around questions of the future of the UK as a whole, of identity and the meaning of ideas of ‘Britishness’, and of sovereignty and legitimacy.

In this article I will sketch the historical context of this constitutional debate as it has related to both places, and I will argue that there are important insights to be derived from considering

’ See discussion of this episode in G. Walker, Intimate Stmngm: Political and Cultural Interation between Scotland and Ulster in M o d a Times, Edinburgh, John Donald, 1995,

’ P. Lynch, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Process and Scottish Constitutional Reform: Managing the Unions of 1800 and 1707, Regional and Federal Studies, 6: 1 (Spring 1996). pp. 45-62; M. Dyer, ‘Scotland: Does Northern Ireland make a Difference?, Parliamentary Bricf(November 1994), pp. 84-85.

pp. 179-84.

SCOTLAND AND NORTHERN IRELAND 23

the Scottish and Northern Irish cases together and exploring the extent to which they might be said to interact.

THE NORTHERN IRELAND EXPERIENCE OF DEVOLUTION

‘Northern Ireland was the creation of the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Often vilified as the ‘Partition Act’ by Nationalists, its intentions were essentially unitary in the long term. The Act provided for two devolved legislatures in Ireland - one for the six- county North and another for the rest of Ireland - and it was envisaged that they would in time come together as one through the medium of the Council of Ireland. The latter device was intended to be a forum for discussion of matters in common between the two parliament^.^ Kendle has suggested that there was also an ‘all round devolution’ spirit infusing the Act, that a United Ireland with significant devolved powers would emerge to trigger further such developments in the rest of the UK. In this way it is possible to discern the influence of the ‘Home Rule All Round line of thought which had been a feature of constitutional debate since Gladstone’s first Irish Home Rule Bill 1886.6

If this interpretation of the Act’s intentions is open to debate, there is little doubt that it was designed immediately to remove the Irish question -North and South - from British politics. As it turned out only the legislature in the new State of Northern Ireland came into being; a settlement of matters in the rest of Ireland was reached in December 1921 when the Anglo-Irish treaty conferred Dominion status on what was to become the new ‘Irish Free State’. By this time Northern Ireland was up and running as a devolved unit within the UK, but effectively cut off from the mainstream of British politics. A convention was rapidly established whereby Northern Ireland business was not discussed at Westminster, notwithstanding the non-federal constitutional status of Northern Ireland which left Westminster’s sovereignty over it intact.

An excellent guide to the Act and to the operation of devolution in Northern Ireland is provided in A. J. Ward, The Z7bh Constitutional Tradition, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 1994, ch. 5.

E See J. Kendle, Ireland and the Federal Solution, Montreal and Kingston, McGill- Queen’s University Press, 1989; and Walker, Zntimate Stnzngns, ch. 2.


It was always likely that problems would arise out of a situation in which Northern Ireland was the product of a piece of legislation which was prevented from bringing about a very different overall result. This indeed was the case in the area of finance. Northern Ireland was given very limited revenue-raising powers; major taxes, such as income tax, were retained in London with Northern Ireland receiving back its share of the cake. It had been envisaged by the framers of the Government of Ireland Act that stronger fiscal powers would be devolved to an Irish parliament when North and South came together. This would be an incentive to unity and cooperation. Northern Ireland, therefore, was forced into a financial relationship with the central government which had been defined with a different outcome in mind. It soon became clear that the arrangements were unsatisfactory, and important revisions to them occurred in 1925, 1926 and 1938. By 1938 it would be more accurate to describe the financial arrangements of devolution in Northern Ireland as having shifted from a revenue-based system to an expenditure-based one, reliant on central government subvention.’ Resulting from this, financial questions of great public interest were not debated in the Northern Ireland parliament; rather they were shrouded in secrecy. The vacuum in parliament was filled by interminable ‘Orange versus Green’ squabbling. The lesson of this seemed to be that if a devolved government unit does not have financial independence the powers designed for it will drift back to the centre.s

