Working in media I walk a tightrope every day trying to adequately reflect the nuance of life and political perspectives on the island of Ireland, in particular Northern Ireland.

Come election season, how people here choose to vote is never about just one issue. But, as always, the question of whether Northern Ireland should reunify with the Republic of Ireland is a consideration on many people’s minds—even though it isn’t on the ballot.

Northern Ireland is currently part of the United Kingdom. Along with voters in England, Scotland, and Wales, the electorate here will head to the polls tomorrow, July 4, to select members of the Westminster Parliament in London.

Northern Ireland is very small, with a population of less than 2 million people. It holds just 18 of the 650 seats in the British parliament so influence can be challenging. Northern Ireland’s devolved legislature, known as Stormont, has limited powers, as do local council bodies.

The Westminster election has been a lackluster campaign but will likely throw up some surprising and significant results. What it means for Northern Ireland depends entirely on whom you ask—nationalists, who want reunification with the Republic of Ireland; unionists, who want to remain part of the U.K.; or others with varied views on the future.

There are hundreds of years of complicated history and identity issues in the mix. Many people consider the island of Ireland to have been Britain’s first colony: the whole thing was once part of the U.K. But in the early 20th century, 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties formed a new republic, leaving the six counties in the north still part of the U.K. This new region of Northern Ireland, essentially gerrymandered into existence, was rife with inequality and structured to ensure unionist electoral dominance in perpetuity.

From the 1960s to the late 1990s violence between British loyalist and Irish republican paramilitaries, and the U.K. state, left over 3,500 people dead and tens of thousands injured. People in Northern Ireland still feel the impact today, through inter-generational trauma and in political discourse.

While the 1998 Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement peace accord largely brought an end to 30-plus years of devastating violence, people in Northern Ireland continue to explore what the future will look like. Peace is a process, not an event.

Over the last quarter century, Stormont has been dominated by fragility, disagreement, and collapse. Indeed, this year it has only been fully functioning since February following a two-year unionist-led dispute over post-Brexit trade arrangements that apply to Northern Ireland but don’t apply to Scotland, England, and Wales.

The government was resuscitated just recently and now the political parties that form the mandatory power-sharing government are trying to present a united front while also competing with each other for Westminster seats.

British unionists standing for office talk a lot about strengthening Northern Ireland’s position as part of the U.K. Non-unionists tend to focus on what they view as the failure of the current U.K. government to adequately provide for the region.

The latter group currently has more seats at Westminster, having overtaken the British unionist parties’ hold on the Northern Ireland delegation for the first time in the 2019 Westminster election. That year, the nationalist parties Sinn Féin and SDLP won seven and two seats, respectively; the unionist DUP won eight seats, and the Alliance Party, neither nationalist nor unionist, won one.

The main aim of Sinn Féin—the Irish political party with historical links to the Irish Republican Army (IRA)—is the reunification of Ireland.

It believes the island should never have been partitioned, and that its people would be best served by an all-island government in the future.

It has an electoral presence in both jurisdictions on the island of Ireland, and in recent years has emerged as the largest party of local and devolved government in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Féin MPs do not take their seats in London. Rather, they abstain from parliament as a form of protest—on the basis that British and Irish people are better off taking control of their own fortunes. They do not accept Westminster MP salaries but do claim expenses to carry out constituency work around areas such as housing, amenities, and public services.

The smaller Irish nationalist party, the SDLP, while rejecting the British oath of allegiance, say the words to be able to take their seats. SDLP MPs believe that for as long as Northern Ireland is part of the U.K., it’s their duty to try to influence policy from the inside, and not leave unionists as the only voices inside the London parliament.

Ultimately Sinn Féin and the SDLP want the same thing: a new, reconciled and reunified all-Ireland constitutional future.

The Alliance Party, formed more than 50 years ago, has emerged in recent years as the third major electoral force in Northern Ireland. It is a “cross-community” party, takes no fixed position on unification, and therefore is described as “other” on the political spectrum, along with the likes of the Green Party.

Alliance attracts support from unionists and republicans, from those who could be persuadable in either direction, and from those not motivated by the topic at all. In this way, they offer representation for those who want an alternative to the traditional binary constitutional positions of political parties in this part of the world.

