Scottish Independence

[grumbler]

Nationalism isn't about grievance, though that's often a motivating factor. It's about a sense of separate identity especially culturally and believing that because of that it needs its own political expression around that geographic, ethnic or civic identity. Did North Americans, especially given the growth in feeling of self-reliance, really feel no separate identity to British soldiers? That seems surprising. But I think it's difficult to compare nationalisms and I think that's especially the case with old and new world.

Americans of the time, from everything I have read, definitely saw British soldiers as fellow-Britains, though at least 1763.  The British colonists in the Americas had a great deal of self-government, of course - far more than any British in the home islands.  But that wasn't so much a factor of some separate identity as a matter of distance.  Right up through July of 1776, the Americans didn't seek independence so much as the same voice in their own affairs as their fellow-Brits had in Britain.  It wasn't taxation - the Americans offered to collect the taxes Britain desired themselves and forward them to the Crown - it was taxation without representation.

Among the poorer Americans, there was a feeling of separation from the British elite, just as there was among the poorer Devonshiremen and Northunderlanders.  But that wasn't nationalism.  It seems surprising that modern Brits (maybe modern Americans, too, though they haven't posted such ideas here) really attribute the American War of Independence to a nationalist sentiment.  I guess people are so used to thinking in nationalist terms that they can't see that there was a time when such feelings really didn't exist.  That a Quebecois would think in these terms isn't so surprising.  I don't think I have ever met (online or off) one of those who really understood American history.  I blame their schools.

[viper37]

I thought that Cameron was pulling a masterstroke when he forced the "increased devolution" option off the ballot. I thought that by taking the "easy way out" option from the Scots, he would force them to vote no. Now he's already offering increased devolution and might end up losing the country.

scare tacticts don't always work so well.  In fact, they often have the opposite effect, pushing moderate people toward the extreme option.

[Barrister]

The Queen , so to speak, wades out of the debate:

Scottish independence: Monarch 'above politics', Buckingham Palace says

Any suggestion that the Queen would wish to influence the Scottish referendum campaign is "categorically wrong", Buckingham Palace has said.

The statement follows press reports that Her Majesty was concerned about the prospect of Scottish independence.

It also follows comments from First Minister Alex Salmond, who said the Queen "will be proud" to be the monarch of an independent Scotland.

The Palace insisted the referendum was "a matter for the people of Scotland".

A spokesman said: "The sovereign's constitutional impartiality is an established principle of our democracy and one which the Queen has demonstrated throughout her reign.

"As such the monarch is above politics and those in political office have a duty to ensure that this remains the case.

"Any suggestion that the Queen would wish to influence the outcome of the current referendum campaign is categorically wrong.

"Her Majesty is firmly of the view that this is a matter for the people of Scotland."
....

Full article here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-29136149

Funny.  I don't remember such reservations from 1995.  From the same Queen.  For Canada.  And Quebec.

A quick google suggests that Liz said precisely nothing on the topic in public in 1995.

Her sum total involvement is when a radio prankster called her up and suggested that the yes said might win, she said that would mean the "referendum might go the wrong way".

[viper37]

Grumbler, you should read this:
Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766

There wasn't a massive feeling like in 1776.  Years of grievances to the British Empire added to that.  But that feeling was beginning to be there.

[viper37]

A quick google suggests that Liz said precisely nothing on the topic in public in 1995.

Her sum total involvement is when a radio prankster called her up and suggested that the yes said might win, she said that would mean the "referendum might go the wrong way".

I might have been wrong.  I was pretty sure she made some televised speech, à la Clinton.

[grumbler]

Grumbler, you should read this:
Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766

There wasn't a massive feeling like in 1776.  Years of grievances to the British Empire added to that.  But that feeling was beginning to be there.

Actually, Anderson agrees with me; that the British colonists felt themselves to be British, and that the troubles that came after 1763 came not because the American colonists felt themselves to be less British, but because British attempts to create a colonial structure that included both their long-standing British subjects and the various conquered subjects led to resentment among the British subjects that their own Crown wasn't serving their interests like a Crown properly should.  Subsequent protests would take the form of trying to alter the Crown's policies, though, rather than, until after the fighting began, try to supplant it.

Did you reach a different conclusion from reading the book?  I'd be interested in hearing it.

[Valmy]

I've asked that question twice, got no answer, other than nationalism is evil.