It would be fair to say that this ‘dependency’ status did not unduly perturb the Northern Ireland governments led by Sir James Craig from 1921 till 1940, nor his successors until the early 1960s. These Unionist administrations took a minimalist approach to devolution. They always prioritized the security of Northern Ireland’s position within the UK far above any imaginative employment of the devolutionary powers they possessed. Remaining ‘stepby-step’ with the rest of the UK in key social and economic areas, such as social services and welfare benefits, became a hallmark of the Stormont era. The accession of Terence O’Neill to the premiership in 1963 signalled the first real challenge to this approach, and although the

‘I See Ward, op. cit.; V. Bogdanor, Devolution, Oxford, Oxford University Press,

See B. Purdie, ‘Lessons of Ireland‘, in T. Gallagher (ed.), Nationalism in the Ninctics, 1978, ch. 3; T. Wilson, Ulster: Conflict and Consent, Oxford, Blackwell, 1989, ch. 9.

Edinburgh, Polygon, 1991.


new Prime Minister’s rhetoric ran far ahead of reality there were genuine attempts made to tap the potential of devolution in relation to regional economic policy and ~ lanning .~

The overall conservatism of the Unionist governments in the period of devolution in Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1972 was a factor which limited in-depth reflection on the Northern Ireland experience when proposals for Scottish and Welsh devolution were debated in the 1970s. As James Cornford has noted, it was believed that a Scottish Parliament would be much more assertive in the use of devolved powers and more inclined to pursue different policies from the rest of the UK.’O Nevertheless, in its influential report on the constitution, the Kilbrandon Commission made liberal reference to the way the devolution experiment had operated in Northern Ireland, and concluded positively while acknowledging ‘the special difficulties’ surrounding ‘the community problem’.”

Academic commentators, intervening in an attempt to contribute constructively to the debate about Scotland and Wales, were divided. Derek Birrell echoed the Kilbrandon Report’s conclusions: if achievements were possible even in the hazardous circumstances of Northern Ireland, then the prospects of successful progress taking place in Scotland were surely even likelier. Birrell, however, was in favour of tax-raising powers for a Scottish Parliament while the Kilbrandon Report had proposed a system of block grants.12 On the other hand, there were commentators who sounded a more cautionary, even sceptical, note. Paul Arthur stressed cogently the defective financial arrangements under which Northern Ireland laboured, and indicated how problematic this question would be in any prospective devolutionary scheme.13 Arthur also underlined the dangers of one-party dominance in the light of the Northern Ireland case: at the time in Scotland this translated into the spectre of a Strathclyde-based Labour Party controlling Scottish affairs. Pro-

s Ward, op. cit., pp. 122-3. lo J. Cornford, ‘Constitutional reform in the UK, in S. Tindale (ed.), The State and

the Nations, London, IPPR, 1996. ‘I The Royal Commission on the Constitution (Kilbrandon) Report, Cmnd. 5460,

1973, part X, p. 54, 380. I* W. D. Birrell, ‘The Mechanics of Devolution: Northern Ireland Experience and

the Scotland and Wales Bill’, Political Quarterly, 49 (1978), pp. 304-21. ” P. Arthur, ‘Devolution as Administrative Convenience: A Case Study of Northern

Ireland‘, Parliamentary Affairs, 30 (1977). pp. 97-106.


devolution Labour activists in Scotland worked hard to discredit any comparison with the Ulster Unionists, but it may be significant that areas of Scotland like Grampian which recorded a ‘No’ vote in the Devolution referendum in 1979 were outside the Labour fiefdom.14