With society dividing roughly 40-40-20 (unionist, nationalist/republican, and others, respectively), Alliance voters will be extremely important when it’s time for people in Northern Ireland to decide to vote to reunite with Ireland at some time in the future.

The Good Friday Agreement allows the U.K. government to call for such a referendum, known as a border poll, under any circumstances; it is accepted that the most likely scenario in which they would do so is when it’s clear most people would vote for Irish unity. That day may not be as far away as it once felt.

I do not see Northern Ireland existing as it has in the years ahead. Its foundations aren’t solid, and its demographics and political landscape are changing. The old certainties of the past no longer exist. Background does not automatically indicate a constitutional preference but statistics suggest that the youngest people here, and the next batches of voters, are more likely to come from Catholic, nationalist, republican communities. The oldest citizens are more likely to be from Protestant, unionist, loyalist communities.

Post-Brexit, conversations about the constitutional future have only accelerated. There is a widespread view that the U.K.’s departure from the E.U. has been disastrous, which has provided impetus to those who seek an alternative future.

Of course, the constitutional future isn’t the only issue citizens care about.

The health service, the economy and cost of living, education, climate, and a host of other issues are important to citizens, too—if poorly addressed because of the general dysfunction that permeates all areas of life, and the structural inadequacies that sometimes make progress feel impossible.

The July election results will impact life in Northern Ireland in a variety of ways. Some people will vote tactically, declare “none of the above,” or not bother voting at all.

As frustrating as it can be, participating in the democratic process is an important function of any society, and it’s important to vote. It is a privilege. Throughout the history of the Irish civil rights movement and other rights movements around the world, people have died for their rights. And as a feminist, I am acutely aware that women were denied the right to vote in the not-so-distant past.

As dysfunctional as it is here, I love this place and its people. We deserve a bright future, an abundance of opportunities, and peace and reconciliation to be central to it all. There is something about a community that has experienced great suffering that produces many decent, empathetic, loving, and funny people. Dark episodes often build resilience and humanity. Every election in Northern Ireland offers an opportunity to channel those strengths to build a better future—even if indirectly, for now.

Labour is most likely to win. Once a new parliament is formed, Labour’s response to Northern Ireland’s political reform, funding levels, equality provisions, the legacy of the violent past, infrastructure projects, and a future border poll, will be where the focus shifts.

The post What’s at Stake for Northern Ireland in the U.K. Elections? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

What makes a country great?

Great cities.

That is a lesson the United Kingdom once knew well. Britain reached its imperial heights in the late 19th century in part because its municipalities were growing into some of the world’s most productive cities.

None better symbolized British greatness than Birmingham, a manufacturing powerhouse in the West Midlands. In 1890, Harper’s Magazine called it the “best-governed city in the world,” and with good reason. Birmingham provided novel services for its people, including free libraries and museums, free education for all children, modern sanitation and affordable housing, street lighting, a municipal bank, and support for the poor.

The spirit of Birmingham was often expressed by the popular nonconformist preacher George Dawson, and two of his parishioners who became mayor—Joseph Chamberlain and his son Neville, who is better remembered for his later failures as a prime minister. The preacher and the Chamberlains evangelized for urban reform, advancing a philosophy called “The Civic Gospel,” the idea that great municipalities offer the best chance for human flourishing.

“A town,” Dawson once said, “is a solemn organism through which shall flow, and in which shall be shaped, all the highest, loftiest and truest ends of man’s moral nature.”

Today, the Civic Gospel is preached by city leaders worldwide, especially in the globally ambitious metros of Vienna, Mexico City, Seoul, and Tokyo, where governments pride themselves on pursuing cutting-edge, humanity-advancing improvements in democratic participation, environmentalism, the arts, and social policy.

But these days you won’t hear the Civic Gospel in its home city—or home country. When you ask municipal experts what the world’s best governed cities are today, you’ll get an earful about Barcelona and Bogota, but you’ll hear nothing about Britain. U.K. cities are too busy struggling just to survive.

