I'm recently back from a two-week holiday to the south coast of England and to London, my first visit to the city in almost fifteen years. My partner and I went primarily to visit with friends on the south coast and to see events in London; we had a thoroughly enjoyable time in glorious weather. Walking along the promenades in Hastings and nearby Eastbourne reminded me of the holidays of my youth, when my immediate and extended family of grandparents, cousins and an aunt and uncle would descend on an English seaside town for a fun-filled fortnight. But then as now, to me when I crossed that invisible line near Berwick I knew I was in another country. Then as now, that other country did not feel like a smooth continuation of my own.
Time has not diminished that feeling I first experienced as a boy. In fact, it has been amplified and matured by an increasing political awareness, first germinating in the 1980s with my witnessing of Thatcherism as a youth, but flourishing particularly in recent years as Westminster's neoliberal assault made Thatcherism look tame in comparison. What I and the majority of other Scots was and are now witnessing was the unelected-by-us imposition of an alien form of government. Few in Scotland agree with it because it does not fit within our centre-left culture. We're not of the same mind as those who devise and implement its policies. In short, they're foreign.
There is a country called Scotland. There is a country called England. They are culturally cohesive units that their peoples identify with. That simple fact can be no more brought home than by a journey and a stay across the border for a citizen of either country. There may be many similarities between the two, but culturally there are many distinctions. Had the nobles of eighteenth century Scotland and England entered into an equitable union, deciding in partnership to create an entirely new country of Great Britain while simultaneously discarding both England and Scotland to history, then perhaps we would not be having this referendum three centuries later. Perhaps by now we would all be truly British, and nothing more. That of course was never going to happen. For England the union was about the acquisition of territory it had long coveted, by means of bribery and blackmail, in order to strengthen and further its imperial ambitions. It went on to do so under the new, often laid-aside moniker of Great Britain. The fact that there were Scots who gladly participated in the new union and its project of empire does not alter where the real power resided – in England.
But even had it been tried, any attempt to erase the nations of Scotland and England from history at the time of union would have been futile. Both had long since coalesced out of the many smaller kingdoms of the early middle-ages to establish themselves as distinct political and cultural units, with boundaries much as they are today. They had entered the modern age as countries, complete with their own stories, songs and traditions. For those politicians who like to claim that Scotland was extinguished by the Acts of Union, they should know then that what they wish for is impossible. We have earned our place in the history of our world, and we are not going away.
What needs to go away is the artificial and unfair construct of the United Kingdom – nothing more than a political contract too often conflated with ideals of one-nation shared values. The campaign to retain Scotland within the United Kingdom falls back frequently on sentimental references to the past, of struggle against common enemies or of shared achievements, but these things have nothing to do with the constitutional arrangement by which Scotland and England are governed. As an example, and for those that haven't yet had it inflicted on them, let's take a look at “Let's Stay Together”, the love-bombing video just released by the No camp. Click on the video on the right side of the page; leave the other video for later, if your stomach can take it.
Here we have a collection of actors, comedians and TV personalities doing their level best to tug at Scottish heart-strings. There are no politicians, economists or other such individuals whose words could matter in this debate. So bankrupt is the No campaign of any serious argument for Scotland to remain under the rule of Westminster that has not by now been comprehensively demolished by Yes, that they are left with no other tactic that emotional blackmail. Some of my favourite moments from the video:
- Fiona Phillips at 0.48. "If independence happens we'll
realise that we were all better off together."
It's more likely that the English electorate will realise they were better off with Scotland as an economic crutch. Both countries will recognise that they were lied to for years by those who knew better.
- Fiona Phillips at 0.57. "We could have made it work".
How many more centuries will that take? You've had three already.
- John Barrowman at 1.03. Just an aside - what an amazing
accent he's discovered in time for this video.
- Ross Kemp at 1.33. “We were fighting for each other.”
Actually we're fighting for oil and corporate interests in a series of illegal wars - the kind we'll no longer participate in post-independence - but we'll leave that aside for the moment.
- David Harewood at 2.20. "We've laughed together."
I've also laughed with the Marx brothers, but that doesn't mean I'd want them running my country. Your point is?
- Fiona Phillips at 2.30. "Scotland is part of my family"
Scotland is a country. Your family is your family. My partner is American – should we propose a political union with the USA? (Actually I suppose we practically have one...)
- Tony Robinson at 3.46. "We love you and want to be with
you."
Tony, I love you too. I really do. Blackadder was part of my youth and I love watching you dig stuff up, but really... enough.
We're only ripping up a political contract. We're still right here north of the border and not packing up en masse for a one-way ticket with the Mars One project. Our shared values come from the social unions that are naturally formed over time between close neighbours, but that does not necessitate political union.
Scotland deserves better than the self-indulgent nonsense spooned up in “Let's Stay Together”. We deserve a real reason to stay in the United Kingdom – something that will outweigh the poverty, the austerity, the lack of democracy and Trident nuclear submarines. We're not getting it from the No campaign because such a reason doesn't exist. We need a clear direction for Scotland's future as part of the United Kingdom at a time where the future is heading into difficult, uncharted, de-growth territory. We're not getting that from Westminster because they're terrified by that future and know only how to wallow in broken-down policies that occasionally worked in the recent decades of über-growth. Scotland and England and the other nations of the British Isles will hopefully be around for a long while to come as small countries negotiating their way on a different, de-globalising world. But the United Kingdom? If it doesn't end in 2016, the trajectory of the future will likely see to it soon enough.
Apologies for the delay in posting this entry. Life, and MS, have an irritating way of interfering with plans!
