Scotland

I think since the Queen is a Stuart – she would keep being the Queen of Scotland , separate from her being the Queen of the UK. When we stopped being able to go to the Privy Council in England to get our grievances against our parliament addressed, the Crown of the States and Commonwealth of Australia separated from the Crown of the United Kingdom. It is just a happenstance now that HRH Queen Elizabeth is the Queen of both (and Queen of her other 14 I think Realms also) – the Crowns are no longer formally in a union. This is like the first Stuart King James 1 & 6 was King of Scotland and King of England but the union of the kingdoms was in his person not in the Crowns which were separate until later on.

So I think Scotland would default to having its very own Crown, which would happen to be borne by Queen Elizabeth. I don’t think the separating from England side have offered a thorough legal examination of how separation would affect the Constitution. When the Scottish government surveyed me about devolution (because if you download a government report from their departmental websites you get to be surveyed for your views on Scotland separating from the UK) – I suggested they should look into how this separation would alter the Constitution and thoroughly explain possible alterations to the public.

I’m not really sure of how English and Scottish laws are currently joined – and how separation would affect other laws and jurisprudence in Scotland. Even though we can’t go to the Privy Council for redress any longer (I don’t think the Privy Council is what it used to be now anyhow – since PM Blair changed The Lord High Chancellor’s constitutional role most unfairly without asking the people if they thought this was a good idea and if they understood what it would mean having lots of their laws be conscience laws – but no longer having an institutional role in the upper house of parliament for the Keeper of the King’s Conscience – how are all the people going to know they have lots of conscience (also called equity) laws at their service?) UK jurisprudence is regularly cited in Australian courts. Would this be the same for Scotland now? And what if they separated from the United Kingdoms?

> I’m not really sure of how English and Scottish laws are currently joined

Essentially they aren’t. After the act of union the westminister parliament didn’t make any particular attempt to unify scottish and english laws, and strongly preferred passing england-only and scotland-only legislation to joint/unified approaches.

Makes more sense when you remember that this only happened in 1707.

It hasn’t really been about the monarch since 1688, when the crown’s powers were largely annexed by Parliament in England. That’s the form that modernity took on the eastern British island: the ‘crowned republic’, with monarchic powers exercised by an assembly, first in England and then in Scotland too after 1707, when the deal with the then Scottish parliament produced a single Union parliament in London containing Scottish members. Since then, discourse about the monarchy has pretty much functioned as a symbolically charged placeholder for discourse about the powers of parliament(s). The nice lady with the hat and corgis has some affective legitimacy in her own right, but it’s secondary, it expresses an underlying arrangement, and it’s hard to imagine it surviving the end of what it expresses. (As I try to say in the video above, the symbolism is also profoundly unhelpful now if you want to talk substantively about the Union. It worked fine in the 18th C to embody a representative constitution in a stout Protestant gentleman from Hanover; less so these days.)

What’s the difference between HRH and HM?

ZM, the Crown retains a theoretical power to appoint one party to form a government where there is no clear parliamentary majority, or when a budget cannot be passed. I don’t know much about Australian constitutional history, but a quick bit of Wikipedia reading on the crisis of 1975 reveals that (a) 1975 was not so much ‘the last time’ the crown’s reserve powers were used in Australia as the only time; and that (b) the Governor General in question, Sir John Kerr, was under the influence of Whitlam’s conservative opposition and possibly of the CIA, rather than Buckingham Palace. Asked by Whitlam whether he had consulted the Queen, he apparently replied that he didn’t need to. This sounds like an abuse of a parliamentary system, not a demonstration of its subordination in general to monarchic power.

Meanwhile, since my actual, prosaic country may be dismantled next Thursday, will you forgive me if I say that fart in the general direction of the Winter Queen of Bohemia?

Just because I am a country person, this is no reason to be dismissive. The Crown is very important as an institution and in laws. I asked above how much would change legally if Scotland leaves the United Kingdoms – Collin Street says the jurisprudence is distinct , but does this mean common law, and conscience/equity laws do not apply? What sort of law do they have -in Scotland if it is completely different jurisprudence from England?

How will land law be affected – in England and Australia the Crown holds all land and people have tenure? What are the obligations of the crown and parliament to the people? Will separation affect these obligations? There are many other questions too – it is not just a matter of Englishness and Scottishness, or Britishness together (I have only watched the start of your clip so far) . Your father wrote a book on the history of the parliament – so you might know how this will affect parliamentary institutions and laws in an independent Scotland (unless Scottish law and parliament is already entirely distinct – but then why would they need devolution?)

On the Crown’s Reserve Powers – From The High Court’s website

“There is a tendency to place the reserve powers in boxes. One might well call them Pandora’s boxes, because there is great trepidation about opening them, for fear of what might be released. In my view, they are better considered in terms of the constitutional principles that underlie them. While this may open up the possibility of reserve powers being used in relation to other subjects, such as the operation of caretaker conventions or the prorogation or summoning of Parliament, this should not be a matter of alarm as long as they are applied in accordance with the relevant constitutional principles to secure responsible constitutional governance, rather than as anomalous exceptions.”

I heard a talk just the other day on conscience law in England and Australia – sometimes this is rhetorically dismissed as being dependent on the size of the chancellor’s shoe. But again – it is discretionary but underpinned by legal principles – so it should not be exercised arbitrarily – but it makes up for the strictness of common law which can result in unfair or unmerciful verdicts.

I didn’t mean to be dismissive. Or rude. I am just very worried about this.

My ‘counterrevolutionary commitments’, eh? I can only admire your telepathic powers; the same ones, presumably, that tell you that ‘the English’ in 1940 had, unanimously and exclusively, the outlook on fascism of Lord Halifax.

#5- I can understand the impatience of an English historian when faced with the concerns of Americans with monarchical niceties. (OT, may I take the opportunity to tell you how much I learned from (and enjoyed) Red Plenty?)

But trying to understand what will happen to HM the Queen in the event of Scottish independence is one way into a confusing situation.

So here’s what I think I know, and I’m ready to be corrected:

Until 1603, Scotland and England were completely separate countries. (“England” includes Wales, which was legally incorporated into England under Henry VIII.) In 1603, the Scottish King James VI acceded to the English monarchy and became King James I of England while remaining James VI of Scotland. So he was James I & VI.

In 1707, the parliaments of the two countries each enacted an Act of Union, which merged the two kingdoms into a new state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The two existing parliaments – the English Parliament and the Scottish Parliament – ceased to exist, and a new Parliament of Great Britain came into being.

The monarch at the time, Queen Anne, had worn three crowns – she was Queen of England, Queen of Scotland, and Queen of Ireland. After the Acts of Union, she became Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, while keeping her separate crown as Queen of Ireland. Luckily, she was the first Queen Anne for either country, so no one had to worry about what number she should have. And the next four kings were all George, a name that had not been used by kings of either Scotland or England, so there was no number problem there.

In 1800, the parliaments of Ireland and Great Britain each passed an Act of Union, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The parliaments of the two countries merged, and the monarch at the time, George III, became king of this new kingdom. He kept his number III, which was fine because he was the third William to be king of Great Britain and also the third William to be king of Ireland.