Birmingham, still the second most populous U.K. city, with more than 1.1 million people, now draws notice as a cautionary tale. In September 2023, it became yet another British city to declare fiscal insolvency—one of eight in the past six years. Birmingham’s bankruptcy is blamed on cuts in national budgets, economic struggles, and two massive governance mistakes: an IT project that went £80 million over budget, and a failure to respond to equal pay claims by female city workers now totaling more than £700m. Unable to pay its bills, Birmingham has suspended spending on arts, youth services, and assistance to families in crisis.

The sorry state of local self-governance is not often mentioned in reports about the upcoming July 4 elections in the U.K., which are widely expected to see the current Tory government replaced by Labour. But local stagnation is at the heart of the sense of frustration and crisis that prevails in Britain.

In the face of national failures—declining life expectancy, dropping real wages, and fiscal austerity—Britons are unable to turn to their local governments for solutions, because those local governments are too weak.

After the Second World War, Whitehall (the nickname for U.K.’s national government) stripped local governments of responsibilities, in areas from utilities to hospitals, and nationalized services in new ministries and institutions. Whitehall also repeatedly reorganized local governments and their jurisdiction, thus fragmenting local power and reducing local control in fiscal matters. The resulting centralization made London a global goliath, but diminished the wealth, influence, and public services of the country’s small and mid-size cities.

The imbalance has not gone unnoticed. Over the past 15 years, British governments have sought to boost regions and localities via various strategies—like “rebalancing the economy” and “Northern Powerhouse.” In 2019, the Tories running Britain announced a plan for “Levelling Up” weaker cities and regions and their people with greater aid, and even established a ministry to pursue it.

But these efforts have failed, because the approaches are top-down, directed by the national government. Indeed, the national “Levelling Up” department has dispensed cash for projects through a slow bidding process, orchestrated by consultants who charge local governments large fees for their assistance. The Economist, in calling the process “scattershot,” noted that 60 of the first 71 projects funded through Levelling Up were behind schedule.

Since “Levelling Up” became policy five years ago, economic disparities between rich and poor regions have actually widened. British cities and counties, have become beggars, asking for bailouts for in-demand services like homeless programs, child care, and adult care that they no longer can afford.

The challenge will get worse for the new government post-election. Of the 300-plus local governments in England alone, more than half say they will be in severe financial distress by next year. It’s not clear that any help is on the way. Labour has made vague promises to “Level Up” better than the Tories.

For now, Birmingham and other insolvent cities feel stuck.

The most promising path forward is for the national government to restore the local autonomy that once made Birmingham and other U.K. cities great. There have been small moves in this direction, with so-called “trailblazer” deals that allow some metro regions to establish their own elected chief executives.

But such devolution deals are full of limits on local control that are nutty as anything in the classic British government comedy, “Yes, Minister.” Among the ludicrous documents of so-called devolution are a “scrutiny protocol” listing all the ways the national government will watch over cities, and a 2022 Levelling Up White Paper laying out a complex four-tier regime for devolving power to cities.

What’s really needed, but so far not on offer, is a restoration of the fiscal autonomy and local freedom that allowed Birmingham to build a city so great it had its own gospel.

The post Why the U.K. Can’t ‘Level Up’ appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Fun Palace at Brockwell Lido in London, 2016. Photo by Helen Murray.

Community members pose at a Fun Palace at Bromley by Bow Centre in London, 2019. Photo by Roswitha Chesher.

Avanttika Sivakumar and Laasya Cherukuri perform a classical Indian dance at a Fun Palace at Manor Park Library in Newham, 2022. Photo by Dominic Saulter.

A science lesson at a Fun Palace in Taupaki, New Zealand. Courtesy of Taupaki Fun Palace.

Kayaks in the swimming pool at a Fun Palace at Brockwell Lido in London, 2016. Photo by Helen Murray.

This piece publishes alongside the Zócalo/Los Angeles Times program “Would Parliamentary America Have More Fun?,” tomorrow, Friday, February 23, at 7 PM PST. Register here to attend in person or online.

For one weekend in 2014, my local community and I came together and took over Brockwell Lido, an outdoor swimming pool in South London. We put on an entirely free weekend of arts, culture, and science events for our community. There were kayaks in the swimming pool, shadow puppetry, cheerleading, scientists talking about the effects of cold water on the body, mermaids, paddle boards, a local choir, guided nature walks in the park nearby, and a magician. People came in the hundreds—the visitor count exceeded 1,000—including those who lived nearby but had never visited the lido and came through its gates for the first time.