If the union is so important to many British citizens, why did they let it that far before reacting?  One week before the vote and suddenly they wish to grant more autonomy?  Why should the Scots believe it?

First all I said was that ethnically based states was a horrible idea.  Somehow this means nationalism is evil?  Anyway they have been granting autonomy.  They had devolution already so the Scots should believe it because it has been happening.  Now that it looks like the vote may be yes they are making efforts to save the country.  Is there some sort of history of the Scots being lied to you would lie to share?

[Valmy]

Grumbler, you should read this:
Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766

There wasn't a massive feeling like in 1776.  Years of grievances to the British Empire added to that.  But that feeling was beginning to be there.

Sure the feeling was that the war was not being managed in a way that satisfied our rights as freeborn British subjects.  Then William Pitt came along and gave into our demands and we thought he was a hero and the British Empire was the embodiment of American liberty and the tyrannical and superstitious French had been vanquished.  It was a good couple years there before the opposition took over and blew all of Pitts good will.

[garbon]

Is there some sort of history of the Scots being lied to you would lie to share?

[Valmy]

Is there some sort of history of the Scots being lied to you would lie to share?

Edward I was a little sneaky but he never actually lied.

[viper37]

Is there some sort of history of the Scots being lied to you would lie to share?

I watched Braveheart a few times, I know everything about Scottish history now.

Seriously, given the fact that the UK is now offering more autonomy, one would guess they didn't have much to begin with.  And as Sheilbh pointed earlier in the thread, they have less autonomy than a US State.

[viper37]

Sure the feeling was that the war was not being managed in a way that satisfied our rights as freeborn British subjects.  Then William Pitt came along and gave into our demands and we thought he was a hero and the British Empire was the embodiment of American liberty and the tyrannical and superstitious French had been vanquished.  It was a good couple years there before the opposition took over and blew all of Pitts good will.

As I said, national identity isn't built in one day.
It didn't happen spontaneously in 1775-1776.

[Josquius]

If the union is so important to many British citizens, why did they let it that far before reacting?  One week before the vote and suddenly they wish to grant more autonomy?  Why should the Scots believe it?

Scotland has been promised more autonomy for months.
It's one of the few smart moves BT has made, cornering off those who on a 3 option referendum would want more autonomy .

Direct promises like that are pretty hard for politicians to go back on. And there's no reason for them to do so

[Sheilbh]

A great piece by Alex Massie that I'm in total sympathy with:

Why I am voting No
333 comments 9 September 2014 16:02Alex Massie 



Once upon a time, a long while ago, I lived in Dublin. It was a time when everything seemed possible and not just because I was younger then. The country was stirring too. When I arrived it was still the case that a visa to work in the United States was just about the most valuable possession any young Irishman or woman could own; within a fistful of years that was no longer the case. Ireland was changing. These were the years in which the Celtic Tiger was born. They were happy years of surprising possibility.

Years later I lived in the United States and my perspective changed. Scottish independence seemed, viewed from there, about as useful or meaningful as independence for Texas. Not impossible or even necessarily undesirable but somehow missing the point nonetheless. But that was later. When I lived in Ireland, Dublin's example seemed, well, exemplary. If the Irish could do it, why couldn't we? More to the point, why shouldn't we?

So, like many other Scots who will vote No next week, I don't think independence a daft notion or some kind of fatuous affectation. I think there is a reasonable case for it (even if this is not the case that, during this long campaign, has often been the case that has actually been made). Could we do it? Why, yes we could. But should we?

Of course the detail matters. It matters even if you accept that the Scottish government's prospectus for life after independence is only one of many possible futures none of which can be decided until independence is achieved. There are many voters – well, perhaps one in five – who would vote for independence even if it promised an impoverished future. Similarly there are many voters – perhaps one in five – who would reject independence even if they believed it offered a more prosperous future.

Still, if we're to vote on independence it should be done on the basis of a moderately honest prospectus. No such prospectus has been offered by the Scottish government. A lot of people are voting on the basis of a deeply cynical and meretricious set of promises that simply cannot, not even when assisted by great dollops of wishful thinking, be delivered. It is not possible to spend more, borrow less and tax the same.

That, however, is what the SNP propose. Lower borrowing rates, 3% annual increases in public spending and no changes to the overall level of taxation. It is incredible. It supposes that voters must be glaikit and easily gulled ninnies who can be persuaded to swallow anything, no matter how fanciful it must be. A nonsense wrapped in a distortion inside a whopping great lie.

