On 12 June 2025, a witness seminar convened at the IHR in Senate House to discuss and debate the historical development of Conservatism and Unionism in the UK. The panel members included former Secretary of State for Scotland and, later Foreign Secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Ulster, Arthur Aughey, and David Melding CBE, who, among other roles, previously served as Deputy Presiding Officer of the Senedd. The transcript below was prepared by Robbie Johnston.
In what was a wide-ranging discussion, the panel first reflected upon the deeper historical context of unionism in the postwar period, including the onset of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the well-known electoral problems of the Scottish and Welsh Conservatives, and the often-contentious party debates over devolution in the 1970s. The participants, too, had a great deal to say about the impact of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, and the Northern Irish peace process of the 1990s.
The panel then moved to consider more contemporary questions: how has the case for the Union changed since the 1990s? Or has it? How has this differed in different parts of the UK? How did (and does) Unionism relate to Conservatism today? How has the relationship between Conservatism and Unionism been shaped by economic debates, and the rise of nationalism? How has the relationship been affected by more recent developments, such as the arrival of devolution and the impact of Brexit?
This witness seminar formed part of a History & Policy partnership with the AHRC-funded research project on ‘Conservatism and Unionism in the UK, 1968-1997’, with Paul Corthorn (Queen’s University Belfast) as PI, Malcolm Petrie (University of St Andrews) as CI and Robbie Johnston (Queen’s University Belfast) as Research Fellow. The project aims to chart the historical evolution of the relationship between Conservatism and Unionism across the UK in the last three decades of the twentieth century.
Philip Murphy
So, this is an opportunity today to talk about Conservatism and Unionism, particularly, really, from the 1970s, just go into some detail about developments since then and hopefully to go up to pretty much the present moment. And we have 3 distinguished panellists who I’m going to keep the introductions fully brief, partly because they need no introduction and partly because we’re going to, in the course of this discussion, tease out parts of their careers and the light it shows on the relationship between Conservatism and Unionism. But very briefly, we are delighted to have Sir Malcolm Rifkind who was Conservative MP for Edinburgh Pentlands from 1974 to 1997 and for Kensington from 2010 to 2015. Malcolm served in various roles in the cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, including the Secretary of State for Scotland from 1986 to 1990, Defence Secretary from 1992 to 1995 and Foreign Secretary from 1995 to 1997. And during his second period in Parliament he served, very ably, as chairman of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee and I think really helped to make that into a serious committee through pushing at the boundaries of what that committee could do.
We’re delighted also to have David Melding CBE, who began his career in the Conservative Research Department from 1986 until 1989, before serving as Deputy Director of the Welsh Centre for International Affairs until 1996. He was a member of the Senedd for South Wales Central between 1999 and 2021 and served as Deputy Presiding Officer between 2011 and 2016 – the only Conservative member to hold that role. And finally, we have Arthur Aughey, Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Ulster and one of the leading scholars on the history of Conservatism and Unionism. After studying politics at Queens University Belfast as an undergraduate, he did graduate work at the University of Hull, where he worked alongside a young Philip Norton, with whom he later collaborated before returning to Northern Ireland and the University of Ulster as an academic. Arthur’s books include The Politics of Northern Ireland: Beyond the Belfast Agreement, These Englands: A Conversation on National Identity, and The Conservative Party and the Nation: Union, England and Europe in 2018. So we will start with a couple of broad questions before we dive into the 1970s and work from there on. So I suppose a first question for each of our panellists, maybe beginning with Malcolm, in terms of your political formation as young politicians, academics, what did Unionism mean to you and how did it, kind of, shape your early career?
Malcolm Rifkind
Thank you, first of all, for inviting me to take part and for your very friendly resuming of my biographical details. Lyndon Johnson was once heard to remark after a similar introduction – the sort of introduction which my father would have enjoyed, and my mother would have believed. I go along with that. Let me try and respond immediately to the points that you’ve raised. Now the term Unionism – it’s pretty difficult to sort of put it into a particular cupboard because it means different things to different people at different times of the year and in different parts of the United Kingdom. There is a common thread, and the common thread is we talk about a United Kingdom which originally included the whole of Ireland, that we all know changed dramatically at the beginning of the 20th century.
But we’ve also had the emergence of new challenges to the Union through Scottish and Welsh nationalism, something that was not seriously contemplated until after the Second World War. People in Scotland, I remember when I was a child, did not bridle if the term England was used to refer to the United Kingdom. That changed dramatically during these more recent years. So essentially, if you ask me what has dominated my own public life in terms of Unionism and what it represents?
I have to confess that as a Scottish Member of Parliament and Secretary of State for Scotland at one period, it was the challenge from the Scottish Nationalist Party that was one of overriding importance. For all the obvious reasons I don’t, I don’t need to go into it. Of course, that remains an issue. There is still a challenge to the Union, not just in relation to Northern Ireland but Scotland and, to a lesser degree, Wales as well. So the challenge I found in the various jobs I had that were relevant to this issue was to what extent could one make the concept of the Union, and I was thinking primarily of Scotland, but it applied to the other nations of the Kingdom as well: how could we bring it up to date? Because the origins of Union, of the Unionists, our concept can’t be separated from the British Empire and one of the reasons why the whole question of home rule in the 19th century so divided Parliament and so divided England as well as the rest of the Kingdom was the view that Home Rule would simply be a step towards full separation as effectively happened after the First World War, and just think of the consequence: the Second World War arrives and Britain no longer has access to the naval bases in the south of Ireland that had been very important to its overall maritime defence in the First World War. So the concerns that people had expressed were not just emotional or historic or questions of identity, there were questions of national security as well, and we know de Valera insisted on total neutrality even to the extent of offering his condolences when Hitler had died at the end of the war, he offered his condolences to the German ambassador, you know, so these were real issues. And let me just conclude these remarks by saying that I think what has happened, certainly in relation to the British, Welsh, English and Scottish relationship, but also Northern Ireland. But I think what has happened is that through these devolved parliaments, there is a new dispensation which has taken the whole issue from being a choice of extremes to a spectrum of possibilities. Do we go to a federal system? Is independence in Scotland a real possibility? Has it been made easier or more difficult by Brexit and a range of issues of that kind. So, it’s a spectrum now of which old-style Unionism is at one end and old-style nationalism at the other.
Philip Murphy
Thank you very much. And I mean David for you as a young man, how far was, I suppose, the idea of the defence of the Union, protecting the Union, part of your conservatism?
David Melding Well, I was born in 1962 so the 70s is not really a period when I was participating, though, I do remember the 1979 referendum on devolution very, very clearly. I was not quite old enough to vote. But at school it was discussed and it produced a pretty emphatic rejection. Not so in Scotland, but in Wales it did seem not only was the issue of devolution closed it was probably closed for generations people thought. Plaid Cymru had a sort of psychological meltdown and had great problems from which they recovered very ably, it has to be said by the mid-80s. But if you read their memoirs, you know the senior members’, it clearly had a terrible impact on what they thought about the nation. And then in my first job after attending the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where I did an MA and became very interested in Unionism in, you know, in their concept. In fact, Unionism is first used in the United States and the build-up to the Civil War was something that I was very interested in. But I became something of a federalist, I think it’s fair to say – I didn’t quite understand the full implications then in the British context, but I really did, you know, I found it very interesting.. And then in the Conservative Research Department, out of the blue, I was asked to write a pamphlet with the title “The Political Nation”. Sorry, “The Political Parties and the Welsh Nation” and this required me to read an awful lot of history, especially from a Nationalist point of view, and you know, it dawned on me that there was a pretty good case for a lot of what was in these interpretations and, you know, the importance of national communities and seeing Britain as a union of nations. What, you know, what are the implications of that and how do you get national flourishing within a wider state? And is that always possible? And is it ever appropriate to move into a different type of constitutional arrangement? So those things really, really interested me. And I mean I became a sort of unionist nationalist, I think it’s fair to say, and it remains my position that I think the nations have to flourish in the Union or it’s not going to endure and, so less about preserving the Union, more about how do you regenerate it for each nation. And I’ll just finish with this cause I can go on at length about the 97 referendum, which if people want to discuss, that’s fine. I, you know, I really do think that Unionism, if it’s going to survive, has to have some of the vitality that nationalism has demonstrated since 1979 and very much since, you know, ‘92, I guess. And then obviously the emergence of Wales as a political nation and Scotland as a political nation again, in terms of having its domestic institutions.
