I met Tom Denning in an earlier life. In the early 1970s, when I was the junior history fellow of Magdalen College Oxford, he was an honorary fellow. Most honorary fellows were content to smile benignly at the institution from a great distance, but Denning was different. He actually turned up and talked to people. One day we had an argument about some case that he had just decided, which had hit the front pages. I told him that I planned one day to go to the bar. He said: `A big mistake. Stick to history.' I didn't take his advice. But this evening, I shall make amends, and stick to history. I shall however start with a proposition of law, the only one that you will hear all evening. Article 1 of the Act of Union of 1707 provides that `the two kingdoms of Scotland and England shall on the 1st of May and for ever after be united into one kingdom by the name of Great Britain.' These words marked the birth, three centuries ago, of Great Britain. The United Kingdom had longer to wait. A century after the Act of Union with Scotland, Article 1 of the Act of Union with Ireland in 1800 provided that the Kingdom should henceforth be known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Uniquely among the nation-states of Europe, the British state was founded on two legislative unions, one between England and Scotland which has lasted more than three centuries and was until recently remarkably successful, the other between England and Ireland, which was a tragic failure from the outset and broke up in less than half that time. It takesmore than statutes tomake a nation andmore than statutes to unmake one. The history of Irish nationalism was already a very long one when the union with Ireland broke up in 1922. It dated back certainly to the sixteenth century and arguably beyond that. By comparison, Scottish nationalism has a much shorter history. As a serious political movement, it dates only from the 1960s. Yet today it commands a majority of the Scottish Parliament created in 1999. The rise of powerful internal nationalisms within the territory of ancient
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Mar 11, 2015
Charles Read 
Open Access