New Wales
You are in the company of Roger Warren Evans
The Little Red Book
Continued > Page 2 of 8
first published in mid-January 1999 by Roger Warren Evans
LABOUR has created a system of self-government within
the framework of a province. Nowhere does the term province
appear in legislation, nor do the terms state or nation state, to describe the UK.
They are all popular, everyday terms for the realities
of power. And the character of a UK self-governing province will
emerge, like statehood, from political custom and practice.
NO PARALLELS are to be drawn with the provinces of
Canada or Spain, or with the states of America, or with the
German Lander. The closest parallel is with France where
devolved power has similarly been hewn from the granite of
a unitary state. But the truth is that all parallels are misleading.
There are no precedents. Wales will differ in key respects from the
provinces of Scotland and Northern Ireland, with different
features, different strengths. The emerging province of Wales
will be unique.
THE STRENGTH of the 1998 Welsh settlement is that it is
complete, self-sufficient, without loose ends. There is no illogic.
There is no West Lothian Question. Westminster, acting for
the UK state, retains primary legislative jurisdiction in all matters,
with secondary legislative powers devolved to the Welsh
Assembly. The right to enact primary legislation for a society is one of the distinctive badges of statehood. That is where Labour
has drawn the constitutional line, and where the majority in Wales
wish to see the line drawn. The province of Wales will be defined within the constraints of that principle. Future political debate will
determine where the lines are in turn to be drawn, as between primary
and secondary legislation: that will be no mere technicality. But as the outlines of the new Welsh constitution are drawn, Wales will remain, with Labour, an integral component of the UK state.
Separatism forms no part of the Labour agenda.
WELSH DEVOLUTION will set the scene for future
UK constitutional change. Because Wales, with its population
nearing 3m, represents an excellent test-rig for devolution
within England. Excluding London, England consists of eight regions, with an average population of 5m. As Wales goes, so could
the nation, quite comfortably. Labour should beware of the threat
to devolution which that parallel presents. For the Whitehall civil servants negotiating the London/Cardiff concordats, indeed
those drafting the secondary legislation under the Government
of Wales Act itself, must know that they are writing the script
for future Civil Service careers. Their propensity will be to retain
power in London, rather than to allow its dispersal.
GRANITE IS HARD. And in legal terms, the UK unitary constitution is like granite. Noone should underestimate
the sheer technical difficulties of dissecting the entire corpus of UK statute law and of assigning functions, both legislative and
executive, to either Westminster or Cardiff. The first phase of the
task will not be complete until mid-1999, when the first
Transfer Order will come into force, under Section 22 of the Government of Wales Act. But once the task has been completed
for Wales, the result will stand ready for use by an Assembly of
the North, or the South West, or the West Midlands.
There must be systematic devolution within each UK Party, except perhaps the nationalist parties. And for Labour, that mass membership and how members are to be engaged in must be achieved, without fracturing the unity of the UK Party.
Next Page
Return to Little Red Book
Previous Page
Drop me a line
<
Back to today's Home Page