It was our first Fun Palace, a huge and vital celebration of the brilliance of our community.

Now Fun Palaces take place annually, inspiring civic joy and democratizing ideas, resources, and culture. Over one weekend, this series of grassroots actions spring up across the U.K., uniting the nation in a drive for hyper-local culture, democracy, and radical social change.

In the 1960s, theater director Joan Littlewood and architect Cedric Price first envisioned a Fun Palace as a “laboratory of fun” and a “university of the streets” located in a physical building they would construct on the River Thames in East London. They dreamed that you would be able to access the building by “train, bus, monorail, hovercraft, car, tube or foot at any time.” They had a vision that you would come together with others there to learn and play. It was to be a temporary building, which after 10 years they would knock down and start over.

But it never got funded.

Instead, the idea of the Fun Palace lay dormant for five decades until Littlewood’s centenary neared. While many places were planning to stage productions of Littlewood’s most well-known play, Oh What a Lovely War, theater-maker, author, and activist Stella Duffy started thinking about what it would take to bring Littlewood and Price’s abandoned vision to life. She asked theater producer Sarah-Jane Rawlings to join her, and they both worked for months, from their kitchen tables, unpaid, to get the campaign off the ground. They traveled the country and were openly political about their mission for Fun Palaces, never underplaying the radical nature of the concept.

There was a huge response from the theater world, from those who knew and loved Littlewood and her work, but the call also attracted others seeking connection and radical social change; a different way of doing things. Ten years of Tory austerity in Britain had seen huge cuts to arts, culture, and public services, paired with increasing division around the borders and barriers to art and creativity. Fun Palaces represented a cultural shift of sorts, filling a void where government was not for its people. In total, 138 venues, organizations, and community groups said “yes” to the open invitation, and Fun Palaces popped up in theaters, libraries, parks, and community centers across the length and breadth of the U.K. on the weekend of October 4, 2014.

Now, 10 years later, Fun Palaces are still going strong, and I’m part of the organization behind them, which campaigns year-round to advocate for cultural democracy, an approach to arts and culture that aims to include everyone’s voice.

The Fun Palaces model broadens what gets counted as culture. We include gardening, crochet, orange peel sculpting, junk modeling, battle rap, and coding (to name but a few) to show people that culture is not limited to opera or expensive theater in big, shiny buildings, or contemporary art pieces in costly-to-visit galleries. By empowering them to have a say in reimagining culture as for them, it also encourages them to see that they have a say in what the world can look like. When communities come together to democratize culture and take over decision-making in this arena, I believe it gives them the power to take over decision-making in other arenas, too.

Last year we called together a group of Makers (people who make Fun Palaces) to find out what Fun Palaces mean to them. We got a range of responses, which made it clear that the political and radical nature of Fun Palaces are a huge pull. “I’ve always seen a Fun Palace as a permission to be a bit more radical and experimental,” one Maker said. “It’s about systems change. And showing that there are alternative ways of re-building society that is currently around us.” To further explore the connection between cultural participation and civic activism, we’re conducting some research with sociologist Katy Pilcher, funded by the Centre for Cultural Value.

We know that the ideas behind Fun Palaces speak to people. Since 2014 there have been more than 2,650 Fun Palaces, made by more than 45,000 people and attended by over 800,000 people. Fun Palaces take place in libraries, theaters, gardens, pubs, cafes, museums, community centers, school halls, allotments, shopping malls, and many other places. We support the communities making Fun Palaces in all kinds of ways, whether it’s talking through ideas, helping them find insurance or funding, or linking them to local buildings that might be a potential venue for their Fun Palace. When the big buildings (theaters, museums, etc.) make them, we encourage them to “hand over” the reins to their local community for the weekend.

Ultimately Fun Palaces place communities at the heart of the decision-making around arts, sciences, and culture. We’ve always used Littlewood’s quote, “Everyone an artist, everyone a scientist” to assert this. But I believe it’s more than that: Everyone a digital creator, everyone a storyteller, everyone a historian, everyone a cultural leader, and everyone an activist, too.