No less a danger, if Northern Ireland was taken as a guide, was that of one-issue dominance. Where the issue of the legitimacy of the Northern Ireland State and its position in the Union consumed political energies there for fifty years, it was at least arguable that devolution in Scotland would have the effect of intensifying ‘the National Question’ to the detriment, as in Northern Ireland, of other issues. Quite simply, would devolution divide Scots over the question of whether it turns out to be a constitutional terminus or a staging post to complete independence? The chances of Scottish political culture becoming so narrowly focused might be increased if Scotland lacked financial autonomy and, in the manner of Northern Ireland, a vacuum was created out of the absence of proper scrutiny of financial matters on the part of parliament. In the debate in the 1970s, none of these issues, important as they were, focused people’s attention as much as the so-called ‘West Lothian Question’. Although this constitutional conundrum had been around since Gladstone introduced his first Home Rule Bill for Ireland, it was debated with scant reference to historical precedent. Thus the fact that Northern Ireland had sent members to Westminster while a devolved parliament was in operation in Belfast, and that these MPs had voted on business pertaining to other parts of the UK, was largely overlooked. The issue had been underplayed largely because the number of Northern Ireland MPs (twelve) was small and did not crucially affect the party balance in the House of Commons. Yet in principle the question was - as it would later be called - as much a ‘West Belfast’ as a ‘West Lothian’ one.

The example of Northern Ireland’s devolution experiment may not have been uppermost in the minds of most people who voted in the Referendum on devolution for Scotland in 1979,15 but there is reason to suggest that the Catholic community in Scotland still took,

l4 See Walker, Intimate Strangers, p. 152. There is no reference to the Northern Ireland case in the only substantial study

of the referendum, J. Bochel et al. (eds), T h c R e f d u m Expmmc, Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press, 1981.


to a significant extent, ajaundiced view of the prospect of a Scottish Parliament based on their fear of its becoming another ‘Stormont’ in which they, as a minority still held in great suspicion by many Protestant Scots, would be treated unfairly.’6 The significant anti- devolution Labour tendency in Scotland at the time of the Referendum arguably played on these fears. Moreover, it is likely that Labour’s coolness on Scottish Home Rule from the 1930s to the early 1970s - the party officially dropped it as a commitment in the 1950s - reflected the lack of enthusiasm for it on the part of the Catholic backbone of its support in the west of Scotland. Certainly, some Labour attacks on the Scottish National Party (SNP) over the years have depicted the Nationalists as narrow-minded Calvinists and anti-Catholic. The Monklands by-election brought such smear tactics to the centre of the political stage.”

The SNP vote in its ‘high tide’ of the 1974 elections was overwhelmingly Protestant. In particular the Protestant working class was much more likely in this period to vote SNP than its Catholic counterpart.’8 Much Protestant SNP support had defected from the Conservatives and it is not implausible to suggest that events in Northern Ireland - specifically the prorogation of the Stormont parliament by the Heath government in 1972 - were a factor in Protestant disillusionment with the Tories. By this time the ability of the Tories (known, significantly, as the ‘Unionists’ till 1965) to make a populist appeal to Protestants, particularly in the west of Scotland, had largely e~aporated.’~ The fact that the pro-Ulster independence Vanguard movement was for a short time a successful vehicle for Protestant anger and bitterness in Northern Ireland may also have helped sway traditionally ‘loyalist’ Scottish Protestants to the possibility of Scottish independence if only briefly. Certainly, it was a convulsive political mornent,*O and it is difficult to under-

See T. Gallagher, Glasgow: The Uneasy Peace, Manchester, Manchester University

“See the report on the spat between Alex Salmond (SNP leader) and George

See J. Brand, The National Movement in Scotland, London, RKP, 1978, pp. 150-4. See discussion of this theme in D. Seawright and J. Curtice, ‘The Decline of the

Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party 1950-92: Religion, Ideology or Economics’, Contemfiwaly Record, 9 2 (Autumn 1995), pp. 319-42; Walker, Intimate Strangers, ch. 3.

2o Other destabilizing developments of the period included the miners’ strike and the imposition by the Heath government of the three-day week.

Press, 1987, p. 327.

