Quocunque Jeceris Stabit (Latin) ("Whithersoever you throw it, it will stand.") | |||||||
| Anthem | "Arrane Ashoonagh dy Vannin (O Land of Our Birth)" | ||||||
| Capital (and largest city) |
Douglas | ||||||
| Other cities | Peel, Castletown, Port St. Mary, Laxey, Ramsey and Ballaugh. | ||||||
| Language | English, Manx | ||||||
| Religion main |
Anglican Christianity | ||||||
| others | Other Christian, Judaism, Nonreligious | ||||||
| Government | Parliamentary monarchy, de jure a Crown Dependency | ||||||
| Legislature | Tynwald | ||||||
| Lord of Mann | William V | ||||||
| Chairman of the Executive Council | |||||||
| Area | 572 km² | ||||||
| Population | 36,245 (2020) | ||||||
| Established | 979 (traditional date) | ||||||
| Currency | Cel | ||||||
| Organizations |  Celtic Alliance
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The Isle of Man (Manx: Ellan Vannin [ˈɛlʲən ˈvanɪn]), also known simply as Mann (/mæn/; Manx: Mannin [ˈmanɪn]), was a self-governing British Crown dependency in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. It is now part of the Celtic Alliance and a de facto dependency of Ireland, though it has maintained its link to the British Crown.
History[]
Background[]
In 1979, the Isle of Man celebrated the thousandth anniversary of Tynwald, the legislature whose roots (and name) stretch back to the Viking age. The date was arbitrary, chosen purely as an excuse to have a party. Tynwald kept no written records before the early fifteenth century, so it is impossible to know exactly when it began. But the isle's institutions and independence certainly stretch back very roughly that far. For a time, Mann was the center of the Kingdom of Man and the Isles, a major regional power in its day. But for most of the medieval era, the island was under the control of feudal landowners - the Lords of Mann - variously beholden to kings in Wales, Ireland, Norway, Scotland, and finally England. In the eighteenth century, with the isle becoming a notorious base for smugglers, Parliament purchased it, ending feudal rule and making it a Crown Dependency. But it was never annexed to Great Britain and remained a separate country.
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, a series of reforms made Tynwald more democratic and more powerful. The twentieth century saw a growing interest in Manx history and culture; the millennium celebration of 1979 was part of that movement. Efforts also began to preserve and revive the indigenous Celtic language as its last native speakers died out. Surviving passive heritage speakers and scholars of the language cooperated to begin teaching Manx to schoolchildren, though as a separate class and not yet a medium of instruction.
In the 1980s, the Isle of Man's economy was in decline, its once-thriving tourist sector suffering the same fate as many English seaside towns.
The Emergency[]
In the early hours of 26 September, 1983, the Isle of Man Civil Defence Corps were roused by the emergency broadcast announcing massive nuclear attacks on the United Kingdom. The Executive Council also convened before sunrise to declare a state of emergency and prepare for wartime measures including a shelter-in-place order and rationing. Some hazardous radioactive material was carried toward the isle in the next few days, both fallout from the bombs and material from the Sellafield nuclear meltdowns in Cumbria. Manx citizens were ordered to stay at home, but many who could sailed to Ireland. The fallout would remain a hazard for the long term, reducing birth rates to near zero for years and further limiting the food supply.
In addition, the missiles had produced an electromagnetic pulse that disabled the island's entire power grid. Still, unlike most of the United Kingdom, the Manx government continued to function and exercise its emergency powers.
Links with Ireland[]
New connections between Mann and Ireland began to form almost immediately. Many Manxmen boarded boats to go to Ireland, both to escape the fallout and to put more distance between themselves and the (assumed-to-be) impending Soviet invasion. The Manx were among the first refugees to arrive in Ireland, but a flood soon began to cross over from Great Britain. Irish emergency authorities, trying to keep the refugee situation as well ordered as possible, directed those from Mann to congregate in the town of Skerries, on the coast north of Dublin. Before too long they were ordered to return home, Mann being deemed safe while Great Britain emphatically was not. The Manx government by now was itself struggling to find space and resources for British survivors coming to the island. The two discussed an exchange, sending the Manx back home and sending an equal number of Britons to Ireland. This provoked such a backlash among all who were set to be deported that it did not happen. But the whole episode began a close cooperation between the Irish and Manx governments on matters of refugees. Ultimately Mann would accept an even greater number from Great Britain.