Philip Murphy
Thank you very much.
And Arthur, I mean thinking back to when you were an undergraduate at Queen’s University and sort of getting a sense of your own political views. What was your kind of sense of Unionism and its future in those days in the early ‘70s?
Arthur Aughey
I suppose you can speak of it before because I’m old enough to remember when Northern Ireland had its own Unionist Parliament pre-‘72. So Unionism and the link with the rest of the United Kingdom was what today people talk of as a lived experience because we had relatives in London that we visited regularly and so that that connection was quite strong, but my family was certainly not politically Unionist and not members of the Unionist Party. In fact, my father was in the Northern Ireland Labour Party and my first political memory, my first political act, I remember was my tongue drying up as I licked election leaflets for the Northern Ireland Labour Party candidate in North Belfast. So, I suppose my Unionism was an unthinking Unionism. And I also remember the, I suppose, the disjuncture of that, as being a first-year undergraduate in 1972, the year in which violence was at its height, the prospect of civil war wasn’t simply a fearful concern, but seemed a very real possibility. And I remember very clearly to this day sitting at the lecture theatre on British Politics 101 and this was early on and I think a Thursday afternoon and the lecturer was saying, ‘well, one of the fundamental principles of British Constitution is the Crown in Parliament and’ – boom – then we got up – ‘and the civility and the conduct of party poli-’ another boom in the distance. Well, I thought, that really isn’t us. We are very different but as I sort of matured and tried to understand the nature of the problem in Northern Ireland, and by that point Unionist domination in the Parliament had gone. The first attempt to create a cross-party, cross-community settlement and the Sunningdale Agreement, it was gone too and my response to that was to get out of Northern Ireland, actually, and go to England and to Hull to study the Conservative Party from which many of my ideas of Unionism, of One Nation, of the link between the various countries that the Union had it had its deep, deep roots. And, of course, the 1970s was also a period of profound constitutional concern because the old certainties seemed to have evaporated, they had vanished in into the air. And it’s at that point that I thought it was more important to focus my attention more clearly on what the substance of these issues were, not to take it unthinkingly, and not to assume that there was little to talk about, but to devote my intelligence to try and understand the nature of the problem and what potential solutions there were to it.
Philip Murphy
Thank you very much indeed. So, the supplementary for Malcolm again before we dive into the minutiae of the timeline.
1955 – The then Unionist Party has a tremendous success in the general election. It wins over half the popular vote in Scotland. It wins 36 of the 71 seats in Westminster. 1997, you have no MPs returned. I mean, are there kind of broad explanations for that extraordinary-
Malcolm Rifkind
It doesn’t have to be a broad explanation. It’s a very specific explanation which I’m very happy to share with you and with colleagues. People often think it was extraordinary that in 1955, the Conservatives did what the Labour Party never achieved in Scotland: they got over 50 per cent of the Scottish vote and, as you say, 36 seats. But there is an explanation as to that remarkable miracle. And when you hear the explanation, it’s not quite as impressive as it sounds otherwise. First of all, there were no Scottish nationalist candidates standing anywhere in Scotland.
Secondly, the Liberals, for reasons of their own problems internally, only put up candidates, I can’t remember precise numbers, but of something like 9 or 10 constituencies out of the 71. So in three-quarters of the constituencies, you were either Labour or Conservative or Unionist. And that was the only choice you had because there were not a plethora of other candidates. The Labour Party in 1955, for various reasons throughout Britain, was not popular. Conservatives won the general election in the UK without much difficulty, and so, such are the unpredictabilities of the first-past-the-post system. We had this annus mirabilis, never before and never again, and it was a freak result, if the truth be told. Having said that, even if there had been Nationalists and Liberals, we would have done a damn sight better than we did years later. So what had then happened? Really, two things. First of all, in the eyes of, I mean the English part of the party essentially thought of themselves as Conservatives. Scots in the party tended to concentrate on the Unionist terminology. They were Conservative and Unionist, but Unionism was what they represented. And it’s worth remembering that in those days the conservatives in Scotland won parliamentary seats in Glasgow and in parts of the West of Scotland, which would be inconceivable in more recent times, and why did that happen? I’m afraid that it was nothing to do with conservatism. It was to do with Unionism. And it was because the West of Scotland had a very substantial proportional, and still does, population of Irish background and, therefore, Irish Catholic background, and the Unionist Party or Conservative Party, it didn’t see itself, but it was presented as the champions of the Protestant tradition in Scotland. And so, a lot of working-class people, Glaswegians and elsewhere in Strathclyde and in the West of Scotland, they didn’t vote Conservative, they voted Unionist because they identified with the Union in the way that the Irish people of Irish Catholic background obviously identified with nationalism. And that was true in Liverpool as well. This was not a purely Scottish phenomenon. Liverpool had a very similar experience, and perhaps Bristol – I’m not so sure about that. So, then what happens is gradually that becomes unrealistic because the passion of the Catholic-Protestant tradition of conflict, it didn’t disappear far, fa- that we had the troubles obviously in Northern Ireland. But in the Scottish context, it became more of a competition in football in the pub and a general rivalry of traditions without the necessary political flavour. Maybe we conclude by saying I am the only person I think who can claim ever to have united Rangers and Celtic fans. I managed to get 50,000 of them booing me simultaneously.
How did this come about? Because when I was in my very first job in government, as a very junior minister in the Scottish office when Mrs Thatcher had just become prime minister, and we inherited a bill from the Labour government, but which we had to complete, which, at the request of the Scottish Football Association would ban alcohol at all Scottish football. The problem had become so serious there were no seating in football grounds in those days, there were terraces. Women and children had stopped coming. Bottles were being thrown. It was very violent. And the SFA, the Scottish Football Association, had said to the previous Labour government ‘we will support legislation’ and so we completed that. It got all-party support. I was invited to the first Ranges-Celtic match where the ban had just come into effect.
And the police under the bill – forgive me, this takes a little bit longer, but it’s worth recording – police had been given power to search anyone who they had reason to believe might be carrying alcohol. Well, they had reason to believe everyone would, so they searched every single one of them entering the ground and in the ground, you had something like 40-50 thousand people, segregated, Rangers on one side, Celtic on the other, and I arrive. I’m the minister but nobody notices me arriving and I’m sitting in the director’s box before the match has begun and the uniformed police officer in charge of all the controls comes up and says ‘Minister, I’m just about to walk around the ground to see how the ban is working, how the fans are behaving. Would you like to accompany me?’ Like a complete clot I said, ‘yeah, great idea.’ Not realising that in those days because the job I was doing, I appeared on Scottish television several times a week and on photographs and papers, and so far. Anyway, the booing began on the Celtic side and it then became like a Mexican wave as we walked around to the ground, as the booing followed us. At one stage I thought do I turn over to get the hell back to the director’s box and no, no, lie back and think of Scotland or something like that. But anyway, that was my claim to fame.
Philip Murphy
Thank you. David, I mean more variations in the performance of Welsh Conservatives, but again, 1997 is a bit of a low point. I mean, again, do you have a kind of broader explanation for that as–?