The number problem didn’t come up until William IV took the throne in 1765. He could have been William I of the UK, or William IV & III of England and Scotland, but decided just to be IV – a tacit assertion that the dominant throne is the English one. That’s been the practice ever since – Elizabeth II is the first Elizabeth to be Queen of the United Kingdom, as the first one was Queen of England, but she uses the II nonetheless.

In 1919, a group of Irish revolutionaries declared the existence of the Irish Republic and formed a government. The Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland never recognized the existence of this entity and went to war to suppress it.

In 1921, a negotiated solution was reached and representatives of the two sides signed a document called the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Its terms were enacted by Parliament in 1992. As a result the union of Ireland and Great Britain was dissolved. The Kingdom recognized Ireland as being a separate “dominion.” The King was represented in the Irish Free State by a Governor-General, and the officials of the State took an oath of loyalty to the King (a fact, btw, that played a significant role in igniting the Irish Civil War).

The northern counties opted out of the Irish Free State and remained part of the United Kingdom. The name of the kingdom was formally changed in 1927 to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to acknowledge that most of Ireland had become – like Canada, Australia, etc. – a “dominion,” no longer part of the same country.

The Act of Westminster 1931 recognized the full independence of the Irish Free State and the other dominions, but legally the last vestiges of the monarchy in Ireland were not eliminated until 1948.

In 1997, Parliament passed an act that provided for the establishment of a Scottish parliament if a referendum in Scotland approved. The referendum passed in 1999, and a devolved parliament was created, so that the Scots are represented both in the UK Parliament and in the Scottish parliament. This had no effect on the monarchy.

The Scottish parliament has now unilaterally authorized a referendum on independence. Unlike the 1997 referendum, the current referendum was not authorized by the UK parliament.

Therefore, as I understand it, Scottish independence if authorized by referendum will not be legal under the laws of the United Kingdom, just as the independence of Ireland in 1919 was not legal. Whether it will be legal under international law is an interesting question and any country that wants to recognize an independent Scotland will find a legal ground to do so.

The Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would be legally within its rights to go to war to suppress Scottish independence, just as the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland did in 1919 against the Irish Republic. But the Scots are safe in assuming that the UK will not go to war to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom and that in a fairly short period of time – much shorter than the equivalent events for Ireland – the Parliaments of both countries will each pass an act that recognizes Scottish independence.

The Scots, presumably, will immediately name their country the Republic of Scotland and their parliament will pass an act abolishing the monarchy. That act will have no effect in the country to the south, which will still be the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland unless and until its parliament changes it.

Presumably HM the Queen will keep her title as monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland until a formal treaty and recognition of the dissolution of the union is passed by the two parliaments. The name of the kingdom will become the United Kingdom of England and Northern Ireland, or perhaps England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

I have a friend from Germany who thinks that it would be a fine idea if the various secessionist movements in Europe had their way — Flanders, Catalunya, Euzkadi, Südtirol/Alto Adige, etc. — because they’d get a better deal as separate parts of the EU than they do in their present configurations. Then again, he’s Bavarian, and Bavaria, like California in the U.S., looks a lot more like a viable independent state than, say, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, or Montana. It was interesting to see, in the Writers Together, just how murky this proposition is at present, at least in the view of two people who know a lot more about it than I do.

Anyway, thanks for the link, Francis. I’ve sent it off to my friend, and will see how he responds. Being an American, I naturally agree with you that the continuation of the Enlightenment project ought to be the great unifier, but as we all know, it isn’t now, if it ever really was, and I’m not so sure that its opposite and great rival, nationalism-as-tribalism, is quite the barbarism that, say, a died-in-the-wool Brussels Eurocrat would have us believe. Fairness, justice, respect for our dignity are the underlying issues. Until the political unions which demand our allegiance allow us all our due –not necessarily what we believe is our due, mind you — ethnicity, nationality, religion, seem natural as a last defense against marginalization, and not just to the ignorant and enraged.

The Scots, presumably, will immediately name their country the Republic of Scotland and their parliament will pass an act abolishing the monarchy.

Why would you presume this?

“The Scottish parliament has now unilaterally authorized a referendum on independence. Unlike the 1997 referendum, the current referendum was not authorized by the UK parliament.”

The referendum is authorised by the UK in The Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Schedule 5) Order 2013. If there’s a yes, there’ll be negotiation followed by secession.

However this turns out, it’s one of the most colossal political fuckups ever. It’s hardly good for the UK if close to a majority vote that they want out. It’s strange that this has evolved from such an abstract possibility to something so real. All the unionist plots “the SNP will never get a majority government at holyrood” & “let them have a vote, they’ll lose dramatically and be humbled” have turned to shit very quickly.

“One positive thing from “devolution” might be that you wouldn’t have a Tony Blair being used as a fig leaf for international support for adventures like Bush’s war in Iraq.”

Dunno. The most recent international impact of Scots MPs is making Cameron lose the Syria vote. That not only stopped the UK intervening on the pro-ISIS anti-Assad side of the civil war, but smashed any hopes of an international coalition, took away the diplomatic cover Obama needed to intervene, and allowed the Russian disarmament plan to take place. God knows where we’d be now if that had gone the other way.

Are we not true Scotsmen? We are Devo!

Francis Spufford @17 And I can only admire your gall in ignoring the English record on fascism even after I mentioned Ethiopia, Spain and Munich. Alas, I have no telepathic powers, merely functional literacy and ears. You’ve left a record.

engels@22 Nitpicking, it’s the imperial march.

Abbe Faria@25 The negotiations are not a formality, especially if it is decided the new arrangements must themselves be ratified by either the UK parliament or a UK wide referendum. An independence vote would mean that independence is on the agenda, which would be huge politically. But it’s not independence. So far from being a done deal, it just means the dealing really begins.

Abbe Faria@27 Since the US is officially launching an air war against Syria, the great contribution of the Scots MPs, admirable as it may have been, clearly did not save the world from yet another US war.

The irony is that, despite all the hysteria that has been whipped up at this stage of the campaign, mostly from the ‘No’ campaign, independence for Scotland would involve very little change except at the superficial legal-political level. The SNP are pledged to keep many of the facets of Union, while all the threats coming from banks and business are unlikely to be put into action, they are just because they like to make clear who is boss in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote.

I am opposed to the principle that national identity has to have its outlet in a fully sovereign, internationally-recognised state, but the state of the campaign at the moment leaves me more resentful than ever against the London-based elites. (I am a Yorkshireman btw)

“independence for Scotland would involve very little change except at the superficial legal-political level.”

I don’t see how this can be so.
(1) North Sea Oil
(2) Borders
(3) currency and monetary policy
(see, e.g., http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/maastricht-in-a-kilt/?_php=true&_type=blogs&module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body&_r=0

Oh, and Scotland would have a much more social democratic government than it does now, while the country to the south, without the 40 Labour and 11 Lib-Dem MP’s from Scotland, would have a much more free market conservative government.

Hard to predict how this would play out – e.g., if Scotland keeps the pound and leaves monetary policy in the hands of England, it could have a round of austerity much more challenging than what it’s seen to date, no matter how hard its government tries to reflate the economy using fiscal policy. But if it leaves the pound, it may lose a big chunk of its financial sector and face very steep inflation, at least in the short term.

