Anthony Birch - Nationalism and National Integration (1989)

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NATIONALISM

ANDNATIONAL

INTEGRATION





NATIONALISM

ANDNATIONAL

INTEGRATION

Anthony H.Birch

University of Victoria, British Columbia

London

UNWIN HYMANBoston Sydney Wellington



©Anthony H.Birch, 1989This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction

without permission. All rights reserved.

Published by the Academic Division of Unwin Hyman Ltd,15/17 Broadwick Street, London W1V 1FP, UK

Unwin Hyman Inc.,8 Winchester Place, Winchester, Mass. 01890, USA

Allen & Unwin (Australia) Ltd,8 Napier Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060, Australia

Allen & Unwin (New Zealand) Ltd in association with the PortNicholson Press Ltd,

Compusales Building, 75 Ghuznee Street,Wellington 1, New Zealand

First published in 1989

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Birch, A H (Anthony Harold), 1924– Nationalism and national integration.1. NationalismI. Title320.54

ISBN 0-203-40005-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-70829-6 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0-04-320180-6 (Print Edition)ISBN 0-04-320181-4 pbk

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Birch, Anthony Harold.Nationalism and national integration/Anthony H.Birch.

p. cm.Bibliography: p.Includes index.ISBN 0-04-320180-6 (alk. paper).—ISBN 0-04-320181-4 (pbk.:alk. paper)

1. Nationalism. 2. National state. I. Title. JC311.B478 1989 88–31365320.54091712–dc 19 CIP



v

Contents

List of Tables page ix

Acknowledgements xi

PART I: Theory and Principles 1

1 Concepts and problems 3

2 The origins and nature of nationalist theory 13

3 Nationalism and its critics 25

4 National integration 36

5 The question of minority rights 52

6 Minority nationalist movements and the question of secession 63

PART II: Practice and Experience 75

7 National integration in the United Kingdom 77

1 The British state 77

2 Wales and Scotland 813 Ireland 964 Coloured minorities 1115 National integration and nationalism 130

8 National integration in Canada 138

1 The Canadian state 1382 Anglophones and francophones 143

3 Ethnic diversity and multiculturalism 1674 The indigenous peoples 1725 National integration and nationalism 178

9 National integration in Australia 183

1 The Australian state 1832 Ethnicity and immigration 1893 Multiculturalism 1964 The integration of immigrants 2005 The indigenous peoples 2086 National integration and nationalism 214

10 Conclusions 221

Bibliography 239Index 248





vii

List of Tables

7.1 Specialization of employment in regions of the

UK in 1966 page 827.2 The growth of electoral support for Welsh and

Scottish Nationalists 897.3 Proportions of British people showing racial prejudice

in 1964 and 1981 1167.4 Unemployment rates by ethnic origin: 1982 1197.5 Occupational attainments among the coloured

workforce 1207.6 Educational achievements in six inner-city areas in

England, 1978–9 121

7.7 Percentages of Asian adults speaking English ‘slightly’or ‘not at all’ in 1982 124

8.1 National self-identification of Quebec francophones 1588.2 Support for Quebec independence by region and

ethnicity 1628.3 Ethnic origins of the Canadian population in 1981 1699.1 Australian public opinion about the number of Asian





ix

immigrants 1929.2 Ethnic origins of the Australian population 1959.3 Commonwealth expenditure on services to immigrants,

1985–6 199

Acknowledgements

I have been very fortunate in writing this book. My thanks go to theRockefeller Foundation for appointing me Writer-in-Residence attheir study centre on Lake Como, where I wrote some of thetheoretical chapters in surroundings of great natural beauty. I amgrateful also to the Australian National University for appointingme to a Visiting Fellowship, which provided me with excellentfacilities for research and stimulating intellectual companionship. Imust also thank the University of Victoria for several travel grants.

At a personal level, I am grateful to Don Aitken, Frank Castles,Barry Dexter and Charles Price of the Australian National University,and to Ian McAllister of the Australian Defence Force Academy, allof whom were generous with their time and advice. My warm thanksgo to Colin Bennett of the University of Victoria for his thoughtfulcomments on the manuscript. In addition, I should like to expressmy appreciation of the valuable work done by Richard Rose and hiscolleagues at the University of Strathclyde on matters relating tonational integration in the United Kingdom. Of course, none of these

colleagues bears any responsibility for my mistakes andmisinterpretations.

Finally, I should like to thank my wife Dorothy for her constantsupport and, as ever, her invaluable help.

Anthony H.BirchVictoria, B.C.





PART I

Theory and Principles





3

1 Concepts and problems

Nationalism is the most successful political ideology in humanhistory. In the two centuries since its first formulation in the writingsof European philosophers, it has caused the political map of the world

to be completely redrawn, with the entire land surface (apart fromAntarctica) now divided between nation-states. Nevertheless, nearlyall of these states contain ethnic or cultural minorities within theirborders that are only imperfectly integrated into the national society.The process, problems and frequent failures of national integrationare issues of central importance in the contemporary world.

The main object of this book is to relate the theory of nationalismto the practice of national integration. Chapters 2 and 3 contain an

outline of the way in which nationalist theory emerged together withan analysis of the criticisms that have been levelled against it. Chapters4 and 5 explain the processes that are summed up by the term‘national integration’; examine the normative arguments that havebeen advanced in support or criticism of these processes; and discussthe vexed contemporary question of the circumstances in whichcultural minorities within a national state can reasonably be said tohave rights. Chapter 6 discusses the further question of whether such

minorities, if territorially concentrated, can ever have the right tosecede; and includes a set of hypotheses to explain why minoritynationalist movements have become more prominent in the past twodecades.

The second part of the book is devoted to case studies of national integration in the United Kingdom, Canada andAustralia. The fact that these three countries are all liberaldemocracies with similar traditions of parliamentary governmentfacilitates the task of making comparative generalizations abouttheir differing experiences in respect of social, economic andpolitical integration. However, the case studies also illustratesome of the problems of integration that are experienced in stateswith widely differing systems of government. As a preliminary tothis analysis, the present chapter will deal with questions of definition.



4 Nationalism and National Integration

Defining nationalism

One of the problems faced by all students of politics is that the termsthey use are also used, in ways that are often confusing, bypoliticians, journalists and members of the general public. This isconspicuously true of the term ‘nationalism’, which is commonlyused in a great variety of ways. It is sometimes used to describeloyalty to the state, for which the proper term is patriotism. It issometimes used to describe the belief that one’s own culture andcivilization are superior to all others, for which the proper term ischauvinism. It is sometimes used to describe feelings of nationalidentity, which is not so much an incorrect usage as an

understandable but loose usage. Scotsmen in England who make ahabit of wearing the kilt and eating haggis might well be describedby their neighbours as ‘real Scots nationalists’. However, Scotsmenin Scotland would only be described in that way if they supportedthe creation of a Scottish National Assembly and the eventualsecession of Scotland from the United Kingdom, and this secondway of using the term is more correct. Properly used, the termnationalism refers to a political doctrine about the organization of

political authority.This doctrine is generally expressed in terms that are specific to

particular communities, but it can and should also be expressed interms of a general theory about good government. The specificversions of nationalism take two slightly different forms, of whichone is ‘the Ruritanian people ought to be united under a singleRuritanian government’ and the other is ‘the Ruritanian peopleought to be liberated from foreign domination so that they can

govern themselves’. The general theory has been neatly summarizedby Kedourie in the three propositions ‘that humanity is naturallydivided into nations, that nations are known by certaincharacteristics which can be ascertained, and that the onlylegitimate type of government is national self-government’(Kedourie, 1961, p. 9). The central thrust of this doctrine, which hasinspired numerous movements for reform or revolution, is thatpolitical authority exercised by principalities, city-states andempires is illegitimate. It is a European doctrine, that emerged at thetime of the French revolution, and has since been exported to orcopied by politicians in other parts of the world. It is not always ahelpful guide to the practical problems of government in the variousareas in which it has been adopted, and indeed Kedourie is one of those who believe that the emergence and influence of the doctrinehas been deeply unfortunate. Nevertheless, it is the most popular



5Concepts and problems

and influential political doctrine ever promoted, and it hastransformed the political map of the world.

There are two main sources of ambiguity about the character of this influential but sometimes misunderstood doctrine. The lessimportant of these is that most nationalist writers and leaders, from

J.G.Fichte to Yasser Arafat, have been concerned with making acase for the independence of a particular nation rather than withnationalism as an abstract and generalized doctrine. Whereassocialist and liberal propagandists have commonly drawn particularlessons for their societies from universal principles about goodgovernment, proponents of nationalism have tended to be moreparochial.

Fichte emphasized the special virtues of the German language andculture. When Mazzini was promoting the cause of Italian unificationand self-government he spent much of his time writing about theglories of the Roman Empire and the historic virtues of Italiancivilization. When the Parti Quebecois campaigned for the secessionof Quebec from Canada, it based its case largely on French-Canadiangrievances about their treatment by the anglophone majority andthe belief that the French language and culture could only be protected

in North America if Quebec became self-governing. All of these claimsrested upon the generalized belief that a society with a distinctlanguage and civilization is entitled to govern itself, but in these andother cases the student of nationalist ideas has to extract thegeneralized argument from a mass of particular arguments of purelylocal relevance.

The second and more important source of ambiguity aboutnationalism is the extreme difficulty of defining the social unit which,

according to nationalist principles, is entitled to govern itself. If oneclaims that every people or society has this right, one is immediatelyin trouble. How many peoples or societies are there in the world?How are their boundaries to be defined and charted? If one says thatonly a national society has this right, how is one to define a nationalsociety without falling into the circular argument that it is a societythat governs itself? How, in fact, can one define a nation? The problemcan be illustrated by tabulating three groups of concepts, onesociological, one cultural and the third institutional.

The concepts in these three columns all refer to entities which canbe identified by consulting documentary sources or by chartingpersonal relationships. The difficulty about the concept of nation isthat it seems to spread across all three categories. Ideally, it might be(and has been) said that a nation is a society which has a distinctivecivilization and also possesses its own state. However, as a general




Sociological Cultural Institutional Concepts Concepts Concepts

Family Religion Municipality

Clan Language CountyTribe Literature ProvinceCommunity Culture StateSociety Civilization Empire

definition this has the crippling disadvantage of rendering theproposition that every nation ought to have its own state purelycircular. What is wanted is a more modest definition that wouldidentify the characteristics a society needs to support a claim to be

a national society. Various authors have tried to do this in terms of such qualities as a common language, a common religion, or acommon ethnic identity. In practice, however, the real worldpresents such a variety of social bases for nationhood that no oneof them can plausibly be singled out as either sufficient ornecessary. A territory is necessary, but that is a geographicalrequirement rather than a social basis. The social bases of nationhood have included culture and history in France, language

in Germany, ethnicity in Japan, and religion in Pakistan and Israel.It is just not possible to define nationhood in terms of any onesocial or cultural criterion.

The French theorist Ernest Renan fell back on the purely subjectivedefinition that a nation is a group of people who believe themselvesto be a nation, but this is not very helpful. It is true that there areelements of subjectivity in the establishment of national identity, butneither individuals nor groups have a free choice in this matter. Group

identity is established by the situation and the observers at least asmuch as it is by the individual or collective self The present author,for instance, is identified as a Londoner when in the north of England,an Englishman when in Scotland, a European when in Africa, aCanadian when crossing the 49th parallel, a white when in Harlem,and a middle-class male almost everywhere. He does not have muchchoice about these ascribed identities.

If the search for a purely social or cultural definition of nationhood

is ultimately fruitless, there is no alternative to that of adding apolitical ingredient. A nation is best defined as a society which eithergoverns itself today, or has done so in the past, or has a credibleclaim to do so in the not-too-distant future. This lends a degree of circularity to the definition of nationalism quoted above, which inlogical terms is most regrettable. Unfortunately, logic and historical




reality are somewhat incompatible in this instance. The pure theoryof nationalism supposes the existence of nations before they acquirepolitical expression, but in reality nations have to be created by aprocess which is at least partly political. Objection may also be takento the insistence on credibility in regard to nationalist aspirations,but this is by no means an insuperable objection. What makes aclaim to self-government credible is an empirical question rather thana conceptual one, and it will be discussed later in this book.

There are two other sources of confusion or difficulty aboutnationalism that may appropriately be mentioned at this point. Oneis a purely intellectual confusion, caused by writers who have linkedthe doctrine of nationalism with other contemporary doctrines,

producing such categories as conservative nationalism, liberalnationalism and socialist nationalism. This is a mistake, fornationalism is a doctrine about the proper relationship betweensociety and the political regime which can be held simultaneouslywith any one of the various doctrines about the proper extent andnature of government policies. People are not conservative nationalistsor liberal nationalists; they are nationalists who may happen also tobe either conservatives or liberals.

Another kind of difficulty in understanding nationalism arises fromthe fact that it is a European doctrine which has spread to other partsof the world where circumstances are different. Because the UnitedStates, for instance, is populated by immigrants from a variety of ethnicbackgrounds and cultures, American nationalism cannot have quitethe same character as German or French or Polish nationalism. It isnot easy for Americans, brought up to believe that all men are equal,to understand fully the feelings of ethnic and cultural pride that underlie

nationalist sentiments in most parts of Europe. Even more clearly, intropical Africa nationalism is an alien doctrine, adopted by governingelites to enhance the legitimacy of their rule, but not easily compatiblewith the reality of tribal loyalties and rivalries. The language andmessage of nationalism has spread round the globe, but the politicalforces described as nationalist differ from one region to another.

National integrationThe most inconvenient fact about the world for nationalist theoristsor propagandists is that the number of communities and culturalgroups far exceeds the number of states that either exist or couldreasonably be established. The first of Kedourie’s three propositions,while accurate as a summation of the logical foundation of nationalist




theory, is at complete variance with historical truth. Humanity isnot naturally divided into nations. For most of human history, for atleast 60,000 years and possibly for twice that period, humanity wasdivided into small tribes. As populations increased andcommunications improved, these tribes merged into larger socialgroupings, but nations are relatively recent and relatively artificialcreations. Very few of the national societies that now exist arecompletely homogeneous in a social and cultural sense. With a handfulof exceptions, modern nations are an amalgam of historicalcommunities which possessed a fairly clear sense of separate identityin the past but have been brought together by various economic,social and political developments. The process by which they are

brought together is known as political integration, and when it takesplace at the national level (as distinct from the regional orinternational levels) it is best described as national integration. Theelements of the process are not difficult to identify.

Let it be supposed that a group of political leaders acquire powerover a designated territory and its inhabitants. Their first step willbe to consolidate political control of the area, by quelling internalrivals, setting up frontier guards, establishing police and courts to

maintain order. Their second step, commonly known asadministrative penetration, will be to establish machinery forcollecting taxes and implementing laws through the area, whichwill involve the appointment of bureaucrats and the creation of aregister of taxpayers. These steps constitute the process of state-building, which has occurred in European states from the twelfthcentury onwards, in the United States, Canada and Australia in thenineteenth century, in the new states of the third world since the

Second World War.Until the last two centuries in Europe and North America, anduntil very recently in most other parts of the world, the demandsmade by the state or empire on its citizens were so small that noactive sense of loyalty was required for the governmental system tooperate. Taxes were minimal; government services were minimal;laws and regulations left people without interference in their normallives; and wars were fought by volunteers and mercenaries. In thiskind of situation, state-building was enough to make thegovernmental system work.

In recent generations, the development of the positive state hastransformed the situation. Citizens are now expected to comply witha myriad of laws and regulations; they are required to surrender alarge proportion of their income through taxation; they have to acceptconscription in times of war and to endure bombing and other




hardships if they are not conscripted. For all this to be possible, theregime requires an active sense of loyalty on the part of theoverwhelming majority of its citizens. They must feel that it is theirgovernment whom they are obeying, their country for which theyare making sacrifices. They are unlikely to feel this kind of loyaltyexcept in a society that both governs itself and has experienced aprocess of national integration.

The essential steps in this process can be listed. One of them is thecreation of symbols of national identity, such as a head of state, aflag and a national anthem. Another is the establishment of nationalpolitical institutions which bring all citizens under the same lawsand are also seen to be representative of the various sections of society.

It is not essential that members of these institutions should be elected,except in those western societies where free election is now regardedas the only proper way of choosing representatives. What is requiredfor the legitimation of the regime is simply that the main governingbodies should contain members to speak on behalf of, and possiblydrawn from, the main divisions of the nation. In the Soviet Unionthe Central Committee of the Communist Party owes part of itsauthority to the fact that it contains representatives from the Ukraine,

Siberia, Georgia and the Muslim republics. In Nigeria the cabinet isexpected to contain members of at least the three largest tribes. InCanada the cabinet is made up of a nicely-calculated mixture of anglophones and francophones, Protestants and Catholics, andrepresentatives of the various regions of the country.

A third essential step in the integrative process is the creation of an educational system which gives children a sense of national identity,teaches them about their common history, and (directly or indirectly)

inculcates patriotism. The control of the educational system is aninstrument of socialization which no modern state can afford toneglect. The first political leader to realize this was Robespierre, whostated as early as 1793 that ‘the nation alone has the right to bringup its children; we cannot confide this trust to family pride andindividual prejudice’. Numerous nationalist spokesmen since thattime have echoed these sentiments, and school curricula everywherehave been shaped to serve nationalistic and patriotic ends.

In some countries, such as the United States, a deliberate attemptis made to teach civics, while in others, such as Britain, nationalawareness is imparted simply through the teaching of history. Butsince a neutral version of history is unthinkable, the result is verysimilar. The importance of education in this context is dramaticallyillustrated by the example of Northern Ireland, where communalconflict has been exacerbated by the fact that the Protestant schools




have taught mainly British history, in which Ireland appears as anuisance, while the Catholic schools have emphasized Irish history,in which Britain is depicted as an enemy. In most, if not all, societiesthe activity of extracting an historical narrative from themultitudinous events of the past is an exercise in national myth-making which serves the end of national integration.

A fourth element, which to some extent follows on from the third,is the development of national pride. If people are to feel that theircountry is worth special sacrifices they have to feel that it embodiesspecial virtues. The French are proud of their civilization and theircuisine; the Germans of their efficiency; the English of their toleranceand sense of humour; the Americans of their democratic institutions.

A regime which feels the need to bolster the morale of its citizensmay even make a deliberate effort to create a focus for nationalpride, as the German Democratic Republic did in the 1970s by itshighly successful program to train world-beating athletes.

The main obstacle to the development of national integration isthe existence of ethnic or cultural minorities within the state whoresist integrative tendencies. If a handful of city-states are disregarded,nearly all modern states contain such minorities. Japan is socially

homogeneous; Portugal, Sweden and the Irish Republic are almosthomogeneous; but these are the exceptions.

Cultural minorities are partially integrated into the larger nationalcommunity by two types of process, one unplanned and the otherresulting from deliberate decisions. The unplanned process, generallyknown as social mobilization, is a consequence of industrialization.The need to leave the land to find employment in industrial areascauses personal mobility, which breaks the social bonds of local

communities. The development of mass markets, rapid transportfacilities, and mass media of communication tends to standardizetastes and values.

The planned measures to integrate cultural minorities normallybegin with the adoption of a single official language for political,legal and commercial transactions. This immediately forces the eliteof the minorities to communicate in the language of the majorityand quickly acts as an incentive for ambitious members of theminorities to become fluent in that language. The official languagesoon becomes the dominant language among educated members of the minority. Since bilingualism is an unnatural state of affairs forhuman beings, there is an inevitable tendency for the dominantlanguage to drive out the second language, except in so far as it iskept alive by the schools.




The second step is for the state to insist that the official nationallanguage should be the only language of instruction in schools anduniversities. This makes sense on utilitarian grounds as well as interms of national integration. A further step, taken by manygovernments at crucial stages in the integrative process, is to ban theteaching of the minority language and even to institute punishmentsfor children heard talking to each other in that language in schoolbuildings and grounds. By measures of this kind the French almoststamped out the speaking of Breton, the lowland Scots renderedGaelic extinct on the Scottish mainland, and the English drove theWelsh language into decline.

State control of radio and television, which is the norm except

in North America, also requires an essentially political decisionabout the language or languages to be used. The state may be blindto differences of colour among its citizens, but it cannot be deaf todifferences of language. There has to be an official language andthe inevitable consequence of this is to drive other languages intodecline. A minority language can be protected if the state adoptstwo official languages, but the experiences of Belgium and Canadaindicate that the political costs of this policy can be very high indeed.

There are several other kinds of planned integration, but it isunnecessary to multiply examples at this stage. The point of mentioning these matters in this introductory chapter is to indicatethat the process of national integration poses some interestinggeneral questions.

There is a set of normative questions about the extent to whichintegration can be justified. Is it right for a state to embark on policieswhich will condemn a minority language, valued by a local

community and said to be essential to the preservation of thatcommunity’s culture, to the certainty of decline and the possibilityof eventual extinction? On what grounds can such policies be attackedand defended? If defenders of local cultures claim that culturalminorities have rights that national governments are morally obligedto recognize, what philosophical problems are involved in such aclaim? There is also a set of sociological questions, relating to theconditions which determine the rate of decline of a minority language,the problems of bilingualism, and so forth. There are rival sociologicalmodels of the integrative process, one maintaining that theassimilation of minorities is an inevitable concomitant of modernization, and therefore by implication desirable, the othermaintaining that the process involves exploitation of the minoritiesby the majority and can appropriately be described as internalcolonialism.




A third model, not yet so well articulated, depicts the cost of socialmobilization and national integration as being not so muchexploitation as isolation. According to this view, these processesreplace local bonds of community membership that were organicand meaningful by a sense of identification with the national societythat is weaker because it is induced and artificial. The result is eitheran atomistic society or a society that has real meaning to membersof the core community but only a superficial significance for membersof what were once peripheral communities but are now little morethan peripheral areas.

There are also questions, both normative and sociological, aboutthe development of minority nationalist movements and the measures

which national governments should or can take either to frustratethese movements or to meet these demands. And if nationalgovernments fail in this endeavour, there is a question about whetherand in what circumstances the minority could reasonably claim aright to secede from the state. All these questions will be discussed in



13

later chapters. The logical first step, however, is to trace the emergenceof nationalism as a political doctrine.

2 The origins and nature of nationalist theory

Unlike most other political doctrines, nationalism lacks a foundingfather whose ideas have served as inspiration and model for hissuccessors. There is no nationalist equivalent of liberalism’s JohnLocke, conservatism’s Edmund Burke, or communism’s Karl Marx.It is, however, possible to trace the intellectual origins of nationalistdoctrine in the reactions of several late-eighteenth century writers tothe universalistic assumptions of the philosophers of theEnlightenment. To put this reaction into perspective, it will be helpful

to give a brief indication of the nature of some of these assumptions,in so far as they relate to politics.The thinkers of the Enlightenment were individualists and favoured

republican forms of government because such forms gave individualcitizens a degree of control over their political leaders. They werealso universalists in the sense that they regarded individuals asessentially similar in their basic characters and needs and as beingswayed in similar ways by historical forces. As Friedrich Meineckeobserved, Enlightenment thinkers regarded individuals as rather likeleaves in a forest, all moved together by the prevailing wind. Theywere also universalists in the sense of believing that republican formsof government were best for everyone and would be a blessing if adopted throughout the world.

The two great political events that embodied Enlightenmentideas were the American Declaration of Independence and theFrench Revolution, and it is no accident that the French and theAmericans have been the two peoples most optimistic about the

power of reason to fashion human progress and most confident thattheir forms of civilization and their concepts of good governmentwere suitable for export. Napoleon’s armies took French politicalideas to other parts of Europe. Later French governments conferredthe benefits of French education and civilization on their colonialsubjects in ways that were not emulated by Britain and the other




colonizing powers of Europe. The US government exportedAmerican institutions to the Philippines and the Americans showedgreat determination and relative success in their attempts toAmericanize Germany and Japan in the aftermath of the SecondWorld War. A survey in 1970 showed that 51 per cent of Americanteenagers thought that American political institutions were suitablefor all countries, compared with only 11 per cent of Britishteenagers who regarded British institutions as suitable for export(Dennis, Lindberg and McCrone, 1971).

Nationalist theories have a different foundation. They are basedon the belief that man is a social animal, deriving his character andaspirations from communities that share a common culture. They

further hold that government can only be good government if it isbased upon such communities. To extend Meinecke’s analogy aboutthe leaves in the forest, it could be said that nationalists see individualsas being more like flowers than leaves, having characteristics thatare particular to their species and flourishing best if gathered togetherwith others of their own kind and nurtured in the way that is mostsuitable for them. Roses grow best in a rose garden, watered andfertilized in ways appropriate to roses and protected from the

corrupting competition of weeds. If this analogy illustrates one of the great strengths of nationalism, namely an understanding of humanity that is more profound than the understanding shown byindividualists, it also reveals one of the dangers implicit in nationalism,for Hitler likened Jews and gypsies to weeds.

J.J.Rousseau

The first political theorist to adumbrate a theory that can be callednationalist was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He has this distinctionbecause he was the first to suggest that a society whose membersshared common customs was the best, and indeed the onlysatisfactory, foundation for a political society. In the Discourse onthe Origin of Inequality he suggested that human beings, havingevolved from a state of nature into communal living based on sharedcustoms and a single way of life, could be expected to feel affectiononly for members of their own societies, not for the whole humanrace. (See Barnard, 1983, p. 26.) This was very different from theuniversalistic view that all human beings are equal and deserving of equal affection. In later works he went on to suggest that suchcommunal groupings could naturally (by which he meant ideally) beturned into political societies with their own institutions of



15Nationalist theory

government, but he did not think that this would happen as a matterof course.

In Rousseau’s view the creation of an ideal political society wasnot a matter of natural evolution or spontaneous combination butthe work of a political leader, whom he called a legislator. In TheSocial Contract he asked what people were fit for legislation. Hisanswer, in part, was a people ‘already united by some common bondsof origin, interest or convention’ (Rousseau, [1762] 1953, p. 53).Moreover, ‘the wise legislator does not begin by drawing up lawswhich are good in themselves, but first investigates whether the peoplefor whom they are intended is capable of bearing them’ (Rousseau,(1762] 1953, p. 46). The spirit of this assertion is very different from

the spirit that motivated the American Declaration of Independence;it is the spirit of a nationalist rather than that of a universalist.

The ideal system of government would derive its character and itsmain lines of policy from the general will of its citizens, so that byobeying the edicts of their government they would be submittingonly to the implementation of decisions in which they themselveshad participated. However, Rousseau was not so optimistic as tobelieve that citizens would have the degree of unity necessary for

this ideal polity without some kind of civic education. He thereforeemphasized the importance of both education and what he called‘civil religion’. The kind of education he thought valuable differedfrom that admired by the Encyclopedists, the writers and philosopherswho dominated French intellectual life in the later part of theeighteenth century. They conceived the main functions of educationto be those of stripping the mind of acquired prejudices and trainingit in the exercise of abstract reason. Rousseau, on the contrary,

believed that education should develop the character as well as themind, and should do so in a way that would pass on to the youngergeneration the moral standards that had developed in their nationalsociety. He made his views perfectly explicit in his Considerationson the Government of Poland.

It is education that must give souls a national formation, anddirect their opinions and tastes in such a way that they will bepatriotic by inclination, by passion, by necessity. When first heopens his eyes, an infant ought to see the fatherland, and up tothe day of his death he ought never to see anything else…At twenty,a Pole ought not to be a man of any other sort; he ought to be aPole…From this you can see that it is not studies of the usual sort,directed by foreigners and priests, that I would like to have childrenpursue. The law ought to regulate the content, the order and the




form of their studies. They ought to have only Poles for teachers.(Rousseau, [1782] 1953, pp. 176–7)

Rousseau also had distinctive ideas about the role of religion in hisideal state. It should be a civil religion that could encourage goodcitizenship and would not set up an authority which rivalled that of the state. He observed in the final chapter of The Social Contract that Judaism and Christianity had both been disruptive influences ina political sense, a characteristic that had understandably led to thepersecution of Jews and Christians in some historical periods(Rousseau, [1762] 1953, pp. 144–5). The influence of the RomanCatholic Church had ‘resulted in an unending jurisdictional conflictwhich has made any sort of good polity impossible in Christian states’

and Christianity was ‘contrary to the social spirit’ because it detachedthe hearts of citizens from the state (Rousseau, [1762] 1953, pp. 145and 149). The ideal state would therefore banish organizedChristianity, along with any other religion that was fundamentallyintolerant, and replace it by ‘a purely civil profession of faith whosearticles the sovereign is competent to determine, not precisely asreligious dogmas, but as sentiments of sociability, without which itis impossible to be either a good citizen or a faithful subject’

(Rousseau, [1762] 1953, p. 153). This is not only the first statementby a political philosopher of a nationalistic attitude to religion butalso one of the most forthright. Its implication is that, in modernparlance, a state should use the influence of religion to socialize itscitizens into compliance with political authority.

J.G.Herder

The second theorist to contribute to the doctrine of nationalism was J.G.Herder, who was a theologian, historian and literary critic (theteacher of Goethe) as well as being to some degree a politicalphilosopher. Herder’s greatest achievements were as the main founderof historicism as a philosophical outlook (being much more influentialthan his predecessor, Vico) and one of the founders of the Germanromantic movement. In both of these achievements he set Germanthought on a path that distinguished it sharply from both Frenchrationalism and British empiricism. His contribution to nationalisttheory was essentially a by-product of his historicism and hisromanticism, his beliefs in tradition, custom and emotion rather thanin the pure play of the rational mind.

Inevitably, his views and the manner in which he expressed themwere partly shaped by the situation in which he was writing. Whereas




Rousseau wrote as a Frenchman, in a country with a long history of political independence and unity, Herder wrote as a German, a peopledivided between over one hundred jurisdictions. Germans weregoverned by a multitude of petty principalities and the Germaneducated classes were profoundly conscious of the fact that Francewas the dominant power in Europe, not only in the sense that it wasthe most populous and powerful state but also in the sense that Frenchintellectuals were the leaders of the Enlightenment and the Frenchupper classes were the leaders of fashion. As a German, Herderresented the French assumption that they were the leaders and bearersof a civilization that had universal validity. In opposition to this hedeveloped the view that humanity had its roots in and derived its

values from a number of national cultures, each of which had itsown virtues and no one of which could rightly lay claims touniversality.

Isaiah Berlin has observed that when Herder visited France he‘suffered that mixture of envy, humiliation, admiration, resentmentand defiant pride which backward peoples feel towards advancedones’ (Berlin, 1976, p. 180). However that may be, Herder caricaturedthe spirit of French cosmopolitanism with a fine spirit of irony:

All national characters, thank God, have become extinct! We alllove one another or, rather, no one feels the need of loving anyoneelse. We associate with one another, are all completely equal—cultured, polite, very happy! We have, it is true, no fatherland, noone for whom we live; but we are philanthropists and citizens of the world. Most of the rulers already speak French, and soon weshall all do so. And then—bliss! the golden era is dawning again

when all the world had one tongue and language! There shall beone flock and one shepherd! (Quoted in Ergang, 1931, p. 96) In opposition to French cosmopolitanism, Herder insisted that everypeople and every age had ‘it’s own outlook and way of thinking andfeeling and acting’ and could ‘be truly understood and judged onlyin terms of its own scale of values…and not those of some otherculture: least of all, in terms of some universal, impersonal, absolutescale’ (Berlin, 1976, p. xxii). Each culture was shaped by the physicalenvironment in which it developed, by the language of its peopleand by the forms of education through which customs, traditionsand values were passed on to younger generations. Herder used theterm Volk to describe each community that had an identifiable cultureand he was willing to apply this name liberally to communities of the most varied sizes and characteristics. He insisted, moreover, that






He also influenced Mazzini’s thought and therefore had an indirectinfluence on the future unification of Italy.

J.G.Fichte

Fichte was a less profound thinker than Herder, but he has an essentialplace in any account of the development of nationalist thoughtbecause he contributed elements of national pride, verbal aggressionand messianic political vision that were to find expression in theideas and activities of so many subsequent nationalist politicians.Fichte was a liberal and a republican, a great admirer of the French

Revolution for its achievement of sweeping away the privileges of the nobility and establishing the equality of all citizens under lawspassed by the National Assembly. In his early years he was also anindividualist with political beliefs that were more cosmopolitan thannationalistic.

After the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon’s armies in 1806 hisoutlook changed. In the winter of 1807–8, in his capacity as firstProfessor of Philosophy at the University of Berlin, he delivered a

series of public lectures that were explicitly nationalistic in character.Subsequently published under the title Addresses to the GermanNation, they were evidently designed to raise the morale of hisaudience and to inspire the German people, or at any rate Germanintellectuals, with a sense of nationalistic mission.

As G.A.Kelly has observed, the Germans of that period were likethe ancient Greeks in that they had a language and a culture but nostate (Kelly, 1968, p. xxii). Fichte followed Herder in maintaining that

language was the most proper basis for nationhood; and he stated thisview in more emphatic terms than the reflective and somewhatcircumlocutory Herder had done. ‘It is true beyond doubt’, Fichtedeclared, ‘that, wherever a separate language is formed, there a separatenation exists, which has the right to take independent charge of itsaffairs and to govern itself (Fichte, [1845] 1968, p. 184). The Germanstherefore had the right to become a self-governing nation.

Moreover, the German language was not any language, to be givenequal value with all the other tongues spoken in Europe and elsewhere.On the contrary, it had special qualities that contributed to the specialcharacter of German culture. It was a pure and natural language,that had been spoken by the Germans throughout the history of their race, and this purity gave both the language and the Germanpeople an advantage over peoples who spoke languages derived fromLatin, like the French, the Italians and the Spanish, as well as overpeople who spoke bastard languages like English. This claim, it must




be noted, marked a distinct step away from the tolerant historicismof Herder, who had maintained that no universal criteria existed bywhich languages could be evaluated.

Fichte went on to claim that there was a link between language,culture and achievement. In medieval times the German burghershad been remarkable in their achievements. If one left out of account some districts of Italy, ‘the German burghers were thecivilised people and the others the barbarians’ (Fichte, [1845]1968, p. 89). More recently, the Germans had again shown theirsuperiority by leading the way in the reformation of the Church.This emancipation from external authority had liberated Germanphilosophical thinking, which had found its highest expression in

the work of Leibniz and Kant, so that by 1807 ‘philosophy hasbeen perfected’. Not everyone realized it, so ‘one must be contentfor the present with stating this as a fact, until an age comes whichcomprehends it’ (Fichte, [1845] 1968, p. 86). Fichte’scontemporary and sometime friend Schiller had a similar view of German moral and philosophical thought: ‘Sundered frompolitics, the German has founded…an ethicalgreatness…independent of any political destiny…Each people has

its day in history, but the day of the German is the harvest of timeas a whole’ (quoted in Kelly, 1968, p. xxii).

Having made these claims on behalf of German culture, Fichtealso set out his vision of the future. ‘The next step forward that wehave to make in the plan of eternity is to educate the nation toperfect manhood…If only because the German has hitherto broughtto completion all the steps of culture and has been preserved in themodern world for that special purpose, it will be his work, too, in

respect of education’ (Fichte, [1845] 1968, p. 88). His view of theform education should take was somewhat authoritarian. ‘The neweducation must consist essentially in this, that it completely destroysfreedom of will in the soil which it undertakes to cultivate, andproduces on the contrary strict necessity in the decisions of the will’(Fichte, [1845] 1968, p. 17). This vision was a far cry from theidealistic view of education Rousseau had developed in Emile.

The German who could be thus educated would be a superiorperson endowed with spirituality and nobility beyond the reach of other peoples, imbued with a mission and ready to die for its sake.

His belief and his struggle to plant what is permanent, hisconception in which he comprehends his own life as an eternallife, is the bond which unites first his own nation and then,through his nation, the whole human race…He who does not




first regard himself as eternal has in him no love of any kindand, moreover, cannot love a fatherland, a thing which for himdoes not eixst…But he to whom a fatherland has been handeddown, and in whose soul heaven and earth, visible and invisible,meet and mingle, and thus, and only thus, create a true andenduring heaven—such a man fights to the last drop of his bloodto hand on the precious possession unimpaired to his posterity.(Fichte, [1845] 1968, p. 116–17)

In his final lecture Fichte developed his rhetoric about the Germanspirit and his earlier hint that its benefits could be spread fromGermany to the whole of humanity. ‘It is for you’, he told his

audience, ‘to justify and give meaning to our sacrifice, by setting thisspirit to fulfill its purpose and to rule the world. If this does notcome about as the final goal to which the whole previousdevelopment of our nation has been tending, then the battles wefought will turn out to be a vain and fleeting farce’ (Fichte, [1845]1968, p. 226).

In the thinking of these three writers, it is clear, the character, thevirtues and the dangers of nationalism as a political doctrine were

all set out. From Rousseau’s insistence that a free self-governing statecould only be achieved if it were based on the consensus of acommunity, through Herder’s historicism and claim that each culturehad its own virtues, to be nourished by the protection of politicalnationhood, we moved to Fichte’s extraordinary claims about thespecial virtues of German culture and his vision that the Germans of the future might impose these virtues on the entire world.

Later nationalist thinkers

Fichte’s immediate successor was Hegel, both in the philosophy Chairat Berlin University and in the advocacy of German nationalism.Hegel was of course a much more profound and ambitiousphilosopher than Fichte and in this context it would be otiose toattempt any summary of his thought. However, it is relevant to notethat in two respects his attitude to nationalism was significantlydifferent from that of his predecessor. In the first place, Hegel’semphasis was on the virtues of the national state as a form of politicalorganization rather than on the importance of culture. Hegel placedhis faith in the state as a means of improving the lot of mankind,which included extending human freedom, properly interpreted, andhe thought that in some circumstances the rulers of states would be




morally justified in actions taken on behalf of the state that wouldbe immoral if taken on behalf of individuals. In adopting this positionHegel has been said to have provided a new justification for theMachiavellian doctrine of raison d’etat, a doctrine that had for longbeen out of favour among liberal and progressive thinkers. Meineckeobserved that in Hegel’s writings ‘Machiavellism came to form anintegral part in the complex of an idealist’s view of the universe, aview which at the same time embraced and confirmed all moralvalues.’ It was, he said, ‘almost like the legitimisation of a bastard’(Meinecke, 1957, p. 350). While this was a perceptive comment onthe intellectual history of that period, it should not be taken to implya lack of moral sensitivity on Hegel’s part. Presumably everyone

who is not an anarchist would now agree that in some circumstancesthe state can rightly do some things (like putting people in prison)that no individual could rightly do.

The second novel feature of Hegel’s version of nationalist theoryis that he replaced Fichte’s vision of what the future might hold by abelief in historical inevitability. The unfolding of the world spiritwas taking humanity, step by step, towards its destiny of beingorganized in national states. Whereas Fichte detested Napoleon and

wished he had never been born, Hegel viewed the Napoleonic empireas just one more stage in human progress, to be replaced in turn byanother and presumably more advanced stage. In this way thehistoricist outlook was transformed from the moral and culturalrelativism of Herder, through the inconsistencies of Fichte, to themoral certainties of the Hegelian dialectic.

Subsequent nationalist thinkers bore the character of users anddiffusers of nationalist theory rather than that of producers. Louis

Kossuth’s campaign to gain political autonomy for the Hungarians,Palacky’s activities on behalf of the Czechs, and Mazzini’s endeavoursto stimulate the Italians into creating a united Italy were all examplesof nationalistic campaigns by intellectuals who had been deeplyinfluenced by the nationalist doctrine generated by the theorists wehave mentioned. There were other examples in nineteenth-centuryEurope, and though it is always difficult to credit specific intellectualswith changing the course of history, there can be no doubt that thecumulative effect of nationalist ideas was to undermine the authorityof the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires.

A conspicuous feature of any catalogue of nationalist thinkersand propagandists would be the absence of Anglo-Saxon names.The reasons for this are fairly obvious. The English themselves had asecure national state from the eleventh century onwards, thushaving no need for a nationalist doctrine or movement. The




Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders secured theirindependence from Britain by mutual agreement, without the aid of nationalism. Only the Americans engaged in a struggle forindependence, and they justified their actions in universalistic ratherthan nationalistic terms. The American colonists had no clear senseof cultural difference from the British, only a set of specificcomplaints about taxation and representation. Their Declaration of Independence began by appealing in the most general terms to therights of man and moved from this vein to a catalogue of particulargrievances, without passing through any intermediate argumentsabout the character, needs and rights of Americans as Americans.All four countries have had to cope with problems of national

integration, which will be discussed in later chapters, but the Anglo-Saxon experience of nationalism as a doctrine has been limited totheir reactions to nationalistic demands put forward by partiallyintegrated communities within their states such as the Irish, theWelsh, the Scots and the French-Canadians.

In spite of their apparent distaste for nationalist doctrine, theAmericans have contributed in a highly significant way to the courseof world history by their propagation of the principle of self-

determination. The strongly-held American view, derived from theirown history, is that imperialism is an unquestionably bad form of government. People should be free to govern themselves and foreignrule is always illegitimate. This was not a nationalist doctrine becauseAmericans never produced a definition of what comprised a nationand tended to look with disfavour on the view that ethnic and culturalunity was the essential basis of nationhood. This attitude was entirelynatural in view of the multi-ethnic character of the American people,

but the consequence was that self-determination has had the characterof a slogan rather than a doctrine. When practical difficulties aroseabout the borders of proposed new states, the American tendencywas to urge the individualistic device of a referendum or plebisciteto resolve such difficulties.

Woodrow Wilson’s attempt to redraw the frontiers of Europeaccording to the principle of self-determination was, as everyonenow knows, the most disastrous piece of policy-making ever engagedin by a well-intentioned politician. However, since 1945 the principlehas proved an ideal tool for the political leaders of colonized peopleswishing to rid themselves of European rule. Because colonialboundaries were imposed without regard to the boundaries betweenethnic groups, very few such leaders could use nationalist doctrineswith any sense of conviction. In sub-Saharan Africa, Jomo Kenyattawas the only leader to do so. In Asia, Mahatma Gandhi used




nationalist doctrines in his efforts to build Hindu self-consciousnessand to persuade the British to leave, only to be rivalled and partiallydefeated at the very hour of victory by the rival nationalism of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, based on the Muslim religion and leading tothe creation of Pakistan as an Islamic state.

But these were the exceptions. Most of the ex-colonies acquiredstatehood without any real pretence that it was built uponnationhood. As Julius Nyerere said in 1964: ‘nations in any real senseof the word do not at present exist in Africa. None of our nations ismade up of people bound together by a single language or heritagecommon to them but not to the people of a neighbouring nation’(quoted in Shafer, 1982, p. 165). Such states were launched into

existence with a flimsy framework of political authority restinginsecurely on a social foundation of tribal rivalries and conflicts.Nobody should be surprised that liberal democratic institutionsproved unsuitable to the task of government and that political powerhas passed mainly into the hands of dictators able to enforcecompliance by the use of the army.

Though the entire world is now divided into national or supposedlynational states, nationalist ideas continue to be influential in many

areas. Most obviously, they influence sub-state nationalist movementsformed by ethnic or cultural minorities claiming political autonomy.Some want political devolution and partial autonomy while otherswant secession and national independence. The movements varyimmensely in character, from the Sikhs of India and the Kurds of Iraq to the Basques of northern Spain and the Quebecois of Canada,but the ideas and propaganda are based on the theories developedby the European philosophers discussed earlier in this chapter.

In a less direct way, nationalist ideas and slogans are also used bypoliticians seeking to regenerate their people and direct their energiesinto different channels. The most common usage of this kind is byleaders wishing to modernize their nations, such as Kemal Ataturkin Turkey, Chiang Kai Shek in China and Gemal Nasser in Egypt.However, the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran has recently used nationalistslogans for the opposite purpose, namely to turn his people awayfrom modernization and recover their traditional devotion to religiouspractices and customs. Such uses of nationalism will not be discussed



25

in this book, for they are tangential to its themes, but they provideone more illustration of the force and vitality of the theories firstdeveloped in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

3 Nationalism and its critics

For all its limitations and problems, nationalism has proved to be

the most successful political doctrine ever promoted. At the time of the French Revolution, there were only about twenty of what wewould now recognize as national states, the rest of the worldconsisting of sprawling empires, unexplored territories and a host of tiny independent principalities. Now the entire inhabitable surfaceof the globe is divided into 175 national (or supposedly national)states, each of them legally sovereign within its territory. Only ahandful of tiny colonies, like Gibraltar and New Caledonia, remain

of the empires; only Antarctica remains free of state sovereignty;and Monaco is the sole principality to retain, under French protection,the semblance of independence. The transformation has occurred inonly two centuries.

As is well known, this great development in human history tookplace not as a gradual process but in stages. In the nineteenth centurythe most important were the break-up of the Spanish-Americanempire in the first half of the century, the unification of Italy and

Germany in the second half. In the twentieth century the mostimportant have been the breakup of the Russian, Ottoman andAustro-Hungarian Empires immediately after the First World War,the achievement of political independence by virtually all Europeancolonies in the twenty-five years following the Second. It isunnecessary to recount the history of the developments in detail; thishas been done in several excellent books, of which the best are Shafer(1972), Seton-Watson (1977) and Breuilly (1982).

What needs to be emphasized, though it is obvious enough, isthat very few of the present 175 states correspond to the ideal modelof political organization sketched out by the theorists of nationalism. Most of the states of the Third World have artificialboundaries, established by their former colonial rulers on the basisof exploration and conquest, but having little relationship to theboundaries between ethnic groups. India, for instance, could well be




described as a multinational state, since it contains within itsborders peoples, like the Tamils and the Sikhs, who have most of theattributes of nationhood and have the capacity to governthemselves. Most African states south of the Sahara could bedescribed as multi-tribal in character, since tribal identities andloyalties are still more important to most of their citizens thannational identities and loyalties.

Even the oldest states are rarely as homogeneous in theirpopulations as nationalist theory would seem to require. Japan,Sweden and Portugal are pretty homogeneous, to be sure. But Britainhas nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales; Spain has a militantnationalist movement among its Basque citizens together with feelings

of cultural distinctiveness among Catalans and Andalucians; andFrance, so often described as ‘the one and indivisible republic’, hasethnic minorities in the shape of the Bretons, the Basques, theAlsacians and the Corsicans.

In these circumstances it is not surprising that nationalism hashad critics and opponents as well as advocates and supporters. Inthe middle years of the nineteenth century, Lord Acton was the mostfamous and influential of its critics. In the aftermath of the Versailles

Treaty, international lawyers like Alfred Zimmern and historians likeAlfred Cobban said the doctrine was likely to have tragicconsequences. In the aftermath of decolonization, Elie Kedouriemounted an intellectual attack of considerable force on the veryfoundations of nationalist thought. It is instructive to consider thesecriticisms of the doctrine and to make some attempt to assess theirvalidity.

A preliminary point, though obvious, ought to be made: namely,

that a good deal of opposition to nationalism came from spokesmenfor groups whose interests were threatened by the spread of thedoctrine. The aristocratic ruling classes of the Hapsburg Empire, forinstance, opposed the spread of nationalism because, quite rightly,they saw it as a threat to their power. Leaders of the RomanCatholic Church regretted and opposed the spread of nationalismbecause, quite rightly, they regarded it as a threat to the authority of a church claiming to be universal. Their opposition was naturallystrengthened by the fact that one of the achievements of the Italiannationalists was to destroy the position of the Church as ruler of thePapal States of central Italy, following a brief campaign duringwhich Garibaldi and his men marched on Rome. The Churchrefused to recognize the legitimacy of the new Italian government,and urged Roman Catholics to boycott Italian elections from 1871until 1913.



27Nationalism and its critics

After 1919, nationalist theories were blamed by many Europeanwriters for the Versailles Treaty, in which the map of Europe wasredrawn in an attempt, deeply unfortunate in its consequences, to applythe nationalist principle of self-determination. After Hitler’s rise topower, nationalist theories were held by several American and Britishwriters to be partly responsible for the character of German fascism,which drew on some of the sentiments expressed by Germannationalists in the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

These criticisms of nationalism are entirely understandable, but theyare open to the counter-attack that a theory of universal significancecannot be discredited by criticisms based either on special interests oron particular historical events which, however unfortunate, had many

causes other than nationalist theory. For criticisms presented at a higherlevel of generality it is appropriate to refer to the work of two moredetached scholars, namely Acton and Kedourie. Of the two, Acton,cited in a thousand footnotes, has to be counted the more famous,while Kedourie is clearly the more sophisticated.

Acton’s contribution

Acton’s essay on ‘Nationality’ was first published in 1862, and hasbeen reprinted on numerous occasions since that date. For such afamous essay, its contents are surprisingly slender. The first part,seventeen pages in length, is a somewhat superficial review of certainhistorical developments, offering reflections in turn on the partitionof Poland, the French Revolution, the Roman Empire, the barbarianinvasions, the fall of Napoleon, the Holy Alliance, and the career of

Mazzini. The remainder of the essay, comprising twelve pages,denounces the doctrine of nationalism as ‘a retrograde step in history’(Acton, [1862] 1949).

Acton’s arguments in this second part of his essay rest on theassumption that the protection of individual liberty and the progressof civilization are the two most important criteria by which politicalideas and institutions should be assessed. While his arguments arenot couched in the form of logical propositions, they may besummarized in the following points. 1 Loyalty to a state is morally better than loyalty to an ethnic group,

for while such groups pertain ‘more to the animal than to thecivilised man’, the state ‘is an authority governing by laws,imposing obligations, and giving a moral sanction and characterto the natural relations of society’ (Acton, [1862] 1949, p. 188).




2 The principle of nationalism would lead to the oppression of ethnicminorities. The dominant group within a state could not admitthem to a position of equality without contradicting the principle,so they would inevitably be ‘exterminated, or reduced to servitude,or outlawed, or put in a condition of dependence’ (Acton, [1862]1949, p. 193).

3 A multinational state or union, on the other hand, would help topreserve and advance civilization.

Inferior races are raised by living in political union with racesintellectually superior. Exhausted and decaying nations arerevived by the contact of a younger vitality. Nations in which

the elements of organisation and the capacity for governmenthave been lost…are restored and educated anew under thediscipline of a stronger and less corrupted race. (Acton, [1862]1949, p. 188)

4 A multinational state or union would also help to protect liberty.

The presence of different nations under the samesovereignty…provides against the servility whichflourishes under the shadow of a single authority, by

balancing interests, multiplying associations, and givingto the subject the restraint and support of a combinedopinion (Acton, [1862] 1949, p. 185).

Reducing Acton’s arguments to propositions in this way has thedisadvantage of destroying the rhetorical effect of his prose style,but the merit of enabling comments to be brief and pointed.

The first and second of these propositions seem, by implication,

to be somewhat contradictory. If loyalty to ethnic groups is asundesirable as Acton suggested, it is not clear why he should haveobjected to such groups being put into a condition of dependence. Itis perfectly reasonable to criticize nationalism on the ground thatthe national state tends to bear hardly on ethnic minorities caughtwithin its boundaries, but only if the cultures and group loyalties of the minorities are thought worthy of preservation. The force of Acton’s argument is also weakened by the fact that his somewhat

dramatic list of alternatives for ethnic minorities within a state didnot include integration, which, to a greater or lesser extent, has beentheir most common fate in the advanced states—or, as he would putit, the advanced civilizations—which he so much admired. Since hehad spent most of his life in Britain at the time he was writing, whydid he ignore the integration of the Cumbrian and Cornish minoritiesinto English society and the substantial integration of the Welsh and




Scottish peoples with the English into the British state? Why, equally,did he ignore the integration of the Burgundian, Savoyard andProvençal minorities into French society?

The third proposition could very well have been put forward by anationalist writer seeking to justify the integration of a culturalminority. It sounds remarkably similar to Hegel’s view of one of theconsequences of the unfolding of the world spirit, which makessome groups civilized but leaves others as barbarians. ‘The civilisednation’, declared Hegel in 1821, ‘is conscious that the rights of barbarians are unequal to its own and treats their autonomy as onlya formality’ (Hegel, [1821] 1952, para. 351). This kind of culturalarrogance was not uncommon among advanced thinkers in

nineteenth-century Europe, imbued with the heady belief ininevitable progress. The practical difference between Hegel andActon on this issue, it would seem, is that Hegel wanted to see thebarbarians assimilated by the civilized nations, and therebyimpoved, whereas Acton wanted to see them left in their uncivilizedcondition. According to Acton, a state which makes efforts toassimilate such backward groups ‘destroys its own vitality’ (Acton,[1862] 1949, p. 193).

The fourth proposition is strikingly reminiscent of JamesMadison’s arguments in favour of the proposed constitution of theUnited States in The Federalist Papers. The ideal state, in Madison’sview, would provide a constitutional framework within whichdiverse and rival groups would campaign for various lawfulobjectives. However, Madison’s view was made coherent by hisstrong belief in the virtues of representative government, whichActon gave no sign of admiring.

Some of the puzzles created by his arguments are cleared up by afifth proposition which is to be found towards the end of the article,in the following sentence.

If we take the establishment of liberty for the realisation of moralduties to be the end of civil society, we must conclude that thosestates are most perfect which, like the British and Austrian Empires,include various distinct nationalities without oppressing them.(Acton, [1862] 1949, p. 193)

It emerges here that his ideal form of organization was not the statebut the empire. When he praised political unions of a multinationalkind he was thinking of authority structures based on conquest andcoercion, not on accommodation and balance. When he wrote of




inferior races and ethnic groups he was thinking of Africans, Indiansand Bulgarians, not of Scots, Bretons or Basques.

It was quite reasonable in the 1860s for a writer to produce adefence of imperialism, and was indeed not uncommon. However,in this celebrated essay attacking nationalism Acton did not do so.He gave no plausible arguments, indeed, virtually no arguments of any kind, to support his claim that empires protected liberty ‘for therealisation of moral duties’, whatever this vague phrase wasintended to convey. In truth, Acton’s article was not much morethan a piece of journalistic rhetoric, of very limited value as acontribution to intellectual debates about nationalism. It has beentaken seriously in these paragraphs only because it has so often been

cited by scholars.

