Winston Churchill

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SCOTTISH AND WELSH
DEVOLUTION
71 yf an y Churchillians tend to believe
l\/l that Winston Churchill would
-L. T JL. have opposed the development of
separate Scottish and Welsh Parliaments,
which they see as spelling the beginning of
the end of the United Kingdom. "Listserv
Winston" enraged in some of this banter in
December. Professor Paul Addison of the
University of Edinburgh and Allen Packwood
of the Churchill Archives Centre put
the List straight on this matter, proving once
again that what is widely believed of
Churchill is not always what Churchill believed...
From: hispas@srvO.arts.ed.ac.uk
(Prof. Paul Addison)
A word or two in response to
the gentlemen summoning up the ghost
of Winston Churchill when attacking
Tony Blair's proposals for Parliaments in
Scotland and Wales. Churchill himself
before 1914 was a supporter of Home
Rule for Ireland, Scotland and Wales. If
his proposals for Irish Home Rule had
been implemented before the First World
War, the twenty-six counties might still
be a part of the United Kingdom today.
There was so little demand for Scottish
and Welsh home rule after 1918 that the
Finest Hour happily publishes interesting
snippets from "Listserv Winston," but you
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question of devolution disappeared for
the rest of Churchill's life, but some of his
comments suggest that he continued to
favour a federal UK including regional
Parliaments in England.
The main reason for the resurgence
of Scottish nationalism in the
1980s was the determination of Mrs.
Thatcher not only to reject Scottish home
rule but to impose on Scotland policies
which the majority of Scots plainly and
repeatedly rejected at the polls. She behaved,
in other words, more like an English
nationalist than a custodian of a
multinational Union. By the time Tony
Blair came in the damage was done and it
may now be too late to save the Union.
But Home Rule offers a last chance of
holding it together and it may just work,
as Churchill hoped it would work in Ireland.
From: agp20@cam.ac.uk.
(Allen Packwood,
Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge)
I was very interested to read
about Churchill's hypothetical reaction to
current political developments within the
United Kingdom. I have been selecting
material for an exhibition on Churchill to
be staged next summer at the National
Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. One of
the items I am proposing to feature is the
following speech, delivered by Churchill
in his Dundee constituency on 9th October
1913:
"Another great reason for the
settlement of the Irish question in the
present Parliament and for disposing of
the Home Rule controversy now, while
we have the full opportunity presented, is
that the ground is thereby cleared for the
consideration of claims of self-government
for other parts of the United Kingdom
besides Ireland. You will remember
how, last year, I addressed a meeting in
Dundee on this subject. I made it perfectly
clear that I was speaking for myself.
I made it clear that I was not speaking of
the immediate future, but dealing with
the subject which lay for the moment
outside the sphere of practical politics and
raising a question for reflection and discussion
rather than for prompt action.
"I spoke of the establishment of
a federal system in the United Kingdom,
in which Scotland, Ireland and Wales,
and, if necessary, parts of England, could
have separate legislative and parliamentary
institutions, enabling them to develop,
in their own way, their own life according
to their own ideas and needs in
the same way as the great and prosperous
States of the American Union and the
great kingdoms and principalities and
States of the German Empire."
Just a few years earlier Churchill
had been advocating reform of the House
of Lords. And who says politics does not
go in cycles? continued >»
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