{"id":144,"date":"2024-08-23T08:31:54","date_gmt":"2024-08-23T08:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/?page_id=144"},"modified":"2024-09-27T13:49:05","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T13:49:05","slug":"beyond-westminster-politics-in-scotland-and-wales","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/subject-essays\/beyond-westminster-politics-in-scotland-and-wales\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Westminster: politics in Scotland and Wales"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Naomi<\/strong> <\/a>Lloyd-Jones<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a><\/a>Department of History, Durham University, Durham, UK<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This essay is an introduction to politics in nineteenth-century Scotland and Wales. It surveys major electoral trends and political questions, exploring the reasons for the Liberal party\u2019s dominance. It also considers the political issues that both made Scotland and Wales distinct and situated them in pan-British political contexts. It argues against an Anglocentric reading of British politics and asserts the importance of a comparative model that recentres Scotland and Wales within a more dynamic picture of overlapping polities, rather than relegating them to a \u2018Celtic fringe\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Politics in nineteenth-century Britain was polycentric \u2013 its history should be likewise. Yet it is often implicitly Anglocentric: many of the major narratives in modern British history are English ones that have no parallel in the Scottish or Welsh literature, scholarships historians of England engage with only infrequently. Historians have profitably compared Scotland and Ireland, but Scotland and Wales far less so, and too few histories take a holistic view of the four United Kingdom or three British nations. Greater dialogue between often disparate historiographical traditions is therefore needed. For instance, if the nineteenth century has been seen as the Liberal century, it is remarkable that so few histories of Liberalism have taken a pluralist approach to an ideology and party that was fundamentally pan-British. A core-periphery model is reductive, falsely homogenising the non-English nations: Scotland and Wales were not Liberalism\u2019s \u2018Celtic fringe\u2019. Each was an integral component of a party that was simultaneously local, national, and \u2018British\u2019, and which made claims to represent opinion at each of these layers \u2013 claims that could be mutually compatible or antagonistic. Paying attention to the political cultures, identities, and historical contexts of each nation \u2013 and to their sites of interaction and divergence \u2013 and acknowledging the multidimensionality of the United Kingdom enhances the study of modern British politics. Two of these nations, Scotland and Wales, are discussed here. Scotland and Wales have distinct national political histories, but these did not operate in a vacuum, and both contributed to the making of British politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>This essay provides an overview of governing structures and electoral trends in Scotland and Wales. The United Kingdom has been described as a \u2018pluri-national state\u2019 and a \u2018state of unions\u2019 (Mitchell 2014). The asymmetrical \u2018territorial dimensions\u2019 and relationships of this United Kingdom state \u2013 and of its electoral systems \u2013 should be seen as \u2018an essential, rather than incidental, feature of its composition and history\u2019 (<\/a>O\u2019Leary 2018, p. 75). The essay also examines three major political issues: land, religion, and nation, which in both Scotland and Wales were intimately linked. Liberals, politically dominant in this period, were instrumental in establishing and politicising these connections, helping to shape Scottish, Welsh, and also British political cultures. Mobilising these issues generated political capital but also raised the expectations of those they claimed to represent. Conservatives fared better with \u2018nation\u2019, and to an extent land and religion, in Scotland than Wales, where the party was depicted as on the wrong side in such debates. In the late eighteenth century, English dominance was the prevailing mood in relations between the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. By the late nineteenth century, the distinctly \u2018national\u2019 demands of Scotland and Wales had become major issues of political debate. However, the United Kingdom, and its dominant political parties, remained fundamentally asymmetrical. At the outbreak of World War One, Ireland\u2019s future within the United Kingdom preoccupied politicians, and it was not until after the Second World War that Scottish and Welsh questions again assumed a more central role within \u2018British\u2019 politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Wales had been united with England since the reign of Henry VIII, meaning its governing structures were more intertwined and incorporated with those of England than Scotland\u2019s were at the start of our period. Political, strategic, and economic considerations led to formal Acts of Union with Scotland in 1707 and Ireland in 1801, creating first Great Britain and then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The four nations together comprised a larger polity, represented in a single Parliament, based at Westminster, between 1801 and 1921, when Ireland was partitioned to create Northern Ireland. However, the Unionisation of the state concealed considerable differences in terms of status, law, parliamentary representation, social structure, and religion \u2013 and of political culture and allegiance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>The 1707 Anglo-Scottish Union abolished the Scottish Parliament but maintained Scotland\u2019s legal, religious, and education systems. Scotland continued to be \u2018treated as a unit for political purposes\u2019 (Mitchell 2014, p. 25). The Lord Advocate and Solicitor General effectively formed a Scottish executive, responsible to the Home Secretary. The post of Scottish Secretary was abolished in 1746, following a Jacobite rebellion. After a high-profile campaign, it was re-established in 1885 \u2013 and made a Cabinet position in 1892 \u2013 with a department in London and former Home Office responsibilities. Yet its impact on governance is debatable: the Lord Advocate and local autonomous supervisory boards retained key controls, which could cause administrative tensions and legislative complications. The Office was increasingly criticised as inadequate, even from within (<\/a>Devine 2000; <\/a>Fry 1991; Cameron 2010a).<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>By contrast, there were few institutional markers of Welsh nationhood. Wales\u2019s last remaining separate legal institution was abolished in 1830. It was not until the passage of Wales-only temperance legislation in 1881 that \u2018a distinct legislative principle\u2019 applied to Wales. Yet the idea that Wales should be treated separately from England, legislated for as a national unit, remained contentious. Advocated by Welsh Liberals, it was resisted by Conservatives (<\/a>Morgan 2002). Echoing calls from Scotland and arguing that Scotland was treated more favourably, some Welsh MPs from the late 1880s sought a Welsh standing committee. In 1907, separate committees were established for the consideration and debate of Scottish and Welsh legislation in the Commons \u2013 in Scotland\u2019s case, rebooting a set-up that briefly existed in the mid-1890s. There were also attempts to obtain a Welsh Secretary and department (not achieved until the 1960s) and a national council to oversee local government in Wales. Some administrative devolution was granted to Wales at a departmental level between 1907 and 1912, largely as a result of the Liberal government\u2019s welfare reforms (<\/a>J.G. Jones 1990; <\/a>Griffith 2006). Nonetheless, by 1914 neither Wales nor Scotland were, in any real sense, \u2018self-governing\u2019 nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>As a result of the 1707 Union and Scotland\u2019s distinctive legal and landholding systems, Scotland had a different electoral system from England and Wales for much of the long nineteenth century. Although England and Wales shared the same franchise, the Welsh system of parliamentary representation had many unique features. When it came to parliamentary reform, England and Wales were legislated for together in 1832 and 1867. Scotland and Ireland were each handled separately. They each had different levels and criteria of enfranchisement from England and Wales until 1884, when franchise measures were applied uniformly across the four nations for the first time. Scotland\u2019s 1832 and 1868 Reform Acts were shoddily drafted, using English legal terms and taking little account of Scots law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Table 1 The Scottish and Welsh electorates<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nIntroduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Governing Scotland and Wales<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Governing structures<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Parliamentary reform<\/h3>\n\n\n\n