Kedourie’s contribution

Elie Kedourie’s critique of nationalism is of a different intellectualorder. It combines an analysis of the philosophical foundations of nationalist doctrines with eloquent comments on what he takes to

be the unfortunate consequences of these doctrines. His main themeis the misleading nature of nationalism as an ideal. Like other idealsthat European thinkers have developed since the Enlightenment, ithas disrupted traditional modes of thought and established forms of political organization. It has also led to violence, revolutions andwarfare, and all to no good purpose. ‘The attempt to refashion somuch of the world on national lines has not led to greater peace andstability. On the contrary, it has created new conflicts, exacerbated

tensions, and brought catastrophe to numberless people innocent of all politics’ (Kedourie, 1961, p. 138).More specifically, Kedourie points to the geographical untidiness

of ethnic divisions in the modern world. This world is ‘much toodiverse for the classifications of nationalist anthropology’ (Kedourie,1961, p. 79). The boundaries of the Polish nation-state, for instance,‘were not palpably more “national” than if the nationality principlehad never been invoked’, in view of the numerous minorities includedwithin its boundaries (Kedourie, 1961, p. 121). There are alwaysareas of mixed population within state borders, and ‘nationalism inmixed areas makes for tension and mutual hatred’ (Kedourie, 1961,p. 115).

What about the view, held by most liberals in the twentieth century,that nationalism, self-determination, representative government and




liberty all go together? Kedourie rejects it entirely. The experience of Central and Eastern Europe after 1919 shows it to be mistaken:

What can be said with certainty is that the nation-states whoinherited the position of the empires were not an improvement.They did not minister to political freedom, they did not increaseprosperity, and their existence was not conducive to peace.(Kedourie, 1961, pp. 138–9)

The experience of the Middle East demonstrates that nationalgovernments could not be expected to safeguard the liberty of minorities, and have indeed treated some minorities more harshly

than they were treated under the Ottoman Empire or under Britishmandate. The experience of Africa and Asia in general suggests that‘nationalism and liberalism, far from being twins, are reallyantagonistic principles’ (Kedourie, 1961, p. 109).

What about the basis of state authority in the absence of nationalsentiments? Here Kedourie has a novel and subtle viewpoint. Hebelieves that states have necessarily to exercise authority, but shouldnot be permitted to disguise it as the popular will. Political authority

is the power of rulers to command the obedience of their subjects,and it is better that this should be naked and external than that itshould involve the hearts and minds of the people. This view foundvery brief expression in Nationalism, but was developed fully in alater work, where his line of reasoning led him to the conclusion thatthere was much to be said for imperialism as a form of government;a viewpoint similar to Acton’s but based on a subtle argument ratherthan on mere assertion.

Government by foreigners has, then, this advantage at least, thatrulers cannot—as they would if they were native—pretend to ‘feelwith the people’; cannot use the complicities of affection and thecomforting illusion of affinity to establish and maintain despotism.No foreigner, we reflect, could have founded and maintained thedespotisms which Europe has seen in the last few decades andthose which have now taken over from European rule in Asia andAfrica. (Kedourie, 1970, p. 135)

These arguments reveal a profound scepticism of outlook. In an agemarked by violence, dictatorship and the desperate plight of millionsof political refugees, such scepticism is understandable. Nevertheless,it is possible to suggest some conflicting arguments, from both right-wing and left-wing perspectives.




From a right-of-centre perspective, it may be observed thatnationalism has proved to be a defence against communism. If workers cannot be excluded from the political process (and in mostcountries they cannot be) it is better that they should be mobilizedby nationalistic propaganda into accepting the leadership of socialsuperiors in their own countries than that they should develop feelingsof class solidarity with workers elsewhere. It has been common inthe postwar period to assert that affluence is the answer tocommunism, but the working classes of Europe did not enjoy muchaffluence before the 1950s and it would be hard to deny that in thesix or seven previous decades feelings of national solidarity played avital part in maintaining the social order. In this regard, Sigmund

Freud provided a perceptive comment:

The narcissistic satisfaction provided by [a national culture]. . .can be shared not only by the favoured classes, which enjoy thebenefits of this culture, but also by the suppressed, since the rightto despise those that are outside it compensates them for the wrongsthey suffer in their own unit. No doubt one is a wretched plebeian,harassed by debts and military service; but, to make up for it, one

is a Roman citizen. (Freud, 1962, p. 9) From a left-of-centre perspective, it is relevant that the modern stateprovides its citizens with educational services, medical services andvarious forms of social security, all of which are expensive and hardlyany of which were provided in the Ottoman or British Empires.Because of this, the modern state demands infinitely more of itscitizens than the empires demanded of theirs. It requires not only

that citizens should keep the peace but also that they should payheavy taxes, comply with innumerable regulations and participatein certain institutions. If people did not feel that the state was theirstate, which in the modern world means their national state, it isdoubtful whether the regime would enjoy enough authority to securevoluntary public compliance with all these demands. Dictatorialregimes can enforce compliance, but liberal regimes would find itdifficult.

It may be objected that the regimes now in power in formercolonies provide few social services and are not generally noted fortheir liberalism. Both these objections have some validity, but theyare not completely valid. In the former British and French coloniesof West Africa, for instance, public education is more widespreadnow than it was under colonial rule. Medical services, while stillvery poor by the standards of Europe and North America, are better




than they were three decades ago. In purely political terms libertymay have diminished, but in tropical Africa education and healthservices may perhaps be more important to the average citizen thanpolitical liberty. This is admittedly a dangerous argument, but notone that can be ignored. The colonial state was essentially a minimalstate, and had to be in view of the great difficulty in collecting morethan minimal taxes. Self-governing states, despite their tendencies todictatorship and corruption, offer the possibility of socialimprovement.

Another country that illustrates the benefits of national self-government is India. In the 1950s India appeared fated to sufferrepeated famines, as the apparently inevitable expansion of

population outstripped the available food supply. In the 1980s thisfear has evaporated and India has actually become an exporter of food, thanks to the energetic, sometimes drastic measures by theCongress Party government to curtail population increases andimprove agricultural techniques. No international agency could havesecured the compliance of the Indian people with these radicalmeasures; only a party and leader supported by nationalistic feelingsof loyalty could have done it.

To make these criticisms of Kedourie is not to refute hisarguments, because in the end it comes down to a question of values.Kedourie prefers individual liberty to governmental authority andwould presumably sacrifice social services to maintain that liberty.Nobody can say he is wrong, but one can appreciate why his is alonely voice in the modern world. Lonely but not unique, however;he has support from a surprising but telling source in the person of Saunders Lewis, founder of the Welsh nationalist party, Plaid

Cymru.It is paradoxical to find a practising nationalist among those whodislike nationalist doctrines. However, Lewis made himself perfectlyclear on the matter. In a lecture to the party’s first summer school, hedeclared that ‘the thing that destroyed the civilisation of Wales andruined Welsh culture, that brought about the dire plight of Walestoday, was—nationalism’ (Lewis, [1926] 1975, p. 5). In medievalEurope, he asserted, Welsh civilization was secure even though Walesdid not have its own state, for in medieval times ‘it did not occur tothe rulers of a country to destroy the characteristics of another land’scivilisation, even when they conquered that land’ (Lewis, [1926] 1975,p. 5). But in the sixteenth century, the century of Luther, Machiavelliand Henry VIII, a new political philosophy developed that exaltedthe role of the state and held that the assimilation (and therefore, inLewis’s view, the oppression) of cultural minorities was justified as a




means of strengthening the power of government. It was theconsequent drive for uniformity, initiated by the Tudor monarchs,that destroyed Welsh civilization by trying to obliterate the differencesbetween Wales and England. The aim of Welsh nationalists shouldnot therefore be the creation of an independent Welsh nation-state,for to advocate this would be to accept the principle of nationalismwhich had caused so much harm. The aim should be ‘a return to themedieval principle’ and with it ‘a denial of the benefits of politicalconformity’ (Lewis, [1926] 1975, p. 9).

By ‘a return to the medieval principle’ Lewis meant a return to acomplex system of government in which no single authority claimedsovereign power over its citizens. His conception of the ideal political

order was that it should be a community of communities, linkedinevitably in some kind of geographical hierarchy, but without themeans for any one community to impose its will on others. In thisway he sought to escape from the dilemma of how to organizegovernment in the contemporary democratic world without basingauthority on national loyalties. His solution was to postulate apolitical order in which authority would be minimal, the implicationof his ideas being that each community would have the right to opt

out of policies agreed upon by higher echelons of government if thecommunity found these policies objectionable. In this fashion heavoided the charge of inconsistency at the price of advocating anideal that most people would think impractical. Whereas Kedouriewas prepared to sacrifice governmental authority to preserveindividual liberty, Saunders Lewis was prepared to sacrifice it topreserve local cultures.

In conclusion

The critics so far mentioned have all been on the side of the smallbattalions; the individual against the state, the ethnic minority againstthe national majority, the Welsh language and culture against theBritish government. It is also perfectly possible to mount a criticismof nationalism from the other flank; to say not that it oppressesminorities but that it holds up progress towards a new internationalorder. Indeed, many scholars have taken just this view.

The arguments for and against this position are complex andmainly speculative. I will discuss them, very briefly, in the final chapterof this book, in the context of some comments about the future of the nation-state. However, the main focus of this book is on thepractical problems of nationalism in the world as it is, rather than




the world as it might be. The main such problems, in my view, arethe problems posed by the existence of minorities, whether they beethnic, cultural or regional, within the territory of the national state.These are the problems with which state governments have constantlyto grapple, as minorities clamour, ever more vociferously, for theirrights, their special interests, their partial autonomy and even theirindependence. They are pressing problems, to which various



36

theoretical arguments are highly relevant. Accordingly, I shall movein the following three chapters to discuss the problems of nationalintegration in general and theoretical terms, after which I shall presentthree case studies showing the successes and failures of nationalintegration in practice.

4 National integration

As Karl Deutsch has observed on more than one occasion, the storyof mankind in its social and political aspects can be regarded as thestory of how small groups became amalgamated into larger units. Inthis book, however, we are concerned neither with the way in whichkinship groups became amalgamated into tribes nor with the way inwhich nations may become merged into international communitiesin the future. Our concern is with the way in which ethnic and cultural

groups have become wholly or partly merged into national societiesso as to support the political organization of the national state.

This is a process common to virtually all national states, for onlya handful of them are ethnically and culturally homogeneous in theway that seems to be assumed or implied by nationalist theory. Japan,Sweden and Portugal certainly qualify as homogeneous. However,some states with the longest history of institutional unity within theirpresent borders, such as France and Spain, have minorities that are

not yet, or were only recently, fully assimilated within the nationalsociety. And the majority of states have sizeable ethnic or culturalminorities among their citizens. These include the three states chosenfor case studies in this book as well as Belgium, Switzerland andYugoslavia in Europe, the USA and nearly all the countries of LatinAmerica, and every state in Africa. The process of national integrationis a common feature of the recent history of the great majority of countries.

As a process, national integration is partly a by-product of othersocial and economic developments, partly the result of deliberategovernment policies. The unplanned component of integration iscommonly called social mobilization. It is basically the process bywhich industrialization induces workers to leave their native villagesso as to seek work in the new industrial areas, thus eroding the socialcommunities of rural areas and mobilizing the workers for absorption



37National integration

into the larger national society. Kinship links become weaker, locallanguages or dialects give way to the dominant national language,local cultures and customs lose their hold. As small industrial concernsare swallowed by larger ones, as means of transport are improved,the process continues. The improvement of means of transport isaccompanied or followed by the development of the mass media of communication, organized on a national basis, so that members of what were once distinct communities become gradually merged intothe national whole.

The process does not always work as smoothly as the above sketchsuggests, but the sketch serves as a model of what has happened tosome extent in most industrial societies and is assumed by some

theorists to be an inevitable process. Karl Deutsch and his colleagueshave suggested that compiling an index of personal transactionsbetween people of different regions, including correspondence andtelephone calls as well as face-to-face contacts, can provide a guideto the extent of social integration in the wider society of which theregions form a part. Up to a point this has been confirmed byexperience, but the process is not always straightforward. Thus, thegreater rate of communication between Quebec and the rest of North

America in the 1960s strengthened separatist sentiments in theprovince, because Quebec nationalists realized that their languageand culture were being threatened.

The other component of national integration consists of government policies designed to change people’s attitudes andloyalties. By developing national institutions and exploiting tacticsof political socialization, the attempt is made to replace local andsectional loyalties by an overriding sense of national loyalty. This

process is known as nation-building. Some examples will be givenlater, but before considering these processes in practice it isimportant to take note of the normative arguments that are alwayspresent, even if not always acknowledged, in discussions of thetopic.

The arguments for national integration

Four arguments have been advanced over the past two centuries infavour of the process of national integration. The first, in terms of its origin, is an argument about historical necessity. In Hegel’s viewthe future of mankind lay in the organization of national states andany process that advanced or facilitated this development couldtherefore be justified as being part of the unfolding of the world




spirit or march of history. The integration of cultural minorities intolarger societies might or might not be welcome to the members of those societies, but civilized nations, by which term Hegel meantnations that were in the forefront of progress, would be justified ‘inregarding and treating as barbarians those who lag behind them ininstitutions which are the essential moments of the state’ (Hegel,[1812] 1952, para. 351).

Marx and Engels held views that were closely related to this one,although expressed in different terms. There is no space in this bookto elaborate on the complexities of Marxist attitudes to nationalismand related questions, which have been authoritatively explained byWalker Connor (Connor, 1984). However, it may be said that the

common thread running through these attitudes was to regardnationalist movements in instrumental terms, to be given approvalor disapproval not for their own sake but in so far as they seemedlikely to aid or hinder the development of progressive tendencies inhistory. Nationalist movements within the Austro-Hungarian Empirewere welcomed as that empire was seen as an obstacle to progress,but no sympathy was wasted on movements within national statesdefending the rights of small cultural minorities whose fate, as Marx

described it, was to be consigned to the rag-bag of history. Not to beoutdone, Engels described such minorities as remnant peoples andnational refuse.

A second line of argument, more acceptable to the Anglo-Saxonmind than these Teutonic pronouncements, was developed bynineteenth-century British liberals. This was the argument thatintegration, in the form of social assimilation, would be beneficial tothe minorities who were assimilated. They might not welcome it,

but in the long run it would be good for them. In 1839, for instance,Lord Durham made the following points in support of his contentionthat a primary purpose of British policy in Canada should be toassimilate and anglicize the French-Canadian community.

The language, the laws, the character of the North Americancontinent are English; and every race but the English…appearsthere in a condition of inferiority. It is to elevate them from thatinferiority that I desire to give to the Canadians our Englishcharacter. I desire it for the sake of the educated classes, whomthe distinction of language and manners keeps apart from thegreat Empire to which they belong…I desire the amalgamationstill more for the sake of the humbler classes…The evils of povertyand dependence would merely be aggravated…by a spirit of jealousand resentful nationality, which should separate the working class




of the community from the possessors of wealth and employersof labour. (Durham, [1839] 1912, pp. 292–3)

A similar argument was put forward in 1847 by the Commissionerson Welsh Education, in regard to the desirability of anglicizing theWelsh community: ‘The Welsh language is a vast drawback to Wales,and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercialprosperity of the people…It bars the access of improving knowledgeto their minds’ (quoted in Coupland, 1954, pp. 188–9)

In 1861 the same general point was made by John Stuart Mill inhis book on representative government. Addressing the problem of national minorities, he declared himself in favour of their

assimilation:

Experience proves that it is possible for one nationality to mergeand be absorbed in another: and when it was originally an inferiorand more backward portion of the human race the absorption isgreatly to its advantage. Nobody can suppose that it is not morebeneficial to a Breton, or a Basque of French Navarre, to be broughtinto the current of the ideas and feelings of a highly civilized and

cultivated people—to be a member of the French nationality,admitted on equal terms to all the privileges of French citizenship,sharing the advantages of French protection, and the dignity of French power—than to sulk on his own rocks, the half-savagerelic of past times, revolving in his own little mental orbit, withoutparticipation or interest in the general movement of the world.The same remark applies to the Welshman or the ScottishHighlander as members of the British nation. (Mill, [1861] 1946,

pp. 294–5) A third argument in favour of integration was also put by Mill. Thisis that representative government should be based on feelings of national unity and would be difficult to operate if those feelings hadnot been developed. Linguistic differences among the populationwould accentuate the difficulties. In Mill’s words:

Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling,especially if they read and speak different languages, the unitedpublic opinion necessary to the working of representativegovernment cannot exist. (Mill, [1861] 1946, p. 292)




This point, put rather casually by Mill, would be better expressedin the proposition that representative democracy can only work ina society with a body of floating voters ready to change theirpartisan support in response to changing party policies andpolitical conditions. If the society is divided on ethnic or religiousor linguistic lines to such a degree that membership of thesecommunal groupings determines partisan loyalties, then there islikely to be no alternation of political power, no readiness tocompromise and no acceptance of majority rule by the minority.Northern Ireland is an obvious example and the point seems to beproved by the failure of democratic institutions throughouttropical Africa, where tribal loyalties have largely determined

political support.This argument, which in its pure form cannot be denied, has been

taken by both European social democrats and American exponentsof modernization theory to mean that economic issues are the onlyproper issues to divide the parties and form the content of electoraldebate, ethnic and cultural loyalties (sometimes described as‘primordial loyalties’) being undesirable hangovers from moreprimitive stages of political development. However, hangovers cannot

be wished out of existence.A fourth and final argument in favour of national integration is

that it is the only secure basis of political authority. This argument,already mentioned in Chapter 3, is frequently neglected in discussionsby political theorists but rarely forgotten by those who wield powerin divided societies.

These arguments, which would be disputed by many liberals inthe 1980s, reigned almost without challenge from the 1850s to the

1960s. A few conservatives regretted the loss of local customs, butliberals and socialists regarded assimilation into a national societyas a necessary aspect of progress. Nation-building was looked uponas an incontrovertibly desirable activity.

The practice of nation-building

The steps taken to promote nation-building can be divided into twocategories. On the one hand, there are direct initiatives taken tofoster integration and a sense of national identity and pride. On theother hand, there are reactive measures taken by governments tominimize the political effects of ethnic and cultural cleavages withinsociety.




An obvious initiative is the creation of symbols of national identity.Flags, anthems and uniforms all serve this purpose. Sports teamsmay also do so, particularly if successful in international competition.In recent years new states have thought it important to establishnational airlines, sometimes at great expense, to symbolize both theindependence and the modernity of their nations. As Minogue haspointed out, new names for towns, new buildings and even newcapital cities have been thought necessary parts of what he calls ‘theequipment of a proper nation’ (Minogue, 1967).

A second and more important feature of nation-building issocialization through the educational system. That earliest of nation-builders, Napoleon, put the matter as follows in 1805:

There will be no political stability so long as there is no teachingbody based on stable principles. So long as children are not taughtwhether they must be republicans or monarchists, Catholics orfree thinkers, etc., the state will not constitute a nation but willrest on vague and shifting foundations, ever exposed to disorderand change. (Quoted in Herold, 1955, p. 118)

This far-sighted remark is put into historical perspective by the factthat during the last three decades of the nineteenth century Frenchstate schools were teaching their pupils the virtues of the Republicwhile Catholic schools were recommending the advantages of amonarchy, as a hangover from which national disputes about thecase for giving state grants to Catholic schools continued until aslate as the 1950s.

In practice all state educational systems socialize their pupils

regarding the virtues of the nation to which they belong, thoughsome do so more openly than others and the virtues stressednaturally vary. American schools are the most open, with theirrequirement that children salute the national flag every morning,in each classroom, and their practice of preaching the virtues of American democracy at every opportunity. British schools are muchmore discreet, but the message about British national achievementsis certainly put across in history lessons. Canadian schools have amore ambiguous task, for the history of their country is one of division rather than unity, but there is now a good deal of propaganda about the virtues of bilingualism and multiculturalism.How far this contributes to a sense of national identity and pride isnot entirely certain.

Another aspect of nation-building is the establishment of politicalinstitutions seen to represent all sections of society. In liberal




democracies this is done by the institution of competitive electionsfor office, with the peripheral regions sometimes being accordedmore-than-proportional representation to make them feel lessdependent on the centre. Thus, Scotland and Wales have moreMembers of Parliament than England, in proportion to their relativepopulations, while Ireland was heavily over-represented when itwas an integral part of the United Kingdom. In Canada andAustralia the upper houses of Parliament give disproportionaterepresentation to the smaller provinces and states, while in Canadathere are also elaborate conventions that assure the peripheral areasrepresentation in the federal cabinet. In the United States thecoincidence of several elections on the same day enables the parties

to nominate ‘balanced tickets’ in areas of mixed ethnic origin, sothat each ethnic group will find familiar names on the list of candidates. In states without competitive elections, such asYugoslavia and the Soviet Union, care is often taken to ensure thatdecision-making bodies contain well-advertised representatives of ethnic or regional minorities.

Institutional arrangements of this kind give peripheral regions orethnic minorities influence on the input side of the governmental

process. This influence is likely to be integrative in its effects if theregions or minorities are represented by national parties, butdisintegrative if they are represented by regional or communal parties,as is now the case, for instance, in Belgium. This is a factor thatcannot always be planned for by nation-builders.

On the output side, efforts are made to ensure that minoritiesgain financial benefits from the activities of the national government.In a centralized political system, the poorer regions benefit

automatically from the fiscal redistribution that occurs as aconsequence of the provision of uniform public services. The wealthierregions contribute more per head in taxation while the poorer regionsreceive more per head in the form of public expenditure. In so far asethnic minorities are concentrated in poorer regions, this processhelps ethnic minorities. Sometimes this automatic equalization processis bolstered by deliberate government policies, as in the UnitedKingdom where Northern Ireland is heavily subsidized throughtransfer payments and Scotland does somewhat better than wouldbe expected. In decentralized systems where many public servicesare provided by provincial or state authorities, fiscal redistributionof an automatic kind will be more limited in scope, but may besupplemented by a deliberate policy of redistribution. In Canada theTax Equalization Scheme has this effect while in Australia the policiesof the Commonwealth Grants Commission achieve the same end in




a more radically egalitarian way. While the manifest function of suchmeasures may be to promote economic welfare and achieveapproximately equal standards of social service provision across thecountry, their latent function is to demonstrate to residents of poorerregions that the national state brings them positive benefits.

A different kind of nation-building activity occurs whennational governments take steps to reduce the impact of ethnic,religious or linguistic cleavages in society. Ethnic cleavages cannotbe reduced directly by governmental action, but insistence onunsegregated schools and legal bans on ethnic discrimination maylead in time to the erosion of ethnic barriers, to intermarriage andto a situation in which ethnic consciousness diminishes. This is

part of the process envisaged by the American view of their societyas a ‘melting pot’.

Religious cleavages are intrinsically less permanent than ethniccleavages in that they can be eroded by conversion or the growth of agnosticism. People cannot change their ethnic identities, though thesemay become less salient to them, but they can change their religiousaffiliations. It is sometimes forgotten that many states have at somestage in their development discouraged minority religions. In

eighteenth-century England only members of the Church of Englandwere enfranchised, and it was not until the second half of thenineteenth century that all religious barriers to membership of theHouse of Commons were removed. In the United States Mormonswere forced to leave the eastern part of the country for a position of relative exile in the Rocky Mountains. In the Sudan, members of predominantly Christian tribes have been penalized in the 1980s bythe imposition of Islamic rules of evidence on courts throughout the

country, whereby judges are forced to give more credence to theevidence of Muslims than to that of infidels whenever there is aconflict of evidence. Examples could be multiplied but the generalpoint is clear.

Irrespective of government action, religious faith in westernsocieties has been sharply eroded in the twentieth century by thegrowth of industrialization, urbanization and affluence. Large citieslike London, Paris and Frankfurt have become essentially irreligious,or de-Christianized as the Catholic Church in France puts it. Thisdevelopment has enabled these countries to resolve issues such asaid to church schools, divorce laws, abortion laws and censorshipthat posed difficult political problems in the not-so-distant past. Onlythe United States and, to a lesser degree, Canada have escaped thistrend, the price of continued religiosity in America being indicated




by the fact that in 1986 twenty-eight abortion clinics there werebombed by Christian zealots.

In countries where religious faith has not declined, the existenceof religious cleavages sometimes creates difficult political problems.In Northern Ireland the Protestant and Catholic communities liveside by side in a condition of mutual hostility punctuated by sectarianviolence and assassinations. The existence of Protestant and Catholicschools, both enjoying state support, keeps the children apart andleads to their being socialized into hostility by the different versionsof history that are taught. In India an uneasy truce between Hindusand Sikhs has been broken in the 1980s by violent behaviour by Sikhnationalists, while Mrs Gandhi paid with her life for her symbolic

gesture of appointing Sikhs as her personal bodyguards. In the MiddleEast there is a conflict between Sunni Muslims and Shi’ite Muslims.In situations like this there is little that governments can do excepttry to divert religious passions away from politics into more innocuousactivities like festivals.

Linguistic cleavages pose problems of a different kind. They aremore certainly divisive than religious cleavages, since they directlyhinder personal communication and nobody can turn a blind eye to

them. They also involve the state in a more necessary way, for thegovernment has to designate an official language whereas it can avoiddesignating an official religion. On the other hand, minority languagesare more certain to fall into disuse, if given no official encouragement,than minority religions are. It is psychologically and mentally costlyfor people to be bilingual, because the human brain is reluctant tostore a multiplicity of labels for a single object or concept (seeLaponce, 1987, Ch. 1). The consequence is that, in any given territory,

there is a general tendency for one language to become dominantand the other to fade away. This process may be delayed if theminority language has a functional sphere in which it is unchallenged,as Welsh was unchallenged for many years as the language of theMethodist church in rural Wales, but it is rare for two languages tosurvive in general use in the same territory for more than a generationor two.

To say this is not to say that the decline of a minority languagewill necessarily be a painless process. People tend to be attached tothe language of their forefathers and to resent its decline, particularlyif this threatens to involve the loss of a considerable body of literature.Protests about the matter may create political conflict, as in Walessince the early 1970s.

When faced with a multilingual society, government leaders havethree possible lines of policy to pursue. First, they can designate




the majority language as the only official language and hope thatminority languages will gradually fall out of public use, possiblyhastening this process by measures such as banning their use inschools. After the Highland Rising of 1745 the English and thelowland Scots took active steps to discourage the use of Gaelic inthe Scottish Highlands, with the result that the language becamevirtually extinct on the Scottish mainland, although it still survivesin the Western Isles. French authorities in the nineteenth centuryencouraged the decline of the Breton language in north-west France,punishing children heard using the language to each other on schoolpremises and adding insult to injury by putting notices on officialbuildings reading ‘Spitting and Breton forbidden’. The English

prohibited the use of Welsh in schools for some years.Measures of this kind involve a cultural loss for a political gain,

any overall assessment of their merits being dependent on personalvalues as the loss and the gain are different in kind. Who can say, ina way likely to command authority, whether England is better orworse off for the extinction of the Cornish language in the south-west and the Cumbrian in the north-west, Scotland better or worseoff for the extinction of Gaelic on the mainland, France better or

worse off for the virtual extinction of Occitan and Provençal?A second possible line of policy is to divide the country up into

linguistic areas, with one language in each area being designated asofficial but the national government required to be bilingual ortrilingual. This is the policy pursued with marked success inSwitzerland, where German, French and Italian are officiallanguages in distinct areas of the country. To ensure that this tidyarrangement is not disturbed by personal mobility, Swiss state

schools teach only in the official language of the area, apart from afew small bilingual districts where instruction is offered in twolanguages. In some parts of Switzerland the language of instructionin private schools is regulated with the same social and politicalpurpose; thus, a French-Swiss family moving to Zurich can havetheir children educated in French at a private school, but only up toa maximum of three years. All subsequent education has to be inGerman (McRae, 1983, p. 148). Citizens may communicate withthe federal government in any of the official languages, though theworking language of the Swiss Parliament and the federal publicservice is German, the majority language among the population as awhole and the dominant language of the area in which the nationalcapital is situated.

Belgium is another country that operates largely on the sameprinciple, known as the territorial principle of bilingualism. That it




has not worked so smoothly in Belgium is largely due to the fact thatthe national capital has French as its dominant language although itis geographically situated within the half of the country that hasFlemish as its official language. At the insistence of Flemish leaders,Brussels has been made officially bilingual and much political energyis devoted to protecting the rights of Flemish-speaking residents of the city. As Laponce has noted, the territorial principle of bilingualismcan be harsh in its application if citizens are not so neatly divided bygeography as the Swiss are. A case in point is the University of Louvain, which had to abandon its bilingualism in the face of Flemishinsistence that all courses given within Flanders should be given inFlemish, forcing its francophone professors and students to move

elsewhere (see Laponce, 1987, p. 175).A third possible line of policy is for the government to apply the

personality principle of bilingualism, as it is known. This is to specifythat both majority and minority languages should be officialthroughout the country, with citizens able to do business in eitherwhen communicating with public officials and with steps taken toprotect the rights of language groups who happen to be in a minorityin their area of residence. This is the choice made in Canada, with

increasing efforts being made since 1969 to ensure that the policy isreflected in practice.

Whereas applying the territorial principle can in somecircumstances be harsh, applying the personality principle isinvariably expensive. It is expensive for government agencies,compelled to operate in more than one language; expensive forcommercial firms, compelled (at least in Canada) to print bilinguallabels and instructions; expensive in terms of lost job opportunities

for those people (in Canada the great majority) who are wholly orsubstantially unilingual; expensive in educational costs if seriousefforts are made to ensure that most people become bilingual. Partlyfor these reasons, it tends to be an unpopular principle in areas of the country that remain substantially unilingual. The politics of language in Canada will be discussed further in Chapter 8.

For political leaders concerned to build a sense of nationhood,the choice between these three policies is sometimes quite difficult.Any choice is likely to upset some citizens and linguistic rivalrieshave caused political tensions in countries as varied as Britain,Canada, India, Malaysia and the Soviet Union.

Arguments for social pluralism




Since the 1960s, much liberal opinion in the west has swung awayfrom the belief that the assimilation of minorities is a necessaryprocess in the building of a nation, towards the view that apluralistic society is in some circumstances more desirable. Whilethe main reasons for this change of emphasis have been practical,some quite reasonable theoretical arguments can be adduced in itsfavour. For instance, J.S.Mill’s arguments for assimilation as thebest basis for democratic government, though impressive, are notwatertight. There is some inconsistency between Mill’s treatmentof majority interests and minority interests. The majority interestis viewed as a collective interest, in the smooth running of representative institutions and the accompanying development of

a more civilized and progressive society. The minority interests areindividual interests, in the possibility of each individual improvinghis position. There is no consideration of what might be regardedas the collective interest of the minority, to preserve a distinctiveculture and way of life.

At a more material level, it seems clear that the process of integration invariably benefits some members of each culturalminority more than others. It benefits the middle classes more than

the workers, and benefits people engaged in commerce and industrymore than those engaged in agriculture. It is for this reason that theWelsh nationalist leader Gwynfor Evans described English as ‘thelanguage of getting on in the world’. It is not a coincidence that theextension of the franchise to Welsh and Scottish citizens who hadnot got on in the world, in 1867 and 1884, was followed by protestsabout Anglicization and centralization that had not been heard earlier.

The change in liberal attitudes towards integration did not spring

from reflections of this kind, however, so much as from mountingevidence that the significance of ethnic and cultural divisions wasnot withering away in the manner that had been predicted. The firstwell-publicized piece of evidence was perhaps the study of New YorkCity published in 1963 under the title Beyond the Melting Pot. Thiswas a descriptive study of five of the six main ethnic groups in NewYork (Anglo-Saxons excluded) by two sociologists, which made animpact on public opinion because its title challenged one of the basicassumptions of American society and the book was written withconsiderable verve. The authors concluded the book by saying that‘religion and race define the next stage in the evolution of theAmerican peoples’ (Glazer and Moynihan, 1963, p. 315).

A second and more important milestone in the change of liberalopinion was the realization, forced upon the American public by therace riots of the late 1960s, that racial conflict between blacks and




whites was going to cause immeasurable damage to American societyunless it could be contained by clear changes of policy leading to amodification of black attitudes. The Kerner Report (Kerner, 1968)recommended just such a change and American attitudes to racialproblems within their society have not been the same since it waspublished.

Outside America, other developments pushed home the samelesson, that ethnicity was a vital force in political life that could notbe dismissed as obsolescent. In Africa, tribal rivalries destroyed oneinfant democratic system after another, while Nigeria plunged into aprotracted civil war following the attempted secession in 1966 of aregion governed by a tribal group excluded from national power. In

western Europe, minority nationalist movements becameunexpectedly prominent, with the Scottish and Welsh nationalistswinning elections and the Basque and Breton nationalists setting off bombs. In Northern Ireland, the simmering conflict between Catholicsand Protestants exploded into bloodshed in 1969, starting a prolongedperiod of sectarian evidence that reminded observers not to underratethe political significance of religion. The lesson was rammed homeby the increased tension in the Middle East.

All in all, the main political development of the late 1960s andthe 1970s was the upsurge in ethnic and cultural conflict. Politicalscientists, having entirely failed to predict this development, reactedto it in various ways. In 1968 Lijphart’s book on The Politics of Accommodation, while basically an account of politics in theNetherlands, carried the more general message that political scientistsshould question the assumption that social homogeneity is necessaryfor democratic institutions to flourish (Lijphart, 1968, Chs 1 and

10). In 1972 and 1973 Walker Connor published influential articleson the political significance of ethnicity, including one about the lossof minority cultures with the pointed title ‘Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?’ (Connor, 1972). In 1974 McRae edited a book entitled(and advocating) Consociational Democracy (McRae, 1974), whilein the following year Hechter used the phrase ‘internal colonialism’to describe the position of ethnic minorities within the national state(Hechter, 1975). These and similar works created a minor revolutionin thinking about the process of national integration, based uponthe propositions that the assimilation of minorities was not takingplace in the way previously imagined, was not necessary to thestability of the state, and possibly was not even desirable.

Patterns of integration






In respect of economic relationships, it is helpful to distinguishbetween full integration and partial integration. Full integration isto be found where there is no significant correlation between ethnic(or cultural) origins and occupation or income. If a chart is imaginedin which the vertical axis indicates levels of occupation and incomewhile the horizontal axis indicates ethnic identity, the lines separatingethnic groups will be vertical in a situation of full integration. Inconditions of partial integration, the lines separating ethnic andcultural groups will be sloping, showing that members of some groupshave a significantly better chance of economic success than membersof other groups. If the lines separating ethnic and cultural groupsturn out to be horizontal, so that no members of the underprivileged

group achieve superior economic positions, this would indicate asociety characterized by economic segregation. In practice it is difficultto think of a society other than South Africa that is in this position,but it clearly deserves a separate category even though the categorymay have only one member.

In respect of political relationships, there are four categories. Acondition of political assimilation is found in societies where ethnicityis of no political significance, with candidates for political office being

chosen irrespective of their ethnic origins and government policieshaving no bearing on the status or relationships of ethnic or culturalgroups. As an example, the Jewish community in Britain is in thisposition. Being Jewish or gentile has no significant bearing on aperson’s candidature; nobody notices how many Jewish politicianssecure ministerial office; and there are no laws or policies that havespecial relevance to Jews. It is perhaps noteworthy that theappointment of an MP of Lithuanian Jewish origin as Secretary of

State for Scotland in 1985 was accepted without criticism and almostentirely without comment; it was important that the office should befilled by a Scotsman, but a Lithuanian Jewish Scotsman qualified aswell as a clansman from the Highlands.

A very different situation exists when there is general awarenessof ethnic and cultural differences and a policy of accommodation ispursued so that members of minority groups shall not feel left out ordiscriminated against. In this case parties make a point of considering ethnic origins when nominating candidates, as in thepractice of choosing a balanced ticket in the larger American cities.Government policies and appointments will also take constantaccount of ethnic or cultural differences if accommodation is thename of the game.

A third possibility is that the ethnic groups will be in a state of political conflict, with parties organized on ethnic lines, little readiness




to co-operate or even to reach compromises between them, andgovernment policies having a strong bias in favour of the winninggroup. This was the situation in most African states during the shortperiods of democracy that followed their independence. It was alsothe situation in Northern Ireland when the province had its ownParliament.

Finally, there are some political systems in which particular ethnicgroups are completely excluded from the normal channels of powerand treated only as objects of policy. This is clearly the situation of blacks in South Africa, which is the extreme case. However, AustralianAborigines, North American Indians and Canadian Inuit are insubstantially the same position politically, in that they exert virtually

no influence through the normal process of elective representation.They are treated much better than South African blacks and areincreasingly consulted about policy, to the point of being negotiatedwith over some issues, but their channels of influence are segregatedfrom those of white citizens in the same country. It will be appropriateto call this situation one of majority control.

It follows that we can draw up a list of categories that will serveas a broad conceptual framework for the analyses of experiences of

national integration that will be presented in Part II of this book.

Social integration AssimilationThe melting potCultural pluralism

Economic integration Full integrationPartial integrationEconomic segregation

Political integration Political assimilationAccommodationEthnic conflictMajority control

Before we turn to the case studies, however, it is important to examinetwo other theoretical questions, of a normative rather than asociological character. One is the question of whether ethnic andcultural minorities within a state can reasonably be said to haverights, and if so what these rights may be. The other is the questionof whether geographically concentrated minorities can be said tohave a right to secede from the state in certain circumstances,accompanied by some discussion of the conditions that lead suchminorities to make this claim. These theoretical questions will beexamined in Chapters 5 and 6.



52

5 The question of minority rights

Nearly all countries contain ethnic or cultural minorities whosemembers make claims on the wider society, whether these be claimsto equal treatment or claims for special privileges or exemptions. Inrecent years it has become common in western societies, following a

trend started in the United States, to use the language of rights whendiscussing such claims. The object of this chapter is to examine thetypes of rights that are commonly claimed on behalf of minoritiesand to discuss the circumstances in which such claims may be regardedas reasonable.

Following the example of the United Nations Special Committeeon the Protection of Minority Rights, we shall be concerned onlywith ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities. No attempt will be

made to discuss the problems of class relationships in society or theproblems of particular categories of people such as women, children,old people or the illiterate. Such problems are important but are notclosely related to the issues of nationalism and national integration.For economy of expression, the term ‘cultural minority’ will be usedto cover the three types of minority whose claims are examined.

Now, to say that a cultural minority has a right to something is tomake a much stronger statement than to say that it has an interest in

something. All organized groups and most individuals have interestsin this, that and the other. This is what politics is about. But a rightimplies an obligation. If I have a right of action, my fellow citizensand my government have a clear obligation to let me act that waywithout hindrance. If I have a right of recipience, the relevantgovernment agency has an obligation to provide me with the cash orservice specified. It is a mistake to talk about rights without beingvery clear about their nature and their basis.

Types of rights

The language of rights was applied to the activities and claims of individuals long before it was applied to the activities and interestsof groups. Hobbes and Locke discussed the natural rights of



53Minority rights

individuals. The American and French revolutionaries issueddeclarations about the rights of man. In the nineteenth century thelanguage of rights fell out of favour, but it was revived after theSecond World War with the United Nations Declaration of HumanRights (proclaimed in 1948) and the European Convention for theProtection of Human Rights (proclaimed in 1950). In both cases therights enumerated were individual rights, not group rights. Since weare on familiar ground when dealing with individual rights, it will behelpful to summarize their nature and basis, in brief outline, as apreliminary to a discussion of group rights. Individual rights can bedivided into five distinct categories, each of which has a differentbasis and scope of applicability. A summary follows.

Type of right Basis Scope of applicability

Contractual rights An agreement or treaty The parties involved

Positive rights Law Residents in the relevant

jurisdiction

Moral rights A moral code or Communities sharing

religious faith that code or faith

Political rights Either custom (traditional Citizens of the state or

political rights) or reaso members of particular

(speculative political groups within the state

rights)

Human rights The essential needs of All human beings

human beings

If the rights claimed by cultural minorities are considered in terms of

these categories, there are no conceptual problems in the case of contractual rights and positive rights. But suppose the rights havenot been established by contract or law, but are merely claimed.Should they be regarded as human rights, moral rights or politicalrights?

Van Dyke’s view that the rights of cultural minorities can beequated with human rights is not at all convincing (see Van Dyke,1985). Individual human rights have their basis in the commonneeds of all human beings, on which all people of liberal outlook canagree. The UN Declaration was swollen by the addition of severalideologically-inspired items put in by the United States and theSoviet Union; but if these are subtracted there remains a group of items—the first twenty articles—that are beyond reasonablecontroversy. The items in the European Convention are also itemsthat all liberals can easily support. However, cultural minorities




rarely have common needs that are generally agreed upon bymembers of the larger societies within which they live. Spokesmenfor the minorities may not even agree among themselves about whattheir needs are.

As an example, in 1986 spokesmen for the Indian tribes of BritishColumbia had the opportunity to make a case for the needs of theirpeoples to an official commitee of inquiry. Their submissions variedenormously, from some who wanted better secondary schools sothat their children could compete effectively for jobs in theCanadian economy, to others who wanted a greater degree of municipal self-government or greater protection for their fishingrights, to others again who wanted independence from Canada and

representation at the United Nations. When minority spokesmendisagree so widely about the real needs of their peoples, and this isfar from being a unique example, it does not make sense to say thatthese needs should be accorded the status of human rights.

If it is inappropriate to talk in terms of human rights, it is alsoinappropriate to talk in terms of moral rights. These are based uponshared moral values, and the whole point about many culturalminorities is that they do not share the moral values of the dominant

groups in society. The Islamic faith permits men to have four wives,but Muslims living in predominantly Christian societies are notallowed to do this. British residents of Pakistani origin sometimeswish their children to enter into marriages arranged by post withpartners from Pakistan, but this conflicts with the dominant valuesof British society. In the absence of shared moral values, it is impossibleto secure agreement upon moral rights.

What we are discussing, therefore, is the case for various kinds of

political rights, that may be customary rights as in the case of indigenous peoples or speculative rights (to use Edmund Burke’s usefulterminology) as in the case of immigrant minorities. The basis of thefirst is tradition while the basis of the second is reason. The distinctionbetween the categories does not, of course, always coincide with thedistinction between the groups involved. Many indigenous groupswant the same kinds of right, for example to equal opportunities ineducation, as immigrant groups want. But it makes the argumentclearer if the rights are distinguished by category, and I shall dealfirst with speculative rights of various sorts and leave customaryrights until later.

Speculative rights can be usefully divided into two sub-categories,namely rights to full and equal opportunities in society and rights tospecial ways of protecting the cultural identity of the minority groupin question. Black citizens in the United States, for instance, were



55Minority rights

demanding equal opportunities in the 1950s, which involved theabolition of segregation in schools and discrimination in employmentand in the political system. When these objectives were largelyachieved, black spokesmen, aware that formal equality of opportunitywas not leading to substantive equality of achievement, demandedspecial privileges for blacks in the form of affirmative action orpositive discrimination. Such demands, largely granted in the 1970s,amounted to a claim that special measures, presumably of atemporary kind, were needed to give reality to the concept of fulland equal opportunities. The claim was an extension of the demandfor the abolition of segregation and discrimination, but it had thesame object in view. That object was the social, economic and political

integration of black citizens into American life.The claim that school and college curriculums should include

programs of ‘black studies’, also made in the late 1960s and 1970s,was different in kind. This was a claim that American blacks,considered as a community, had a distinctive cultural identity thatwas threatened by integrative developments and deserved protection.Moreover, it was a claim that blacks had a right to this protection,even though it might require educational changes that imposed costs

on the majority. It was a claim to preserve differences from whitesociety, as distinct from a claim to eliminate differences.

The coincidence of both types of claims raises questions abouttheir compatibility. Is there what some scholars have called ‘an ethnictrap’, whereby the preservation of cultural distinctiveness makes theachievement of economic equality more difficult? (See Wiley, 1967and Kringas, 1984.) There is scattered evidence from various countriesthat this may be the case. It has been shown, for instance, that the

devotion of a substantial period of schooltime to the teaching of Gaelic in Irish schools had a detrimental effect on the educationalprogress of Irish children in other subjects. For this reason, the amountof time devoted to Gaelic has been reduced in recent years, eventhough it is one of Ireland’s two official languages. In Canada, Porter’sauthoritative study of social mobility showed that the French-Canadians, though the first to colonize the country, had consistentlyheld an inferior economic position there, being poorer not only thanBritish Canadians but also than some ethnic minorities who arrivedmuch later than the French. Porter attributed this to education, sayingthat ‘the more French and Catholic education has been, the less hasit been adequate for the French to improve their position in themodern economy’ (Porter, 1975, p. 98, italics in the original).

It is clear from these and other studies that there may be anethnic trap in respect of language maintenance, although the




evidence is not conclusive. In the period relevant to Porter’s studyFrench-Canadian schools placed a good deal of emphasis ontheology and classical studies as well as on French, the combinedeffect of which was presumably to reduce the time available forsubjects of greater utility in the North American economy. Recentstudies of students from English-speaking backgrounds who haveattended French immersion schools, where French is the mainlanguage of instruction, suggest that the students have benefitedfrom the experience. However, here also there are factors at workother than language training, as the immersion schools tend tohave smaller classes and better-trained teachers than other publicschools in Canada and to draw their pupils mainly from educated

middle-class families. Moreover, it is one thing to give training in aminority language to students whose fluency in the majoritylanguage is assured, another to maintain minority languagesamong groups whose knowledge of the majority language isinsecure.

The evidence about the effect of extensive training in a minoritylanguage on subsequent performance is therefore somewhat mixed.However, it is clear that measures to maintain minority cultures are

conceptually different from measures to promote equality of achievement and may in some circumstances be dysfunctional inrespect of the latter objective. The two types of claim will thereforebe considered separately.

Measures to promote equality and integration

(1) It may be taken for granted that all citizens need to be fluent inthe language of commerce and government of their country if theyare to be able to participate fully in its economic and political life. Itis therefore fair to assume that immigrants have a right to theprovision of language training for themselves and their children. Inpractice this might be objected to on the ground that some of theimmigrants were uninvited and may even be unwelcome to membersof the host society. Although understandable, this argument is difficultto sustain. In all modern states immigration is subject to governmentcontrol, so that logically the government ought to take responsibilityfor measures necessary for the integration of immigrants into society.In the case of adult immigrants with no knowledge of the languageof the host society it is highly desirable for language training to beprovided by teachers who can speak the native language of theimmigrants, which may sometimes create practical problems.



57Minority rights

However, a government that admits such immigrants can be held tohave a duty to do its best in such cases.

(2) Members of cultural minorities, once they attain citizenship,are entitled to equal opportunities with all other citizens. Theytherefore have a right to protection by laws banning discrimination,whether this be in the labour market, the housing market, or theprovision of government services.

(3) If members of cultural minorities persistently occupy inferiorpositions in the economic system and it can be shown to be causedby their group identities, rather than by inferior qualifications, itwould be reasonable for them to ask the government to promotemeasures of affirmative action (these being voluntary) or positive

discrimination (if backed by legal sanctions) to raise their level of achievement. However, it would be difficult to maintain that theyhave a right to such measures, for several reasons. First, it is inherentlydifficult to establish the reasons for inferior economic performanceon the part of a group of people. Numerous factors may contributeto this result. Second, such measures infringe the liberal principle of equality before the law and are directly costly to members of themajority. In some situations the measures might be challenged in the

courts as unfair discrimination against members of the majority, ashappened in the Bakke and De Funis cases in the United States. Inother situations the measures might cause a backlash among themajority that would damage community relations, as might be thecase if a British government legislated for positive discrimination infavour of coloured minorities and would certainly be the case if aFrench government took similar action in respect of North Africansliving in France. In view of these possible problems it would be naïve

to advance as a general principle the proposition that culturalminorities suffering from a disadvantageous position in the labourmarket should be entitled as of right to demand measures of positivediscrimination from their government. All that can be said is thatwhen spokesmen for disadvantaged minorities make a plea for thiskind of assistance, the government has an obligation to consider thequestion in a sympathetic manner.

(4) It is obviously desirable for established political parties toopen their doors to members of cultural minorities and to adoptsome of them as candidates for elective office. This is not a matterthat can be legislated for, but it would be logical for national partiesthat preach the virtues of national integration to do what they can tofurther this objective within their own organizations.

(5) Spokesmen for cultural minorities often maintain thattheir groups should not only have the opportunity to participate





59Minority rights

Examples include the question of whether Sikhs should be exemptfrom the law requiring motorcyclists to wear crash helmets (anissue of the past two decades in Britain, the United States andCanada); whether Sikhs should be permitted to wear ceremonialbut sharp daggers when being prosecuted in court or when inprison (an issue raised in 1986 in Canada); whether westernersshould be allowed to drink alcohol in countries where this isgenerally banned (a recent issue in Kuwait and one or two otherpredominantly Muslim states); whether westerners should bepermitted to kiss in public in countries influenced by Islamicfundamentalism; and whether Hindus should be permitted tocremate their relatives on funeral pyres in their back yards (an

issue raised briefly in England in the 1960s).The only general principle that can be endorsed in such cases is

that the majority has an obligation to be tolerant. There is a case forevading a direct clash over such issues wherever possible, such as byallowing Sikhs not to wear crash helmets on condition that they payhigher insurance premiums or get reduced compensation for headinjuries. It should be noted, however, that an obligation to betolerant does not necessarily confer a right on the minority. Rights

always create obligations but the reverse does not hold. If I see a girldrowning in the surf or about to be seized by a crocodile I have amoral obligation to rescue her if I can, but she does not have a rightto be rescued. I have to weigh my obligation to help her against myswimming abilities and my obligation to stay alive for the sake of my wife and children. Similarly, a government has to weigh itsobligation to be tolerant about minority customs against its duty toprotect the interests of the majority, if these are real interests and not

merely expressions of prejudice.Occasionally, issues arise in which public authorities have to weightheir obligation to be tolerant of minority customs against their dutyto protect the rights of individuals. The Canadian authorities do notpermit Sikhs to wear daggers in prison, lest these be used againstother prisoners. British authorities do not permit Hindus to crematetheir relatives in their back yards, lest the widows of men beingcremated find themselves under pressure to throw themselves on thepyre as well, which is a Hindu custom. In England a number of teenage girls of Pakistani origin have applied to become wards of court, so as to escape from their parents’ pressure or orders to enterinto arranged marriages with men whom the girls disliked or hadnot even met, and in some cases the English courts have acceded tothese requests. In the United States the courts have sometimes agreedto requests from hospitals to authorize medical treatment to save the





61Minority rights

traditional way. If they want to become integrated with the majoritythey deserve special help in the form of measures to equip them forthe modern labour market. If they prefer to save what they can of their original ways of life it would seem reasonable for the majorityto help them with this also.

The problem is that neither of these objectives is at all easy toattain. The history of attempts to integrate American and CanadianIndians and Australian Aborigines into the modern labour marketsof those countries is very largely a history of failure. CanadianIndians have been the least unsuccessful of the three, in that aproportion of them have displayed entrepreneurial talents and havesuccessfully organized logging companies, trucking companies,

hotels and even a small airline. But the majority of the CanadianIndians who have attempted to prosper in the Canadian economyhave ended up in menial or low-paid occupations. American Indianshave been less successful and Aborigines have been dismallyunsuccessful, the cultural gap between the latter and white societybeing greater than that between North American Indians and whitesociety.

At the same time, indigenous peoples have found it difficult to

maintain the standard of living they once derived from hunting andsimilar activities, partly because the development of their country bywhite men has changed the environment and partly because theyhave lost many of their native skills. The buffalo no longer roamacross the plains of North America and there is no way that they canbe brought back. The establishment of cattle and sheep stations inthe Australian outback has reduced the land available for food-gathering and hunting by Aborigines. Indians are no longer good

with a bow and arrow and most Aborigines have lost the delicateskills that once enabled them to survive in an arid land, where manyearly white explorers died of thirst.

In these circumstances there is no easy answer to the problems of indigenous peoples. In all three countries government policies havemoved from conquest to attempted integration to the provision of social welfare. In all three the latest phase is the attempt to givepartial autonomy to groups of indigenous peoples and to find waysof helping such groups to become at least partially self-sufficient,pursuing some of their traditional activities even though they haveto be subsidized by welfare payments and special grants. The policiesadopted in Canada and Australia will be outlined in Chapters 8 and9, but it can be said now that the most profitable way ahead lies notin the assertion of old grievances, serious though these may be, butin the negotiation of arrangements most likely to give practical help




to the groups concerned. Indigenous peoples have a right to citizenshipand, as citizens, they have the same right to social security benefitsas anyone else. In addition, it seems clear, as a matter of social justice,that when groups of indigenous people prefer not to enter intocompetition in the white economy they deserve government supportto protect what remains of their native culture and lifestyle.






any combination of these. However, temporary grievances, nomatter how strongly felt, cannot plausibly be put forward as ajustification for breaking up an existing state, so long as that stateprovides some mechanism for the peaceful adjustment of its policiesand the replacement of its governing parties. Liberal systems of government could not be sustained if any minority with a temporarygrievance used this as a reason for opting out of the system. Thegrievance has to have a history, and be likely to persist indefinitely, if proposals for secession are to seem justified to observers fromoutside the minority in question.

Any discussion of justification has to rest upon normativeassumptions of one kind or another. In the following paragraphs I

shall suggest conditions that might reasonably, in the eyes of liberals,justify the claims of a geographically concentrated minority to secedefrom an existing state. Since the assumptions are liberal, it is not tobe expected that Marxists or supporters of the authoritarian rightwould agree with the argument.

First, secession might well be thought justifiable if the regionhad originally been included in the state by force and its peoplehad displayed a continuing refusal to give full consent to the union.

