The Little Manx Nation: Antiquarianism, Ethnic Identity, and Home Rule Politics in the Isle of Man, 1880–1918

2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Belchem
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
General Meeting ◽  
Irish Sea ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Isle Of Man ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Irish Sea ◽  
Frank Kermode

As imperial pride flourished in the racial discourse of late Victorian British politics, ethnic revival and Celtic nationalism also gained purchase and resonance. These complex and seemingly competing issues of identity extended beyond the “four nations” of the United Kingdom to the Isle of Man, a crown dependency constitutionally outside the United Kingdom but at the very center of the British Isles. In this “land of home rule,” adrift in the Irish Sea, the juxtaposition of Britishness and Celticism was particularly acute, compounded by the proud persistence of Norse traditions. Manx independence within the Atlantic archipelago was symbolized by the annual Tynwald Day ceremony, a Viking “Thing” or general meeting, at which the year's new legislation was promulgated in both English and Manx Gaelic. In the late Victorian period, as Anglo-Manx business syndicates invested heavily in the “visiting industry,” transforming the island into “one large playground for the operatives of Lancashire and Yorkshire,” gentlemanly antiquarians constructed (and/or invented) the necessary traditions to safeguard Manx cultural distinctiveness and its devolved political status. Through the assertion of Celticism, a project that tended to downgrade Norse contributions to the island's past, the little Manx nation girded itself against cultural anglicization, yet remained unquestionably loyal to the British empire.Slightly other than English, the Manx have displayed what Sir Frank Kermode has described as “mild alienation” and “qualified foreignness,” characteristics that need to be considered in the wider debate about British identity.

The Mox Plant Case–Provisional Measures in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea

2003 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 611-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
MALCOLM J. C. FORSTER
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Irish Sea ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
International Tribunal ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Radioactive Substances ◽  
United Nations Convention ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Irish Sea

On 3 December 2001, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) issued an Order in response to Ireland's request for the prescription of provisional measures in accordance with Article 290 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In its request, Ireland alleged violation by the United Kingdom of numerous provisions of UNCLOS. The scope of provisional measures requested by Ireland included, among others, the immediate suspension by the United Kingdom of the authorization of the Sellafield Mox Plant and a guarantee of no movement of radioactive substances or materials or wastes that are in any way related to the plant into or out of the waters of the Irish Sea. This article reviews the background to the dispute between Ireland and the United Kingdom over the operation of the Sellafield Mox Plant. It focuses on the various jurisdictional challenges raised before ITLOS and critically assesses the conclusions reached by the Tribunal in its Order.

Disunited Kingdom

2021 ◽  
pp. 169-204
Author(s):  
Michael Ledger-Lomas
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Irish Sea ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Small Circle ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Irish Sea ◽  
Roman Catholics ◽  
The Church

This chapter assesses Victoria’s efforts to cope with the religious diversity of the United Kingdom. Although Victoria’s admiration for the Church of Scotland, which was centred on the Highlands and a small circle of eloquent preachers, made her a biased participant in disputes over its established status, impressions of Victoria’s Presbyterian sympathies sank deep in Scotland and around the Empire. Victoria had hoped to commend herself to the Irish as she had to the Scots, by paying respect to their different kind of national faith, but the chapter shows that her estrangement from Irish Roman Catholics mounted with her reluctance to cross the Irish Sea. Though increasingly appreciative of Roman Catholicism as she encountered it during travel or in the lives of friends and relatives, and friendly towards popes, who she hoped might bring the Irish hierarchy to heel, Victoria could not translate these affinities into a constructive relationship with Catholic Ireland.

Divided Treasons and Divided Loyalties: Roger Casement and Others: Read at the Society's conference 11 September 1981

1982 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 153-174
Author(s):  
Owen Dudley Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Irish Sea ◽  
Cultural Attitudes ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Irish Sea ◽  
Norman Invasion

The problem of treason in the first half of the twentieth century is at its most acute for the historian of Britain in contemplating the Irish dimension. Treason against the realm up to 1922 meant treason against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The dissolution of that Union, and the subsequent progress of twenty-six of the Irish counties to the status of a Republic in 1949, has built up a retrospective assumption on both sides of the Irish sea that such dissolution was inevitable. The British Tory and the Irish nationalist, similar in many cultural attitudes, agree on this point: the perpetual irreconcilability of the two countries and the inevitability of their disunion absolves the Tory from anxiety that the causes of Irish separation may have lain in British failure, and that they have comparative significance for possible future English divergence from Wales and Scotland; while the Irish nationalist separatist, the child of the Easter Week Rising of 1916, insists that Ireland never accepted British rule, and that the insurgent handful who took up arms in 1916 were acting on behalf of a people who secretly had been demanding such separation since the Norman invasion of 1169 and would continue so to do until the end of time.