Or maybe not. I don’t think you can say that nothing will happen.

I watched the “Writers Together” video, and I’m struck by the degree to which science fiction has become the version of the imaginary that encompasses the future, even the political future. The video starts with _Lanark_ and ends with “if only Iain Banks were here”. Even the link to the man hounding the Labour MPs would not have featured the Imperial March if it wasn’t for Star Wars.

Is that purely a selection effect created because Francis Spufford and Ken McLeod are both writers, or is e.g Alasdair Gray really a force within the population in general? I remember that when I wrote some kind of fannish thing about _Lanark_ I was contacted by school kids who wanted to use something about it for a school project, and realized that the book was assigned very widely.

One thing that the video reminded me of, in connection with Ken’s comments about immigration and London: the bit in Adam Roberts’ _New Model Army_ in Chapter 7 where the reader has just found out that the war is about Scottish independence and the narrator is giving his potted history of past events:

“Then immigration — a classical source of national wealth, and one that has been previously spread around the whole country — dried up; indeed, it reversed in many areas. Such immigration into the island as still occurred (for historical reasons this was mostly from south-central Asia and Eastern Europe) tended to concentrate in the south-east, because that was where most of the wealth was still pooled.” (pg. 63)

George III, became king of this new kingdom. He kept his number III, which was fine because he was the third William to be king of Great Britain and also the third William to be king of Ireland

Dinsdale!

Melissa,

My friend in Yorkshire is worried that Scottish independence would kill the Labour party in Parliament. They depend on the Scottish vote.

Obviously this isn’t the Scots’ concern, but it is a big issue for the English left.

“As I understand the UK constitution, no Parliament can bind any future Parliament, so after the referendum (assuming a majority votes for independence) the UK parliament will still need to vote to dissolve the union in order for the dissolution to be accepted in the UK. Is that your understanding?”

Effectively, Yes. (There is an arcane but partially relevant debate as parliamentary sovereignty dates to the Bill of Rights 1689 which is English law, while Scots law has a separate tradition of popular sovereignty dating from the Declaration of Arbroath 1320).

But, I can’t see independence not happening if the vote is a yes. Parliament could ignore it, but the current government has stated they’ll accept the result and the moral force of the result will make it difficult to ignore a vote. Maybe if negotiations drag on and you get majority pro-union Governments in both Westminster 2015 and Holyrood 2016?

Secession is rather like divorce in that there are all sorts of community property and other entanglements to sort out and sever. Unlike divorce, there are no courts to impose any particular terms of separation on the two parties. They have to reach agreement among themselves.

A Yes vote will just be the beginning of a process of separation. Because there is no divorce court to dictate terms, Scotland and the UK (the Scots would be very foolish to withdraw their MPs from the Parliament in Westminster until Westminster signs a deal) will have to reach a mutually agreeable settlement through negotiations, war, or some blend of the two. War may be unthinkable now, but wait until we see what various parties within each entity, Scotland and the UK, want and need out of the final settlement before you rule out any possible negotiating tactics.

Bloix,

This would be just one of the many, many points of contention that would arise between a Yes vote next week, and an actual Act of Devolution. Process issues such as the one you raise could well end up being the most difficult to sort out. The Scots will argue that as long as the UK exists, as long as the UK is the partner it has to reach agreement with on the terms of devolution, the Scottish part of the UK must have its representation in the UK Parliament.

the country to the south, without the 40 Labour and 11 Lib-Dem MP’s from Scotland, would have a much more free market conservative government.

Doesn’t really work like that. It’s a Tory/Lib Dem coalition with the Tories dominating; having fewer Lib Dem or Labour MPs in the Commons wouldn’t make any difference to that. As for the electoral arithmetic after the first general election after independence (not the next general election), the loss of the Scottish seats would make it harder for Labour to get a majority, but not that much harder.

bc:

Generally, the left case against independence has always seemed to revolve around “solidarity” and fixing things in britain, and at its worst on the idea that England can’t be trusted to govern itself without the somehow moderating influence of Scotland.

Well, the left case against secession is that it wouldn’t help the working class and/or that it would help capital, and I think either of those is arguable. But I’m not making a left case; I’m making a “not wanting to see you people f*ck up horribly by misjudging the situation and charging on regardless” case. For Scottish independence, just not like this.

51,

The problem with moral force is that everyone imagines that it dictates their favored solution in all matters. Let’s hope moral force plays little part in this matter, or it will not end well.

Considering the all important question who gets the nukes, ive read that the attitude is the opposit one – who has to keep the nukes. Scotland doesnt want nukes, and the nuclear submarines stationed in Scotland would require an expensive new home.

This government passed a fixed-term parliament act; absent a vote of no confidence, the next election will take place in May 2015, no sooner and no later.

Talking about subtracting the Scottish MPs and redoing the arithmetic doesn’t work: the referendum, if it goes through, will give the Scottish government a mandate to start independence negotiations with the London government. Nobody expects those negotiations to reach the point of actual secession till long after next May. Presumably there would then be another election in the rest of the UK.

” a fixed-term parliament act”
You learn something new every day – or every ten minutes, if you start from a sufficient baseline of ignorance.

But do you think that the Tories will have an upper hand in the election if Scotland votes Yes?

I’m assuming that the Tories would be tougher negotiators than Labour on the terms of the dissolution. Maybe that’s not right.

I was born in Scotland (in Selkirk, a beautiful small town in the Borders) and my family moved to the US when I was 13. I visited for a month this summer, and spent a lot of time talking about independence with family, friends, and various people I met in trains or pubs. Here’s a brief precis of the major arguments that I heard:

Pro:
Scots are more compassionate than the English. In an independent Scotland society’s least well off will be better taken care of. This was passionately expressed by the man I talked to in the “Yes” office in Inverness, and is, I think, a widely held sentiment.

Westminster frequently makes decisions based upon the needs of the English, even where the needs of Scots may diverge. (Empirical evidence for both this and the previous point can clearly be seen in various Thatcher era policies – the poll tax and various industrial closures being the best examples.)

A Scottish parliament will better recognize the needs of the Scottish people. (This is a soft form of the previous argument, suggesting ignorance rather than malevolence or power imbalance as the cause for Scotland’s neglect.)

The EU: Scots are firm supporters of the European project. The rise of UKIP has some people worried that the UK might pull out of the EU. They believe that the Scots would be easily admitted to the EU (despite Spanish opposition) and would reap the benefits thereof.

No arguments:

Britain: Interestingly, I didn’t hear much about the Braveheartish reasons for Independence, but I did hear emotional appeals to the nature of Britishness from the No side. My godparents, a Scottish man married to an English woman in Edinburgh, were particularly upset about the idea that they might be citizens of different countries.

The money: Scotland receives more revenue from Westminster than it pays in taxes. There is concern that an independent Scotland would be unable to continue spending on (eg) the NHS at current levels. In parts of Scotland the military is a major employer – almost certainly this couldn’t continue.

These are the arguments that I was actually hearing from people. I wasn’t hearing about the currency issue (unless I specifically asked), which I think is a question to which there is no good answer, or about Trident.

