Devolution, Regionalism and Regional Development

The UK Experience

Jonathan Bradbury

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415323611
• eBook ISBN: 9781134349050
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Devolution, Regionalism and Regional Development provides an overview and critical perspective on the impact of devolution on regionalism in the UK since 1999, taking a research-based look at issues central to the development of regionalism: politics, governance and planning.

This multidisciplinary book is written by academics from the fields of geography, economics, town planning, public policy, management, public administration, politics and sociology with a final chapter by Patrick Le Gales putting the research findings into a theoretical context. This will be an important book for those researching and studying economic and political geography and planning as well as those involved in regional development.

1 Introduction

Jonathan Bradbury

To study the changing fortunes of regional politics and policy in the UK is to take a case of apparently significant contradictions. On the one hand the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with a population of over 55 million, an economy among the top ten in the world and an imperial past that still gives it a global reach, may initially appear a highly stable consolidated state. On the other hand, the UK incorporates a territorial complexity that should be obvious from its title. The UK is a composite state made up of a union of England, the biggest nation by territory and population, with three other nations/regions: Wales (since 1536), Scotland (since 1707) and Northern Ireland (since 1921, previously Ireland 1800–1921). Prior to 1997 this territorial dimension was accommodated for by a variety of constitutional, political and administrative arrangements. There had been a phase of political devolution only in Northern Ireland, when an elected assembly sat between 1921 and 1972. Between 1997 and 1999, however, following proposals made by the Labour Government, led by Tony Blair, referenda votes led to a transformation of political representation and government across the UK. Scotland was granted a devolved Parliament with primary legislative and tax varying powers; Wales a devolved assembly with secondary legislative powers; and Northern Ireland new legislative and executive structures based on a devolved assembly. In England, a directly elected mayor and authority were introduced for Greater London, and in all nine English regions development agencies were established. In each region these were to work in conjunction with central government offices of the regions, as well as regional chambers (later assemblies), representing the regional stakeholders.

Consequently, while regional politics and policy has always been a significant dimension of the UK, recent changes have been of profound importance in accentuating that fact. This book seeks to chart and explain the implications of these recent developments. It starts from the initial proposition that analysis is best explored by addressing three conceptual foci which are often taken as interchangeable but in fact refer to related but different phenomena, namely devolution, regionalism and regional development. First, devolution is an explicitly constitutional act, which involves ‘the transfer to a subordinate elected body, on a geographical basis, of functions at present exercised by ministers and Parliament’ (Bogdanor 1999: 2). The hallmark of devolution is legislative decentralisation, be it of primary legislative powers or of secondary powers. In the latter case primary powers remain with Parliament but the powers to make secondary laws through statutory instruments and orders are devolved.

Regionalism, in contrast, is a governmental process involving the ‘formulation of public policy for, and the administration of policy in, large territorial units consisting usually of a numbering of neighbouring counties defined by geographical, sociological, administrative and political criteria’ (Smith 1964: 2). Such governmental capacity may involve the development of an elected tier of government but not necessarily so. Even if it does, it will not compromise the legislative powers of central government. It is simply an executive capacity. Thirdly, closely associated with such developments, whether of devolved institutions with legislative powers or regional institutions with executive powers, is consideration of how such developments allow for ‘the spatial co-ordination of many different policies’ (Hall 1989: 8) at a level between the local and the state levels. Recent debates have seen narrow economic conceptions of regional co-ordination replaced by more holistic concerns with regional development, where sustainable economic development is considered in terms of wider social and environmental regional agendas (Townroe and Martin 1992). Both devolution and regionalism can be considered for their impact on regional development strategies.

The institutional changes wrought in the UK between 1997 and 1999 clearly introduced devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, albeit on different bases. They also consolidated governmental regionalism in England, with a new elected body being introduced for London, and political debates about the journey for the other English regions. Equally, the changes provided new potential for the spatial co-ordination of public policies at the regional level across the UK. For analysts of devolution, regionalism and regional development the study of the UK became of particular interest. The implications of these reforms for politics, governance and public policy in the nations/regions of the UK by the end of the Blair governments in 2007 provide the subject of this book.