A sewage disposal strategy for the isle of man

1996 ◽  
Vol 34 (12) ◽  
pp. 119-126
Author(s):  
R. Burrows
Keyword(s):  
Irish Sea ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Isle Of Man ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Treatment Provision ◽  
Public Inquiry ◽  
Geographic Separation ◽  
The Irish Sea ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Urban Wastewater Treatment

The Isle of Man sits in the middle of the Irish Sea, surrounded by the United Kingdom (UK) coasts of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is, however, independently governed by its own Parliament, Tynwald, and is not part of the European Union (formerly the European Community, EC). A radical scheme for the integrated sewerage provision of the whole of the Island, of population approximately 65,000, involving centralised treatment and re-use of sewage sludges, has been accepted in principle. The policy adopted, as realised in the so-called ‘IRIS’ scheme, goes beyond the level of provision called for by the recent EC Directive on Urban Wastewater Treatment, yet the threat posed by the Isle of Man to the waters of the Irish Sea is negligible in comparison to the major inputs from its more populous neighborus. The geographic separation of the Island from the major pollution inputs from the British and Irish mainlands should ensure unobstructed assimilation of its releases by the marine environment. In many instances the coastal communities of the island, through their small size, would be without the statutory responsibility for land based treatment provision, even if bound by the EC legislation. This article, based on evidence presented to Public Inquiry on a first phase of the scheme's implementation, expresses the view that the strategy for future sewerage provision should be re- evaluated in the light of the flexibilities in implementation which would be afforded to the Isle of Man under the EC legislation. More fundamentally, however, it is suggested that the ‘marine treatment’ option using long- sea outfalls should be incorporated in the range of scheme options to be evaluated against achievement of a ‘best environmental solution’. The argument developed herein draws extensively on the background leading to the UK Water Industry's reluctant adoption of the EC legislation. These circumstances are considered worthy of report in their own right and the Isle of Man provides an ideal case study.

Why Should We Be Beggars with the Ballot in Our Hand? Veto Players and the Failure of Land Value Taxation in the United Kingdom, 1909–14

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 575-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAIN McLEAN ◽  
JENNIFER NOU
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Veto Players ◽  
Temporary Increase ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Land Value ◽  
Fiscal Discipline ◽  
Veto Player ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Entire History

Recent veto player work argues that majoritarian regimes such as the United Kingdom have better fiscal discipline and smaller welfare states than proportional regimes with more veto players. An analytic narrative of the failure of land value taxation in the United Kingdom between 1909 and 1914 shows, however, that it failed not because of previously advanced reasons, but because the number of veto players in British politics was sharply increased. This increase in veto player numbers prevented a tax increase. All seven of the conventional reasons for characterizing the United Kingdom as a low-n veto player regime failed to hold between 1906 and 1914. Observable implications discussed include the need to review the entire history of British politics in this period in the light of the temporary increase in veto players; and the ambiguous implications of number of veto players for fiscal discipline.

‘Beyond the limit of human endurance’: The stolen Manx history of Dunkirk

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 946-995
Author(s):  
David Kneale
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Isle Of Man ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Cultural Forces ◽  
Heroic Narrative

This article reappraises the experience of the civilian crews aboard Manx personnel vessels engaged in Operation Dynamo, and the contested aftermath. More than 20,000 troops were retrieved by nine ships of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, three of which were sunk in and off Dunkirk. There is more than enough material for a heroic narrative to emerge, yet a sense of scandal seems to cling to these particular civilian crews. Various political, social and cultural forces foster distinctly separate narratives between the United Kingdom and Isle of Man. However, empirical research in Manx and UK archives, including access to a hitherto closed file, reveals a different story: that the official Admiralty narrative of Operation Dynamo was intentionally weaponized against the Manx civilian crews for political reasons. This was achieved through the creation of reports that were false, misleading or unsupported by evidence, the provocation of the Isle of Man’s Lieutenant Governor into acts of reprisal, and through the work of an unseen editorial hand in Admiralty archives. The influence of this hostile narrative, which continues to be reinforced, has obscured the contributions of the true civilians of Dunkirk.

The southern Irish unionists, the Irish question, and British politics, 1906–14

1967 ◽  
Vol 15 (59) ◽  
pp. 228-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.J. Buckland
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
British Politics ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Irish Question ◽  
Deep Impression

The period 1906–14 is often regarded as one of continual disagreement and turmoil in British politics. This may be true; but it is important to understand why. In fact, British politics between 1906 and 1914 were marked by a strong desire to avoid extremes. Developments on the fringe of politics, socialism, syndicalism and suffragism, made a deep impression upon the moderate elements of both major parties and their desire to contain such signs of disturbance was epitomised in the constitutional conference held in 1910. Yet the Irish question frustrated attempts at moderation, embittered politics and hindered the development of a more representative, democratic and social stage in the United Kingdom.

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