Random independence-related anecdote: A few years ago I had the opportunity to talk to Ian Rankin (author of the Rebus books) about independence. A few months later the next Rebus book came out, and our conversation is reproduced between two minor characters in a police station cafeteria.

Random first-hand celebrity data: Rankin’s a no, as also is Denise Mina, who was kind enough to visit my school on her recent US book tour. When I saw Mogwai in the spring, they had Yes stickers on their guitars.

If I had a vote, I would vote no.

21, Timberman: I have a friend from Germany who thinks that it would be a fine idea if the various secessionist movements in Europe had their way — Flanders, Catalunya, Euzkadi, Südtirol/Alto Adige, etc. — because they’d get a better deal as separate parts of the EU than they do in their present configurations. Then again, he’s Bavarian, and Bavaria, like California in the U.S., looks a lot more like a viable independent state than, say, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, or Montana.

60: “Pros”, 61: I did spend a little time thinking about possible common factors among the places in Timberman’s list, adding on my own Kiev/Novyrussia and maybe ISIS.

Educated creative-class/petty bourgeois elites? Successful when they can find merchant and agricultural class support via imaginary nations?

bob mcmanus @ 62

I myself believe that the popular will should be respected, if it exists, and if it can be determined to the satisfaction of more than a mere majority of concerned members of the region seeking independence — I’m thinking now of the mixed marriage misgivings referred to by TheSophist, and thinking even more so of the Ukraine, where entire regions can’t decide whether or not they’re actually married, or just co-habiting.

That said, I still feel some hesitancy about the consequences. The Black Madonna of CzÄ™stochowa waving above a march for workers’ rights is one thing; the Stars and Bars waving above a cavalry charge in defense of the right to own other human beings is quite another. I mean, there you are, bob, bravely striding forward, singing the Internationale at the top of your lungs, and when you turn around, you’ve got a bunch of pieces parts whacking each other with clubs. That’s if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, you get to re-stage WWI.

That is interesting P M Lawrence. It looks like the English introduced that legal concept into Scots law after the union – likely to increase their control of Scots law and discourage the use of the pre-UK Scots law traditions. It would be interesting to see if desuetude would continue after independence? Scots might like to reintroduce some of their older laws or legal principles? I do not know anything about pre-UK scots law though.

In Australia a similar concept is applied in Native Title law – for indigenous societies to have their claim to Native Title recognised by the Crown’s courts – they have to be able to show a continuous connection with the land and continuous practice of their culture. This can be hard for some indigenous claimants – because previous governments had assimilationist policies , including taking children away – these children are called the Stolen Generations. An indigenous elder in town here has written about how as a young child he would run inside the house and his mother and aunties would all stop their chatter – alone they would chatter in their own language, and talk about their culture – but they never did this in front of the children out of fear the children would be taken away by the government. This meant a lot of language and culture was lost – the elder has learned a lot about the culture since assimilationist policies ceased, and he has said it is very important to him to pass on as much of their traditions as possible to the young – since the governments’policies denied him the chance as a young person, and some culture is lost.

I think this is where the emphasis on Enlightenment values others have pointed to is very problematic. The alliance or relationship between Enlightenment figures and powerful political/economic figures did cause a lot of harms to people. Not only in Colonies ‘made new worlds’ and looted as Francis Spufford says – but Even in the British Isles – Enlightenment rhetoric about natural laws and property was used to justify enclosures of common land. I read on a socialist website an article about how some of the Stuart Kings tried to reverse enclosures and return land to the commons – but this was a reason why the property-owning parliaments were so against the Stuarts, and beheaded them and pretended they abdicated.

> likely to increase their control of Scots law and discourage the use of the pre-UK Scots law traditions.

No, it’s because scotland couldn’t afford or justify the meticulous record-keeping the english had [record-keeping was/is expensive and england pretty wealthy]. Easier just to come to some new suboptimal-but-good-enough decision than to keep the records for the next time a goat explodes after eating stolen basking shark.

ZM @ 65:

“there seems to have been a Scotland Parliament introduced in the 1990s”

Yes. It made the news and everything, it even has its own wikipedia article.

I’m with Francis Spufford in this: my country is considering taking itself to pieces next week, for reasons which have nothing whatsoever to do with the Stuart monarchs or the role of the Lord Chancellor. I’ve learned a lot from CT over the years, and I’d love to read the views of a lot of the commentators here on Scottish independence, but this thread seems to be completely missing the point.

@73 During my semester in Edinburgh a long time ago one of my professors, apropos of nothing, explained to the 7 Americans in his class on “Theories of Existence”: “You see, it all goes back to the Romans. Because Scotland was never conquered, they were never truly Christianized and remain essentially heathens to this day. They celebrate Christmas here, but the real holiday is New Years when they gather on the High Street and burn the English monarch in effigy.”

Now, Christianity came to Scotland and England from Ireland before it came from the Romans, I believe. But between the professors comments and the fact that strangers in pubs would routinely discuss current events with reference to 500 year old incidents, made me realize that the United States is an outlier when it comes to the vintage of our national identity. Very old events fuel very strong prejudices in the minds of very well regarded philosophy professors at the very best University. Lord knows what gets said in the working class pubs of Glasgow.

In some ways it may be that the rise of the Tea Party represents the first time Americans have had to deal with something Europeans have seen over and over again: the conflicts that arise when historical myths and legends are faced off against the practical requirements of the present.

William Burns @36
Is it? Isn’t that kind of the question, whether “Scotland” is part of the Empire? Perhaps you and Spufford are right but I was being cautious about prejudging.

The thing is, if you and Spufford are right about Scotland really being part of a genuinely united kingdom, as much a part of the Enlightenment as support for benevolent despotism? It emphasizes that the referendum is about nothing but an unqualified endorsement of imperialism versus an endorsement of an unspecified reformist capitalism. Shameless evil versus hypocritical evil I suppose you could say. Boycotting both sides is a political nightmare, which is precisely why the referendum was staged in the first place: A loaded question. I am vaguely pleased that the imperialist masters are stunned to find so many people willing to contemplate buying a pig in a poke in preference to them.

Abbe Faria @51
Moral force is easy to ignore. Thatcherism prides itself on ignoring moral force. Bobby Sands etc. Thatcherism is no more gone from the UK than “McCarthyism’s” repression of the left is gone in the US.

Masses of people in the streets, not so easy to ignore. I don’t know if people in Scotland en masse have illusions about how ruthless the rulers truly are and are prepared for the real consequences or not.

It’s certainly odd. Cameron’s austerity is hated by the Scots. As much as I agree, for it to push Scotland into the hands of Salmond – who was arguing adoption of the Euro and the Irish/Icelandic model of banking deregulation in the not too recent past – seems ironic.

Dsquared, come tell us if Wales will also skip out, afters.

Basically, unlikely. I don’t agree with Phil that there isn’t any historic conception of nationhood (IMO this is a very Welsh Labour view which relies on yaddayaddaing such things as Owen Glendower). But it’s true to say that Wales was conquered by the English quite a long time before nation states were really a thing and so Wales really didn’t build up independent institutions.