The Isle of Man also requested diesel fuel to keep its generators going. Ireland had none to spare, and what little it could was going to England and Wales, where it was needed to run pumps that were preventing meltdown in several nuclear power plants. Instead some Irish builders and technicians came to improve the capacity of the isle's just-completed hydroelectric plant at the Sulby reservoir, and begin to repair the island's power grid. The power could still only be used for essential purposes and most houses had to go without most of the time; but by the end of 1984 the plant was running again.
The British government was attenuating further by the month, and once the emergency government outposts confirmed that Mann had in fact survived as an intact state, they largely ignored it to handle other crises. The situation was similar in the outer Scottish islands, which were operating almost entirely on their own by 1985. For the Isle of Man, the cooperation over refugees and infrastructure led Ireland to largely step in to replace Britain's former role. The Irish Coast Guard patrolled the waters around the island and set up a station there in 1986. Mann never changed its status as a Crown dependency, and all acts of Tynwald were still passed in the name of the Lord of Mann, Elizabeth (and after April 1984, her son King Andrew); but gradually the island was becoming an Irish dependency in practice.
The Celtic Alliance[]
All these areas of cooperation forced the Isle of Man to do something that it had never done before, namely engage in diplomacy. By the end of 1984 Tynwald had named a permanent commissioner to go to Dublin to facilitate discussions on all these matters, and Ireland sent an envoy of its own. The British diplomatic staff in Ireland were completely consumed with trying to deal with the collapse of their country while helping however they could with the situation in Northern Ireland; so the inexperienced Manx delegates had to operate largely without them.
The Celtic Alliance formed in 1986 mostly to help Ireland and Scotland cooperate to bring about peace in Northern Ireland. But doing this required a statement of ideals that became the Constitution of the Celtic Alliance, as well as a framework for permanent cooperation among the states. So before too long it was clear that the CA was becoming a regional organisation covering a wider range of issues, one that could replace the United Kingdom in its role as regional leader.
The idea of the Isle of Man joining an international alliance was so profoundly strange that many members of Tynwald took time to come around to it. But by the early 90s it was starting to seem inevitable. Ireland's armed forces were in the process of integrating with whatever military were left in Scotland. Peacekeepers in Northern Ireland were already marching under the pan-Celtic flag. A joint Communications Board was preparing to take over the management of communications services throughout the region. All of these actions would affect Mann, and the argument was that the island should have a voice in CA policy.
In 1990 Tynwald expanded the size and role of the commission in Dublin, dubbing it the Commission to the Celtic Alliance. Rounds of negotiation and additional votes followed. Mann never had an official referendum on membership, but the Tynwald election of 1992 served well enough. A convincing majority of the elected legislators supported the Alliance. In 1993 Tynwald accordingly voted to join, and this was accomplished the following year. The day of accession was planned to coincide with 5 July, Tynwald Day, the national day of the Isle of Man. Accession to the CA marked a new era for the isle. It was now a Crown Dependency in name only; on a practical level, it was a free and sovereign nation within a growing international alliance.
The CA helped to facilitate a return to something like normalcy in Mann and around the region. Fighting in Northern Ireland wound down in the late 90s. The Isle of Man successfully expanded its hydropower capacity in the early 2000s, this time with Welsh support. Regular ferry service resumed. Most of the Manx in Ireland returned, while the British refugees found permanent homes either on the isle or elsewhere in the CA. Life on the isle was more poor and primitive than before the war, but everyone could agree that the emergency had passed. Independence from the UK, together with the overall cultural project of the Celtic Alliance, contributed to a growing sense of Manx nationhood. Besides their long history, their shared culture, and their traditions, the people of Mann could look to the crisis that they had weathered together.