When we come together in our communities and learn from one another, we strengthen what we’re capable of. If we can sing together, knit together, and have fun together, then we are also in a better position to stand up as communities and ask to have our other needs met, too.

The post What Is a Fun Palace? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

You would look in vain for any controversial statements made by the queen during her lifetime. Sure, in the internet age, she, too, acquiesced to having a Twitter account, and a team of press people would post things on Instagram in her name. But they were all bland, uncontroversial—and, frankly, dull.

In an age when everyone has an opinion—when everyone in public life feels an urge to tell all and sundry about their grumbles, gripes, and grievances—she never did. That is exactly why she, and the monarchy, became a stabilizing factor in a time of upheaval.

Take this anecdote from 1995, when the Montreal broadcaster Pierre Brassard phoned Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and convinced her that he was then-Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. The Canadian politician was concerned that the French-speaking province of Quebec would break away in a referendum in that year. And the imitator asked the queen to intervene. She did not. Nor did she deny the request. She just responded with studious dullness, and small talk. What would have been a scoop was nothing of the kind, because the queen said nothing of substance.

She had opinions. But they were tightly guarded. And they were only revealed when David Cameron (her 12th Prime Minister) broke with protocol. “She purred down the line,” Cameron reportedly said, describing the queen’s display of happiness when he informed her of the failure of a referendum to make Scotland independent in 2014.

Cameron got in big trouble for relaying that detail. Because the monarchy is based on the premise that the queen (or king) is a neutral arbiter, literally above the fray, sharing a choice anecdote from the weekly meeting between the British monarch and her PM was seen as a betrayal of confidence. In the aftermath, Cameron had to tuck his tail between his legs. “I have made my apologies and I think I will probably be making some more,” he told reporter Andrew Marr on BBC One.

In British constitutional theory, the role of the monarch is almost purely ceremonial. But not entirely. In 1867, the journalist Walter Bagehot wrote that the queen was part of the “ceremonial” part of the constitution, not the “functional.” The sovereign was no longer the ruler, but she maintained “the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn,” he wrote in the book The English Constitution.

The role of the monarch when Bagehot wrote was to be a unifying figure. The constitutional monarchy was devised in the Victorian age as a means to overcome class divisions. The queen was to personify the unity in a country that was deeply divided. This is still her role.

But, paradoxical though it may sound, the unelected monarch also has a democratic role to play. If she (or now he) knows how to perform the duties.

In the 1990s, Vernon Bogdanor, an Oxford academic (who was also my doctoral supervisor) controversially argued that “far from undermining democracy, the monarchy sustains and strengthens democratic institutions.”

Don’t get me wrong, the idea of a monarchy goes against every logical tenet of a meritocratic society. Having someone who is born to a position in society is profoundly undemocratic. And yet, one could make the argument that her ability to give politicians advice was uniquely unpolitical and disinterested, since she had a long view and never had to face voters.

When, on rare occasions, no party had a majority in the House of Commons, she could advise on who could form a government in a way that was not party political. Her reserve also gave the whole political sphere to elected officials; she, like the most understanding parent, would never criticize them in public, even if she might disagree in private.

By contrast, in countries with an elected head of state (Finland, Italy, or Germany, to name only a few) the president is almost inevitably a former politician. Only the most unopinionated presidents in European countries—notably ’90s Irish president Mary Robinson and the present Irish president Michael D. Higgins, a poet in his previous life—have managed to be accepted as neutral arbiters. More typically, there is a strong whiff of partisanship around Europe’s elected presidents, a sense that the advice they give to prime ministers or chancellors is tainted by past political allegiances.

This is not the case with a monarch.

And in this Queen Elizabeth was an unrivaled master, once again, because she was, yes, bland.

In 1975, the queen’s representative in Australia, Governor-General Sir John Kerr, dismissed the leftist Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. For years, Australians speculated that the monarch herself had deliberately sacked the reforming Labor leader. Yet, when the files were finally released in 2020, there was no smoking gun, no conspiracy, no evidence that she had known of the sacking ahead of time, much less approved it. No surprise: What the files did contain were various bland statements by the queen.