It's quite possible that the realities of life in an independent Scotland might push the country's centre-of-political-gravity to the right. Quite possible, then, that an independent Scotland would be more likely to produce more of my kind of politics than some of the politics imagined by the keenest advocates for independence. That still strikes me as a thin and selfish reason to vote for independence.

But, sure, many of the details could be worked out and it's certainly possible that after an initial period of some difficulty Scotland would emerge as a decently prosperous and contented country. It needn't be a disaster and it probably wouldn't be. Nevertheless, the growing pains would be acute and I think it best to recognise this. There will be short and even perhaps medium-term pain but the long-term prize will be worth it.

That's not what's being sold, however. Far from it.

There are other difficulties. The dishonesty of suggesting – or allowing it to be understood – that there's no functional difference between sterlingisation and a monetary union with whatever remains of the UK is, in the end, breathtaking. Yes, Scotland can "use the pound" but how it's used is a question of some importance.

I know politicians can never say they don't know the answer to something but there are times and places when pretending you have all the answers is worse than admitting the obvious truth that you don't. This is one of those times; one of those places.

But, look, in the end this is still process stuff. Very important process stuff but still only process stuff. I happen to think it provides ample reason to vote No but it's not why I'm voting No.

I'm voting No because the campaign has surprised me. It's made me think about my country and, more than that, what it means to be a part of that country. I'll vote No even though I think Scotland would do fine as an independent country.

Because, even more than the economic sleight-of-hand, I've been taken aback by the dishonesty of a campaign that claims you can end the United Kingdom as we know it but retain almost everything about the United Kingdom that actually makes it the United Kingdom.

Like everyone else I've been asked to believe that independence will improve relations between the constituent parts of this kingdom and that, far from ending a kind of Britishness, it will actually enhance your sense of Britishness. The Yes campaign has said you can lose your country and keep it too. I don't believe that.

You know how it is at a funeral: there is a hierarchy of grief and it is unseemly to pretend you're closer to the epicentre of loss than is actually the case. The same is true of difference and "foreigners". No parts of these Atlantic Isles are truly strangers to one another. But there is still a hierarchy of difference. England and Wales are not so foreign as Ireland. Ireland is not so foreign as New Zealand or Australia. Which in turn are less foreign than Canada. And Canada is not as foreign as France or Belgium or Sweden or even bloody Norway.

Independence won't sever all those bonds. Of course it won't. The hierarchy of difference will remain in place. But the gaps between the layers will increase. Scotland and England (and Wales and even Ulster) will drift apart. We will be less close than once we were; we will not become strangers but we will know less about – and be less interested in – each other. Never foreign-foreign but foreign enough for it to count and be noticed.

And I think that would be a sad business. I think Alex Salmond gets something very wrong when he says that England would lose a "surly lodger" after independence and gain a "good neighbour". Because I don't think of Scots as lodgers paying rent in someone else's house, granted a bedroom and the use of the lounge three nights a week. I think we live in our own house. A house we built ourselves. Salmond asks us to move to another, smaller, house and that's fine but he does so while pretending we can continue to live in our old house too. But we can't.

I'm Scottish but I'm British too and I've been surprised by the extent to which that latter layer of identity still matters to me and still has something to say, not just about me, but about all of us. I don't recognise the caricature of England (and it is usually England, not the rest of the UK) offered by Yes supporters. They see a heartless, rapacious, profiteering "neoliberal" dystopia; I see a relaxed, liberal, ambitious, open-minded, multi-racial, modern country.

They see the rise of UKIP and are frightened by it; I see UKIP as a bug not a feature because the feature is the manner in which the UK is open to the world and, actually, quite happy about that thank you very much. A UK in which, despite its difficulties, has managed the transition from a white country to a multi-racial polity with, in general, commendable ease. They see a broken, sclerotic, unreformable Britain; I see a cosmopolitan country that's a desirable destination for millions of people around the world.

Of course there are difficulties. There always are and always will be. Britain can no more solve every problem than could an independent Scotland. Which is why, again, this debate – for me anyway – isn't about policy but instead about something bigger: who we are.

The other day the historian Tom Devine remarked that all the Union has going for it is sentiment, family and history. Like that's not enough? Those aren't wee things, they're the things that make us who we are. The blood and guts, the bone and marrow of our lives. The tissue that connects us to our fellow citizens, the stuff that makes us more than an individual. The things from which you build a society.  You can have that in Scotland, alone and independent, too of course. But we also have it in Britain, right now, and we will lose some of that if we vote Yes. Or some of us will, anyway.