As a prelude to substantive discussion this chapter has five principal aims. First, it will seek to explain the origins of the United Kingdom as a territorial state and the place of the nations/regions in it. Second, it will explain the pressures that led during the late twentieth century to new regional approaches, and in turn the implications of Thatcherism, the key state reform project of the late twentieth century. An analysis of both of these issues is essential to an understanding of contemporary developments. Third, the chapter will address how the 1997–1999 reforms introduced devolution and regionalism, and how the 1990s more broadly saw the development of new paradigms in regional development. Fourth, it will consider a number of key contexts affecting the operation of devolution, regionalism and regional development up to 2007. Finally, the chapter will explain the rationale of the book. There is a concern to understand the implications of the 1997–1999 reforms for overall regional capacity in the UK, which in turn raises key questions that contributors will address in framing their analyses.

Nations, regions and origins of a United Kingdom

The United Kingdom first emerged as a unified state in 1800, originally as Great Britain and Ireland. The raison d’être for the state rested initially on history and geography. Waves of Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Norman invasion from the mainland continent of Europe had established the English as the dominant people with the indigenous Celtic Welsh, Scots and Irish thrown back into the peripheral areas of the British Isles archipelago. The Welsh never successfully created their own independent kingdom, leading to a process of incorporation by English monarchs over several centuries. The sixteenth century acts of union were the consolidation of a reality that had pertained for some time. The Scottish, however, did establish their own independent kingdom, leading to tensions between the English and the Scots for much of the early modern period. Ultimately, English views rested on strategic concerns about Scotland’s relations with potential enemies from mainland Europe; Scotland in turn always felt vulnerable against its overwhelming neighbour to the South. The chance fusion of the English and Scottish Monarchies paved the way for a full act of union in 1707, negotiated between the respective political elites. Similar strategic concerns fuelled English interests in controlling Ireland, although here religious differences between predominantly Protestant Britain and Catholic Ireland, and British interests in land settlement, also played a key part. The 1800 Act of Union reflected the ultimately decisive influence of British security fears and the desire for political stability (for a range of perspectives see Colley 1992; Davies 1999; Bulpitt 1983).

The results of this English imperialism were not, however, a simple coercive English-centric state. Multiple sources of grievance notwithstanding, a number of scholars contend that the UK developed constitutionally in a manner consistent with the union state model (Mitchell 2004; Mclean and McMillan 2005). It is important to recognise that such a conception still recognises that ‘administrative standardisation prevails over most of the territory’; simply that ‘the consequences of personal union entail the survival in some areas of pre-union rights and institutional infrastructures which preserve some degree of regional autonomy and serve as agencies of indigenous elite recruitment’ (Rokkan and Urwin 1982: 11). Consequently, until the late twentieth century, the UK was predominantly governed as a unitary state. This rested on the central principle of the sovereignty of the UK Parliament at Westminster with sole right to make legislation and enact taxation. The development of the franchise and popular politics led to a party system that in the main was British-wide. The Liberal–Conservative dominated system before 1914 and the Labour–Conservative dominated one after 1945 both spanned Scotland and Wales as well as England. There was a unified civil service based in Whitehall. Experience of relative economic success and Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries cemented London and the South East of England as the financial and economic power house of the state, not to mention its principal cultural centre. Equally, it consolidated presumptions of Westminster as the principal locus of power to which aspiring politicians from all parts of the UK would descend.

