First published in Gayle’s Scottish Blog.
A guest blog by Gayle Miller.
Up until the 1600s England had a chief administrator answerable to the monarch but as the role of chief administrator began to grow with more responsibility being devolved and political change started to take hold the claim of monarchical absolutism was challenged. It wasn’t until the 1600s when the English monarch effectively abandoned the throne and was officially removed by parliament through a parliamentary convention and the new monarch, by dint of birth, was contested that the rise of English parliamentary sovereignty began to take hold. It was during this time that the English political parties began to emerge first as factions and then as the political parties that would stand in parliament.
The Whigs, who were against monarchical absolutism due to their religious beliefs, were founded in 1678. In 1859 the party dissolved and merged with the English Liberal Party. The Whigs opposition was the Tory Party which was founded in 1679.
The Tories supported the monarchy and objected to the monarch’s exclusion as they believed that inheritance based on dint of birth was the foundation of a stable society. Like the Whigs, the Tories dissolved in the 1700s though this was due to having been excluded from parliament for a few decades due to their hugely unpopular repressive attitude. When they reemerged after undergoing a fundamental change it was as the Conservatives and then later, when the Liberal Party split, it merged to become the Conservative and Unionist Party.
The Labour Party emerged in England as a consequence of civil unrest in the latter stages of the 19th century and became the opposition to the Conservatives replacing their Whig turned Liberal Party rivals.
However, it wasn’t until the mid 1800s that the English governmental office of Prime Minister would be officially recognised as ever more responsibilities were devolved to it. Retrospectively, the first Prime Minister of England post-1700 was attributed to Robert Walpole, born in Norfolk, England, who held the position from 1721-1742.
Of the 55 Prime Ministers 43 were born in England. Of the remaining 12 every single one represented an English political party.
List of English Born Prime Ministers and Political Party Represented
Robert Walpole, Norfolk – Whig
Spencer Compton, Warwickshire – Whig
Henry Pelham, Sussex – Whig
William Cavendish, Westminster (baptised) – Whig
Thomas Pelham-Holles, London – Whig
George Grenville, Buckinghamshire – Whig
William Pitt Snr, London – Whig
Augustus Henry Fitzroy, Grafton – Whig
Frederick North, London – Tory
Charles Watson-Wentworth, Rotherham – Whig
Henry Addington, London – Tory
William Pitt Jnr, Kent – Tory and Whig
William Wyndham Grenville, Buckinghamshire – Whig
William Cavendish-Bentinck, Buckinghamshire – Whig
Spencer Perceval, London – Tory
Robert Banks Jenkins on, London – Conservative
George Canning, London – Tory
Frederick Robinson, London – Tory
Charles Grey, Northumberland – Whig
William Lamb, London – Whig
Robert Peel, Lancashire – Conservative
Henry Temple, London – Whig and Liberal
John Russell, London – Whig
Edward Smith Stanley, Lancashire – Tory and Whig
Benjamin Disraeli, London – Conservative
William Gladstone, Liverpool – Liberal
Archibald Primrose, London – Liberal
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Hertfordshire – Conservative
Herbert Asquith, Yorkshire – Liberal
David Lloyd George, Manchester – Liberal
Stanley Baldwin, Worcestershire – Conservative
Neville Chamberlain, Birmingham – Conservative
Clement Attlee, London – Labour
Winston Churchill, Oxfordshire – Conservative
Anthony Eden, County Durham – Conservative
Harold MacMillan, London – Conservative
Alec Douglas -Home, London – Conservative
Edward Heath, Kent – Conservative
Harold Wilson, Yorkshire – Labour
James Callaghan, Hampshire – Labour
Margaret Thatcher, Lincolnshire – Conservative
John Major, Surrey – Conservative
David Cameron, London – Conservative
Theresa May, Eastbourne – Conservative
Non English Born Prime Ministers and Political Party Represented
John Stuart, Edinburgh, Scotland – Tory.
William Petty, Ireland – Whig
Arthur Wellesley, Ireland – Tory
George Hamilton Gordon, Edinburgh, Scotland – Conservative
Arthur Balfour, East Lothian, Scotland – Conservative
Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Glasgow, Scotland – Liberal
Andrew Law, Canada – Conservative
James McDonald, Lossiemouth, Scotland – Labour.
Tony Blair, Edinburgh, Scotland – Labour
Gordon Brown, Glasgow, Scotland – Labour
Boris Johnson, USA – Conservative
From the 1700s through to the 1900s Scotland had seen civil wars, the outlawing of their language, culture and heritage, highland clearances, deportations and indentured servitude, rebellions and massacres. Those who obtained office did so by prostrating themselves at the feet of the English. The lifestyles, titles and privileges too good to pass up.
Perhaps it started off as fear. Fear of what lay in store for them if they did not back the English. Fear that they too would be sent to pastures new or publicly beaten to an inch of their lives. A promise of riches, security, prestige lay in wait if only the prostrated themselves at the altar. And so they did. Not everyone needed coaxing, of course. But the threat was as real.
