The Conservative Party's Approach to Devolution in 1997-1998 I II
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The Conservative Party's Approach to Devolution in 1997-1998 I The Conservative Party’s approach to devolution in 1997-1998 had three strands: a vindication of existing governance, support for limited reform, and antipathy to devolved institutions. Each relied, in turn, on three concepts: the status quo, the Union, and parliamentary sovereignty. The focus of this paper is the first strand: vindication of existing governance. After setting out its methodology, the paper considers the contribution of the three concepts to this defence. It then briefly indicates how these concepts informed the remaining strands: support for limited reform and antipathy to devolved institutions. II John Major rivalled his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, in fervent advocacy of the Union and firm opposition to devolution.1 He confessed to a deep worry about separatism and resolved to confront it at the General Election in 1992.2 After an unexpected victory, Major was convinced that the dual strategy advocated by his Scottish Secretary, Ian Lang – a trenchant defence of present arrangements, while ‘taking stock’ of governance – had electoral appeal; accordingly, the two elements remained leitmotifs of Major’s second term and, ultimately, the election campaign in 1997.3 It failed: the Conservative Party suffered its worst defeat for ninety years. Moreover, in opposition for the first time in eighteen years, the Party had few resources to assist in its new role: half the parliamentary party had been lost, with no representation outside England; the Shadow Cabinet lacked key figures, such as willing spokesmen for Scotland and Wales; Major had announced his resignation, leaving Conservatives rudderless and distracted; many staff had left for the private sector or one of the five leadership campaigns; and there was little personal, and no institutional, memory of opposition. Within two weeks, the frontbench had to respond to the Queen’s Speech and the very first piece of legislation: the Referendum (Scotland and Wales) Bill, paving the way for devolution.4 However, the Party had at least one asset on which to draw: the conservative tradition. Policy developed through what Levi-Strauss called bricolage: the creation of something new from existing resources.5 This meant that Conservatives enjoyed situated agency rather than autonomy; traditions simultaneously facilitated and constrained innovation.6 Nonetheless, the 1 existence of several inheritances within, let alone beyond, the conservative family – notably Whig and Liberal Unionist alongside Tory – afforded space for radical choice between, as well as grounded preference within, such ‘webs of significance’.7 Tradition was abridged as ideology, offering a balance of intellectual rigour, on the one hand, and practical application, on the other; it occupied the point at which the square blueprint of ideas met the crooked timber of humanity.8 Such a Politische Weltanschauung should not be dismissed as a partisan view of reality; it was, in fact, an essential device that offered prejudice, therapy, and cynosures.9 Prejudice guided the Party through their engagement with devolution; the challenge, of course, was to ensure the policy was reasonable not only in their frame but also that of the electorate.10 Figurative accounts, rather than critical thought, were a typical expedient.11 First, metonyms introduced novel connotations.12 Conservatives referred to ‘nationalists’ (never ‘patriots’) who pursued ‘separation’ (rather than ‘independence’); equally, the new legislatures were ‘talking shops’ and the accompanying executives ‘bureaucracy’. Second, metaphors emphasised some aspects of experience and discounted others.13 The Party envisaged a ‘slippery slope’ to independence, feared the ‘break up’ of the country, and embarked upon a ‘Battle for Britain’. Third, narratives organised, connected, and explained facts by allusion; as such, they were related to myth.14 Conservatives accused opponents of wanting to create a ‘Bundesrepublik Britannien’ within a ‘Europe of the Regions’, basing this part of their offensive on supposition, rather than evidence. Therapy addressed strains between centre and periphery.15 First, it offered catharsis in portraying a symbolic opponent: for Conservatives, the enemy was the nationalist seeking to break up the United Kingdom.16 Second, it boosted morale by denying or legitimising any disequilibrium: the Party denied there was any demand for self-government before the referendum and then disputed the proposals, rather than principle, after the poll.17 Third, it generated solidarity by claiming the entire polity was under threat: Conservatives sought to protect the interests of all four nations – and, above all, the United Kingdom.18 Fourth, it provided advocacy of neglected issues: the Party focused on the instability of devolution and consequent danger of separation.19 Fifth, it dispensed closure by painting the contingent as necessary: for Conservatives, union governance from Westminster was the only viable settlement.20 2 Cynosures were rallying points.21 First, they reinforced loyalty by attracting supporters who shared one attitude before using group reinforcement to extend this to a wider outlook.22 As the lone challenger to devolution, the Party courted unionists who might then endorse its wider manifesto. Second, they encouraged unity with a narrative outwith the dominant political culture that ideally featured a menacing ‘other’.23 Conservatives portrayed devolution as neither self-government nor local patriotism, but as a halfway house to the divorce vaunted by separatists. Third, they legitimated authority through structure, myth, and intimation.24 With no MPs and lost referendums in Scotland and Wales, the frontbench invited rational-legal authority by locating sovereignty at Westminster, where they were Her Majesty’s Opposition; sought traditional authority by portraying themselves as historic defenders of the nation; and pursued charismatic authority by occupying the role of statesmen acting in the national, rather than party, interest. Ideology was comprised of concepts; as Freeden shows, they mutually constituted, intersected, and clustered.25 Hence, even a nuanced change in meaning or a subtle variation in structure could yield fundamentally different results.26 Freeden offers a categorisation: core concepts were jointly, but not severally, essential to an ideology; adjacent concepts were secondary, but finessed and anchored the core; peripheral concepts were concrete and adapted frequently to the environment.27 Conservative policy placed the status quo, the Union, and parliamentary sovereignty at the core; accumulated wisdom, civic patriotism, and equal membership were adjacent; common law, needs allocation, and West Lothian were peripheral. Concepts were reformulated to address, rather than ignore, dilemmas.28 Facing the reality of devolution, the Party had to update its understanding of the status quo, the Union, and parliamentary sovereignty – as well as accommodate others, such as concordats. Scope for creativity flowed from the essential contestability, of concepts; this effect was multiplied by several clustering together as super-concepts.29 A good example is the way in which Conservatives built a civic patriotism around a normative retelling of the Whig history of England. Ambiguity occurred where an expression might be read in several ways, which the Party sometimes intended in order to secure a broad range of support.30 Did needs-based funding, for instance, improve or worsen the situation in Scotland and Wales? Vagueness resulted from boundary issues, which could not be solved if concepts were multi-dimensional.31 The West 3 Lothian Question brought this into particular focus: could a reduction in the number of MPs from Scotland and Wales somehow address the asymmetry of devolution? Decontestation of concepts was essential, since their manipulation and prioritisation settled issues.32 The Party intervened in debates by providing substantive conceptions to occupy the formal concepts, thereby seeking mastery of political vocabulary by legitimising some interpretations and delegitimising others. 33 Conservatives seized patriotism as their own, juxtaposing a nationalism that encompassed obsessed separatists and foolhardy devolutionists. Yet equilibria were always incomplete, momentary, and unstable; political discourse was on a quest for finality that it could never complete.34 The Party sought a constitutional settlement to halt the journey to separation, yet feared a ratchet as powers were stripped from London. Skinner identifies three sorts of knowledge required to employ a term.35 The sense comprises the criteria for its use; the range of reference is, accordingly, the universe of things to which it applied; the speech act potential is the variety of attitudes it might express.36 Consequently, an ‘innovating ideologist’, which was a fair description of the Party at times, could derive significant advantage from theory politics.37 The first tactic was to coin new terms; however, this was as hard as it sounds and did not feature in the Conservative response. The second was to modify the sense of an existing term; this was much easier and there was a concerted effort by the Party to speak of devolution with respect to individual choice exercised by tenants, patients, and parents.38 The third was to challenge the range of reference: Conservatives tried to focus on local, rather than national, politics such that devolution meant empowering unitary