David Melding
Yeah, well, there’s a fairly direct one here as well, I think. I mean, the party has always done reasonably well in in Wales, but very much the second party because of Labour’s dominance and, you know, two-thirds of the population essentially in what were then heavily industrialised areas and there was always, you know, amongst the candidates who won and more in the west and the north, you know, that they were Welsh and of Welsh heritage. But in a lot of the industrial areas, you know it was [inaudible], you know, [inaudible] or Cynon Valley or places you can’t pronounce until you ask the local agent and this did give the party a very English image amongst a lot of people and culturally that had, I think, quite a big effect. But then I have to say in 1987, Mrs. Thatcher appointed Peter Walker as Secretary of State despite having, I can’t remember, if it was 6 or 8, I think it was 8 Conservative MPs, including a very able Minister of State, or of Welsh or, you know, had become Welsh in terms of living in Wales and working in Wales. And Peter Walker was very able and, you know, indeed became, if not popular, there was a lack of resentment to him, but because he was the Secretary of State for Energy, when we had the miners’ strike, which was not lost on a lot of the population. And whilst that didn’t have much effect on the conservative vote in the industrial areas, I think in the shoulder around, you know, the commercial towns that serve the coalfield, for instance, or right along the South Wales coast, I think, you know, appointing an Englishman as Secretary of State for Wales, you know, was not a very clever move. And then it was repeated, I mean, between 1987 and 96 in that all the secretaries of state were English, with the possible exception of David Hunt, who I think was born in Wales, but I think his father was serving in the forces at the time. So, that had a powerful effect, I think and it took the party quite a long time to recover from. So that would be the main point I would emphasise there. Then between 1997 and 2011 the party, especially, you know, after the Senedd came along, first called the National Assembly for Wales, the party really did try to generate itself as an indigenous Welsh Conservative party that fitted into the UK family of Conservatives. And I think with some success did that, and I could talk more about that if it is of any interest.. But since 2011 we’ve kind of, you know, cleaved more to the British element again and our support has been in decline for a while now. So, I think it’s a fairly open question as to what sort of conservatism will be presented in Wales.
Philip Murphy
Thank you very much. I want to jump back now to the 1970s. So, we have 1965-75. We have Ted Heath as Conservative party leader who, I suppose, flirts with forms of devolution. I suppose the predominant view is that Mrs Thatcher’s arrival on the scene in 1975 changes things somewhat. She describes herself as a convinced Unionist. And again, there’s a sort of suggestion that if, if she’s reacting against Heath’s policy to some extent, she’s also influenced by Enoch Powell’s very integrationist brand of Unionism. And that that creates new sort of tensions in the Conservative Party’s approach to Wales, and Scotland, and Northern Ireland in the period of opposition of Thatcher’s leadership between ‘75 and ‘79. Arthur, what are your views on that kind of broad picture and on Thatcher’s impact?
Arthur Aughey
Well, yes, don’t forget she was very clearly influenced by Airey Neave as well, very close to her, who was in that tradition of arguing that the complicated forms of devolution suggested for Northern Ireland, in fact, were not only concessions to nationalism, but in practice unworkable. And that, I think did encourage that integrationist discourse not only within Conservative politics but also within Ulster Unionism as well with James Molyneaux who was convinced of that. But I think in terms of the practice of it, I always recall what Iain Macleod said about that Powellite influence that you had: ‘I’m on Powell’s side, I’m quite impressed by Powell’s intellect, but I want to get off the train at the station before he hits the buffers at the end of the line.’ And, I think, in terms of the realities that were faced by Conservative politicians and Labour – any politician in Westminster, in dealing with Northern Ireland – it was impossible simply to take up an integrationist line and they were constantly, as we saw throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, drawn back into the form of talks about talks. But to get back to the early 1970s, and my own education at university, Ted Heath had suggested some form of – intimated some form of – devolution in Scotland, which was really about amending the procedures – I think if I remember correctly, it was the Perth declaration – about the procedures of Westminster to deal more openly with Scottish matters. And I recall whenever devolution was discussed in the round about the United Kingdom and its effect on the Union, my own tutors at the time saying, the history of devolution in Northern Ireland was very different because the purpose of devolution in Northern Ireland was ultimately to hold Northern Ireland to the Union, because that was the Unionist purpose, that was the Unionist project, that was the Unionist instinct. But as an old colleague and friend of mine from University of Swansea, George Boyce, said about devolution in Northern Ireland, it worked because it didn’t work. It didn’t encourage separatism, you know, it didn’t encourage Unionists to think along different lines. In fact, the whole purpose of devolution was, as far as possible, to keep Northern Ireland step by step with what was happening in the rest of the UK. Not an entirely persuasive Unionist position, but it was the authoritative one, and therefore the great concern, of course, was the one that Sir Malcolm has intimated already that if you could say devolution, it is in the form of constructive conservatism. Essentially what you’re doing is handing ammunition to your opponents who are either likely to be Labour, or they’re likely to be nationalists, and I suppose translates Scottish nationalism, which had hitherto been a form of defensive Unionism, into a different form of nationalism, which would become a form of separatism, which, interestingly, is exactly how Linda Colley described the transformation in Scotland between the ‘80s and the ‘90s and into the noughties with the dominance of the Scottish Nationalists. And it was also the very persuasive thesis of Colin Kidd in his book on the union to say that Scottish nationalism, really, until this century was actually a form of defensive Unionism and a way of keeping control of perhaps English politics and its influence in Scotland. So the trajectory of Northern Ireland between 1922 and 1972, therefore, was not necessarily the measure of what might happen in Wales and Scotland if you pursued the line of devolution. That seemed to be a reasonably persuasive argument for not going down that route, but I think again, it didn’t really deal with the realities of the situation either in Scotland or Wales as it emerged in the ‘70s and ‘80s and in Northern Ireland.
Malcolm Rifkind
Could I just say something about Thatcher’s view when she became leader of the party on the issues that you raised because that’s not been mentioned yet by myself. When we were in opposition and Ted Heath was the leader of the party, he asked Alec Douglas-Home to have a commission on constitutional change in Scotland and one of the conclusions, the main conclusion, of the Home report was that some form of what was then called a Scottish assembly would be appropriate because Scotland had a separate legal system. It all often required separate legislation, and this would be a more sensible way of handling things. He didn’t go into detail. So Heath then makes his declaration of Perth which was a commitment to the idea of a Scottish Assembly. He becomes Prime Minister and nothing happens during that Conservative government. It’s not dismissed, it’s not rejected, but there’s new commissions looking at things and so forth. So Margaret Thatcher then challenges them successfully for the leadership. She does not attack the concept of devolution for Scotland. Quite the opposite. She indicates that she is relaxed about this and this is an idea that whose time may have come, but no commitments, no promises of a hard kind. And I remember, actually, when she became leader of the party at one stage I wrote to her because I had become a junior Scottish office shadow spokesman under Alick-Buchanan Smith on the opposition side, she was leader of the opposition, and I wrote to her saying, could you clarify what your view is on devolution. And she came back, and I still have the letter she sent me. She said, ‘Don’t worry, Malcolm. The Conservative Party remains committed to devolution. There will be devolution.’ That was in opposition.
Now what then happened was the Labour government of the time introduced legislation to set up what was originally called the Scottish assembly and became a Scottish Parliament. And the Conservative Party was in turmoil as to how it should vote because, in theory, it was committed to the principle of devolution and a Scottish assembly. Most English members and a significant minority of Scottish Conservative members didn’t want devolution at all. They were hardline Unionists, if I can use that term.
And essentially Margaret Thatcher came under very dramatic pressure, particularly from English MPs who overwhelmingly wanted us on second reading to vote against that bill. Her shadow spokesman in Scotland, Alick-Buchanan Smith, and I was his number two, and with the support of the majority of Scottish Conservative MPs, not all of them, but the majority said look, we are supposed to be committed to the principle of devolution.
