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Home , Channel Islands, Sark

10

AUTONOMY IN THE

By Allan Macartney *

Paper read at "Small Nations of the North " Seminar, T6rshavn (Faroe) 22 June 1983 The report of the proceedings of the last meeting of this Seminar in Mariehamn made very interesting and enlightening reading. It is very helpful that this time there is a chance to open out the discussion beyond the confines of the Scandinavian/Nordic context and in particular to address the question of autonomy within the British Isles.' That should per- haps be corrected to read "questions" in the plural since there are many questions to be discussed in this context. The questions arise on three planes: (1) analytical/definitional, (2) historical and (3) future political development. Each of these aspects has its own fasci- nation and could readily be developed in discussion - indeed one could profitably spend a similar length of time in a session on autonomy and the small nations of the British Isles. Let us get down to two definitional questions straight away. The first is the question of what is meant or implied by the title "small nations" - I speak personally as a Scot who is very conscious of belonging to a small nation - indeed it used to be commonly argued that was too small even to be capable of independence - but in Northern European terms small only in relation to the multi-national state to which she belongs. The important fact is not Scotland's population of five million but her share (less than 1007o)of the popu- lation of the UK. alone is about ten times bigger than Scotland in population if not area. has three million of a population and most Welshmen would regard them- selves as belonging to a small nation, as indeed would the Irish. But there are other units which are of more than passing interest to this seminar, namely the various islands and groups of islands which in some sense "belong" to the UK in a way the bulk of does not, although it remains within the purely geographical designation, "the British Isles". There are, first, the (die Normanneninseln in German; les iles Anglo-Normandes in French). They are divided into two , but there are four semi-autonomous units in all, since the of includes the small autono- mous islands of and . Next comes the , whose Parliament vies with the Faroese Ting for the title of second-oldest in . The status of these islands, outside the but under British sovereignty, be the subject of particular interest to this seminar in that certain parallels can be drawn with Faroe, Aland and Green- land. Then finally there are the islands closest to Faroe in a southerly direction - and they have been my particular research subject2 over the last few years - namely , and the Western Isles (Outer ). These Scottish islands are currently the subject of a Government study3 of the functioning of their Island Councils, a special category of local authority. So much for the catalogue of candidates for the title "small nations" or, to use Professor Modeen's alternative terminology, . The next definitional problem concerns the word "autonomy". In the sense of legislative

* Dr. W. J. A. Macartney is Staff Tutor in Politics with The Open Universityin Scotland. 11

self-government but of a limited kind, i. e. short of independence, only the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands and, for a time in the past, would fall within this defini- tion. (The Irish Republic of course would fall outwith the scope of this discussion and so it will virtually remain.) But, in order to avoid ruling out some of the most interesting ter- ritories, a return to the literal meaning of the Greek word will be preferred, i. e. territories which have their own laws - or have certain aspirations so to do. This last qualification is necessary if the Western Isles are to be brought into the discussion. For the sake of sim- plicity this paper will also have to be permitted to ignore the separate legislative existence, for certain purposes, of England and of within the UK - not because they are unimportant (indeed a central political government is involved here)4 but because there is a danger that this paper would become unmanageable. Reverting to the question of nations and nationalities, it may be worth keeping a third category up our sleeves and that is one used by at least one author, Cobban, who, in writing during the last war, described the Manx and the Channel Islanders, to be specific, as sub-nationalities.5 The four groups of Channel Islands and the Isle of Man do have the symbol of internationally recognised postage stamps on their side. In this respect they are one up on the islands around the Scottish coast. The alternative to a scheme allowing for the category of sub- is to say that the British Isles contain the following nationalities in order of size: England; Scotland; Ire- land ; Wales; ; Guernsey; Mann; Alderney; and Sark. Two problem areas are left out of the scheme - the six counties of NE Ireland which form part of the UK, and the ancient Celtic territory of Cornwall. It will be further noted that the Northern and Western Isles are here subsumed in the Scottish nation, albeit as a very distinctive part of the Scot- tish realm. Much as I would like to pursue this analytical debate I think it is time to take refuge, in a paradoxically very English way, in history to provide an explanation of the various degrees of autonomy and national or sub-national identity to be found in the British Isles. In doing so, due regard has to be paid to two different but related strands. The first is ethnic, defined historically in linguistic terms. Here the major division occurred between the Anglo-Saxons on the one hand and the Celtic peoples on the other. Hechter's stimulating book6 attempts to make this the framework of understanding coreperiphery relations between core England and the major (leaving aside Britanny) of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The English-Celtic divide however does not provide the whole picture. The other dimension is the growth, existence and then decline of two empires, the Viking or Norse empire and the English or . It was the decline of these empires that gave rise to many fascinating questions, some of which can be examined in this seminar. While this dynamic aspect is important for our analysis and understanding of the situa- tion a propos of autonomy in the British Isles, it is arguably time for a dose of institutional description of the degree of autonomy enjoyed by the respective units and very briefly how these came to be. The of England in the late eleventh century is generally taken as the foundation of the English Kingdom and the date 1066 is known as such to every English schoolboy. (The same average schoolboy, it should be added in parenthesis, would find it extremely difficult to distinguish accurately between England, Great Britain, the United ' Kingdom and the British Isles.) For the Norman Islanders of the Channel the sequence is of some importance in that their sovereign as of subsequently became