The United Kingdom and Human Rights - College of Social ...

140 Values and Civil and Political Liberties
with limited local government arrangements. Greater
powers of internal self-government have been denied
since 1974 because of continuing political differences
between the communities and insistence by successive
British governments that power-sharing, and not majority
rule, is the only appropriate form of administration
in a plural society with deep conflicts about national
loyalties.
Even the degree of external self-determination accorded
the people of Northern Ireland has not been
accorded "the people of Scotland," who do not have a
right to intermittent referenda on whether Scotland
should continue to be part of the United Kingdom. A
referendum was held in 1979 on devolution of power to
a Scottish Assembly in which about 1.2 million Scots
voted for devolution and about 1.1 million against.
However, this did not result in change, because the Act
empowering the referendum required an affirmative vote
to consist of at least 40 per cent, of the electorate, a
criterion not met (those against and those abstaining
totalled over 60 per cent, of the electorate). In 1990 the
United Kingdom government then in office had no
policy of ultimately according the Scots internal selfdetermination
by way of a local legislature with largescale
devolution of power from Westminster.
Northern Ireland—an Emergency Case
Northern Ireland has also been significant in another
unhappy way. It has been a laboratory for testing
limitations on civil rights, particularly in relation to fair
trial and the powers of the police and armed forces in
time of emergency. Since 1972 there has been trial