David Reynolds is emeritus professor of
international history at the University of
Cambridge. His latest book is Island Stories:
Britain and its History in the Age of Brexit
(William Collins, 2019)into a Protestant-dominated rump state.
Until the 1960s, London turned a blind
eye to discrimination against Catholics
but then, amid mounting paramilitary
violence on both sides, it imposed direct
rule from Westminster and introduced
British troops. Still the bloodshed con-
tinued: some 3,500 people died during
three decades of ‘the Troubles’.
In the 1990s, what we might call the
UK’s ad hoc ‘First World War settlement’
- a cohesive Britain and a divided Ireland
- finally began to unravel. By then,
decolonisation had dissolved the cement
of the British empire, and the Scottish
and Welsh economies – built on coal,
steel and other ‘nationalised’ heavy
industries – had also become uncom-
petitive. The Thatcher government’s
aggressive programme of privatisation
hit especially hard in Scotland, where
around one-third of the employed
population still worked for central or
local governmental organisations and
In the 1990s, the UK’s ad hoc
‘First World War settlement’
- a cohesive Britain and a divided
Ireland – finally began to unravel
members indicated that 63% were ready
to bid farewell to Scotland, and 59% to
Northern Ireland, in order to have the
pleasure of waving goodbye to Brussels.
The most sensitive part of the UK
is Scotland. First Minister Nicola Stur-
geon has said she wants a second referen-
dum on independence in 2020 because
Brexit has changed the whole political
landscape. But she has also stated that
this must, as in 2014, be held with the
agreement of the UK government under
the Scotland Act of 1998. UK prime
minister Boris Johnson has said a flat
“no”, and Sturgeon is under pressure
from SNP activists to ignore London,
raising the spectre of a unilateral decla-
ration of independence by Edinburgh.
Even if Johnson did allow another
referendum, the challenges for Scotland
would be enormous. If it voted to leave
the UK, what currency would it use? The
SNP wants to keep the pound sterling for
the moment, but would London agree?
In any case, any Scottish declaration of
independence would rupture Britain’s
300-year old ‘common market’. How
would the new border be policed?
Given such challenges, perhaps
Sturgeon would back away from inde-
pendence if offered a new, much more
radical devolution package. Certainly
a looser union, de facto or de jure –
stripped of what has been called “central
imperial condescension” – is essential if
the UK is still going to hang together.businesses. So when Tony Blair’s Labour
government offered referenda on devo-
lution in 1997, Scotland and (less deci-
sively) Wales voted in favour. In 1999,
devolved governments were inaugurated
in Edinburgh and Cardiff.
By this time, both sides in Northern
Ireland had wearied of the Troubles.
Intense efforts by London and Dublin
culminated in the ‘Good Friday Agree-
ment’ of 1998. London pulled British
troops off the streets of the province and
agreed to restore devolved government
in Belfast. Northern Ireland also became
much more open to the Irish Republic,
notably by dismantling the militarised
border but also in less visible ways, such
as the creation of a single electricity
market across the whole of Ireland.Route to a referendum
What could be termed the ‘Millennium
Settlement’ of 1998–99 developed a
momentum of its own, particularly in
Edinburgh where the Scottish National
Party (SNP) – which formed a majority
government from 2011 – manoeuvred
its way to holding a referendum on
independence in 2014. Although the
vote was much closer than London had
expected, a clear majority (55% to 45%)
voted for Scotland to stay within the
union. That seemed to settle the issue
for a generation.
But the 2016 EU referendum has
thrown all that into confusion. Although
Wales, like England, voted to leave the
EU, 62% of voters in Scotland and 56%
in Northern Ireland wanted to remain.
That cut no ice with the Conservative
government in London. In June 2019,
a YouGov poll of Conservative partyScottish sacrifice
Scottish soldiers during the
First World War. “Four years of
Scottish sacrifice for the British
empire in 1914–18 had a lasting
effect,” says David Reynolds