Malcolm Rifkind
We should, if we can’t vote for this Labour bill then we should at least abstain and then if it’s not improved during its passage we could vote against it at third reading, if that’s what you wanted to do. That was the compromise of it. It wasn’t accepted by the shadow cabinet, overwhelmingly. And Alick-Buchanan Smith, I and one or two others resigned from the front bench because we said, look, we’ve been saying we’re committed to the principle. We’re not even prepared to abstain. We’re voting against this effort. So the party, effectively, became committed to what it really believed in. If the truth be told, it had never really been convinced at that moment in time that a Scottish assembly or parliament was the right way forward and there was a real fear that it would lead to further fragmentation, not just be objectionable in itself. So I think that has to be borne in mind. There’s not a united Conservative position, but Thatcher changed her position. She didn’t have any choice. The pressure was so strong from her own backbenchers that that’s what she had to do.
Arthur Aughey
They didn’t object to it in theory, but they objected to it in practise, which is a very conservative position.
Malcolm Rifkind
I don’t think they thought very much about it, to be honest.
Arthur Aughey
Except, of course, it was the Labour Party amendment, the Cunningham amendment to the Scotland Act of 1978, which required a weighted majority of the voting population in the referendum. Labour was fundamentally divided over their devolution plans as the Conservative Party.
Philip Murphy
Yeah. And then there’s the referenda in 1979 and an overwhelming rejection of devolution in Wales, but a majority, but not the necessary majority in Scotland in favour. So, I suppose there must have been a sense that, although, that particular battle had been lost or won, the issue hadn’t gone away.
Malcolm Rifkind
It hasn’t gone away, but it’s worth looking at the beyond the global figures in Scotland in that referendum. You are quite right, there was a majority that voted for the Scottish Assembly. It was a very narrow majority, but it was a majority which [if] there hadn’t been a requirement for a minimum that would have been sufficient.
When you looked at Scotland as a country, it was deeply, deeply divided. Effectively, you had a large majority in the Highlands and Islands against a large majority in the borders, Dumfries and Galloway, against. The central lowlands where the bulk of the population lived, you had a very small majority in favour. So, Scotland was deeply divided both regionally and in terms of population, and that meant it was not that dramatic when the incoming Thatcher government repealed the bill. There was no great outcry apart from, obviously, the committed political people, but from the public as a whole there was an acceptance that Scotland was not ready for such a fundamental change, even if it might be desirable. That changed in the years that followed, and that was the position at that stage.
Philip Murphy
Yeah. And then in Wales, as we said, you know, there’s an 88 per cent No vote in ‘79. And actually, the Conservatives do pretty well in the 1983 general election in Wales. So there’s a, there’s a sense in the sort of the early mid-80s that the Conservatives may be on the, sort of, an upward trajectory in Wales, do you think?
David Melding
Yeah, I think it was 80-20, wasn’t it, roughly? The rejection of devolution. So, well, obviously for the Conservative Party, this was presented as the first time they’d ever really won in Wales and I think that was quite an important moment and then it went on to have a, you know, quite successful election result in in 79, a very successful one in 83 and quite a successful one again in 1987. So Mrs. Thatcher achieved high levels of support given the, you know, traditional support the parties had in Wales.
David Melding
I think only Macmillan surpassed the total she achieved. But, you know, it wasn’t really the people voting for a Conservative concept of Union, it was rejecting what was on offer from the Labour Party. A lot of Welsh Nationalists thought it was a very tepid proposal, but they ended up being the only force that campaigned hard for it, but I mean, I think even in their, you know, constituencies that, you know, that had been won in ‘74, it was still rejected in ‘79 even in those places. And I think a lot of this is explained by industrial South Wales seeing devolution as, you know, a project of the elite, something that would favour the Welsh-speaking communities in particular. In the ‘60s we had, you know, our civil rights movement focused a lot on Welsh language rights and the first Welsh Language Act came along in 1967. But you know, these were big movements socially. I mean Wales is the only part of the United Kingdom that has retained at a popular level a non-English-speaking culture. But it’s not everywhere, you know, Welsh is spoken everywhere but in terms of, you know, the proportion of population it is concentrated, or was then in the west and the north. Cardiff has increased in the age of, you know, since the Senedd came in and S4C and broadcasting has increased the number of jobs available to Welsh speakers. But in ‘79 there is quite a divisive, you know, approach to some of the campaigning, never at official level, but you know, ‘Welsh North Wales will take over South Wales’. And, you know, it was a complete impossibility given the numbers that live in North Wales compared to South Wales. But that was part of what was happening. And I think one of the curious things about the 1980s is, you know, Mrs. Thatcher does very well and there’s a chap called Wyn Roberts, who Sir Malcolm might remember and Wyn Roberts served as our first Under-Secretary of State for Wales from 79 and then he became Minister of State. And I think he served until like 1993. He was never made Secretary of State for Wales, which remains a very curious fact. But he was a natural Welsh speaker, very committed to the language, and he pushed through a lot of reforms that basically healed the division, I think, in terms of the language, and Wales truly became a bilingual culture. It was recognised and not seen as a threat. And it was owned, even by monoglot English-speakers, as something to be proud of in your tradition and you know, it extended to education. The educational reforms of 1986 with the national curriculum. In Wales, every parent had a right to have their children educated bilingually. Now I’m sure when that came in, not many people thought that English-speaking parents would send their children to Welsh-speaking schools. But, of course, then if you didn’t have much choice in, you know, the West of Cardiff, which is a heavily working-class area with you know limited, a lot of social problems, if your local school wasn’t up to much in your opinion, you had the right to send your children to a Welsh-speaking school and they would have immersive, you know, education at the age of four or five to get up to a standard then to receive curriculum in Welsh. And parents started to do that and I think, you know, that was a big shift really in how the Welsh nation was viewed by a lot of English-speaking, or Anglo-Welsh, if I can use that term, people in South Wales. I’ll just finish with this. I mean, I could talk at length and all this, but I’m sure it will be more than you need to hear at this stage. The constituency that voted most for devolution in 1997 was Neath Port Talbot and I don’t know: if anyone knows South Wales very well, but Neath Port Talbot, you know, if you want to pick steel and coal mining area, that’s the one to pick, voted heavily against devolution in 1979 and recorded the highest vote for devolution in 1997. And I do think that shift was really quite remarkable and it was more than just politics. I think it was a deeply cultural thing too.
Philip Murphy
Thank you very much indeed. We get to 1985 and the Anglo-Irish agreement, which Mrs, Thatcher signs. Couple of questions for Arthur really. Firstly, I suppose there were fears in Westminster, Whitehall that you might have a kind of popular revolt against this on the lines, on the scale, of the movement that, you know, brought down the Sunningdale Agreement in the mid-70s. But there really isn’t that, quite. What–How do you kind of explain the reaction and was Unionism genuinely united in opposition, or were there kind of variations in how Unionist politicians responded to it?
Arthur Aughey
Well, the first response was one of profound shock. And it was shocking for me, in the sense because I remember very clearly the day that was announced and we had the Sixth Form conference and we were talking about all sorts of politics that would emerge in their A-Level exams and members of staff were talking and not one person had an intimation of what was ahead.
Arthur Aughey
Indeed, Jim Molyneaux, whose leadership of the Ulster Unionists, we could call it, a sort of steady state form of leadership – he’s had his critics, of course – was necessary as a countervailing element to Paisley’s street performance politics. And he did, for most of his career, steady Unionist opinion. But Jim Molyneaux at the Ulster Unionist Conference, even a few months before the agreement was announced, said ‘Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen, we’ve all heard all this before, the Union’s in in safe hands, Margaret will not betray you.’ And the shock of what happened on that day was profound. And yes, there was a reaction on the streets in terms of mobilisation, of bringing together what ATQ Stewart called the ‘we will eat grass rather than concede to our enemies’ form of Unionists and the middle-of-the-road, middle-class Unionists in horror at what had happened. They simply were not prepared for it. But the big difference-
Malcolm Rifkind
What were they most objecting to? Remind us of the main issues that caused the strength of feeling.
