Recognising the Armenian Genocide in the UK: Multi-level Governance and National Identities

Although the British government was intimately involved in the initial stages of the international recognition of the Armenian genocide, it has since kept a conspicuous silence on the issue. Since the early 21st century, Members of Parliaments have regularly introduced motions or Bills to achieve recognition, but they are never even likely to pass as they are not supported by the government of the day. The latest of those efforts was a Private Member’s Bill presented on 11 December 2023, which Second Reading is supposed to happen in June 2024. No major party has clearly advocated for the recognition in their electoral manifestoes or in major leader’s speeches, even if individual MPs have issued statements in the past. The House of Lords which, over the past two decades, has specialized in human rights issues, is making explicit, though timid, efforts at promoting the debate. The British government, however, is sticking to a legalistic line: they declare that only international courts can call such events “genocides”.
Even if the national recognition of the genocide does not appear likely, the constitutional structure of the United Kingdom means that some regions of the country, Wales and Scotland, have been able to issue official recognition through their parliaments. The language used in the debates there emphasizes the Welsh or Scottish identities as supportive nations, in solidarity with victims of war and genocide. On a different scale, Britain was still a member of the European Union when the European Parliament had voted to call the events a “genocide”, adding a further international dimension to the debate, even if the tension has somewhat lessened with Brexit.
Therefore, in the UK, the question of the recognition of the Armenian genocide is caught between intra-state debates and international relations. This paper aims at understanding the discrepancy between the different levels of decision-making in the UK, through the analysis of parliamentary discourse in the UK Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd, as well as the different declarations of major political parties.