Questions[]
❝ Gladstone spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question. ❞
~ SELLAR & YATEMAN, 1930
The 2010s in the British Isles were defined above all by the Royal Question and the Union Question. Would Britain, or its successors, be ruled by royals? If so, who? Would Britain take steps to reunite? If so, what would a reunited Britain look like? The Manx liked to claim that they avoided having to deal with the Questions because they had already settled them for themselves. They solved the Royal Question by remaining stable enough to never lose their head of state in the first place. As for Union, Mann had always occupied an ambiguous place in the region's political geography; the people were sure that their island would find a way to thrive in whatever new arrangement came down the pike.
But in reality these were difficult Questions for Mann. The monarchy might be merely ceremonial, but the Royal Schism provoked an intense controversy throughout the former UK and its dependencies. The Isle of Man was alone in continuing to recognize the exiled royals in South Africa. As for Union, Ireland and the Celtic Alliance had largely replaced the UK's former role in the island; but a rising British consciousness caused many Manx, especially older citizens, to question whether this was really the best state of affairs.
During much of the 80s and 90s, the Manx could not be sure how their head of state was doing, or even if he was alive or dead. Sporadic news from South Africa reassured them that the Dominion of South Africa was still functioning, but also that the entire region was unstable and prone to wars and racial strife. The Isle of Man restored direct links to the monarch in the early 2000s, when trade between Europe and South Africa was just starting to emerge again. The Manx government gave a message for the king to the captain of a freighter going from Dublin to Cape Town. The message asked for updates on the Lord of Mann's health and family, as well as a current image to use for official government purposes like postage stamps.
A year later, the reply came in several large crates. Rather than a single photograph, the DSA had printed an entire (Isle-of-Man-sized) issue of postage stamps printed with an engraving of the king's face. The stamps had room for the Isle of Man Post to print over them with the denomination, the South Africans being unable even to ascertain what currency it was using. Also included were thousands of cards printed with photographs of the king and queen and their son and daughter - enough to distribute to nearly every household on the island. This relatively simple gesture did much to confirm Manx loyalty to the exiled Crown, and it prefigured years of messages of goodwill exchanged with increasing frequency between Douglas and Port Elizabeth. The warm connection likely contributed to the false confidence with which Andrew began his tour of Britain in 2010. Expecting his welcome everywhere to be as warm as that given by the Manx, Andrew was disappointed almost everywhere when he was labeled a coward or a traitor, and the shock of this likely caused him to stumble into numerous gaffes. The Isle of Man was his final stop, and the people greeted him enthusiastically; but by then the entire trip was already considered a failure.
As the Royal Question heated up, this drove a wedge between the Isle of Man and the scattered parts of the former United Kingdom. Other states were now lining up to recognize Anne II, Andrew's sister who had stayed in Yorkshire and accepted (under pressure) the throne of the Kingdom of Cleveland. Outsiders began to criticise Mann's continued attachment to the discredited king. Andrew died in 2015 and was succeeded by his more popular son William V. This tended to improve the DSA's image in southern Africa and abroad, but not in Britain. Born in Africa and married to a Zulu princess, William did not seem to most Britons like someone who could be their king, whatever his lineage.
Economy[]
More than 80% of the island's surface is devoted to traditional mixed farms and grazing lands. These farms and fishing are the mainstay of the economy. The service sector is sustained principally by the government. A modern standard of living has not returned, though free trade with the semi-industrialized Celtic Alliance economy has certainly helped somewhat.
Absenteeism takes a toll on family life: many Manxmen work in Ireland for part of the year. The government has tried to encourage investment into services and small-scale manufacturing as a way to keep workers in the country.
Culture[]
Religion[]
The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are the only C.A. member nations to still have an established state church. The Diocese of Sodor and Man had been founded by the Norse but was fully part of the Church of England. The Crown had the power to name its bishop, and he or she sat as a member of Tynwald, just as the English bishops did in the House of Lords. The fall of the United Kingdom, and the effective end of the Church of England as a single body, sparked a debate over disestablishing the Church in Mann. But the island's own survival as a nation was also making many Manx desirous of holding on to whatever institutions they could, and in the end the antidisestablishmentarians won the day. In fact, the episode gave the Church the opportunity to present itself as a true embodiment of the Manx nation, and its membership and participation shot up, though they have slowly slid downward in the years since.