There must have been a history of reservations about the union,even if not one of active protest. This condition would have giventhe people of the Roman Catholic countries of Ireland the right tosecede from the United Kingdom at any time between 1801 and1921. It would have endowed the people of Algeria with a similarright to secede from the French state. It would give the Ambonesepeople of the South Moluccas the right to secede from Indonesia,as they attempted to do in 1950, even if Indonesia had not ceased

to be a democracy. (On the Ambonese, see Young, 1976, p. 354.)The hard cases under this condition are the indigenous peoples of lands conquered by settlers. In the majority of instances, theirterritories have been invaded by settlers, and members of theindigenous tribes so dispersed, that there is no longer a territorythat can be clearly demarcated in which tribal members constitutea majority of the population. Where there are such territories, as inthe tribal reserves of North America, the Indians usually dependon government subsidies to maintain their living standards, so thatsecession would have little attraction. There is undoubtedly a sensein which these indigenous peoples have suffered cruelly from thewhite man’s invasion, but it would be romantic to suggest thatsecession is now an appropriate answer to their problems.

A second condition that would seem to justify secession wouldobtain if the national government had failed in a serious way to



65The question of secession

protect the basic rights and security of the citizens of the region.This failure must either have been continuing or, if not continuing,be so drastic that a reasonable person in the region could be expectedto feel fearful for his future security and freedom. This conditionwould have given the Ibo people of the Eastern Region of Nigeriathe right to secede from the federation in 1967, following the completefailure of the Nigerian regime to prevent the massacre of Ibos carriedout by groups from the Northern Region, and by units of the Nigerianarmy, in May, July and September-October 1966.

A third justifying condition would obtain if the political system of the country had failed to safeguard the legitimate political andeconomic interests of the region, either because the representative

process was biased against the region or because the executiveauthorities had contrived to ignore the results of that process. Forthis condition to apply, it would be necessary to show that the failurewas prolonged and likely to continue, that it had resulted in relativedeprivation of some kind for the region, and that the politicians inpower could be held responsible for the adverse consequences thathad followed.

It would not be enough to show that the region was economically

backward or affected by industrial decline, like southern Italy orScotland, for in these cases the causes of relative deprivation are notpolitical and the national government has shown itself sensitive tothe problem by pursuing policies specifically designed to help theregion in question. For the condition to apply, there has to besystematic distortion of what could be expected to be the normalpattern of democratic influence, either through peculiarities of therepresentative process or as a result of manipulation by national

leaders. A rather extreme example of this condition would be thecase of the Bengalis of East Pakistan. The refusal by national leadersto accept the normal democratic consequences of an electoral victoryby the party supported by most East Pakistanis turned theaccumulated resentment of the Bengalis into a flame of anger, leadingto the secession of what became Bangladesh in 1971. This secessionwas clearly justifiable in terms of the principles here proposed.

A much more marginal case is that of Western Australia in 1933.That state proposed to secede from the Commonwealth because itsleaders believed that its economic interests were being largely ignoredby the Commonwealth government, dominated as it was by the moreindustrialized eastern states. However, Western Australia was notsuffering from any great deprivation, its people did not have a cultureof their own that was markedly different from that of otherAustralians, and the proposal to secede was quickly dropped when




the state was offered better financial terms by the commissionresponsible for fixing the level of federal grants. This was an exampleof a not-very-passionate minority nationalist movement, based upona rather weak argument for secession.

A fourth justifying condition, rather more difficult to recognizethan the three so far mentioned, might pertain if the nationalgovernment had ignored or rejected an explicit or implicit bargainbetween regions that was entered into as a way of preserving theessential interests of a region that might find itself outvoted by anational majority. The paradigmatic case is that of the southern statesof the United States, whose leaders were probably entitled to feeloutraged and threatened when Congress broke the convention that

new states would be admitted to the union on the basis of one freestate for one slave state. When northern politicians decided to ignorethe warnings that John C.Calhoun and others had expressed on thisissue, they provoked a secession by southern states whose leadersfelt that the move jeopardized their essential interests and the futurestructure of their society. In terms of the liberal principles hereproposed, this attempted secession was probably justifiable.

The case of Quebec, though clearly different, may be thought to

fall into the same category. The hope of the leaders of the French-Canadian community in the early years of Confederation was that thenew Canadian state would embody a partnership between the twofounding peoples, whose interests and rights would be equally protectedin the years to come. This hope rested on shaky foundations and inpractice the Canadian state has not proved to be an equal partnershipof the kind envisaged. The western provinces that were subsequentlysettled and established as units of the Canadian state did little or nothing

to protect the French language, so that francophone citizens have beenforced to learn English to find employment and have seen their childrenand grandchildren gradually adopt English as their first or onlylanguage. When politicians in Quebec realized that the dominance of the French language and culture was not secure even in that province,for reasons that will be explained in Chapter 8, the result was thegrowth of the Quebecois nationalist movement with separatistambitions. In terms of the fourth type of justification for secessionhere suggested, Quebec appears to be a marginal case.

Conditions leading to secessionist movements

It is possible to argue that this discussion of how secessionistmovements can be justified misses a central feature of the situation.




Scotland, for instance, would not appear to be justified in claimingindependence from the United Kingdom under any of the headingsmentioned. Yet Scotland was once an independent nation and ithas its own legal system, its own established church, a significantliterature and a history of contributions to world thought thatincludes the writings of David Hume and Adam Smith. To thetrue Scottish nationalist this is undoubtedly enough to establishthe case, without any need to argue about broken bargains. Tothe true Welsh nationalist, it is enough that Wales has its ownlanguage and culture, even while lacking many of the advantagesthat Scottish nationalists may claim for their country. As the 1972Manifesto of the Welsh Language Society declared: ‘To that

astonishing question, “Why do you want to keep up the Welshlanguage?” the true Welshman need only answer, “That our fathersbe not shamed”’ (Planet, 1974/75).

This declaration points firmly to another aspect of the situation;that the dyed-in-the-wool nationalist is a romantic, not a rationalist.He is a communitarian, not an individualist. He thinks in terms of the spirit and culture of his people, not in terms of bargains andcalculations. He will fight for his case despite any number of rational

arguments showing it to be unjustified.However, this aspect of the situation, though highly important,

does not render our discussion of justifications irrelevant. Romanticnationalists may not be impressed by the arguments, but romanticnationalists are few in number. They can create minority nationalistmovements and keep them alive, but they cannot win widespreadsupport in their community unless they can point to broken promises,material disadvantages suffered, or the prospect of tangible gain.

Poetry may inspire the few, but the masses need to be persuaded of actual losses and potential benefits. To explain why minoritynationalist movements wax and wane, we need to examine thematerial factors that lead to their growth and decline.

Various theories have been put forward in recent years that bearon this question. The best known is probably the theory of internalcolonialism, first advanced by Latin-American writers and expressedin systematic form by Hechter. The essence of this theory is thatthe relationships between members of the dominant or corecommunity within a state and members of the minority or peripheralcommunities are characterized by exploitation. The dominantcommunity uses its economic advantages to ensure that its industrialbase is diversified, leaving the peripheral areas with more specializedand therefore more vulnerable economies. The dominant communityalso regulates influential roles and positions in the state in such a




way as to favour its own members and leave members of the othercommunities in subordinate roles (Hechter, 1975, pp. 9–10 and38–40). Members of the peripheral communities, remainingconscious of the cultural differences between themselves and themajority, will inevitably resent the exploitation to which they aresubjected and can be expected to support minority nationalistmovements when this resentment reaches a certain level.

Hetcher illustrated his model by taking the United Kingdom as acase study and it is therefore unfortunate that the contemporarysituation in this country gives scant support to the theory. Therelations between Britain and Ireland certainly conformed to theinternal colonial model in the period up to Irish independence in

1921, but the relations between England on the one hand andScotland and Wales on the other are very different. The Scottisheconomy is not highly specialized, the statistics showing it to haveless specialization of employment than any other region of the UnitedKingdom (Birch, 1978, p. 330). The Scots and Welsh have not beenexcluded from influential positions in the state and neither have thecitizens of Northern Ireland. These three territories, comprising only17 per cent of the population of the United Kingdom, have contributed

at least their fair share of political leaders and top civil servants, aswill be shown in Chapter 7. In Canada a similar enquiry would revealthat Quebec has a more diversified economy than many of theAnglophone provinces and that French-Canadians have played adominant role in the Liberal Party, which itself has governed Canadafor most of the past sixty years. A theory that fails to explain eitherthe Scottish or the Quebecois nationalist movement cannot beregarded as a very useful guide.

Somewhat similar comments can be made about Nairn’s attemptto compensate for what he rightly calls the failures of Marxism byproducing an explanation of nationalist movements (of all kinds,representing national majorities or minorities) in terms of the unevendevelopment of capitalism (Nairn. 1977, Chapter 9). Some territories,like Scotland and Wales, are slightly poorer than their immediateneighbours; others, like the Basque country and Catalonia, are slightlyricher than theirs; the whole of the Third World is underdevelopedin comparison with the western world, and the result in all cases isthe growth of nationalism. The real origins of nationalist movements,according to Nairn, are to be found ‘in the machinery of worldpolitical economy’ (Nairn, 1977, p. 335).

This theory has to be looked at sceptically. It is not clear thatcapitalism is responsible for uneven economic development. Theworld has been unevenly developed since people first farmed its land,




and it seems likely that it always will be. There is uneven developmentin and among socialist states just as there is in and among capitaliststates. The German Democratic Republic is richer than Poland,Hungary is richer than Bulgaria, and the area around Moscow isricher than Uzbekistan. If the reference to capitalism is dropped,there may still be some truth in the suggestion that unevendevelopment contributes to nationalist rivalries, but the explanatoryvalue of this suggestion seems rather small. Polish nationalism isfairly intense not because Poland is poorer than neighbouring statesbut because the Germans and the Russians have taken turns to invadePolish territory. The people of the Soviet Islamic republics harbournationalistic feelings vis-à-vis ethnic Russians not because the latter

live in a richer part of the country but because of the religious andlinguistic differences that divide them. Nairn’s emphasis on economicfactors is best regarded as an unconvincing attempt to rescue neo-Marxists from the failure of Marxism to predict the continuedrelevance of cultural issues in politics.

In his painstaking sociological approach to the problem,Rothschild arrives at another generalization that has some similarityto Nairn’s. ‘Politicised ethnic assertiveness today’, he maintains,

‘appears to be keenest among those who have been least successfuland those who have been most successful in meeting and achievingthe norms, standards and values of the dominants in their severalmulti-ethnic states’ (Rothschild, 1981, p. 137). The former areresentful at their failure while the latter are resentful because theireconomic success is not reflected in full social and politicalacceptance. Rothschild gives no examples to justify this last part of the argument, and it is not at all clear that Jewish-Americans,

German-Americans and Irish-Americans (to take only his owncountry) are at a disadvantage in the political sphere even whenthey are successful in economic terms and in meeting the socialnorms of American society. This might have been said in the past,but it does not seem credible in the 1980s. The ethnic origins of Kennedy, Kissinger, Reagan, Schulz and Weinberger do not seemto have done them much harm.

My own view is that structural explanations of these kinds goonly a very small way towards explaining minority nationalistmovements. I think it more helpful to attempt an explanation interms of one constant factor and two groups of historical (as distinctfrom structural) variables.

The constant factor is the determination of romantic nationaliststo demand measures of autonomy to protect the cultural identity of their community. Ethnic and local loyalties are enduring features of




social life. People invariably retain an attachment to their own ethnicgroup and the community in which they were brought up. For many,often for most, people these attachments become overlaid by loyaltyto the wider national society and its institutions, but for some theethnic or cultural community remains the chief object of their politicalpassions. Such romantic nationalists may keep the banner wavingover long periods when their cause seems hopeless. Armeniannationalists are still holding demonstrations to protest about thedisappearance of their country as an independent entity in 1920 andthe still earlier massacre of their people by Turkish troops. IrishRepublicans are still fighting to undo the decisions embodied in theAnglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. Cornish nationalists in the 1980s are

busily struggling to reconstruct the Cornish language, which actuallybecame extinct in the 1930s. It is this constant factor that explainswhy minority nationalist movements have great survival power eventhough their rate of success is rather low.

The first group of historical variables is both general in scope andsecular in nature. My proposition is that, for reasons that will beenumerated, conditions in the 1970s and 1980s have made minoritynationalism more attractive and more plausible than did conditions

earlier in the century. The factors involved are as follows.1) The impact of television on cultural minorities has been

different in kind from the impact of other media. It is different becauseit brings a majority culture, often in its least attractive form, rightinto the living room. It is different because it captures the imaginationand sympathies of children to a much greater extent than writtenmaterial. Television also differs from the printed word in its enormouscosts of production, so that minorities cannot support their own

channels in the way that they support their own publishing firms. Itis therefore not surprising that the impact of television often provokesan angry reaction from the defenders of minority languages andculture. People who would do nothing to prevent the gradual erosionof their language and culture over the generations may be stirred toprotest if they see them threatened with extinction within their ownlifetime (see Birch, 1977, p. 174).

2) Since the Second World War industrial rationalization hasled in many economically advanced countries to a greaterconcentration of business headquarters in metropolitan centres suchas London and Paris. People in peripheral regions tend to resent thefact that this concentration reduces their control over regionaleconomic affairs while it strengthens that of the dominant community(see Esman, 1977, pp. 375–4).

3) A remarkable feature of recent years is the growth of political




impatience. In an era when talk about the future is dominated bypredictions of nuclear warfare, world famine and the exhaustion of energy resources, people are no longer willing to accept a situationthat displeases them in the hope that things will be better for theirchildren or grandchildren. There has never been a period in historymarked by the impatient demands that characterize our present era;when groups are campaigning for women’s rights, gay rights,students’ rights and prisoners’ rights it is only to be expected thatspokesmen for cultural minorities will become vociferous too. Therapid spread of higher education has contributed to thesedevelopments and enlarged the pool of ready recruits for nationalistorganizations.

4) The changed nature of the international system has increasedthe security of smaller states, so that secession seems less risky thanit would have done in earlier periods. The size of a country’spopulation no longer bears a close relationship to its expectation of being able to resist invasion. The people of Belgium and Luxembourgare protected just as effectively by the NATO alliance as are thepeople of France and the United Kingdom. Size is also less importantthan used to be the case in diplomatic disputes. The medium-sized

states are so constrained by the web of international relationshipsthat they may have no more freedom of manoeuvre than small states.These changes in the international order have removed one of themain benefits to be derived from membership of a sizeable state (seeBirch, 1977, p. 173).

5) The development of supranational organizations like theEuropean Community, the World Bank and the InternationalMonetary Fund gives citizens of small states some of the economic

advantages that were previously enjoyed by citizens of large states.These include access to a large market, access to capital not directlycontrolled by another state, the reduction of financial instabilitycaused by local economic difficulties and the opportunity forgeographical mobility by members of the professional classes (seeBirch, 1977, p. 173).

6) The development of television news programs has proved to beof incalculable benefit to the propagandist activities of minoritynationalist movements. Whereas such movements in the past had tohold meetings and distribute pamphlets to reach a few thousandpeople, contemporary movements can command an audience of millions by any activity that attracts the television cameras. In 1976the very small and previously obscure South Moluccan nationalistmovement, which wanted Indonesia to grant independence to SouthMolucca, got an international television audience of tens of millions




by hijacking a suburban train in Holland. The example is an extremeone but the factor is of general relevance.

The second group of historical variables consists of factors, entirelylocal and particular in character, that change people’s perceptions of their situation in such a way as to rally large numbers of them to thenationalist cause. For nationalist fervour to turn the masses awayfrom their existing allegiance to other political parties and institutions,there has to be an eruptive factor of some kind. The nature of thisfactor varies greatly from one movement to another and is difficultto predict. For the Zionist movement, which laboured for so longwith little support, the eruptive factor was the Holocaust. For Scottishnationalism, previously led by romantics, it was the discovery of oil

in the Scottish part of the North Sea and the accompanying realizationthat an independent Scotland could be extremely wealthy. For theQuebecois, it was the impact of the ‘Quiet Revolution’ of the 1960s,to be discussed in Chapter 8, together with the realization that thearrival of non-French immigrants in large numbers posed a potentialthreat to French culture in Quebec.

It is impossible to generalize about factors of this kind. It is vitalto realize that nationalist movements need an eruptive factor if they

are to capture mass support, but it is difficult in advance of itsoccurrence to predict what this factor may be or when it may develop.It may be a social or economic factor, like foreign immigration orthe discovery of new natural resources. It may be a purely politicalfactor, like the brutal treatment of a minority, the sudden suppressionof activities that had previously been tolerated, or an election resultthat seems to threaten the interest of a particular ethnic group. Itwas an election result that aroused Fijian nationalism in 1987, when

the native Fijians, actually a minority in their own country, reactedto the perceived threat by a military coup.However much they may prefer generalized explanations, social

scientists have to accept that local, contingent and often unpredictablefactors are apt to play a large role in the growth of nationalistmovements. There was no social-scientific way of predicting thatSikh nationalism, after simmering for so long in India, would suddenlybecome militant in 1986, or that Tamil nationalism in Sri Lankawould do the same in 1987. Such developments have to be explainedin particularistic historical terms.

Tactics of system maintenance

Historically, the most common response to secessionist movementshas been suppression. Governments rarely take kindly to threats to




the integrity of their territory and the only examples of peacefulsecession, by agreement, are those of Belgium’s secession from theNetherlands in 1830 and Norway’s secession from Sweden in 1905.Elsewhere, separatist parties have commonly been harassed by thepolice, while actual attempts at secession have been met with force.The secession of the Confederate States in 1860 was crushed in along and bloody civil war. The Irish insurrection of 1919 was metwith force by the British, though the latter sent armed police ratherthan troops and eventually conceded the issue. The independencemovement in Algeria in 1956 was met with attempted suppressionby the French, who sent half a million troops there before giving up.The secession of Biafra from Nigeria in 1967 was crushed in a civil

war. The secession of East Pakistan in 1971 was met by armed force,though the intervention of Indian troops on the side of the EastPakistanis resulted in the creation of Bangladesh.

Other ways of maintaining the existing regime are theaccommodation of grievances and the device of holding a referendum.When Western Australia proposed to secede in 1933 this was headedoff by the offer of generous grants from the federal government.When the Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties gained strength in

the 1970s this development was met by the offer of devolved systemsof government, combined with referendums to ascertain whethernationalist aims had the support of the majority of Scottish and Welshvoters. When Quebecois nationalists proposed to take Quebec intoindependence, the Canadian government fought a vigorousreferendum campaign to persuade Quebec voters that they would bebetter off if they remained in Canada.

These three examples will be examined in the three following

chapters. The three cases will show that a national governmentwishing to resist the claims of a secessionist movement has moreweapons at its disposal than rifles and tanks. Moreover, in thesethree cases the tactics of system maintenance all succeeded, whereasin the Irish, Algerian and Pakistani cases armed forces failed, whilethe American and Nigerian federations were preserved intact only ata horrendous cost in lives and human suffering.

It is appropriate to add here that the three countries chosen ascase studies to illustrate the problems of national integration in PartII of this book have many similarities in their political and economicsystems though they have significant differences in the compositionof their societies and the policies adopted to integrate culturalminorities. They are all liberal democracies with similar systems of parliamentary government. They all have legal systems that are largelybased on the British system of Common Law and they all have a




long history of concern for the liberties and rights of citizens. Theyare all advanced industrial societies with a high standard of livingand near-universal literacy.

These basic similarities facilitate the task of making comparisonsand generalizations regarding their problems and patterns of nationalintegration. If countries like Nigeria or the Soviet Union were includedas case studies, comparisons and generalizations about nationalintegration would be vitiated by the existence of basic differences inpolitical and economic structure and conflicting assumptions aboutthe liberties and rights of citizens. In methodological terms, this studyfollows—if only loosely, because national integration is a broadsubject—what J.S.Mill called ‘the method of concomitant variations’

(Mill, [1843] 1893), Przeworski and Teune called ‘the most similarsystems design’ (Przeworski and Teune, 1970) and Lijphart called‘the comparable cases strategy’ (Lijphart, 1975). However, it is hopedthat the conclusions emerging from the three cases will also throwsome general light on the universal problems of national integration,which I believe constitute the central dilemma of nationalism as anideology.



PART II

Practice and Experience





77

7 National integration in the

United Kingdom

1 THE BRITISH STATE

The United Kingdom is a somewhat untidy state, neither federal nor

completely unitary, that has no formal constitution and can only beunderstood in historical terms. It was created in stages, by theexpansion of England to take in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, butthen suffered a process of partial disintegration by an insurrection inIreland leading to the partition of that country and the independenceof the greater part of it. It offers a fascinating example of politicalintegration and disintegration.

England itself was unified in the eleventh century and its

Parliament has a history of continuous existence since 1275.Members of the landowning classes, anxious to expand theirdomains, invaded and partially conquered Wales in the twelfthand thirteenth centuries. That country did not have a unifiedgovernment of its own before the English invasion and it was ruledin only a loose and patchy way for some centuries after theinvasion. In 1536, however, it was formally united with Englandby an Act of Union passed by the English Parliament. From thenonwards Wales has been governed as if the Welsh counties werepart of England, save for some slight administrative differences inthe earlier part of this long period and a degree of administrativedecentralization that has been established since 1964 in responseto Welsh pressure.

The history of Scotland is quite different. Scotland was anindependent state for several centuries before it was united withEngland by the Act of Union of 1707. This was a voluntary union,supported by a majority in the Scottish Parliament, which thereupon

ceased to exist. Other Scottish institutions remained intact,however, including a distinctive legal system, a distinctive (andrather advanced) educational system and the Presbyterian Churchof Scotland. With this history, it is not surprising that the Scottishpeople have a secure sense of national identity, which has survivednearly three centuries of political union with England and is now the




basis of a lively nationalist party that seeks to regain Scottishindependence.

Ireland was partially conquered by English landowners,operating on a free enterprise basis, in the twelfth century. By thelate sixteenth century it had become, in effect if not in law, anEnglish colony, and from then onwards troops were sent acrossthe Irish Sea from time to time to impose order. The IrishParliament that met in Dublin was essentially a parliament of theconquerors and settlers, with a strong bias against the RomanCatholic majority in the Irish population. In 1798 there was anIrish revolt, easily suppressed but nevertheless worrying to theEnglish because of the possibility that the Catholic Irish might

welcome an invading French army, as indeed they had done in1689. Largely in response to this, Ireland was formally unitedwith England, Scotland and Wales in 1800 to constitute the UnitedKingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

The United Kingdom, once established, constituted a populousfree trade area with freedom of movement for labour and capital.This facilitated the growth of industry, prosperity and similar livingstandards throughout the mainland areas, though Ireland was

always poorer and only the area around Belfast shared in theindustrial growth of the mainland during the nineteenth century.Throughout the latter part of the nineteenth and the whole of thetwentieth century there has been a great deal of internal migration,with Welsh, Scottish and Irish people flocking to England toimprove their economic positions and with a reverse migrationfrom England to south Wales when coal-mining and industry weredeveloped there.

Some significant cultural differences remain, but it is vital torealize that the differences within and between each of the non-English territories are as important as the differences betweenEngland and the others. As Rose has pointed out, those who lumpthe non-English peoples together as Celtic are guilty of ‘a majorerror’ (Rose, 1982, p. 14). The Welsh are divided between theanglicized majority who do not speak Welsh and the largely ruralminority who do. The Scots are divided between those of Irish originin the north and west, who used to speak Gaelic, and those of Anglo-Saxon or Norse origin in the south and east. The Irish arebitterly divided between Catholics and Protestants. The wholeKingdom can reasonably be described as a multinational state, butthe cultural and social relationships within it are not homogeneouswithin national borders. Partly because of this, there has never been



79Integration in the United Kingdom

any possibility of the non-English peoples forming any kind of alliance against the English.

The United Kingdom state, normally known as the British state,was not only created by the English (with a little help from the Scots),but has also been largely managed by the English, who form 83 percent of the current population. Over the years the English have devisedseveral strategies for managing the periphery, which will now bebriefly summarized.

(1) The peripheral territories are given full access to the centre of government in London and full representation in Parliament. Indeed,they have generally enjoyed over-full representation since the ReformAct of 1885. Ireland had 105 seats in 1918 although representation

by population would have entitled it to only 63 seats. Scotland nowhas 72 seats although its population entitles it to only 57. Wales has36 seats instead of 31. The object is not only to prevent grievancesarising but also to persuade the non-English political elites that theyhave a good chance of helping their territories through action inLondon. The strategy failed in Ireland during the First World War, butit had been successful for many decades before that.

(2) Politicians and administrators from the periphery are not

excluded from leading positions in British politics and government, asinternal colonialist theory would suggest, and are not even at anyclear disadvantage there. One-third of British Prime Ministers in thetwentieth century (6 out of 18) have been Scottish, Welsh or Irish. Ananalysis made in 1977 showed that the non-English territories,comprising 17 per cent of the population, contributed 22 per cent of Members of Parliament, 18 per cent of Cabinet ministers, the Speakerof the House of Commons, the Leader of the Liberal Party and 21 per

cent of the top officials (the Permanent Secretaries) of governmentdepartments (Birch, 1978, pp. 327–8). In 1987 three of the four nationalparties had Welsh or Scottish leaders. The peripheral territories alsocontribute at least their fair proportion of judges and top army officers.

(3) Public expenditures by the national government are slantedtowards the peripheral territories. A Treasury publication has revealedthat expenditures are consciously related to a calculation of regionalneeds corrected by a political factor reflecting the degree of politicalinfluence exerted by the territory in question.

(4) In terms of culture and national symbols, the English policyhas been to discourage minority languages, seen as divisive, but toencourage various other symbols of cultural differences, seen asharmless and possibly useful. The various Acts of Union all establishedEnglish as the only official language of government and courts. Theuse of Gaelic was forbidden for a time in Scottish schools, so that the




language is now spoken by only 1.5 per cent of Scottish people, almostentirely living on offshore islands. The use of Welsh in Welsh schoolswas also forbidden for a rather shorter time, with the result that theproportion of Welsh people claiming a knowledge of the languagehas fallen to 21 per cent. The Irish language was discouraged byvarious means and a knowledge of this is now claimed by only 27per cent of people in the Republic and a much smaller proportion inNorthern Ireland, with no more than 2 per cent of the Irish actuallyin the habit of using the language.

On the other hand, the Union Jack is an amalgam of English,Scottish and Irish symbols; each country has its flag, anthem andsongs; care has been taken to retain distinctive Scottish, Welsh and

Irish regiments, with all their regalia; the kilt, once used only byScottish Highlanders, has been adopted as a general symbol of Scottishness; and the four territories all compete separately in theCommonwealth Games, in international rugby football and (mostimportantly) in international soccer competitions such as the WorldCup and the various European cups. Arrangements of this kindprovide symbolic satisfactions to the non-English peoples that arenot available to the residents of Canadian provinces or Australian

states, though in other ways these countries, being federal, are moredecentralized.

(5) Detailed administration has been hived off from Londonwhenever this seemed to be politically appropriate. In Ireland,administration was controlled by a British Governor-General inDublin from 1800 until the bulk of Ireland became independent in1922. In Northern Ireland, administration was in the hands of aseparate bureaucracy, supervised by a separate Parliament, from 1922

until 1972. Although that Parliament adopted the great majority of British laws without significant changes, its existence enabled theBritish government and Parliament to wash their hands of theprovince’s tiresome internal conflicts, at least until British troopshad to be sent there to quell disturbances in 1969.

In the case of Scotland, the extension of the franchise in 1884 wasfollowed by demands for some kind of devolution to make theadministration more accessible to the people. In 1885 the ScottishOffice was established, with a minister who has had a seat in theCabinet from 1892 onwards and has acquired responsibility foreducation, health, roads, law and order and various other services inScotland. In 1964 a Welsh Office was established on a similar pattern,with fewer responsibilities at first but becoming more and more likethe Scottish Office as the years passed. In 1972 a Northern IrelandOffice was set up, with a similar structure.




These very flexible arrangements go a fair way towards satisfyinglocal demands to be treated differently from the English, while stillretaining all control over policy issues in London. Bulpitt’s distinctionbetween ‘high politics’ and ‘low politics’ is very relevant here (Bulpitt,1983). According to Bulpitt, it is an age-old principle of Britishstatesmanship to keep central control of high politics, such as issuesrelating to defence, foreign affairs, finance and the economy, whiledevolving day-to-day control of other matters to a variety of regionaland local agencies. It is noticeable that although the three offices forthe peripheral territories have extensive responsibilities, they haveno control whatever over taxation or economic policy. These arematters of high politics and are reserved for the Cabinet and the

Treasury in London.The following sections of this chapter will deal with Scotland and

Wales, where these integrative strategies have been largely successful;with Ireland, where the strategies have been entirely unsuccessful;and with the coloured minorities within Britain, to whom thestrategies cannot be applied because the minorities are not territoriallyconcentrated.

2 WALES AND SCOTLAND

Political integration with England brought gains and losses of differentkinds to Wales and Scotland. To Wales it brought organizedconstitutional government for the first time, with Welshrepresentation in Parliament and a regular system of courts andjustice. On the other hand, integration started a long process whereby

the greater part of Wales became progressively anglicized, with theWelsh language displaced by English, at first as a language only of government and commerce but eventually as the dominant languageof communication and education.

To Scotland, political integration meant the loss of Scotland’sstatus as a sovereign state together with the loss of the ScottishParliament. On the other hand, the Acts of Union with Englandsafeguarded the positions of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland,the Scottish legal system and the Scottish system of education.Having the independence of these three institutions guaranteed bythe English saved them from attacks that might otherwise havebeen mounted on them in retribution for the Highland rebellion of 1745, when clansmen marched as far south as the English Midlandsin an attempt to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on the English throne.Moreover, it is arguable that these institutions were more important




for the Scottish sense of national identity than the ScottishParliament was, given the very limited franchise that existed in1707.

In economic terms, both Wales and Scotland benefited from havingthe large English market open to their products and having Englishcapital available to help develop their mines and manufacturingindustry. In social terms, the educated classes of both countries gainedfrom having wider opportunities open to them, in business, ingovernment service and in the professions. Unless an exceptionallyhigh value is attached to the Welsh language, the only reasonableconclusion is that the benefits of integration far out-weighed thelosses, for Wales and Scotland as well as for England.

Economic integration

The British economy is highly unified. There are no barriers tointernal trade and transport costs form only a low proportion of the total costs of production. All three countries are highlyindustrialized and urbanized, with the proportion of the male

workforce engaged in agriculture varying only from 3 per cent inEngland to 5 per cent in each of Wales and Scotland. Proponents of the theory of internal colonialism have argued that the peripheralareas of industrialized states are likely to have more specializedeconomies that will therefore be more vulnerable to tradefluctuations and technological change than the economies of thecentral areas (see Hechter, 1975, pp. 9–10). There is, however, very

Table 7.1 Specialization of employment in regions of the UK in 1966

Source: A.J.Brown (1972).




little evidence to support this hypothesis in the British case. Thefigures in Table 7.1 show the coefficients of specialization of employment of the standard regions of the United Kingdom in 1966,the coefficient indicating the minimum percentage of each region’semployed population that would have to change from one type of industry to another to make the regional distribution coincide withthat of the whole United Kingdom.

These figures give little or no support to the internal colonial model.Of the three non-English regions, Northern Ireland is highlyspecialized, Wales has a coefficient that is close to the regional meanof 13.9, while Scotland is the least specialized of all.

In terms of prosperity, Wales and Scotland have suffered since the

1930s from the relative decline of certain staple industries, namelyshipbuilding and coal-mining in Scotland, steel manufacturing andcoal-mining in Wales. Parts of northern England have suffered in asimilar way from the decline of the textile, shipbuilding and miningindustries. Energetic efforts by postwar governments to encourageindustrial expansion in these areas have prevented the difference fromgrowing, but have not succeeded in eradicating it. In 1964 the regionalfigures for gross domestic product per head, given as percentages of

the UK figure, were as follows: South East England, 113; WestMidlands, 109; Yorkshire, 99; North West England, 98; East Midlands,98; Wales, 88; South West England, 88; East Anglia, 87; Scotland, 86;Northern England, 85 (Birch, 1978, p. 330). In 1979 the figure forWales was still 88 per cent of the UK average but that for Scotland,aided by North Sea oil, had risen to 97 per cent (Rose, 1982, p. 22).The overall figure for England in 1979 was 102 per cent.

These differences in prosperity are small—much smaller than the

regional differences in Canada, for instance—and the differences inthe average weekly earnings of an industrial worker in the threenations are infinitesimal as a consequence of the mobility of labourand capital and the pattern of industrial relations. There are veryfew trade unions that are purely English, Welsh or Scottish in theirmemberships and the pressures from the unions have always been infavour of uniform wage rates throughout Britain. In 1979 the indexfigures for average weekly industrial earnings were 100 in England,99 in Wales and 98 in Scotland (Rose, 1982, p. 22).

Disparities in material standards have also been kept low by thecentralized character of British government services. The basicprinciples involved here are quite simple. In a common market, withfree movement of labour and capital, there are always likely to beregional differences in economic achievement. If there is no centraladministration to compensate the poorer areas they may be worse




off than they would have been if they had remained outside themarket. Thus, it has been shown that the East African CommonMarket brought large benefits to Kenya, marginal benefits to Ugandaand a substantial loss to Tanganyika (Ghai, 1965). In a federal systemthe poorer states benefit to some extent from federal public services,but the standard of state services is likely to vary from state to stateunless it is equalized by federal grants. In a centralized system of government the provision of uniform public and social services overthe whole country means that the wealthier regions automaticallysubsidize the poor regions through the fiscal system.

This is certainly the case in the United Kingdom, where residentsof poorer regions contribute less than average to government revenues

but enjoy public services that are more expensive than average.Research carried out for the Royal Commission on the Constitutionshowed that in 1968–9 central government expenditures per headon local services were 42 per cent higher in Scotland than in Englandand 30 per cent higher in Wales than in England (Royal Commissionon the Constitution, Research Paper 10, 1973, p. 9). However, sincethe Scots contributed more per head to central government revenuesthan the Welsh did, the net ‘profit’, being beneficial government

expenditures minus tax contributions, was actually greater in theWelsh case than in the Scottish case (Royal Commission on theConstitution, Research Paper 10, 1973, p. 72).

Communications and culture

In terms of personal communications, it is relevant that the most

populous areas of Scotland are separated from those of England bya tract of sparsely populated country, whereas the most populousareas of Wales are adjacent to the English border. As is sometimessaid, Wales is ‘sideways on’ to England. Partly because of this, thevolume of cross-border traffic is greater in the Welsh case than theScottish case. Estimates made by the author in 1977, on the basis of statistics provided by British Rail and the airlines, indicated thatpassenger traffic across the Welsh border by rail and air was thenabout 50 per cent greater than it was across the Scottish border,while the volume of freight (including road freight) crossing theborders was about twice as great in the Welsh case as in the Scottishcase (Birch, 1977, pp. 38–40 and 46–7). Communication by mailand by telephone was also heavier between Wales and England thanbetween Scotland and England (Birch, 1977, p. 40). If allowance ismade for the fact that Scotland has approximately twice the




population of Wales, it is clear that Wales is much more closelyintegrated with England in terms of communications than Scotlandis. In fact, comparisons with figures for communication betweenvarious parts of England suggest that Wales could well be regardedas just another English region, no more self-contained or separatedfrom London than Yorkshire is.

A similar conclusion is suggested by figures from newspapercirculation. Britain has eleven national morning newspapers, all editedin London, that are delivered to the doorstep in Scotland and Walesjust as they are in England. Their combined daily circulation in 1988was 14.5 million copies. The only Welsh daily morning paper is theWestern Mail, with a circulation of only 80,000 that is small

compared with a circulation of about 600,000 for the London-basedpapers in Wales. Scotland, on the other hand, has three importantmorning papers of its own as well as several smaller dailies; and thetotal circulation of the Scottish-based dailies is just about the sameas the circulation in Scotland of the London-based dailies.

These data confirm the conclusions that can be drawn fromhistory, namely that Scotland is a much more self-contained nationthan Wales is. However, there is an important distinction to be

drawn within Wales between the largely anglicized majority andthose—sometimes known to the English as the Welsh Welsh or thevery Welsh—who can speak the Welsh language and attach greatvalue to the cultural traditions of rural Wales. The members of thisminority tend to support Plaid Cymru (the Welsh Party, literally)and the Welsh Language Society. Pressures from this minority,supported by a Gandhi-like fast by the President of Plaid Cymru,induced the British government to agree in 1980 that the proposed

fourth television channel should broadcast in Welsh rather thanEnglish. This development, together with the growth of Welshlanguage teaching in schools, has halted the decline of the Welshlanguage and traditional Welsh culture that had been taking placefrom the 1870s to the 1970s. It is a significant exception to thegeneral trend that can be discerned in the past century of increasingcultural homogeneity within Britain, brought about by moderncommunications and mass media.

National feelings and nationalist movements

The Welsh and the Scots, like the English, have two compatiblenational identities. They are Welsh and Scottish in terms of theircultural identity and British in terms of their political identity.




Surveys indicate that 57 per cent of the Welsh and 52 per cent of the Scots choose their cultural identity when asked to give just oneidentity (Rose, 1982, p. 14), but it is clear that they are aware of both identities.

If we turn from feelings of national identity to feelings of nationalpride, it is necessary to draw a distinction between the two nations.The Scots were a self-governing nation for several centuries beforeScotland became part of Great Britain. Scotland has long had itsown institutions, its own aristocracy and its own intellectual leaders.In the latter part of the eighteenth century it could stand comparisonwith England and France in intellectual terms, with thinkers likeAdam Smith, David Hume and the philosophers of the Scottish

Enlightenment. In the industrial age it has produced a series of scientists, engineers and medical specialists who have been in theforefront of technological advance. The average Scotsman may notbe familiar with Hume’s philosophical writings but he knows that aScot invented the steam engine and that another Scot inventedtelevision. The Scots have much to be proud of and they commonlygive the impression of being a proud people. This does not makethem nationalists in a political sense because the great majority of

them regard the union with England as being to Scotland’s advantage.It does, however, help to explain why the nationalist party that hasbecome significant in recent years is pragmatic rather than emotionalin character. Modern Scottish nationalists are not clamouring forthe recognition of Scotland as a nation but argue, in an essentiallyrational way, that the Scots could manage their own affairs better if they were independent of the English.

The Welsh situation is very different. Wales has not had its own

national government, has never had an aristocracy and has notproduced leaders of thought or technology or medicine. As a Welshhistorian has pointed out, in the latter part of the nineteenth centurymost Welsh landowners were anglicized and a fair number wereactually English migrants. Welsh bishops could not speak Welsh.Wales had no agreed border with England and no agreed capitalcity. It was governed as if it were no more than a group of Englishcounties, with most English politicians reluctant to recognize it as adistinct nation (Morgan, 1970, Ch. 1).

In these circumstances it is not surprising that the nationalistfeelings that emerged were somewhat emotional and resentful incharacter. It has been observed that in the nineteenth centurynational feeling in Wales was ‘a struggle against contempt ratherthan physical oppression, a campaign for national recognition’(Morgan, 1970, p. 16). The development of national feeling was




closely related to the growth of the nonconformist churches, whichused Welsh rather than English in their services. A movement grewfor the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales, withthe first parliamentary motion seeking this change being introducedin 1870 and the reform actually being achieved, after several falsestarts, in 1920. There is a striking contrast between the speed withwhich British governments have usually been willing to promotelegislation in response to Scottish grievances and the slowness withwhich they responded to this Welsh grievance. And although Walesnow has agreed borders and an agreed capital, contemporarynationalist feelings retain a good deal of emotional content,including a passionate wish to establish and protect the Welshness

of Wales and the distinctiveness of its culture.The present nationalist parties in the two countries both have

their origins in the 1920s. Plaid Cymru was founded in 1925. TheNational Party of Scotland was founded in 1928, merging withanother group to become the Scottish National Party (henceforthSNP) in 1934. In their early years both parties were strong on theoriesand rhetoric, but weak on organization. Their members could wellbe described as romantic nationalists, and the parties had no real

success in electoral terms until the mid-1960s. They then began toattract widespread support, rising to a peak in the elections of 1974but declining again after the referendums on devolution held in 1979.Despite this parallel progress, however, the parties are so different intheir motives and objectives that they must now be discussedseparately.

Plaid Cymru has as its main objective the preservation of the Welshlanguage and culture. In the absence of an institutional basis for

nationhood, nationalists regard the language as essential to thepreservation of their society; they echo the view of a nineteenth-century writer that ‘if once we lose the Welsh language, that will bethe end of us as a nation’ (quoted in R.T.Jones, 1974, p. 134). Theyargue that the decline of the language in the twentieth century hasdeprived most Welsh people of a literary heritage and folk-culture of songs and verse. They regard the English mass media as an ever-present threat to the language and they also dislike what they thinkof as the materialism and frivolity of modern English social values.They well know that Welsh is only used as a medium of communication by a small minority of people in rural areas, but thismakes them all the more determined to preserve the traditional wayof life in these areas.

This determination has led to several conflicts that the pragmaticEnglish simply fail to understand. One such conflict was over a plan




to build a large reservoir in a Welsh valley inhabited by only seventyfamilies, a small number to be rehoused in a crowded society likeBritain. The reason that the nationalists’ opposition was so passionate,as explained to me by the President of Plaid Cymru, was that thesewere not just Welsh families but Welsh-speaking families.Demonstrations and protests held up the plan for over a year beforeit was finally approved by Parliament. Another conflict arose overthe proposal to build a new town in central Wales to rehouse 50,000people from Birmingham. As Welsh spokesmen had complainedvigorously about the depopulation of this area, it was expected thatthey would welcome the proposal, that had been approved by theWelsh Office. Instead of welcoming it, nationalist leaders attacked it

as a plan to commit cultural genocide. It was explained to me that aplan to swamp a Welsh-speaking area with so many English peoplecould only be regarded as a plot to destroy Welsh culture in that partof the country. The opposition was so vociferous that the plan wasfinally abandoned.

The Welsh nationalists, unlike the Scots, are not particularlyconcerned about economic issues. They naturally regret the growthof unemployment and the closure of industrial plants in Welsh towns,

but they do not claim that self-government for Wales would bringgreater prosperity. Indeed, some of them admit that a self-governingWales might be poorer in strictly material terms, though better off interms of culture, democracy and the preservation of traditionalcommunities.

The nature of its program gives Plaid Cymru a degree of committedsupport among Welsh-speaking groups, but limits its appeal amongother Welsh voters. As only 21 per cent of the population claim a

knowledge of Welsh, the chances of Plaid Cymru winning a sizeablenumber of parliamentary seats have always been slender. Non-Welsh-speakers are bound to have reservations about a party that wouldlike a knowledge of the language to be a requirement for posts in thepublic service. Such a proposal is inevitably regarded as a proposalfor ‘jobs for the boys’.

The growth of electoral support for the party in the mid-1960sand 1970s was almost certainly related to two political developmentsthat affected voting behaviour all over Britain. One of these was thedecline of traditional class loyalties, leading to greater electoralvolatility and a weakening of the Labour Party’s hold on the supportof working-class voters. The other was a certain disillusionment withthe two main parties, following their evident failure to promoteeconomic growth at a rate commensurate with that of Britain’sindustrial rivals. In England these developments led to an electoral




The years immediately following the 1974 elections weredominated by debates over a plan drawn up by the British government

to devolve a certain amount of political authority to new nationalassemblies in Wales and Scotland. The main object of this exercisewas to ward off the challenge of the SNP in Scotland, but an assemblywith somewhat fewer powers was also proposed for Wales. In March1979 a referendum on this proposal resulted in a resounding defeatfor it in Wales, even though it was officially supported by the LabourParty as well as by Plaid Cymru. When it came to the point, only11.9 per cent of Welsh electors were willing to vote for the

establishment of a Welsh Assembly, the remainder either thinking itsuperfluous or fearing that it would give an advantage to politiciansand public servants who spoke Welsh.

This result was a major setback for Plaid Cymru from which ithas never recovered. Electoral support decreased in the generalelection of 1979 to 6.4 per cent of the Welsh vote, with only twoMPs elected, and has remained at about that level in subsequentelections.

If Plaid Cymru seems firmly set as a party of a small minority, itwould be wrong to conclude that it has had no influence on policy.On the contrary, its efforts, supported by those of the much smallerbut more militant Welsh Language Society, have almost certainlysaved the Welsh language from continuing the decline registered insuccessive censuses from 1871 to 1961. It looked in the 1950s as if the language would become extinct some time in the twenty-first

revival for the Liberal Party, while in Wales and Scotland theycontributed to a growth in support for the two nationalist parties aswell as for the Liberals. Plaid Cymru won a parliamentary by-electionin 1966 and the SNP did the same in 1967. The record in the threefollowing general elections is shown in Table 7.2.

Table 7.2 The growth of electoral support for Welsh and ScottishNationalists






that of its European competitors and the mass media referredconstantly to Britain as ‘the sick man of Europe’. The Conservativestrategy of relying on free enterprise proved no more successful thanthe Labour strategy of drawing up plans and the government had tomake what the media called ‘a U-turn’ in its policies in 1972. Theunemployment rate began to grow and it was twice as high in Scotlandas in England.

In these circumstances the advantages to Scotland of beinggoverned from London seemed less obvious than they had seemed inearlier years when Britain was Europe’s leading economic power.The loss of empire also had a certain effect on Scottish attitudes. Itwas one thing to be in partnership with England when Britain ruled

a quarter of the world; another to be a junior partner in an offshoreisland beset by problems.

The eruptive factor that turned the rising tide of support for thenationalists into a flood was the announcement in 1971 of thediscovery of a large oilfield off the Scottish coast in the North Sea. Itquickly became clear that an independent Scotland in possession of this oilfield would experience rapid economic growth and becomeone of the world’s richest countries in terms of national income per

head. It also became clear that under existing constitutionalarrangements the British government would simply add the oilroyalties and profits to general revenue, without any intention of earmarking a proportion of them for the special benefit of Scotland.The way in which the SNP exploited this factor is well illustrated bythe following extracts from a pamphlet entitled England Expects— Scotland’s Oil.

England expects Scottish oil to help pay for the third Londonairport,…the Channel Tunnel, a re-equipped Polaris submarinefleet, the ever-rising Common Market levy and the colossal billfor Concorde. These projects damage the Scottish economy byconcentrating even more jobs and prosperity in the south of England.

England expects the Scottish people to be grateful for handoutsfrom London or Brussels when we could be the wealthiest nationin Europe if we controlled our own resources…

England expects Scotland to stand back and allow hastyuncontrolled exploitation of our oil in order to help the Englishbalance of payments problem, even if this causes unnecessarydamage to local communities in the front line of the oil rush.

Above all England expects that we the people of Scotland willsit back and allow our country to be exploited without taking




action. The London establishment simply assumes that it has anabsolute right to our wealth and resources without our consentand that, as always, the Scots will passively accept lower wages,higher prices, worse housing, more unemployment and highemigration. Let’s prove them wrong.

The great strength of this line of propaganda was that the argumentsput forward were irrefutable. The assessment of English expectationswas largely correct. The SNP did not rely on this kind of argumentalone, however. It also set out some fairly detailed statements aboutthe policies it would promote if it were the governing party in anindependent Scotland. In the manifesto for the general election of

October 1974 only 20 per cent of the space (as measured in columninches) was devoted to the case for independence and the history of the party, as compared with 10 per cent to the policies regardingexternal affairs and defence that the SNP advocated for anindependent Scotland, 14 per cent to policies regarding oil and otherenergy resources, and the remaining 56 per cent to policy on domesticissues such as housing, agriculture, pensions and economicdevelopment. This readiness to be judged on the policies it would

promote after independence distinguishes the SNP from most otherminority nationalist movements of the twentieth century, which havedirected a high proportion of their propaganda to emphasizing thevalue of their people’s culture and the iniquitous nature of theirtreatment under the existing system of government. Whatever itsfailings, the SNP must be rated as a remarkably practical andconstructive nationalist party.

The rapid growth in electoral support for the SNP in the early

1970s was of particular concern to the Labour Party. The patternof party support within Britain is such that the Conservative Partynormally wins a majority of English seats and the Labour Partydepends largely on its greater support in Wales and Scotland to tipthe overall balance in its favour. Of the six postwar elections thathave yielded Labour victories, only two (those of 1945 and 1966)have produced Labour majorities in England. The growth of nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales therefore threatened theLabour Party in a way that it did not threaten the ConservativeParty.

Successive public opinion polls in the early 1970s showed that theScottish nationalists had one great strength but one marked weakness.The strength was that the great majority of Scottish electors wantedthe Scots to acquire greater control over their own political affairswhile the weakness was that only a small proportion favoured




complete independence. The exact figures varied from one poll toanother, but the range was between 15 and 21 per cent in favour of independence compared with between 55 and 70 per cent in favourof some decentralization of political power. It was therefore entirelylogical of the Labour Party to prepare plans for the creation of aScottish Assembly that would handle many Scottish affairs whilestill remaining subordinate to the British Parliament. This could bepresented as a democratic response to popular demand as well asbeing in Labour’s electoral interest.

The initial reception of this proposal by the Scottish branch of theLabour Party was hostile. Many Labour leaders in Scotland werewedded to the traditional view that the best thing for Scotland was

to have a Labour government in London pumping money northwards.In June 1974 the Scottish executive committee of the party rejectedtheir national leaders’ proposal for a Scottish Assembly by six votesto five. To get around this, it was necessary for the national executiveto call a special one-day Scottish conference at which the decisionwas reversed by the weight of trade union votes.

After the general election of October 1974 the Labourgovernment prepared detailed plans for the creation of a Scottish

Assembly with certain legislative powers, together with a WelshAssembly that would only have executive powers. This anomaly inthe plans was by no means the only odd thing about them. A moreserious anomaly was that there was no provision either for anEnglish Assembly or for regional assemblies covering the variousregions of England. It was proposed that English domesticlegislation, on matters that in Scotland were devolved to the ScottishAssembly, would be dealt with by the United Kingdom Parliament,

where the balance of power might be held by Scottish members.This arrangement would have been so manifestly unfair to Englandthat it was a certain prescription for political conflict. Given thenature of the partisan balance in the three countries, the proposeddivision of powers automatically ensured the hostility of theConservative Party to the whole proposal. Yet another anomaly inthe plans was that the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies were to haveonly limited control over economic affairs and no power at all tolevy taxation. This would have meant that a Scottish government,faced with criticism of its policies and its public services, would havebeen able to transfer the blame to the British national exchequer fornot giving Scotland enough money to do better. It was anotherprescription for political conflict.

These proposals were pushed through Parliament, at the secondattempt, by the exercise of strong party discipline within the




Parliamentary Labour Party and with the help of support from thenationalist parties and the Liberal Party. However, to quellbackbench dissent from English Labour MPs, which had ensuredthe abandonment of the first legislative attempt to make the change,the government promised that the Acts to establish the Assemblieswould not come into force unless Scottish and Welsh votersregistered their approval of the changes by voting for them inreferendums. When the Bills were debated in Parliament opponentsof the plans managed to secure agreement on an amendmentwhereby a majority in the referendums would not be counted assupport for the changes unless at least 40 per cent of the electorsregistered affirmative votes. In the end it was this 40 per cent rule

that ensured the failure of the government’s plans in Scotland, theirfailure in Wales having been certain from the moment that thegovernment agreed to a referendum.

The campaign over the devolution proposals in Scotland wasfiercely fought. Those in favour argued simply that the plan wouldgive Scottish people more control over Scottish affairs and that itfollowed the desire for decentralization repeatedly expressed by themajority of Scottish respondents in public opinion polls. Those

opposed campaigned under the slogan ‘Scotland is British’. Thecampaign committee contained Labour Party activists as well asConservatives and businessmen. The opponents stressed the manybenefits that they said Scotland derived from membership of theUnited Kingdom and they also stressed the manifest weaknesses andanomalies in the devolution proposals. The judgement of mostobservers was that the opponents got the better of the argument.

As against this, the proposals were officially supported by three

parties and opposed by only one. Because of this disparity of numbers, the television companies were banned by court orderfrom giving each party time to present its position. Instead theyhad to rely on news coverage of the debates, giving each side (butnot each party) equal weight in their presentations. As thecampaign developed, it became clear that the opponents were farmore united in their opposition to the proposals than the partiesofficially favouring the proposals were united in their support of them. The SNP was lukewarm about them, realizing that theywould not give the Scottish Assembly much actual power whereasthey might give it enough of the appearance of authority to satisfyfloating voters. The Labour Party was divided on the issue, withsome feeling that constitutional change was a diversion from theclass struggle and some resentment that the views of the Scottishexecutive committee had been circumvented as the result of




decisions taken in London. In Edinburgh, Labour Party pamphletsin favour of devolution were actually distributed by SNPcanvassers because most Labour Party members were unwilling todistribute them.

For all these reasons, the opponents of devolution gained instrength during the course of the campaign. When the votes werecounted, it emerged that 32.8 per cent of the electors had given anaffirmative vote, 30.8 per cent had given a negative vote and theremainder had abstained. It therefore transpired that the plan toestablish a Scottish Assembly had to be abandoned because of insufficient support from Scottish electors. The result was greetedwith jubilation by all those who believed in the advantages of

national integration and centralized government in the UnitedKingdom.

The impact of this result on the SNP was rather devastating. Inthe general election held a few weeks later the SNP vote declinedfrom 30.4 per cent of the total Scottish vote to 17.3 per cent, whileits representation in Parliament was cut from eleven to two MPs.After this result the party was hit by internal dissention and insubsequent general elections it has fared badly, gaining only about

11 per cent of the votes in 1983 and 14 per cent in 1987, whilewinning two seats and three seats respectively.

The overall consequences of the growth of Welsh and Scottishnationalism have therefore been limited. In Wales the nationalistshave never looked like gaining the support of more than a fifth of the electorate, but their campaigns appear to have saved the Welshlanguage. In Scotland the nationalists became much more popularand came near to bringing about a major constitutional change, but

in the end the reform efforts failed and the Scottish nationalists haveactually made less difference to Scotland than the Welsh nationalistshave made to Wales. The whole episode illustrates how difficult it isto bring about significant constitutional changes in a well-establishedsystem of democratic government. Most politicians have a vestedinterest in the status quo while most electors are concerned withbread-and-butter issues rather than with constitutional questions.The defenders of the status quo have many weapons in their armoury,of which a popular referendum is one and a 40 per cent hurdle in areferendum is another. It is highly unlikely that any furtherconstitutional change of the character discussed here will be promotedin the United Kingdom without a referendum; and if constitutionalconservatives wanted to make change more difficult they could alwaysraise the hurdle to 50 per cent or extend the area of the referendumto include the votes of the English.




