"Dancing with Dogma. Britain under Thatcherism" by Ian Gilmour

Résumé du document

The document under study here is extracted from Dancing with Dogma. Britain under Thatcherism, a book by Ian Gilmour, a Scottish leading figure on the liberal, or "wet", left-wing of the Conservative party, essentially under the governments of Heath and Thatcher. The piece of writing concentrates on the debate over devolution -that is to say, the delegation of power from a superior organ to an inferior one, in our perspective, from Westminster to the Scottish Parliament- as it took place under Thatcherism. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the emergence of still greater pro-devolution movements in Scotland, with the 1988 Claim of Rights for Scotland and the creation of a Constitutional Convention, which gathered for the first time in March 1989, in response to Margaret Thatcher's lack of concern for devolution.

Extraits

[...] Throughout the whole text, Gilmour indulges in a systematic criticism and dismantling of the right-wing Conservatives' arguments against devolution to Scotland. He skilfully underlines the fallacy and inaccuracy of the three main grounds set forth by the traditional wing of his party, showing in the meantime his own pro-devolution position. This aspect of the document is the point of our last section. It is worth mentioning that Mrs Thatcher has never been in friendly terms with Ian Gilmour –this is an overstatement. [...]

[...] Thatcher disliked such “left-leaning” people, instinctive Unionist as she was. The tension subsequently the clash, if we may between the two factions of the Conservative party is palpable in the text, Gilmour taking great care in dismantling the right wing's rationale against devolution. Indeed, the text contrasts the pro-devolution leadership of the Scottish Conservatives with the unionist grass-roots of the party. As regards the asymmetry, said to run counter to the principles of the Union, which the right-wing Conservatives point out as a major flaw of therefore, a main argument against– devolution, Gilmour argues that symmetry was never effective in the British Constitution. [...]

[...] As a first remark, it is worth mentioning that Margaret Thatcher Thatcherites as well to some extent– always considered herself “English to the core and Unionist through and through”. She saw the Welfare State, which so many Scots regarded as protective and redistributive, as a mere Nanny State, a “fundamental source in Britain's weakness”, since it did not give people the incentive to fend for themselves and kept them in what she called a dependency culture. From the beginning of her first mandate, the Prime Minister did not show much concern for the economic problems soon arising in Scotland because of her own policy of financial purging –unemployment, privatization–, which resulted in the Conservative party losing more and more seats favour of the Labour party (line in this part of the Kingdom “Doomsday scenario” was already in place. [...]

[...] As a traditional Conservative, Mrs Thatcher was a strong supporter of the United Kingdom, and did not accept the idea that devolution would consolidate the Union –dating from the 1707 Act of Union. The first major flaw pointed out by the unionist faction of the Conservative party as regards the process of devolution is the constitutional and historical asymmetry it would draw between Scotland and England Wales and Northern Ireland to a lesser extent in the text. Indeed, this side-effect of devolution has often been set forth, emphasizing the inequality that devolution would create to the detriment of England. [...]

[...] Reduction of Scottish and Welsh representation at Westminster; 4. Scottish and Welsh MPs to speak and vote only on those matters not transferred to Scottish and Welsh Assemblies so-called and members”. Indeed, when Gilmour points out that number of Scottish MPs in Westminster would have to be cut this echoes the third answer to the West Lothian question for instance. At last, as regards the anti-European argument against devolution, Gilmour highlights its greatest contradiction: “Scotland [would be] in the EC and England out of (lines 49-50). [...]