So I think of E Pluribus Unum and I think that's a motto that applies to the United Kingdom too. And so does its opposite: within one, many. There's ample room for many types of Britain. Not just Scots and Welsh and Irish and English but Pakistani-Scots, Jamaican-Welsh and Nigerian-English too. I think it's the tensions and ambiguities inherent in all of this that makes Britain interesting; that makes Scotland interesting too.

Nuance and complexity matter and have some value. They have helped make us what we are. I like that at Waterloo the Scots Greys, part of the Union Brigade, charged into the French lines to the cry of Scotland Forever. I like our ambiguous, sometimes ambivalent, often ironic, past. I like our present too and I have some small hopes for our future as well.

Perhaps this is romantic, sentimental, tosh but that's an inescapable part of national identity. An unavoidable part of the business of constructing a nation. That's true of Scotland just as it's true of Britain too.

Here's the thing: Scotland is different from England but it is not separate from it. Nor from Wales or even Northern Ireland either. I like the fact I have two countries. I like the fact that one includes Jerusalem, Men of Harlech and the Londonderry Air as well as Annie Laurie and the Flowers of the Forest. That one offers Larkin and Thomas and Heaney as well as MacDiarmid. I like that these belong to all of us even if they each belong a little more to some of us than they do to the rest of us.

I see this as a country greater than the sum of its constituent nations. Whatever remains of the United Kingdom after Scottish independence will do just fine. Scotland, likewise, is not doomed. We can, all of us, make a decent fist of things. But it will not be the same and the idea everything must change so things can remain much the same is a con.

If history matters – and I think it does just like sentiment and family matter – then whatever this place's shortcomings and mistakes it's worth recalling that it's also the country of William Wilberforce and Alan Turing as well as Adam Smith and Thomas Paine. That should count for something. We are different but not separate. I think of it as being like the relationship between Boswell and Johnson. They complement one another. You may even think they complete one another. There'd be a smaller Johnson without Boswell but a lesser Boswell without Johnson. They improved each other.

Most of all, I like that when you get the train to Scotland from London or Peterborough or Newcastle north and you cross the border in the gloaming you feel your heart soar and you cry hurrah and yippee because you know you're home now without having been abroad. I like that and think it matters. I don't know if I know why it does or why it suddenly seems so valuable but I know I do. But that's the Britain I know and like; a place in which I'm always Scottish but also, when it suits, British too. A country where you travel to very different places and still always come home without having been abroad.

[Sheilbh]

Regional units are too lumpy.  Plus inertia.

But even at county or town level the centre's willing to devolve pretty few powers. Look at what the Mayor of London can actually do, for example, and compare it with the Mayor of New York, Paris or Berlin.

Squeeze won't shut up about the north south divide.

North-South divide is mostly economic and a century ago was the other way round. That's it.

There's other differences but it's not another country

I thought that Cameron was pulling a masterstroke when he forced the "increased devolution" option off the ballot. I thought that by taking the "easy way out" option from the Scots, he would force them to vote no. Now he's already offering increased devolution and might end up losing the country.

I always thought Devo Max should be on the referendum. It'd probably get 60% of the vote.

Is there some sort of history of the Scots being lied to you would lie to share?

Yes-ish. During the campaign in the devolution referendum (for a far, far weaker Parliament than they've currently got) in the late 70s the Scots were told by some campaigners, like Sir Alec Douglas-Home, to vote no and they'd get 'something better'. As it turns out they got Thatcher, eighteen years of Tory rule and devolution wasn't even supported by the Labour party until the 90s.

Scotland has been promised more autonomy for months.

But until recently each party has been promising a different sort of autonomy and, anyway, we might end up with a coalition again.

Not to mention that I am getting the feeling that most Scottish yes votes are eyeing the hopeful bigger welfare checks out of the grabbed North Sea oil money.

I am shocked, shocked that you'd get a feeling like that

People who support more welfare money aren't necessarily on it. I play plenty of tax and receive no benefits but I want a bigger welfare state

Also the North Sea oil is in their waters. I don't think they'd be grabbing it any more than the Thatcher government did when they used it to pay for their tax cuts.

And I am merely referencing the earlier quoted Scottish Labour argument that people should vote yes to drive low taxes and low welfare out and back to England.

Scotland's generally more left-wing than England. This isn't a surprise.