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The Council of the Isles and the Scotland-Northern Ireland relationship
by Graham Walker
Taylor, Trimble and fellow Unionist MP William Ross all tabled questions on Scottish matters, mostly with an Ulster connection real or implied and special attention was given to Scottish-Ulster links in the policy areas of transport, tourism, education and dealings with the European Union. All of these were to be cited as areas of possible exploration and co-operation through the BIC in the terms of the Belfast Agreement. In 1995 Trimble asked Lang to list 'the joint programmes' between the Scottish and Northern Ireland Offices, to which the reply came that there were no joint programmes as such but various cases of 'close working relationships' between the two department (Hansard 22 March 1995). In raising the question Trimble may have wished to float the idea of more formal Scottish-Ulster administrative harmony. Finally, the Monklands Affair, raising as it did the question of religious sectarianism on the part of the local Lanarkshire council, allowed Trimble to signal that 'Orange and Green' tensions did not just have political ramifications in Northern Ireland, and that the Scottish and Ulster political cultures had much in common. Indeed, he called in 1994 for the creation in Scotland of 'a moderate, right of centre, pro-union alternative to Labour, which the present Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties cannot provide' (Hansard 14 June 1994).
It was notable that the Ulster Unionists, under the leadership of David Trimble, responded positively to the election of the Blair government in May 1997, and its constitutional reform agenda. In the House of Commons Trimble said that 'the government's commitment to decentralisation and openness creates opportunities for us' (Hansard 16 May 1997). The Unionists had a history of largely pro-Conservative sympathies to live down and they were anxious to show that they were amenable to 'New Labour's plans for 'New Britain'. Trimble stressed that if arguments for devolution in Scotland were made on the basis of Scotland's separate legal system and social differences, then such arguments applied with equal force in Northern Ireland. He pledged that his party would be in the thick of the debate, and that they would support devolution based on 'sensible co-operation' between the centre and the regions. On the other hand he was against breaking the fiscal unity of the UK, and thus against proposals to give the Scottish Parliament additional taxation powers, and he was at pains to impress upon the Labour Prime Minister that references to 'our country' and 'our nation' should be truly inclusive, and should not censor out 'the British people of Ulster' (Hansard 10 May 1997).
This was an important marker to lay down, and it seems no coincidence that
the new Labour government has included Northern Ireland in its reform plans,
and has produced a wider and more imaginative framework for agreement in
the Province than its predecessors. Trimble was to be found endorsing the
idea of a Council of the Isles in the autumn of 1997 (Irish Times 6 December
1997) and it appears that he was able to wed his desire for a strong East-West
dimension to the Labour government's more regionally conscious, if vague,
vision of a new British future (Parliamentary Brief 1998). Moreover, the
strength of the argument in favour of some institutional expression of the
myriad examples of East-West links embracing all of Ireland , North and
South, was such as to disarm traditionalist Irish Nationalist opposition.
It appears that these Nationalists felt that the inclusion of the Council
of the Isles would be the price they would have to pay for the North-South
bodies, whose range of powers and functions were confidently expected to
be far greater. Nationalists seemed to believe that the BIC would soon assume
the role of a mere talking-shop. |
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