3 IRELAND

The story of England’s relations with Ireland is a story of politicalfailure. It has involved not only a failure of political integration butalso a failure of sympathy and an intermittent failure, on both sides,of simple understanding of the other side. It is important to appreciatethe reasons for this.

The first reason is that the English conquest of Ireland did notlead, as the English conquest of Wales led, to the emergence of ananglicized middle class from among the conquered. The Irish werean exceptionally poor and backward people, among whom only thepriests had any education. The bulk of the Irish were always despised

by the English landowners who conquered them, while the priestsand their Church were thoroughly disliked. This contempt wasmagnified into a stronger feeling by the events of 1689 and 1690,when the Roman Catholic Irish rallied to the cause of the exiledCatholic King of England, James II, and joined his army of Frenchtroops in supporting his attempt to make Ireland a base from whichhe could recapture the English throne. In the fighting that followed,most notably the Battle of the Boyne, James and his supporters were

defeated by William of Orange and his force of Protestants. Byfighting against the newly-crowned King of England in this way, theCatholic Irish branded themselves as enemies in English eyes.

These events were followed in the eighteenth century by adetermined attempt by the English settlers, who controlled the IrishParliament, to suppress the Catholic Church. Under the ‘Penal Laws’,Catholic priests were forbidden to celebrate mass and Catholics werenot permitted to send their children abroad to be trained for the

priesthood. Furthermore, Catholics were not permitted to buy land,except on a fairly short-term basis, and were not permitted tobequeath their land by will. When a Catholic landowner died hisland was divided equally between all his sons, which in a country of large families ensured the fragmentation of Catholic estates. AsIreland’s only university (Trinity College, Dublin) was confined toProtestant students, the Irish Catholics were effectively preventedfrom developing an educated class. The Irish position was essentiallycolonial, with all positions of influence in society occupied byimmigrants and the indigenous population turned into lawbreakersif they practised their religion.

In the north-eastern corner of Ireland the situation was significantlydifferent. In that area lands confiscated from Irish landowners whohad moved to the Continent at the beginning of the seventeenthcentury had been distributed among about 150,000 Protestant settlers




from Scotland and 20,000 from England (Rose, 1971, p. 78), whowere brought across the Irish Sea to establish what was called theUlster Plantation. They were followed by other Protestant settlers,also mostly Scottish, who bought land from Irish landowners. Inconsequence the six north-eastern counties came to have a Protestant(and largely Presbyterian) majority, whose presence was deeplyresented by the Catholic minority.

In the nineteenth century Scotland and Wales shared in theindustrial revolution that had started in Manchester andBirmingham, benefiting greatly from this development. In Ireland,however, industry was developed only in the mainly Protestant cityof Belfast. The Catholic counties of Ireland remained agricultural

and extremely poor, for in general the land was poorly farmed.Tenants tended to fall behind with their rents, their Protestantlandlords evicted them with little compassion, emigration rose tohigh levels and there was a good deal of rural lawlessness. ThoughIreland was now an integral part of the United Kingdom, inconstitutional terms, it was by no means integrated with the rest of the Kingdom. The quasi-colonial character of its social andeconomic relationship with Britain was to some extent reflected in

the fact that, although legislation for Ireland was enacted in London,executive powers were concentrated in the hands of a colonial-style Governor-General in Dublin instead of being shared amongthe British ministers for trade, agriculture and so forth.

Despite the poor relationships between the British and most of the Irish, there was little sense of Irish nationalism before the 1890s.For nationalist sentiments to develop among a people, being poorand downtrodden is not enough. The people also need to have a

positive sense of national identity and pride to form the basis for thebelief that national self-government would improve the situation.Moreover, they need leaders. The Italian nationalist leaders, Mazziniand Cavour, both visited England in the 1840s and wrote about theIrish question. Both sympathized with the plight of the Irish peoplebut could not see in Ireland the basis for a nationalist movement.The Irish did not have a distinctive culture, lacked a sense of nationalmission and were not well enough educated to be nationalists (seeMansergh, 1975, pp. 88–100). In 1856 Engels, who actually visitedIreland, described the Irish as ‘utterly demoralised’ (quoted inMansergh, 1975, p. 109). Irish folk-songs of the period certainlyseem to confirm Engels’ judgement. (For some examples, see Birch,1977, pp. 52–3.)

This situation changed in the last years of the century. That periodsaw a great flowering of Irish literature, which gave the Irish much




to be proud of. In England, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shawwere dazzling London society with Irish wit. More important, inthis context, Dublin saw the emergence of a brilliant group of poets,playwrights and novelists who included George Moore, J.M. Synge,W.B.Yeats, George Russell, James Joyce and Sean O’Casey. At thesame time, the Gaelic League (founded in 1893) was winning convertsin its attempt to restore Gaelic as the first language of the Irish nation,while the Gaelic Athletic Association (founded in 1884) waspromoting traditional Irish sports at the expense of important Britishsports. It was in line with these developments that Ireland’s firstnationalist party, Sinn Fein (literally, ‘ourselves alone’) was establishedin 1905.

In London, the Irish MPs were campaigning first for agrarianland reform and then for political decentralization, known as homerule. Land reform was granted by the Conservative government in1903, in the form of a sweeping measure that provided governmentfinancial aid for the wholesale transfer of farms and estates to theownership of their tenants. Home rule was promised by the Liberalgovernment of 1910–18, but the promise could not be turned intoreality because of the determined opposition of the Ulster Protestants

to a measure that would transfer many powers to an Irish Parliamentin Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics. That theProtestants would fight tooth and nail to prevent such a developmenthad been clear since 1886, when Gladstone had first committedthe Liberal Party to the idea of home rule. When the Home RuleBill of 1912 was introduced the Protestants campaigned vigorouslyagainst it and threatened to plunge Ireland into civil war if the Billwere enacted. By 1914 the Liberals had become reconciled to the

idea that Ireland would have to be partitioned if a Dublin Parliamentwere to be established, but the outbreak of the First World Warthen terminated the discussions and the whole issue was put on icefor the duration.

This was done with the agreement of the Irish Party atWestminster, whose leaders called on their followers to support theBritish war effort. While many of them did so, volunteering in largenumbers to join the British army, the leaders of Sinn Fein had quitedifferent ideas. In 1916 a small group of them launched the revolt inDublin that has gone into history as the Easter Rising. It was asmall-scale affair, with only about 1,200 rebels facing the Irishpolice and the British army, and the result was never in doubt. Itssuppression proved, however, to be a pyrrhic victory for the Britishauthorities.

The two men who had planned the Easter Rising, Patrick Pearse




and James Connolly, knew that it would be defeated and predictedthat they and other leaders would then be executed for treason. Thepurpose of the Rising was not to capture Dublin but to provoke theIrish people into a wider rebellion by providing martyrs for thenationalist cause. The British authorities duly played their part byexecuting sixteen of the leaders (Pearse and Connolly among them);Irish poets then played their part by writing stirring verses about theaffair that were published throughout the country; and from thattime onwards Irish nationalists, in increasing numbers, were firedwith revolutionary spirit. In 1918 they successfully sabotaged theBritish attempt to impose conscription on Ireland and in 1919 theylaunched a general insurrection.

The Irish insurrection

The Irish insurrection of 1919–21 was cleverly conducted by theIrish Republican Army (henceforth IRA). The insurgents are saidnot to have had more than 15,000 men under arms and not morethan 5,000 on active service at any one time (Lyons, 1973, pp. 416–

17). The British were in the process of demobilizing an army of threemillion men, experienced fighters after their long struggle againstGermany. If the British had been willing to use their army againstthe IRA the struggle would have been one-sided. However, the Irishpeople were British citizens and the British government did not thinkit right to use the army against them. In any case, the governmentwas still in favour of home rule for the Catholic counties of Irelandand had no real will to fight a war to keep Ireland British. The

government therefore confined its efforts to sending volunteers tohelp the Irish police maintain civil order.The IRA used terrorist tactics to demoralize the police. Individual

police officers were assassinated in front of their families, a movethat successfully deterred potential recruits from taking the place of the dead men. The maintenance of order therefore came to dependmore and more on the British volunteers, a somewhat undisciplinedforce who retaliated against the guerilla and terrorist tactics of theIRA by fierce reprisals that included arson and looting in areasinhabited by IRA supporters. These reprisals got the volunteers—known as the Black and Tans because of their uniforms—an extremelybad name in the world’s press and among sections of the Americanpublic. American politicians voiced their sympathy with nationalistaspirations in Ireland while Irish-American supporters sent financialhelp to the IRA.




By the beginning of 1921 the armed struggle in Ireland had reacheddeadlock and both sides were willing to discuss the terms for peace.Agreement on a peace treaty was, however, held up for some time bydisagreement on two issues. One of these was very important, theother purely symbolic. The important issue was the future of the sixnorth-eastern counties of Ireland. Nationalist leaders regarded themas an integral part of the Irish nation and thought it essential thatthey should become part of an independent Ireland. The British couldnot possibly agree to this proposition, for it would have meanthanding over the Protestant majority in these six counties to agovernment in Dublin which they would not have regarded aslegitimate and against which they would be prepared to take up

arms.Ulster Protestant feelings in this matter are well captured in one

sentence by their leader, Edward Carson. Referring to the constantloyalty to Britain that the Protestants had shown, he asked: ‘Is it ourreward that we are to be turned outside the United Kingdom; thatwe are to be put in a degraded position in the Empire; and above allthat we are to be handed over, bound hand and foot, to those whohave ever been Your Majesty’s enemies and ours?’ (quoted in

Williams, 1966, p. 91). The British attitude was encapsulated in thefollowing comment by Lloyd George, who was Prime Minister from1916 to 1922.

You had to ask the British to use force to put Ulster out of onecombination in which she had been for generations into anothercombination which she professed to abhor and did abhor, whetherfor political or religious reasons. We could not do it…You have

got to accept facts. The first axiom is that whatever happened wecould not coerce Ulster. (Quoted in T.Jones, 1971, pp. 129–30) In 1920, while the fighting in Ireland was in progress, the BritishParliament put Ulster’s fears partially at rest by passing an Act toauthorize the establishment of two Parliaments in Ireland, one inBelfast for the six north-eastern counties and the other in Dublin forthe other twenty-six counties. When negotiations with the nationalistsopened in 1921, therefore, the fact that Ireland would be partitionedwas already decided in British minds. With great reluctance, the IRAspokesman eventually accepted this and it was an essential clause of the treaty with Britain which they signed. What was deeplyunfortunate for the Irish is that some of the leaders of the IRA whohad not taken part in the negotiations refused to accept it, thusdividing the nationalist forces and precipitating the Irish civil war




that followed the peace treaty. What is unfortunate from all pointsof view is that, nearly seventy years later, the contemporary successorsof the IRA still refuse to accept the legitimacy of partition and arewilling to kill and maim thousands in a fruitless struggle to bring itto an end.

The other issue that divided the nationalists was the largelysymbolic question of whether a self-governing Ireland would be anindependent republic or a member of the British Commonwealth.The British insistence on the latter was also accepted by the Irishnegotiators and the new Irish government that was established assoon as hostilities ceased, but rejected by the dissident nationalists,led by Eamon de Valera, who plunged the new state into civil war. In

this way romantic nationalism had tragic consequences.The Irish civil war and the subsequent internal affairs of Ireland

are not the concern of this book. Since Irish independence was sucha contentious issue, achieved only at the expense of many lives, it is,however, worth pausing to attempt some assessment of its costs andbenefits. To the Irish, independence brought the political satisfactionof running their own government without dictation, or eveninterference, from the British. It also brought them the benefits of

neutrality in the Second World War. In cultural terms, independencehas made little difference. Ireland is officially bilingual, as a gestureto traditionalists, but less than 2 per cent of the population actuallyuse Irish in normal communication (O’Cuiv, 1969). In terms of publicservices, the Irish are not so well off as they would be if they werestill in the United Kingdom, when they would be subsidized throughthe fiscal system by the wealthier regions of the country, as the peopleof Northern Ireland are. In economic terms, independence has enabled

Ireland to develop its own policies for industrial development, whichit did with some success in the 1960s, but it has not enabled it tocatch up with the British standard of living. European Communitystatistics show that in 1980 the gross domestic product per head of the Irish Republic was only 58 per cent of that of the United Kingdom(Chubb, 1982, p. 345). In terms of trade and communications withBritain, the Irish have lost very little, as the British have not erectedtariff barriers against Irish exports and there are no immigrationcontrols. (For a statistical analysis of movements and transactions,see Birch, 1978, pp. 343–4.) When staying in Britain, Irish citizensare entitled to all the privileges of British citizenship, including theright to vote. The fairest overall verdict is probably that the Irish area little poorer but a good deal happier as a result of politicalindependence.

For the British the secession of the greater part of Ireland has




been wholly advantageous. First, they have not had to put up with alarge contingent of Irish MPs affecting the balance of power and theconduct of business in the House of Commons. Secondly, they havenot had to worry about Irish poverty or to subsidize Ireland throughtheir fiscal system. Thirdly, they have not had to listen to protestsfrom the Irish Catholic Church about liberal British policies ondivorce, birth control and abortion. In retrospect, the decision togrant independence to Ireland seems to have been one of the betterdiplomatic moves Britain has made in the twentieth century.

Northern Ireland

The partition of Ireland left the six counties as a province of the UnitedKingdom, possessing their own Parliament and administration butultimately subject to the overriding decisions of the British Parliamentand government. The population of the six counties comprisesapproximately one million Protestants and half a million Catholics,divided not only by religion but also by their political loyalties. TheProtestants are united and fiercely nationalistic, with a nationalism

that has a different basis from the nationalism of the Catholic Irish.The bases of Irish nationalism are geographical and ethnic.

Ireland is seen as a self-contained entity, an island created by Godas the home of the Irish people. Irish nationalists have generallybeen willing to accept the Ulster Protestants as Irish, since theyhave lived there for so many generations, and they think that theProtestants, as democrats, should be willing to accept thatgovernment would normally be controlled by the Catholic majority

in the island. The overall population comprises approximately 3.5million Catholics and 1 million Protestants, so that if Ireland wereunited the Protestant minority would be large enough to exerciseconsiderable influence.

The bases of Ulster Protestant nationalism, in contrast, are religionand loyalty to the Crown. The Ulster Protestants not only dislikeCatholicism, they also look down on it. J.B.Woodburn expressed awidespread view when he cited religion as the main reason why thenorth-eastern counties were more prosperous than the rest of Ireland.‘The religion of the North’, he said, ‘is one that incubates freedom of life and conscience, and must produce a more robust race of menthan the South with its traditional and enervating Catholicism.’ Hewent on to quote Lecky’s opinion that Catholicism ‘weakens thecharacter, and it produces habits of thought and life not favourableto industrial activity’ (Woodburn, 1914, pp. 399–400). In the early




years of the twentieth century the Ulster Protestants were not uniquein assuming a relationship between religion and industrial growth,for this was the period in which Weber wrote The Protestant Ethicand the Spirit of Capitalism. They were, however, unique in basingnationalistic feelings of communal superiority on this assumption.

The Protestant feeling of superiority has continued right up to thecurrent era. A social anthropologist who did her field work in Ulsterin the 1950s and early 1960s has reported that:

While Ulster Catholics tended to ascribe their…poverty to themachinations of the Protestants, the latter believed it to be theinevitable consequence of the Catholics’ adherence to a church

that imposed heavy financial burdens on its members, preventedthem from limiting their families sensibly, and sought to keep themdocile through ignorance. (Harris, 1972, p. 177)

Echoes of these sentiments can still be heard in the speeches of Ulsterpoliticians in the 1980s.

The other basis of Ulster nationalism is loyalty to the Crown.This dates from the battles of 1689 and 1690, when Irish Protestants

fought against Irish Catholics to secure the position of William of Orange on the throne of England. The belief that Irish Catholics areinherently disloyal has been reinforced in the twentieth century severaltimes. At the turn of the century nationalists from the southerncounties supported the Boers in their fight against British forces inSouth Africa. In 1916 the Easter Rising was staged at a time whenregiments from Ulster were suffering heavy losses in the Battle of theSomme. In 1918 the Catholic Irish successfully obstructed the

imposition of conscription on Ireland. Eight Protestant leaderssubsequently sent an open letter to Woodrow Wilson in which theyexpressed their shame, as Irishmen, about this obstruction, andblamed it partly on the Catholic Church:

The most active opponents of conscription in Ireland are menwho have been twice detected during the war in treasonable trafficwith the enemy, and their most powerful support has been that of ecclesiastics, who have not scrupled to employ weapons of spiritualterrorism which have elsewhere in the civilised world fallen outof political use since the Middle Ages. (Quoted in McNeill, 1922,Appendix B)

In 1940–1, when the war was going badly for Britain, members of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland defaced walls with the






as in Britain. Northern Ireland received a substantial subsidy fromthe national exchequer for the administration of public services, butthe size of this subsidy was determined by a complicated formuladevised by the British Treasury; it was not the subject of openbargaining or debate.

At the level of municipal government, the institutional formswere similar in Ulster and Britain, but the practice was significantlydifferent. The Ulster Unionists used their permanent dominationof administration in Northern Ireland to gerrymander some of themunicipal electoral boundaries, most notably in the city of London-derry. The franchise for municipal elections, being confined toratepayers, tended to favour the Protestants. Unionist majorities

on municipal councils tended to discriminate against Catholics inemployment and in the allocation of subsidised municipal housing,as well as to upset Catholics by closing municipal playgrounds andgolf courses on Sundays on the ground that Christians ought not toplay games on the sabbath.

The Catholic minority in Northern Ireland therefore had certainspecific grievances under the system of devolved government thatoperated from 1922 onwards. However, their general unhappiness

with their situation in the province can only be partially explained inthese terms. The essential trouble with Northern Ireland is the lackof social integration between the two communities. Nearly all schoolshave a religious affiliation so Protestant and Catholic children aresegregated. The kind of history taught differs as between the twoschool systems so that children are socialized into feelings of communal conflict rather than into feelings of social unity. The schoolsorganize different sports, so Catholic and Protestant children rarely

meet on the sports field. There is a large degree of residentialsegregation and of segregation in pubs and clubs. There is littleintermarriage and a good deal of segregation in employment. Thetwo communities lead largely separate lives, in a rather smallgeographical area.

In this kind of situation comparisons of success are inevitable;and the Catholic community has always come out rather badlyfrom such comparisons. There are proportionately fewer Catholicsin high-income occupations. In 1978, 10.5 per cent of the Catholicswere engaged in professional or managerial occupations, comparedwith 17.8 per cent of the Protestants (Moxon-Browne, 1983, p.83). Among industrial workers, the Catholic unemployment ratehas generally been higher than the Protestant unemployment rate.In 1978, the overall unemployment rate was 14 per cent amongCatholics when it was only 7 per cent among Protestants (Moxon-




Browne, 1983, p. 83). In rural areas, the average Protestant farmerhas better land than the average Catholic farmer. The police forcehas always been over 90 per cent Protestant in its composition.This is partly the responsibility of Catholic politicians whodiscouraged Catholics from joining the force in the early years of its existence, but this historical fact does not lessen the feelingamong Catholics that they may be discriminated against by thepolice. In 1969 nine-tenths of the lawyers holding posts in thejudiciary were Protestants, a fact that was alleged to result frombias on the part of those making judicial appointments (Harbinson,1973, p. 119). In all these and other ways the Catholics have feltthat they occupied an inferior position in a province dominated by

Protestants.This does not mean that most Ulster Catholics have wanted an

end to partition. In spite of being, on average, poorer thanProtestants they are, on average, better off in material terms thanthey would be in the Irish Republic. Whereas the gross domesticproduct per head in the Republic was only 58 per cent of theUnited Kingdom figure in 1980, in Northern Ireland the equivalentproportion was 78 per cent. The social services in the North, being

subsidized by the British taxpayer, are substantially better than theservices in the Republic. It is probably for these economic reasonsthat only a minority of Catholic electors have come down infavour of the unification of Ireland in the several polls that havebeen conducted on this topic. The actual proportion has variedaccording to the timing of the poll and the organizationconducting the poll. A 1979 survey by the Economic and SocialResearch Institute of Dublin may be a more reliable guide than

most; it showed that 39 per cent of Catholics in Northern Irelandfavoured unification while 49 per cent preferred to stay in theUnited Kingdom (O’Brien, 1980, p. 81).

In view of this, it is unfortunate that all the Catholic politicalparties of Northern Ireland have espoused unification as the onlyacceptable solution to the problems of the Catholic community. Inthe first elections to the Stormont Parliament the Ulster Unionistswon forty seats and their opponents won twelve, these being equallydivided between Sinn Fein and a new (and slightly less extreme)Nationalist Party. All these twelve refused to take their seats on theground that they refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of partitionand therefore of the new Parliament. This attitude naturallyenhanced the tendency of Protestant politicians to regard Catholicpoliticians as basically disloyal. In subsequent elections Catholicparties have varied between boycotting the elections, participating




in the elections but boycotting Parliament, and actually taking theirseats when elected. The Social Democratic and Labour Party(SDLP) that was established in 1970 committed itself to fullparticipation, but as the Stormont Parliament has not met since1972 the SDLP has not been able to achieve much through thischannel. All in all, it has to be said that the Catholic parties andpoliticians of Northern Ireland have done little to improve theposition of the Catholic community.

Since 1968, Northern Ireland has been plunged into politicalviolence. It is unnecessary here to recount the history of ‘the troubles’,as the long-suffering people of Ulster describe the situation. Sufficeit to say that the violence began with conflict between Catholic

demonstrators and Protestant mobs and has been continued since1970 by a campaign of terror waged by the IRA. Protestantparamilitary groups have added to the casualty list by assassinatingCatholics and the British army has had to maintain a force of between10,000 and 15,000 men in Ulster to help the police maintain security.The casualties between 1968 and 1988 amounted to just over 2,700deaths and many thousands of people injured.

Because the British government felt that it had to take charge of

policy in Northern Ireland once the army was heavily involved there,and also because it was dissatisfied with the advice on security issuesemanating from the Northern Ireland government, that governmentand the Stormont Parliament were abruptly suspended in 1972. Sincethen the province has been governed directly from London, apartfrom a four-month period in 1974 when there was a power-sharingexecutive in Belfast. There is a Secretary of State for Northern Irelandwho is a member of the British Cabinet and commutes between

London and Belfast. The policies adopted by the British governmentcan be summarized under four headings, as follows: (1) An attempt to remedy the legitimate grievances of the Catholic

minority.(2) An attempt to minimize violence and to put those responsible

for it in prison.(3) An attempt, so far unsuccessful, to persuade Protestant and

Catholic politicians in the province to share executive power.(4) An attempt to secure the co-operation of the government of

the Irish Republic in fighting terrorism and improving thepolitical atmosphere in Ulster.

British efforts to remedy Catholic grievances began in 1969. Thelocal government franchise was extended to all adult citizens. The




government of Londonderry was transferred to a bipartisancommission. The control of public housing was taken out of thehands of municipalities and given to a new province-wide HousingExecutive, that has been largely free of sectarian bias even though ithas become unpopular because of its red tape (see Scott, 1977, Ch.3). The Royal Ulster Constabulary was put under the command of an English Chief Constable and turned gradually into a much moreprofessional force than it had been. The reserve police force knownas the ‘B Specials’, greatly distrusted by Catholics because of itsProtestant bias, was disbanded. Once they accepted responsibilityfor administration in Ulster, the British acted quickly and fairly. Itwas, however, beyond their powers to change the social structure of

the province so as to end the diffuse feelings of dissatisfaction thataffected a great many Catholics.

The attempt at pacification has also been partially but not entirelysuccessful. The security forces got on top of the IRA by 1976, aftersix years of extreme violence and bloodshed. In the 1980s changes inthe judicial system have made it easier to secure convictions againstsuspected terrorists, large numbers of whom are now languishing inprison. Protestant thugs have been imprisoned as well as IRA

members, so that the number of sectarian murders has fallen to lowlevels. Whereas deaths from political violence occurred at the rate of over 400 a year in 1971 and 1972, they have been reduced to under100 a year in the 1980s. Whereas Belfast was in a state of siege in theearly 1970s, with barricades and body searches every few yards inthe city centre, daily life in the city has now returned to a morenormal state.

However, it is not possible to defeat the IRA completely, so long

as it can attract recruits and provide its members with training andsafe houses. It has been in business as an underground army forseventy years and is not likely to give up the struggle. Every defeatproduces martyrs who can be compared with the original martyrs of the Easter Rising and serve as an incentive for new recruits to join. If there is a temporary shortage of martyrs, IRA members in prisoncan starve themselves to death, as ten did in the early 1980s. TheIRA has suffered so many losses in the past few years that its leadersmay call for a pause in the campaign, but it is not likely that theorganization will fade away. It is not short of funds and it has overseassuppliers of arms. Having committed itself to two quite unattainableobjectives, namely the unification of Ireland followed by a revolutionin Dublin, it will always have a cause to go on fighting for. It wouldbe foolish to regard it as other than a permanent actor in NorthernIrish politics.




The attempts to induce Protestant and Catholic politicans to shareexecutive power have failed. In 1974 some Unionist leaders werepersuaded to try this experiment, but they were immediately disownedby the majority of Unionists and the experiment was quickly broughtto a halt by a general strike of Protestant workers in Belfast. Whenelectricity supplies, water supplies and sewage disposal were all onthe point of being cut off, the power-sharing executive simplycapitulated.

The attempt to involve the government of the Republic in NorthernIrish affairs has been much more successful. The Anglo-IrishAgreement, signed by Margaret Thatcher and the Irish Prime Minister,Garret Fitzgerald, in 1985, contained a declaration by the British

government that Northern Ireland could be united with the Republicif a majority of its citizens voted for this course of action, togetherwith a declaration by the Irish government that it would only wantunity with the North if this was desired by a majority of northerners.The Agreement also established a liaison body known as theIntergovernmental Conference that meets in Northern Ireland todiscuss ways of improving the political situation there. TheConference makes recommendations to the British government that

the latter may accept or reject.In practice the liaison body has served as a valuable channel

through which proposals emanating from the Catholic minority inthe North can be supported by representatives of the Republic andpassed to London for consideration. Some of these proposals havebeen rejected, but the majority have been accepted and acted upon.In consequence, Catholics are now permitted to fly the Irish tricolourand to display other flags and emblems as they wish; there are

improved procedures for dealing with complaints about policebehaviour; and active steps are being taken to reduce or eliminatereligious discrimination in employment.

The long-term consequence of the political violence that hastragically scarred life in Northern Ireland since 1968 has thereforebeen, somewhat paradoxically, a closer integration of the provincewith Britain. Instead of having its own Parliament and government,Northern Ireland is now subject to direct British rule in the samegeneral way as Wales and Scotland. Its education system differs fromthose of England, Wales and Scotland in that the great majority of schools are segregated by religion, with both denominationsqualifying equally for state finance. Its legal system is like that forEngland and Wales rather than independent, as the Scottish legalsystem is, but it differs in that trial without jury is authorized interrorist cases in which juries might be subject to intimidation. Its




local government system is the same as the English system except forthe fact that there are special arrangements, as noted above, formunicipal housing. Because the Stormont Parliament no longer sits,the representation of Northern Ireland in the British House of Commons has increased from 12 seats to 17 seats, to bring it in linewith the rest of the country in terms of the ratio between seats andpopulation.

This arrangement for the government of Northern Ireland is likelyto continue for the indefinite future. Though it is disliked by Ulsterpoliticians, because it renders them largely redundant, it is acceptableto most citizens. Surveys reveal that although few people put directrule as their first choice for the province, nearly everyone prefers it

to the first choice of the other community (see Moxon-Browne, 1983,pp. 113–14). It is a form of government that most people, apartfrom IRA supporters, feel they can live with.

Direct rule is not very popular with either the British governmentor the British people, but it is accepted as the most viable of the threealternatives. The British will not restore the system of developedgovernment in Northern Ireland unless the political leaders of thetwo communities there agree to a form of power-sharing whereby

each ministry would be controlled by a partnership of Protestantand Catholic ministers. As Protestant political leaders are vehementlyopposed to such an arrangement, and were able to sabotage it in1974, this possibility can be ruled out for the foreseeable future.

The other theoretical possibility, that the British would handNorthern Ireland over to the Republic, can be ruled out even morefirmly. This is not because Britain has any vested interest inmaintaining control of Northern Ireland, which is a liability rather

than an asset. The reason, not always understood by Canadian orAmerican commentators, is that such a course would be grosslyundemocratic. The unification of Ireland is opposed by nearly allUlster’s Protestants and by about half of Ulster’s Catholics, makinga total of between 75 and 80 per cent of the electors who are againstit. The British could no more transfer Ulster to the republic in thesecircumstances than the United States could transfer Texas to Mexicoagainst the expressed wishes of 75 per cent of Texans. Democraticstates do not behave like that.

If the two alternatives to direct rule have to be ruled out for theforeseeable future, it follows that direct rule is almost certain tocontinue. To say this is not to say that it is an ideal arrangement. AsRose has pointed out, the Secretaries for Scotland and Wales in theBritish Cabinet are by convention normally Scottish and Welsh, butthe Secretary for Northern Ireland has never yet been Irish (Rose,




1976, p. 154). As the Northern Irish parties are separate from theBritish parties and not allied to any of them, it is not politicallypossible for a Northern Irish MP to be included in the Britishgovernment. This inevitably makes the Secretary of State for NorthernIreland a somewhat alien figure to the people he is governing and forthis reason direct rule cannot be equivalent to full political integration.At the present time, however, there is no apparent way to escapefrom this dilemma.

It may reasonably be asked whether there is any hope of reducingthe communal tensions that now make Northern Ireland such adifficult province to govern. In this author’s view, the only way aheadthat offers much hope would be to try to change the attitudes of the

next generation. To achieve such a change, it would almost certainlybe necessary to establish integrated schools in place of thedenominational schools that now socialize children into segregationand conflict. This change would be controversial but would not begenerally unpopular. In 1967 and 1968, two surveys found thatintegrated education was favoured by about two-thirds of the adultpopulation, while a 1978 survey showed that 82 per cent of Protestants and 84 per cent of Catholics regarded it as not a bad idea

(Moxon-Browne, 1983, p. 134). The British government began inthe 1980s to encourage non-denominational secondary schools andby 1988 seven were operating successfully. It remains to be seenwhether they will become common and how far they will in factchange public attitudes. It does seem, however, that integratededucation offers the best hope for the future in an otherwise depressingsituation.

One final reflection seems appropriate. This is that the situation

in Northern Ireland raises considerable doubts about the virtues of educational segregation in plural societies. It has been advanced bysome as appropriate for English cities with sizeable colouredminorities, a topic that will be addressed in the following section. Itmay indeed be appropriate in some situations and some forms, butthe experience of Northern Ireland should serve as a warning tosocial and educational planners about its potential dangers.

4 COLOURED MINORITIES

Immigration

Since 1955 the arrival of large numbers of Indians, Pakistanis, EastAfrican Asians and West Indians has created coloured minorities in




English cities amounting to two and a half million people by 1987, afigure likely to rise to about three and a third million by the turn of the century. About 70 per cent are of Asian extraction and theremainder are of Afro-Caribbean origin. This development has givenrise to so much social tension and sporadic violence that it would befoolish to pretend that it has been other than disintegrative, at leastin the short run. The problems arising from it may be resolved withthe passage of time, but they cannot be ignored.

The arrival of the Saxons in the Dark Ages is the only otherexample of mass immigration into Britain. It is therefore all the moreremarkable that immigration since 1955 was not the result of adeliberate government policy but the accidental by-product of policies

formulated for quite different reasons. The crucial decisions weretaken in the years 1946–8. In 1946 Canada became the firstCommonwealth country to introduce its own citizenship, as distinctfrom British subjecthood, an example that was followed by Indiaand Pakistan after they achieved independence in 1947. As it wasdecided in 1947 that nearly all of Britain’s colonial territories wouldbe prepared for political independence as soon as this seemedpracticable, it would have been logical for the British government to

accept that the British Empire was on its way out and to abandonthe whole concept of a British subjecthood to which all colonialresidents were entitled.

In the event, the British Labour government, with the full supportof the Conservative opposition, decided that the Empire should betransformed into a multiracial Commonwealth and that all itscitizens should remain British subjects as well as being citizens of their own countries. In retrospect, it is clear that these decisions

were based on unrealistic assessments of the future and weredisadvantageous in their long-term effects. They played a major partin shaping Britain’s fateful decision not to join the EuropeanEconomic Community at its inception in 1957, when Britain wouldhave been a welcome and influential member and could probablyhave prevented the Community from adopting the extravagantagricultural policy that now weighs heavily upon its (and British)finances. The decisions also had unforeseen consequences in respectof immigration. As a lawyer generally sympathetic to the LabourParty has observed: ‘By preserving…imperial and increasinglyoutmoded concepts of citizenship, the Attlee governmentperpetuated confusion about who “belonged” to the UnitedKingdom’ (Lester, 1985, p. 277).

The decision that all citizens of Commonwealth countries wouldremain British subjects meant the continuance of a discriminatory




immigration policy, whereby Commonwealth citizens were allowedto enter Britain as of right whereas everyone else had to apply for apermit. That this could pose grave and even insoluble problems wasobvious, in view of the fact that Commonwealth countries had overfive hundred million citizens while Britain was alreadyovercrowded. In 1948 an interdepartmental working party of civilservants warned of the dangers involved in large-scale immigrationfrom colonial territories (Layton-Henry, 1984, p. 20). In 1949 theRoyal Commission on Population reported that large-scaleimmigration ‘could only be welcomed without reserve if themigrants were…not prevented by religion or race fromintermarrying with the host population and becoming merged with

it’ (quoted in Layton-Henry, 1984, p. 22). Sir Winston Churchillwas reported as saying in 1954 that ‘Immigration is the mostimportant subject facing this country but I cannot get any of myministers to take any notice’ (quoted in Layton-Henry, 1984, p. 32).In 1955 an interdepartmental committee of civil servantsrecommended that Commonwealth immigrants should be subject tothe same controls as aliens (Layton-Henry, 1984, p. 33). All thesepieces of advice were ignored.

In the mid-1950s Commonwealth immigration, mainly from theWest Indies, increased sharply, from about 2,000 in 1953 and 11,000in 1954 to over 42,000 in 1955. From then onwards there wereincreasing complaints about the social problems created by thereception of these immigrants, most of whom arrived without jobsor accommodation arranged and with little or no money. Many werea burden on the social services, with the Department of Health andSocial Security eventually having to set up an office at London Airport

to arrange accommodation and provide cash benefits for new arrivalswithin hours of their arrival. Municipal authorities reported thatschools in some areas faced the problem of having to teach children,particularly from Pakistan, who spoke no English. Backbench MPsfrom both Labour and Conservative parties urged the governmentto take some action about the situation.

In August 1958 things took a turn for the worse with the outbreakof racial violence between young white people and West Indians inboth Nottingham and the Notting Hill district of London. Thedisturbances lasted four days and involved hundreds of people inLondon and up to four thousand in Nottingham. In October theConservative Party annual conference passed a resolution asking forimmigration to be controlled. In December a nationwide poll showed79 per cent of people to be in favour of immigration restrictions(Layton-Henry, 1984, p. 36).




In all these circumtances, that no steps were taken to check theflow of immigrants until late 1961 reflects oddly on the ministersresponsible. Their behaviour illustrates the importance of Bulpitt’sdistinction between ‘high politics’ and ‘low politics’ (Bulpitt, 1983).Commonwealth relations were high politics whereas housing andeducation were low politics, so the cabinet took little notice of thelatter. When ministers at last grasped the nettle they did so in away that perpetuated a degree of confusion. Instead of decidingthat all prospective immigrants would be dealt with on their merits,without discrimination according to country of origin, theyproduced a Commonwealth Immigrants Bill (to become theCommonwealth Immigrants Act, 1962) that gave the appearance

of discriminating against people from the Commonwealth whileactually permitting the continuance of immigration on a verysubstantial scale. Throughout the 1960s Asian and West Indianimmigrants continued to arrive at the rate of about 50,000 a year,with the rate falling to between 30,000 and 40,000 in the 1970s.Many of these were dependants of immigrants who had arrivedbefore the 1962 Act came into force. That the situation would havebeen disastrous without the Act is made clear by the fact that

between July 1962 and October 1963 over 300,000 people, mostlyin India and Pakistan, applied for immigration vouchers, withapplications in the second half of 1963 ‘accumulating at the rate of 10,000 a week’ (Layton-Henry, 1984, p. 56).

Attitudes of the host society

The two main parties in Britain did not and do not differ substantiallyabout the problems created by this immigration, though they havediffered in timing and emphasis. In 1961 Labour opposed immigrationcontrol but by November 1964 the new Labour government hadcome round to supporting it and in August 1965 a White Paper waspublished indicating the government’s intention to tighten the controlsby administrative means. In 1965 also Parliament passed a RaceRelations Act, with support from all parties, aimed at eliminatingracial discrimination in public places and housing and promotingconciliation in cases of dispute. This legislation was extended by afurther Act in 1968 that banned discrimination in employment, thesale of goods, the sale or rental of business premises, the provision of services, and membership of trade unions and professionalassociations.

If this legislation is compared with American legislation on race




relations, from which the British copied a good many provisions,three comments can be made. First, the British moved more quicklyon this point. As an American lawyer observed, the legislators acted‘very promptly by American standards, precipitously according toBritish tradition’ (Claiborne, 1979, p. 11). Secondly, the 1968legislation was more sweeping than its American equivalent, forAmerican laws do not cover the sale and rental of business premises,do not cover all commercial transactions and do not bandiscriminatory advertisements. Thirdly, the British make less use of criminal sanctions than the Americans but more use of conciliation.This was in accordance with the wishes of the Campaign AgainstRacial Discrimination, a group acting on behalf of immigrants that

persuaded the government to drop criminal sanctions (included inthe first version of the Bill) on the ground that these would cause toomuch resentment to be worthwhile.

The Acts have eliminated all forms of overt discrimination buthave not eliminated covert discrimination in respect of employment.It is illegal for a Chinese restaurant to advertise for a Chinese cookand this law is enforced, but it is almost impossible to prevent Chineseapplicants being favoured. It is invariably difficult to establish

discrimination in particular cases and the British approach hasemphasized conciliation and education rather than legal tussles overindividuals. The 1965 Act established a national Race Relations Boardto improve race relations, assisted by numerous local boards. The1968 Act added a Community Relations Commission and in 1976these two bodies were replaced by the Commission for RacialEquality, with wider powers. There are also numerous local councilsand groups with similar objectives, so that altogether there is a small

army of people working for the improvement of relations betweenthe host society and the immigrant communities. However, the resultsof their efforts are generally regarded as disappointing.

In regard to the attitudes of the general population to theminorities, some distinctions need to be drawn. It has becomecommon in the 1980s to use the term ‘racism’ when describing theseattitudes. This is a pity, because the concept of racism, as used, cancover anything from active racial prejudice to the mere belief thatmembers of different races tend to have different culturalcharacteristics. In outlining British attitudes to coloured minorities,it is better to ignore this elastic term and to concentrate on the threedistinguishable phenomena of attitudes to immigration, the extentof racial prejudice, and offensive behaviour.

On the first issue, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of white British people regret the arrival of the immigrants in such large




numbers. Over the crucial years, numerous surveys and polls askedpeople whether they welcomed large-scale immigration or thoughtit would benefit the country. The proportions replying in the negativevaried between 79 and 90 per cent, with some ‘don’t knows’ andonly a handful who gave affirmative answers. At the time of the1974 election 69 per cent of voters felt strongly that there were toomany immigrants in Britain, compared with 14 per cent who believedthere were too many but did not feel strongly about it, 13 per centwho thought there were not too many and 5 per cent who had noview (Fox, 1975, p. 168).

Secondly, there are poll figures giving a crude indication of thelevel of racial prejudice in society. At various times, random samples

of the population have been asked whether they would object tohaving coloured people as friends, to working alongside them at theworkplace, or to seeing their children have coloured children asschoolmates. On the assumption that an affirmative answer to anyone of these questions indicates racial prejudice, the polls have shownthat about 15 per cent of the British people were prejudiced in theearly 1950s, that the proportion rose to over 30 per cent in the 1960s,but that it had fallen back to about 15 per cent by the late 1970s.

This statement is based on several polls. Table 7.3 compares theresults of a poll conducted in 1964 with a similar poll conducted inMay 1981. The question asked whether people would ‘be pleased tohave, not mind having, rather not have, or strongly dislike havingcoloured people as friends, fellow-workers, or schoolfellows to [their]children’. The 1981 poll was conducted immediately after three daysof racial rioting in Brixton, south London, a fact that may havereduced the number of respondents willing to contemplate friendship

Table 7.3 Proportions of British people showing racial prejudice in 1964and 1981

Source: Gallup Poll, May 1981.




with coloured people. In May 1982 another Gallup Poll, asking whatkinds of people respondents would dislike having as next-doorneighbours (and permitting multiple answers), revealed that only 11per cent would dislike having members of racial minorities livingnext door.

All racial prejudice is ugly and the evaluation of these figures canonly be somewhat subjective. There is no truly objective way of choosing an adjective to describe each figure. However, it is importantto note that the development of large coloured minorities in Britainresulted in only a temporary increase in racial prejudice, not a lastingincrease.

Thirdly, a small minority of white British people have reacted

viciously to the presence of coloured minorities, either by abuse orviolence directed at coloured citizens or by offensive demonstrationsdemanding that they be deported. Racially motivated assaults onmembers of the coloured minorities or their property began to be afeature of English life in the late 1960s and to grow in frequencyduring the 1970s and 1980s. The attacks have been mainly conductedby young whites, while the victims have mainly been Asians. In thelate 1970s such attacks appeared to be taking place at the rate of

over 3,000 a year (Layton-Henry, 1984, p. 116) and in the 1980sthey have been much more common. The great majority have beenattacks on property rather than persons, but several Asians havebeen killed and in a few areas, such as parts of east London, Asiansgo in fear of street violence. It is a distressing development thatencourages members of the minorities to live in geographicalconcentrations for mutual protection, a tendency that clearly hinderstheir integration into British society. It also sometimes leads

spokesmen for the minorities to accuse the police of not doing enoughto protect them, though numerous whites have been prosecuted forthese assaults and it is not clear, given the random nature of theattacks, that the police could have done much better.

At the political level, the 1970s were marked by the rise and fallof the National Front, a racist party whose only point of appealwas its repeated attacks on immigration policy and its demandsthat coloured immigrants should be repatriated. It had other policies,anti-semitic and neofascist in character, but these were vote-losingpolicies and the Front gave little publicity to them. The Frontcontested four general elections from 1970 to 1979, without evergetting more than a derisory number of votes, and thendisintegrated. At that level of activity it was never a serious problem.What was much more serious was its habit of holding publicdemonstrations and marches that provoked counter-demonstrations




by elements of the radical left and led to violence. As the Frontemployed the tactic of getting advance police permission for itsdemonstrations, most of the fighting occurred between radical left-wingers trying to break up the demonstrations and police who werebound by law to protect the demonstrators. Of the three peoplekilled in these fights, two were radicals and one was a policeinspector. These events were very ugly, but the publicity gained forthe Front did it no good in electoral terms and the demonstrationsended when the Front disintegrated in 1979.

The violence and publicity surrounding the National Front weretherefore of limited duration and have had little lasting effect onrace relations, except in so far as they may (and this can only be a

matter of speculation) have turned the attention of teenage thugs toracial minorities as well as to spectators at football matches. Nastyas the Front’s activities were, the British can take consolation fromthe shortness of its life and the fact that it never gained anythingapproaching the support secured by its French equivalent, the FrontNational, which got 9.2 per cent of the votes in the Frenchparliamentary election of 1986 and 14.6 per cent of the votes in thefirst round of the presidential election of 1988. The largest number

of votes accumulated by National Front candidates, in 1979,amounted to only 0.7 per cent of the total votes.

Integration and non-integration

The racial, cultural and religious gulfs between the host society andthe coloured minorities in Britain have made assimilation difficult in

the short run, though it may come with the passage of time. Themelting pot model of integration seems inappropriate, as the whitemajority have shown no signs of wishing to learn anything from theimmigrants apart from (among young people) a certain interest inreggae music. The most appropriate model is probably that of culturalpluralism and the best definition of the goal of successive HomeSecretaries was that given by Roy Jenkins when he described it as‘equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity in anatmosphere of mutual tolerance’ (quoted in Layton-Henry, 1984, p.66). The dimensions of the process whereby this goal might beachieved are economic, cultural and political.

In the economic sphere the coloured minorities have sufferedvariously from being concentrated in inner-city areas of highunemployment, from poor educational qualifications, from havingployers. They have mostly been employed in the less skilled (though




not actually in the least skilled) occupations, a fact that has madethem vulnerable to unemployment because a high proportion of redundancies have occurred in occupations of these kinds. The sharpgrowth of unemployment in the early 1980s affected ethnicminorities more seriously than whites and had a particularly hardeffect on Asian women, because of their disproportionateinvolvement in the declining textile industries. Unemployment ratesin 1982, the year of maximum unemployment, are shown in Table7.4, with minorities classified according to their family region of origin, whether they were born there or in Britain.

The overall picture revealed by Table 7.4 is very discouraging,but two facts have to be borne in mind when interpreting the figures.One is that the difference between white and coloured unemploymentfigures is not so great within particular areas as over the wholecountry, part of the overall difference resulting from the fact that adisproportionate number of the coloured citizens live in decaying

inner-city areas where unemployment among all groups is rife. Suchpeople are caught in a classic poverty trap with consequences thatare not directly related to their ethnicity.

The other relevant fact that has to be noted is that, among males,the differences between the various minorities are greater than thedifference between the position of the whites and the position of theaverage coloured person. Among the men, the Indians were hardlyless well off than the whites and the East African Asians were only alittle worse off. These differences between minorities appear to berelated partly to the social background, before immigration, of thegroups concerned, partly to their fluency in the English language,partly to educational achievements in Britain. The exceptionally highunemployment rate among Bangladeshi women is partly explainedby the fact that 76 per cent of them had little or no knowledge of English (see C.Brown, 1984, p. 138).

Table 7.4 Unemployment rates by ethnic origin: 1982

Source: Field , 1986, p. 31.




Field also presents figures showing the proportions of the ethnicworkforce at the top of the occupational ladder, in professional andmanagerial posts, and at the bottom, in semi-skilled and unskilledwork. These figures are encouraging at the top of the ladder, for theyshow that bright Asians, and to a lesser extent bright blacks,significantly narrowed the gap between whites and themselves in theeight years between 1974 and 1982. Indeed, it is reported that ‘amongmale workers under 25, more than twice as many Asians as whitesare in professional and managerial jobs’ (Field, 1986, p. 31). However,the figures are discouraging at the bottom end of the ladder, for theproportion of coloured workers in poor jobs fell only a little in the

same period. The figures are given in Table 7.5 In this table and inwhat follows people of Afro-Caribbean origin are, for convenience,described simply as blacks. The average earnings of male colouredworkers were between 10 and 15 per cent less than the averageearnings of white male workers in 1982, a differential very similarto that which exists in Canada but much smaller than the differentialin the United States, where ‘black workers earn about one-third lessthan whites’ (Field, 1986, p. 32).

The evidence that well-educated young coloured people,particularly Asians, are improving their positions quite rapidly callsattention to the importance of education in economic integration.Britain is a country where success at school is crucial for future careers,to a greater extent than in North America, where people are sortedout a little later in life. A government report published in January1988 showed that the overall unemployment rate among youngpeople who passed four O-level examinations at age 16 (a good but

Table 7.5 Occupational attainments among the coloured workforce

Source: Field , 1986, pp. 31–2.




not exceptional achievement) was only 2 per cent, whereas the rateamong young people who left school without any qualifications was42 per cent (Sunday Times, 17 January 1988). In view of this, thefigures in Table 7.6 assume particular importance.

This table shows a striking difference between the scholasticachievements of young whites and Asians, on the one hand, andyoung people of West Indian origin on the other. The difference is allthe more remarkable because for many of the Asians English is asecond language whereas for all of the blacks it is a first language,even though in some cases their parents may speak in a dialect ratherthan in standard English. The difference cannot be explained in termsof genetic differences in intelligence, even though black children tend

to perform less well than others in IQ tests. Research has establishedthat, when social and environmental factors are held constant, thereis little significant difference between the intelligence of white, blackand Asian children in England (Swann Report, 1985, pp. 71 and81). What, then, is the explanation of the lamentable performanceof black children in schools?

The answer is that there is no single explanation, but a complexmixture of relevant factors. One is that most of the black immigrantscome from poor backgrounds in the West Indies, whereas thebackgrounds of the Asian immigrants, though in many cases poor,were more mixed. The importance of this factor is shown by thefact that the small Bangladeshi community in England, coming fromvery poor rural backgrounds and with little knowledge of theEnglish language, produce children whose scholastic attainmentsare way below the Asian average. Another factor is the nature of

Table 7.6 Educational achievements in six inner-city areas in England,1978–9

Source: Swann Report, 1985, p. xviii.




black family life, with a large proportion of single-parent familiesand also with a tradition that the father leaves most of theresponsibility for guiding the children of a marriage to his wife. Inthis connection it is suggestive that twelve independent studies of black children in school all found that the girls were more successfulthan the boys (Tomlinson, 1983, p. 41). The relevance of this kindof factor for achievement is also indicated by the fact that Muslimgirls, often brought up to expect subservient roles in adult life, areless successful in school than Muslim boys and also less successfulthan Sikh boys (Tomlinson, 1983, p. 57).

A third possible factor, very difficult to establish or to refute, isthat some teachers may have low expectations of black pupils and

communicate these expectations, perhaps unconsciously, to theirclasses. A fourth factor is that blacks, as a group, have been slowerthan Asians to appreciate the close relationship between scholasticsuccess and future job opportunities. A study in the early 1970srevealed that Asian teenagers displayed about the same match aswhite teenagers between their educational achievements and theirpersonal career ambitions, whereas black teenagers were wildlyunrealistic (Phizacklea, 1975). Fifteen-year-olds who had failed every

school examination harboured ambitions to be doctors or lawyersor architects. A senior youth employment officer interviewed by theauthor in 1978 said that he and his colleagues were well aware of this problem, but when they tried to educate black parents on thesubject they were frequently met with the retort that it was mainlyracial discrimination that prevented young blacks from enteringprofessional careers.

The consequence of poor scholastic achievement among young

blacks is that a high proportion of them are fit only for unskilled orsemi-skilled jobs. Unfortunately, it is at this level that, because of thespread of automation, unemployment is highest. Also unfortunately,racial discrimination by employers is more common at this level thanin respect of jobs involving greater skill (Smith, 1977, p. 110). Thereport already cited (Sunday Times, 17 January 1988) revealed thatthe unemployment rate among young people without any scholasticqualifications was 42 per cent; other reports indicate that the rateamong black youngsters without qualifications was 60 per cent ormore. In Brixton at the time of the 1981 riots, the overallunemployment rate among blacks between 16 and 18 was 55 percent (Scarman, 1982, p. 27). It is no wonder that many young blacksregard their position in British society as hopeless.

The reasons why Asian children do better than blacks at school,in brief, are closer family ties, more parental guidance and




encouragement, a more realistic understanding of the economicimportance of education and a tendency to stay at school longer.Studies have shown that Asian children are apt to be behind whitechildren of equivalent social background in their early years at school,but tend to catch up later (Tomlinson, 1983, Chapter 4). They areless likely than white children to be socialized into acceptance of aworking-class lifestyle, more likely to be ambitious. Their efforts arerewarded by a fair measure of success in the marketplace, at least forthe brighter ones among them.

The economic integration of the minorities is therefore very patchy.Many Asians and a smaller proportion of blacks are doing well,occupying professional or managerial positions or doing skilled

manual or white-collar work. A fair number of Asians are self-employed, owning shops or other small business concerns. However,a rather high proportion of both groups are doing unskilled or semi-skilled work or are unemployed.

The response of British governmental authorities to theseproblems has been two-fold. First, a good deal of research into theeducation of ethnic minorities has been sponsored and educationalexperiments have been conducted in various areas. Secondly, the

national government has launched the Youth Training Scheme, amassive program of technical education for all young peoplebetween the ages of 16 and 18 who do not have jobs and are notpursuing full-time educational courses. The scheme is not speciallydesigned for ethnic minorities, but it will clearly benefit them, alongwith young whites. The scheme provides students with varioustechnical skills, with a wage, and also with a period of workexperience in industrial and commercial firms who accept trainees

for a few months at a time. Some critics have alleged that the schemehas been introduced to reduce the unemployment figures, and it iscertainly true that nobody in Britain under the age of 18 is nowclassified as unemployed. However, the whole scheme, nowinvolving about 750,000 trainees, is an ambitious innovation that iscalculated to raise the morale of otherwise unemployed youngpeople as well as to equip them with basic transferable skills of atechnical nature.

What the British government has not done is to launch a campaignagainst racial discrimination in employment. The Home Office, whichis the government department mainly responsible for race relations,has been slow to take initiatives in this field, just as it was slow in the1950s to recognize the problems of mass immigration and has beenslow to tidy up British legislation regarding citizenship. The HomeOffice has a miscellany of responsibilities, including police, law and




order and prisons as well as citizenship, immigration and racerelations. It can be argued that Britain would do better to have aministry specially responsible for race relations. As it is, theseproblems are left to the Commission for Racial Equality, which doesnot have a ministerial head to promote its objectives and whose recordwas severely criticized by the House of Commons Home AffairsCommittee in 1981–2 (see Banton, 1985, pp. 95–8).