But really, the issue is that welsh nationalists are cultural, not political nationalists. Plaid Cymru developed alongside Cymdeithas yr Iaith (the Welsh Language Society). This meant that straight out of the box, the party limited its appeal to the 25-33% (depending on how you measure competence) of the population of Wales who speak the language. It also made Plaid into a regional party rather than a national one in Wales.

This approach has worked, though. Wales has kept its language, unlike Scotland or Ireland, has a television channel etc. It was a successful approach for cultural nationalists to take, but it’s not one that puts you on a path leading to independence.

Worth remembering in context that the last line of the Welsh national anthem is “ O bydded y heniaith parhau” – not anything about independence, nation out freedom, but “the old language will endure”. It’s a very different politics which even English people find alien and IME most foreigners, even from other Celtic minority nations, don’t understand at all.

Karl reMarks: We Give the Scottish Independence Referendum the Middle East Expert Treatmentf

I don’t agree with Phil that there isn’t any historic conception of nationhood

I didn’t say this. Glyndwr is interesting – I think Robert the Bruce could have gone the way of OG if the dice had fallen differently, which would have had big implications for the idea of Scotland. Whether Glyndwr could ever have gone the way of R the B (with equally big implications for Wales) is another matter – I think you’re talking double sixes and then some.

But it’s true to say that Wales was conquered by the English quite a long time before nation states were really a thing and so Wales really didn’t build up independent institutions.

I did say this.

The PC/Cymdeithas yr Iaith overlap is a really interesting point. I lived in Wales long enough (and/or at an early enough age) to feel it makes perfect sense – that just is how you do nationalism – but that assumption clearly isn’t universal. I wonder if it goes back to that very early experience of conquest – as if to say that rolling back external political control just isn’t on the table, but we can keep some sort of nation alive on the cultural level.

It’s not a small thing, either. I once, rather unwisely, teased a friend of mine whose email signature described him as a Uwch Dadansoddwr Systemau, asking him how often he was referred to as such (as opposed to being called a Senior Systems Analyst). He said that he’d grown up speaking Welsh at home and most of his colleagues had done too; all in all, Uwch Dadansoddwr Systemau wasn’t the translation of his job title, it was his job title. That was me told.

Other than that, I’d just like to restate my impression that, wrt Scotland, questions of constitutional law are just not interesting or relevant. There’s nothing Westminster and Holyrood can do that can’t be done, in the immortal words of John Lennon. The politics are the killer – which makes it bizarre that nobody’s discussing the politics, beyond the sentimental soup of “we’re better together” vs “we can decide for ourselves”.

LM Dorsey,

Alex Salmond is very fond of our Queen, likely because she is a Stuart and he wants to go back to having a Queen of Scots. Having the Queen be the Queen of England as well as the Queen of Scots bodes very well, because it is unlikely the Queen of England would sanction harm against the Queen of Scots (being the same person now) as in what unfortunately befell the last Queen of Scots poor Mary (Although Queen Elizabeth I did write in a letter to the young James VI that it was not really her decision, but instead that the people who engaged in court intrigue and politicking were responsible )

“Salmond had earlier moved to reassure traditionalists when he said the “Queen and her successors” would remain as head of state in an independent Scotland. He told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1: “We want to see Her Majesty the Queen as Queen of the Scots. That is a fantastic title and a fantastic prospect.”

As someone who doesn’t have a strong opinion (a rare event!) about the referendum, I found the Spufford/MacLeod video less than entirely convincing. The point about the possibilities inherent in a civic (national) identity is extremely well taken (and it’s probably why I would instinctively incline towards ‘No’), but ultimately it’s a fairly abstract point. And as regards the possibilities of—what they were calling—the British project in particular, I found the discussion to be far too rosy/a bit weak on substance. I don’t know, “The British system of parliamentary sovereignty is exceptional and uniquely receptive to progressive change” is just not cutting it for me. And the point about Britain being able to stand up to global capital seemed even weaker. (On the other hand, I found this Ken McLeod post to be considerably more helpful.)

But I am really open to the case and would like to see a good hard political-economic case made for the No side. (Or for that matter for the Yes side, I suppose.)

@86 ZM
In lieu of a genealogy, I’m calling on shenanigans on the “Elizabeth II Alexandra Mary Windsor is a Stuart” meme. (Happy to be proved wrong, actually, but I’m getting bored trolling through wacky google results relating her to King David and Julius Caesar and all whatnot — pfft.)

Now we get to a woman again, Queen Victoria became Queen after the death of KingWilliam IV. She was the daughter of Edward, another son of George III. Her son became King Edward VII, then he abdicated, then her other son became King George V.

…some I’s and V’s (not to mention Edwards and Georges) are missing here.

Who have I missed out?

@91 ZM
Thank you kindly for your efforts. I begin to see, I think. The succession to Anne was a real crisis, and set the stage for Colloden. Nonetheless Georg Ludwig’s claim was defensible, as you say, and the Hanoverian succession prevailed.

ZM wrote:-

Now we get to a woman again, Queen Victoria became Queen after the death of KingWilliam IV. She was the daughter of Edward, another son of George III. Her son became King Edward VII, then he abdicated, then her other son became King George V.

That bit is what’s wrong. The last sentence should become these sentences:-

Her son became King Edward VI. His elder son predeceased him, so his second son became King George V. George V’s son became King Edward VII, then he abdicated, then his second son [not “other son” – there were other brothers] became King George VI.

I don’t recall, but George V may have had more than one brother, too.

Glen Tomkins wrote:-

So, the current Queen of England is also a Plantagenet, right?

No, because that does run in the male line (and it’s not “Queen of England”, not since Queen Anne before 1707). There are no legitimate Plantagenets left (Shakespeare has a lament for the passing of many noble houses in the Wars of the Roses, and caps it with “where is Plantagenet?” [from memory]).

The only known Plantagenets left, after going the wrong side of the blanket a time or two but then being legitimised, are the Duke of Beaufort and his relatives in that line. That line only just survived, as the last Duke left no direct heirs and there were no others in the male line any nearer than a fairly distant cousin.

For what it’s worth, I think it’s a stretch to claim that the Stuarts don’t run in the male line, but obviously that one is arguable.

PM Lawrence,

You and ZM messing with me, right? Some family names, like the Plantagenets, pass only in the male line (and are extinct in the male line or a Plantagenet would still be the monarch), but some, like the Stuarts, at least arguably pass in both the female and male line? The current monarch is descended from both families, isn’t she, whether or not somebody or others naming system says her name is one, both or neither? She’s the monarch because the Act of Succession says she is, not because of anyone’s theory of what her last name might or might not be — right?

That said, perhaps all of you lot are in on it. No wonder you have so many Scots flustered.

Damn, I wrote the numbering down wrong, too. Edward VII was George V’s father, and it was George V’s son Edward VIII who abdicated. Put it down to copying and pasting Edward VII into the wrong position, and then subtracting from him without paying enough attention.