Nevertheless, the politics of union encompassed quite distinct territorial issues and political differentiation (for more detailed summaries see McGarry and O’Leary, 1997; Griffiths 1996; Brown et al. 1998). Throughout this period, territorial politics in the United Kingdom was deeply troubled by the Irish Question. During the nineteenth century a movement for Irish national autonomy emerged, and after three efforts at home rule within the context of the UK, the 1920 Government of Ireland Act effectively divided Ireland. This established a process that gradually led to the South, with an overwhelming Catholic majority, forming its own state as the Republic of Ireland. Meanwhile, a rump Northern Ireland, with a majority of pro-union Protestants, remained in the UK albeit with a devolved Parliament. The Stormont Parliament lasted until 1972, presided over by a succession of Protestant unionist leaders, dependent upon UK finance but governing in a manner largely free of UK central government control. While it engendered fierce support from the unionist community, the Stormont Parliament was deeply opposed by Catholic, nationalist and republican minorities. The institutions of Protestant unionism and nationalist republicanism marked out the distinctiveness of the political-cultural life of Northern Ireland. Orange orders harked back to William of Orange, the Protestant pretender who took the British throne in 1688, and asserted the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland with victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Catholic nationalists identified with the Republic of Ireland’s constitutional claim on Northern Ireland. Schools and community associations were organised by this religious-political division, and each summer there was a marching season during which the Protestant–Catholic battles of the late seventeenth century were commemorated. A distinctive party system also emerged, ranged between Protestant unionist parties, by the 1970s led by the Ulster Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party, and nationalist republican parties, principally the Social Democratic Labour Party and Sinn Féin.

Northern Ireland may have been particularly distinctive, but during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the territorial dimension of the UK remained apparent in four other key ways. First, the saliency of national or regional identity was reflected in distinctive civil institutions. By the 1707 Act of Union Scotland sustained its own established Church of Scotland, its own system of education and its own system of civil law. Wales sustained a separate language distinct from the English spoken throughout the British Isles. By the late twentieth century surveys indicated that approximately 20 per cent continued to speak the language with areas of West and North Wales having it as a working language. The introduction of a Welsh language television station—S4C—the growth of Welsh language radio media and the requirement from 1988 that all school pupils take Welsh up to the age of 14 cemented the language in modern Welsh culture.

Second, differences in national culture stimulated differences in national politics. During the twentieth century the Scottish and the Welsh increasingly came to distinguish themselves by their support for social collectivism or national autonomy in contrast to the individualistic values attributed to the English. As a result, the Labour Party through most of the twentieth century enjoyed a clear advantage over both the Conservative and Liberal/Liberal Democrat parties. This contrasted sharply with party fortunes in England, where, with the exception of certain landmark elections like 1945, the Conservative Party was dominant. Scotland and Wales also saw the rise of nationalist parties—the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru (Party of Wales)—to take parliamentary seats in the 1960s. In Scotland the SNP, which campaigned clearly for independence, regularly polled around 20 per cent of the vote.

Third, the saliency of territorial politics was reflected in notions of economic territory. During the post-Second World War era, when ideas of state responsibility for the management of the economy became orthodox, notions of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish economies as distinct entities emerged. They became ‘standard regions’ for the UK, used as a basis for the collection of statistical data, and considered in aggregate terms when planning economic policy. There were also ramifications from British relative economic decline when confidence in the British state to deliver high levels of employment began to diminish. Campaigns emerged in Scotland to argue that North Sea oil was ‘Scotland’s oil’ rather than Britain’s. In Wales, activities of English corporations to use Wales as source of water supply had a similar, if somewhat more limited, effect in encouraging a sense of national economic self-consciousness. The notion of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as economic territories led to the creation of development agencies during the 1970s. Subsequently, their general brief to promote economic development, combined with the efforts of other ‘national’ lobbies such as the Scottish or Welsh tourist industry, consolidated the economic institutionalisation of the UK’s nations and regions.

Fourth, territory also came to define public policy institutions. This occurred in an overtly political sense in a number of ways. UK Government developed the modern principle of the territorial department of state. From 1885 UK Government decided to organise the services of many central departments of state as they applied to Scotland from a new central department called the Scottish Office. A minister of government was put in charge, who conventionally was a Scottish MP, and from the 1920s he/she was given Cabinet rank. The Scottish Office had both London and Edinburgh headquarters and whilst entirely being part of the UK central system of government came to be a focus for the debate of Scottish public affairs. The principle was subsequently applied in Wales with the creation of the Welsh Office in 1964, and was forced upon UK Government in the case of Northern Ireland when devolution had to be abandoned in 1972 to be replaced by UK direct rule.