At the cultural level, integration has also been patchy. Many of the Asians still have a serious language problem, the overallproportion who could speak English only slightly or not at all in1982 being 21 per cent of Asian adult men and 47 per cent of Asian adult women (C.Brown, 1984, p. 137). However, the

differences between Asian communities are very marked, as is shownin Table 7.7

In view of these figures, it is not surprising to find that the

proportion of Asians who were married to or living with whites wasvery low in 1982, though the proportion of blacks who had set uphouse with white partners was quite substantial. Outside of the areasof high black concentration, 26 per cent of the adult blacks who hadset up house with a member of the opposite sex had a white partner,while the figure for all areas was 15 per cent (C.Brown, 1984, p. 33).

Religious differences sometimes pose problems, but these havebeen slight in the case of Hindus, Sikhs and the older West Indians.Greater problems have arisen between the host society and Muslims,concerned about some aspects of the educational system, and thoseyounger West Indians who have adopted the Rastafarian creed.

The concerns of Muslims have revolved around their desire tohave their children taught some of the main features of Islamicculture and their apprehension that teenage Muslim girls will beintroduced to western ideas about sexual relationships by attending

Table 7.7 Percentages of Asian adults speaking English ‘slightly’ or ‘not at all’ in 1982

Source: C.Brown, 1984, p. 138.




coeducational schools. The question of lessons in Islamic culture isdifficult because what is granted to one ethnic group can hardly bedenied to others. By and large, British schools have neither thequalified staff nor the time in the curriculum necessary to offerinstruction in a variety of religions. Most children get two periodsof non-denominational religious instruction a week and it is nowquite common for these periods to be devoted to a survey of worldreligions rather than to be concentrated on Christianity. In someareas with a high proportion of Muslim students the schools focusmainly on Islamic studies, but no general right to expect programsof this kind has been conceded by the education authorities.

In some areas, but not all, Muslim spokesmen have protested

about the impact of coeducational schools on Muslim girls. Theyspecifically object to mixed swimming lessons at which girls wearscanty swimsuits, but some of their concerns are much wider thanthis. In Bradford they have urged the city council, without success,to transform the educational system by going over to single-sexschools at the secondary level. These varied concerns have led tothe growth of private Islamic schools, in some cases funded by SaudiArabian money, but the number of pupils at these schools is not yet

large.The growth of the Rastafarian creed among young blacks is an

entirely different story. The creed emerged in Jamaica during the1920s and it is a creed of underprivileged, sometimes despairing,black people in a world dominated by whites. The essence of thecreed is that blacks in western societies came from Ethiopia andwill eventually return to that country, idealized as a ‘promised land’.The creed takes its name from the family name of the former

Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Ras Tafari. White society isdescribed as corrupt as well as oppressive and is known toRastafarians as ‘Babylon’. The message of the creed is that Babylonwill eventually collapse under the weight of its own corruption,when blacks will become triumphant and return to Africa. In themeantime, blacks should avoid contamination by Babylon. Inpractical terms, this means that they should not work in the whiteeconomy, should have contempt for white institutions and shouldsmoke marijuana to induce the right kind of passivity while awaitingthe great day. For a full account of the creed, see Cashmore’sscholarly study (Cashmore, 1979).

This creed became popular among young blacks in London andBirmingham in the late 1970s, subsequently spreading to other cities.It is a reaction to unemployment and a clear sign of alienation fromBritish society. It is hard to think of a creed that would be more




disintegrative in its consequences. It has led young blacks to abandonthe search for work, to take drugs and deal in drugs (heroin andcocaine as well as marijuana), and to adopt hostile attitudes towardsauthority. Its growth has contributed to the street crime and violencethat has developed in black neighbourhoods and to numerous conflictswith the police.

In addition to these specific developments, there are generalquestions as to whether England has become, is becoming or shouldbecome a multicultural society. These are questions, however, to whichno meaningful answer can easily be given. England has a very strongand distinctive culture and there are consequently strong pressurestowards the assimilation of minorities. The Scots, Welsh and Irish

people living in England have long been assimilated. The Russian Jews who arrived in the early years of the present century, the Poleswho settled in England in 1945 and the Hungarian refugees whoarrived in 1956 have all been very largely assimilated. Assimilationcan probably be expected of those blacks and Asians who set uphome with whites, of those who acquire post-secondary educationand of those living in areas where coloured people are thin on theground.

Liberal opinion in England is somewhat divided on the desirabilityof assimilation. Older people tend to favour it while younger onesare more likely to favour multiculturalism. That bastion of liberalism,the BBC, was in the early spring of 1988 devoting only forty minutesa week of television time to a specifically multicultural programme,entitled ‘Network East’ and directed at Asian citizens. In other periodsof the year there is a similar program, entitled ‘Ebony’, directed atblack citizens. At the same time, the BBC makes a point of employing

coloured newsreaders, program presenters and actors. It hasestablished six scholarships to provide professional training intelevision reporting for Asian and Afro-Caribbean candidates, thetraining to extend over a two-year period. It has an EqualOpportunities Officer and has adopted the practice of ‘ethnicmonitoring’ in respect of staff appointments at all levels. Theassumptions underlying these policies would seem to be moreassimilationist than multicultural.

On the other hand, in January 1988 the two Asian presenters of ‘Network East’ were dismissed for being in different ways too wellintegrated into English society. The older of the two was dismissedbecause she had become publicly identified with the Labour Party,having been elected as a Labour councillor in one London boroughand being employed as a legal adviser by another London boroughwith a Labour majority. The younger of the two was dismissed




because older Asian viewers complained that she had a strongBirmingham accent, could not pronounce Asian words correctly andwore fashionable clothes such as a miniskirt. She seemed to someviewers to be just a Birmingham girl with a brown skin. The twopresenters, who happened to have the typically English first namesof Valerie and Samantha, were replaced by three newcomers whosenames were Shahnaz, Fatima and Sudha.

The second generation of coloured citizens is now reachingadulthood, clearly subject to pressures from society to assimilate andpressures from their parents to retain their cultural distinctiveness. Itwill probably not become clear whether assimilation or culturalpluralism is to be the more common pattern until the third generation

reaches adulthood.At the political level, members of coloured minorities all enjoy

the right to vote, join political parties and stand for political office.Statistical analysis shows that the level of electoral participation in aconstituency is depressed by the presence of coloured minorities, apartfrom Indians, who have no effect on turnout, and Asians from EastAfrica, whose turnout rate appears to be higher than that of whites(McAllister and Studlar, 1984, pp. 145–6). Nearly all blacks who

vote support the Labour Party and so do most of the Asians, but thereasons for their voting behaviour are to some extent different. Asurvey has shown that black support for Labour can be explainedalmost entirely in terms of class identity whereas 31 per cent of theAsians said that they supported Labour for ethnic reasons (Layton-Henry and Studlar, 1985, p. 311). However, as the constituencieswith sizeable numbers of coloured voters are safe Labour seats inany case, it cannot be said that ethnic voting has any perceptible

effect on the electoral process at the parliamentary level (McAllisterand Studlar, 1984, pp. 147–8).Until 1987 there were no coloured MPs, but in that year three

blacks were returned as Labour Members in London constituenciesand one Asian, also Labour, was elected in Leicester. One of theblack MPs said immediately after his election that he intended toform a black section within the Labour Party, notwithstanding theParty’s refusal to accept organization on ethnic lines, but it is not yetclear whether he will be able to do this. The Conservative Party hasno objection to ethnic sections and has formed an association forAsian sympathizers.

At the municipal level there were 150 Labour councillors and 20Conservatives in 1985, out of about 25,000 elected councillors inthe country as a whole (Layton-Henry and Studlar, 1985, p. 314).At one time it appeared possible that Indian political organizations




might become quite active in municipal politics, but they have beeninhibited by the fact that it is very difficult for councillors in Britainto provide favours for their supporters. As Banton has pointed out,immigrant communities in the United States moved into local politicson the basis of being about to help members of their ethnic groups,but political ethics and procedures make this almost impossible inBritain (Banton, 1972, p. 144). Politically active members of thecoloured minorities in Britain tend to be interested in ethnic issuesand to find working in pressure groups more relevant to their concernsthan participating in party politics. There are several ethnic pressuregroups campaigning at any given time and the various official bodiescharged with improving race relations contain coloured members.

This has proved to be the most constructive field of political activityfor the minorities, though their satisfaction with it has been limitedby the failure of the official bodies to eliminate racial discriminationin employment.

The other form of political activity engaged in by members of theblack minority, though not by Asians, is participation in protestsand demonstrations against the police. In England’s largest cities,and most particularly in London, young blacks have taken to various

forms of street crime such as mugging, picking pockets and snatchinghandbags. The police have responded to this by stopping people onthe street and searching them. Blacks complain that the police donot do this on a random basis but discriminate against young blackmales, an allegation that is undoubtedly correct. One police answerto this has been to publish statistics showing the high incidence of crime among young black males, an action that was greatly resented.In recent years the spread of drugs among the black communities

has also led the police to raid black cafes where drugs are sold. Thedifference between the proven crime rates of blacks and Asians isillustrated by the fact that a 1983 survey of London and the South-East found that ‘although young Asian males outnumbered youngblacks in the population by two to one, young blacks in penalestablishments outnumbered young Asians by 22:1’ (Layton-Henryand Studlar, 1985, p. 317).

The consequences of bad relations between young blacks and thepolice are known to anyone who has a television set. There havebeen repeated riots in the Brixton area of London and the Toxtetharea of Liverpool, with shops looted and burned, police carsoverturned and many hundreds of policemen injured. In July 1981there were riots in twenty-seven urban areas, with unemployed whiteyouths joining in the looting and violence. In 1985 there was a riotin the Handsworth area of Birmingham in which two Asian




shopkeepers died in a shop burned down by blacks, followed by ariot in Tottenham (north London) in which a policeman was hackedto death with a West Indian machete while two other policemen andthree journalists were injured by gunfire. Nobody expects that thesewill be the last of such incidents.

Government policies

Bulpitt’s thesis about the British way of separating high politics fromlow politics is largely but not entirely confirmed by governmentalreactions to the problems resulting from the presence of a large

coloured minority. The great exception to Bulpitt’s rule is the YouthTraining Scheme, a vast enterprise conceived and organized, veryrapidly, by the national government.

Apart from this scheme, national governments have certainlytried to pass the main responsibility for dealing with the problemsto other bodies. The prevention of racial discrimination is in thehands of the Commission for Racial Equality, the CommunityRelations Commission and the local community relations councils.

Education is in the hands of local authorities. The 1988 EducationReform Act will make it possible for schools to opt out of localgovernment control, if this move is supported by a majority of parents, in order to become self-managing, subject to overridingcontrol over the curriculum and educational standards. In somemixed residential areas it is possible that this will lead to thesegregation of all-white schools from all-coloured, particularly all-Asian, schools. Such a development would resolve some problems

while creating others that might be more serious. It would hinderthe cultural and social integration of the minorities involved, andthe example of Northern Ireland indicates that in somecircumstances it could lead to social conflict.

The maintenance of public order is firmly in the hands of thepolice, with no involvement at all by municipal authorities and onlygeneral guidance by the Home Office. The government has made itclear that the police can use tear gas and plastic bullets if they thinkit necessary, but with the one exception of tear gas in Liverpool in1981 the police have so far preferred to rely on fists and batons. Thepolice are the focus of conflicting pressures that makes their livesvery difficult. They are pressed by public opinion, reinforced by theirown sense of duty, to keep the crime rate down; are advised by theScarman Report to put the preservation of public order before theprevention of crime (Scarman, 1982); are urged by Asian spokesmen




to police areas of mixed ethnicity more thoroughly; and are urgedby black spokesmen to police such areas more lightly. The police areoccasionally clumsy, but in this situation it is unfair to expect miraclesof them.

When all the problems are weighed in the balance, the mostserious of them is unemployment. If Muslim communities remainsomewhat isolated, that is unfortunate in terms of social integration,but if they give priority to their culture and religion this is not aserious problem for the rest of society. If coloured voting turnoutremains low, this does not really matter. Violent attacks on thepolice do matter, but they are highly local and sporadic. Long-termunemployment is soul-destroying, however, and the bitterness it

causes is sharpened if it is perceived as partly caused by racialdiscrimination.

There is a case for believing that the national government shouldtake a more vigorous stand against discrimination, but beyond thatthere is little that the government can do to reduce colouredunemployment, as distinct from unemployment in general. Nopolitical party or sizeable group in Britain wants to see positivediscrimination in favour of coloured people enforced by law. This is

mainly because of a strongly-held British principle that all citizensshould be treated as equal in the sight of the law, reinforced in thiscase by the fact that racial differences in unemployment are not allthat great if geographical factors are held constant. The problem of white unemployment in the inner-city areas is almost as serious asthat of coloured unemployment. In 1982 a survey of the inner-cityareas of England’s three largest cities (London, Birmingham andManchester) revealed male unemployment rates there of 23 per cent

among whites, 26 per cent among Asians and 29 per cent amongblacks (C.Brown, 1984, p. 192). These decaying urban areasconstitute a wretched problem from which Canada and Australiaare fortunately free, but in Britain there is no quick or easy solutionto this problem.

5 NATIONAL INTEGRATION AND NATIONALISM

National integration

The United Kingdom, as a state, has been outstandingly successfulin creating a political identity on top of three distinct culturalidentities. England, Scotland and Wales all have their own poets,novelists, songs and distinctive styles of humour. The Welsh comedian




and folk-singer, Max Boyce, reflects the Welsh self-image in hisengaging innocence, nostalgia and enthusiasm for rugby. His Scottishequivalent, Billy Connolly, reflects the Scottish self-image in the tough,resilient, sardonic personality he projects. The self-deprecatinghumour of English comedians reflects the confidence andcomplacency of the English people, for it takes people who arebasically pleased with themselves to be publicly self-deprecating.When British people think of their national identity, they mostcommonly think of themselves first as English, Welsh or Scots.

At the same time, there is rarely any doubt about their beingBritish. As we have seen, the slogan ‘Scotland is British’ proved awinner in the campaign to persuade Scottish electors not to express

in the referendum vote the view for which most of them hadpreviously shown sympathy in public opinion polls, that it wouldbe to Scotland’s advantage to have a Scottish Assembly. Welsh votersdid not even need a slogan; they knew. If protest votes and localissues are taken into account, the voting figures at recent electionssuggest that less than 10 per cent of Welsh electors and no morethan about 15 per cent of Scottish electors favour secession fromthe United Kingdom. If a campaign were waged on the issue, this

author’s guess is that the proportions voting in favour of secessionwould be even smaller.

Loyalty to the British state is therefore very secure on the Britishmainland, and it is noteworthy that the Scottish and Welsh nationalistparties are entirely constitutional in the means chosen to pursue theirobjectives. Whereas the Breton nationalists in France and the Basquenationalists in Spain have resorted to bombs and the Sikh nationalistsin India to a campaign of assassination, the Scottish and Welsh

nationalists try to win seats in the British Parliament.The position of Northern Ireland is more complicated, for this isa society divided in terms of national loyalty as well as in terms of religion and culture. Members of the Protestant majority have threeidentities, as Ulstermen, Irish and British. Logically, they are Britishby law and either Ulstermen or Irish by inclination and feelings of cultural identity. A 1978 survey revealed that, when asked to nameone identity, 67 per cent called themselves British, 20 per cent calledthemselves Ulstermen or women and only 8 per cent called themselvesIrish (Moxon-Browne, 1983, p. 6). The English, Scots and Welsh aremore likely than this to think of Northern Irish Protestants as Irish,less likely to think of them as British. This pattern of attitudes reflectsthe common feeling that all the Northern Irish, whether Protestantor Catholic, differ from the ‘real British’, being more religious, lesstolerant and more inclined to violence. However, there is no doubt




about either the British legal identity or the British loyalties of theUlster Protestants. As one of them told a Guardian reporter in anearly stage of the troubles, ‘We’re going to stay British, whether youbloody English like it or not’. This was a precise and perceptivesummation of community attitudes.

The Northern Irish Catholics are more reluctant to identifythemselves as British. In the same survey only 15 per cent did so,compared with 69 per cent who identified themselves as Irish, 6per cent who called themselves Ulstermen and 10 per cent whogave mixed or uncertain replies (Moxon-Browne, 1983, p. 6). Thisis an understandable response from people who strongly disliketheir Protestant neighbours and also dislike the English who control

their government. Whether or not they actually want to join theRepublic, and 49 per cent of them thought that ‘the Irish governmentshould stop talking about the goal of reunification’ (Moxon-Browne, 1983, p. 21), they feel more sympathy with their co-religionists south of the border. This attitude is not alwaysreciprocated, however. A large-scale academic survey of Dublinresidents found that 59 per cent of respondents agreed and only 28per cent disagreed with the proposition that ‘Catholics in Northern

Ireland have more in common with Northern Protestants than theyhave with Catholics in the Republic’. The reason for this attitudewould be well understood by the English. Fifty-five per cent of Dubliners agreed and only 37 per cent disagreed with theproposition that ‘Northerners on all sides tend to be extreme andunreasonable’ (MacGreil, 1977, p. 377).

What about feelings of identity among the coloured minorities inEngland? While no survey of their feelings of political identity has

yet been conducted, it seems fair to assume that they would mostlyidentify themselves as British. It is because of their British passportsthat they or their parents were able to move to Britain as immigrants.A much more interesting question is whether those born in Englandwould identify themselves as English, but to this it is difficult to giveeven a speculative answer.

The discussion of national integration in the previous sections of this chapter has shown that economic integration within the UnitedKingdom is almost complete. Northern Ireland is more dependenton agriculture and poorer than the rest of the country, but the gap isgetting smaller, not wider, over the years. The gross domestic productper head in Northern Ireland has moved from 66 per cent of theUnited Kingdom figure in 1966 to 72 per cent in 1971 and 78 percent in 1980. That this should be so despite the violence that hasplagued the province since 1968 is a testimony both to the economic




policies of the British government and to the determination of theNorthern Irish people.

Social and cultural integration is also virtually complete among93 per cent of the population, though with three groups standingout as largely unintegrated. The Northern Irish Catholics (about half a million strong) comprise one such group; the Welsh-speaking Welsh(about half a million) constitute another; and the coloured minorities(2.5 million) comprise a third. The more important of the variousreasons for their social and cultural separation have been mentionedand need not be recapitulated.

The question of how far this cultural separation is desirable raisesthe whole issue of the case for cultural pluralism, now commonly

called multiculturalism, within a national society. This is an issue onwhich dogmatism is quite inappropriate, though unfortunately notuncommon. Thoroughly respectable arguments can be mustered oneach side of the question.

On the positive side, it is clearly right that religious minoritiesshould be able freely to practise their religion and pass it on to theirchildren. It is desirable that minority languages such as Welsh shouldbe preserved, even if not widely used, rather than allowed to die out.

There is a literature and a body of songs in Welsh that would be lostfor ever if the language were to become extinct. The Hindu andMuslim minorities in Britain have a cultural heritage as well as areligion that they generally want to pass on to the next generation. Itwould be a very narrow view that these minorities should be pressedinto assimilation to the culture of the majority.

On the other hand, the Northern Irish example shows clearly howdangerous it can be for minorities to be segregated in their schools

and their social life. It would be unfortunate if the existing small-scale development of private Islamic schools should mushroom intoa tendency to segregate the racial minorities in state schools. Early inthis century, the Jewish immigrant community decided as a matterof policy that they would organize Jewish schools only for religiousinstruction on the sabbath, sending their children to unsegregatedstate schools for general education. The very successful integrationof Jewish people into English, Scottish and Welsh society, withoutany loss of their religion, suggests that this is the example that shouldbe followed by the coloured minorities—as up to now it has been,with only a few exceptions.

Classes on multiculturalism in state schools also raise questions.Since it is important for racial tolerance and harmony for each groupto know a little about the religions and cultures of other groups, itwould seem desirable for classes to be mixed rather than for children




to be divided up for Islamic studies, Hindu studies, Afro-Caribbeanstudies and so forth. In practice this can sometimes be difficult toorganize, which perhaps justifies the absence of any clear nationalpolicy on the question.

In terms of language maintenance and communication, the mainproblem among Asian immigrants is not any present threat to Urduor Hindi but the fact that so many Asian women immigrants haveonly a very sketchy knowledge of English. There are plenty of classesin English available, but the statistics on language suggest that Britishgovernments have been remiss in not organizing a well-publicizednational program for teaching English as a second language. Peoplewho cannot speak English fluently are bound to be both isolated

socially and at a disadvantage in the labour market. As dependentsare still arriving from Asia, this is a problem that the governmentclearly ought to address.

In this and other respects, the British government’s policy of leavingthe main responsibility for the racial minorities with local authoritiesand quasi-autonomous organizations is open to question. The policyis well-intentioned and is understandable in terms of British politicaltraditions, but there is a real possibility that some of the minorities

will become like the Catholics in Northern Ireland: culturally cut off from the majority, occupying an inferior economic position in society,wielding very little political influence and drifting into a conditionof alienation. This need not happen, but the danger is there andgovernment leaders ought to do more than stand by and let it develop.

The political integration of Wales and Scotland is almost complete,with both countries contributing leaders to the British national parties.It is historically understandable but now rather unfortunate that the

Northern Irish parties are separate, as it effectively bars Irish MPsfrom attaining ministerial office in British governments. There is,however, no sign of either the British national parties wishing toestablish branches in Northern Ireland or of Irish people being keento join them if they did. Instead, the British parties have all treatedNorthern Irish affairs in the way that they treat foreign affairs, namelyas matters on which the parties should try hard to maintain theappearance of unity. Direct rule in Northern Ireland therefore fallsshort of full political integration with the other constituent parts of the United Kingdom.




Nationalism

The nationalist sentiments and movements that are reported in themass media are invariably examples of aspiring nationalism on thepart of groups wishing to change the political order. Britishnationalism has never had that character; it is and always has been apossessive form of nationalism wishing to preserve the political order.Possessive nationalism is a phenomenon made up of three constituentelements that can be defined. The first is national consciousness,namely the consciousness on the part of the people of a given territorythat they have a certain national identity, over and above theirconsciousness of belonging to various churches, linguistic groups and

classes. The second is national cohesion, the objective fact(conspicuous by its absence in Northern Ireland) that the people of that territory have a degree of social and political unity that overridesthe various factors that divide them. The third is national loyaltyand pride, shown by the readiness of members of the nationalcommunity to defend it from outside criticism, commercial aggressionor physical attack.

British nationalism is essentially a development of the nineteenth

century that grew out of English nationalism, which is much older.English nationalism is thought by most historians to have been adevelopment of the sixteenth century. It had been awakened by theHundred Years’ War with France and was consolidated by thecommercial success of the Tudor period, by the cultural triumphs of the Shakespearian era, by the break with the Roman Catholic Churchand by the defeat of the Spanish Armada. One historian has saidthat ‘Philip II could not possibly appeal to his subject peoples to

fight for the Spanish Empire as Elizabeth could appeal to the Englishpeople to fight for England’ (Coupland, 1954, p. 10).The sense of national cohesion built in this period was disturbed

but not shattered by the revolutions of the seventeenth century. Theoutcome of these revolutions was the establishment of the most liberalpolitical order in Europe; and the English added a pride in their liberalinstitutions to pride in their cultural achievements, their commercialsuccesses and their naval victories. The subsequent development of the world’s first industrial system and the world’s largest empireinflated the English sense of national pride into the extremechauvinism of the late nineteenth century.

It was the success of the industrial revolution that persuaded theScottish and later the Welsh middle classes to merge their loyaltieswith those of the English into a new loyalty to the British nation.Among the Scottish bourgeoisie it became fashionable for a time to




refer to their country not as Scotland but as North Britain. Thefinanciers and engineers who built the first railway in Scotland calledit the North British Railway, and to this day the massive North BritishHotel stands in central Edinburgh as a monument to that mode of thought. As the nineteenth century wore on the concept of beingBritish spread to all classes in Scotland and Wales, not as a substitutefor their Scottish and Welsh identities but as an addition to them.British national loyalties were intensified by the Boer War and thenmade complete by the First World War.

That the latent strength of British nationalism is as great as everwas demonstrated dramatically in 1982, when Argentina’s invasionof the Falkland Islands united the country in a determination to

recapture the islands from the invaders. The Falklands areeconomically worthless and there are no material considerations thatcould have justified the cost in lives and money of the ensuing struggle.Despite this, the campaign was waged with enthusiasm and withoutany serious opposition from critics.

One disputable question is that of how far the English retain asense of English nationalism that is distinct from British nationalismand potentially hostile to Scotland and Wales. They certainly pay

little attention to national symbols that are distinctively English. Theydo not celebrate St George’s Day as the Scots and Welsh celebratetheir national days. They rarely fly the English flag and it is notcertain that most English people would even recognize it. They tendin conversation to use the terms English and British as if they wereinterchangeable.

When the Royal Commission on the Constitution reported in 1973,the six members who supported the main recommendations (two

Scotsmen, two Welshmen, one Ulsterman and one Englishman)suggested a division of legislative powers between the proposedScottish and Welsh Assemblies and the British Parliament that theyacknowledged would amount to ‘a serious injustice’ to the Englishpeople. However, for some unstated reason, presumably anassumption of English political apathy, they did not think the Englishwould raise practical objections to this (Royal Commission on theConstitution, 1973, p. 344). The other English members of theCommission dissented from this recommendation but were dividedamong themselves about what they preferred.

In the event the Labour government put this proposition aboutEnglish apathy to the test by proposing the arrangement that wouldbe manifestly unfair to the English people. The consequence, asalready noted, is that English MPs refused to support the reformunless it was dependent upon a favourable vote in a referendum,




and then added the 40 per cent hurdle that effectively prevented thereferendum from providing an endorsement. It may therefore beconcluded that English nationalism, though latent rather thanobvious, can be awakened by a threat to English interests and is thenlikely to dominate the outcome by force of numbers.



138

8 National integration inCanada

1 THE CANADIAN STATE

The Canadian state was created by the British North America Act(henceforth BNA Act) of 1867. This was an Act of the BritishParliament that had been drafted, in all its essentials, by politicalleaders from the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and NovaScotia. The leaders of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, whohad participated in the first round of the negotiations, withdrewbefore the final round. The Act created a federal union of four

provinces, with Canada being divided into Ontario (formerly CanadaWest and essentially anglophone) and Quebec (formerly Canada Eastand essentially francophone). Manitoba was subsequently admittedas a province in 1870, followed by British Columbia in 1871, PrinceEdward Island in 1873, Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1905, andNewfoundland in 1949.

As a constitution for a federal state, the BNA Act was in severalrespects less than satisfactory. The first and most serious of its

weaknesses was a lack of clarity about the division of legislative powersbetween the federal and provincial authorities. In each of the otherclassic federations, namely the United States, Switzerland and Australia,the federal powers are set out in a list and it is provided that all otherlegislative powers reside with the states or cantons. In the BNA Act itwas stated that the provincial legislatures would have power to legislatein sixteen defined areas but that power in all other fields would restwith the federal Parliament. This suggested that as the years went by

Canada would become a highly centralized federation, consequentupon the federal power to legislate in all the new fields of governmentactivity as the scope of government increased. This had been theintention of the anglophone promoters of federation from CanadaWest and seemed to be implicit in the description of the constitutionas providing for a ‘legislative union’. However, the BNA Act allowedfor confusion over this question in two ways.



139Integration in Canada

First, ‘for greater clarity’, it enumerated twenty-seven specific areasin which the federal Parliament could legislate; secondly, one of thesixteen fields reserved for the provinces was defined as ‘propertyand civil rights in the province’. This ambiguous wording permittedthe Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to take the view in the1890s that most matters not included in the enumerated federalpowers affected property and civil rights in the provinces, a line of interpretation that provided for increasing decentralization ratherthan increasing centralization and thus changed the whole balanceof the constitution.

A second weakness of the BNA Act was that it did not establish acourt to adjudicate in cases of constitutional dispute. Appeals under

the Act were simply referred, like other colonial questions of adjudication, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council inLondon. This body was certainly impartial, but it had neither thecomposition nor the status to act as a branch of the Canadiangovernment in the manner of the US Supreme Court. It treated theBNA Act as just another statute, without enquiring into the intentionsof those who drafted it and without consciously shaping itsinterpretations to fit changing social circumstances. It therefore never

engaged in the creative jurisprudence that has characterized boththe American Supreme Court and the Australian High Court. Since1946 the Canadian Supreme Court has taken over the role previouslyfilled by the Judicial Committee, but the Canadian court has provedto be similarly cautious in its behaviour.

A third weakness of the BNA Act was that it provided for a Senatewhose members were to be nominated by the federal government,rather than elected, and that did not give equal representation to

each province. In America, Switzerland and Australia the upperhouses of the federal legislature are based on the principle of equalrepresentation for each state or canton, thus giving the smaller statessome security that their interests would not be overwhelmed by thoseof the larger states. The failure to do likewise in Canada, combinedwith the fact that Senators have normally followed the party line of the government that appointed them, has meant that the smallerprovinces have not been able to look to the Senate to represent theirinterests in the federal law-making (and therefore policy-making)process.

A consequence of this, in combination with the exceptionallyrigid party discipline that prevails in the Canadian House of Commons, is that the smaller provinces—and, over the years, allprovinces—have tended to rely on the provincial premiers to lookafter provincial interests by a process of bilateral bargaining with




Ottawa. As, for different reasons, federal-provincial financialrelationships have also depended on bilateral bargaining, directnegotiations between provincial and federal ministers have acquiredan importance that is not paralleled in any other federation. Thishas impeded the development of national integration, for it meansthat electors look first to their provincial governments to protecttheir interests, sometimes regarding the national government as analien body that must be guarded against or struggled with.

A fourth weakness of the BNA Act was that it failed to specifyany procedure for its own amendment. As an Act of the BritishParliament, it has simply been amended by further Acts of thatParliament, on Canadian request but without any settled procedure

for agreement between the federal and provincial governments aboutthe request. Nor is there any provision for direct participation by theelectors in the amending process, as is provided for in the American,Swiss and Australian constitutions.

This omission from the Act was corrected in 1982, when a formulafor future amendments, to be carried out entirely within Canada,was enacted by the British Parliament. Unfortunately this formulawas arrived at by a process that can only be described as shabby. A

different formula had been proposed in 1980 by the federalgovernment, but was opposed by eight of the ten provinces.Astonishingly, the federal government, led by Pierre Trudeau in hismost truculent mood, asked the British Parliament to pass theproposed Bill notwithstanding provincial opposition. This oppositionled the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British House of Commonsto reach the unanimous view that the Bill should be rejected, whichit would have been had the Trudeau government not been forced

into second thoughts by the judgement of the Canadian SupremeCourt that the procedure embarked upon flouted constitutionalconventions. A conference of provincial premiers was then called toconsider the issue. After failing to reach agreement in a formal session,the anglophone premiers then hammered out a compromise at aprivate meeting in the evening to which the Premier of Quebec hadnot been invited. This compromise was subsequently embodied, in aslightly revised form, in an Act that the British Parliament agreed topass, under the title of The Constitution Act 1982. The Quebecgovernment protested both about the way the formula had beenreached and about its failure to give Quebec a veto over futureconstitutional amendments.

This arrangement lasted only five years. In 1987 the premiersand the new Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, agreed on a revisedformula that gave Quebec a veto. The price of this compromise,




however, is that all the other provinces have also been given a veto,so that the smallest province, containing less than one per cent of the population of Canada, is now in a position to block anyproposed constitutional amendment. A more likely scenario, giventhe tradition of bargaining that has been established, is that theprovince or provinces with the least enthusiasm for any proposedamendment will be able to extract a sizeable bribe from the federalauthorities as the price of agreement.

The overall consequence of these weaknesses and lacunae in theBNA Act, combined with subsequent constitutional developments,is that the Canadian state has moved in the opposite direction fromthat of most other federations. Whereas they have become

progressively more centralized over the years, the Canadian statehas been progressively decentralized.

Another feature of the Canadian state that must be mentioned atthis point is that federal-provincial financial relationships have provedto be a source of lively controversy. The BNA Act gave the mostvaluable revenue sources to the federal government, so that from thebeginning the provinces were heavily dependent on federal grants.As each new province entered the federation a separate financial

deal was struck with it, while after only seven years two of the originalfour demanded and received ‘better terms’. (See Birch, 1955, Chapter3.) This way of dealing with fiscal issues established a tradition of political bargaining over financial matters that has both strengthenedthe role of provincial governments and led to a less tidy system thanis to be found in other federations. It has also led to feelings of grievance on the part of people who believe, rightly or wrongly, thattheir province or region is not getting a fair deal.

In recent decades the people of the four western provinces havefelt somewhat exploited by eastern Canada, in fiscal and economicterms. The four Atlantic provinces have gained greatly from the TaxEqualization Scheme, which has increased the revenue of theirprovincial governments by over 50 per cent (Norrie, Simeon andKrasnick, 1986, p. 113). Quebec has gained from tax equalizationand in recent years has also gained from federal subsidies paid todeclining or threatened industries, such as textiles. Ontario has gainedfrom Canada’s protective tariff and the large internal market forOntario manufactured goods. The western provinces, beingdependent on the export of primary products while having relativelylittle industry, would be better off without the protective tariff; theyhave not benefited from federal subsidies to industry; and two of them (Alberta and British Columbia) have lost heavily from the taxequalization arrangements. They also have grievances about railway




freight charges and about a national energy policy that forces thewestern provinces to sell oil at below world prices to easternconsumers and gives the federal government 27.5 per cent of oilrevenues. Two economists have calculated that British Columbia,Alberta and Saskatchewan are all clear losers from federal economicpolicies (Whalley and Trela, 1986, p. 10).

The political effects of all these grievances have been enhanced bythe fact that in the long years of Liberal dominance at the federallevel the western provinces have contributed only a small number of MPs to the governing party. Since 1945 the majority of western seatshave been divided between the Progressive Conservatives and theNew Democratic Party in every Parliament save the one elected in

1949. The west has been seen to be supporting the federal government,in a partisan sense, only in the years 1949–53, 1957–63, and 1984to date, plus the six months of the Clark government in 1979. In theforty-two years of the period 1945–87, it was on the right side forless than fourteen years. This is in sharp distinction to Quebec, thatcontrived to get a majority of its MPs on the governing side for overthirty-nine years in the same period.

The combination of a series of grievances with a feeling of political

impotence at the federal level has led many westerners to a degree of scepticism about the federation. In 1980, when this scepticism wasat its height, a poll of 1,200 westerners revealed that 84 per centthought the west was not getting a fair deal from confederation, 53per cent thought they had more in common with the USA than witheastern Canada, and 28 per cent agreed that ‘We get so few benefitsfrom being part of Canada that we might as well go it alone’ (Roberts,1980, pp. 3–6).

Early in 1981 a survey conducted by the Gallup Poll found that25 per cent of people in the prairie provinces and 20 per cent of thepeople in British Columbia believed that ‘Canada would break up’(Conway, 1983, p. 214). In the same year a survey conducted by theCanada West Foundation found that 84 per cent of westerners agreedthat ‘the west usually gets ignored in national politics because thepolitical parties depend upon Quebec and Ontario for most of theirvote’, while 36 per cent of them agreed that ‘western Canadians getso few benefits from being part of Canada that they might as well goit on their own’ (Conway, 1983, p. 215).

These surveys are clear evidence of western alienation. Severalseparatist movements have emerged, including Western Federation,United West and (in the 1980s) the Western Canada Concept.However, none of these has polled more than a derisory number of votes in an election. It seems that there is a large gulf between




agreement with the proposition that western Canada might as well‘go it alone’ and readiness to vote for a party that actually proposessecession.

The reason for this gulf is undoubtedly the absence of any clearcultural factor that unites the west and divides it from the east.Westerners believe that their rulers frequently ignore westerninterests, but they do not think that they are governed by foreigners.The importance of cultural and ethnic factors in nationalism isindicated very clearly by the fact that the Quebec separatistmovement came within sight of success in 1980, even though anindependent Quebec would be poorer than Quebec within thefederation, whereas western separatist movements cannot get off

the ground, even though an independent state of Western Canadamight reasonably be expected to be wealthier than the west withinfederation. Western alienation has strengthened the forces makingfor the decentralization of power, but it has not threatened theintegrity of the federation as Quebecois nationalism has done. Tounderstand this latter phenomenon it is necessary to put it into thecontext of English-French relationships in Canada, which will be thesubject of the next section.

2 ANGLOPHONES AND FRANCOPHONES

Canada was originally a French colony, the flag having been raisedthere by Cartier in 1534 and the first successful French settlement, inwhat is now Quebec, having been established in 1608. It wasconquered by the British in 1760, but British settlers were considerably

outnumbered by the French until the American War of Independenceof 1776, following which substantial numbers of settlers in theAmerican colonies moved northwards to maintain their loyalty tothe Crown and the British Empire.

In 1838 the British government sent out Lord Durham to make areport on the future of British North America. Durham was a manof progressive liberal convictions, with views about representativegovernment and the need to assimilate cultural minorities that exactlyparalleled the views of J.S.Mill that have been discussed previouslyin Chapter 5. He proposed that the anglophone colony of UpperCanada should be united with the francophone colony of LowerCanada and that a system of representative and responsiblegovernment should be established in this large colony. He was alsoquite clear that one object of British policy should be to anglicizeLower Canada by immigration and by dominating the French.




It must henceforth be the first and steady purpose of the BritishGovernment to establish an English population, with English lawsand language, in this Province, and to trust its government tonone but a decidedly English legislature. (Durham, [1839] 1912,pp. 288–9)

I repeat that the alteration of the character of the Province ought tobe immediately entered on…that in any plan which may be adoptedfor the future management of Lower Canada, the first object oughtto be that of making it an English Province; and that…theascendancy should never again be placed in the hands of any but

those of an English population. (Durham, [1839] 1912, p. 296) Durham believed that in the long run anglicization would be to theadvantage of the French-Canadians, and that in any case it wasinevitable in view of their geographic situation. ‘In thesecircumstances’, he said, ‘I should be indeed surprised if the morereflecting part of the French-Canadians entertained at present anyhope of continuing to preserve their nationality’ (Durham, [1839]

1912, p. 295).He was of course quite wrong about this, but his report was

nevertheless acted upon by the British government. In 1840 the twocolonies were united and in 1848 a system of responsible governmentwas introduced. As the populations of Upper and Lower Canadawere about equal, they were given equal numbers of representativesin the legislative assembly. There were rather more British settlersthan French, but as the British were divided between two parties it

was not possible for them to exclude the French from government.What developed was a system of concurrent majorities by which theBritish and French communities had roughly equal power in thegovernment of the colony.

By the 1860s the population of what had been Upper Canada hadbecome appreciably greater than that of Lower Canada, though eachcontinued to get equal representation in the Assembly. The desire onthe part of the British settlers to secure complete control over thegovernment of Upper Canada led them to suggest a redivision of thecolony. This was one of the motives underlying the moves towardsthe establishment of a federal system that would include not onlythe two Canadas but also two or more of the anglophone colonies of the Atlantic seaboard.

In the BNA Act (now rather confusingly retitled the ConstitutionAct) it was provided that the Parliament of Canada and the




Legislative Assembly of Quebec should both be bilingual, that Actspassed by these bodies should be published in both English andFrench, and that either language could be used in the federal courtsor the Quebec provincial courts. No mention was made of languagein respect of the other provinces. Another provision relevant to thecultural division between the English and French communities wasthat there should be no interference with the rights and privilegesof any denominational schools existing in a province at the time of union, particular mention being made of Roman Catholic schoolsin Ontario and of both Catholic and Protestant schools in Quebec.As anglophone Canadians were then largely Protestant, whilefrancophone Canadians were almost entirely Catholic, this section

of the Act apparently entrenched the right of the linguistic minoritiesin the two provinces to have their children educated in the languageof their choice.

For the first eighteen years of confederation the leaders of boththe anglophone and the francophone communities were reasonablycontent with the new system of government. John A.Macdonald,Prime Minister of Canada for nineteen of the country’s first twenty-four years, would have preferred a unitary state to a federation, but

he had accepted the impossibility of achieving this and believed thatthe federal system would become more centralized over the years asa consequence of the allocation of residuary powers to the federalParliament rather than to the provinces. The French communityincluded many who still resented the British conquest of 1760, butthis resentment was tempered by the knowledge that if New Francehad not been conquered by the British, it would almost certainlyhave been sold to the Americans at the time of the Louisiana Purchase.

Many French-Canadians also doubted whether the British could betrusted to protect the French language and culture, but these doubtswere kept within bounds by the constitutional provisions mentionedabove.

This condition of relative contentment was undermined by a seriesof events which began in 1885, the cumulative effects of which wereto give French-Canadians a substantial feeling of grievance in regardto the behaviour of the anglophone majority and to strengthen thesentiments of French-Canadian nationalism.

French-Canadian grievances

The first event that seriously upset French-Canadians was theexecution of Louis Riel in 1885. Riel was the self-appointed leader




of the Metis (a community of mixed Indian and French blood) whoseway of life on the prairies was seriously threatened, and eventuallydestroyed, by the arrival of large numbers of English-Canadian settlersand administrators who ignored the traditional farm boundaries of the Metis (as well as their traditional hunting habits) when dividingup the land for legal settlement. In 1885 Riel led an uprising of Metiswhich was doomed to failure and was quickly crushed by the policeand military. When Riel was sentenced to death for treason French-Canadians launched a movement for his reprieve, essentially becausehe was seven-eighths French in his ethnic origins and was a staunchRoman Catholic. Macdonald refused to yield to this campaign,declaring that ‘he shall hang though every dog in Quebec bark in his

favour’. Riel thereupon acquired the status of a martyr among manyFrench-Canadians.

This event may be likened to the execution of the fifteen leadersof the Easter Rising in Dublin. To English-Canadians Louis Riel wasa traitor, of wild ambitions and unstable disposition (he had spenttwo years in an American mental hospital) who clearly deserved hispunishment. They did not anticipate his subsequent elevation to thestatus of martyr any more than the British authorities in 1916

anticipated that the leaders of the Easter Rising would achieve thatstatus in Ireland. The reason was the same in both cases; that theBritish, not having been conquered since 1066, find it impossible tounderstand the depth of resentment harboured by peoples who havebeen forced to submit to British domination. The stakes were not sohigh in Canada as in Ireland and the consequences not so dramatic,but Riel’s execution nevertheless had a lasting effect on French-Canadian attitudes. According to Verney, ‘it was the most important

factor in the re-emergence of a French-Canadian nationalism dormantsince 1837’ (Verney, 1986, p. 262).The second event which contributed to French-Canadian feelings

of grievance was the 1890 decision by the government of Manitobato establish a system of non-denominational schools, accompaniedby the withdrawal of grants to church schools. When Manitoba hadbeen established as a province in 1870 it had a francophone majority,and had then decided both that the province should be officiallybilingual and that grants would be given to both Protestant andCatholic schools. By 1890 the province had an anglophone majority,whose decision to discontinue grants to church schools meant, ineffect, that parents who wanted their children to be educated in Frenchwould have to pay for their education in Catholic schools as well ascontributing through their taxes to the maintenance of provincialschools where the language of instruction was English. In the same




year, Manitoba passed an Act making English the sole language foruse in the legislative assembly, the courts and the provincialadministration.

The Manitoba Schools Act raised issues of greater weight thanthe execution of Louis Riel, because the Act deprived Catholics (andtherefore francophones) of rights that appeared to have beenguaranteed by the constitution of the province adopted twenty yearsearlier. It was the subject of two legal appeals, both of which went tothe Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. The firstappeal failed. The second succeeded, but instead of invalidating theAct the Judicial Committee merely authorized the CanadianParliament to pass remedial legislation, which that Parliament failed

to do. In 1896 the federal government reached an understandingwith the Manitoba government whereby instruction in French, andin the Catholic faith, would be given in some of the provincial schools.However, this understanding had no legal basis and some years laterthe Manitoba government decided to ignore it.

As Verney has pointed out, the most significant aspect of thisdispute was that it demonstrated what English-Canadian politicianshad always assumed to be the character of the Canadian constitutional

system, namely that it was a system dominated by the principle of majority rule except in so far as the British North America Actcontained explicit guarantees for minority rights. This ran counterto a different interpretation common amongst French-Canadianpoliticians, namely that the bilingual principle established in Quebecand in the activities of the federal government would be extendedwestwards across Canada as new territories were settled and newprovincial governments established there. This latter view now seems

like a romantic dream, but Verney has made the pertinent commentthat at the time ‘it was no more unrealistic than the Americansoutherners’ dream of extending the Mason-Dixon line to the PacificOcean’ (Verney, 1986, p. 262).

While this is undoubtedly an appropriate comparison, it is fair toobserve that the southerners had somewhat more justification fortheir dreams than did the French-Canadians. For about two decadesbefore the Civil War, western states had been admitted to the Unionon the basis of ‘one slave, one free’, but there was nothing equivalentto this convention in Canada. Nevertheless, what happened inManitoba in the 1890s has to be regarded as the first step in a painfulprocess by which French-Canadians were forced to realize that, farfrom being equal partners in Canada, they were destined to have thestatus of a cultural minority except in the single province of Quebec.

Other grievances accumulated over the years. In 1899 the




Canadian government sent a contingent of troops to fight alongsidethe British in South Africa, though many French-Canadianssympathized with the Boers and most would have preferred neutrality.In 1905 Saskatchewan and Alberta were admitted to the federationas unilingual provinces, with no provision for instruction in Frenchin their schools. Canadian immigration policy favoured Britishimmigrants, and ‘out of the two million people who came to Canadabetween 1901 and 1911, only 30,000 were French-speaking’ (Levitt,1972, p. 8). In 1912 the Ontario government banned teaching inFrench beyond grade 3 in its public schools. In 1916 the Manitobagovernment eliminated teaching in French entirely. In 1917 therewas the first conscription crisis, which infuriated French-Canadians

who were unwilling to be ordered to fight ‘Britain’s war’. By 1918,all Canadian provinces except Quebec had become officiallyunilingual. In the Second World War there was the second conscriptioncrisis, resolved in a way that led to charges of betrayal being leviedagainst the national government.

It is indicative of the character of French-Canadian feelings thatin both wars the United States government found it easier tomobilize German-Americans to fight against Germany than it was

for the Canadian government to mobilize French-Canadians to fighton the side of France. The French-Canadian community issomewhat introverted in attitude, feeling isolated in an English-speaking continent and harbouring grievances against the majorityof their fellow-citizens that have been sedulously cultivated by theirreligious leaders and politicians. It is noteworthy that whereas carlicence plates in other provinces bear innocent advertising sloganslike ‘Beautiful British Columbia’, ‘Friendly Manitoba’, or ‘Alberta:

Wild Rose Country’, licence plates in Quebec carry the message ‘Jeme souviens’. And what people are expected to remember is theirlong history of defeat and alleged injustice at the hands of ‘lesmaudits anglais’.

French-Canadian nationalism

Almost inevitably, this accumulation of grievances led to thearticulation of theories about the position of French-Canadians inrelation to the federation that can reasonably be described asexpressions of French-Canadian nationalism. The first of thesetheories, that emerged in the first years of the twentieth century,holds that the Canadian polity is or should be based on an equalpartnership between two nations, the French and the English. The




man who produced the most coherent account of this view was HenriBourassa, one of the founders of the Ligue Nationaliste in 1903.Bourassa had excellent qualifications for his role, being a highlyarticulate speaker and writer who was the grandson of Louis-JosephPapineau (leader of an unsuccessful rebellion against the British in1837) and who had himself resigned from his seat in the CanadianHouse of Commons in 1899 in protest against Canadian participationin the Boer War (though he had been re-elected five months later).Bourassa’s version of what became known as the ‘two nations theory’can be reduced to the following set of propositions.

(1) Canada was formed as a union of two equal nations,confederation being ‘the result of a contract between the two races

in Canada, French and English, based on equality and recognizingequal rights and reciprocal duties’ (quoted in Cook, 1969, p. 141).

To suggest that under the authority of the 1867 constitution therights of French language exist only for Quebec is to say that thepact of 1867 was a trap, that Cartier, Macdonald, Brown, Howeand all the authors of this magnificent constitution were in leagueto deceive the people of Lower Canada! As for me, I do not believe

it. (Cook, 1969, p. 136)

(2) English-Canadian politicians had failed to honour this originalcontract, not necessarily from malice but more as a consequence of their ‘ignorance of history’, their ‘absence of any philosophy’ and their‘habit of colonial servitude’ (Cook, 1969, p. 141).

(3) The French race and culture will disappear in Canada if theFrench language is not maintained, in the way that ‘by losing their

language…the Scottish race has disappeared as a race and become simplyone of the constituent elements of the British people’ (Cook, 1969, p.133). Education using French as a medium of instruction must thereforebe available to French-Canadian children throughout the country.

(4) Bilingualism is not an appropriate objective.

I do not believe it possible or desirable for the mass of our peopleto learn and to speak English. A man of the people can generallymake use of only one language. The spread of the English languageon the popular level would…be the surest way towards theannihilation of our nationality. (Cook, 1969, p. 121)

(5) As a logical consequence of propositions (3) and (4), there

should be little French-Canadian enclaves all over Canada, ‘given theirown schools and French-speaking priests so that they could set up




their own parishes and they would be like so many small provinces of Quebec’ (Cook, 1969, p. 143). These enclaves would be economicallybackward by comparison with the English-speaking areas surroundingthem, because they would reject the American pursuit of profits andwealth in favour of a more cultured way of life.

(6) In the fullness of time the French language will ‘have itsrevenge’ because English-Canadians everywhere will feel compelledto learn French for the sake of the moral and intellectual benefitswhich only this language can confer. When this happens ‘the Anglo-Saxons in Canada will bless us for having preserved the Frenchlanguage, the immortal seed of modern Christian civilization, throughso many mishaps and struggles that often occurred because of their

ill will’ (Cook, 1969, p. 145).It will be helpful to comment on these propositions one by one.

The first seems to involve a misreading of history. There is very littlein the debates on confederation to suggest that the founding fathersintended the principle of bilingualism to be extended across the westernterritories. The Canadian Parliament was to be bilingual, but this didnot imply that Canada as a country was to be bilingual. If the firstproposition is historically incorrect, the second has no substance.

Bourassa’s third proposition is weakened in force by thecomparison he drew with Scotland. Gaelic was never the languageof the whole Scottish people but only the language of the Highlanders,who had originally migrated from Ireland, and the fact that Gaelichad become virtually extinct on the mainland of Scotland had notled the Scottish people to ‘disappear as a race’. On the contrary, theScottish people have a very clear sense of national identity whichdoes not in the least depend on language. Whether a government has

a moral or political obligation to provide education in a minoritylanguage is a question that has been addressed previously in Chapter5. The answer arrived at there is that in general there is no theoreticalfoundation for such an obligation, though in particular situationsthe provision of such education might be desirable.

Bourassa’s fourth proposition has a good deal of substance. AsLaponce and others have shown, it is not natural for people to bebilingual and the practical consequence of an admixture of languages within the same territory is invariably that the strongerlanguage drives out the weaker (see Laponce, 1983). In certaincircumstances, however, linguistic islands may develop and bemaintained. ‘Since the learning of a second language ispsychologically, neurophysiologically and socially costly, peoplegroup themselves in physical space according to their dominantlanguage’ (Laponce, 1983, p. 2).




Statistics show that in all provinces except Quebec, the numberof Canadians who speak French at home is appreciably lower thanthe number who have French as a mother tongue, while the numberwho speak French at work or in commercial transactions is lowerstill. In the whole of Canada, there are only two areas where thepopulation is substantially bilingual, namely a sizeable areastraddling the border between Quebec and Ontario, running in anorth-westerly direction from Montreal, and a small strip of landalong the east coast of New Brunswick, which was the heartlandof the original territory occupied by the Acadians (Laponce, 1983,Figure 1).

The proposition that French-Canadian enclaves would be likely

to lag behind the surrounding territories in terms of economic growthand prosperity seems to have been borne out by the limited experiencethat we have. As noted in Chapter 5, Porter has shown that French-Canadians have persistently ranked lower in social and economicstatus than English-Canadians and most other immigrant groups.Another study, also made in the 1960s, showed that of the fourteenethnic groups identified in Quebec, ‘the French ranked twelfth withrespect to the mean income of male wage earners’ (Waddell, 1986,

p. 89). Bourassa’s final proposition displays an astonishing degreeof intellectual arrogance, rather charming if taken lightly but apt tobe thought irritating or threatening by those English-Canadians whohave taken it seriously.

Bourassa’s speeches and writings from which the above quotationswere taken date from a period between 1902 and 1912. From thenuntil the 1960s numerous other French-Canadians endorsed histheories, but they added rhetoric rather than logic to what Bourassa

had said. For this reason they need not be quoted here. English-Canadians have been virtually unanimous in rejecting the two nationstheory, for various reasons. One is that they believe it to be historicallyinaccurate in its assumption about the intentions of the foundingfathers. Another is that they have been and are reluctant to definethemselves as hyphenated Canadians. Meisel reported in 1977 thatbetween 80 and 90 per cent of anglophone Canadians refused togive themselves an ethnic identity; their self-ascribed identity was asCanadians pure and simple (Meisel, 1977, p. 16). There is inconsequence a distinct lack of symmetry between the feelings of national identity held by French-Canadians and the feelings held byother Canadians. In sociological terms, Canada is emphatically nota country composed of two nations. It is a multiethnic society with asingle political identity, within which one substantial minority definesitself as a distinct nation in cultural and linguistic terms.




New federal policies

In 1963 an anglophone Prime Minister took the surprising decisionto change the direction of national policy and commit the federalgovernment to the complete acceptance of the two nations theory,with all its contradictions. Lester Pearson did this when he establishedthe Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, whoseterms of reference instructed it to ‘inquire into and report upon theexisting state of bilingualism and biculturalism in Canada and torecommend what steps should be taken to develop the CanadianConfederation on the basis of an equal partnership between the twofounding races’ (italics added). Moreover Pearson appointed as the

Commission’s executive director and co-chairman a French-Canadiannationalist called André Laurendeau, a disciple and son-in-law of Bourassa who had vigorously opposed Canada’s entry into the SecondWorld War.