As the worldwide Anglican Communion recovered, the island church belatedly took the formal step of declaring itself a separate national church rather than a mere diocese of the Church of England. It is called the Church of Sodor and Man, still using the old Norse name. Like other Anglican churches in the CA, it is a member of the interdenominational Celtic Church organisation.
Among other Christian denominations, the Methodists are the largest on the island, before Doomsday having almost equaled the Anglicans in numbers.
Language and Celtism[]
The Isle of Man's status as one of the Celtic Nations is probably the most famous thing about it, and this has really come to the fore during its membership in the explicitly pan-celtist CA. Tynwald Day has expanded into a large cultural festival with a parade, music, and artistic displays. Manx language revival has accelerated. It is now taught to all children in school, and a Manx-medium school finally became a reality in 2006. It cannot be considered to be revived as a first language - the population remains wholly anglophone - but its place at the foundation of Manx national identity is assured.
Running counter to this is a renewed interest in Mann's British heritage, especially in response to new British unification efforts since 2010. A substantial part of the population did arrive as refugees in the aftermath of the war, and some of these felt left out amid the turn toward pan-celtism. Older residents also remember fondly the prewar connections to Britain and wonder whether the embrace of Irish influence has not been excessive.
Government[]
Tynwald[]
The isle's hallowed legislature has looked and operated in wildly different ways down through its millennium or so of existence, its one constant being its size, 24 members. Its name comes from Old Norse and is cognate with the Icelandic Þingvellir - the Thing-Field. It has been a democratically elected body since 1866 and has had responsibility for the Government since 1949. Tynwald is bicameral. The lower House of Keys is chosen via direct election, and it selects the Executive Council, which is equivalent to a Cabinet. The upper house is the Legislative Council. It consists of eight members chosen by the Keys, plus the Lieutenant Governor, the Anglican bishop, and the Attorney General. Most Manxmen proudly boast that their constitution has not essentially changed since before the war, seeing in this a sign of stability and their nation's success in coming through the crisis. There are, however, calls for reform: new structures adapted to the new world.
Law[]
The Isle of Man has a unique system of common law going back to the Norse, though its laws were totally unwritten before the fifteenth century.
The isle has an independent judiciary dating to 1884; prior to that, Tynwald itself functioned as the island's court, and indeed that was its main role for many centuries. The highest court is called the High Court of Justice of the Isle of Man; its judges are titled deemsters. Today there is no higher court; previously, appeals to the British Privy Council were possible.
Crown[]
The isle never stopped acknowledging Queen Elizabeth's heir as Lord of Mann - the only part of the British Isles where his nominal rule continued uninterrupted throughout the crisis years. From the late 80s to the mid-2000s, the island had no contact whatsoever with its sovereign. It changed the method of choosing his representative, its only major postwar constitutional change. Now the Lieutenant Governor is chosen by the Legislative Council, in a way similar to how the Legislative Council itself is elected by the House of Keys.
Ireland and the CA[]
The Celtic Alliance now has responsibility for the Isle of Man's defence, post and telecommunications, and trade policy. It plays a similar but not identical role to what the United Kingdom had done formerly. For example, Mann now has more legislative and judicial independence than before, but it no longer operates its own national postal service. It sends 3 members to the Celtic Alliance Parliament and has a permanent commissioner to manage the isle's relations with the alliance executive.
Other International Relations[]
Unaccustomed to international diplomacy, the Isle of Man relies on the CA ti handle most of its relations with the rest of the world. It has no organized diplomatic corps other than the commissioner to the CA. It has named permanent envoys to Southern England and temporary ones to some other British states. Through the Alliance, the Isle of Man is part of the Atlantic Defence Community and has representation in the League of Nations, but the national government rarely interacts directly with these organisations. It has not even joined the renewed Commonwealth of Nations, which is strongly associated with the South African branch of the royal family. The family's controversial status in the rest of the British Isles has led the isle to delay membership, though it might join at some point in the future when the Royal Question becomes less heated.
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