Rich @ 39: “s e.g Alasdair Gray really a force within the population in general? ”

Good question! Since tracing back monarchical connections is the busy part of this thread, I’ll have to have this conversation with myself. I looked back at Ken MacLeod’s post linked in #88. A quote:

“How are artists likely to fare under such a government? Well, if you look forward to being dependent on the goodwill of a nationalist cultural apparatus in a small country where everybody knows everybody and memories are long, an SNP hegemony might be just the thing. If you relish the relentless polarization of every last issue of culture and society and nature and beauty along the axis of the national question, go for it. And if the pro-independence artists and creatives protest, as my friends here surely will, that this is not what they want at all, I would respectfully suggest that calling themselves National Collective and Bella Caledonia is not the way to reassure us. If you thrill to the vision of the future that these names evoke, knock yourself out. ”

Bella Caledonia? Here’s Ken’s first comment to that post:
“Fun though twitting them may be, the name Bella Caledonia obviously means ‘Beautiful Scotland’ and is taken from a character in Alastair Gray’s novel Poor Things – hence the lassie in the logo.”

So there it is. To continue the twitting, I’ll note that Bella Caledonia links to Alasdair Gray in their culture section, but it’s the *wrong Alasdair Gray*.

So — which Alasdair Gray novel should be considered as contributing most to a potential Yes vote? _Lanark_, obviously, which is also mysteriously listed for its illustrations only (?) in the Guardian’s list of the top 10 masterpieces of Scottish art as of 3 days ago. All right then, is _Poor Things_ #2? I thought the scenes in _1982 Janine_ where the main character laments what his dead friend (and by extension, Scotland, and himself) could have been were much more affecting.

Glen Tomkins, “what counts for succession” isn’t “what the Act of Succession says”. It’s subtler than that. What counts for succession is who the Council of Accession (a special ad hoc sitting of the Privy Council, ultimately going back to the Witanagemot) elects, just as cathedral chapters elect Anglican diocesan bishops. But, just as cathedral chapters elect who they are told to by the Cabinet, or else, so also the Council of Accession must elect the monarch specified by current law, or else. However, on the one hand that law has varied – it was Henry VIII’s last will and testament, for several reigns after him – and on the other hand, if a monarch is otherwise elected then the law will soon be changed to match (which is usually what happens with a change of dynasties, as when the Stuarts came into England despite the specifications of Henry VIII’s will, and is how the present Act of Succession came about when the Hanoverians came in).

So, yes, ultimately the Act of Succession does determine all this – but only until it doesn’t.

This indirect accession machinery, also used in the Papacy and in the U.S.A., does have a useful reason: it allows for bending to realpolitik, Hayes/Tilden fashion, and ensures that anyone strong enough to sway that level will thereafter have enough added strength from that support along with his (it’s usually “he”) own strength to stay on top – so few are tempted to overthrow the whole system, particularly if “reigns” are likely to come around frequently enough to allow the hope of further attempts by the losers (Nixon, la Clinton…). Attempts to lock in, deem away or outright eliminate “faithless electors” are sitting on a safety valve which is there for a reason: to allow bending to realpolitik without breaking the principle on which things are set up, which would only ruin legitimacy down the track once the current storm had passed.

ZM and others: three very simple points.

1. NOBODY IN EITHER CAMPAIGN IS TALKING ABOUT THE INSTITUTION OF THE MONARCHY

This is presumably because
2. SECESSION WILL HAVE NO EFFECT ON THE INSTITUTION OF THE MONARCHY

but also because
3. THE INSTITUTION OF THE MONARCHY DOES NOT MATTER AND IS OF NO INTEREST TO ANYONE BUT TOURISTS (AND HISTORIANS OF PERIODS WHEN IT DID MATTER)

Could we get back to talking about things that do matter in the present day and will be effected by Scottish secession?

js. I am really open to the case and would like to see a good hard political-economic case made for the No side

Try Gavyn Davies, Adam Tomkins and Frances Coppola, for starters.

“Could we get back to talking about things that do matter in the present day and will be effected by Scottish secession?”

The commenters who are interested in aspects other than the monarchy etc need to make their interesting comments on other areas. I did mention possible law issues, and criticized aspects of the pro-Enlightenment views among unionists other things, but discussions of monarchy proved more interesting than those topics.

I saw papers on possible affects on welfare and the environment – I might read them on the train , if welfare and environment discussions are of interest?

P M Lawrence,

You are quite right about the republican referendum in Australia. In retrospect (I was only fairly young at the time) – what seems curious to me is we had so much discussion of that preamble – and not much discussion on any legal or parliamentary powers ramifications etc

I did quote Alex Salmond above talking about a monarchy, because he said he wants a Queen of Scots again

For clarity, I think a British republican movement would be a wonderful thing, and if the Yes campaign were proposing to found a Scottish republic* it’d be a very different campaign and one much more worth supporting. But they aren’t.

*Or to leave NATO, or to make Scottish waters nuclear-free, or…

ZM: it is not defensible to say that the queen is a Stuart just because there is a male Stuart somewhere back in the female line: someone from whom there may be no genetic contribution whatsoever, not even mitochondrial DNA. By that line of reasoning, she is also a Tudor, etc etc; it’s equally meaningless.

This simply highlights the ridiculousness of having traditional inheritance as a qualification for any kind of public office. The adoption practiced in both ancient and imperial Rome made much more sense: a true republic, in my view of the Swiss type which avoids a single figurehead, would make much more sense.

This should be irrelevant to any rational independence debate: it isn’t of course, because of the (at least perceived) emotional attachments, and I suppose to an extent the aversions, to the House of Windsor amongst the Scots electorate.

pml @ 100 on Prime Ministers – “couple of more obvious Scots (Keir Hardie, Brown)”

I think you mean Ramsey MacDonald. no?

Sasha Clarkson,

May I ask how much of the original person called Clarkson you have in your DNA?

Bollocks. I can’t work the HTML. I meant, with notably rare exceptions, Britain never resisted fascism…

Francis Spufford,

“She was very good at melting solid things into air, and the final thing dissolved may turn out to be the British state itself. Before 1979, there was a lively nationalist current in Scots politics, feeding off the continuing vitality of a much more widely shared pride in Scots identity, culture and history… But there was no presenting grievance for it to mobilise more than a fraction of Scots political opinion around. Most Scots up to the 1970s took positions in a class-based Union-wide politics. ”

I don’t think you can attribute that to Thatcher (much as I [and reportedly the Queen]) dislike her. The resurgence of interest in tradition and related ideas of cultural authenticity happened around the world from maybe the 1960s (?) – it is one of the hallmarks of culture afternoon the failure of the Modernist [Enlightenment] project is how it’s normally described

P M Lawrence,

Did you ever read Don Watson’s (speech writer to Paul Keating) book on the Scots in Gippsland – Caledonia Australis? I have not yet been able to finish as some of my forbears settled in that part, and the idea of Scots leaving home after poor treatment by the English parliament, then so awfully treating indigenous people in Australia as they tried to remake their old land and carry traditions here is most unsettling and sad – and the almost extinguishing of both languages by English

ZM@72: when you write “the English parliament … wanted to enclose all the common land away from the clans, and legislate against people wearing traditional dress , and make landless people in trousers work in industry, try to stop any one from being catholic” you have an idiosyncratic approach to Scottish history: which is not a simple matter of Evil English oppressing Virtuous Scots.