The Royal Commission worked at what now seems to have beena leisurely pace and did not produce its report (in six volumes)until 1967–9. However, its recommendations were radical. Afterexamining the situation in Belgium and Finland, where the

proportions of the population claiming to be bilingual were aboutthe same as the proportion in Canada, namely 11–12 per cent, theCommission rejected the policies adopted in those two countries.In Belgium and Finland, as in Switzerland (which has a higherproportion of bilingual citizens), language policy is based on the‘territorial principle’, whereby the country is divided into unilingualareas but the equal status of each language is recognized andreflected in the conduct of the national government. For Canada

the Commission recommended the ‘personality principle’, wherebylinguistic minorities were given equal rights with the majority,wherever they happen to live. To give effect to this principle theCommission made a large number of recommendations, the mostimportant of which are listed below. (1) The federal public service should provide more and better

opportunities for francophone officials and should greatlyincrease the use of French in official communications andrecords.

(2) Ontario and New Brunswick should declare themselves to beofficially bilingual.

(3) Any other province with an official language minoritycomprising 10 per cent or more of the population should declareitself to be officially bilingual.




(4) All provinces should permit the use of both official languagesin their legislative assemblies.

(5) Bilingual districts should be established throughout Canada,the areas to be determined by negotiation between the federaland provincial governments.

(6) Elementary and secondary school education should be providedin both official languages in all bilingual districts.

(7) The Canadian armed forces should be reorganized so as torecognize the equality of the two official languages.

(8) Large firms operating in Quebec should use French as theirlanguage of work.

(9) Any Canadian firm having extensive markets or facilities in

Quebec should develop bilingual capacities and appointbilingual senior executives.

In this way the whole of Bourassa’s slightly improbable agenda wastranslated into a set of official recommendations. A hundred yearsafter confederation, measures were proposed that would appear tomeet all French-Canadian complaints. Getting these proposalsimplemented was another matter. At the federal level, the Liberal

government had the political will to implement thoserecommendations that concerned activities within federal jurisdiction,and in some ways it went even further to satisfy French-Canadiansthan had been proposed. However, the provinces did not step intoline so quickly.

Within the federal public service, a number of agencies nowconduct their business and keep their records in French, whilenumerous posts have been classified as requiring fluency in both

languages. This policy has automatically favoured francophoneofficials, who are far more likely than anglophone colleagues to bebilingual. Changes in recruitment policies have had a similar effect,with the consequence that the proportion of francophones in thehigher ranks of the service increased from 13.4 per cent in 1971 to23.7 per cent in 1987 (Wardhaugh, 1983, p. 50). A salary bonus ispaid to bilingual officials.

At the provincial level, implementation has been patchy. NewBrunswick has become officially bilingual but Ontario has not. Mostprovinces have agreed to permit the use of French in their legislativeassemblies but Newfoundland, Alberta and British Columbia havedeclined to follow suit. The proposal to designate districts all overthe country as bilingual, stated by the Royal Commission to be‘the cornerstone of our proposed system’ (Innis, 1973, p. 27), hasnot been implemented except in the national capital district.




Teaching in the French language has been provided in virtually allareas with sizeable concentrations of francophone residents, butfor the most part this has been done quietly, where and whenprovincial governments and local school boards have deemed it tobe appropriate, rather than in the open and well-publicized waythat the members of the Royal Commission would have liked.

In British Columbia, an unpublished government survey of parentalattitudes produced the interesting revelation that many francophoneparents want their children to be educated in English while manyanglophone parents like the idea of having their children educated inFrench. The first group want their children to become fluent in thelanguage spoken by 99 per cent of the province’s residents while the

second group want to improve their children’s chances of careers inthose occupations, like the federal civil service, where it is anadvantage to be bilingual. While these preferences are entirely sensible,the proposal to create French immersion schools for the sake of alargely anglophone clientele has created problems in some areas.These schools are expensive and it is not always easy to persuadetaxpayers to pay extra to improve the career opportunities of thechildren of certain (largely middle-class) neighbours.

By the time the report of the Royal Commission was published,Pearson had been replaced as Prime Minister by Pierre Trudeau,whose government quickly passed an Official Languages Act in 1969.This Act authorized lavish expenditure on language training andtranslation services: in 1981–2 the direct cost of the Act was estimatedto be $448 million (Wardhaugh, 1983, p. 55). It was also providedthat all goods sold in Canada must have bilingual labels andinstructions, the overall cost of which to manufacturers and importers

must be substantial.Another line of policy pursued by Trudeau was to remove Britishor ‘Imperial’ titles from official institutions, on the grounds thatthese displeased French-Canadians. A significant move towardsneutralizing the symbols of the Canadian state had already beenmade by the Liberals in 1965, when the new national flag wasdesigned and adopted amidst much controversy. At that timenumerous designs were debated, many of them including a smallUnion Jack in the corner to symbolize Canada’s origins as part of the British Empire and some of them also including a fleur-de-lysto symbolize the French contribution to Canadian society. All suchdesigns were rejected in favour of the simple maple leaf design,that is devoid of political symbolism. It was apparently moreimportant to French-Canadians to exclude a British symbol thanto include a French symbol. Further moves taken after Trudeau




became Prime Minister included the replacement of the term ‘RoyalMail’ by ‘Canada Post’ and the merger of the Royal Canadian Navy,the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Army into a bodywith the less-than-inspiring title of the Canadian Forces, whosemembers were all equipped with similar green uniforms. These andsimilar changes deprived Canadians of British origin of some of their sources of symbolic gratification without doing anythingpositive to gratify French-Canadians.

Trudeau and the Liberal Party lost public support amonganglophone Canadians as a consequence of these policies and thiswas one of the reasons why the party lost its overall Parliamentarymajority in the 1972 general election. Trudeau’s biographer has said

of this election that ‘not since the Khaki Election of 1917 had thecountry been so polarized politically on language lines’ (Gwyn, 1980,p. 138). The Liberals lost seats to the Conservatives in every provinceexcept Quebec. It was only because of the massive French-Canadiansupport in Quebec that the overall result gave the Liberals 109 seatsto the Conservatives’ 107, with 48 seats going to the smaller partiesand two independent candidates. In the next Parliament more thanhalf of the Liberal MPs came from Quebec, and as the Liberals

continued in power as a minority government the federal governmentwas actually dominated by representatives from just one of the tenprovinces.

As the Trudeau era wore on, linguistic tensions increased,particularly in the four western provinces where French-Canadiansare thin on the ground and are considerably outnumbered byCanadians of German and Ukrainian origin. It is arguable that thelanguage policies adopted should have been adopted a hundred years

earlier, but implementing them in the 1970s was bound to causeresentment and there developed certain signs of a backlash amongthe anglophone majority. A survey conducted in Calgary in 1974showed that 62 per cent of respondents believed that French-Canadians outside Quebec ‘should speak English like the rest of us’(Gibbins, 1977, p. 371). A scaremongering book entitled Bilingual Today, French Tomorrow (Andrews, 1977) ran through ten printingsin the thirteen months after its publication, and was also serializedin the Toronto Sun. On Canada Day, 1978 the capital of BritishColumbia was plastered with federal posters depicting a small boyand a small girl holding hands with lines underneath saying ‘I loveyou’ and ‘Je t’aime’. Many of the cars in the same city sported bumperstickers reading ‘One country, one language’.

If the period since 1963 is considered in historical perspective, ithas clearly been the occasion of a massive attempt to remedy the




grievances among French-Canadians that flowed from the down-grading of the French language outside Quebec that occurred between1890 and 1918. The political costs of this have been considerable.However, the benefits have also been considerable. On the one hand,the policies have improved career opportunities for French-Canadiansand have made those living outside Quebec feel more at home intheir environment. On the other hand, the policies, by remedyinglong-standing grievances, may have reduced the attractions of secession for those living in Quebec. This second point is open todispute, however, for the Quebecois nationalists were not tooconcerned about the rest of Canada. As Smiley has noted, their leaders‘tended to equate Quebec with French Canada, and were for the

most part indifferent to the recognition of cultural and linguisticduality in federal institutions or in provinces and areas of Canadaoutside Quebec’ (Smiley, 1980, p. 221). It is to the phenomenon of Quebecois nationalism that we must now turn.

Quebecois nationalism

What happened in the 1960s is that a sizeable and increasingproportion of French-Canadian nationalists in Quebec changed theirself-ascribed indentity. Having once described themselves as ‘lesCanadiens’, and then as ‘les Francais’ or ‘les Canadiens-francais’,they adopted the term ‘les Quebecois’, which in earlier periods hadusually been confined to residents of Quebec City. The implicationof this change was that their loyalties had contracted in spatial termsfrom the whole of Canada to the province of Quebec, while also

becoming more intense and involving the belief that Quebec shouldseek greater political autonomy.The idea of autonomy or even independence for Quebec was

not entirely new. Over the years a number of romantic nationalists,in the sense defined in Chapter 6, had advocated a development of this kind. In 1895 V-P. Tardivel had written a highly political novel,Pour la patrie, that envisaged the establishment of a French stateon the banks of the St Lawrence. In 1922 Father J-M-R. Villeneuve,who later became Cardinal Archbishop of Montreal, declared thatan independent French state would be the best way of ensuring thesurvival and health of French civilization in North America. ‘Canadais bound to split up’, he said, and ‘a French state of smaller butmore sensible proportions would be…the best means of serving theuniversal interests of the entire race’ (quoted in Cook, 1969, pp.204–5). Confederation had been ‘nothing but a miserable




bankruptcy, a bitter, humiliating deception’, whereas anautonomous French state in Quebec ‘would inspire thinkers whosework would be elevated because Latinate, and gestures that wouldbe civilizing because Catholic’ (Cook, 1969, pp. 211 and 212). In1924 Antonio Perrault, one of the founders of a group called Actionfranchise, wrote of ‘the persecution of the French in Ontario’ anddescribed the Canadian confederation as ‘a fool’s market’ (Cook,1969, p. 218). Thirty years later Michel Brunet took a similar line,though expressed in more moderate terms.

Like the romantic Scottish and Welsh nationalists mentioned inChapter 7, these writers were concerned mainly with their nationalculture and their thinking contained a considerable element of

nostalgia. They envisaged their hypothetical state as one dominatedby rural and religious values, a modern replica of the Frenchsettlement that had been conquered in the eighteenth century.Villeneuve, for instance, complained that confederation ‘imposes uponus divorce and women’s suffrage and imperial conscription, allprinciples of social dissolution fatal to a race’ (Cook, 1969, p. 211).These thinkers kept the flame of nationalism alive over the years,but in the absence of an eruptive factor to produce mass support

they could not inspire a significant political movement.The eruptive factor in Quebec was a set of social and economic

changes, occurring in the 1960s, that have been given the collectivename of the Quiet Revolution. The developments that made up thisrevolution need not be detailed here in chronological terms, for thishas been done in a score of works, most notably in the excellentstudy by McRoberts and Posgate. Instead, the main features of therevolution will be outlined, very briefly, under the four headings of

economic, religious, psychological and political.The economic development of the 1950s and 1960s was that theextent of industrialization in Quebec was greatly increased. Between1950 and 1960 the number of jobs in manufacturing industrydoubled. Quebec universities extended their provisions for trainingscientists, engineers and accountants, and there was a widespreaddetermination on the part of the francophone élite in the provincethat Quebec should catch up with Ontario and other industrializedregions of North America. The provincial government set up a publiccorporation to provide capital for French-Canadian industrialventures. The general public became more ambitious in their materialexpectations.

The religious change was a decline in church attendance, combinedwith the secularization of the schools. The decline in churchattendance is a widely-experienced concomitant of growing




industrialization and prosperity, that has also occurred in suchCatholic societies as France, Belgium, Italy and Spain. The takeoverof church schools was brought about by the Liberal administrationin 1964, without serious opposition from the church. There was alsoa notable relaxation of film censorship and a growing permissivenessin public attitudes towards sexual behaviour.

The psychological development that accompanied these changeswas a growing discontent with the traditional self-image of theQuebecois people. During the first half of the twentieth century, theFrench-Canadian view of the differences between themselves andanglophone Canadians was that French-Canadians were morecultural and spiritual, less materialistic and less advanced in the field

of technology. As Charles Taylor was the first to point out, thestereotypes resulting from this view jarred with the growingQuebecois image of themselves as a go-ahead people determined toimprove their economic position (Taylor, 1965; see also Clift, 1982,pp. 87–8). A wish to modify the way in which they were perceivedadded impetus both to the drive for the modernization of Quebecsociety and to the transition of their self-ascribed identity from French-Canadians to Quebecois.

As might be expected, this transition was much more markedamong younger people than among older people. Once one becomesmiddle-aged, one does not easily change one’s feelings of identity.Table 8.1 shows the results of a 1977 survey on this topic.

The political aspects of the Quiet Revolution took two forms, of which one was a remarkable strengthening of the provincialgovernment and the other a growing resentment at the dominanceof the anglophone minority in the private sector, particularly in thecommercial enterprises of Montreal. Between 1960 and 1965 thenumber of people employed in the Quebec civil service grew by42.6 per cent while the number employed in public enterprises grew

Table 8.1 National self-identification of Quebec francophones

Source: Blishen, 1978, p. 130.




by 93 per cent (McRoberts and Posgate, 1980, p. 109). In the privatesector, however, nationalists were upset by the reluctance of theanglophone minority in Quebec to learn French, coupled with theadvantages enjoyed by anglophones in securing senior positions inindustry and commerce. A detailed analysis of 1961 census datashowed that only 33 per cent of the difference in income betweenanglophone and francophone employees in Montreal could beexplained by the lower educational level of the francophones, with6 per cent resulting from differences in age structure and theremaining 60 per cent being ascribed to the ‘preference of anglophone employers for English-Canadian candidates’ formanagerial posts. A 1971 study showed that in a sample of business

head offices in Quebec ‘francophones constituted 35 per cent of the employees receiving less than $10,000, but only 15 per cent of those earning over $22,000’ (McRoberts and Posgate, 1980, pp.127–8). As the language of work in most of the major corporateenterprises in Montreal was English, this cultural division of labourneed not be explained in terms of prejudice; managers are apt towork more effectively in their first language than in a secondlanguage. However, the situation was naturally a source of

annoyance to ambitious francophones, and could only be remediedby government action to change the language in which businesswas conducted.

A further source of anxiety and grievance was that the newpostwar wave of immigrants whose mother tongue was neitherFrench nor English were choosing to send their children to schoolswhere they were taught in English rather than to schools usingFrench, because the parents believed that a training in English would

bring greater economic advantages in future life. This choice wasparticularly offensive to francophones in the aftermath of the QuietRevolution, because it seemed to represent a judgement by Europeanimmigrants that francophones were doomed always to beunderdogs. Resentment about this development was another factorin attracting followers to the nationalist groups that emerged inthe 1960s.

The most dramatic of these groups was the Front de Libérationdu Quebec (FLQ). In March 1963 the FLQ published the followingmanifesto.

Notice to the Population of the State of Quebec

The Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ) is a revolutionarymovement of volunteers ready to die for the political and




economic independence of Quebec. The suicide commandos of the FLQ have as their principlemission the complete destruction, by systematic sabotage, of:

(a) all colonial (federal) symbols and institutions, in particularthe RCMP and the armed forces;

(b) all the information media in the colonial language(English) which hold us in contempt;

(c) all commercial establishments and enterprises whichpractise discrimination against Quebecois, which do notuse the French language, which advertise in the coloniallanguage (English);

(d) all plants and factories which discriminate against French-speaking workers.

The Quebec Liberation Front will also attack all Americancultural and commercial interests, natural allies of Englishcolonialism. All FLQ volunteers have on their persons duringacts of sabotage identification papers for the Republic of Quebec.

We ask that our wounded and our prisoners be treated in

accordance with the Geneva Convention on the rules of war.

Independence or DeathThe dignity of the Quebec people demands independence.Quebec’s independence is only possible through social

revolution.Social Revolution means a Free Quebec.Students, workers, peasants, form your clandestine groups

against Anglo-American Colonialism. (Regush, 1973, pp. 91–

2)

In the next seven years the FLQ exploded over eighty bombs inMontreal together with a few in Quebec City, killing six peopleand injuring many more. It was a small group, tiny and amateurishin comparison with the IRA, but difficult for the police to dealwith because it was organized on a cellular basis, with members of one cell not knowing the members of others. Several cells weredetected and their members imprisoned, but other cells remainedoperative. In October 1970 the FLQ staged its most dramatic event,that brought it worldwide publicity but also resulted in its demise.One cell kidnapped a Quebecois cabinet minister and subsequentlymurdered him; another cell kidnapped a British consular official,who was released after several weeks, but with permanent damageto his health. The Quebec government, supported by the Mayor of




Montreal, asked the federal government to send troops to the cityand Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act to legalize this. TheAct also gave draconian powers to the police, who misused themby harassing and arresting radicals, some of whom were not evenQuebecois nationalists. However, the FLQ kidnappers were sent toCuba (a condition for the release of the British official), some of itssupporters became police informers (see de Vault, 1982) and theorganization disintegrated.

Public reactions to this crisis were overwhelmingly supportiveof the government. A survey showed that 89 per cent of English-Canadians and 86 per cent of French-Canadians approved of theinvocation of the War Measures Act (Morchain, 1984, p. 73). On

the other hand, there was clearly much support for constitutionalchange, though not for terrorist tactics to bring it about. In October1967 several leading Liberals, notably René Levesque, left theLiberal Party to form a movement in favour of ‘sovereigntyassociation’ for Quebec, defined as political autonomy for theprovince while retaining an economic union with the rest of Canada.In 1968 Levesque formed the Parti Quebecois with this objective,attracting to itself most members of two minor separatist parties

that already existed. In 1969 a crowd estimated at 50,000demonstrated against a government bill that guaranteed thecontinuance of both English-language and French-language schoolsin Quebec, with immigrants being entitled to choose between them(McRoberts and Posgate, 1980, p. 162).

From 1970 onwards the Parti Quebecois contested provincialelections with mounting success, winning a majority in 1976. RenéLevesque and his colleagues thus canalized nationalist emotions

into support for a party that proved to be entirely constitutional inmethods and democratic in spirit. The party drew most of its earlysupport from younger voters in Montreal, but as the years went bysupport was diffused throughout the province, particularly amongbetter educated elements of the population. There was a negativecorrelation between frequency of religious attendance and supportfor the new party, which in itself indicated how far Quebecnationalism had changed in character from the earlier versions thathad been articulated by clerics like Groulx and Villeneuve (Hamiltonand Pinard, 1976, also Blais and Crete, 1986). Despite its democraticcharacter, the party’s victory in 1976 sent shock-waves across thecountry; only nine years after the celebrations marking the centenaryof confederation, the second-largest province seemed bent onsecession. Public reactions across Canada to this proposition areshown in Table 8.2, based on a survey conducted in 1977.




T a b l e 8 . 2

S u

p p o r t f o r Q u e b e c i n d e p e n d e n c e b y r e g i o n a n d e t h n i c i t y

S o u r c e : O r n

s t e i n ,

S t e v e n s o n a n d W i l l i a m s , 1 9 7 8 , p .

1 6 0 .




In two respects the reactions of English-Canadians are interesting.One was that only 58 per cent of the voters were definitely opposedto the secession of Quebec. Opinions about the matter were varied,but there was no overwhelming opposition to the proposition thatCanada might, in some circumstances, be partitioned. The otherinteresting finding is that the second most common response wasthat of favouring Quebec independence, but only if there were noeconomic agreement between Quebec and the rest. The most likelyreason for this response was that Canada imposed high customsduties on some goods, notably clothing and furniture, for thepurpose of protecting industries that were mainly located in Quebec.If Quebec were to secure political independence, people in the rest

of Canada might be best served by a reduction or abolition of theseduties so as to import the goods from wherever offered the bestbuy. A secondary reason may, of course, have been a natural if slightly spiteful feeling that Quebec should not be permitted to haveher cake and eat it too. However, when asked whether the rest of Canada should be prepared to negotiate an economic agreementwith Quebec if the province actually achieved independence, slightlymore than half the English-Canadian respondents gave an

affirmative answer. In view of these relatively tolerant responses tothe prospect of secession, it is not surprising to find that only 14per cent of respondents favoured the use of force to preventsecession. There was never any possibility of armed conflict overthis issue in Canada, as occurred in the United States in 1860–5and in Ireland in 1919–21.

After securing office in 1976, the first major decision of the PartiQuebecois government was to introduce a Bill regulating the use of

language in the province. Bill 101 was not only the first but also themost important piece of legislation to be passed by this government.Its provisions, in outline, were as follows: (1) Quebec was to be officially unilingual, with French the only

language of legislation, administration and the courts.(2) All enterprises with fifty or more employees were to adopt

French as their language of work, though with the possibilitythat national firms with head offices in Montreal, but most of

their workers outside the province, might apply for exemp-tion.

(3) All public signs and advertisements were to be in French only.(4) Access to English-language schools was to be confined to chil-

dren of parents of whom at least one had been educated inEnglish in Quebec.




One or two large commercial firms objected in principle to theprovisions about the use of French and moved their head offices toToronto. After the dust had settled, however, it became clear boththat the Bill would remedy several long-standing grievances of thefrancophone majority and that its implementation would not beexcessively hard on the anglophone minority. Anglophone managersand business executives did not lose their positions as a result of theBill, though they had to make the transition to conducting theirbusiness in French.

After ten years, the only provision of Bill 101 that remainedcontentious was its least important provision, that all public signsshould be in French. As noted earlier, it is natural for people to become

irritated by enforced changes of language which seem to serve nofunctional purpose. When a sign advertising ‘Joe’s Restaurant’ hadto be changed to ‘Restaurant Joe’, on the ground that the Frenchlanguage contains no apostrophe, people whose first language wasEnglish were annoyed every time they saw the sign. When a Liberalgovernment replaced that of the Parti Quebecois in 1985, thisprovision of the Bill was the only one that they sought to change, notby legislative action but by encouraging an appeal to the Quebec

Supreme Court. The appeal was successful, but a bomb was explodedin a store that put up bilingual signs and in response to threats of further bombs the owners of the store (which is part of a chain)immediately agreed to go back to French-only signs. This episodeneatly illustrates the emotions that can be aroused by the symbolicuse of language.

The other major initiative taken by the Parti Quebecois governmentwas the organization of a referendum to decide whether or not the

provincial government should enter into negotiations with the federalgovernment to establish a form of sovereignty association. Levesquehad promised at the time of the 1976 election to make no movestowards this objective without first having it endorsed by popularvote, and he kept his word. The referendum was held in May 1980and was organized with scrupulous fairness by the provincialgovernment. Following the example of the British 1975 referendumon membership of the European Community, campaign committeeswere established for both sides of the issue with the provincialadministration not directly involved.

On the ‘yes’ side, the Parti Quebecois conducted an educativecampaign, organizing innumerable meetings and discussion groupson the issue. On the other side, the opponents of change receivedsubstantial support from outside as well as inside the province.Liberal MPs distributed propaganda produced in Ottawa explaining




the advantages that Quebec derived from federation. The nineanglophone premiers all announced that their provinces would beopposed to an economic association if Quebec were to secede, thusraising the stakes. The federal Ministry of Health chose thecampaign period to launch a drive against excessive drinking, sothat the hoardings of Quebec were plastered with federal postersbearing the words: ‘Non, merci’. Pierre Trudeau, then primeminister, spoke to a mass meeting in Montreal urging people tovote against the proposal.

All this outside intervention mitigated against an affirmative vote,as did the realization by some (if only a few) electors that anindependent Quebec might be involved in diplomatic conflict with

the rest of Canada. Quebec government agencies had publishedmaps showing Labrador to be part of the province, although the

Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had ruled in 1927 thatLabrador was within the jurisdiction of Newfoundland. Some of the more extreme nationalists suggested that an independent Quebecwould lay claim to part of the Canadian lands in the Arctic, andshould be prepared to take this issue to the United Nations. Thissuggestion raised the possibility that an independent Quebec might

be in conflict not only with Canada but also with the United States,which had a large air base in Labrador and a strategic interest inthe Arctic.

The result of the referendum was defeat for the proposal by amargin of 60 to 40. As virtually all anglophone voters wereopposed, it was clear that francophone voters had split almostexactly 50–50. This was a grievous blow to the Levesquegovernment, but one that did not diminish its popularity, for in

the 1981 election it was returned to office with an even largermajority. There were fierce debates within the party about itsreaction to the referendum result, as there had been among Scottishand Welsh nationalists following their referendum defeats in 1979,but Levesque secured firm support for his preferred policy of accepting the verdict of the electors and dropping secession fromthe party’s program.

During the campaign Trudeau declared that a negative votewould not imply an absence of constitutional change, as hisgovernment was formulating plans for constitutional revision. Whilehe was not in any way specific, the inference was drawn by manythat he hoped to amend the British North America Act in waysthat would benefit Quebec. In the event, this inference proved false.The complex negotiations and arguments about Trudeau’s proposedconstitutional revision were finally resolved at a private meeting of




the nine anglophone provincial premiers and the formula that wasagreed upon for future constitutional amendment did not giveQuebec the veto power which Quebec politicians of all parties hadalways regarded as essential. In consequence, the Quebecgovernment refused to endorse the accord and the Quebecois feltbetrayed once again.

In conclusion

Anglo-French relationships in Canada have clearly undergone manyvicissitudes since confederation. It is possible to believe that the basis

has now been laid for better relations. Outside Quebec, the measurestaken since the report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism andBiculturalism have removed virtually all the bases for French-Canadian grievances. Many anglophone Canadians have beenirritated by some of the measures that have been taken, but theseirritations are dying down with the passage of time. Within Quebec,Bill 101 has ensured the survival of the French language and cultureand removed the bases for the resentments and fears from which

many Quebec citizens previously suffered. The younger members of the anglophone community have either decided to move out of Quebec—the choice made by most in the 1980s—or are becomingeffectively bilingual. Census figures showed that the proportion of anglophone Quebec residents who were bilingual increased from 37per cent in 1971 to 53 per cent in 1981, and it has undoubtedlyincreased since 1981.

It is therefore possible to be optimistic, but Anglo-French

relationships are so delicate that confidence about this would bemisplaced. In the first four months of 1988 several developmentssharpened debate about linguistic issues. The government of Quebecappealed against the decision of the Quebec Supreme Court thatbilingual signs should be permitted. Pending a resolution of thisissue by the Canadian Supreme Court, bilingual signs were banned.The Commissioner for Official Languages stated in his annual reportthat the actions of the Quebec provincial government had humiliatedthe sizeable anglophone minority in Quebec. The Quebec LegislativeAssembly responded to this attack by passing a unanimous vote of censure on the Commissioner.

Outside Quebec, the Canadian Supreme Court declared thatSaskatchewan and Alberta were still bound by a law passed for theNorth-West Territories in 1886 insisting that all legislation shouldbe published in both French and English and that both languages




could be used in court hearings. The Saskatchewan LegislativeAssembly promptly repealed the 1886 law and the Premier of Quebeccongratulated the Saskatchewan Premier on this action, while otherFrench-Canadian spokesmen deplored it. The conflict between theterritorial principle of bilingualism and the personality principle of bilingualism was thus brought back into the forefront of politicaldebate. In this situation it is difficult to make any prediction aboutfuture relationships between the two main language groups.

3 ETHNIC DIVERSITY AND MULTICULTURALISM

A surprising fact about Canada is that, although the country ispopulated almost entirely by immigrants and their descendants, therehas been very little debate about immigration policy. As the historianof that policy has said: ‘Canada has had no settled view of immigration. No common convictions about it exist amongCanadians’ (Hawkins, 1972, p. 33). In this respect Canada is quiteunlike the other three English-speaking societies composed mainlyof immigrants, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

Immigrants have arrived of their own volition; some have been morewelcome than others and some have been turned away at the gates;but there has not been a clear national policy arrived at after opendebate, let alone a national plan to compare with the plans forattracting immigrants to Australia.

To say that there has been little public debate about immigrationpolicy is not to say that there has been no policy, as was verylargely the position in the United Kingdom before 1962. The civil

servants and ministers responsible for dealing with prospectiveimmigrants have certainly had policies. They were firmly andopenly opposed to the admission of Chinese immigrants up to1956. They were quietly opposed to the admission of blacks, whowere commonly turned away on the ground that their health wouldnot stand the Canadian winter. They were secretly opposed to theadmission of Jews, showing a callous disregard for the plight of German Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s that made Canadathe least willing of any western democracy to accept them (seeAbella and Troper, 1982).

Since about 1960 these prejudices have been largely eliminated.However, officials responsible for issuing immigration visas have avery large measure of administrative discretion. Their concern is toadmit immigrants who will help the Canadian economy, not be aburden on health or other social services and not threaten Canadian




security. They are much more selective than British immigrationofficers and somewhat more selective than their Australianequivalents.

Applicants have to provide evidence of their education, financialstanding and fluency in English or French. They have to have a jobwaiting for them unless they are the last remaining members of families otherwise in Canada. They have to have a thorough medicalexamination and their police records (if any exist) will be examined.Security checks disqualify applicants thought likely to be supportersof the Communist Party and a lengthy interview with animmigration officer may result in the applicant being rejected asunlikely to adjust to Canadian society. The extent of administrative

discretion is such that an academic critic has described Canadianimmigration policy as ‘a secret policy, secretly administered’(Whitaker, 1987, p. 25).

The result of Canada’s immigration history and policies is apopulation much more mixed than that of Britain or Australia. Thefirst census after confederation showed that there were about twomillion settlers whose place of origin was the British Isles; about onemillion French settlers; and about a quarter of a million others, the

great majority of whom were of German origin. Forty years later, in1911, there were four million of British or Irish origin, two millionof French origin, and one million others, the largest contingents beingGerman, Scandinavian and Ukrainian. The rate of immigration thenslowed until 1945, but the postwar period has been marked by aninflux from various parts of Europe together with a good many Asianimmigrants, now admitted without discrimination. The ethnic originsof the population in 1981 are shown in Table 8.3.

The non-British and non-French immigrants did not distributethemselves at random over the provinces of Canada. Very few settledin the Atlantic provinces, which remain overwhelmingly British andIrish in composition apart from the French element in NewBrunswick. Few settled in Quebec until after 1945, when sizeablenumbers of southern Europeans moved into Montreal. But by 1971this ‘third force’ of immigrants constituted 29 per cent of thepopulation of Ontario, 47 per cent of the population of the prairieprovinces and 34 per cent of the population of British Columbia.

A recent development of some importance is the arrival of sizeablenumbers of black immigrants from the Caribbean. They have settledin eastern cities, with over 100,000 now living in the Toronto area.Unfortunately, young members of this community have shown exactlythe same tendency to underachievement in the educational systemthat young blacks in Britain have shown.




Starting in 1984, some Ontario school boards have been sendinggroups of teachers and educational psychologists to work in WestIndian schools for a period, in the hope that they will find ways of improving the performance of blacks in Canadian schools. It is tooearly to say whether this strategy will be successful. As in Britishcities, there have been cases of inter-racial assault. However, theunemployment rate is lower than in Britain, the housing situation is

not so bad and there have been no racial riots.Canadian attitudes towards the third force of immigrants have tobe divided into French-Canadian and English-Canadian attitudes.The French-Canadian attitude was indifference mixed with suspicionuntil after 1945, when these feelings were replaced by hostility becausethe increasingly cosmopolitan character of Montreal was viewed asa threat to the dominance of French culture there. This hostility wascommunicated to the federal government and it exercised a‘substantial influence on immigration policy of a negative kind foralmost twenty years’ (Hawkins, 1972, p. 79).

English-Canadians have passed through three phases, from a firmbelief that the immigrants should be assimilated to British culturethrough a half-hearted belief in the sociology of the melting pot toan acceptance of cultural pluralism. The belief in assimilation fadedaway in the inter-war period, when it became clear that the non-

Table 8.3 Ethnic origins of the Canadian population in 1981

Source: Canadian Census , 1981.Note: 1Most of the Other Europeans are of mixed European origin and some are

Jewish (not distinguished in the census by country of origin).




British and non-French settlers were too numerous and toogeographically concentrated for assimilation to be a practicalproposition. The idea of Canadian society as a melting pot waspropagated in the inter-war years but it never really caught on. Inpart, this was because it was an American idea and American ideas(as distinct from American habits) have always been suspect inCanada. In part, it was because it did not seem as plausible whenapplied to the Ukrainian and Scandinavian farmers scattered overthe prairies as it did when applied to crowded cities like New Yorkand Chicago. In part, it was because Canadians of British and Irishorigins showed little inclination to learn from the newcomers or toabsorb elements of their cultures. The basic ambition of Anglo-Saxon-

Celtic Canadians was to continue as they were without change, notto create a new culture blended from the contributions of diverseimmigrant groups.

In consequence, English-Canadian attitudes drifted in the 1950sand 1960s towards an acceptance of cultural pluralism as the not-undesirable character of Canadian society, at least from Ontarioto the west coast. The word most commonly used to describe thischaracter was ‘mosaic’. America, they said, forced people into a

melting pot, but Canadian society was a mosaic of differingcultures.

The term ‘multiculturalism’ was not used until 1971, and thenonly as an accidental by-product of the Royal Commission onBilingualism and Biculturalism. The title of this commission causedsome offence among Canadians of neither British nor French origin,and it was in response to this that Trudeau proclaimed in 1971 thatCanada, though officially bilingual, was multicultural rather than

bicultural.The term was used not only to describe a state of affairs, a socialfact existing alongside what Canadians insist on calling ‘the Frenchfact’, but also to describe a new government policy. Since 1971, thefederal government has had an agency devoted to multicultural affairswith a modest budget for helping ethnic organizations. Grants areprovided for training in English or French, for community centresorganized on ethnic lines, and for cultural exchanges and ethnicfestivals of various kinds. This policy has not proved to becontroversial in the way that a British government declaration thatEngland is now a multicultural society would be, or as the Australiangovernment’s multicultural policies are. It is simply accepted by themajority of Canadians as a gesture to the ethnic minorities that givesthem some satisfaction and causes no harm to anyone else, apartfrom a relatively small cost to taxpayers.




For some anglophone Canadians, a degree of symbolic gratificationis apparently gained from the definition of Canadian society asmulticultural. A sociologist has put the matter as follows:

In the absence of any consensus on the substance of Canadianidentity or culture, multiculturalism fills a void, defining Canadianculture in terms of the legitimate ancestral cultures which are thelegacy of every Canadian: defining the whole through the sum of its parts. (Weinfeld, 1981, p. 94)

As Breton puts it, more pointedly, multiculturalism ‘helps to define adistinct collective identity and thus to differentiate Canadians from

Americans’ (Breton, 1986, p. 50).Among some spokesmen for ethnic minorities there is a tendency

to make much more of multiculturalism than this, in fact to turn itinto a kind of ideology. The House of Commons StandingCommittee on Multiculturalism shares in this tendency, declaringin its 1987 report that it wants original language usage to bepreserved, cultural diversity to be enhanced, a minister of multiculturalism to be appointed and all cultural agencies in Canada

(including the CBC and the Canada Council) to be placed underthis minister’s jurisdiction (Multiculturalism Report, 1987, passim).As an example of what might be promoted as a result of reformsalong these lines, a former top official of the federal multiculturalagency told me that the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra shouldinclude Chinese music in its concerts as a gesture to the Chineseminority in that city. The view seems to be that cultural diversityshould be regarded as a positive advantage for society and therefore

encouraged by the state.Not surprisingly, this view has been poorly regarded by manysociologists. Thus, Porter has argued that it encourages ethnicseparation and, if acted upon, would perpetuate what he calls thevertical mosaic and others have called the cultural division of labour,maintaining and perhaps strengthening barriers to upward socialmobility (Porter, 1975 and 1979). Brotz has alleged that the ideologyand policy of multiculturalism corrupt liberal-democratic andegalitarian ideals ‘by projecting the ideal of Canada as some kind of ethnic zoo where the function of the zoo keeper is to collect as manyvarieties as possible and exhibit them once a year in some carnivalwhere one can go from booth to booth sampling pizzas, wontonsoup and kosher pastramies’ (Brotz, 1980, p. 44). Kallen has statedthat multiculturalism does not meet the real needs of Canada’s ethnicminorities:




It does not support the kinds of mobilization of corporate ethnicgroup interests necessary for the equalization of access byimmigrant ethnic minorities to political, economic and socialpower in Canadian society. In effect, by stressing theparticularistic, expressive functions of immigrant ethnocultures,the multicultural policy shortchanges the goal of national unity;and by ignoring the instrumental functions of ethniccollectivities it shortchanges the goal of ethnic equality. (Kallen,1982, p. 169)

These very pertinent comments suggest that multiculturalism, if turned into an ideology, may not be so harmless as many Canadians

seem to believe.

4 THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

The 1981 census showed that the Canadian population included313,655 native Indians, 76,520 Metis (of mixed Indian and Frenchblood) and 23,200 Inuit (the official term for Eskimos). This made a

total of 413,380 persons classified as indigenous. In addition therewere 78,085 persons of mixed Indian and European (mainly British)origin, who were not so classified.

In Chapter 5 the point was made that indigenous peoples have aspecial claim on society not shared by other ethnic minorities.Through no fault of their own, their means of sustenance and theirtraditional cultures have been partly destroyed by white settlers;by all liberal standards, they deserve sympathy and help. It is

generally agreed that Canadian Indians and Eskimos received bettertreatment from the white man than American Indians and muchbetter treatment than Australian Aborigines. In view of this, it issomewhat paradoxical that the legal and political uncertaintiessurrounding native rights are more complex in Canada than in eitherof the other countries. In this section space forbids more than avery brief indication of the relationship of the Indians to Canadiansociety and Canadian governments. The Inuit, who are few innumber, will not be dealt with.

As Indian land rights are now a pressing problem, it will be helpfulto sketch their history. When white settlers moved into the StLawrence valley, they found Indian tribes there who were farmingpart of the land. Treaties were concluded with these Indians wherebythey retained title to some areas but ceded all claims to the rest. Asthe settlers moved westwards into the great plains of Canada, they




entered territory where the Indians were hunters rather than farmers,nomadic in that they followed the herds of buffalo and therefore nothaving a concept of land ownership that the white man couldrecognize as such. The Canadian government nevertheless enteredinto treaties with them, partly to avoid the violent clashes that hadoccurred in the American west and partly out of an ambition to turnthe plains Indians into farmers. This was a well-intentioned ambitionin view of the fact that the government could anticipate the imminentarrival of large numbers of settlers, determined to farm the landthemselves and therefore certain to clear the forests and kill off thebuffalo herds.

The treaties made were not ungenerous by European standards.

The Indians were given title to land equivalent to 160 acres perfamily—a sizeable plot—together with agricultural implements, thepromise of medical and educational services and ongoing grants of so many dollars per head per year. The settlement of the westnevertheless meant the inevitable destruction of the lifestyle of theIndians, a fact that many still resent.

These arrangements left the northern parts of Quebec, Ontarioand the prairie provinces uncovered by treaties. The greater part of

British Columbia was also uncovered. That province had been settleddirectly by sea rather than by westward expansion; its Indians werenot farmers but fishermen on the coast and hunters in the interior;and over most of the territory the white newcomers wanted not tofarm the land but to engage in fur-trapping, gold prospecting and,later, forestry. In these circumstances it is not surprising that thequestion of land ownership was left unsettled, but in the 1980s it isthe subject of complex legal disputes.

From the 1880s right through to the 1960s the government’sattitude towards the Indians was paternalistic. They were encouragedto live on reserves and farm the land, an activity in which they werenot very successful, while the federal government gave them servicesand subsidies. They were not entitled to vote unless they left thereserves and applied formally to be enfranchised, an irrevocabledecision by which they lost their official status and their entitlementto subsidies. If they took this step they became ‘non-Status Indians’,entitled to the same services as any other citizen but not to any specialgrants or protection.

In the 1960s policy changed. By this time a fair number of Indianshad left the reserves to find work in the cities, sometimes giving uptheir official status but more usually not doing so. The governmentdecided on a policy of rapid assimilation. In 1960 all Indian adultswere enfranchised. Expenditures on health, welfare and educational




services were greatly expanded. Little importance was attached topreserving Indian languages or traditions. The intention was to helpthe Indians achieve something like equality in Canadian society. Agovernment statement issued in 1969 stated clearly that earlier policieshad ‘kept the Indian people apart from and behind other Canadians’,whereas the new policies were designed to recognize the Indian rightto ‘full and equal participation’ in Canadian life (quoted in Asch,1984, p. 8). In line with this, the government would not entertainthe view that indigenous peoples had land rights surviving from theperiod before European settlement. Within a few months of becomingPrime Minister, Trudeau made his views on this topic crystal clear.Speaking in Vancouver in January 1969, he said this:

Our answer is no. We can’t recognize aboriginal rights becauseno society can be built on historical might-have-beens. If we thinkof restoring aboriginal rights to the Indians well what about theFrench who were defeated at the Plains of Abraham? Shouldn’twe restore rights to them? And what about the Acadians whowere deported? Shouldn’t we compensate for this?…What canwe do to redeem the past? I can only say as President Kennedy

said when he was asked about what he would do to compensatefor the injustice that the negroes had received in American society.We will be just in our time. That is all we can do. We must be justtoday.

Within four years, however, a judicial decision had reopened thewhole question of aboriginal rights. The Nishga Indians of BritishColumbia claimed ownership of a large tract of land on the ground

that they had always owned it and had not ceded it by treaty. Thetrial judge and the BC Court of Appeal both dismissed the claim onthe ground that there was no evidence of land ownership by theNishgas that could be recognized under Canadian law. The CanadianSupreme Court was divided, however. Three judges took the viewthat the Nishgas had once owned the land but had had their titleextinguished by colonial ordinances before British Columbia joinedthe federation. Three judges took the view that the Nishgas still ownedthe land. The seventh judge held that the claim must fail because thecase had been brought under an incorrect procedure. Quite clearly,another such case could easily go the other way.

Following this decision, the federal government embarked on anew policy of reaching comprehensive agreements with all tribesthat had not entered into treaties. In 1975 an agreement was madeconcerning the whole northern half of Quebec, under which the




Indians and Inuit got exclusive use of 5,408 square miles of land,hunting, trapping and fishing rights in a further 60,000 square miles,the right to be consulted over future developments and a cash grantof $225 million, to be paid over a long period (J.Wilson, 1977, p.29). Negotiations have continued with other organizationsrepresenting Indian tribes and sections of the Inuit people, but progresshas been painfully slow. At the end of 1985, after twelve years of negotiation, the position was that three comprehensive agreementshad been signed, six potential agreements were under activenegotiation and fifteen further claims awaited negotiation (Living Treaties: Lasting Agreements, 1985, p. 13). By the end of 1987 theposition had not changed, except that the number of claims awaiting

negotiation had gone up to eighteen. By March 1987 102 milliondollars had been lent to claimants (of which 20 million had beenrepaid) and a further 34 million dollars had been paid in grants tothe Indians for the costs of developing and presenting their claims.

In the 1970s there was also a parallel development of significance,namely a tendency to give the Indian Band Councils greater powerto manage their own affairs. It should be explained that there areover five hundred Band Councils in Canada, each elected by the

members of the Band and responsible for the Band’s collective affairson the reserves. In 1973 the government accepted proposals madeby the National Indian Brotherhood for Indian control over schoolson reserves, for a special effort to train Indian teachers and for therevision of the curricula in Indian schools to eliminate the whiteman’s derogatory image of native peoples and to pass on the valuesof tribal culture to the next generation. Another step has been thedevelopment of certain forms of municipal independence, on an ad

hoc basis, to Band Councils. As a small example, where the roadfrom Victoria to Victoria Airport passes through a small Indian reservethere are large advertisement hoardings on each side of the road, theIndian Band in question being exempt from provincial regulationsbanning such hoardings. There is also a very cheap motel, able tooffer low prices partly because its owners were exempt from certainbuilding regulations that applied outside the reserve. In small ways,official opinion began to move away from the ideal of assimilationtowards the idea of self-management, which was what spokesmenfor the Indians most wanted.

In 1982 the political atmosphere was considerably changed whenthe constitutional amendment that included the Charter of Rightsand the new amendment formula also included a paragraphguaranteeing the rights of aboriginal peoples. This was inserted afterdetermined and militant lobbying by Indian pressure groups, not




because any of the Canadian governments wanted it but as a way of keeping the Indians quiet. The clause was actually added by the federalgovernment in January 1981, immediately after the Foreign AffairsCommittee of the English House of Commons had recommendedthat the proposed constitutional amendment be rejected. In the firstweek of November 1981, when the provincial premiers reachedagreement on a revised draft of the amendment, the clause aboutaboriginal rights was deleted. At the end of November, followingintense Indian pressure, the clause was reinstated, the premiers beingprepared to accept it on condition that the word ‘existing’ was addedto qualify the rights that were guaranteed (Sanders, 1983, pp. 314–21). The actual wording of Section 34 of the Constitution Act, 1982

is as follows:

34 (1) The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginalpeoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed. (2) In thisAct, ‘aboriginal peoples of Canada’ includes the Indian, Inuit andMetis peoples of Canada.

The extraordinary feature of this new provision is that nobody knows

what the existing rights of the aboriginal peoples are. The democraticconstitutions of the world are full of ambiguous clauses, but this isperhaps the only one that entrenches a blank cheque. To fill out thecheque, it was agreed in 1983 (and added as Section 37) that aConstitution Conference would be held in 1984 to identify and definethe rights in question. When this conference met, the federalgovernment tabled a document stating that the aboriginal peopleshave ‘the right to self-governing institutions’, subject to agreements

to be negotiated with the federal and provincial governments. Issuingthis statement proved to be a major tactical error. On the one hand,the words ‘self-governing’ encouraged spokesmen for the Indians tomake extravagant claims about their inherent rights to politicalindependence. On the other hand, the statement upset several of theprovincial premiers, both because they had not been consulted andbecause they were quite unwilling to agree that the Indians had aright to independence, overriding provincial and perhaps even federalauthority.

The 1984 conference was a somewhat unmanageable body withseventeen participants: the Prime Minister, ten provincial premiers,the chief ministers of the North-West Territories and the Yukon, andspokesmen for four associations of native peoples. A consensus wasnever likely and nothing like a consensus emerged. All that could beagreed was to meet again in the following year. In fact the conference




was convened twice more, in 1985 and 1987, but failed to reachagreement on either occasion. The attempt to define the rights of theaboriginal peoples has therefore been abandoned and Article 34 of the Constitution Act remains a somewhat empty declaration. Thewhole story emphasizes the stupidity of raising nationalisticaspirations that cannot be satisfied. Nationalism is too powerful anideology to be trifled with. This lesson was underlined in May 1988,when the chairman of one of the Indian associations—a body withthe somewhat pretentious title of the Assembly of First Nations—said that the upcoming generation of Indians would turn to violenceand terrorism if Indian claims to land rights and self-governmentwere not settled by negotiation between governments and the present

generation of Indian leaders. On the following day an armed groupof Mohawk Indians blockaded a main highway leading out of Montreal.

A central problem for negotiators is that the social situation of Indian peoples is so varied that it is almost impossible to agree uponany formula that is generally applicable. At the end of the 1970sthere were 573 Indian Bands occupying 2,287 reserves, with apopulation approaching 300,000. Forty-eight per cent of the Bands

had populations of under 300 people; 39 per cent had populationsof between 300 and 1,000; and only 13 per cent had populations of over 1,000 (Gibbins and Ponting, 1986, pp. 242–3). The Bands areto some extent artificial creations of the federal government, theirgenerally small size resulting in the division of the tribes that oncehad a sense of social and political unity. In the southern regions of Canada it would not be feasible to reunite these tribes, so that theonly sensible solution of the issue is to extend the kind of municipal

quasi-autonomy that many of the Bands already enjoy.In the sparsely-populated northern regions of Canada there ismore tribal unity and there are large areas of land that could feasiblybe designated as under tribal control. The main problem in thoseregions is the control of natural resources. It is an established fact inCanadian law that natural resources belong to the provinces, i.e. tothe Crown in Alberta, or wherever. Provincial governments may bewilling to agree that Indian tribes should be given fishing andhunting rights over sizeable areas, together with control of education and other services necessary to the preservation of Indianculture, but may not be willing to surrender their ownership andright to exploit mineral resources in these areas. In British Columbiathere are also many tracts of land, now claimed by Indians, wherewhite residents have established legal ownership or where the rightto cut timber was transferred to lumber companies by legally




binding agreements made many years ago. Such issues are not easilyresolved.

In this situation Hawkes is almost certainly correct in saying that‘no single approach or model will meet the needs or aspirations of all aboriginal peoples. A universal formula is doomed to failure’(Hawkes, 1985, p. 23). A universal formula is, however, what manyIndian spokesmen want. At this stage no predictions are possible.What is clear, however, is that policy towards the indigenous peoplesof Canada has moved decisively away from the objective of integrating them into Canadian social and political life, towards theobjective of giving them as much cultural and political autonomy asis compatible with the interests of the rest of the population.


The level of national integration in Canada is clearly lower than inthe United Kingdom. As will be seen, it is also lower than in Australiaand it may well be lower than in any other advanced democraticstate.

The most important of the reasons for this is the cultural dualitybetween anglophone and francophone Canadians. Languagecleavages inevitably create a social gulf, which in this case has beendeepened by religious differences and political grievances. For thewhole of the period up to the Second World War, francophone Canadawas entirely Catholic while anglophone Canada was primarilyProtestant. This led nationalists like Villeneuve to believe that theywere defending their faith as well as protecting their language. The

political grievances have been mentioned earlier in this chapter andneed not be recapitulated. It is noteworthy, however, that some of these grievances, such as those relating to Riel, the Boer War andconscription, have made French Canada’s relationship to EnglishCanada more like Ireland’s relationship to Britain than like Scotland’srelationship to England.

Another aspect of the situation is that there is little culturalexchange between the two communities, whose relations are wellcaptured by the novelist’s phrase ‘the two solitudes’ (MacLennan,1965). They do not read the same books or watch the same televisionprograms. The English-Canadian cuisine has been hardly affectedby the French-Canadian cuisine, to the great loss of English Canada.There is often a failure to understand the attitudes of the othercommunity. There are two distinct intellectual élites, with only ahandful of individuals able to bridge the gap.




This lack of social integration between the two main ethnic groupsin Canada is supplemented by multicultural attitudes that somewhatdivide anglophone Canadians and by the almost unbridgeable gulf between the white population and the indigenous peoples. Canadiansociety is clearly characterized by cultural pluralism.

The Canadian economy is also less well integrated than that of Britain or, as will be seen, that of Australia. The various regions of Canada differ greatly in their economic resources and activities.Policies that help one region may be costly to another. Thus, theprotection and federal subsidies given to the textile and clothingindustries help Quebec at some cost to consumers and taxpayerselsewhere. The Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United

States that was negotiated in 1987 would benefit most of Canadabut is seen in Ontario as a threat to that province’s industries. Theplacing of federal contracts is widely viewed by Canadians in termsof regional gains or losses. For example, the 1986 decision to awardthe contract for the maintenance of a new fighter aircraft to a firm inMontreal rather than to one in Winnipeg, though the latter offeredlower prices for the same degree of technical efficiency, was generallyregarded as a federal attempt to buy political support in Quebec at

the expense of the west. In ways like this, issues of economic policytend to divide the nation rather than to unify it.

At the same time, the various ethnic groups in Canada differappreciably in their degree of economic success. This wasdemonstrated clearly by Porter’s analysis in the 1960s (Porter, 1965).Since then, the francophones of Quebec have improved their positionconsiderably, but there is no evidence of a general trend towardsethnic equality in terms of occupation and average incomes.

Canadians of British extraction are still firmly at the top; theindigenous peoples are still at the bottom; Canadians of Asian andWest Indian origin are still next to the bottom; and people of French,German, Ukrainian, Scandinavian and Italian origin are still rangedin intermediate positions.

Political integration suffers from the long-standing tendency of Canadians to vote one way in federal elections, another way inprovincial elections. The lack of a clear ideological gap betweenthe two main parties partly accounts for this, but in some provincesvoters have supported parties at the provincial level that are quitedifferent from the national parties. This is conspicuously true of Quebec, which has had Union Nationale and Parti Quebecoisgovernments in the postwar period; it is also true of BritishColumbia, where the Social Credit Party has ruled for most of thetime since 1952.




In terms of political attitudes, the most significant tendency isfor Canadians to put a certain distance between themselves andthe national government. Provincial governments both provide themwith many of their social services and defend provincial interests inrelation to Ottawa. The federal government tends to be somewhatunpopular. In the autumn of 1982, after the Liberal governmenthad succeeded in its efforts to patriate the constitution and giveCanada a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, only 25 per cent of anational sample of electors said they were satisfied with thegovernment’s performance, compared with 73 per cent who weredissatisfied (Birch, 1986, p. 114). In December 1987, after theConservative government had succeeded in negotiating a free trade

agreement with the United States, the Prime Minister’s ratingsshowed that only 21 per cent of the population thought him thebest person to fill that post (Toronto Globe and Mail, 31 December1987). It is the lot of federal Prime Ministers and ministers to beunpopular, to a far greater extent than provincial premiers andministers. Repeated public opinion polls also show that Canadianelectors are sceptical about the national representative process, theproportions saying that Parliament (or MPs) soon lose touch with

electors varying between 63 per cent in 1965 and 75 per cent in1981 (Birch, 1986, p. 113).

The main feature of Canadian nationalism is that the sense of national identity is weaker in Canada than in most other developedstates. Canadians have neither a common language nor a commonculture to bolster nationalistic feelings. All groups have beensubstantially influenced by American culture, with even the Quebecoiseating chauds chiens, but that weakens rather than strengthens the

feeling of being Canadian. Furthermore, in contrast to the Swiss andthe Belgians, Canadians do not have a shared history to unite them.The history of Canada is a story of communal rivalries and conflicts,not a story of unity against the outside world. This story has alwayscome in two different versions, an English version and a Frenchversion, not very similar in content. It is not certain whether it isbetter or worse for national unity that in many Canadian high schoolshistory has in any case disappeared as a separate subject, beingsubsumed under the heading of social studies and frequently taughtwith American textbooks. The consequence of this is that many youngCanadians know more about American history than about the historyof their own country.

