If you were born before 1974 your probaly English by law

For hundreds of years the county of Monmouthshire was officially a part of England. However, in 1974, by action of a sparsely-attended parliamentary sitting, inclusive of not one MP for Monmouthshire itself, the county was moved into Wales. Overnight, the entire nationality of the county was changed wholesale without a referendum, or a survey, or even consulting the people informally. This paper will attempt to answer a number of questions surrounding the phenomenon - why did the move take place?, why was there not widespread protest against the move?, how Welsh has Monmouthshire become?, what has changed in the nature of British politics that would make this sort of action utterly unthinkable today? 'The Monmouthshire Question' cuts straight to the heart of contemporary issues surrounding regionalism, nationality, territorialism, democratic involvement, and patriarchal governance.

Monmouthshire's Welsh status was ambiguous until the 1960s. Previously, the legal formula had been to refer to 'Wales and Monmouthshire'. In popular usage, it had been considered part of Wales for many centuries. The ambiguity surrounding its status arose from its not being mentioned in the second Laws in Wales Act in the 16th century. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica unambigiously described the county as part of England, but notes that 'whenever an act [...] is intended to apply to [Wales] alone, then Wales is always coupled with Monmouthshire'.

The Acts that defined Monmouthshire did treat it in a slightly different way to other counties created out of the Marches (for example, it sent two members to the Commons, like English counties, rather than one, like the other Welsh ones). However, this is something of an irrelevance, as the entirety of Wales and the Marches had been part of England since the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284.

The question of Monmouthshire's status continued to be a matter of discussion, especially as Welsh nationalism and devolution climbed the political agenda in the 20th century: nonetheless, in the rare event that an Act of Parliament was restricted to Wales, Monmouthshire was always included, and the creation of the Welsh Office in 1964 explicitly included Monmouthshire. A typical example was the division of England and Wales into registration areas in the 19th century - one of which, the "Welsh Division", was defined as including "Monmouthshire, South Wales and North Wales".

The question was clarified in law by an Order in Council of 1968, and further clarified by the Local Government Act 1972, which provided that in legislation after 1974 the definition of "Wales" would include it. The Interpretation Act 1978 provides that in legislation passed between 1967 and 1974, "a reference to England includes Berwick upon Tweed and Monmouthshire", but would exclude the rest of Wales.

Being a part of the diocese of Llandaff, Monmouthshire was included in the area in which the Church of England was disestablished in 1920 to become the Church in Wales.