Queen Elizabeth’s talent for not saying anything, maintaining the sense that she was above the fray made her such a rallying point, a symbol of unity, for many in a divided society.

The big question for the British monarchy now—and for the countries that still have her as the head of state (including Canada, New Zealand, and Jamaica)—is if her successor is capable of displaying the same talent.

The queen’s oldest son —King Charles III as he is now known—has a reputation for his strong, sometimes compelling opinions on everything from architecture to the environment. “My old Aston Martin, which I’ve had for 51 years, runs on—can you believe this?—surplus English white wine and whey from the cheese process,” Charles once told the BBC without a hint of irony, thus putting an ocean of distance between himself and the common.

Now, suddenly, having opinions is no longer his job. Is he up for aloofness?

In a constitutional monarchy, once the monarch has an opinion, the support for the institution falls away. When Spanish King Felipe VI made remarks about the region of Catalonia that indicated he was unsympathetic to the secessionist aspirations of some Catalans, it damaged the institution of the monarchy.

By contrast, the Danish Queen Margrethe II has studiously avoided having any opinion on Greenland and the Faroe Islands and their aspirations for greater sovereignty, emulating a blandness commensurate with her late English colleague. It is no wonder then that in Denmark, unlike Spain, the monarchy remains strong.

Charles must do his utmost to show that he is the king of all Britons. This is a difficult task—and an urgent one. The Scottish government is seeking a second independence referendum in 2023. And while Queen Elizabeth, who died at Balmoral, was highly popular in Scotland, only a minority of the Scottish people support the monarchy as an institution.

For a while, conventional wisdom had it that the English monarchy could be saved if the opinionated Charles were to abdicate in favor of Prince William. But William’s very publicized spat with his younger brother Harry and Harry’s wife Meghan—and how race was a part of that controversy—means that he, too, is not seen as neutral. (In contrast, the queen managed to avoid the publicity backlash that William faced, while still reportedly being involved in the unwelcoming of Meghan.)

Of course, it may be inhuman for any flesh-and-blood monarch to match the mien of the most successful and studiously bland monarch in modern history. But politicians may find it worthwhile to try to imitate her.

The late Queen Elizabeth’s lasting lesson is that, in divided and diverse societies, we still need institutions that appear to be uncontroversial and above the fray, and we still need the illusion of simple and steady leaders onto which we can project our own complicated feelings.

The post Queen Elizabeth II Knew the Virtues of Being Vanilla appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Such was the dangerous state of affairs in Great Britain nearly two centuries ago, when that nation veered as close as it ever has come to outright revolution and a French-style overthrow of the government.

Reform-minded politicians knew they had to let some air into the system or the entire country would explode. So, the Parliament—through brinksmanship and arm-twisting, over the strenuous objection of aristocrats—passed the landmark Representation of the People Act of 1832.

The law’s primary purpose was redrawing the gerrymandered districts of Parliament, which still conformed to boundaries determined in the 12th century when the institution was in its infancy. Parliament had been born of arguments over taxes between rural strongmen and King Henry III that the reforms of the Magna Carta hadn’t been able to completely soothe. The balance of power between the crown and the nobles was evened out with a roving council that took its name from the Norman word parler—“to talk.”

King Edward I made this legislature more formal a century later by designating two knights and two citizens from every major population center to confer with him on matters of state. The biggest arguments, of course, concerned taxes and how much should be raised at any given time to support various wars against regional neighbors. The citizens’ group eventually won the right to elect members of its own, which became the beginnings of the House of Commons and the Western tradition of a bicameral legislature.

England changed in the centuries after the Parliament began, but the legislative districts did not. They conformed to the kingdom’s historic counties—Devon, Yorkshire, Cornwall, Essex and the like—without taking drastic population shifts into account. The lines remained static for six centuries even as demographic change rippled through the British Isles. Parliament entered the 19th century in a dangerously unrepresentative state.

The Industrial Revolution made this problem a crisis, as new cities like Manchester and Birmingham blew up with former countryside residents jammed into urban hovels without any representation or protection. The vote was restricted to property owners, defined as those who owned a home with a kitchen hearth. The saying went: If you could boil—or “wallop,” in British parlance—a pot of water in your own house, then you could cast a ballot. (The term “potwalloper” became another word for voter.) This restriction helped keep those on church relief—especially poor Irish Catholics—from voting.