Galloway (Labour MP) as reported in the Scolsman, 5 August 1994.


estimate the role of the SNP’s electoral breakthrough in 1974 in shaping the constitutional debate in the UK for the rest of the decade, which brought Scotland to the brink of having its own parliament.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES OF THE 1980s AND 1990s

The resumption of the constitutional debate in Scotland in the 1980s saw the SNP move to the left to try to kill off ‘Tartan Tory’ jibes for good, while the Tories under Thatcher retrenched around traditional notions of Westminster sovereignty and fimdamentalist Unionism. As Mitchell has argued, the Conservatives in this period moved away decisively from the concept of a ‘Union State’ in which territorial sensitivities were prioritized and, in the case of Scotland, its national distinctiveness fully appreciated. The Tory approach under Thatcher was much more in line with the idea of a ‘unitary state’ in which the centre exercises dominance with little regard for the historic diversity underpinning the state.” The Labour Party recognized that the anti- government mood in Scotland was also a nationalistic one and took up much of the Nationalist agenda.2* Devolution reclaimed its place at the centre of debate but it increasingly became bound up with agendas for wider reform largely inspired by Europe. By the early 1990s regionalism was in vogue and federalist concepts of constitutional reform for the UK were being revived.

The Scottish case was viewed by constitutional reformers as a catalyst to wider change. The deliberations of the Scottish Constitutional Convention inspired the campaigning of groups for UK reform such as ‘Charter 88’.25 In the period running up to the 1992 general election, leading Ulster Unionists sought to position

*’ See J. Mitchell, ‘Conservatives and the Changing Meaning of Union’, Regional and F e h a l Studies, 6: 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 30-44.

** See J. Geekie and R. Levy, ‘Devolution and the Tartanisation of the Labour Party’, Parliamentury A/Jairs. 42 (1989).

Much scholarly commentary has accompanied the deliberations of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, especially in the academic journals the Scottish Government Yearbook (until 1992), and Scottish Affairs (from 1992). See, for example, J. Kellas, ‘The Scottish Constitutional Convention’, Scottish Gmernment Yearbook, 1998, pp. 50- 8; P. Lynch, ‘The Scottish Constitutional Convention, 1992-5’, Scottish Affairs, 15 (Spring 1996), pp. 1-16.


Northern Ireland to ensure that it was not left out of any constitutional shake-up which might transpire; the then Unionist leader James Molyneaux made contact with the Scottish Constitutional Convention. There was even speculation about the effects on Northern Ireland if Scotland became i n d e ~ e n d e n t . ~ ~ All this highlighted the extent to which the British link for Ulster Unionists was, at least sentimentally, a Scottish one. It is perhaps no coin- cidence that the period since the early 1990s has seen a significant upsurge in ‘Ulster-Scot’ cultural activity - a strong pressure group exists to promote the Ulster-Scot language and claims have been made for ‘parity of esteem’ with the Irish language regarding funding. As ‘identity politics’ have flourished, it is important to note the rise - or revival - of the ‘Ulster-Scot’ example, and to consider its possible implications for the future in Northern Ireland if there is any disengagement on the part of the British government, or break-up of the Union.25

The rather anti-climactic result of the 1992 general election had the effect of temporarily dousing speculation about the Scottish constitutional case and, with the onset of the ‘Peace Process’ in Northern Ireland from late in 1994, it was Northern Ireland rather than Scotland which was identified as likely to be the subject of a constitutional initiative and, thereby, a catalyst for wider change.26

The Framework Document of February 1995 for a time strength- ened the view of many that constitutional change seemed imminent first in Northern Ireland, and that this would in many ways help to throw into sharper relief the controversies around the issue of constitutional change for Scotland. Proponents of change in Scotland pounced upon the inconsistency in the Conservative government’s approach to constitutional reform in relation to Northern Ireland and to Scotland. They pointed out that the Framework Document was proposing essentially the form of legislative assembly (with a Proportional Representation voting system) which the government had rejected for Scotland: ‘In Ireland’, wrote the Scottish com-

x4 Walker, Intimate Strangers, p. 168. x5 See debate on ‘Ulster-Scots Identity’ in Northern Ireland Forum for Political

Dialogue, Record of Debates, 23, 10 January 1997; also comments of David Trimble (Ulster Unionist Party leader) reported in Belfast Newsletter, 31 December 1996.