Arthur Aughey
Yeah, the main issue was that they thought that a deal had been done without their consultation, behind their backs, to change the status of Northern Ireland without their consent. But although the government very clearly said, ‘No, the status hasn’t been changed, you’re still citizens of the United Kingdom, this is a purely consultative exercise with the Irish Government about how we manage this problem on the island of Ireland between Ireland and the UK’, the Unionist feeling was there had been a change in their status precisely because an Irish government that was dedicated to the interests of protecting the nationalists in Northern Ireland could take a distinctive position which the sovereign government of the United Kingdom could not take a partial, and distinctive position, because they had to govern everyone, not just the Unionists. So it was that imbalance that threatened or felt threatening such that Peter Robinson could say, ‘Look, we’ve been put on the window ledge of the Union’, the DUP will never knowingly undersell the crisis, and Peter Robinson was a dedicated devolutionist. I know why Margaret Thatcher did it. I know of the divisions in the cabinet over the wisdom of doing it, and that it was done from the British point of view, or on Thatcher’s point of view to increase cross-border security, which was necessary. Everybody wished for that, of course. But in the end, I think in her memoirs, it wasn’t sufficiently delivered and – but, in the end, what had happened was that the difference between 1973-74 and 1985 subsequently was there was no institution that, by their boycott, Unionists could bring down.
Philip Murphy
Yeah.
Arthur Aughey
They could only shout from the from the outside or they could resign their seats in the House of Commons as a sign of protest. But at the end, you know, they actually lost out in that venture, lost seats rather than returning with increased support. So it was a sense of frustration of being excluded, of really not knowing what the alternative would be that I think characterised that sort of febrile post-1985 period. It was also not only a febrile period of anxiety, and anxiety about expectations, but it was also actually quite creative the way that for the first time, you know, Unionists had to force themselves to think about the nature of the Union, of which they were a part. The campaign for equal citizenship emerged from it, which is an integrationist movement and even if that in itself was not an option, it encouraged a new group of people into Unionist politics. Unfortunately, Arlene isn’t here and Arlene Foster was one of those young Unionists, what we call the baby barristers who came into the Unionist politics in that period in the 1980s and were quite influential in the Trimble strategy after 1995.
Philip Murphy
So you know, I mean, Malcolm, do you remember how Conservative MPs reacted to the Anglo-Irish Agreement?
Malcolm Rifkind
I think that, and I’ve just been listening very carefully to what you’ve just been saying, I think what happened in the controversy in Northern Ireland which was not replicated in a significant way in in the rest of the Kingdom about what had been conceded to the Irish Government, a right to be consulted on matters, I think it in a very fundamental way exemplifies one of the greatest difficulties of this whole issue. Culturally, politically, Northern Ireland was different not just because of geography, but because of the fundamental cleavage at that time between the two communities who had different political aspirations as to whether they wish to be British citizens in the first place, or whether they were prepared to make any compromises of a fundamental kind. Now, from a British point of view, as opposed to a Northern Ireland point of view, to give the Irish Government a commitment that they would be consulted on issues before decisions were taken was seen by most British MPs, not everyone, but by most, as a pretty good outcome from a point of view of a compromise because it was a commitment to consult, not to agree with, there was no commitment to the Irish – the Irish Government were not being given the veto in any form or fashion – I’m just explaining how it was seen from a British mainland point of view. They were not being given any right of veto. They were being given an opportunity to comment before a final decision was reached by the British Government on matters involving Northern Ireland.
Malcolm Rifkind
Now, the question is, was that concession worth making? And that it was not just to please the Irish Government. It was because we were already in a situation where the Troubles meant that there could be infiltration of Northern Ireland by the IRA, not just [by] people based within Northern Ireland but coming across the border and to deal with that successfully, inevitably because it was an international border, needed the cooperation of the Irish Government. They were not a foreign government, in that sense, they were crucial to beating the IRA and stopping terrorism. Now the IRA – the Irish Government were as hostile to the IRA as the British Government, for all their own reasons, there was no empathy, certainly not at the level of government. So, from a British perspective, this was not some unreasonable concession we didn’t have to make. It was a very sensible compromise whereby we did not in any way reduce the sovereignty of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. We gave no veto to the Irish Government, but it was not unreasonable for them to expect to be consulted on matters of cross-border interest. Now I know that’s not the way it was seen by the Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, but part of our problem was Conservatives, who had originally shared the whip with the Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, was it wasn’t just that we occasionally disagreed, it is that they came from what was manifestly a fundamentally hardline position that any movement from the status quo was the beginning of the end to Unionist aspirations or citizen security.
Philip Murphy
And then there’s this period, it’s a little bit of a historical dead end, I suppose. But in the late-80s and it’s a move that’s supported by the Conservative Party conference in ‘89 to set up Conservative Associations in Northern Ireland and it sort of peters out by about ‘93. Was that ever a realistic prospect of that?
Malcolm Rifkind
I think it was a dumb idea because all that effectively did, in so far as the people who standing as Conservative candidates in Northern Ireland are concerned, it split the Unionist vote, right? It was already split for British other reasons. But the main beneficiaries were the nationalists. And I know the thinking behind it was reasonable. If Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, why do we need to have two parties representing the same fundamental constitutional view? I can understand the thinking behind it. It wasn’t an unpleasant or improper judgement, but it was one that was destined to have had no political success.
Arthur Aughey
Yeah, it was the only issue in which they campaigned for an equal citizenship and had a very minor success. Was it not successful with the Labour Party, who refused to organise in Northern Ireland. Indeed, in the 1992 general election, which no one expected John Major to win, the Conservatives did exceptionally well in North Down. Laurence Kennedy was their candidate and they came within a few thousand votes of unseating James Kilfedder, who had been there for donkey’s years and was like an immovable object, so one felt. And then in 1995, Bob McCartney won that seat again, as a sort of Unionist protest vote. Bob McCartney’s position was UK Unionist rather than Northern Ireland Unionist, but Bob McCartney, although being profoundly articulate about Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom and the value of the wisdom of Westminster government, never fitted in when he went to the House of Commons. His personality did not fit in with the culture that he experienced in the House of Commons, and he, as I know personally, he was a very lonely figure and his time there was very uncomfortable. So I think yes, those are the contradictions and the tensions and the differences. I think everyone can accept that Northern Ireland is different, yes. Even Unionists accept that Northern Ireland is different in the problems it faced. The only concern they had with what seemed to be in trend with the Anglo-Irish Agreement was that what was being said is, ‘yes, you’re different and your future is you can take your differences with you and your future is in some form of Irish association’, that but I know that that that wasn’t the purpose of-
Malcolm Rifkind: It’s never happened actually and it’s not-
Arthur Aughey
Yes, yes, I know, I know. But that was the feeling at the time.
Philip Murphy
I’m jumping ahead a bit because I want to give people time to ask questions and maybe move this on to more recent periods, but I’ve got two, maybe two, final questions from me. Firstly, does John Major’s appearance on the scene in 1990 make a difference? Does he have a significantly different approach to the Union and the Four Nations than Mrs Thatcher and do you see that playing out in policy? And one of the reasons I asked that is that you kind of, you know, Peter Brooke gives this famous statement in November, the 9th of November, on Northern Ireland that ‘the British Government has no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland.’
