In 1982 Ian McEwan wrote a scene in which two characters discuss the ploughman’s lunch. Suggesting that it is “traditional English fare”, one character then reveals “In fact it’s the invention of an advertising campaign they ran in the early sixties to encourage people to eat in pubs. A completely successful fabrication of the past, the Ploughman’s Lunch was”. The story is much more complex, and probably more one of revival and fine-tuning than fabrication, but the fundamental tension remains: an expression which feels ancient, but is much more recent than it seems. Similarly, “Crown Dependency”, despite feeling an ancient anachronism, is a late 20th century conceptualisation; and like the Ploughman’s Lunch, one which has become increasingly established.
The Kilbrandon Report of 1973 reviewed the relationship of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man with the United Kingdom, but makes no mention of Crown Dependencies. Instead, when it uses a collective term for the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, it refers to “the Islands” (for instance para. 1469). The term “Crown dependency” had been used in UK Parliamentary debates from 1970, where it appeared in relation to Guernsey, but not in a way which clearly has a narrower meaning than dependent territory of the Crown, being used to refer to the Turks and Caicos in 1986 for instance. It was first used in the modern sense in Parliament in 1987; and in Tynwald not until 1998.
The term makes its first judicial appearance in an unexpected court. In twentieth century decisions under the European Convention on Human Rights, the term is absent – for instance in the famous Manx birching case of Tyrer v UK. In 2001, however, the European Court of Human Rights uses it, albeit in a footnote, in Bankovic v Belgium. The UK government had made a series of derogations (opt-outs) to the ECHR in relation to counter-terrorism. In 1998 a derogation explaining the position in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man had not used the term “Crown Dependencies”, but in February 2001 (just before Bankovic), the UK government used the term in the continuing derogation referred to in Bankovic. The first judicial appearance of the term, then, was a result of post-1998 change in UK practice under the ECHR. Having been used by the European Court of Human Rights, we then find the term appearing in court judgements from 2005 (UK), 2012 (Guernsey), and 2014 (Isle of Man and Jersey).
The first use of the term in legislation similarly appears this century, rather than last. It is used in explanatory notes to UK legislation – rather than legislation itself – three times in the 20th century. It makes its first appearance in UK secondary legislation in 2005, and in primary legislation in 2009. It then appears in an Act of Tynwald in 2015; and in Jersey and Guernsey legislation only after Brexit; when the term was given new legal significance in the reformulation of relationships that followed from the decision to leave the European Union.
A Tynwald Select Committee in 2024 recommended “that the word “dependency” does not reflect clearly the constitutional status of the Isle of Man; and that Tynwald calls on the Isle of Man Government to engage in discussion with the Manx public and with the Governments of the Channel Islands and the UK with the aim of finding a better term”. It drew on evidence from Jersey and Guernsey, as well as the Isle of Man. Perhaps the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, and the United Kingdom will agree to replace Crown Dependency with a new term. If they do, it will not be discarding a long Manx tradition.
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