There were no real opposition to the English political parties in the parliament of Great Britain. Not until SNP were formed in the 1930s with the sole aim of restoring Scotland’s full statehood and terminating the 1707 Treaty of Union. However, centuries of English governments sitting in the state parliament, unchallenged and unopposed by Scotland, with a few notable Scots seduced by prestige representing English political parties and governments, has seen even the SNP fall foul to English hegemony, referring to the Prime Minister of England and the English government it represents as though they have dominion over Scotland and its people. Representatives of the SNP have been seduced by prestige and privilege just as those before them. Inevitably this has led to a split in the Scottish National Party just as England’s political parties had done during its political evolution. As the rivalry between the SNP and Alba becomes ever more pronounced and the original aim of the party to restore Scotland’s full statehood is put front and centre by Alba will Scotland’s representatives continue to fall foul having been indoctrinated into an English political system or will they recognise the Prime Minister of England and the English political parties that they represent for what they are? Extensions of the English establishment pre and post union.
“the principle of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle which has no counterpart in Scottish Constitutional Law”
Lord Cooper 1953
Support the re establishment of The Convention of the Estates and assert our own Scottish Constitution protected in The Claim of Right.
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Indeed it is an entirely English concept. The office of Prime Minister is also English officially replacing the post of Chief Administrator of England. The first, retrospectively, being Robert Walpole in 1721 who held the post during the Scottish civil wars which led to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Neither parliamentary sovereignty nor the post of PM are in the 1707 treaty. (The first PM of England taking office 14 years after the treaty was signed and ratified.) Likewise there is no gov of GB or constitution. The Scots have been hoodwinked into believing the English government have dominion but there is literally nothing that grants them that status bar the Scots themselves.
The reverence in which the Scottish government reps (MPs), the Scottish administration (MSPs) and the establishment hold the English government and its PM is disturbing though understandable. However, there is no excuse for continuing to do so when the truth is pointed out and ignorance can no longer be applied. It behoves each and every representative of Scotland to treat the English government and its PM as simply that. The government of a foreign country – England. If they are incapable of standing up for Scotland and asserting Scots sovereign authority which is imbued in them then they should remove themselves from office with immediate effect.
As the Scots learn to exercise their sovereign authority both governments – English and Scottish – should take heed for there is nothing more terrifying to a government than a people that know the power they wield.
Gayle: most people, even Scots, would have difficulty in believing that acquiescence is our bane because they believe, most of them, even many SNP supporters, the nonsense that passes for constitutional law in the UK. It is so demoralising. All anyone has to do is study the Treaty and the Acts that translated that Treaty. England has gotten away with this for too long, and the Scottish government does nothing. Well done, you. SALVO and SSRG are also beginning to push forward now, as well, and all this needs to be out there. Could we crowd-fund for a full page ad with pithy bullet points and one liners and negotiate with, say, The National, The Scotsman and The Herald, for starters?
Interesting summary Gayle Millar. History can tell us a lot. But of course history is very often written out, removed from view with another history put into place.
Such is the way of colonies with Scotland being a prime example. What Scottish history are our children taught in our schools. Certainly not Scottish history. indeed, those of a certain age will recall the pink shaded world map displayed in every classroom in the land. A world map shaded to show the extent of 5he British Empire. And yes, we got the British history to go with it.
And whilst the pink shaded map has gone, the pervasive misinformation hasn’t. For it’s last remaining colony Scotland, misinformation is still the order of the day. Nothing can be clearer than that of the repeated attempts to maintain the effectively the Treaty of Union does not exist, done and dusted Scotland and England are forever fused with a power utterly vested in Westminster.
No vote, no choice, not today, not in ten years, maybe never is the line and a line recently exposed by the English prime minister. It’s utterly facist colonial stuff. Not now, not ever, get it Jock, understand it Jock, because we the English are the masters.
And so it continues. Scotland a land blessed with natural resources. No good resources you understand. Oil that’s running out or in fact should have run out ten years ago. And oil that’s worth nothing. Ditto gas, another resource past it’s best. Ditto the new found wind which it seems isn’t much good either because it doesn’t blow all the time. How utterly bizarre that we are so unlucky.
But here’s a contemporary piece picked up over the weekend in a statement by a Tory Armed Forces Minister –
“Millions of households in Britain must be ready for the “short-term pain” of high energy bills so Vladimir Putin is defeated in Ukraine and future threats from Russia and China are defused, a minister warned on Wednesday “
Armed forces minister James Heappey admitted that a “really expensive winter lies ahead” for many families in the UK” ( Source Evening Standard )
So there you have it. We have to bleed their deepest veins for our families, our children to live in fuel poverty, whilst Scotland is endowed with energy from gas to oil to wind to hydro. Jeepers we also have the monstrous ability to store power in pump storage schemes that our mountains, locks and glen.
indeed with the Coire Glas Great Glen pump storage scheme ready to start, it alone will double the entire U.K. pump storage capacity – and there’s another five or six sitting ready to move on. But I digress, useless wind, gas and oil, – our history tells us we ain’t got jack. But at least our families, or more accurately ‘ many of them ‘ will be able to play their part.
Meanwhile I laugh, as the madcap laughs, at who is making all the money as Scotland pumps out huge amounts of gas and oil. Dirty old job, selling our oil, gas, wind and hydro power, but someone’s got to do it.
Ah well back to the history book. Am Georta Mor anyone, where the colony exported grain to England whilst the indigenous starved.
Willie , they will blame anyone but themselves – what a dereliction of duty the government has become.
Noblesse oblige and all that eh?
How wonderful to finally see don’t you all think , the SNP now finally working for whats best for
Scotland AND the UK at the same time , its the best outcome for all of us.
https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1526820281082682
Indeed, Scotland’s independence is just what England needs to become a real and normal country. For too long it has been a parasitical country stealing murdering, raping and cheating other nations out of their wealth and natural resources. It is high time it started to stand on its own two feet! So glad you agree