Will Hutton, ‘The State We’re in‘, Fortnight, 333 (November 1994); Iain McWhirter, ‘SNP and Labour should end Stand-off‘, ScotlundonSunday, 25 September 1994.


mentator Iain McWhirter, John Major was saying that devolution would strengthen the Union, whereas in Scotland he was saying that it would break it up’.27

In response to the accusations of inconsistency government ministers sought to stress the ‘exceptionalism’ of the Northern Ireland case. Michael Ancram, for example, said that Northern Ireland was distinctive in the UK context on account of divisions of culture, tradition and allegiance.28 Certainly, it had been on the basis of this assumption of Northern Ireland’s ‘exceptional’ status that successive Conservative governments had exercised a degree of flexibility regarding constitutional initiatives not shown to Scotland. However, it is tempting to suggest that ‘exceptionalism’ is more solidly grounded in the respective relationships of Northern Ireland and Scotland to the party political system in Britain: Scotland is not regarded as exceptional because it is much larger and more important to the strength of the parties and the system as a whole.29

Moreover, the use of the ‘exceptional’ argument in the Northern Ireland case exposed the government to attacks from its opponents who pointed to other ‘exceptions’, most notably in the case of Scotland. The Labour Party was able to use the Conservative government’s approach to Northern Ireland to defend its own position on constitutional change and to turn against the government issues which had traditionally been problematic for Labour regarding devolution for Scotland..so Thus the ‘West Lothian Question’ was identified by Labour as in principle no different from the ‘West Belfast Question’. In addition, the Framework Document accepted the anomaly of the Northern Ireland secretary of state continuing to sit in cabinet in the event of a devolved assembly being set up, while the government had identified as an unresolved problem Labour’s endorsement of the continuation of the Scottish Secretary’s cabinet role in the context of Scottish devolution.

The way the Scottish and Northern Irish questions were brought together served as a reminder of how untidy - in the absence of a written constitution - the governance of the UK is in practice, and

I. McWhirter, ‘Doomsday Two: The Return of Forsyth‘, Scottish Ajjuirs, 13

Michael Ancram as reported in Scotlund-on-Sunday, 18 August 1996. See Cornford, ‘Constitutional Reform in the UK’.

(Autumn 1995), pp. 16-26.

Io See Lynch, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Process and Scottish Constitutional Reform’.


how anomalies and ‘exceptions’ abound in the system. It also highlighted the haphazard fashion in which the UK has developed, and the extent to which ‘British’ nationality and identity are deeply ambiguous and complex questions. The Conservative government’s position exposed it to the charge that it was not as concerned about doing all it could to ensure that Northern Ireland remained in the Union as it clearly was in relation to Scotland. Northern Ireland, indeed, seemed not to be regarded by the Conservative government as part of the British ‘nation’, or at least not in the same terms as England, Scotland and Wales. The latter were assumed to form a homogeneous community.3’

The Scottish and Northern Irish questions both compel critical analysis of the contemporary meanings of the idea of ‘Britishness’. These meanings vary according to context, and people in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and indeed Wales, have all at various times been upset by the tendency of many English people to equate the terms ‘English’ and ‘British’ and appear to discount the non-English dimensions to Britishness. Thus the Ulster Loyalist sense of Britishness may seem puzzling to the English but is easily appreciated (if by no means always admired) by Scots as carrying within it a desire to be recognized. On the other hand, even in Scotland today the Ulster Loyalist brand of Britishness is generally perceived as outdated. Scotland seems to be largely ‘post-British’: identification with the state on a pragmatic level is now much more characteristic of Scottish attitudes than an emotional ‘loyalism’ or patriotism. Britishness, if subscribed to, tends to sit lightly on top of, or alongside, other identities, and Scottishness is of course the most dominant of these.3*

The different meanings of Britishness in contemporary Scotland and Northern Ireland may constitute a significant factor in creating a distance between the two places in relation to the topic of constitutional change, notwithstanding the way constitutional questions affect both regions and the historic and cultural bonds which span

