CommonSpace columnist Shaun Kavanagh takes a journey through Scotland’s relationship with Westminster to understand some of the issues of the modern day
“Our precious union of nations is the most successful union the world has ever seen … we have been joined together as one country for over 300 years – we’ve worked together, we’ve prospered together, we’ve fought wars together…”
Theresa May, 16/03/2017
RECENTLY, The Times columnist Melanie Phillips wrote in an article where she alluded that Scotland and Ireland were “cultural phenomena rooted in romanticism and myth”. The “British Isles”, she said, is the only “authentic nation” and “secessionists” must not be allowed to destabilise it.
This was in respect to Theresa May’s Brexit strategy, which seems to be about re-asserting British national sovereignty and recreating a unified and integrated UK.
Yet proponents of this viewpoint such as Melanie Phillips, and the prime minister, ignore the complexities and the nuances of Scotland’s relationship with its larger southern neighbour since 1707.
The preeminent historian Tom Devine has described Scotland’s relationship with England as being “in bed with an elephant”.
The preeminent historian Tom Devine has described Scotland’s relationship with England as being “in bed with an elephant”. Ultimately, the union of England and Scotland was not created on grounds of love or mutual adoration. It was a pragmatic solution founded after months of tense negotiations in response to a myriad of geo-political factors.
The Reformation and the emergence of protestantism ultimately added impetus for a closer relationship between a more correlated and peaceful relationship between two ancient nations – especially when the forces of counter-reformation in France and Spain posed a very real threat to the religious ‘freedom’ of the people of England and Scotland.
Once the parliamentary union was secured, Scotland was treated with a benign indifference. The union settlement protected the church and legal system, and an essentially Scottish form of national and local government was re-established.
The system of justice at the local level remained Scottish, while education and poor relief remained distinctive. This meant that most of the political decisions that mattered to Scots were made in Scotland.
In matters of education, poor relief, and in many legal matters as well as religion, the United Kingdom was not – and never has been – homogenous. In this sense, it could be said that Scotland has always enjoyed a state of semi-independence.
Ultimately, the union of England and Scotland was not created on grounds of love or mutual adoration. It was a pragmatic solution founded after months of tense negotiations in response to a myriad of geo-political factors.
Westminster was sovereign in formality. Yet in parliament, few bills were passed in relation to Scotland. Once England had secured its own internal security, it had no reason to interfere with affairs north of the border. Only during the retaliation for the Jacobite Rebellion after 1746 was there any great interference from the government in Scotland.
There was nothing inevitable about the union, and its success was not guaranteed. The great hope was that the union of 1707 would be the great panacea for all of Scotland’s previous ills. It wasn’t. In 1713 a vote to dissolve the act of union was defeated in the House of Lords by five proxy votes. For nearly five decades afterwards, it also seemed like it was destined to fail.
Of course, despite what some more fervent nationalist types would say, the union did eventually pay dividends for Scotland. From the middle decades of the 18th century, Scotland was an economic success story. The very rapidity of economic change encouraged the analysis of social transformation and gave rise to one of the most distinguished bodies of sociological literature in the modern world – what is now referred to as the Scottish Enlightenment.
In Scotland the great intelligentsia of the Enlightenment were unionist – and they rubbished the pre-union history of Scotland. Unionism was seen as liberation for Scotland; allowing the nation to develop from a feudal backwater to a key component of a commercial superpower.
Unionism was lauded by the contemporary elites as a common sense progression that brought peace and prosperity to the nation. Indeed, for a while, there were fears that Scotland would simply disappear into ‘North Britain’.
There was nothing inevitable about the union, and its success was not guaranteed. The great hope was that the union of 1707 would be the great panacea for all of Scotland’s previous ills. It wasn’t.
Yet the general characterisation of Scottish national identity as somehow absent for much of the 19th century ignores the widespread and dynamic sense of nationality present within civil society in Scotland at that time.
As the work of historian Graeme Morton has shown, Scots held “concentric loyalties”, to their own Scottish nationality and to the British state in which they had become incorporated via the union.