One particularly galling act of an out-of-touch Parliament was the Corn Laws of 1815. This tariff on imported food was meant to protect the incomes of gentlemen farmers—often titled nobles—who sold their harvest to domestic markets at inflated prices. Riots quickly broke out over the rising price of bread; famine-like conditions among the poor accompanied bad harvests.

But Parliament was in the hands of the wealthy, especially a bloc called “The West India interest” who had investments in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean and were dedicated to the preservation of Black slavery. The high tariffs on wheat didn’t bother them, and many of those who owned estates in both hemispheres became even richer.

Though colonies like Jamaica and Barbados officially had no seats in Parliament, their local grandees were able to game their way in because of the ancient legislative maps. They also exploited an 1800 law that created a dual borough system of representation, which allowed for two members of Parliament from every borough, no matter how few people lived there. Abandoned medieval towns with almost no residents still could send two representatives to London. One was a hilltop cathedral that had collapsed in the 13^th century. Another was a ruined port city almost completely underwater.

Big money interests, especially West Indian slaveowners, elected puppet representatives from these hollowed-out areas. A whole class of political consultants called “borough jobbers” arose to steer merchants and earls—or their compliant allies—toward available seats.

This created profound inequality. A bare handful of people from rotten boroughs sent 112 dupes, puppets, and aristocrats to the House of Commons every year. Nobody could ever be sure who paid for a seat; it was the 19th century version of dark money. Abolitionists like William Wilberforce cursed the West Indian interest. As long as it remained intact, slavery would persist.

As a result, the English working classes began to sympathize with enslaved people in the Caribbean—victims of the same heavy hand that was pressing British industrial workers deeper into abject poverty. Radical speakers attracted crowds; at one such gathering at St. Peter’s Field in Manchester, a militia charged into the crowd to break it up, hacking at bystanders with sabers and killing 18 people. The carnage became a major scandal and raised the national temperature. It also called attention to the extreme unhappiness with Parliament among city dwellers.

Then, in the elections of 1830, the reformist Whigs gained a shaky majority, their overwhelming popularity slopping even over the high gunwales of gerrymandered district lines. When the House of Lords blocked three successive bills to add seats to Parliament, more rioters took to the streets and citizens’ committees started to talk of the most un-British of subjects: revolution. The Birmingham Political Union boasted of two million citizens ready “to recover the liberty, the happiness, and the prosperity of the country.”

The government—even the monarchy—seemed on the brink, unless a valve could be found to release the pressure. Historians have given this period the cinematic name “Days of May.” On May 10, 1832, the Whig prime minister Charles Grey, the 2nd Earl Grey, resigned after the failure of the third bill to expand Parliament and was replaced by Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, a famously tone-deaf politician. He reiterated his support for the status quo, and commoners erupted. Plans for street barricades similar to the Paris Commune were passed around; reform activists readied themselves for combat and office takeovers. The wife of King William IV told her friends that she hoped she would conduct herself like a lady when she was executed.

In a panic, the king reappointed Grey, who muscled a successful bill through both houses that redrew district lines and added Parliament seats. The radicals turned their energies toward petitions and electoral campaigns, demanding pledges of slavery abolition from candidates and formulating slates of those who seemed most likely to beat the borough-jobbers and their shills. In the next set of elections (with results clear by January 8, 1833), the Whigs captured 70 percent of seats and the West Indian interest was permanently hobbled.

That same year, a reformed and reinvigorated Parliament passed the Slave Emancipation Act, setting 800,000 people on a path to freedom. The legislature also approved the Factory Act, which banned the employment of children under the age of nine.

Britain’s path to a more representative government offers lessons to nations with sclerotic legislatures that have lost the confidence of their people. The best solutions in such circumstances are to crack open the locked box of ancient customs and minoritarian rule, to expand representation in the legislative branch, and to reduce the built-in influence of big money interests. Doing so saved British democracy from collapse in the 1830s, and steered its path to an expansion of liberty.