Arthur Aughey: No comma between ‘selfish strategic’…
Philip Murphy
And you feel that that’s the sort of step change in British policy, but Mrs. Thatcher’s still there. She doesn’t resign till the end of the month. So when you, kind of, when you apply chronology to these questions it sometimes, yeah –
Malcolm Rifkind
We’ve got to think in terms of the moment. The IRA signal very privately and then publicly that they are prepared to end the terrorist campaign and look for political reform through negotiation, and peacefully. Now that could have started at any time. It required the IRA to realise that they were not going to break the British will to protect Northern Ireland. That as long as the people of Northern Ireland, or a majority of them, wish to be citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Government had a responsibility for their protection and to ensure that that was achieved. And that was an absolute. And there was no evidence that the IRA campaign was having any success in changing not just the will of government but of the British public, even although there was acts of terrorism on the mainland. Now, I don’t know the answer as to whether the IRA would have come to that judgement that they were prepared to give up terrorism during the period that Margaret, while Margaret Thatcher, was still Prime Minister. Because not only had she been associated with very hard-line policies, she herself was the victim of an assassination attempt as we remember, in Brighton, and the whole background of those years was so incredibly complex and violent. The idea of having a gradual move towards negotiation, I’m not saying it would have been impossible, and I think Thatcher was a much more pragmatic person than she was often judged to be. If there had been a real chance of a negotiated outcome during her prime ministership, she would not have rejected it. She would have reacted, at least in the first instance and perhaps, permanently, in the same sort of way as John Major did. But it would all have been more difficult because she was such a divisive personality and her position on Northern Ireland, the language she used was much harsher than that which Major would have used even though the policy would have been much the same. So I worked under John Major during those years when he was Prime Minister and I could see that once the signal was given by the IRA, he authorised contact to be made very privately, very secretly, to assess how serious they were and the junior Minister for Northern Ireland, Michael Ancram. Michael sadly died just three months ago. He was the first British minister to have direct contact with who turned out to be Martin McGuinness.
And what happened? And it was all incredibly secret, and he was very brave. He was driven to meet McGuinness in Derry. He had no security apart from his driver and the meeting was to take place at the home of the Bishop of Derry, who had offered this to be a location. And he had this meeting in the McGuinness for about 3 hours. And was arising out of that, that it was agreed with the IRA, Sinn Féin, whom whomsoever, however you choose to describe them, that some means of private communication between the British Government and their organisation would be sensible and the single biggest question at that stage was if they really meant to give up terrorism when would the decommissioning of their weapons begin and how would it begin and how would it be managed and that proved to be incredibly difficult but was successful. And John Major and then Tony Blair devoted a huge amount of time successfully on an issue that didn’t win them any votes, but because they both deeply believed this was an historic opportunity.
Arthur Aughey
Yeah, if you, if you remember that…there’s the Brooke-Mayhew talk constitutional talks and- but for those who had access to the papers, which I did, you had the feeling that there were noises off. Your feeling – I had a feeling looking at the papers that something else was happening, especially from the SDLP’s point of view in which at that point they were talking about a triumvirate of an executive to look after Northern Ireland affairs, one member of the executive being from Irish Republic, one from the UK and one from the European Union. It didn’t seem to be a serious proposal. Certainly wasn’t a runner. The Ulster Unionists were still proposing something that was originally applied in Wales as a form of devolution. The DUP were much more constructive about the nature of the devolved settlement they wished to see. But you had the feeling something else was happening. Of course, Sir Patrick Mayhew had to admit then later that private talks were happening but that ‘no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland’ was a phrase which had emerged in these other negotiations or talks between Hume and Adams and the Irish Government, and later on and-
Malcolm Rifkind
It reflected the honest British position that, it wasn’t just a phrase, it wasn’t a political term. It was something I was trying to get across. We do not have a strategic interest and in the sense that is normally implied.
Arthur Aughey
And of course, the outcome of that strategy then at least in its broad principles, was the Downing Street Declaration of 1993.
Philip Murphy
Did the end of the Cold War in any way seal that sense of not having a strategic interest in Northern Ireland?
Malcolm Rifkind
It helped actually, it helped change the climate because you had all sorts of extraordinary things happening. The Cold War and the Berlin Wall disappears. And this all happens without a shot being fired and then simultaneously or round about that time, you have a Mandela and de Klerk discussing the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa and making dramatic progress and naturally delivering that. So when you’re in that kind of situation, anything’s possible if the politicians are brave enough to actually see an opportunity, and if the people who were using violence realise they’re not delivering, I mean, McGuinness and Adams had begun as young terrorists they were now middle-aged terrorists and they were no nearer realising their objectives and they obviously realised they didn’t want to be old pensioner terrorists still unsuccessful.
Arthur Aughey
You said it very well.
Philip Murphy
I mean, David, you referred to this a little bit earlier on the that succession of English Welsh Secretaries under John Major. How sensitive do you think Major was to the kind of the needs of the of the Welsh Conservative Party and the Union in Wales?
David Melding
Not very, I think, would have to be the judgement. I mean the rhetoric certainly improved in terms of the value of Scotland and Wales in the Union and I think within the status quo setting, the Union was stretched as much as possible. So you know, new things were done with the Welsh Grand Committee and the Scottish one as well. I think the cabinet held meetings, a few, anyway, around the country, as I recall. So, you know, there was that. But he did appoint John Redwood as Secretary of State, which was really quite lethal to Conservative prospects in ‘97. In fairness to Redwood, I mean, he made no attempt really to, you know, try to be Welsh, or accommodating to Welsh needs. You know, he didn’t seek out distant ancestors that, you know, had gone to Caerphilly to buy cheese or something and, you know, it’s indefensible. And it was very difficult. I used to be a broadcaster then. I was a teatime Tory on one of the popular radio programmes and it was genuinely difficult to defend. So I was just reduced to humour in a hopeless attempt to deflect. A very common strategy or tactic amongst Conservatives. And I think, you know, obviously people are governing in real time and we can look back, but an awful lot was happening in Scotland and Wales that required quite deep thought about the Union. We ended up being quite compromised in 97 in how we opposed it. What our, you know, alternative ideas were and I think that lasted quite a long time then through the 2000s. Though having said that, if you read Tony Blair’s memoirs, he gives the most tepid defence of devolution, basically saying, ‘Yeah, we had to do it, but yeah, it’s also a danger to the Union.’ And I, you know, I don’t think much critical thought, certainly, that has survived and had influenced politically, was undertaken then and given that, you know, for our constitution what happened in 97, you know, was the biggest thing since universal suffrage. And just to finish this thought, when I was elected in 99, I had an email from a Republican in a Midwest state, I can’t remember which, and he just asked me to explain why the Conservative Party was so much against what they called states’ rights. And, you know, it just appeared to him a contradiction in a basic sort of Conservative sense of a basic Conservative principle and you know, I tried to explain, you know, the cultural differences anyway. But it seems to me that sort of reflection, we should have been having in the 90s, especially with what we’ve heard from Malcolm about how deep the shift to accept in some form of devolution in the constitution that occurred in the 70s in the Scottish party. Certainly nothing like that was repeated – was attempted for the first time in Wales and I suspect it wasn’t repeated in Scotland but obviously I can’t judge on that.
Arthur Aughey
If I may just a brief aside on John Redwood in in Wales, I overheard you talking to Sir Malcolm about Sir Alistair Cooke at the Conservative Political Centre, and I was part of this study group on the Union, 1995 and 1996, and we went and did all these interviews with various secretaries of state, Lord Cranborne in the House of Lords was one, and I remember very clearly because I think we were in the basement of Smith Square and there was a thunderstorm outside and we were interviewing John Redwood about the possibilities of devolution in Wales, of politics in Wales, and it was very flat. It was very flat until someone raised the issue of England. If you remember Jack Straw was at the time proposing regional governance for England and John Redwood came alive – at this issue, this imposition – on the good English people, and can you imagine the feeling in Bristol if they feel that they’re going to be governed from Exeter or whatever. And that’s where his passion seemed to lie. So, sorry, historical witness aside.
