(Enoch Powell)
Nation is a necessary precondition of
democracy, since only where a people share an underlying sense of community and
values will the minority be prepared to acquiesce in rule by the majority.
Sovereignty and self-determination in
the new Europe (James Mayall)
Woodrow Wilson had originally conceived
Article 10 of the League Covenant in a way which would qualify the permanent
freehold of the European successor states. He envisaged circumstances arising,
either as the result of demographic change or as a consequence of a major shift
in public opinion, which would justify a change in territorial boundaries. This
idea was so radical that it was opposed even by his own delegation and would
certainly have been strongly resisted by the other major powers at the Peace
Conference. The draft was so quickly forgotten and the final version of the
Article asserted the primacy of territorial integrity, although an attempt was
made to soften the impact of this major concession to the sovereignty principle
by including a system of minority guarantees.
Joint Downing Street Declaration (1993)
laid particular emphasis on the issue of self-determination and on the absence
of any continuing strategic or economic British interest in retaining Northern
Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. – Tom Hadden, Northern Ireland
The rest of the Balkans (Hugh Poulton)
Since the Ottoman Empire did not attempt
to assimilate Christian or Jewish minorities, the peoples of the Balkans
managed to retain their separate identities and cultures. Many of them also
retained a sense of a glorious history when they controlled a particular area,
often at the expense of their neighbors who likewise made (and still make)
historical claims to the territory in question.
In Bulgaria there was a continuation of
the noticeable large-scale emigration of the ethnic Turks and other Muslims
which had been encouraged by the authorities from the outset of the modern
state. Turkish schools, especially primary schools, were closed. The advent of
dictatorship in 1934 saw a further deterioration, with a ban on the use of the
new Latin script and the reinstatement of the Arabic script for all Turkish
publications and classes. This was an apperent attempt both to dissuade
mother-tongue expression and to hinder links with Ataturk of Turkey.
It was reported that the Orthodox Greek
hierarchy initially relieved Archimandrite Nikodimos Tsarknias of his duties in
his parish outside Thessalonika because he had identified himself as a
Macedonian, and that it then expelled him from the church.
In comparison with the previous way of
life, the future offered by the reform-minded political parties was quite
terrifying. Their standard election messages included phrases such as ‘open
market economy’, ‘competition’, and ‘the struggle to achieve European
standards’. People were simply not ready for such a vision. The institutions of
a civil society could have played a role in soothing people’s fears of an
unknown future and solving conflicts, but they were virtually non-existent. One
might argue that after so many years of comfortable collective identity within
the system, the average Yugoslav was simply unprepared to take responsibility
to exercise individual freedom.
The easiest option was therefore to seek
another form of collective identity, another protective shield against the
confusion. This was nationalism. Many politicians quickly realized that the
nationalist ticket was a life-line for them too. It could be used as a tool to
homogenize people and to create the constituency that, in the one-party system,
they had never had.
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