Beyond simply examining words that are related to political parties or factions, it’s also important to examine some of the typical words of our government itself. Looking at the structure of government, it is important to note what separates our form from others. For example, a number of countries are considered federations, like Russia, Germany, and the United States (where different levels of government share sovereignty). The European Union is the closest and only modern equivalent of a confederation (where an entity is created by sovereign states), and nations similar to the UK are defined as being today’s word: unitary.
In its basic form, the word unitary is simply an adjective which means that an object is uniform or unified. First used in English in 1816, the word is a derivative of the root word “unit,” which comes from the Latin unitum/unire (to unite). When used in a governmental sense, the term means that a state is governed by a single entity, which for us is, of course, Parliament. (Interestingly, even though Parliament has recently devolved extensive powers to local authorities in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, the UK is still considered to be unitary due to the fact that these localised powers are granted and can be withdrawn solely by Parliament.)
Exclusively during its first 3 decades of usage and throughout much of its history unitary has been used in a physical scientific sense. However, as with many words, time has seen the word’s usage expand beyond its traditional boundaries. The first known usage relating to people occurs in 1847 in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, which writes that “The parcelled and the associative systems… With the latter the economies of unitary habitation..might be obtained.” 1936 sees Sir Robert C. K. Ensor use the term relative to the UK for the first time in the Oxford History of England 1870-1914, writing that, “A special effect of the County Councils Act was that London acquired for the first time since its vast modern expansion a popularly elected unitary authority in the shape of the L.C.C.” Giving a broader overview of what has happened in the UK during the last few decades are the Parliamentary Papers of 1968-9 which, in the Report of the Royal Commission on Local Government, suggests that, “We would combine responsibility for all services in a single authority for each area. We call such areas unitary and the authorities responsible for them unitary authorities.”