These facts raise the question of how Canadians identify theirsociety and its characteristics. The answer for anglophones is thatthey identify it in terms of its differences from the country to which




it is most similar, namely the United States. The similarities areobvious. As long ago as 1887 it was being argued that Canadianspreferred American books and journals to British ones (Chaiton andMcDonald, 1977, p. 14). In 1938 the historian Arthur Lower arguedthat Canada was ‘overwhelmed’ with American movies, magazines,fashions, foods, comic strips and so forth. ‘In other words’, he said,‘the day-to-day expressions of Canadian life are completely American’(Anderson, 1938, p. 8). This is even more true today, when manyCanadians spend their evenings watching American television. Whatother people, it may be asked, habitually watch television newsprogrammes broadcast in and for another country?

The differences lie not in culture but in social and political attitudes.

In a word, Canadians are more conservative than Americans. Thisgoes right back to the United Empire Loyalists, who movednorthwards into Upper Canada because they could not accept theliberalism of the American revolutionaries. In modern times,Canadians are more conservative in a social sense, being morereserved, more patient, more puritanical, less enterprising. They arealso more conservative in a political sense, being less individualistic,more law-abiding, more willing to accept authority and more apt to

admire the police.It cannot be denied, however, that the differences are getting

smaller all the time. English-Canadians have become very largelyAmericanized and in some respects French-Canadians are becomingAmericanized too. The question of whether this matters is one towhich widely different answers are given. The conservativephilosopher George Grant thinks it matters a great deal. His book,Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (1965),

is very well summarized by its title.On the other hand, Pierre Trudeau appears to think that it isunimportant. This is not because he has any positive wish for Canadato be Americanized, but because he believes that nationalism is anunfortunate ideology. Like Acton and Kedourie, he is opposed tonationalism on principle, but while Acton preferred empires andKedourie appears to do the same, Trudeau looks forward to a worldin which national pride will disappear and multiculturalism will beuniversally accepted. In such a world the state would be merely amechanism for providing services, not an object of loyalty andpassion. Canada is just such a state, and could be an example to thepolyethnic states of the Third World. More than that, even: ‘Canadianfederalism is an experiment of major proportions; it could become abrilliant prototype for the moulding of tomorrow’s civilization’(Trudeau, 1977, p. 179).




The historian Ramsay Cook takes the same line. In Canada, heasserts, ‘we have had too much nationalism, not too little’ (Cook,1977, p. 7). In answer to the question of what can hold Canadatogether in the absence of nationalism, he says this:

The nation-state serves the practical purpose of organizing groupsof people into manageable units and providing them with serviceswhich they need and which they can share: a railway, a medicaresystem, a publicly owned broadcasting system, an art gallery, anexperimental farm, a manpower retraining program, a guaranteeof equality for linguistic rights. (Cook, 1977, p. 8)

What gives this formulation away is that the last ‘service’ is hardlyon a par with the others. The first six functions ascribed to the statecould all be carried out by a reasonably competent team of bureaucrats, whereas the seventh requires political leadership,statesmanship and authority. As soon as these qualities are needed,it becomes necessary to have some degree of nationalism to givepolitical leaders the authority they require to carry out their tasks.

If Trudeau and Cook are unconvincing guides, it may nevertheless

be possible to accept the verdict of Mildred Schwartz, a politicalsociologist. Writing of Canada, she has observed that ‘the satisfactionof material needs and the provision of political stability provide, asit were, alternatives to a high level of consensus’ (Schwartz, 1967, p.248). This is just about right. Canada is a prosperous and spaciouscountry, secure in democratic freedoms and essentially stable in spiteof the problem of Quebecois nationalism. It has several advantagesover its southern neighbour, including a much lower level of personal

violence and the relative absence of slums. It is a country that English-Canadians are quietly content with, though a diffidence born of disunity and proximity to a more powerful and self-confidentneighbour inhibits the development of chauvinism. Feelingchauvinistic is one of the minor pleasures of life that the British andthe Australians enjoy in full measure, the Canadians hardly at all.But it is not one of the major pleasures of life.






did not have them, and the prohibition of Chinese immigration. In1886 the miners followed the example of the seamen by foundingthe Amalgamated Miners’ Association, with branches in all sixcolonies, and in the same year the Amalgamated Shearers’ Associationwas established (Greenwood, 1955, pp. 154–7). The unionistsbelieved that, in a continent where capital and labour were becomingmore mobile, amalgamation or federation was a necessary step toenhance union influence.

Another significant development was the establishment of theSydney Bulletin in 1880, followed by the Brisbane Boomerang sevenyears later. Both these journals were self-consciously nationalistic,featuring articles, short stories and poems by Australian writers on

Australian themes, preferably written in a direct and distinctivelyAustralian style. The Bulletin, which survives to this day, wasparticularly influential, achieving a wide circulation throughout thesix colonies within a few years of its foundation. Its slogan was‘Australia for the Australians’. In the visual arts, the 1880s saw theemergence of the ‘Heidelberg School’ of Australian painters, a groupof artists, influenced by the French impressionists, who set out withgreat success to capture the unique qualities of Australian light and

the Australian landscape. Their first exhibition was held in Melbourne(of which Heidelberg is a suburb) in 1889; they brought immediatepleasure and pride to their viewers; and their paintings are nowprominently featured in public art galleries in all major Australiancities. The painters as well as the writers played a part, though asmaller part, in the raising of national consciousness.

At the explicitly political level, the move towards unity wasstimulated by the desire to create a common tariff and common

market; by alarm at the German seizure of most of New Guinea in1884; and by the view that the Australian colonies shared interestsin the South Pacific area that could best be protected by the creationof a single Australian state with unified defence forces.

A convention was held, without success, in 1891. However, thiswas followed by a further convention, in 1897–9, at which delegatesfrom the six colonies reached agreement on a draft federalconstitution. This document received popular approval by referendumin each of the colonies, was submitted to the United Kingdom, andwas enacted by the British Parliament without significant change in1900. The Commonwealth of Australia then came into existence in1901.

The constitution followed the American example quite closely.The federal Parliament was given a list of legislative powers, with allother powers assigned to the states. The rights of small states were



185Integration in Australia

protected by the establishment of a Senate, composed of an equalnumber of representatives from each state and enjoying equallegislative powers with the House of Representatives except in regardto financial matters. These rights were further protected by a provisionfor constitutional amendment that required any proposed change tobe approved by a majority of the voters both in the Commonwealthas a whole and in at least four of the six states.

The factors working for political unity in the federation havebeen strong and can be simply enumerated. These include asimilarity of history, political institutions and political traditionsin the six states; a marked degree of ethnic and cultural homogeneityfrom the early settlements until the late 1940s; the early growth of

a system of highly disciplined political parties that dominated theSenate as well as the House, thus making the Senate largelyineffectual in its intended role as a protector of the rights of smallerstates; and the development of a powerful Labour Party that hasseen federalism as a barrier to some of its economic plans and hascalled for the replacement of the federal system by a unitary systemof government.

The factors making for the continuance of state powers are slightly

less obvious but equally effective. One of them is geographical. Eachof the Australian states is dominated by its capital city, which servesalso as its main port. Roads and railways were built outwards fromeach capital into the surrounding country, the railways having gaugesthat varied (as they still do) from state to state, and interstatecommunications being relatively poor until the growth of air servicesafter the Second World War. About 70 per cent of the entire Australianpopulation live in these state capitals, which thus have a natural

importance far beyond that exercised by Edinburgh, Cardiff or theprovincial capitals of Canada. Victoria, Regina and Halifax areinsignificant as cities and as foci of loyalty in comparison with Perth,Adelaide and Brisbane.

Another factor is historical. Australia is unique among federaldemocracies in that all except one of its constituent states had aconsiderable history of largely independent self-government beforejoining in federal union. It is therefore not surprising that theinstitutional life of these states continued without much immediatechange after the Commonwealth was established. Statebureaucracies were entrenched and maintained their structurewithout substantial revision. State politics have provided a satisfyingcareer for generations of politicians, very few of whom have thoughtit desirable to move from the state to the federal arena. Since the1920s only two men, Lyons and Menzies, have gone on from holding




ministerial office at the state level to holding the highest office atfederal level.

In addition, most voluntary associations and interest groupscontinued for some time after federation to be organized on a staterather than a Commonwealth basis. As Joan Rydon has pointed out,‘many churches and other associations were incorporated at statelevel; many professional groups were subject to state registration’(Rydon, 1986, p. 7). Some of these bodies established federalorganizations quickly after federation but others were much moreslow to do so. The Presbyterian churches united in 1907 but theBaptist churches did not follow suit until 1925. The state architecturalassociations established a Federal Council in 1915 but the Royal

Australian Institute of Architects was not created until 1930 (Rydon,1986, p. 5). The state medical associations got together more slowly,not establishing a Federal Council until 1933 and not creating theAustralian Medical Association until 1961.

Because of these and other factors, the federalized structure of government has never seriously been threatened by the unifying forcesin Australian politics. To turn Australia into a unitary state wouldupset many entrenched interests and bring about a drastic change in

the pattern of political organization. It has never been likely that aproposal to do this would overcome the difficult hurdle of theAustralian procedure for constitutional amendment. The history of attempts at constitutional amendment reveals that proposals toincrease the scope of Commonwealth powers have in nearly all casesfailed to secure the required majorities in a referendum.

Voters agreed in 1910 and 1929 to technical amendments enlargingthe power of the Commonwealth to take over and manage state

debts; they agreed in 1946 that the Commonwealth should havepower to provide a wide range of social benefits; and they acceptedin 1967 that the Commonwealth should have power (along with thestates and territories) to pass ‘special laws’ regarding Aborigines.However, eighteen proposals to extend Commonwealth power overeconomic issues have all been rejected, as have a proposal to give theCommonwealth power to regulate ‘essential services’, a proposal torequire all state houses of parliament to be elected directly by thepeople, and a proposal to require substantial equality in thepopulation of electoral constituencies for all legislative houses. Inall, 28 of the 36 proposed amendments to the constitution have beenrejected by the voters.

It does not follow from this that the Australian constitution isunduly rigid. It has been stretched by judicial interpretations, someof which have shown remarkable elasticity in extending the range of




federal authority. The practical powers of the federal governmenthave also been greatly increased by the financial dependence of thestates on Commonwealth grants, following the monopoly of incometax that the Commonwealth secured during the Second World War.The point is not that Commonwealth governments have been greatlyhamstrung or frustrated by the federal system, only that the federalstructure of Australian institutions determines the channels throughwhich political activity has to be directed. As will be shown, theextent of national integration in Australia is very considerable, butthe federal system itself seems virtually indestructible. Even the federalexecutive of the Australian Labour Party, so long in favour of establishing a unitary system of government, has now accepted the

inevitable in this regard.There is one exception to this general history of stability in the

federal system, namely that in 1933 Western Australia proposed tosecede from the federation. The westerners had always had doubtsabout the advantages of federation and there had for some time beena few politicians who favoured secession. The eruptive factor thatpersuaded the majority of westerners to embrace this objective wasthe impact of the depression on the state’s economy. In Greenwood’s

words, ‘the economic ills of the state were responsible fortransforming secession from a goal favoured by a few extremistsinto a movement expressive of an almost universal dissatisfactionwith existing conditions’ (Greenwood, 1946, p. 163). The proposalto secede was put to a referendum by the state government andendorsed by a vote of 138,653 to 70,706.

The case for secession, carefully argued in a document preparedby the state government, was based on four propositions. First, the

high protective tariff imposed to shelter Australian industries fromcompetition had put a heavy burden on Western Australia, whoseeconomy at the time depended almost entirely on primary productsintended for export. Second, free interstate trade within Australiaprevented Western Australia from protecting its own infant industriesagainst competition from the eastern states. Third, the NavigationAct confining trade between Australian ports to Australian shipsbore hardly on Western Australia, because it prevented Europeanships that called at Fremantle on their way to and from Melbourneand Sydney from carrying goods for that leg of the journey, thusleading to increases in the shipping rates between Europe andFremantle as well as reducing competition between Fremantle andthe east. Fourth, the federal embargo on the import of sugar forcedthe consumers of Western Australia to pay £30 a ton for Queenslandsugar instead of buying it from Java at about £7 a ton (see Greenwood,




1946, pp. 165–71). The case was clearly not without merit. Did itgive Western Australia a right to secede, in terms of the principlesadumbrated in Chapter 6? The answer seems to be in the negative,as Western Australia had freely consented to join the federation andthe legislation complained of had been passed by a parliament inwhich the state was fairly represented in terms of its population.Advocates of secession could point out that the state had been thelast to agree to federation, had been under some pressure from Londonto do so, and had agreed in a referendum in which the narrow majorityin favour (25,109) was almost entirely made up (to the extent of 24,517) of newcomers from the east living in the area of the goldfields(Greenwood, 1946, p. 161n). It had been a very near thing, but in

terms of principle the point is that the decision to join had not involvedcoercion.

In the event the state’s case received a pragmatic and generallysympathetic response from the other states and the newCommonwealth Grants Commission, without the alarm andresentment that the Quebecois movement towards secession causedin political circles elsewhere in Canada. In its first report theCommission accepted that Western Australia could only be as well

off within the federation as outside it if ‘compensation can be givenin some way for the injury done by the tariff’ (Commonwealth GrantsCommission, 1933, p. 71). The report acknowledged that the mostlogical way of assessing the compensation needed would be tomeasure the loss caused by the tariff, but found that this was notpracticable. It therefore concluded that the grants to the three poorerstates (South Australia and Tasmania as well as Western Australia)should be based on the principle of fiscal need. This principle was

used to give the poorer states grants that would enable them to providepublic services at the same level as those of the richer states, withouta higher burden of taxation, when allowance was made for speciallocal factors such as a sparse population over a large area (for details,see Birch, 1955, pp. 130–4).

The effect of this principle is highly egalitarian. It brings all statesto approximately the same level of affluence in terms of their budgets.It is therefore much more egalitarian than the tax equalization formulaadopted in Canada and about as egalitarian as the system fordetermining grants to local authorities in Britain. The system hasbeen accepted as fair by all governments, has eased the problems of federal-state financial relations, and has removed the main financialbasis of the interstate rivalries and conflicts that occur in mostfederations. It led Western Australia to drop its attempt to secede,and since 1935 no more has been heard of this proposal.




2 ETHNICITY AND IMMIGRATION

In Australia, unlike Britain and Canada, politically significant ethnicdivisions hardly existed until after the Second World War. Australiansociety has until very recently been remarkable for its degree of ethnic and cultural homogeneity. From the first settlement of 1788until after 1945, the settlers were overwhelmingly from Britain andIreland. The existence of the Aboriginal population has alwaysprovided a sharp contrast to this dominant culture, but theAborigines have been few in number and for most of the time thegreat majority of them have lived only on the fringes of white society.They have not posed a serious social problem for the whites, except

temporarily in a few areas, and have not hindered the process of national integration any more than the Canadian Indians have done.The position and problems of the Aborigines, in relation toAustralian society as a whole, will be discussed briefly in asubsequent section.

In part, the ethnic homogeneity of Australia up to 1945 resultednaturally from the facts of geography and history. The Australiansettlements were on the other side of the world from Europe, and

migration there involved a long and arduous voyage. It was altogethereasier for European migrants to make North America theirdestination, with South America the obvious alternative for thosewho spoke Spanish or Portuguese. European countries other thanBritain and Ireland got very little news of Australia and fewcontinental migrants thought of moving there. Nearly all newmigrants came from Britain and Ireland, attracted by reports fromrelatives and friends who had preceded them or by encouraging news

in the press. Many of them were given assisted passages by theAustralian authorities.The other part of the story is the legal ban on migration from

Asia or Africa. The colonies had all at different times prohibitedimmigration by non-white people, with the partial exception of Queensland, which had permitted the recruitment of Kanakas towork on the sugar plantations. Australian determination on this issueis indicated by the fact that one of the first actions of theCommonwealth Parliament in 1901 was to pass the ImmigrationRestriction Act, empowering customs officers to require prospectiveimmigrants to take an education test by writing down fifty words of English dictated by the officer. In the words of the historian RusselWard, ‘it was understood by everyone, and often openly stated inthe debate, that the test would be applied to all coloured applicantsfor admission and to no one else’ (Ward, 1977, p. 32). This Act was




accompanied by another declaring that Australian mail should onlybe carried in ships employing all-white crews. These two Acts gavefederal legislative expression to what was universally known as theWhite Australia policy.

The policy was inspired by fear that Australia would otherwisebe swamped by millions of immigrants from China, Japan and theother crowded lands to Australia’s north. These Asian peoples wereregarded, like Africans, as racially inferior to people of white stock.They were also regarded, particularly by trade unionists andmembers of the Australian Labour Party, as posing a threat toAustralian living standards by their readiness to work long hoursfor low wages. Thirdly, they were regarded as culturally different

from European peoples, to such an extent that mass immigrationby non-whites would create an unbridgeable cultural cleavagewithin Australian society.

In recent years the history of the White Australia policy has broughta good deal of embarrassment to Australians. In fairness, it shouldbe said that the policy itself was quite understandable in thecircumstances of its time. In the later decades of the nineteenth centuryand the first two decades of the twentieth it was commonly assumed

in Europe and North America, as well as in Australia, that the non-white races were inherently inferior to the white. Within Australiathis widespread assumption was strengthened by the fact that thenon-white people of whom Australians had first-hand knowledge,namely the Aborigines, had not progressed beyond a Stone Age cultureand thus gave the appearance of being among the most primitive of all human groups.

Australia was not alone in discriminating against non-whites or

in being alarmed by what was often described as ‘the yellow peril’.In 1875 British Columbia had disfranchised Chinese residents, evenif they had been born in the colony. In 1879 California had bannedregistered companies from employing Chinese or Mongolian workers.In 1881 New Zealand adopted a Chinese Immigration Act ‘thatvirtually excluded all Chinese immigrants’ (London, 1970, p. 5).Throughout the first half of the twentieth century Canada and theUnited States discriminated against prospective coloured immigrants,in Canada by rules excluding people who could not (as it was said)be expected to cope with the Canadian climate or to adjust toCanadian society, in the United States by a quota system based oncountry of origin. What was unique about Australia was not thesentiment or even the policy, but the brutal frankness by which thepolicy was proclaimed and defended. Australian politicians andlabour leaders made no attempt to disguise their feelings of superiority




over non-white peoples and offered no apology for their policy. AlfredDeakin, one of the founding fathers of federation and secondCommonwealth Prime Minister, said that the policy was based upona national instinct for self-preservation, for ‘it is nothing less thanthe national manhood, the national character, and the national futurethat are at stake’ (quoted in London, 1970, p. 13).

After 1945, Australian immigration policies were radicallychanged, for it was generally accepted that the country needed toexpand its population rapidly and it was clear that Britain, then inthe period of postwar labour shortages, could not supply the millionsof immigrants that were wanted. It was therefore decided to recruitnon-British immigrants from Europe on a large scale, but the

decision to diversify the population in this way did not go so far asto embrace the recruitment of non-white immigrants from countrieslike China. Addressing this question, the Minister for Immigration,Arthur Calwell, produced his famous (or notorious) quip, ‘twoWongs do not make a white’ (quoted in Ward, 1977, p. 283). Indeed,at the very time when Calwell was actively promoting the policy of diversification, based on the perceived need to increase thepopulation rapidly, he was also ruthlessly deporting the small

number of non-white refugees who had entered the country duringthe war years.

However, attitudes have changed. The belief that some races areinherently superior to others was thrown into disrepute by Hitler’sracial policies. Scepticism about the abilities and potentials of the

Japanese people was undermined by Japanese victories in the war.Dislike and fear of non-whites was eroded by the success of theColombo Plan, which brought thousands of Asian students to

Australia to complete their education.After 1964 Liberal-Country coalition governments quietly changedadministrative procedures so as to admit about 6,000 non-white (orpartly white) immigrants each year (Ward, 1977, p. 401). In 1965the Australian Labour Party removed the paragraph committing itto the White Australia policy from its national platform. By 1972 itwas possible for Gough Whitlam, on coming to power as LabourPrime Minister, to announce the complete abandonment of the policyand to declare that henceforth race would not be a factor in theadmission of immigrants.

This reversal of policy has substantially changed the ethnicbalance among new immigrants, in favour of Asians and at theexpense of Europeans. The proportion of Asians among newpermanent settlers rose to 14 per cent in 1974, 25 per cent in 1975and 33 per cent in 1976 (Blainey, 1984, p. 51). The admission on




humanitarian grounds of many Vietnamese refugees—about100,000 by 1987—has pushed the proportion upwards, the figurefor 1983 being 38 per cent (Blainey, 1984, p. 166). Theabandonment of the White Australia policy has therefore led to asudden influx of settlers with quite different cultural traditions fromthose of the host population, that can be compared with the suddeninflux of West Indians and Asians into Britain in the late 1950s andearly 1960s. By 1986 the proportion of Asians (in ethnic terms)among the Australian population had reached 3.9 per cent,comprised of 1.3 per cent from the Middle East and 2.6 per centfrom the remainder of Asia (Price, 1987).

Since any sudden change in the ethnic composition of a community

is likely to produce social tensions, it is relevant to compare Australianexperience in this regard with British experience. There are somepoints of similarity but (happily for Australia) not very many.

First, opinion polls in Australia show that public opinion aboutthe immigration policy has been much more divided than in Britain.In repeated polls people were given a figure for the number of Asianimmigrants in the previous year, or the number estimated to arrivein the same year, and asked whether they thought the number was

too few, about right, or too many. Some of the results are given inTable 9.1.

It is clear from these figures that in the early years of the newpolicy the government had the support of more than half theAustralian people but that after 11 or 12 years a majority had swunground to the view that too many Asians were being admitted.However, this is a much milder rejection of Asian immigration thanthe overwhelming rejection of Asian and West Indian immigrationshown by the British polls. It should also be noted that the figuresfor those believing that too many immigrants were being admitted

Table 9.1 Australian public opinion about the number of Asianimmigrants

Source: Goot, 1985, p. 54






planning grounds. If the grounds cited were in fact fictitious and if alternative sites for the mosques are not found, this would clearly bea deprivation of rights for Muslim immigrants, and one that is certainto cause resentment.

The other ethnic dimension of Australian society is that until after1945 the people (Aborigines apart) were not only all European byorigin but were overwhelmingly British or Irish by origin. This wasan important dimension of Australian national identity. MostAustralians took it for granted that they were a British and Irishpeople, ‘Anglo-Celtic’ in the language of politicians, living in thesouthern hemisphere. It was commonly believed that at the end of the Second World War 98 per cent of Australians had this kind of

ethnic origin.In actual fact this figure, though frequently publicized and hardly

ever contradicted, somewhat exaggerated the Anglo-Celtic pre-dominance. Australia’s leading demographer, Charles Price, has tracedthe ethnic origins of the population with meticulous care, dividingindividuals up for statistical purposes into one half English, threeeighths Irish, one eighth German, or whatever the records show. Hisreconstruction of the ethnicity of Australians, calculated in this way,

shows that only 90.9 per cent of the non-Aboriginal population in1947 had Anglo-Celtic origins. Price’s detailed figures, given in Table9.2, show both that people of German origin constituted the largestethnic minority (assuming, for the time being, that the Irish can beincluded with the British as part of the majority) and that the Germanswere already there in 1861. In fact, many Germans moved to Australiain the years 1834–40 and settled in South Australia, while otherswent to Queensland.

The main reason why Australians seemed largely unaware of theGerman and other minorities before 1945 is that these minoritieswere almost completely assimilated into Australian society. Theyspoke English and showed no desire to emphasize such distinctivecultural characteristics as they retained. Their existence did not affectthe predominant self-image of Australian society as essentially Britishand Irish in origin.

The table also shows the considerable change that has occurredsince 1947. The non-Anglo-Celtic proportion has increased from 9per cent to 25 per cent in demographic terms and from about 2 percent to 25 per cent in terms of popular conceptions. This change hasled to a lively and vociferous debate about how far the diversificationof the population means that Australians should now regard theirsociety as multicultural and should adopt policies to encourage themaintenance of cultural diversity.




The policy of encouraging the immigration of people from continental

Europe was forced upon the Australian government in the immediatepostwar years by the coincidence of two factors: a consensus amongruling élites that Australia must ‘populate or perish’ together withthe impossibility of getting as many British and Irish immigrants aswere deemed necessary. In 1947 the government arranged freetransport for large numbers of displaced persons, then mostlyaccommodated in camps in Europe. In succeeding years free passageswere offered to citizens of Italy, Greece, Holland and other Europeanstates on the same conditions that were set for the displaced persons,namely that for two years they would be accommodated in hostelsin Australia and would do whatever work the government askedthem to do. By the mid-1970s nearly two million new immigrantshad been accepted from continental Europe.

This development placed certain burdens on postwar Australiangovernments: they had not only to find work for the immigrants

Table 9.2 Ethnic origins of the Australian population

No records available.Source: Price (1987).

Note: In one respect the above figures differ from those calculated byPrice. Following the 1981 Census, he gives Jewish Australians as a separateethnic group for 1986, though not for the earlier years. Thinking this to beunhelpful, I have reclassified the Jews, making the assumption that the sameproportion were German in 1986 as in 1978, that three quarters of theremainder came from eastern Europe and that the rest came from northernEurope.




but to ensure that they were taught English, were welcomed by thehost population and were integrated into Australian society. Thework was not a problem since there was full employment at thetime and the immigrants were not permitted to be fussy about whatthey did, but the cultural homogeneity of the host populationmitigated against the quick success of measures to promote socialintegration. Classes in the English language were organized, butthey were nearly all conducted in English and were therefore prettyineffective. Immersion teaching can often work well with youngchildren, but it did not work well with adult immigrants. A surveyof adult immigrants in the Melbourne area in 1965–6 showed thatonly 39 per cent of the Italians and 41 per cent of the Greeks could

speak English well, with 50 per cent of each group speaking it badly(in the opinion of the interviewer) and the rest unable to speak it atall (Jupp, 1966, p. 183).

Good Neighbour Councils were established to welcome theimmigrants, but these were groups of middle-class volunteers,operating only in English, who proved singularly unsuccessful inmaking contact with non-British immigrants (Jupp, 1966, pp. 148–51). In any case the latter would have wanted to be approached as

Greeks, Italians or whatever, as this was the most meaningful identitythey then had, rather than as ‘new Australians’ or ‘our migrants’,the rather patronizing collective terms used at the time.

The policy of the Australian government towards these newimmigrants in the first two postwar decades was that they should beassimilated, in the sense defined in Chapter 4, and that this shouldhappen as quickly as possible. Pressure was put upon the immigrantsto become naturalized as soon as they were eligible and they were

required not only to take an oath of allegiance to the Queen but alsoformally to renounce their allegiance to their country of origin. TheseAustralian policies contrasted with British and Canadian policies inthe same period, for neither the British nor the Canadian governmentput pressure on foreign residents to become naturalized, and thoughnew citizens have had to swear allegiance to the Queen they havenot been required to renounce their allegiance to their country of origin. They are, in fact, able to retain dual citizenship if theregulations of their country of origin permit this.

3 MULTICULTURALISM

That the Australian policies were modified in the late 1960s and1970s was evidence not so much of a change of heart among




Australians as of a willingness to recognize the lessons of experience.Evidence mounted that the newcomers were not being assimilatednearly as quickly as the Australian authorities had predicted. Figureswere produced showing that disgruntled immigrants were returningto Europe in sizeable numbers. It was reported that in the period1959–65 ‘settler loss was over 16 per cent of settler arrival’ (Martin,1978, p. 31). Later figures showed this had underestimated the truerate of return. It was realized that migrants could not immediatelyexchange one cultural identity for another just because they hadchanged countries, and that it was unreasonable to expect them todo so. It was appreciated that services to immigrants fell short of what was desirable and that they had to be improved. Within a few

years Australians moved from a policy of assimilation to one of accepting that their society had become, or was becoming,multicultural and plural in character.

This change occurred at about the same time as Canada decidedthat its society should be labelled multicultural rather thanbicultural, but the Australian change has provoked much moreideological conflict than the Canadian change. In part this can beexplained by the fact that acceptance of cultural diversity is new

to Australians, old and inevitable to Canadians; in part it mayresult from the greater tendency of Australians to engage inideological debate over political issues. The debate has produceda rich variety of concepts, including conservative pluralism,structural pluralism, radical pluralism, cultural liberation, holisticmulticulturalism and hard multiculturalism. Scholars, as well aspoliticians, group spokesmen and journalists, have taken diverseviews on the whole issue of the right of cultural minorities to

preserve their identities.What the Australian government means by multiculturalism isnot entirely clear, in spite (or perhaps because) of a plethora of statements on the subject. It would seem that the authorities, thoughnot all of the commentators, have a vision of a multicultural societythat is closer to the model of the melting pot than to that of culturalpluralism. Australian immigration officers frown upon the intentionto live in ethnic ghettoes, whereas Canadian immigration officersgenerally expect French-speaking immigrants to settle in Quebec andChinese immigrants to settle in Vancouver, Victoria or Toronto. Therehave developed concentrations of Italian, Greek and Vietnameseimmigrants in particular quarters of Melbourne and Sydney, but thereis not the same sense of a ‘Little Italy’ that there is in Toronto andMontreal. For in so far as there is an Australian model it is thatimmigrants, while retaining something of their original cultural




identities, should gradually merge into Australian society, perhapsenriching it with their own contributions.

It has been argued in Chapter 5 that in most respects immigrantmembers of ethnic minorities can preserve their cultural identitieswithout official help, provided only that they are spared activepressure to adopt the habits and beliefs of the host societyimmediately. They need tolerance from the majority and time to makethe adjustments that they or their children are bound to make in thelong run. Their only clear needs for positive official assistance arehelp to learn the majority language, by the provision of classesconducted in minority languages, and guidance on how to secure thesocial services they are entitled to.

Since the late 1960s Australian governments have provided boththese kinds of help and have also introduced two imaginative newservices that have no exact parallel elsewhere. One of these is atelephone interpreter service, available at first in Melbourne andSydney and now in other cities as well. The other is an evenings-only television channel directed primarily at the minorities. ThisSpecial Broadcasting Service (SBS) specializes in showing foreignfilms and drama series with English subtitles, thus both enabling

people to enjoy programs made in their own countries of originand helping them to learn colloquial English. SBS also shows afair number of soccer matches, soccer being a game played mostlyby European immigrant teams with names like the MelbourneCroatians. In a typical week in 1987, SBS showed 15 hours of foreign drama programs (from Sweden, Greece, Germany, Italy,China and Japan), 12 1/2 hours of foreign films (from France,Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany and Bulgaria), 31/2 hours of

foreign documentary programs, 3 hours of soccer and 3 hours of foreign comedy or children’s programs. The logic underlying thischoice of program is obvious and the result is a service that notonly fulfils its function of making immigrants feel at home inAustralia but also provides attractive features for Anglo-CelticAustralians.

In practical (as distinct from theoretical) debate, the main issue of controversy about multicultural policies is whether state schoolsshould be expected to teach the language of their country of originto immigrant children. Spokesmen for some ethnic minorities, notablythe Greeks and Italians, have emphasized the case for this kind of policy and have claimed that it is a logical corollary of theproclamation that Australian society is multicultural. State andmunicipal authorities have tended to resist the demand, partly forpractical reasons such as a shortage of trained teachers and pressure




on educational budgets, partly because of doubts about the wisdomof perpetuating linguistic divisions. The federal government has alsodone little to meet the demand, preferring to spend most of its veryconsiderable outlay on services to immigrants on teaching Englishand on the SBS. The figures for federal expenditure in 1985–6 aregiven in Table 9.3.

There is, however, some pressure for a national policy onlanguage teaching, which would necessarily include a policyabout ‘community languages’, the Australian term for the nativelanguages of non-British immigrants. In 1984 the SenateStanding Committee on Education and the Arts produced areport entitled A National Language Policy (Colston Report,1984) and in 1987 a special adviser to the Minister of Educationcontributed a further report entitled National Policy onLanguages (Lo Bianco Report, 1987). The reports are quitesimilar in their approaches and their conclusions, though thelatter report is noticeably more bureaucratic in expression. Theyconclude that there should be a national policy on languages, togive guidance on priorities to the various authorities responsible

Table 9.3 Commonwealth expenditure on services to immigrants, 1985–6(Figures in millions of dollars)

Source: Jupp, 1987, p. 2.






Canada. Their command of English is complete, they are notconcentrated in particular residential areas or particular occupations,they have intermarried with Anglo-Celtic Australians. The southernEuropeans and the Asians have not been assimilated in the sameway and it is no longer believed that their integration depends onassimilation. The degree of their integration has to be assessed interms of their ability to participate in Australian life, in their economicsituation and their political activities.

Two rather striking illustrations of their contributions toAustralian society are the growth in the popularity of soccer, nolonger confined to new immigrants, and the transformation of theAustralian cuisine, at least in the bigger cities. Whereas in the 1950s

Australian food was like English food in the same period, namelystodgy and boring, the incorporation of Italian and other continentalEuropean dishes and techniques into the diet has produced a verydifferent cuisine, distinctively Australian rather than just a mixture,which must be counted among the finest in the world. Other aspectsof the social integration of these groups are more difficult to assessat this juncture, though another highly relevant indicator is thereport that second-generation Italian and Greek immigrants mostly

speak English to one another, except when their parents are present.This supports the view that the Australian pattern is likely to bethat of the melting pot rather than that of cultural pluralism, in thesenses defined earlier.

We are fortunate to have available a rather elaborate study of theextent to which recent immigrants have become integrated into theAustralian economy. This is a report prepared by three sociologistsfor the Committee of Review of Migrant and Multicultural Programs

and Services. The 1986 report was based on 1981 census datasupplemented by a survey of a large representative sample of Australians over the age of 18. The study showed that only one migrantin six and one native-born Australian in eight thought that employersshowed favouritism towards white-born Australians, while very fewpeople reported any personal experience of discrimination. Twenty-three per cent of immigrants from non-English-speaking countriesthought they had probably ‘missed out on a job’ because of theirnational origins, but only 3 per cent of second-generation immigrantsfrom these countries thought this (Kelley, Jones and Evans, 1986, pp.47, 49 and 57). When asked about the reason for such disadvantagethat they had experienced, virtually all respondents cited languagedifficulties. Since many adult immigrants, including one in five of thosefrom Mediterranean countries, reported that they spoke English poorly,it is not surprising that they should have found themselves at some




disadvantage in the labour market. What is significant is that hardlyany of the immigrants cited prejudice among native-born Australiansas a factor. Moreover, 9 per cent of immigrants and their childrenreported that they had got a job because of their national origins (Kelley,

Jones and Evans, 1986, p. 57). Among employers, eight out oftenreported that they would treat immigrants equally with native-bornAustralians (Kelley, Jones and Evans, 1986, p. 52).

Analysis of the incomes of immigrants and others in 1981 showedthat anglophone immigrants and their children came top, with averageincomes of $14,600, followed by northern and eastern Europeanimmigrants and their children with $14,100, Third World immigrantsand their children with $13,400, native-stock Australians with

$13,300 and Mediterranean immigrants and their children with$11,000. The reasons for the poorer average performance of Mediterranean immigrants (mainly from Italy, Greece and Turkey)were investigated carefully. The conclusion was that three factorswere involved: one was that their knowledge of English tended to bepoorer than that of other groups; the second factor was that, onaverage, they came from poorer backgrounds, such as peasantfarming, than other immigrants; the third was that those with

professional qualifications did markedly less well. Australianauthorities have been suspicious of professional qualifications fromMediterranean countries and slow to give them full recognition, afact that not only depresses the incomes of immigrants possessingsuch qualifications but also discourages prospective immigrants fromthese occupational groups.

It is important to note, however, that these disadvantages havenot carried over into the next generation. As the report puts it:

‘Brown eyes, olive skin and eleven years of Australian educationentitle a man to just as good a job as do blue eyes, sunburnt skinand eleven years of Australian education. This is compellingevidence that ethnic discrimination does not confine Mediterraneanmigrants to a secondary labour market’ (Kelley, Jones and Evans,1986, pp. 76–7). The economic success of Third World immigrants,mainly from eastern Asia, is also noteworthy. It is clear that theenergetic efforts of the federal government, combined with thetolerance of the Australian people, have produced a situation inwhich immigrants from all lands enjoy equal opportunities in thelabour market, so that the economic integration of ethnic minorities(apart from the Aborigines) is virtually complete. This is aremarkable achievement in view of the ethnic homogeneity of Australian society up to 1946 and the value that Australiansattached to it until policies changed.




Political integration

To be integrated into the political system of a country, immigrantshave, at the very least, to vote in its elections. Beyond this thereare, as outlined in Chapter 4, four patterns or models for the politicalintegration or non-integration of ethnic minorities. The first ispolitical assimilation, with participation through commoninstitutions and established partners and no importance attachedto ethnic identity in elections and propaganda. The second ispolitical accommodation, based on a conscious attempt byestablished parties and government agencies to recognize culturaldiversity and accommodate the demands of minorities. The third is

ethnically-based political conflict which nevertheless stays short of organized violence. Finally, there may exist a situation not of integration but of majority control, in which minorities are leftoutside the participatory political system and treated only as objectsof government policy. This last situation obtains in respect of Australian Aborigines, as it does in respect of the native Indian andInuit peoples of Canada.

In Australia the institution of compulsory voting means that there

are no variations in turnout between native Australians andimmigrants, once they have secured citizenship. A study of the factorsinducing immigrants to take out Australian citizenship shows thatlength of residence is by far the most important. A survey of 700non-British immigrants over the age of 30 conducted in 1973 revealedthat 53 per cent had taken out citizenship almost as soon as theywere eligible, 64 per cent had done so within 10 years of arrival and85 per cent had done so within 20 years of arrival. There was no

significant difference between immigrants from the various countriesof origin and no relationship between occupational status or jobsatisfaction and the decision to become naturalized, once controlsfor length of residence and age were taken into account (Kelley andMcAllister, 1982, pp. 434–7). Two other studies showed that peoplewho had become naturalized had a greater sense of identity withAustralia than those who had not (Martin, 1965, p. 74 and P.Wilson,1973, p. 85), but a third concluded that naturalization had ‘fewbehavioural implications beyond its direct political consequences’(F.L.Jones, 1967, p. 422). Its most direct political consequence isthat the new citizens are required to vote.

A comparison of the ethnic composition of constituency electorateswith election results in those constituencies reveals very little aboutthe voting behaviour of first and second generation immigrants. Forone thing, there are no constituencies with really high proportions




of first-generation immigrants from the same countries apart fromone on the outskirts of Adelaide where over 40 per cent of the peoplewere born in Britain. In 1976 Italian-born immigrants constituted12.5 per cent of the people in one Melbourne constituency and 9.1per cent of the people in another, but not more than 8 per centanywhere else. Greek-born immigrants constituted more than 8 percent of the population only in Melbourne Ports, where the figurewas 8.1 per cent (Jupp, 1982, p. 15). Not all of the immigrants hadAustralian citizenship so the proportions of the electorates weresmaller than these figures suggest. In any case, nearly all the areas of high immigrant concentration are in industrial suburbs which wouldbe safe Labour seats with or without the immigrants.

However, an elaborate statistical analysis, based on nationwidesurveys of individuals, has revealed interesting patterns of votingbehaviour among immigrants. It appears that immigrants fromnorthern Europe, predominantly British in origin, have supportedthe main parties in approximately the same proportions as theAustralian-born majority of the voters, whereas immigrants fromother parts of Europe have varied in their allegiance. Those fromeastern Europe have been significantly less likely to support the

Labour Party, and this anti-Labour tendency increased markedlybetween 1967 and 1979. When their voting behaviour was adjustedfor variations resulting from their family background and theirsocio-economic status, voters born in eastern Europe were 2 percent less likely to vote Labour than Australian-born voters in the1967 federal election, 10 per cent less likely in the 1973 electionand 20 per cent less likely in the 1979 election (McAllister andKelley, 1983, p. 103). The reasons for this tendency cannot be found

by statistical analysis, but it is believed by several students of thematter that the main reason is strong dislike of the communistregimes in their countries of origin, leading them to be suspiciousof the Australian Labour Party because of its mildly socialisticpolicies and attitudes (Aitken, 1977, p. 159; Richards, 1978;McAllister and Kelley, 1983, p. 105).

Voters born in Mediterranean countries have shown a significantlydifferent pattern of behaviour. When their voting patterns wereadjusted for variations resulting from their background and socio-economic status, they were 10 per cent less likely than Australian-born voters to support Labour in 1967, 11 per cent less likely in1973, but 12 per cent more likely in 1979. The reason for their anti-Labour tendency in the earlier elections is unclear, but may be relatedto the attractions of the largely Catholic Democratic Labour Partyin this period, founded as it was by an Italian-Australian. The reasons




for the marked swing in their allegiance after 1973 are also uncertain,but are thought to be the adoption of the policy of multiculturalismby the Whitlam government of 1973–5 and the move within theVictoria Labour Party towards the establishment of ethnic sectionscatering specially for ethnic minorities (McAllister and Kelley, 1983,pp. 105–6). The Italians and Greeks are the minorities whosegeographical concentration has led them to appreciate thesedevelopments most.

What about political activity beyond voting, such as writing toMPs or the press, joining pressure groups or parties, or standing forelectoral office? While there has been no national study dealing withthis question, various local studies have drawn the conclusion that

levels of political interest and participation among non-Britishimmigrants are generally low. The Italian-Australians are a clearexample. They came to Australia to improve their economic prospectsand have worked very hard to do so. They are to some extent activein their church but apart from that their concerns have been withtheir work and their families. They mostly came from poorbackgrounds in rural Italy, a country with a non-participant politicalculture where voting is, as in Australia, compulsory. For the most

part, it has simply not occurred to them to become active in Australianpolitics. A survey of Brisbane electors in the early 1970s showedthat whereas 12 per cent of the native Australians had at one time oranother joined a political party, 17 per cent had campaigned for aparty and 41 per cent had attended a political meeting, thecorresponding figures for Italian immigrants were nil, 1 per cent and3 per cent (P.Wilson, 1973, p. 44). Immigrants from Greece,Yugoslavia and Turkey are in a very similar position to those from

Italy, though Greek-Australians have been somewhat more activethan the others in pressing for language teaching in their mothertongue.

Most of the other postwar immigrants from non-Britishbackgrounds have been refugees, either from the displaced personscamps of Europe in the 1940s or from south-east Asia in the 1970sand 1980s. Grateful to have found a haven, they have also tended toconcentrate their attention on their families and their economicposition rather than on politics. This is also true of recent Asianimmigrants who have moved to Australia because of its economicopportunities.

The political parties in Australia, though ideological like Britishparties, do not have the same concern to attract large numbers of members. This follows from the institution of compulsory voting,which relieves parties of the need to recruit an army of unpaid




canvassers to get out the vote. The parties have not been much affectedby the arrival of so many non-British immigrants. Aitkin has pointedout that ‘the postwar period has produced no Tammany Hall, nomigrant parties or groups, nor even a notable individual of immigrantstock who relies on an electoral base of migrants…the parties haveignored immigrants almost entirely’ (Aitkin, 1982, p. 155). TheVictoria Labour Party’s initiative in establishing ethnic sections inthe Melbourne area has not been copied elsewhere and the policy of multiculturalism is not an issue between the parties; thoughintroduced by Labour, it has been accepted by all. According to

Jaensch, ‘the ethnic vote is a target of the campaigning of the politicalparties in every election, but ethnicity has not emerged as a salient

factor in the electoral party system. Ethnic groups in Australia donot seem to participate in politics to any great extent as ethnic groups’(Jaensch, 1983, p. 95).

A possible exception to what seems to be the general trend, one of gradual political assimilation, is provided by the success for someyears of the Democratic Labour Party. This party was created in1955 as the result of a curious and interesting campaign by RomanCatholic groups within the Australian labour movement to protect

the latter from what the Catholics regarded as the threat of communism. The campaign was started in the Melbourne area atthe end of the 1940s by a second-generation Italian-Australian calledB.A.Santamaria, acting under the guidance of Archbishop Mannix,the highly-politicized Irish-Australian priest who had led the campaignagainst conscription in 1916. Santamaria formed Catholic actiongroups to penetrate the governing committees of trade unions so asto keep Marxists and fellow-travellers out of power there. This tactic

was so successful that by 1952 the Industrial Groups, as they werecalled, found themselves in a position to control the Labour Partyitself, through its affiliated unions, in Victoria and New South Wales.They exploited this position because of suspicions that H.V.Evatt,the party’s leader, was soft on communism. After the 1952 annualconference the Groupers controlled the state executives of the partyin the two most populous states.

The Groupers were all Catholics but not all recent immigrants,some of them being of old Irish-Australian stock. Having got intopositions of power within the Labour Party, they tried to convert itto a range of novel policies that ran quite counter to prevailingLabour doctrine. These policies included ‘the use of a productivityindex to fix wages, decentralisation of government, increasedimmigration and the setting of immigrants on small-holdings onthe land. In foreign policy they strongly opposed the recognition of




Red China and openly supported the Liberal Government in mostof its defence plans’ (Pringle, 1961, p. 82). It was this attempt tochange the party’s policies that eventually led Evatt, in October1954, to denounce the Groups and to drive them from the party.

After much factional fighting and bitterness Evatt achieved hisaim, but at a heavy cost. The Labour Parties of Victoria and NewSouth Wales were split; Labour lost its majorities in Victoria andQueensland; the national Labour Party was badly defeated in ageneral election in 1955; and in 1957 the Democratic Labour Party(DLP) was formed by the defeated Labour factions. The new partyquickly became national and was committed to opposing the LabourParty throughout its life.

Although essentially a Catholic rather than an immigrant party,the DLP had policies designed to appeal to Catholic immigrants andhad some success in this. In the 1967 election, for instance, it wassupported by 2 per cent of Australian-born voters, 4 per cent of those born in northern Europe, 7 per cent of those born in easternEurope and 8 per cent of those born in southern Europe (Aitken,1977, pp. 157–9). Its electoral performance was never good enoughfor it to win any seats in the federal House of Representatives, but

the fact that it persuaded its supporters to nominate anti-Labourcandidates as their second choice meant that its intervention costLabour a number of seats under the Australian system of proportionalrepresentation. It also gained some seats in the Senate and for severalyears held the balance of power in that body. It was Whitlam’sappointment of a DLP Senator to the post of Ambassador to Ireland,made in the hope of ending the anti-Labour majority in the Senate,that led to the 1975 deadlock between the two Houses and thence to

the Governor-General’s controversial decision to dismiss the LabourGovernment from office. All in all, the DLP did Labour a great dealof damage.

According to Aitkin, survey interviews with a random sample of Australian voters in 1967 and 1969 revealed that the DLP was themost disliked, and even despised, of the parties, but that the blamefor its existence was pinned on the Catholic hierarchy rather than onCatholic immigrants. The Catholic Church, people felt, ought to keepout of politics (Aitkin, 1977, pp. 68–70). In view of this it isremarkable that the Labour Party, which suffered greatly from theactivities of the DLP between 1955 and 1975, should have agreedduring this period to an entirely new policy of paying governmentgrants to private schools, many of which are Catholic. The LabourParty showed considerable tolerance, in face of the phenomenon of the DLP, in both supporting aid to Catholic schools and continuing




to support large-scale immigration from Catholic countries. Thistolerance was justified, in partisan terms, by the fact that during the1970s popular support for the DLP waned and by the mid-1980s ithad ceased to be a significant force.

The overall conclusion about the political integration of non-Britishimmigrants must therefore be that they are following the pattern of assimilation. There is neither a pattern of incipient conflict, as withblacks in Britain, nor one of elaborate accommodation, as in Canada.The pattern of social integration appears to be one of the melting pot,though with no significant pressure on immigrants to ‘melt’ more quicklythan they and their descendants wish to do. When this pattern iscombined with assimilation in both the economic and political fields

the overall judgement can only be that the ethnic diversification of theAustralian population has been a highly successful operation. TheAustralian practice of strong governmental leadership in regard to boththe selection and reception of immigrants has clearly paid dividends.

5 THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

The relationship between the Australian state and organized societyon the one hand and the indigenous peoples on the other has always,as in Canada, been one of majority control. The indigenous peoplescomprise the Aborigines of mainland Australia and the Torres StraitsIslanders. However, as the latter are small in number and similar incharacter to the former, the term Aborigines will henceforth be usedto describe both categories.

When the first white settlement of Australia was made in 1788

the continent was inhabited by Aborigines whose total has beenestimated to have been about 250,000, though it may have beenlarger than that. They had a stone age culture that had probably notchanged for hundreds or thousands of years, and showed great skillin eking a living out of a largely infertile land by hunting and gatheringberries. Their early relationship with white settlers did not involvewarfare, but it could hardly be described as friendly. When whitepeople used the land for grazing their stocks or growing crops, theyinevitably reduced the area available to support the nomadicAborigines. This was naturally resented and the Aborigines tendedto retaliate by stealing the white man’s goods, which in turn led thesettlers to take punitive measures, sometimes homicidal, against thesuspected culprits.

In many areas, a kind of trading relationship developed in theoutback. The settlers had food and other goods that the Aborigines




coveted, while the latter had only one thing they could offer inreturn. This was the services of their women, in demand amongthe settlers because, unlike the settlers of the Canadian (orAmerican) west, they generally left their womenfolk in the coastalcities while they explored the inhospitable terrain of the interior.One inevitable result of this relationship was the production of numerous half-caste children, who were sometimes accepted andbrought up as their own by the Aboriginal tribes and sometimesnot. In the latter part of the nineteenth century half-caste childrennot fully accepted by their tribes were commonly brought up inmissions established by the Christian churches, later supplementedby settlements run by colonial or state governments. In this way

the population now classified as Aboriginal developed two featuresthat have no parallel among the indigenous peoples of NorthAmerica: the first, that over two-thirds of them are of mixed blood;the second, that many of them have been alienated from Aboriginalsociety by their upbringing without having been accepted by whitesociety.

The story of the Aborigines since 1900 is complex and sad, but asthey have borne only a marginal and subordinate relationship to the

Australian polity they can be dealt with only in the briefest outlinein this chapter. It will make for simplicity if some of the distinctivefeatures of their situation are listed.

First, they are unlike most of the Canadian Indians in that notreaties were ever concluded between Aborigines and white settlers.The Indian concept of land ownership is different enough fromEuropean concepts, as we have seen, but the Aboriginal concept waseven more different, reflecting their social organization as small bands

of nomadic huntsmen and food-gatherers. In consequence, theAborigines have no possibility of legal appeals based on treaties.They were simply elbowed aside by the white newcomers andregarded as a nuisance.

Second, the Aborigines were not regarded as Australian citizensuntil 1967. They were protected persons and white men who killedthem were in some states and at some times charged with murder;for instance, in 1838 seven white men were convicted and executedfor the murder of an Aboriginal child during a mass murder in NewSouth Wales (Clark, 1962, p. 149). However, in other areas and atother times, reaching into the 1920s, Aborigines were murdered bywhite men with impunity. They did not enjoy the protection of thelaw that was afforded to citizens.

The policy of both governmental authorities and churches formany decades was to try to isolate and segregate Aborigines, partly








the fact that Aborigines, comprising 1 per cent of the entirepopulation, comprise 10.6 per cent of the prison population(Hazlehurst, 1987, Table 1). Part of the reason for this is the highincidence of drunkenness among Aborigines. Another factor is thehigh incidence of personal violence. In Queensland the homicide rateon Aboriginal reserves in the years 1979–81 was ‘some ten timesboth the national and Queensland average’ (Law ReformCommission, 1986, p. 26). In these circumstances it is not surprisingthat Aboriginal living areas are policed more heavily than other areas,which leads in turn to allegations of police harassment. However, itis also noticeable that Aborigines tend to get prison sentences fortrivial offences, such as using obscene language, that would not

normally lead to prison for white men. There are very few Aboriginesin Australian police forces, but Western Australia has led the way inmaking extensive use of Aboriginal ‘police aides’, while New SouthWales has established an elaborate and costly program of publicrelations to improve relationships with the state’s Aboriginal citizens.It is clear that despite legal equality, Aborigines have a differentrelationship with the forces of law and order from that enjoyed bywhite citizens.

Since 1967 Aborigines have been entitled to the same health andwelfare services as other citizens. Because of their circumstances,they place greater demands on these services. Thus, in WesternAustralia 58 per cent of the children in residential child care homesand 54 per cent of the children in foster care in 1981 were Aborigines,though only 2.4 per cent of the population are Aborigines. In NewSouth Wales in the same year 15 per cent of the children in substitutecare were Aborigines, though the Aboriginal percentage of the

population was only 0.7 (Law Reform Commission, 1986, p. 25). Inaddition to the general health and welfare services, Aborigines nowget special grants for housing and for both secondary and tertiaryeducation.

One consequence of providing improved health and welfareservices is that the Aboriginal population is increasing rapidly.The 1981 census showed a population of 159,897, but almosthalf of these were children and it is estimated that by the end of the century there will be over 300,000 Aborigines (Coombs, 1978,p. 8). The cost of helping the Aboriginal people to secure equalitywithin the political system is therefore increasing rapidly. On thetwentieth anniversary of the referendum that gave citizenship toAborigines, the Canberra Times published a leading article onthe progress that had been made. It was said that although thereal rate of annual Commonwealth expenditure was at least ten




times as great as it had been in 1967, ‘most Aboriginal childrenstill face an extremely bleak and untrained future’. Investment inland, facilities and infrastructure ‘has not yet provided, and showslittle promise that it ever will provide, Aborigines with a secureeconomic base’ (Canberra Times, 29 May 1987). It is clear thatthe problems of the Aboriginal people are deep-seated andextremely difficult to eradicate: they are worse than the problemsof Canadian Indians and markedly worse than the problems of black citizens in British cities.

