The Constitution Unit

Launch event: Interim Report by the Working Group on Unification Referendums on the Island of Ireland

Episode Summary

How would any potential future referendum or referendums on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland best be designed and conducted?

Episode Notes

The Working Group is independent of all political parties and governments and is funded by the British Academy and Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. The Group takes no view on whether such referendums should take place or what the outcome should be.  

The report concludes that referendums should not be called without a clear plan for the referendum processes that would follow, and it identifies difficult issues that need discussion and analysis. For example, what evidence would inform the decision to call a referendum on Northern Ireland’s constitutional status? Would referendums take place before or after proposals for the shape of a united Ireland had been developed? How would the referendum campaigns be regulated? These are just a few of the questions explored in the interim report.  

Speakers:

• Dr Alan Renwick, Chair of the Working Group and Deputy Director of the Constitution Unit
• Alan Whysall, Working Group member and former senior civil servant in the Northern Ireland Office
• Clare Salters, former senior civil servant in the Northern Ireland Office
• Martin Kettle, writer for the Guardian.

Chair:

Professor Meg Russell, Unit Director.  

Full report: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/sites/constitution-unit/files/wgurii_interim_report_nov_2020.pdf

Executive summary: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/sites/constitution-unit/files/wgurii_executive_summary.pdf