The Territorial Dimension

Abstract

Before the 1960s a chapter on ‘territorial politics’ probably would not have appeared in a book of this kind. For not only was the United Kingdom a unitary state, as it still is, it was also a homogenous state. The ‘homogeneity thesis’, which was widely held by British political scientists, argued that Britain’s unitary constitution was underpinned by an increasingly uniform political culture in which religious, linguistic and national differences were overridden by differences based on social class. Hence separate discussion of the various national components of the UK was not required since these countries were becoming progressively more alike. But in the late 1960s and 1970s the emergence of nationalist movements in Scotland and Wales and of ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland provided a reminder of the complex, multinational nature of the UK. Its taken-for-granted unity disappeared as problems with the territorial management of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by Westminster politicians pressed to the fore.