The Highland clearances, which are what I suppose you mean by taking common land away from the clans, were not done by acts of the UK parliament (by the time they happened, there had been no English parliament for a long time). They were done by Scottish landlords, many of them clan chiefs themselves, who evicted their tenants.

Also the laws against Highland dress – it was specifically Highland dress that was prohibited, lowlanders were free to keep to their traditional costumes – in the wake of the great Jacobite rebellion was not a particularly English matter. Lowlanders and English were both mostly in favour: you do realise that very many lowlanders opposed the ’45, don’t you?

And as for being anti-catholic: you do know that the Church of Scotland is Presbyterian?

Stephen,

That is because wealthy lowland Scots colluded with the wealthy English and parliament. The highlanders were sort of catholic plus folk religion until the Calvinists went missioning in.

My view is the standard left-centreleft-or catholic view in Australua. This was written by the Prime Minister’s speechwriter – so it is very standard

“Fifty years after the union of the English and Scottish parliaments (1707) internal and overseas trade in cattle, linen, and tobacco was laying the financial basis for Scotland’s industrial revolution. Now linked by a common crown [from Scotland’s royal family and which the parliament beheaded or pretended they abdicated betimes as it suited them] , a common parliament, by trade in goods, technology and ideas, and by religions different on denomination but singularly favourable to commerce, England and the Lowlands of Scotland advanced into the Age of Improvement in the same happy partnership in which, increasingly, they advanced into European and colonial wars.

The generosity which the leaders of the Kirk applied to themselves was not extended quite so amply to the common people, and not at all on the evangelical frontiers. For those who did not profit from business activity the Kirk provided an efficient education system (for children were not born innocent, but ignorant of Godliness) and a strict code of moral conduct based on scripture. These were weapons against Satan… They were also weapons against social disorder and rebelliousness , for they armed the State with Divine vengeance.

… Even by the end if the eighteenth century a visitor [to the highlands] found to his astonishment that ‘Protestants and Papists, so often pronounced to be eternally inimical, live here In charity and brotherhood’…

…Samuel Johnson noted the change [in the highlanders] during his visit in 1773:
“There was , perhaps , never any change of national manners so quick, so great, and so general, as that which operated in the Highlands by the last conquest, and the subsequent laws. … Of what they had before the late conquest of their country , their remain only their language and their poverty.”

The late conquest was of course the defeat of the Jacobite forces in Culloden in 1745. The British campaign had been inspired by strategic considerations: it was intolerable that a region of Britain, however wild and barren, should be a stronghold of French and Jacobite ambitions. By the time Johnson wrote, however, it was apparent that the military assault had been but a prelude to the destruction of Highland society by legislative means”

Don Watson , Caledonia Australis

I’m pretty sure that the present political leadership of the UK gives even less of a flying fuck about Scotland’s grievances than Canadian federalists do about Quebec’s. Therefore, I strongly urge Scots to vote yes.

Don’t be fooled. Learn from our mistakes.

A letter from Quebec: http://wingsoverscotland.com/a-letter-from-quebec/#more-57418

Phil: thanks for a really informative set of comments — some of the best and fairest guidance I’ve read about what is and is not at stake.

“normal and well-established pattern of behaviour”

Is this normal and well-established pattern of behaviour the English parliament’s policies of conquests and colonizing etc in the British Isles and around the world in pursuit of trade and power for several centuries, until after 2 world wars they backed away (apart from Suez, etc)?

@134

It’s obvious to me he wasn’t asserting that there’s a liberal movement to secede in the U.S. Analogies don’t have to be true. It’s a hypothetical “as if.”

“There is nothing the English left can offer Scotland besides history. ”

I don’t know about that. Krugman, Wren-Lewis and others suggest Scotland could be in for a painful transition, more or less-so depending on the quantity of oil reserves. This may be a second order consideration as it appears to be for Charlie Stross. Getting rid of nukes and getting the UK out of the empire business would be good things. I don’t know if Stross is right that many small nations would be better.

If they vote yes we’ll find out. I could easily see Scotland repeating the experience of the periphery of Europe during the recent crises. Monetary policy set somewhere else is too tight while local fiscal policy is under a straightjacket and is insufficient. So for example Spain has 20 percent unemployment. Maybe Stross is right and they’ll sort it out and get their own currency or something.

Perhaps the update to the original post misspells the name of Mr. Spufford’s video partner? On his books (and his own comment above) it’s Ken MacLeod, not Ken McLeod. Unless they are considered equivalent, with one an abbreviation?

Peter K,

It’s a hypothetical “as if” that has no chance of happening and would require a huge set of cultural, political, and economic changes that aren’t in view. It’s about as likely as there being a mass religious revival in Northern Ireland that causes the Unionist population to become Roman Catholic, teach their children in Irish, and break off from the UK to form a united Ireland. (That last could happen anyway, but not through mass Unionist conversion.)

Scotland is already enduring a painful transition, or didn’t you notice that the UK in the last few years has done worse than it did in the Great Depression? Ireland’s experiences with the euro show it can be worse, but I don’t expect Scotland to end up with the pound – it will have to get its own currency, at least for a while. Also note here I said the English left. Since when has the English left had any influence over the British pound?

stevenjohnson,

The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression treaty with Nazi Germany and then committed a war of aggression against Poland, Finland, Romania, and the Baltic states. It actively colluded with fascism to liquidate the Polish army leadership and intellectual class and only turned against fascism when Nazi Germany and its allies invaded it in 1941.

The Soviet Union played a key role in enabling Nazi Germany’s intial victories by selling materials, allowing German training on its territory, and colluding with it to destroy Poland.

Portraying the Soviet Union as the only state fighting fascism is bad history.

Here’s what I’d seen on class differences in Scotland on voting for independence (fwiw)

http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2014/08/22/scottish-independence-the-class-issue

German-Soviet military cooperation ended with Hitler’s seizure of power.

Nazi Germany’s initial victories included remilitarization of the Rhineland, intervention in Spain, the Anschluss and the Munich partition of Czechoslovakia by Germany and Poland, all of which were accomplished by Nazi/British/French/US cooperation in one form or another, against Soviet opposition.

The atrocity at Katyn didn’t have any Nazi input, which is why it was one of the few atrocities the Nazis and the movie Enigma had no problem condemning.

Most of all, actually winning the battles that beat the Nazis back to Berlin earns the real credit, not beating the Nazis back from Alexandria and Algeria. I think Kesselring’s army was eight divisions. Not exactly nothing but no, putting the Nazis on the defensive in Italy wasn’t the fight that mattered. The wars in north Africa, Italy, Greece were diversions aimed at mundane interests at the expense of really going after the Nazis.

stevenjohnson,

So the near-simultaneous invasions of Poland were not an example of German-Soviet military cooperation? It also seems to me the massacre at Katyn wouldn’t have been possible without an agreement with Nazi Germany to divide up Poland. The Soviet Union made sure that Nazi Germany would conquer most of Poland by grabbing the rest.

The Soviet Union gets credit for winning the battles back to Berlin, but loses credit for the purges of the military, ethnic cleansing and mass killings of the Borderlands, and criminal lack of preparation for a German invasion that meant it lost so many battles in 1941-2.