” See J. Mitchell, Strategiesfor SelfGarenzment, Edinburgh, Polygon, 1996, pp. 286-7. 3* The work by the sociologists David McCrone and Lindsay Paterson is particularly

important in this respect. See, for example, their contributions to section entitled ‘Autonomy and National Identity in Stateless Nations: Scotland, Catalonia and Quebec’, in Scottish Aflain, 17 (Autumn 1996); and A. Brown, D. McCrone and L. Paterson, Politics and Society in Scotland, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996, especially chs 2, 3, 9 and 10.


the North Channel. In Scotland there is a political will for constitutional change for its own sake. In Northern Ireland, among Unionists, there is a political will only for change which will secure their position and thwart Nationalist aspirations. Unionist insecurity seems set to fuel an emotional and ‘ethnic’ Britishness at least until the point at which the British government says ‘no’ to their demands. If this point is reached, it is possible that most Loyalists will pursue the goal of an independent Ulster and draw on the ‘Ulster-Scot’ industry to reshape their identity.

Differences between Scotland and Northern Ireland surrounding ideas of Britishness reflect the decline of a Protestant Unionist version of Scottish identity, dominant until the 1960s, and its eclipse by a more secular, left-of-centre, pro-Europe and (arguably) anti- English version. In Northern Ireland, of course, Protestantism and Unionism are still synonymous in practice, although there have emerged new strands in Unionist thinking which seek to transcend this image, and appreciate that being less traditionally Unionist in political behaviour may be the only way to preserve the Union.JJ

NORTHERN IRELAND AND CONTEMPORARY SCOTTISH POLITICS

The different political contexts of Scotland and Northern Ireland undoubtedly are a factor which inhibits dialogue between the two places. In addition, Scots remain wary of Ulster influences - the fear of civil strife and political instability in the Province ‘contamina- ting’ Scotland remains a real one, largely due to the endurance of religious tensions in certain parts of Scotland. The Scottish political parties’ approach to the issue is still guarded. The Conservatives have not resorted to sectarianism or Orange populism to revive their flagging fortunes, and Labour has long been aware of the political benefits of ‘de-politicizing’ sectarian passions and channelling them into other areas. It is, arguably, the SNP which is now in the most difficult position and subject to conflicting pressures.

” See contributions in J. Foster (ed.), The Idea ofthe Union, Vancouver and Belfast, Belcouver Press, 1995; and N. Porter, Rethinking Unionism, Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 1996. It should be noted, however, that there are important areas of disagreement between Porter and academic contributors to the Foster collection such as Arthur Aughey.


The SNP has become much less ‘Protestant’; younger Catholics in particular seem now to be attracted to it.% The party is much more prepared to draw comparisons with the Irish Republic and to point to the recent success story of the Republic within the European Union.s5 Anti-Union, of course, implies anti-Loyalist and anti-Orange Order. Among younger SNP members republican sentiment is strong. Yet, the obstacles to acquiring the level of Catholic support necessary to damage Labour in its heartlands remain: the Labour Party still holds a central position in the Catholic community identity. The SNP has a past to live down in respect of its former Protestant and - in the 1930s and 1940s - anti-Catholic image. The Monklands episode indicated that where many Protestants felt that Labour was a ‘Catholic’ party and acting in Catholic interests, they would vote for the SNP, and not the Tories, to counter it. The SNP, in addition, has to beware of alienating people whose Scottishness has been shaped by a pride in Scottish institutions (including the Established Church) and an interpretation of Scottish history redolent with the achievements of Scots from within the context of the Union and Empire.

The present SNP leader, Alex Salmond, addressed in the wake of Monklands the question of sectarian tensions in Scotland, and took the opportunity of the John Hewitt summer school to discourse on ‘Northern Ireland and the Scottish Question’.s6 In this lecture Salmond displayed an awareness of how sectarianism linked Scotland and Northern Ireland, while pointing to the need in both places to revive and renew democratic processes, and hinting at the similarities between them regarding the question of accommodating different identities.