Philip Murphy
Final question before I throw things out to the floor. The 1990s you also see the Maastricht Agreement and the rebellion on the Conservative benches over Maastricht, and the issue of Euroscepticism starting to rear up within the Conservative Party. What would that movement mean in the longer term for relations between Britain, the between the constituent parts of Britain and Conservatism and Unionism.
Malcolm Rifkind
I think there is one very ironic and unexpected consequence of the Britain’s relationship with Europe, with Brexit and the consequences of Brexit. You’ll recall that at the time we had the referendum on Brexit, one of the great campaigning arguments of the Nationalist party in Scotland was that Scotland had voted to remain, England had voted to leave, and we are leaving and that shows how Scotland is ignored and wishes that the majority of Scotland is ignored. And they believed – and a lot of people were really concerned that this would be a great campaign theme for them. You know, this is the ultimate argument why we’re being dragged out of the European Union against the wishes of the Scottish people. Only by independence can we resolve this matter. The way it has worked out is it had actually the opposite effect. Because while we were in the European Union, the Nationalists in Scotland were able to argue relatively easily, ‘Well, if we become independent, we will be – our relationship with England will not be two foreign countries. It will be like, we’re all part of the EU and we can have as good relations with England and Scotland as we have with Denmark or Ireland for that matter.’ That no longer is an option. Because if Scottish nationalism was to force another referendum and win it, the effect of an independent Scotland would be they were not only no longer part of the single market called the United Kingdom, but it would take them at least 10 years and perhaps longer to join the European Union? Why? Because the EU has already made it clear they are completely against the fragmentation of Member States and, for example, the Spanish, with their problems with Catalonia, have made it clear they would veto an independent Catalonia trying to join the EU. The same applies to the Flemish and the Walloons in Belgium and the Bavarians in Germany and various other national ethnic minorities. And so the EU would not just hesitate, it would refuse for at least a good few years to contemplate an admission of a separate Scottish state because of the precedent it would create for similar nationalist movements in the existing European Union, so it, in a paradoxical way, it has become much more difficult for the Nationalists to argue the economic benefits of independence because they would have to be some sort of border between Scotland and the rest of the UK, just as there is between the UK and the EU without being part of the single market.
Arthur Aughey
I think the high point of that Scottish expectation if you care to read is, that Alex Salmond invited Tom Nairn, who’s been saying things since at least 1977, which is almost half a century. Well, anyway, Tom Nairn was invited to give this Edinburgh speech in which effectively he made that proposition that the UK was a product of iron and coal, when you needed these large middle-sized states to accommodate difference and assert themselves in the world. But today it’s what used to be called Kleinstaaterei by Marxist critics. You have to be small and nimble and you can be small and nimble in this globalised world and protected by the European Union and Scotland, just like Ireland will prosper in this arc of prosperity. That’s the future. So suddenly the arc of prosperity, you know, collapsed in 2008 with the great economic crisis. And I think it is quite an irony. Perhaps Brexit which in Northern Ireland terms it’s fundamentally opposed to, I could see this disaster coming down the line, but unfortunately like most people I didn’t expect it. Again as a sort of a historical aside, just before the referendum I was invited to this large seminar on the EU referendum in the University of Maynooth. And the British Ambassador to Ireland was on one side and the great and the good from the Irish state were on the other and we’re discussing this issue and, of course, the conclusion was this would be a disaster. And I came to the final comments, you know, have you a final word to say and that always puts you into a panic because you never do have a final word to say. And the only thing I could think of was when it came to me: ‘I rely on the good sense of the British people to vote remain’. And I can see that on my tombstone in the future. But interestingly, it’s always struck me that devolution is far away from the old political reference that for Wales: see England. But when it actually came to Brexit – and people who write about Brexit – as an English nationalist revolt still say for Wales: see England and yet Wales voted for Brexit too.
David Melding
Well, that is true. But Cardiff, which I represented voted more remain than London did. So, you know, it’s a very complicated picture. I think Maastricht had a profoundly baleful effect on Unionism. You know, in terms of British statecraft I think the Treaty of Maastricht was an incredible success. We reserved all sorts of things, but allowed the European Union, which it then became, you know, to proceed in certain areas, like looking at the euro and that we could join this project if we ever felt it would be in our national interest. You know, it didn’t seem to me the savage, heavy hand of a centralising bureaucracy in Brussels. We were given remarkable terms and yet, you know, it was a turning point as we now know in the Conservative Party’s thought really about what Britain meant, what Union meant and, you know, led to Brexit. I think it’s very difficult to say that Wales and Scotland flourish in this wider entity, the Union, the United Kingdom, but that the British state couldn’t flourish in this wider entity of the European Union. So we had to say, you know, Unionism was good locally but not, sort of, internationally. And I think that, you know, is a problem and now, you know, we’re in the situation where the geopolitical situation is dire, I think in terms of what’s happened since Brexit, just in terms of international developments to, you know, I still remember Dr. Liam Fox saying, well, we don’t need the EU, we’ve got the World Trade Organisation. I mean, it didn’t even have an appellate body that worked effectively then, I don’t think, and it certainly doesn’t have it now, and we, you know, we can see with Trump and all sorts of things that are happening. So, you know, I really think the Union’s in peril and it’s a slow burn but let’s never forget that you know from, speaking profoundly as a Unionist, the only secession we’ve had from the United Kingdom was of Southern Ireland. And that was done when, at the Treaty of Versailles, you know, Woodrow Wilson sent the nationalists packing and saying you’re part of the United Kingdom and we’re not gonna be part of any division, Britain is not Austro-Hungary. But the Irish people, the people in Southern Ireland decided, despite that and the obvious impact on its economy, on their individual economic fortunes, that regardless they wanted out of the Union. So I don’t think that the EU and what position it takes is going to be a big defence when we have the second Scottish referendum. You know, the EU can say what it likes, but you know, the day should Scotland secede, they then have to deal with the fact there’s a sovereign state called Scotland. And I think that changes all sorts of things. And you know, it’s not something we can just sort of sit back and think, well, you know that’s going to take care of the situation. And let’s not forget in the final week of that referendum campaign in 2014 when 45 per cent of Scottish people voted to leave the state, our national leaders of the Union, various unionist parties went up to Scotland and said rejecting independence does not mean it’s the status quo. We will have a new vision for the Union. And some things were done around the fringes, but I do not think that we ended up providing that new vision for Unionism. And if we don’t do it, by the time there’s a second Scottish referendum, we won’t be able to play that trick again. We will have to have really thought about what we want the UK to look like and to have that as an alternative at that point to secession for those that are still pushing for it.
Philip Murphy
Thank you very much.
David Melding
Sorry, I sounded like a politician. I used to have a hashtag #TheLastoftheUnionists because I got so fed up with some of my colleagues not really thinking about what Unionism is. I mean, if Unionism is anything, it stands as a prior principle to things that you may want but could damage the Union, like Brexit, I would say. So I was very fed-up.
Arthur Aughey
…the Welsh were the first Britons and they’ll end up being the last.
David Melding
Yeah, well, you know, there was a time when nearly all of Britain was Wales, basically. The classic Welsh texts were found in Strathclyde, for instance, and I think that Welsh Kingdom was only extinguished in the 1080s.
***************************************************************
A Timeline: Conservatism and Unionism, c. 1964-1999.
1963 (March) Terence O’Neill invited to succeed Basil Brooke (1st Viscount Brookeborough) as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).