In each of these cases, debate of public policy focused around the policies promoted by the secretaries of state and the critiques of their political opponents. From the 1970s this principle of territorialising central government was exacerbated by the explicit territorialising of public expenditure allocation to these departments. Through the Barnett formula, the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Offices received block grant allocations that were based on proportionate ratio calculations to English levels of expenditure. Generally, these allocations were judged to be generous in per capita terms in recognition of the special demands placed by identity politics on the politics of the UK.

Distinctive territorial institutional arrangements extended to forms of political organisation in the UK Parliament. Patterns of over-representation developed in the number of MPs relative to population for both Scotland and Wales relative to England. The Scottish and Welsh Grand Committees provided opportunities for general debates by MPs just from these countries, and the Scottish, Welsh and latterly the Northern Ireland select committees provided opportunities for the scrutiny of the relevant territorial departments. Special standing committees allowed Scottish MPs separate debate of Scottish civil law. Distinctive territorial arrangements also extended to the development of public policy institutions in the territories that were not overtly political. For example, Scotland and Wales amassed a number of ‘national’ cultural institutions such as ‘national’ libraries as well as distinctive national pressure groups. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have long had their own sports teams in international competition. Scotland and Northern Ireland have distinctive pounds sterling notes. Each of these territories has its own distinctive national/regional media to comment on public affairs at a Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish level. All of these institutions have developed for their own reasons, but nevertheless cumulatively have consolidated the idea of distinctive national or regional communities.

Although there were always dissident nationalist voices, especially in Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom for several decades after the First World War was a relatively settled entity. Some scholars stressed the integrative implications of the common experience of Empire and two world wars, and the relatively high levels of cultural, political and economic exchange between England, Scotland and Wales (Birch 1989; Garside and Hebbert 1989). Others stressed the continuing lack of strong ties that bind. Notably, Bulpitt argued that stability was the product of a dual polity in which central government and politics in the various territories of the UK generally operated in quite separate ways. In other words, the notion of a union state was a constitutional nicety; the reality was that the centre had more than enough to do, and simply allowed local collaborative elites the autonomy to govern on routine issues in these distinct parts of the state (Bulpitt 1983). Whichever was the case, in the mid twentieth century few inhabitants would have seriously questioned the territorial unity of the UK state. By the 1970s, however, a variety of movements had developed which questioned the very nature of the state.

Pressures for change and Thatcherism

The most dramatic changes occurred in Northern Ireland. Nationalist republicanism grew stronger as criticism of the perceived abuses of unionist governments spawned a major civil rights movement. Paramilitary violence and growing civil disorder then led the UK Government to suspend the Stormont Parliament and impose direct rule in 1972. From this point onwards Northern Ireland was ruled as the rest of the UK from the centre, with the assistance of a territorial office of central government headed by a Cabinet minister.

Almost as soon as direct rule was established, debates developed about restoring devolved government in Northern Ireland, albeit this time on the basis of power sharing between the parties representing both the nationalist and unionist communities. The Sunningdale agreement in 1973 provided for a power-sharing assembly accompanied by a Council for Ireland, which would also establish governmental co-operation between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The arrangements did not last long, defeated by a Protestant workers’ revolt against the idea of sharing power with nationalists. Direct UK rule was restored, accompanied again by unrelenting paramilitary action by the provisional lrish Republican Army (IRA) against unionist targets both in Northern Ireland and on the English ‘Mainland’, provoking in response violence by Protestant loyalist paramilitary groups. Such sectarian bitterness made the prospect of power-sharing devolution very unlikely, and by the time Mrs Thatcher, the most unionist of ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of tables and figure
• Contributors
• Preface and acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Devolution in the UK
• PART II Regionalism in England
• PART III Regional development in the UK