Advice to Salmond and the SNP has in turn come from Sinn Fein. The essence of it in the words of Pat Doherty (a leading Sinn Fein member who was born and raised in Glasgow) is to keep fixed on the goal of ‘self-determination’. The message is one of anti-English imperialist solidarity, with Scotland as well as Ireland depicted as

J. Brand, J. Mitchell and P. Surridge, ‘Social Constituency and Ideological Profile: Scottish Nationalism in the 199Os’, Political Studies, 42:4 (December 1994). pp. 616- 29.

m See e.g. comments of Alex Salmond in the Herald (Glasgow), 24 August 1996. s(i A. Salmond, ‘Northern Ireland and the Scottish Question’, Scottish Affain, 13

(Autumn 1995), pp. 68-81.


suffering from colonial rule?’ As well as requiring a very partial and distorted reading of Scottish history, this analysis, if it gains any significant sway within Scottish nationalism, would raise doubts about the extent to which the SNP can transcend traditional concepts of nationalism and check the danger of being portrayed as out of date and against the ‘post-nationalist’ spirit of the times.J8

The damaging effects in Northern Ireland of the language of self-determination have been cogently exposed by commentators such as Wilson and Kearney, enthusiasts of a ‘Europe of the Regions’, who argue that it fuses things that should be separated, that is people, nation and state.J9 Such arguments find a ready echo among Scottish scholars and commentators, such as McCrone and Paterson, who see the stateless nation of Scotland as ideally placed to come to terms with a regionalized Europe in which concepts of the sovereignty of traditional nation-states will have become meaning- less.40 These commentators believe that Scotland might come to epitomize this ‘civic’ form of nationalism which repudiates the insistence on a sovereign nation-state as the only proper framework for democracy or ‘self-determination’. Correspondingly, another Scottish expert on nationalism, Neal Ascherson, has suggested that Northern Ireland could plausibly become an example of the separation of cultural identities from traditional political allegiance^.^' It is, indeed, striking how many of the most powerfully argued cases for the rethinking of identities within a framework of new ideas on regionalism and nationalism have been proposed by people from Scotland and Northern Ireland, or have been concerned specifically with these places.4*

See comments of Doherty as reported in the Herald, 13 November 1995. yI See V. Bogdanor, ‘SNP Going against Spirit of the Times’, Scotsman, 25 September

1996. IS R. Wilson, ‘Northern Ireland Peoples, Nations, States and Sovereignty’, Scottish

Affairs, 8 (Summer 1994), pp. 44-54; R. Kearney and R. Wilson, ‘Northern Ireland’s Future as a European Region’, in R. Kearney, Post-nationalist Ireland, London, Routledge, 1997.

See the work of McCrone and Paterson listed in n. 32. N. Ascherson, ‘National Identity’, in C. Radice (ed.), What Needs to Change: New

Visionsfor Britain, London, HarperCollins, 1996. In addition to the works cited above by McCrone, Paterson, Wilson, Kearney

and Ascherson, see C. Delanty, ‘Northern Ireland in a Europe of the Regions’, Political Quarterly, 67: 2 (April-June 1996), pp. 127-34.


CONCLUSION: THE POSSIBILITIES OF DIALOGUE

Such examples of the intersection, at least at the level of scholarly debate, between the Scottish and Northern Irish questions suggest greater possibilities of more sustained and meaningful political dialogue. To return to the views of Edna Longley referred to at the beginning of this article, much might be gained from a fuller appreciation of the interplay of cultures in these two islands, with the Northern Ireland-Scotland relationship a key case in point.

