The Wilson government, the rise of nationalism and the road to the royal commission on the constitution, 1966-1968

Bibliographic Data

ID12586117
AuthorsAdam Evans (0000-0003-4150-1517, Cardiff University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume39
Issue1
Pages55-77
Publication date2024-07-22
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueContemporary British History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1361-9462 • E-ISSN: 1743-7997
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13619462.2024.2382116
OpenAlexW4400928922
LanguageEN
References cited11

The Royal Commission on the Constitution was a rare moment when the UK’s territorial governance was considered as a whole. Established as a response to the rise in electoral support for the SNP and Plaid Cymru in the mid to late 1960s, the Commission was seen by some at the time and others since of being a classic example of Harold Wilson’s claim that Commissions ‘take minutes and last years’ and a cynical attempt to kick the constitutional ‘can down the road’. This article is not an analysis of the Royal Commission’s findings, rather it offers an examination of why it came to be established. Drawing on an extensive range of primary and secondary source materials, including Cabinet papers and ministerial correspondence, this paper provides a detailed assessment of the months of debates and deliberations, including a Ministerial Committee on Devolution, which preceded the decision to establish a Royal Commission on the Constitution. The by-election successes and unnerving near-misses for Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties at by elections between 1966 and 1968 created a sense within the Cabinet that the Government needed to have a clear response to the electorate. That this response was a Commission only followed a intense process of debate and deliberation within Government that failed, despite the efforts of a number of Wilson’s Ministers, to produce a broadly acceptable and supported alternative

Commission · Constitution · Government (linguistics · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Philosophy · Political Systems and Governance · Public Administration

Tools

Open DOI