“…Its initial reactive pronouncements invoked the idea of UDI. Ian Smith's unilateral declaration of independence of Rhodesia in the context of British imperial retreat provided a model for Vanguard (Lowry, 1996). Craig (1972) wrote following Stormont's prorogation: We have no doubt there is a place for interdependence.…”
This article examines the idea of Northern Ireland independence in Unionist political thought. It focuses on three moments which compelled Ulster Unionists to re‐evaluate Northern Ireland's constitutional status as part of the United Kingdom—the Stormont parliament's cohabitation with the post‐war Labour government, Stormont's collapse in 1972, and the Anglo‐Irish Agreement of 1985. It argues that rather than being the expression of Ulster nationalism or a contractarian understanding of political obligation, Unionist arguments for independence were motivated by a classical republican concern: the arbitrary power Northern Ireland is subject to as part of the United Kingdom. This locates Unionist thought on independence within a problem of democratic self‐determination: the relationship between majority rule and the bounds of the political community. The article finds that each moment compelled particular Unionist thinkers to reconceive of Ulster Unionists as a political minority subject to arbitrary power in the UK constitution and to choose between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom as the sovereign political community. The article is unique as there exists little scholarship on the idea of Northern Ireland independence and instructive in providing a challenging case study to assess the attraction and determinacy of classical republicanism as a theory of self‐determination.
“…Its initial reactive pronouncements invoked the idea of UDI. Ian Smith's unilateral declaration of independence of Rhodesia in the context of British imperial retreat provided a model for Vanguard (Lowry, 1996). Craig (1972) wrote following Stormont's prorogation: We have no doubt there is a place for interdependence.…”
This article examines the idea of Northern Ireland independence in Unionist political thought. It focuses on three moments which compelled Ulster Unionists to re‐evaluate Northern Ireland's constitutional status as part of the United Kingdom—the Stormont parliament's cohabitation with the post‐war Labour government, Stormont's collapse in 1972, and the Anglo‐Irish Agreement of 1985. It argues that rather than being the expression of Ulster nationalism or a contractarian understanding of political obligation, Unionist arguments for independence were motivated by a classical republican concern: the arbitrary power Northern Ireland is subject to as part of the United Kingdom. This locates Unionist thought on independence within a problem of democratic self‐determination: the relationship between majority rule and the bounds of the political community. The article finds that each moment compelled particular Unionist thinkers to reconceive of Ulster Unionists as a political minority subject to arbitrary power in the UK constitution and to choose between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom as the sovereign political community. The article is unique as there exists little scholarship on the idea of Northern Ireland independence and instructive in providing a challenging case study to assess the attraction and determinacy of classical republicanism as a theory of self‐determination.
“…As Donal Lowry observes, the Irish Home Rule crisis in parliament reverberated across the settler communities of the Empire, with echoes of Ulster's vocal loyalist resistance sounding throughout the first half of the twentieth century in Rhodesia, Natal and what would become Kenya. 22 The wariness of Irish aristocrat imperialism in Africa was heightened by the perceived threat of London's creeping disengagement from its colonial attachments, and the added insult of the 1916 Rising further reinforced hard-line unionist perspectives. John Cole wrote home from France, where he was serving with the North Ireland Horse Brigade, to suggest that the British Chief Secretary, Augustine Birrell, "ought to be hung beside Casement" for his disastrous failure to quell the insurgency, and to express his relief that his father was safe and well, having heard reports that members of Dublin's Kildare Street Club, on their way home from the Fairyhouse races, had been seized by the rebels and kept as hostages: "…the idea of you languishing in a papist guard room is too aweful (sic)," he wrote.…”
“…60 As Donal Lowry has argued in a further cases of transnational constitutional history knowledge the Northern Irish and Southern Rhodesians kept detailed notes of each other's history and relations with Britain seeing mutually beneficial lessons on how to deal with perfidious Albion. 61 Julius Nyerere, as Ellen Feingold argues, sought to place on the early bench of independent Tanzania black judges from West Africa and the West Indies including having a Canadian educated Dominican, Telford Georges, serving in Trinidad and Tobago to come to Dar-es-Salaam and become the first non-white Chief Justice of the territory.…”
Section: Post-war and Professional Commonwealth Constitutional Historymentioning
This article provides a survey and definition of the field of Commonwealth constitutional history since 1918, especially during and after global decolonisation. It asks what is Commonwealth constitutional history and how it differs from its English and Imperial counterparts. The article puts forward a working definition of Commonwealth constitutional history and introduces key and diverse writers who illustrate the range and potential of this history. The article provides an historiography and survey of constitutional history in the Pre-Commonwealth and Postwar Commonwealth periods while also assessing the opportunities of Post-British Commonwealth constitutional history. Throughout the article is the objective to show how Commonwealth constitutional history can contribute to the historical study of state power and to see its worth to other fields of history and disciplines. Commonwealth constitutional history is a necessity to examine the politics, power and consequences of the British empire during the long age of decolonisation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