For Northern Ireland to break out of the Unionist-Nationalist ‘endgame’ in which identities are defined in deadly opposition to each other, the problem has to be tackled in as wide a context as possible with due acknowledgement of all its dimensions: British, Irish and European. Regionalist thinking is very pertinent to both Northern Ireland and Scotland. The vision of writers such as Kearney of a regionalized British Isles ensconced in a federated Europe may still be a long way from reality, and it has been discounted as a possible ‘solution’ by influential academic experts on the Northern Ireland situati0n.4~ However, such thinking has made a profound impact over the past few years and may yet shape events; ‘archipelago is an awkward word, but an important idea’, as Longley comments.45 If concerns with cultural identity continue to underscore the relevance of ‘identity politics’, then arguably only a Council of the Islands structure, in the British and Irish context, will permit such cultural pluralism to flourish without severe political tensions and violence.

Within such an arrangement Scotland and Northern Ireland (and indeed the rest of Ireland) may feel freer to develop their well- documented affinities and historic bonds, and get beyond the rather artificial boundaries set by the current state of the Union and, indeed, the partition of Ireland. No such ‘freeing up’ of political cultures will occur if identities remain fixed on the traditional Irish and British nation-states, or, for that matter, if nationalist pressures in Scotland are channelled towards the attainment of a Scottish

See Kearney, Pact-nationalist Ireland. * For example, J. McGarry and B. OLeary, Explaining Northern Ireland, Oxford,

Blackwell, 1995; and J. Ruane and J. Todd, The Qnamics ojconflict in Northern Ireland, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.

a E. Longley, ‘The Irish Republic: Part of the Problem/Part of the Solution’, Times Changc, 8 (Summer/Autumn 1996), pp. 9-15.


variant. While acknowledging the still vital state of traditional allegiances, it is plausible to suggest that the multi-layered sense of identity held in particular by many Scots, Northern Ireland Protestants and some Northern Ireland Catholics leaves these groups well placed to respond to Kearney’s concentric circles model of multiple identities,46 if political structures could be found to realize it.

As Scotland prepares for devolution with limited taxation powers, it ought to reflect on the Northern Ireland experience, and on the way a potentially fluid constitutional process might open up with implications for the rest of the UK including Northern Ireland. Scots could usefully study the Northern Ireland situation in relation to matters such as the accommodation of ethnic identities and as a way of facing up to the seriousness of sectarian divisions in their own midst. Scots too have an education system segregated in effect on the basis of religion, and Scots too witness controversies over Loyalist and Republican marches. Scottish nationalists, who base much of their case on the premise that the Union has entailed cultural subordination or even absorption by a larger neighbour, might be induced to appreciate that central to the Ulster Unionist case is the parallel fear that a united Ireland in the present circumstances would bring about their cultural marginalization. Scottish involvement in the Northern Ireland debate may be regarded by Unionists as providing more balance in a peace process perceived to be biased against them. Although Unionists could face criticism from Scotland regarding their apparent inflexibility, they may be more disposed to listen to Scottish voices, especially if they were given a chance to address positively what they claim rhetorically to have affinity with and made to feel less isolated and ‘disowned’.

A dialogue between Scotland and Northern Ireland could thus be far-reaching. It would focus on the constitutional debate which bears down on both places but it would go beyond this into matters of identity and the coexistence of different identities, It could address ways of constructing pluralist identities for both Scotland and Northern Ireland in opposition to ethnically purist and sectarian forces in both places. By such forces is meant here the dogmatic

4e Kearney, Post-nationalist Ireland, p. 182; for a discussion of this concept in a Scottish context see T. C. Smout, ‘Perspectives on the Scottish Identity’, Scottish Affain, 6 (Winter 1994), pp. 101-13.


anti-Britishness of strands of Irish nationalism and republicanism; the Loyalist mirror-image of myopic anti-Irishness; the problem for Scottish nationalism in proving that it does not depend on a visceral anti-Englishness for its momentum; and the matter of religious antagonism in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. Both places would have much to gain from anything which reduced the stranglehold of the respective ‘national questions’ on their political cultures.

Finally, a Scottish Parliament might provide a focus and a means for Scottish opinion on Northern Ireland to be given better expression. It could provide Scots with a platform to exert more influence if they so chose, and to add another dimension to the Anglo-Irish framework.

scotland and northern ireland: constitutional questions, connections and possibilities

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