The post How Everyday Britons Forced Their Government to Save Itself appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Who governed Orkney then? We don’t know. Who governs Orkney now? We still don’t know. But some clarity could come this month with a referendum that will impact the lives of the 23,000 people who inhabit these 70 islands. On September 18, the voters of Scotland–all residents older than 16 years–will decide whether to become an independent country or remain within the United Kingdom.

The question is a complicated one, and it is being debated in not only Scotland but also around the world. The question is even more complicated in the case of Orkney, where sovereignty has been an open question since the beginning of European society here more than 5,000 years ago.

Orkney lies in the sea north of the Scottish mainland, between Scotland and Norway. This strategic position has given the Orkney people both opportunities and challenges. Over the ages, the archipelago has been occupied by Nordic Vikings, Norwegian kings, and Scottish monarchs. In 1707, it was attached to the United Kingdom along with Scotland.

During the two world wars, the British military used Orkney as their main naval base; the remains of sunken warships can still be seen today along the coastlines of Orkney. More recently, the region’s enormous natural resource–including fish, gas, oil, and new opportunities to generate electricity from wind and tidal flows–have given rise to a great deal of interest in Orkney.

“The fertile land and mild climate offered (and still offer) a perfect setting for people to settle, meet, and develop,” explained the historian David Murdoch, who makes his living by showing the archipelago to foreigners from Scotland and beyond. When I arrived on the tiny airfield to report on Orkney for the Swiss Broadcasting Company, the first landmark outside the airport in Kirkwall, the main city of Orkney, was a large sign with three big letters:“Y-E-S.”

A “yes” vote in the September referendum would mean independence for Scotland, but it’s not clear if that would mean more independence for Orkney. Sovereignty has a difficult history here. When Scotland—after a successful popular vote back in 1997—achieved more autonomy within the United Kingdom, Orkney’s regional powers were reduced. And Orkney’s regional powers weren’t much to begin with, the U.K. being one of Europe’s most centralized polities.

Orkney is hoping for a reversal—and more sovereignty. The question is whether an independent Scotland will produce that result.

“We need to be taken much more seriously,” stresses the island’s Prime Minister Steven Heddle as he welcomes me at the Orkney Islands Council’s headquarters in Kirkwall. The Council governs all of Orkney. “While we contribute a lot to the wealth of Scotland and the U.K., we have very little possibility to decide our own local affairs,” said Heddle, who would like to see the development of a strong democracy across Orkney, including what he calls the “features of true direct democracy.”

Together with his leadership colleagues in other parts of Orkney—Shetland and the Hebridean islands—Heddle has used the ongoing referendum process on Scottish independence to open negotiations with the governments in both Edinburgh and London about autonomy for Orkney, irrespective of the outcome of the referendum. Those negotiations have yet to produce a clear plan, but both the Scottish government and the central U.K. administration in London have promised to give more power to the people of Orkney.

While Steven Heddle doesn’t want to reveal his voting preference in September, his wife Donna Heddle is a strong advocate of an independent Scotland. “This will finally give us the right to have a government of our own,” she said, noting that successive Tory governments in London had no support at all from the people in either Scotland or Orkney.

Scotland and Britain aren’t the only options for Orkney. Norway retains a pull here. Donna Heddle, a professor and head of the Centre for Nordic Studies in Kirkwall, sees the Nordic countries as natural allies for Scotland and Orkney: “We have much more in common with Norway and Iceland than with England or Ireland.”

Donna Heddle envisions an independent Scotland with an oil-funded Nordic-style welfare state that would allow Orkney to become an autonomous part of the U.K. She can also imagine a future with an independent Scotland in which Orkney has a status similar to that of the Faroe or Åland islands—two other archipelagos further north that belong to Denmark and Finland, respectively, and possess far-reaching lawmaking powers.

Not everyone agrees with the many Orcadians on the Scottish independence question. But no matter how people here vote on September 18, their desire for their sovereignty is unmistakable. The question is: What path will get the islands there?

“There are really no good reasons as to why we should vote ‘yes’ on September 18,” said Charles Tait, a photographer and writer, whom I met in the windy harbor of Kirkwall. “We do not need a revolution in the relationship to the U.K., but a continuous evolution on our path to greater autonomy.”

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