Britain's Splitting Headache
The Sunday Age
Sunday February 3, 2008
As the power of the British Empire fades, the Scottish are intensifying their push for independence, writes Jacqueline Maley.
NINE days ago, Scottish drawing rooms echoed with the glorious, phlegm-sodden sounds of Robert Burns poems, recited loudly and at length. Burns Night takes place every year on January 25, the presumed birthday of the adored Scottish poet. A haggis supper is optional, but recitation of Burns' most famous poem, the feisty Address to a Haggis, is not. In it, he hails the "great chieftain of the pudding race", which is sneered at by the anglicised upper class but keeps the Scot strong: "The trembling earth resounds his tread."Burns died in 1796, but his patriotic poem has more resonance than ever. Despite last year celebrating 300 years of its union with England, Scotland, along with parts of Wales and Northern Ireland, is restless. The Scottish National Party, whose goal is Scottish independence, has won government for the first time ever, and there is talk of a referendum on the subject. Wales, which occupies a place in the English heart similar to that of Tasmania in Australia, also has its own independence movement. And despite a recent power-sharing agreement, the voices of nationalism in Northern Ireland are stronger than ever. Which leaves a very lonely England looking vulnerable as the last vestiges of its old empire are threatened. "The European Union means people are becoming aware of the fact that Europe consists in large part of very small countries," says Alasdair Allan, a Scottish National Party MP in the Scottish Parliament."Scotland is an ancient country, with the institutions of an independent one. People are beginning to ask, 'Why are we not a properly independent country?"'Since 1999, Scotland has had its own parliament, with dominion over education, health care, police and justice but, crucially, no revenue-raising or foreign policy powers. Traditionally, Labour has enjoyed strong support north of Hadrian's Wall, but its supremacy was overturned last year when the SNP won minority government (with 47 seats out of 129, compared with 46 for Labour) in the Scottish elections. The shock was felt in Westminster, where the Labour Prime Minister is a proud (and famously dour) Scot. The SNP win sent a strong message to England that the union of the two countries, which has existed since the Act of Union was signed in 1707, may not be the strongest of marriages. Since then, there has been talk of divorce. The change in government was partly a reaction against what many Scots saw as the arrogance of the London-centric British Labour Party. According to stereotype, Scots are brave-hearted warriors, but the decision of Tony Blair's government to take Britain to war was enormously unpopular in Scotland. As the Scottish First Minister, the head of Scottish government, Alex Salmond put it: "(Blair) managed to illustrate why it's probably a good idea to decide whether your troops should go off to war - because if you don't, some other idiot will."The Iraq war coincided with a resurgence in the sense of Scottish identity, Allan says, and it's not all kilts and whisky-soaked Highland flings. According to Professor David McCrone, co-director of the Institute of Governance at the University of Edinburgh, Scottish national pride has evolved. "Britishness has withered away," he says. "It's not like we have some sort of rabid ethnic 'we-hate-England' nationalism, but people take pride in being open to immigrants in Scotland. In England, they worry about keeping them out, whereas we seek to attract immigrants."About 2% of the population is non-white. They are mostly Pakistani immigrants. According to our research, they call themselves Pakistani Scots or Muslim Scots. You find Sikhs wearing kilts and all sorts of things."Thirty years ago, 65% of people in Scotland called themselves "Scottish". By 2005, this figure had leapt to 76%. In England, 41% of people declare themselves "very proud of being British" but only 23% of Scots feel the same way. "Virtually nobody would describe themselves as more British than Scottish now," Allan believes. "One of the factors is the disappearance of one of the main bulwarks of Britain, which is empire."When it entered the union in 1707, Scotland became part of an empire with merchants and colonial governors, missionaries and soldiers and all of that. That doesn't exist any more."As is often the case with marriages that have soured, there are also fights about money. In the past few months, there has been feisty public debate about the fact that public spending is higher per capita in Scotland than in the rest of Britain. In the minds of some English, the miserly Scots are living large off the munificence of England's wealthy south-east. Some call their northern neighbours "subsidy junkies".The National Health Service is also administered slightly differently in Scotland, meaning that Scots get free prescriptions and free personal nursing care for the elderly. The English get neither, a fact that creates some resentment.But both major British parties are keen to preserve the union. On a recent trip to Scotland, the leader of the British Conservative Opposition, David Cameron, lashed out against the ugly stain of separatism seeping through the Union flag. "The future of the union was looking more fragile - more threatened - than at any time in recent history," he warned. The British Labour Party cites more practical, chiefly economic reasons for its opposition to Scottish separatism. But Scotland has rich oil reserves in the North Sea, which the SNP says would ensure its fiscal independence. If it has its way, there will be a referendum on the independence question in 2010."It will be up to the people to decide," Allan says. But it's not just the northern natives who are restive - England also faces insubordination from their western neighbours, the Welsh. Normally the butt of jokes involving sheep and baritone singers, the small but culturally distinct region is pushing back.In last year's elections for the Welsh Assembly, Plaid Cymru, the Party of Wales, won a record number of seats. It moved from opposition to forming a coalition government with the Labour Party. Its stated aim is to "promote the constitutional advancement of Wales with a view to attaining full national status for Wales within the European Union"."The big parties are all very London-based and London-centric and people are starting to see they don't deliver to the people of all corners of the UK," says Meinir Jones, a spokeswoman for Plaid Cymru. "That's why the nationalists are now in power in Scotland and Wales."During the 1960s, a group called the Free Wales Army waged a bombing campaign to promote the cause of independence, but since then the road to greater autonomy has been peaceful."We're quite mellow and easygoing," says Jones of her countrymen. "People call us the land of the song. We like singing and rugby. Our identity is based on culture more than politics, very different to the Irish people."Ireland's recent political history is famously bloody, but since last May, the Nationalists and Unionists have shared power in peace. Ian Paisley, Ireland's Democratic Unionist First Minister, and his deputy, former IRA chief-of-staff Martin McGuinness, appear so jolly in public appearances that one Ulster unionist dubbed them the "chuckle brothers". But the nationalist cause, which has been alive in some form or another since the time of Cromwell, is not about to fade out. Last year, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said guardedly that the Northern Ireland devolution experiment was "a work in progress". "I'm minded of when someone was asked what they thought about the French Revolution. They said it was too soon to tell."
© 2008 The Sunday Age