What of Aboriginal participation in the Australian political system?The answer to this question is that Aborigines are represented on avariety of consultative bodies and have some significant posts in the

public service, including that of the chief civil servant in theDepartment of Aboriginal Affairs, but that they play little part inthe political parties and have very few elected members in legislativebodies. Aborigines have been elected in small numbers to municipalcouncils and to the legislative assembly of the Northern Territory,but they have not yet been elected to state legislative assemblies.They have a dominant position in community councils in the NorthernTerritory, but these councils do not have much power. The Aborigines

are so dispersed geographically that there is no constituency in whichthey can play a dominant role. In consequence they are likely toremain, like the Canadian Indians, on the outside of the main politicalsystem, but with less opportunity than the Indians to achieve ameaningful measure of self-management. The Australian government,like the Canadian one, proclaims that self-management is a desirablegoal, but the difficulties of achieving it in Australia are even greaterthan in Canada.

In the face of this position of substantial powerlessness, someAboriginal spokesmen have encouraged alternative forms of politicalaction. In the 1960s there were ‘freedom rides’ by young Aboriginals,to draw attention to their plight. In 1972 there was a short-livedattempt to establish an ‘Aboriginal Embassy’, housed in tents, outsidethe national Parliament in Canberra. In 1987 a self-styled Aboriginalleader from Tasmania visited Libya at the invitation of ColonelGaddafi and said on his return that the Aborigines were entitled to aseparate state within the Australian continent, that would be dulyrepresented in international bodies. However, there does not appearto be any widespread support for this claim.

In 1987 a committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, sensitiveto the desire of many Aborigines to enjoy more independence fromwhite control, produced a report entitled Return to Country. Thisreport recommended that the Commonwealth government should




actively encourage, both with its policies and with financial aid, thedevelopment of ‘homeland centres’ or ‘outstations’ for Aboriginalpeople. Homeland centres were defined as ‘small decentralizedcommunities of close kin established by the movement of Aboriginalpeople to land of social, cultural and economic significance to them’(Return to Country, 1987, p. xvi). The committee claimed to haveidentified 588 such centres throughout Australia, with a further 111communities in the Northern Territory that might qualify for thiscategory. The population of the centres was about 9,500 and theother 111 communities contained a further 3,900 people. Thesefigures, it should be noted, are considerably in excess of thoseproduced by the Aboriginal Development Commission, which

identified 495 homeland centres with a total population of only 6,558.Three brief comments may be made about this proposal. First,

the number of people involved is only a very small proportion of theAboriginal population, even using the most generous estimates.Second, it is not likely that the communities could become self-supporting in an economic sense. Their members depend on welfarepayments to buy most of their food and on government assistance of a moderately expensive kind to provide them with roads, airstrips,

health services and other amenities and services to which, asAustralian citizens, they are entitled. The proposal to extend thesecentres could therefore be described by critics as a proposal to keepAborigines in idleness in inconvenient locations at the taxpayers’expense. Third, there is evidence that Aborigines in such communitiestend to be happier than those living in towns or on the fringes of towns. Many or most of the latter depend on welfare payments inany case, and might be less likely to become demoralized in homeland

centres than by living on the fringes of white society. Moreover, theexistence of a larger number of homeland centres, if assured of government support, would presumably provide a safety valve forthe tensions that are apt to build up among Aborigines in urbanareas. It is therefore possible that this report will meet withgovernment approval and lead in due course to developments thatmost Aborigines would approve of. If the hope of integration intonational Australian society is doomed to failure, it is helpful to havean alternative policy available.


Aborigines apart, Australia is a rather successful example of nationalintegration. Since 1945 it has broadened its immigration requirements




and diversified the ethnic composition of its population with only afew of the tensions and social problems that coloured immigrationhas brought to Britain. After some initial difficulties, it has providedfar more services to immigrants than either Britain or Canada,regarding this as an important field of government policy. The energydevoted to this type of policy in recent years is illustrated by the listof official reports included as an appendix to this chapter, a list thathas no equivalent in either Britain or Canada. It has a policy of multiculturalism that seems likely to make Australian society amelting pot for immigrants rather than to perpetuate culturaldivisions.

In terms of economic integration, Australia has been somewhat

more successful than Britain or Canada in providing equalopportunities for immigrant groups. It is noteworthy that Third Worldimmigrants in Australia have marginally higher incomes than native-stock Australians, a situation that certainly differs from that in Britainand Canada. Regional economic differences are also smaller inAustralia than in the other two countries. The economic resourcesof the Australian states vary very little and federal fiscal policieshave been egalitarian in their intentions and consequences.

A common source of regional conflict within a country, apt toproduce interstate tensions in a federation, is the geographicaldistribution of contracts and subsidies awarded by agencies of thenational government. Australian federal governments are certainlynot unaware of political considerations when they make such awards.Indeed, Butler has observed that they are particularly likely to takesuch considerations into account (Butler, 1974, p. 22–3). However,Australian governments are generally perceived as using their

patronage to help the majority party in marginal constituencies, ratherthan as favouring this state at the expense of that. This is partlybecause there is less regional bias in partisan loyalties in Australiathan there is in Britain or Canada, so that favouritism, when exercisedfor partisan advantage, has to be specific to an area smaller thanthat of a state or region. In Britain Margaret Thatcher’s governmentis perceived as favouring the south over the north in its economicpolicies; in Canada Liberal governments have been perceived asfavouring central Canada over the west; but in Australia Labourgovernments in Canberra are perceived as helping Labour’s cause inthis or that marginal constituency. The consequence is that federaleconomic policies and the use of federal patronage do not sharpenregional rivalries as much as they do in Britain or Canada.

In respect of political integration, there are no serious problemsapart from the virtual exclusion of the Aborigines. The secessionist




movement in Western Australia collapsed very quickly when theCommonwealth Grants Commission produced a formula helpful tothat state. The main issues of Australian politics are national issuesthat divide the electorate on ideological lines but not on ethnic orregional lines. The political unity of the country is also helped by anexcellent national newspaper, The Australian, that has to be rated asmore successful than the Toronto Globe and Mail.

There has not been any real problem about Australian nationalidentity since the federation was established. To be sure, peoplehave secondary identities as Victorians, New South Welshmen andso on, but these do not rest on ethnic or cultural differences or evenon any major differences of lifestyle. When people in Brisbane wear

T-shirts proclaiming ‘And on the eighth day the Lord madeQueensland’ this reflects a feeling more like that of Yorkshiremenin relation to other Englishmen than that of the Scots or Irish inrelation to each other or to the English as a whole. The only statewhere state loyalties have rivalled national loyalties is WesternAustralia, but its brief threat of secession was based on financialcalculations rather than on the assertion of an alternative nationalidentity, comparable to that of the Quebecois. First-generation

Australian immigrants have a dual sense of identity, but life issimpler for their children.

In part this derives from the country’s self-contained geographicalcharacter, as being, together with Japan, one of the only two largecountries in the world without a land frontier. In part it is aconsequence of the distance between Australia and Europe or NorthAmerica, a matter of weeks at sea until long-distance air transportdeveloped in the 1950s. Australians are geographically isolated and

their national psyche has been deeply influenced by that fact. It hasimposed certain costs on them but in terms of national identity andcohesion it has been beneficial.

Another factor in the situation is the early prosperity that Australiaenjoyed. In 1900 it is commonly reckoned to have had the highestgross national product per head of any country. The United Statesvery quickly overtook it and some economic historians believe thatthis had occurred by the turn of the century, but the greater equalityin the distribution of incomes that prevailed in Australia gave theaverage citizen there a more comfortable standard of living than theaverage American enjoyed. Australians were well aware of their goodfortune in this respect, which they attributed to the hard work of their ancestors and themselves combined with the beneficial effectsof strong trade unions and sensible government policies. Australiawas the place where the eight-hour day was first established and




where the working man was thought to be better off than anywhereelse. This contributed to a strong sense of national pride, alreadyapparent when the country had been unified for less than a decade.Almost from the beginning, Australians have been somewhatchauvinistic; it was within the first five years of federation that ajournalist coined the oft-repeated phrase ‘temper democratic, biasoffensively Australian’.

Yet another factor was the cultural homogeneity that prevailed,Aborigines apart, from the earliest times until the first waves of non-British immigrants arrived in the late 1940s. Australians did not haveto surmount cultural cleavages like that between English- and French-Canadians or those between the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish. And,

as we have seen above, the postwar transition from culturalhomogeneity to a kind of melting pot has been relatively smooth,despite being surrounded by a penumbra of argument.

Though a large country, Australia has a relatively smallpopulation, and is therefore, like Canada, dependent upon alliesfor its defence. Until the winter of 1941–2 Australia relied on Britainand then, in a publicly-announced switch of dependency, ittransferred to reliance on the United States. Now, dependence on a

greater power is commonly assumed to be an unfortunate state of affairs. Latin American theorists of dependencia take this forgranted. Even when the standards of living of the countries involvedare similar, as in the case of Canada and the United States, citizensof the dependent nation tend to be slightly resentful about the matter.Australia is unusual in that resentment about dependency has beenalmost wholly absent. A leading student of Australian diplomacyhas said that the Australian case might ‘be presented as a persistent

national addiction to a rather profitable dependency, a consciousand even sometimes Machiavellian adoption by policy-makers of the easiest and least costly way out of assumed strategic dilemmas’(Bell, 1984, p. 2).

Dependence on Britain, not only for defence but also for capitalinvestment and immigrants, seemed natural to Australians for manydecades. The emotional bonds between Australia and Britain havealways been stronger than those between Canada and Britain, andthere were no serious tensions in the relationship before the SecondWorld War. At meetings of Commonwealth prime ministers betweenthe wars, there were repeated occasions on which Australia and NewZealand lined up with Britain on some issue of diplomacy or defencestrategy, while Canada, Ireland and South Africa took different views.The switch from Britain to America was occasioned not by anymarked difference of opinion, but by the simple fact that Britain was




incapable of defending Australia against the Japanese after the fallof Singapore in December 1941.

The policy of dependence has paid dividends in terms of defencecosts. These have rarely exceeded 3 per cent of gross national product,running at ‘about half the average British level and a third that of the United States’ (Bell, 1984, p. 247). As Australian policy-makershave always been keen to appear good allies, troops were sent tohelp the British fight the communist insurgents in Malaya and, later,to fight the Indonesians in Borneo. They were also sent to fightalongside the Americans in Korea and in Vietnam. The contrast withCanada’s policies is obvious. The Vietnam excursion provedcontroversial, particularly when it became clear that the Americans

could not win, but the other expeditions got general public support.Casualties were low, partly because military leaders saw to it thatlittle more than token forces were sent, but Australia got the approvalof its allies for being supportive and Australians got the satisfactionthat comes from feeling that they could be proud of having playedtheir part. As a people, they attach more importance than most totheir military activities, as witness the very moving Anzac Day paradesthat take place every year in every sizeable city. Defence policies can

therefore be said to have contributed in some measure to the ratherclear feelings of national pride and satisfaction that Australiansdisplay.

A final point is worth adding, even though it is somewhatspeculative. Australia has been characterized as ‘the lucky country’and, whether by luck or good management, it is a conspicuouslycontented society. As compared with British society, it is largely freefrom class conflicts and regional conflicts, has more optimism about

its economic future and has handled the reception of ethnic minoritiesamong its immigrants more successfully. As compared with Canadiansociety, it is free from linguistic cleavages and does not suffer fromthe feelings of resentment, mild or active, that French-Canadianshave about their defeat and subsequent treatment by the English;that some English-Canadians have about the constant concessionsthat (since the 1960s) their politicians have made to the French; andthat Canadians of all groups tend to feel about their cultural andeconomic domination by America.

There is also a more subjective factor. Australians have beendescribed by Max Harris as hedonistic existentialists, seeing noinherent purpose in life beyond the search for comfort, enjoymentand friendship. The British are less simple, being concerned abouttheir individual status at home and their collective status abroad,somewhat resentful that their earlier role as world leaders in many




fields of activity is slipping from them. The Canadians are less simpletoo. On the one hand, they are more religious than Australians andmore affected by a desire to do good in the world, whether bycollecting for charity, fighting environmental pollution or supportingpeace movements. On the other hand, they have accepted theAmerican belief that success involves acquiring more materialpossessions than their neighbours, together with the constant driveto make money that goes along with that. Australians like moneytoo, but they are not so willing to sacrifice their leisure for it, andthere are very few Australian equivalents of the compulsively house-proud Canadian wife, driving the second or third family car with abumper sticker reading ‘Born to Shop’. The life-aims of the average

Australian are essentially attainable aims, that most citizens haveattained or are within sight of attaining. Subjective factors of thiskind increase the satisfaction that people feel with their society andthus contribute, in some degree, to the integration of the Australiannation.

APPENDIX

Australian Government Reports relating to theintegration of immigrants, 1973–86

1973 Survey of Interpreting and Translating NeedsInquiry into the Departure of SettlersReports of Migrant Task Forces in each of the six states

1974 The Multicultural SocietyThe Language BarrierSurvey of Views of Local Government Authorities relating to

ImmigrationSettlement and Integration

1975 Population and AustraliaReport of the Inquiry into Schools of High Migrant Density

1976 A Decade of Migrant Settlement Report of the Committee on the Teaching of Migrant LanguagesAustralia and the Refugee Problem

1977 Australia as a Multicultural SocietyImmigration Policies and Australia’s Population: A Green Paper

Report of the Interdepartmental Working Party on Interpreters and TranslatorsFinal Report of the Royal Commission on Human Relationships

1978 Migrant Programs and Services1981 About Migrant Women: Statistical Profile, 19811982 Evaluation of Post-Arrival Programs and Services Multiculturalism

for all Australians: Our Developing Nationhood 1984 A National Language Policy




Serving Multicultural Australia: The Role of Broadcasting 1985 The Economic Effects of Immigration in Australia

Report of the Committee of Review of the Adult Migrant EducationProgram

1986 Ethnic Youth: Their Assets and AspirationsPatterns of Disadvantage among the Overseas Born and their

ChildrenResearch on Patterns of Social MobilityIntergovernmental Aspects of the Provision of Post-Arrival Services

of MigrantsDon’t Settle For Less: Report of the Committee for Stage I of the

Review of Migrant and Multicultural Programs and Services1987 National Policy on Languages






One reason for this is that such governments did not have theauthority necessary to collect taxes at the level needed to financesocial services. Tax collection in the colonies was always a hit-and-miss affair, with evasion as common as compliance. Decolonizationhas changed this and it would be difficult to argue that this is not achange for the better. Karl Deutsch was stating a simple truth whenhe said that ‘the nation-state performs more services than any othersort of government in the history of the world has performed before.It is the best arrangement the world now has for getting thingsdone’ (Deutsch, 1969, p. 33).

It is sometimes said that the organization of the world into nation-states has brought a curse that outweighs these benefits, that curse

being an increase in the incidence and intensity of war. Some scholars,indeed, have gone so far as to describe the state system as a warsystem. This proposition is, however, difficult to sustain. It is certainlynot clear that wars have been any more common since the rise of thenation-state than they were before. There have been tribal wars,trading wars, religious wars, dynastic wars and imperial warsthroughout recorded history. Wars since the middle of the nineteenthcentury have undoubtedly been much more violent and murderous

than they were previously, but the main reason for this is technologicalchange in the form of the development of more effective weapons. Itis by no means obvious that the state system can be blamed for modernwarfare.

Consideration of the main wars since the French Revolution doesnot suggest that most of them have been products of the state system.The Franco-Russian war would certainly fall into that category, aswould the recent war between Iraq and Iran. The First World War

could probably be put into the same category, but this is open toargument as one of its main causes was German fear that the RussianEmpire might expand westwards with the imminent collapse of theHapsburg Empire. However, as Holsti has pointed out, theNapoleonic Wars and the Second World War were brought about bythe attempt of dictators to replace the state system by new empires,not by rivalries produced by the state system itself (Holsti, 1985, pp.683–4). Since 1945, most wars have resulted from the decolonizationprocess, either directly as in the wars challenging French rule in Indo-China and Algeria, or indirectly, as fighting developed over theorganization of power in the immediate post-colonial period. Thefour Arab-Israeli wars fall into the latter category, as do the Nigerianand Congolese civil wars and the American war in Vietnam.

If nationalism has reshaped the political world and that reshapingis on balance probably beneficial, has the new system come to stay



223Conclusions

or is it merely a transitory phenomenon? Some scholars take theview that it is likely to be short-lived, maintaining that the growinginterdependence of states is making the state system obsolete.Regional associations are developing and the growth of transnational relations will inevitably, it is said, lead to thereplacement of the state system by some new kind of global politicalorganization.

The trouble with this line of argument is that it is permeated withwishful thinking. Those who advance it tend to be both shocked bythe economic gulf separating the industrialized states from the ThirdWorld and horrified by the possibility of nuclear war. There is abelief that the supercession of the nation-state system by wider and

eventually global forms of political organization is necessary toprovide a more equitable distribution of economic resources and toavert the danger of mass destruction by warfare. The belief isunderstandable and should be respected, but it does not follow thatwhat is desirable is also likely to occur.

The problems standing in the way of the supercession of the nation-state as the basic unit of political authority lie partly in the realm of institutions and partly in the realm of public loyalties. The

supranational organizations that have developed since 1945 are basedupon the support and co-operation of state governments. The UnitedNations, UNESCO, the Food and Agricultural Organization, theWorld Bank and the International Monetary Fund all work throughand support the state system because that system supports them.When state governments refuse to pay their contributions to the costof such agencies, there is practically nothing that the agencies can doabout it. Likewise, when state governments refuse to comply with

resolutions and directives issued by the agencies, the latter are revealedas impotent. They have no sanctions, because state governments havea monopoly of armed force in the world, with the exception of a fewprivate armies like the IRA. When the United Nations Organizationsends in troops to keep the peace, as in the Middle East, thecontingents making up the force can be ordered to leave at a moment’snotice by the local state governments; and in any case the troops areseriously weakened by the order not to use their weapons, even if fired upon. NATO is a much stronger organization because it is morevital to its member-states, but even so it is revealing to see that thecomponent armies within NATO use incompatible weapon systemsbecause the state governments concerned refuse to agree uponstandardization.

Quite apart from these considerations, there is no evidence at allof public loyalties being transferred from national governments to




supranational organizations. The most ambitious and successful of these organizations, the European Community, has been in operationfor over thirty years without attracting much loyalty from citizens.On the contrary, public pressures within the Community invariablytake the form of pressure on state governments to look after nationalinterests, even to the point of vetoing Community decisions if theseare found offensive. At the administrative level the Community hasa functioning supranational bureaucracy, but at the level of politicalloyalties and authority it remains only a little more than an arena fornegotiations between state governments. If the Community as suchwielded any sizeable amount of political authority it would long agohave reformed its Common Agricultural Policy. The European

Parliament, though now directly elected, has attracted little publicinterest and possesses little influence. Surveys do not even show asignificant build-up of friendly feelings among the various nationalpublics. The British public have warmed to Western Germany, butthe West Germans have not reciprocated this feeling. At the sametime, commercial rivalries between Britain and France have led theBritish public to rate France as second only to the Soviet Union as acountry that is disliked, while French views of Britain have declined

in parallel.The evidence from current politics all points in the same direction.

Possessive nationalism is very much stronger than incipientinternationalism. As Michael Howard has put it: ‘the withering awayof the nation-state at present remains a dream and, in the eyes of themasses of the peoples of the world, not even a beautiful dream’(Howard, 1984, p. 33; see also Miller, 1981, p. 198).

Minority nationalist movements

It is possible to argue that the growth of minority nationalistmovements in recent years poses a greater challenge to the nation-state than the growth of supranational organizations andcommitments. Certainly that growth has tended to invalidate manysocial science theories that previously held sway. From the 1850s tothe 1960s, most social theorists believed that the development of industrial society would be accompanied by the withering away of conflicts based on ethnic or cultural divisions. Marxists regardedsuch conflicts as a passing phase of capitalist society, essentiallyirrelevant to the class struggle and certain to be engulfed by classwarfare when the latter developed. Leading sociologists, includingTalcott Parsons, S.N.Eisenstadt and N.J.Smelser, subscribed to a



225Conclusions

diffusionist theory of social integration, according to which the cultureand values of the core community in a society are gradually diffusedthroughout the peripheral communities. Political scientists committedto ‘modernization theory’ believed that conflicts based on ethnicityand religion are less rational than economic conflicts and are likelyto fade into history as societies become wealthier and moreindustrialized.

It cannot be said that these theories were totally mistaken. Somecultural minorities have indeed merged with the majority so thattheir local cultures are now only of antiquarian interest. TheCumbrians and the Cornish in England are examples, along withnumerous other groups in western Europe. Political conflicts over

religion, so important in many European states in the nineteenthcentury, have faded into insignificance in most of them. The point isnot that the earlier theorists were entirely wrong but that theirpredictions were too sweeping.

In the 1970s one of the main political developments of the decadewas the emergence or re-emergence of nationalist movements inperipheral areas of modern states. The Scots and the Welsh in Britain,the Quebecois in Canada, the Basques in Spain, the Bretons and

Corsicans in France were only the most conspicuous examples. In1976 there were actually nationalist agitations in five different partsof France, for so long known as the ‘one and indivisible republic’. Itbecame clear that ethnic and cultural loyalties among minoritycommunities within the state have greater survival power than hadhitherto been thought. They may be half-submerged for generations,but still blossom out if the circumstances favour them.

In the face of these developments, some scholars have predicted

not only the continued existence but also the success of minoritynationalist movements. In a book entitled The Quest for Self-Determination, Ronen has argued that the logical implication andprobable consequence of accepting the principle of self-determinationis the splintering of existing states into smaller units based uponethnic communities. These smaller units may not (and should not)be sovereign, because wider, perhaps worldwide, organizations areneeded for economic planning and the distribution of economicresources. Nevertheless, the modern nation-state is likely to disappearas the main unit of political organization and to be replaced by aworld order composed of ‘hundreds, maybe thousands, of social andpolitical frameworks’ (Ronen, 1979, p. 119).

The case studies examined in the above chapters do not give muchsupport to this view. It is clear that, as was suggested in Chapter 6,minority nationalist movements need both a sense of cultural




distinctiveness and a significant material grievance or opportunityfor material gain. Cultural distinctiveness is needed to produceromantic nationalists who keep the spirit of nationalism burning,while material grievances or opportunities are needed to engenderwidespread support for the cause. Welsh nationalism, which has thecultural factor without the material factor, seems condemned to be acause supported by only a small minority of the Welsh people. Thesecessionist movement in Western Australia, which had the materialfactor without the cultural factor, gained mass support very quickly,but died a natural death with equal speed when the grievance wasremedied by larger federal grants.

Scottish nationalism, which survived for generations as a small

and romantic movement, flared into a mass movement only whenevidence of British economic mismanagement, combined with theprospect of massive revenues from North Sea oil, convinced electorsthat Scotland could be richer if it were self-governing. The fiascoof the devolution referendum, combined with the realization thatthe English were never going to relinquish control of North Sea oil,resulted in a dramatic collapse of electoral support. In the 1980sScottish nationalism has almost (though not quite) reverted to the

status of a romantic movement. The history of Quebecoisnationalism bears some similarities to the history of Scottishnationalism. Its cultural basis is much stronger, because of thelinguistic cleavage in Canadian society, but it did not attract masssupport until the Quiet Revolution produced grievances about thecontrol of economic life in the province. With the grievances nowlargely satisfied, the prospect of Quebecois secession from Canadahas become much more remote.

The case studies have also produced three other examples of incipient or actual nationalist movements, all quite different. One isthe incipient discontent of people in the western provinces of Canada,who have economic grievances but no cultural distinctiveness. Theparties that articulate this discontent have never got off the groundin electoral terms and the reason for this is quite simple. UnlikeWestern Australia, which was one of the poorer Australian states inthe early 1930s, the western provinces of Canada are more prosperousthan most of the eastern provinces. The possibility of being evenbetter off is reflected in public opinion polls and media grumbling,but is not a sufficient basis for a secessionist movement of anystrength.

Another and totally different example is the Irish republicanmovement, which I take to be a case of romantic nationalism turnedinto tragedy. The Irish republicans had material grievances in 1919,



227Conclusions

but these came to an end with Irish independence in 1921. That, allthese years later, people should be willing to murder others and risktheir own lives for a romantic dream, that has no serious prospect of realization, is a terrible long-term consequence of the decision tostage the Easter Rising as a way of inflaming opinion by creatingmartyrs. It is appalling that the IRA should still be in the business of assassination, but sad to learn that young women convicted of terrorism should give as their reason that they were avenging thedeath or imprisonment of a grandfather or great-uncle. It is sad alsothat young men should starve themselves to a painful death in theattempt to turn themselves into martyrs. The modern IRA and SinnFein are pathological examples of nationalism, at one level disgusting

but at another level deeply pathetic.In my view the Ulster Unionists, in their various organizational

manifestations (the Official Unionists, the Democratic Unionists, theOrange Order, the Ulster Volunteer Force, etc.), should also beregarded as constituting a nationalist movement. They are notnormally so regarded, because they have always wanted to preservethe political order rather than to change it. But they have all thebasic ingredients of a nationalist movement: a distinctive culture to

maintain, a sense of superiority over their rivals and enemies, a setof material interests to defend. Their nationalism is possessive ratherthan aspiring in character and is all the stronger because of this. Solong as they remain united in their main objectives, as they showevery sign of doing, they are in no danger of defeat. In all truth theycould afford to be more generous towards the Catholic minority andmore willing to let Catholic politicians have a junior role in thegovernment of the province, but, for understandable reasons, they

show no signs of changing in these ways.It will be noted that of these seven movements the UlsterProtestants alone have achieved their main objective. The reasonfor this is that the other six have favoured constitutional changesand in any well-run state the tactics available to the government tomaintain the system against proposals for radical change are veryconsiderable. It is to this question of system maintenance that wemust now turn.

System maintenance

A government faced with a discontented minority has various waysof alleviating the discontent so that it does not endanger the stabilityof the political system. In the first place, it can offer greater




representation to the minority. As I have argued elsewhere (see Birch,1971), the political representation of minorities has four logicallydistinct forms. Symbolic representation occurs when flags, anthemsor sporting teams reflect the presence of minorities within the nationalsociety. Functional representation occurs when minorities appointrepresentatives to government agencies or organize pressure groupsthat secure access to political decision-makers. Elective representationexists when the electoral system enables minority interests to bearticulated in legislative assemblies. Microcosmic representation issecured when minorities are reflected, in rough proportion to theirsize, in the staffing of public services.

The United Kingdom has gone much further than Canada or

Australia in giving its cultural minorities symbolic representation inthe design of the national flag, in numerous official ceremonies, inthe naming of regiments and in the field of international sports. Allthree countries afford functional representation to their minoritiesthrough a myriad of agencies and communication channels, thoughthe indigenous peoples of Canada and Australia were somewhat leftout of these arrangements until recently. In respect of electiverepresentation, the United Kingdom is unique among these countries,

and conceivably in the world, in its practice of deliberately distortingthe electoral system so as to give proportionately more seats to theIrish, Welsh and Scots than to the English. Microcosmic representationis the most difficult of the four types to arrange, because the normalprocedures of appointment and promotion on the basis of merit mayhave to be distorted to achieve it. Nevertheless, governments canintervene if faced with protests from minorities, as the Canadiangovernment did in order to ensure that more francophones got into

the federal public service.Another tactic of system maintenance is decentralization. Quebechas been given more and more independence of federal control, aspointed out in Chapter 8, so as to blunt the force of the complaintsthat successive Quebec governments have made about the federalsystem. Scotland and, much later, Wales have been given largemeasures of administrative decentralization to keep their politicianshappy. Canadian Indians have been given extensive powers of self-management on Indian reserves. The British government showed inthe 1970s that it was willing to establish Scottish and Welsh assembliesif this was really necessary to prevent the further growth of thenationalist parties in those countries.

Yet another tactic is to offer financial subsidies of one kind oranother to regions that show signs of disaffection. Public expendituresin Britain are deliberately planned so as to spend proportionately



229Conclusions

more money in Scotland and (to a much smaller extent) Wales thanin England. Quebec has repeatedly been given subsidies for decliningindustries and special grants for economic development, though itdoes not need them as much as the Atlantic provinces need them.Western Australia’s threat to secede was bought off by a radicallynew formula for paying federal grants to the states. Materialgrievances, so necessary to gain mass support for a minoritynationalist movement, can usually be alleviated by the right kind of bribe.

Finally, the referendums discussed in Chapters 7 and 8 show thata carefully managed referendum can take the wind out of the sails of a secessionist movement. A complicated set of proposals is almost

certain to weaken the support for radical change by creatinguncertainty in the minds of electors. Warnings about possible futuredifficulties can have the same effect. A requirement that 40 or 50 percent of the whole electorate have to support change for this to countcan weight the balance in favour of the status quo. Extending thereferendum to the rest of the country could be even more conservativein its effects.

With all these weapons in its armoury, a national government

ought to be able to head off a secessionist threat by a minority. Indeed,the Scottish and Quebecois cases are good examples of this. WhenMichels wanted to show that oligarchy was an inevitablecharacteristic of sizeable political parties, he took the German SocialistParty as an example because it was the most democratic party heknew of. If that party was oligarchic, he maintained, all parties of equivalent scale were likely to be or become oligarchic (Michels,[1915] 1958). By the same logic of ‘the most extreme case’, it is now

suggested that the failures of the Scottish and Quebecois nationalistmovements to carry the day in the 1979 and 1980 referendumsdemonstrate the inherent weakness of such movements when it comesto the crunch. Scotland and Quebec were the most plausible of thevarious candidates for political autonomy (if not for fullindependence) in the 1970s; their nationalist parties facedgovernments more liberal than most; but when it came to the pointthey could not persuade a majority of electors to support them.

The fact is that in the contemporary world the great majority of national governments are too powerful for minority nationalistmovements to have much real chance of success. Governments controlthe police and the armed forces, control the national exchequer,determine trading relations with other states, have an immenseamount of patronage at their disposal and have the capacity to exertgreat influence over public opinion. They have all the tactics of system




maintenance available to them and they should be able to maintainthe integrity of their state if they want to do so. The example of EastPakistan (now Bangladesh) does not invalidate this conclusion,because circumstances there were altogether exceptional. It wasseparated from the rest of Pakistan by two thousand miles of Indianterritory and the secessionists won because they had both diplomaticand military support from the Indian government.

Plural societies

If the present state system is likely to continue for the foreseeable

future, so are the problems arising from the existence of pluralsocieties governed by a single state government. Canadian liberalslike Pierre Trudeau and Ramsay Cook have tended to make light of these, as noted in Chapter 8, but their sentiments can be regarded asthose of Canadians making the best of a difficult situation. The worldhas too many examples of bloodshed and suffering caused bycommunal conflict within states for it to be reasonable to regardethnic or religious plurality as other than intrinsically difficult and

potentially dangerous.In Northern Ireland there is no foreseeable end to the violent conflict

between Catholics and Protestants. In Cyprus the Greek-Cypriots andTurkish-Cypriots have been unable to find a way of living togetherpeacefully. In Lebanon the precarious balance between religious groupsthat kept the country more-or-less peaceful from 1941 to 1975 brokedown in the latter year into a civil war that continues to flare upintermittently, with the Christians, the Sunni Muslims, the Shi’ite

Muslims and the Druze all maintaining their own armed forces. In SriLanka fighting broke out between the Tamils and the Singhalese in1986 and was stopped only by the arrival of the Indian army. In Fijithe democratic regime was overthrown in 1987 by a military coupmotivated by native Fijian resentment of Indian settlers. In India Sikhnationalists assassinated the Prime Minister in 1984 and have murderedover 300 Hindus since then. Nigeria and Zaire have experienced civilwars resulting from tribal conflict. In Spain Basque nationalists havemurdered scores of Spaniards. In France Breton nationalists have blownup the Palace of Versailles. In Wales militant supporters of the WelshLanguage Society have set fire to scores of holiday homes owned byEnglishmen. The list could be extended but these examples are enoughto make the point.

The three countries taken as case studies in this book have avoidedcivil war, except in the case of the Irish insurrection against British



231Conclusions

rule. What lessons can be drawn from their experiences of theproblems of national integration, as examined in the previous threechapters?

One clear lesson is that linguistic cleavages are apt to be themost permanent and perhaps the most difficult of the divisivefactors. John Stuart Mill was not stupid when he suggested, inthe remarks quoted in Chapter 4, that democratic governmentcould not easily flourish in countries that lack a common language.Canada has been a difficult country to govern throughout its life,with linguistic issues causing intermittent but never-endingpolitical conflict. The Canadian federal government is in manyways weaker than the national governments of either Britain or

Australia; and if the agreements reached at the Meech Lakeconference in 1987 are passed as constitutional amendments itwill become weaker still.

Secondly, the fact that plural societies have the potential to producesocial conflict raises questions about immigration policy. Agovernment that diversifies its society by authorizing immigrationthat will have that effect is necessarily creating a potential socialproblem. The three countries on which this book has focused have

differed in the goals, the styles and the consequences of theirimmigration policies. The Australians, being anxious to populatetheir large and remote territory, have had a collectivist approach toimmigration. The aims of national policy have been publicly debated;the government has given assisted passages to large blocks of immigrants from selected countries; and the government has alsoaccepted the responsibility of providing services, often includingtemporary housing, to the immigrants.

The Canadians have had an individualistic approach to the matter.They discriminate between individual applicants on the basis of criteria that have rarely been the subject of public debate and havenot always been publicly known, but have been largely determinedby the views of the political and bureaucratic élite about what is inthe Canadian public interest. They have not accepted anygovernmental responsibility for providing services to immigrants,though sponsorship of immigrants by families or by churchorganizations has been encouraged.

The British have hardly had an immigration policy per se, buthave let it be largely determined by foreign policy. Before 1905, Britainhad an open door to the world; between 1905 and 1962, citizens of Commonwealth countries had the right of entry while others weresubject to restrictions; since 1973, citizens of European Communitycountries have had this right while Commonwealth citizens have




been restricted. Between 1962 and 1973 the government departmentresponsible for immigration gave the unhappy impression of beingforced into adopting hasty policies by the pressure of public opinionand the evidence of mounting social problems created by immigrationfrom the Commonwealth. Until 1981 the laws regarding nationalityand citizenship in Britain were exceptionally untidy; and though theBritish Nationality Act of 1981 has improved the situation in thisrespect a constitutional lawyer has said that ‘many of its provisionsare so obscurely drafted that they are unfit to be in the statute-book’(Lester, 1985, pp. 279–80).

As will probably be clear, my own conclusion is that immigrationpolicies ought to be publicly discussed so that governments can be

sure that they are acceptable to a majority of citizens. Of the threecountries, Australia clearly comes out best in terms of this criterion.This may seem a paradoxical conclusion in view of the internationalembarrassment caused to Australians by the White Australia policy.However, embarrassment is a much less serious problem than socialconflict. The advantage of the Australian practice of makingimmigration a public issue and having a minister in charge of it isthat Australian governments have been able to liberalize their policies

with some confidence that the host society will accept and welcomethe newcomers. This is now being put to a test by the acceptance of over 100,000 Vietnamese refugees with uncertain skills and linguisticabilities, but so far there is no evidence that the Vietnamese influxwill cause trouble, as distinct from certain local tensions.

The need to integrate immigrants with different culturalbackgrounds raises questions about language training andmulticulturalism. It was asserted in Chapter 5 that governments

have a duty to instruct immigrants in the main language of theirnew society and the employment difficulties experienced by Muslimwomen in Britain serve to underline this point. The question of teaching what Australians call ‘community languages’ is one aboutwhich generalization is difficult. I do not believe that immigrantscan reasonably be said to have a right to have their children taughtthe language of the country they themselves have voluntarily left.In Canada the existence of two official languages effectivelydetermines what will be taught as a second language in the greatmajority of schools, though Ukrainian is taught in some schools inAlberta and Saskatchewan. In Britain membership of the EuropeanCommunity and close proximity to the Continent make French andGerman the obvious candidates; a few schools offer Urdu as analternative but it would be difficult to establish a case for makingthis or Hindi generally available. In Australia geographical



233Conclusions

remoteness means that a wider choice of languages can sensibly beoffered; and official reports on this matter have been outlined inChapter 9. The general conclusion must be that the choice of asecond language is best determined by pragmatic considerationsrather than by statements of principle.

This leads into the more general question of whether, whenassimilation is either inappropriate or impossible, the multiculturalmodel is more or less advantageous for society than the older modelof the melting pot. Sociologists differ not only on the relativeadvantages of these models or ideals but also on how far they arerealistic categories. Some have argued that the idea of a melting potis a myth and that in practice the United States is just as much a

cultural mosaic as Canada (see, for instance, Anderson and Frideres,1981, p. 107). I am not persuaded by this argument. Having lived inboth countries, I believe that there is a distinctively American culture,widely shared, that is definitely more than the sum of numerousethnic contributions; but I do not find a distinctively Canadian cultureequivalent to this. Though the two categories are far from watertight,I think that there is a useful distinction to be drawn between themodel of the melting pot and that of cultural pluralism.

I would add that I think American society and Australian societyapproximate to the melting pot model, whereas Canadian society ismore substantially multicultural; and if we think in terms of idealsrather than models I prefer the melting pot ideal. Cultural pluralismis agreeable to immigrants while they are settling in to a new society,but I do not see much advantage in passing it on to succeedinggenerations. It divides cultural energies and talents instead of unitingthem (see Wangenheim, 1966, pp. 84–6); and it may tend to

perpetuate ethnic stratification. We should not ignore the conclusionof two Canadian sociologists that ‘the more a minority group turnsin upon itself and concentrates on making its position strong, themore it costs its members in terms of their chances to make theirway as individuals in the larger system’ (Vallee and Shulman, 1969,p. 95).

The British case is complex, because there is no possibility of creating a melting pot out of the English, Indian, Pakistani andWest Indian cultures. The alternatives are assimilation or culturalpluralism, with no middle way. It is too early to say what patternwill emerge, though one might perhaps expect assimilation for someof the better-educated blacks and Indians, cultural pluralism forthe others.

The cultural cleavages between the indigenous peoples and thesettlers of Canada and Australia are obviously too great for anything




but cultural pluralism to be feasible. Attempts to assimilate nativeIndians and Aborigines have failed and the consequence has all toooften been that groups of these people live an impoverished existenceon the margins of white society, having poor jobs and housingconditions, cut off from their traditional culture, sometimes takingto drink. Indians and Aborigines still living on reserves are generallyin a happier position and in both countries government policy nowrecognizes this.

In Canada the attempt to give Indians some form of self-government has failed for the time being. However, governmentpolicies have now retreated from the ideal of assimilation and areaimed at encouraging native life on the reserves in so far as this is

feasible. The slowness with which Indian land claims are beingsettled illustrates the practical difficulties involved, but the will isthere.

The position of Aborigines is worse than that of Canadian Indians,for three main reasons. One is that their treatment by white settlerswas simply worse than the treatment the Indians received. Anotheris that the cultural gap between the Aborigines and the white man ismuch greater than that between Indians and whites. Aborigines have

not adapted to the white economy as well as a few—but neverthelessa significant few—Indians have done. Nor do Aborigines seem tounderstand white ways so well. An Australian commission of inquirywas established in late 1987 to investigate the deaths by suicide of sixty-nine Aborigines while in police custody. The report of the inquiryhas not yet been published, but it is widely believed that the deathswere genuine suicides caused by despair and culture shock. Nothinglike this has happened in Canada.

The other bleak fact for Aborigines is that the Australian outbackis less hospitable than its Canadian equivalent. In many areas Indiantribes can provide much of their food by hunting and fishing, butvery few Aborigines could now do this in the wild. The move ‘backto the country’ in Australia, though desirable on social and culturalgrounds, is nevertheless a move to living on relief payments in ruralareas instead of doing so in cities. The Aborigines, and to a lesserextent the Canadian Indians, are historical losers. Nothing can alterthat sad fact; the most that the white majorities can do is to showunderstanding and offer help to mitigate the practical problems thatthese indigenous peoples face.

Another vital aspect of integration, besides the social, is theeconomic aspect, which has both regional and ethnic dimensions. Inregional terms Australia is the most integrated of the three countriesand Canada the least integrated. In Australia the wealthiest state



235Conclusions

(Victoria) is only about 14 per cent richer than the poorest (Tasmania).In the United Kingdom England is about 32 per cent richer thanNorthern Ireland. In Canada the three wealthiest provinces (Ontario,Alberta and British Columbia) are about 45 per cent richer than thefour poorest (Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick andPrince Edward Island).

The ethnic dimension of economic integration can best beillustrated by the imaginary matrix suggested in Chapter 4. In anyadvanced society there are horizontal divisions between people inprofessional and managerial occupations, shopkeepers and other self-employed people, skilled workers and unskilled workers. If communaldivisions are represented by near-vertical lines superimposed on the

horizontal lines, the crucial test is to discover by empirical enquiryhow nearly vertical the communal lines are. If the lines of communaldivision are far from vertical, the community with a preponderanceof less skilled occupations will tend to feel resentful about the structureof society. This is obviously the case with members of the indigenouspeoples in Canada and Australia who have moved into the cities tocompete with the white man. It is true of Catholics in NorthernIreland, as explained in Chapter 7. It is true of Afro-Caribbean groups

in English cities. They may well be much better off in London orBirmingham than they would be in the West Indies, but after a fewyears in Britain life in the West Indies ceases to be such a relevantpoint of reference for them as the life and incomes of their whiteneighbours. The economic achievements of Asians in Britain are morevaried, as noted earlier, and their attitudes are also more difficult togeneralize about.

In Canada there is evidence of a fairly clear hierarchy of economic

achievement among ethnic groups, as reported in Chapter 8. Asianand Afro-Caribbean immigrants are, next to the indigenous peoples,at the bottom of this hierarchy, but there have been no public signsof alienation parallel to those among blacks in Britain. Canada ishelped in this respect by its relatively low unemployment rate, lackof decaying inner-city areas, better housing and greater space; thoughit is also fair to observe that a lower level of political activity and thedifferent organization of the mass media mean that discontent ismore likely to go unnoticed in Canada than in Britain. In Australiathe economic integration of immigrants has been remarkablysuccessful, as reported in Chapter 9, though the Vietnamese constitutea partial exception to this generalization.

The third aspect of national integration, namely the politicalaspect, can take any of the four forms outlined earlier, namelyassimilation, accommodation, ethnic or regional conflict and








The subject is of increasing importance. Throughout the ThirdWorld, new states have recently embarked upon processes of nation-building and national integration that are inherently difficult becauseof the ethnic heterogeneity of so many Third World states. Manyadvanced industrial states, though fairly well integrated, are nowfacing new problems because of the arrival of new types of immigrants. The United Kingdom, Canada and Australia are notalone in having diversified their populations considerably in the pastthree decades. West Germany and France have done so too, invitingforeigners in to help their labour shortages in the years of rapideconomic growth and now finding that the new residents create socialproblems in a period of slow growth. Other countries have diversified

their populations by accepting refugees. Sweden, for example, nowhas a minority of Palestinians, who will presumably stay there becausethey have no state of their own to go to. There is no probable end tothis process of ethnic diversification. The constant improvement of world communications tends to increase the flow of migrants, whilepolitical upheavals tend to maintain the flow of refugees. Theproblems of national integration and nationalism discussed in thisbook are therefore certain to remain on the political agenda for the

foreseeable future and may be of increasing importance in the yearsto come.



239

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248

Abella, I 167Aboriginal languages 200Aborigines 51, 58, 61–2, 189, 190,

208–14, 233–4Acton, Lord 26–30, 181Affirmative action 55, 57Aitken, Don 204, 206, 207

Algeria 73Alsacians 26American blacks 47, 54–5American nationalism 7, 13–14, 22–3American religiosity 43Andalucians 26Anderson, A.B. 181, 233Andrews, J.V. 155Anglo-Irish Agreement 109Arafat, Yasser 5

Armenian nationalists 70Asch, M. 174Assimilation

in general 49–51of coloured minorities in Britain 126–7of immigrants in Canada 169–70of Canadian Indians 173–4of immigrants in Australia 194, 196,

200–2, 206–8Ataturk, Kemal 24

Australian defense policy 217–18Australian national identity 216–19Australian nationalism 183–4 Bangladesh 65, 73, 230Banton, Michael 124, 128Barnard, F.M. 14, 18Basques 26, 48Basque nationalism 131, 230Belgium 11, 42, 45–6, 73, 152

Berlin, Isaiah 17, 18Bell, Coral 217, 218Biafra 73Bilingualism 44–6, 144–5, 150–6Bilingualism & Biculturalism, Royal

Commission on 152–4, 170Blainey, Geoffrey 191–2, 193

Blais, André 161Blishen, B. 158Bonaparte, Napoleon 22, 41Bourassa, Henri 149–51, 152Breton language 11, 44–5Breton nationalism 131, 230Breton, R. 171

Bretons 26, 48Breuilly, J. 25British Broadcasting Corporation 126–7British nationalism 134–7British North America Act 138–41,

144–5Brookman, A. 210Brown, A.J. 82Brown, C. 130, 119, 124Brotz, H. 171

Brunet, Michael 157Bulpitt, J. 81, 114, 129Burke, Edmund 54Butler, David 215 Campaign Against Racial

Discrimination 115Canadian Indians 51, 54, 58, 61–2, 64,

233–4Canadian national identity 180–2

Canadian nationalism 180–2Carson, Edward 100Cashmore, Ernest 125Catalans 26Cavour, Camillo 97Chaiton, A. 181Chiang Kai Shek 24Chubb, Basil 101Claiborne, L. 115Clark, C.M.H. 209

Clift, D. 158Cobban, Alfred 26Colston Report 199–200Commission for Racial Equality 115,

124Commonwealth Grants Commission

188

Index






Howard, Michael 224Human rights 53–4 Immigrants, services for

in Britain 123, 134in Australia 198–200in general 232–3

Immigration policiesin Britain 112–14, 231–2in Canada 167–9, 231–2in Australia 189–96, 208, 231–2

India 25, 33, 44, 72Indian immigrants in Britain 59Indigenous peoples, claims

and rights of 60–2

in Canada 172–8, 233–4in Australia 189, 190, 208–14, 233–4

Individual rights 53Innis, H.R. 153Internal colonialism 67–8, 79, 82–3International Monetary Fund 71International system 71Inuit peoples 51Ireland, before 1916 78, 96–8Irish Civil War 100–1

Irish independence 101–2Irish insurrection 99–100Irish language 80Irish nationalism 97–9, 102Irish Republican Army 99–101, 107–8,

226–7Islamic nationalism 23–4Italian nationalism 5, 22, 26

Jaensch, D. 206

Jewish minority in Britain 50 Jinnah, Mohammed Ali 23–4 Jones, F.L. 201–2, 203 Jones, R.T. 87 Jones, Thomas 100 Jupp, James 196, 199, 204 Kallen, E. 171–2Kedourie, Elie 4, 7, 26, 30–4, 181Kelley, G.A. 19, 20

Kelly, J. 201–2, 203, 204, 205Kringas, P. 55Keon-Cohen, B. 211Kenyatta, Jomo 23Kerner Report 47Khomeini, the Ayatollah Ruhollah 24Kossults, Louis 22Krasnick, M. 141

Language teaching in Britain 134 in Australia 198–200in general 232–3

Laponce, Jean 44, 45–6, 150–1

Layton-Henry, Z. 113, 114, 117, 118,127, 128Lebanon 230Lester, Anthony 112, 232Levesque, Rene 161, 165Levitt, J. 148Lewis, Saunders 33–4Lijphart, Arend 48, 74Lindberg, L. 14Linguistic cleavages and issues

in general 10–11, 44–7, 55, 232–3in Britain 78–80, 87–90, 150in Ireland 98, 101in Canada 143–56, 159–60, 163–7in Australia 196, 198–200

Lloyd, George 100Lo Bianco Report 199–200London, H.I. 190–1Lyons, F.S.L. 99

MacGreil, M. 132MacLennan, Hugh 178Madison, James 29Manitoba Schools Act 146–7Mansergh, N. 97Manuel, F.E. 18Malaysia 49Martin, Jean 197, 203Marx, Karl 38Mazzini, Giuseppe 5, 18, 22, 97

McAllister, Ian 127, 203, 204, 205McCrone, D. 14McDonald, N. 181McEachran, F. 18McNeill, R. 103McRae, Kenneth 45, 48McRoberts, K. 157–9Meinecke, Friedrich 13, 14, 22Meisel, John 151Melting pot model

in general 43, 47, 49, 51, 233in America 47, 170, 233in Britain 118 in Canada 169–70in Australia 197–8, 201, 208, 233

Michels, R. 229Mill, J.S. 39, 46–7, 74, 231Miller, J.D.B. 224



251Index

Minogue, Kenneth 40–1Minority nationalist movements 63–72,

224–30, see also specific examplesMinority rights 52–62

Modernization theory 225Morchain, J. 161Morgan, Kenneth 86Moxon-Browne, E. 105–6, 110, 111,

131, 132Moynihan, D.P. 47Multiculturalism

in Canada 170–2in Australia 196–201, 205in general 233

Muslim immigrantsin Britain 124–5in Australia 193–4

Nairn, Tom 68–9Napoleon, see BonaparteNasser, General 24National Front 117–18Nationalism

definition of 4–7

theories of 13–24critics of 26–35advantages of 31–3, 221–2among cultural minorities 63–74,

224–30see also specific nationalist movements

Nationalism and the nation-state 221–4Nation-building 37, 40–6Nation-state

benefits of 221–2

future of 222–30NATO 71, 223Nigeria 9, 48, 65, 73, 74Norrie, K. 141Northern Ireland 9–10, 80, 102–11Northern Ireland Parliament 80, 104–5,

106–7Nyerere, Julius 24 O’Brien, C.C. 106

O’Cuiv, B. 101Ornstein, M.D. 162 Pakistan 24Pakistani immigrants in Britain 59Palacky, Frantisec 22Parti Quebecois 5, 161–5Pearse, Patrick 98–9

Pearson, Lester 152Perrault, Antonio 157Phizacklea, A. 122Pinard, M. 161

Plaid, Cymru 33–4, 85, 87–90Plural societies 230–37Poland 30Polish nationalism 69Police and ethnic minorities 117–18, 126,

128–30, 211–12, 233–4, 236–7Political demonstrations 117–18, 128–9Political representation of minorities

in general 228in Britain 127–8, 228, 236

in Australia 203–8, 213Political representation of regionsin Britain 79, 228in Canada 139, 142–3, 179in Australia 184–5

Ponting, J.R. 177Porter, John 55, 171, 179Posgate, D. 157–9Positive discrimination 55, 57Price, Charles 192, 194–5

Pringle, J.M.D. 206–7Przeworski, A. 74 Quebec referendum 164–5Quebecois nationalism 5, 37, 66, 72, 73,

156–66, 226, 236Quiet Revolution 157–9 Race relations

in Britain 114–30

in Australia 211Rastafarians 124–6Referendums

in Scotland and Wales 94–5in Quebec 164–5and system maintenance 229

Regush, N.M. 160Religious cleavages

in general 43–4in Ireland 96–111

in Britain 124–6 in Canada 146–7in Australia 193–4, 207–8Renan, Ernest 6Richards, L. 204Riel, Louis 145–6Robarts, S.C. 142Robespierre, Maximilien 9Romantic nationalism 67, 69–70, 226–7




Ronen, Dov 225Rose, Richard 78, 83, 86, 97, 110–11Rothschild, J. 69Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 14–16, 20, 21

Royal Ulster Constabulary 106, 108Rydon, Joan 186 Sanders, D. 176Santamaria, B.A. 206Scarman, Robert 122, 129Schwartz, Mildred 182Scott, Roger 108Scottish national identity 81, 85–6Scottish National Party 87–95

Scottish nationalism 4, 67, 72, 73, 86–7,226Secession

justifications of 63–6conditions for 66–72

Self-determination 23, 27Seton-Watson, H. 25Shafer, Boyd 24, 25Shulman, N. 233Sikh immigrants

in Britain 59in Canada 59Sikh nationalism 44, 72, 131, 230Simeon, Richard 141Sinn Fein 98, 104, 106Smiley, Donald 156Smith, D.J. 122South Africa 50Soviet mobilization 10, 36–7South Moluccan nationalists 64, 71–2

Soviet Union 9, 42, 46, 74Sri Lanka 72, 230State-building 8Stevenson, M. 162Stormont, see Northern Ireland

ParliamentStudlar, D. 127, 128Sudan 43Supranational organisations 71, 223–4Swann Report 121

Switzerland 45, 73, 152Symbolsof cultural difference 79, 80of national identity 9, 40–1

System maintenance 72–4, 227–30 Tamils 25, 72Tardivel, V-P 156

Taylor, Charles 158Television

and minority nationalist movements70, 71–2

and Canadian national identity 181and multiculturalism in Australia198–9

Teune, H. 74Tomlinson, Sally 122–3Torres Straits Islanders 208Transnational relations 223–4Troper, H. 167Trudeau, Pierre 140, 154–5, 161, 165,

170, 174, 181, 230

Ulster Catholics 105–11Ulster nationalism 102–3, 227Ulster Plantation 97Ulster Protestants 100–11Ulster Unionists 104, 227United Nations Organization 223 de Valera, Eamon 101Vallee, F.G. 233

Van Dyke, Vernon 53de Vault, C. 161Verney, Douglas 146, 147Villeneuve, J-M-R 156–7, 161, 178 Waddell, E. 151Wangenheim, E. 233Ward, Russel 189, 191Wardhaugh, R. 153, 154Weinfeld, M. 171

Welsh language 11, 44, 67, 78, 80, 81, 85,87, 89–90Welsh Language Society 67, 85, 89, 230Welsh nationalism 33–4, 47, 67, 73,

86–90, 226Western alienation in Canada 141–3, 226Western Australia, proposed secession

65–6, 73, 187–8, 226West Indian immigrants

in Britain 113–14, 119–30

in Canada 168–9Whitaker, Reg 168White Australia policy 189–91Wiley, N.F. 55Williams, P.M. 162Williams, T.D. 100Wilson, J. 175Wilson, P. 203, 205



253Index

Wilson, Woodrow 23Woodburn, J.B. 102–3World Bank 71

Young, Crawford 64

Youth Training Scheme 123, 129

Zaire 230Zimmern, Alfred 26

Zionism 72

Documents

Anthony Birch - Nationalism and National Integration (1989)