They could identify with their region within Scotland, Scotland as a whole, the British state and its empire. This is characterised by Morton as “unionist nationalism” – a dual identity where Scottishness was incorporated into a wider acknowledgement and support of the union.
But the very successes of the 19th-century Scottish economy stored up problems for the future. Scotland had achieved dominance in the field of heavy industry not only through technical skills but also by way of a relatively underpaid workforce. A vicious circle of overdependence began.
The manufacturing elite preferred investment abroad to the limited opportunities available in the domestic economy, where there was insufficient domestic demand, while, in turn, light industries and the service sector were underdeveloped.
In 1713 a vote to dissolve the act of union was defeated in the House of Lords by five proxy votes. For nearly five decades afterwards, it also seemed like it was destined to fail.
Two world wars served only to reinforce these imbalances through temporary ‘booms’, which delayed the inevitable collapse of an under-diversified economy. Nevertheless, Scotland remained a bastion of British unionism until the 1950s. Indeed, despite the mythology of Red Clydeside, Scotland had voted mainly for the Tories in the 1920s and 1930s.
The establishment of the welfare state soon became the new adhesive of the Anglo-Scottish union. Nationalisation of key industries further strengthened the idea of a British-wide collective economic enterprise.
The myriad of factors that contributed to the loosening bonds of unionism are beyond the scope of this article. However, a key, perhaps most critical, factor in this narrative is the Thatcher years. Between 1976 and 1987 the nation lost nearly a third of its manufacturing capacity. The great heavy industries that had made Scotland’s global economic reputation over more than a century
disappeared in a matter of a few years. The devastation was firmly placed at the feet of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives.
Major differences in political culture and voting patterns between nations since the Thatcher years of the 1980s have highlighted in the starkest terms the notion of a democratic deficit.
With the Labour party today on the fringes of Scottish politics, it seems that the pillars of ‘Britishness’ appear to be toppling – slowly.
Unionism was lauded by the contemporary elites as a common sense progression that brought peace and prosperity to the nation. Indeed, for a while, there were fears that Scotland would simply disappear into ‘North Britain’.
Why is this all relevant?
First, it is important to check and refute the spurious notions that the UK was once a homogenised state until devolution. When people argue, for example, that “we all voted to leave the EU as one country”, they miss the point that Scotland has had a fairly distinctive relationship with England for the majority of the union’s existence.
Second, as European history shows, long-term unions are not sustainable by geographical proximity or binding notions of shared history. Northern Ireland and the Irish republic, Spain and Portugal, Norway and Sweden – all provide examples of connections that have proved to be transitory.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, are issues of identity. The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey made clear recently that there has been a profound change in attitudes to the union since 2012. The number of Scots who support independence has doubled from 23 per cent to 46 per cent. It lends credence to the belief that the pendulum of identity in Scotland is glacially moving towards ‘Scottishness’.
Yet the ultimate litmus test was in the autumn of 2014. It showed that, despite the swing, the dual identity of Scoto-Britishness – or unionist-nationalism – was strong.
The next campaign for independence will have its fair number of arguments over balance sheets – but emotion and identity will play significant roles. Proud Scots of the unionist-nationalist variety must be understood and reasoned with – and not shouted down as ‘yoons’.
Identity is a powerful thing; and history demonstrates that the union is capacious and flexible enough to allow the continuance of distinctive Scottish institutions and sentiments.
For many Scots, the union has been able to contain and represent much Scottish national feeling – without the need for independence. In other words, as every canvasser who knocked a door in 2014 can testify, the response of, “I’m as proud a Scot as you can get, but I don’t believe in independence,” was as common as it was frustrating to get around.
The next campaign for independence will have its fair number of arguments over balance sheets – but emotion and identity will play significant roles in the process. Proud Scots of the unionist-nationalist variety must be understood and reasoned with – and not shouted down as ‘yoons’. Reality is far more complicated – and it’s in our greatest interests to understand that implicitly.
The union of 1707 was pragmatic, rather than emotional. So make the case for dissolving it pragmatic – calmly, and rationally.
This time, reason will prevail.
Picture courtesy of Lawrence OP
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