1963 (October & November) Alec Douglas-Home replaces Harold Macmillan as Prime Minister. He steps down from the Lords to (successfully) contest the Kinross and Western Perthshire by-election as a Scottish Unionist candidate.
1964 (October) Harold defeats Sir Alec Douglas-Home in the 1964 General Election. Labour wins a three-seat majority in the House of Commons.
1965 (January & February) Terence O’Neill meets the Irish Taoiseach Jack Lynch: first at Stormont and then in Dublin.
1965 (July-August) Alec Douglas-Home steps down as Party leader. He is replaced by Edward (Ted) Heath.
1966 (July) Plaid Cymru’s Gwynfor Evans wins the Carmarthen by-election.
1967 (November) Winifred Ewing wins the Hamilton by-election for the Scottish National Party (SNP).
1968 (May) At the 1968 Scottish Conservative and Unionist Conference, leader Ted Heath makes ‘the Declaration of Perth’, moving his Party onto a pro-devolution footing in Scotland.
1968 (October) A civil rights march organised by members of the Derry Housing Action Committee is stopped by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). It marks the beginning of the Troubles.
1969 (April) A backlash follows Unionist MPs voting for ‘one man, one vote’ in local government elections in Northern Ireland. Terence O’Neill resigns as Prime Minister. He is replaced by James Chichester-Clark.
1969 (August) The Battle of the Bogside begins. The British Army is deployed to Northern Ireland by Labour Home Secretary James Callaghan.
1970 (March) The Conservative Scottish Constitutional Committee recommends a ‘convention’ for Scotland (an indirectly elected assembly to review legislation passed at Westminster).
1970 (June) The Conservatives unexpectedly win the General Election. They make modest gains in both Scotland and Wales.
1972 (January) Bloody Sunday.
1972 (March) The Conservative Government suspends Stormont. Direct rule is introduced.
1972 (July) Bloody Friday.
1973 (January) The UK enters the European Community along with the Republic of Ireland & Denmark.
1973 (October & November) The Kilbrandon Report on the Royal Commission on the Constitution recommends establishing assemblies for Scotland and Wales. The report makes no recommendations for devolution in Northern Ireland but recommends the number of MPs be increased from 12 to 17. Margo MacDonald wins the Govan by-election for the SNP.
1973 (December) The Sunningdale Agreement is reached.
1974 (January) The Ulster Unionist Council (the policy-making body of the UUP) votes against the Council of Ireland proposal in the Sunningdale Agreement. Brian Faulker resigns as UUP leader.
1974 (February & March) The Heath Government falls after calling a snap general election. Anti-Sunningdale candidates are elected for the UUP. The SNP share of the popular vote doubles from 11 to 22 per cent. Plaid Cymru succeed for the first time in getting candidates (two) elected at a general election in Wales.
1974 (May) The Ulster Workers’ Council Strike. The Dublin and Monaghan bombings take place on 17 May.
1974 (October) Labour wins three-seat majority in the second General Election of that year. In Scotland, the Conservatives are displaced by the second party in the popular vote by the SNP. Plaid Cymry make more modest gains in Wales.
1975 (February) Margaret Thatcher becomes the leader of the Conservatives.
1975 (June) The UK votes by 67.23 per cent Yes to 32.77 per cent No in the European Communities referendum.
1976 (December) Margaret Thatcher’s Shadow Cabinet announce a three-line whip in an attempt to defeat Labour’s Scotland and Wales Bill legislating for devolution.
1979 (March) Welsh devolution is defeated heavily in a referendum (79.74 per cent No to 20.26 per cent Yes). In Scotland, Yes receives 51.62 per cent to 48.3 per cent No. However, it falls below the 40 per cent ‘rule’ threshold set by the amendment moved by George Cunningham of Labour. Later that month, the Callaghan Labour Government loses a vote of confidence in the House of the Government by a single vote.
1979 (May) Margaret Thatcher wins the 1979 general election.
1980-1981 Republican hunger strikes in Northern Ireland.
1983 (June) Thatcher wins a landslide victory at the 1983 General Election. In Wales, the Party performs relatively well, taking 14 seats to Labour’s 20. In Scotland, the Conservatives win 21 seats compared with 41 for Labour.
1984-1985 The Miners’ Strike
1984 (October) The IRA Brighton bombing attack on Margaret Thatcher and the Cabinet at the Conservative Party conference.
1985 (November) Margaret Thatcher and Douglas Hurd sign the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
1987 (May) Abolition of Domestic Rates Etc. (Scotland) Act 1987 receives Royal Assent. The Community Charge (or the Poll Tax) would be rolled out in Scotland in 1989-1990, a year ahead of England & Wales.
1987 (June) The Thatcher government wins a third successive term in office In Scotland, however, the Conservatives face a crisis of political legitimacy having lost over half of their MPs. The Conservatives, too, lose 6 seats in Wales. Peter Walker (the MP for Worcester) replaces Nicholas Edwards as the Welsh Secretary of State.
1987 (November) The Enniskillen bombing.
1988 (May) Margaret Thatcher delivers the ‘Sermon on the Mound’ before the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
1988 (September) Margaret Thatcher makes her famous Bruges speech, declaring her opposition to a federal Europe.
1988 (November) Jim Sillars wins the November 1988 Govan by-election for the SNP.
1989 (October) Conservative delegates at the Blackpool conference vote overwhelmingly to endorse a motion encouraging the Party to organise in Northern Ireland.
1990 (March) A mass protest against the Poll Tax takes place at Trafalgar Square.
1990 (November) Peter Brooke, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, states that Britain has ‘no selfish economic or strategic interest’ in the province and would accept Irish unification by consent.
1990 (November) Margaret Thatcher announces her resignation as Prime Minister. She is replaced by John Major.
1992 (February) The Maastricht Treaty is signed by the then twelve member states
1992 (April) John Major wins a surprise victory at the 1992 General Election. He campaigns strongly on defending on the Union in Scotland.
1992 (September) Black Wednesday. The UK withdraws from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).
1993 (May-July) The Maastricht rebels vote against the Major Government in the House of Commons over key divisions over Europe.
1993 (October) The Conservative Government passes the Welsh Language Act (receiving Royal Assent that month).
1993 (December) British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds issue the Downing Street Declaration.
1995 (June) John Redwood resigns as Secretary of State for Wales and challenges John Major for the leadership over Europe.
1995 (September) David Trimble is elected as Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.
1997 (May) Tony Blair’s New Labour defeat the Conservatives in a landslide victory. The Conservatives lose all their MPs across Scotland and Wales
1997 (June) William Hague is elected as Conservative leader. The Conservatives campaign against Labour’s plans for Scottish and Welsh devolution.
1997 (September) Scotland votes for a Scottish Parliament by 74.29 per cent to 25.71 per cent. Wales votes for a National Assembly (narrowly) by 50.30 per cent to 49.70 per cent.
1998 (April) All parties involved in the multi-party talks at Stormont give their consent to the Good Friday Agreement.
1998 (May) The referenda on the Good Friday Agreement pass Northern Ireland votes Yes 71 per cent, No 28 per cent (turnout 81.10 per cent). The Republic of Ireland votes 94.39 per cent Yes, 5.61 per cent No (turnout 53.70 per cent).
1998 (June) Northern Ireland Assembly elections. The UUP remain the largest Unionist Party on 21.3 per cent of the popular vote (compared with 18.5 per cent for the Democratic Unionist Party).
1999 (May) Scottish and Welsh Parliamentary election In Scotland, the Conservatives poll 15.6 per cent (FPTP) & 15.4 per cent (List). In Wales, 15.8 per cent (FPTP) & 16.5 per cent (List).
1999 (July) The Welsh Senedd is convened. The Queen opens the Scottish Parliament.
1999 (December) Westminster devolves powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly. A power-sharing Executive is established.
