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Historical Review: How Many Referendums Have Been Organized in the UK So Far?

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As the day for the Brexit is approaching it is interesting to go back in the history of the UK and find out approximately how many similar referendums were held previously in the UK and to refer to some interesting features that are peculiar to the referendums organized in the UK.

So far there have been 13 significant referendums held in the UK.  Let’s refer to the major ones.

The first referendum of national significance held in the UK was in 1973, when according to the referendum results Northern Ireland decided to stay within the UK rather than to join the Republic of Ireland.  Two years later in 1975 the first UK-wide referendum was held to decide whether the UK should remain within at that time European Economic Community or not.  During the referendum the Government, Conservative Opposition, the Liberal party advocated for the UK staying in the Union and consequently the UK stayed in the Union with 65% of the "remain" votes.

 Later on in 1979 Scotland and Wales organized a referendum to establish devolved assemblies, which, however, did not have a positive outcome. Only in 1997 and 1998 when similar devolution referendums were held first in Scotland and Wales, then in London (on an elected Mayor and Assembly) and Northern Ireland, four of them had positive outcomes.

Another UK-wide referendum was held in 2011 and it was on adopting the Alternative Vote (AV) system for UK general elections. This was for the first time that the ruling party led a "no" campaign and the change was rejected. And finally in 2014 the well-known Scottish referendum was held during which a record participation turnout of over 84% was reported. 55.3% of voters negatively responded to the question: "Should Scotland become an independent country?" Those are the major referendum recording in the UK history (more details here).

Finally, if we refer to some main peculiarities of the organization of referendums in Britain we should mention the following three interesting facts:

First, although UK-wide referendums are governed by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 ("the 2000 Act"), for  general procedure, each referendum requires  its own Act of Parliament, which among others also sets the franchise for each referendum.

Second, the turnout of the referendums organized in the UK is not usually so high as compared to the turnout in elections.  So far the highest turnouts were reported in Northern Irish referendum on the Good Friday Agreement- 80 percent and 84 percent in the Scottish referendum in 2014.

Third, how strange it may sound the referendums in the UK are not legally binding and only have consultative nature, which means that the UK parliament can ignore the results of the referendum.

Thus, the chronology of the referendums in the UK and some of the peculiarities mentioned, prove that each referendum can be unique in its nature in terms of the groups of people eligible to participate, the main emphasis the referendum questions can contain, the stance of main political parties etc. In this sense the upcoming referendum is also going to be a unique one in its nature and will have a far-reaching consequences in case of either outcome.

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