I’ll also note that the other Allies provided critical support and supplies to the Soviet Union all through WWII. Tanks, trucks, and radios were critical components, for example.

I think actively colluding with fascists to invade and annex other countries doesn’t count as “fighting fascism”. Are fascists ok to work with from 1939-1941, but one must fight them from 1941-1945? If so, then the US supported the fascists much less than the Soviet Union (if at all) from 1939-1941, and fought them from 1941-1945. It put a lot more effort into fighting the Japanese Empire in particular for that period. I’m surprised why the US gets no credit, and Britain gets demerits, considering it opposed Nazi Germany from 1939 on.

One extra notice. Francis Spufford makes a little slip that I wish to rectify. The Russian people and the Soviet Union are not synonymous, and a number of other ethnicities in the Soviet Union endured much greater suffering than the Russians. Belarussians, Ukrainians, Jews, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians (after their forced annexation by the Soviet Union) all suffered more than the Russians. It’s spitting on the graves of all the non-Russian Soviet soldiers, and I wish people would stop it.

To bring it back to the present topic. It’s an interesting Freudian slip, much like when English people talk about “England” when they really mean “Britain”. It’s a slip I expect much more coming from English people than Scottish, for example. It nicely encapsulates the contempt that many English people have toward non-English subjects of the UK.

“To bring it back to the present topic. It’s an interesting Freudian slip, much like when English people talk about “England” when they really mean “Britain”. It’s a slip I expect much more coming from English people than Scottish, for example. It nicely encapsulates the contempt that many English people have toward non-English subjects of the UK.”

Oh for Christ sakes. The Scots are no more “subjects” of the English then Quebecers’s are “subjects” of Canadians.

This is open for debate, of course, but if we’re going to get picky, the “English” were really the Angles, and might loosely include the Saxon and Jute invaders from Germanic lands as well.

The pre-English were Celtic peoples at the time of the Anglo-Saxon-Jute invasions, though the use of the word “Celtic” is sometimes disputed these days. Not so much in the past. A very, very rough estimate of Celtic concentration in Britain puts the start around 500BC. Modern humans are thought to go back some 41,000 years on the island, while their ancestors go back hundreds of thousands of years before that.

The Germanic invasions were in the 5th and 6th centuries — though there were raids before then. It’s not very accurate to call Britain “England” until then, and only part of it at that. One could make a case that Wales and Scotland are “British,” not “English,” even today.

Sorry to double comment, but I left this off:

“Do you think Unthank refers to the Enlightenment, or Empire, or Modernism , or Capitalism – or something else?”

I think the answer may be “Yes”, but more seriously, some mixture of Empire and Capitalism.

jwl- I am just going to admit that I misread what you wrote as implying that the Scots were “Subjects” of the English. My complete apology.

/Though from my experience with the British I don’t think that the average English person views the Scots with contempt.

Tom Slee,

It’s one thing when talking about other countries. It’s a different thing when English people casually talk about “England” when they mean Britain. (Margaret Thatcher, among others, was famous for it.) Not knowing the components of your own country is a much bigger sin.

jwl,

Makes sense.

“Britain” is used to mean the whole, not one or two parts. “England” is more properly a part. But it’s interesting, at least to me, that the word (Britain) really means the Celtic component of the island, and the “English” actually ended up defeating most of the Celts, who had been, before that, brutally crushed by the Romans . . . . though not as badly as in Gaul. The Romans engaged in near-genocide of the Celts there, before moving onto Britain.

The Celts being my own “people.”

IOW, the “English” later dominated the island, defeating most of the “British,” but the entire island is now called Britain. A kind of linguistic revenge for the Celts. And, later, of course, the Normans defeated the English, but didn’t leave the same kind of mark, and may be said to have reintroduced Gaulish Celts back into the flow. For a time, Britain could have been called New Normandy . . . .

Britain, then England, then New Normandy, perhaps.

An excerpt from a wiki article on genetics in Britain:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_the_British_Isles

Germanic & Scandinavian genetics

Another subject in the literature which has been widely discussed is whether genetics can show signs of Germanic invasions particularly in England. In a widely cited article through DNA testing, Weale et al. (2002) argued that the Y DNA data showed signs of a racial “apartheid” in Anglo-Saxon England. The clear signs of Germanic influx all over Britain is now widely accepted and has been shown in other studies such as Capelli et al. (2003). The Capelli study made two important observations: the English, Frisian, and Dutch samples were indistinguishable from each other – and North German/Danish genetic frequences were indistinguishable, thus precluding any ability to distinguish between the genetic influence of the Anglo-Saxon source populations and the later, and better documented, influx of Danish Vikings.[8]

A study into the Norwegian Viking ancestry of British people found that there is evidence of particular concentrations in several areas; especially in Lowland and Eastern Scotland – and the north sea islands Shetland and Orkney, Western Scotland and the Western Isles including Skye in Scotland, Anglesey in Wales, the Isle of Man, and the Wirral, Mid-Cheshire, West Lancashire and Cumbria in England.[9][10][11][12]

Plume@155

“Modern humans are thought to go back some 41,000 years on the island”

If you have a reference for that, I would be extremely interested to know it.

Stephen,

I found the reference to that date in a wiki article but will switch to another source here:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-15540464

The finds in the Grotta del Cavallo, Apulia, and Kents Cavern, Devon, have been confirmed as the earliest known remains of Homo sapiens in Europe.

Careful dating suggests they are more than 41,000 years old, and perhaps as much as 45,000 years old in the case of the Italian “baby teeth”.

The details are in the journal Nature.

The results fit with stone tool discoveries that had suggested modern people were in Europe more than 40,000 years ago. Now, scientists have the direct physical remains of Homo sapiens to prove it.

#166

stevenjohnson @147
“German-Soviet military cooperation ended with Hitler’s seizure of power”

Agains strong competition, I think that wins the prize for Statement on this Thread most thoroughly Divorced fro Reality

Somehow I didn’t read that closely. I imagined he meant that their military cooperation ended when Hitler seized Minsk.

#151

A very, very rough estimate of Celtic concentration in Britain puts the start around 500BC. Modern humans are thought to go back some 41,000 years on the island, while their ancestors go back hundreds of thousands of years before that.

Most of britain was covered by glaciers 40,000 years ago. And that wasn’t the last glacial surge there. It’s possible that there were humans there then, who all left one way or another and were later replaced by other humans.

Rich Puchalsky,

“But from what I remember about Unthank, I thought it figured squarely as a surreal version of Scotland under British control, with each person’s energies unable to be turned towards anything, and becoming their disease.
…
“Do you think Unthank refers to the Enlightenment, or Empire, or Modernism , or Capitalism – or something else?” – I think the answer may be “Yes”, but more seriously, some mixture of Empire and Capitalism.”

It is quite interesting the paralleles with indigenous people here in Australia – they had a culture much more based on social duties to one another and the courtesies of thankfulness – so they generally thought if they were kind to the new white visitors – the new white visitors would be kind to them. Indigenous people also thought white people would keep their wordif they made pledges , they were oft disappointed. The local protector of aboriginals wrote to the governor that their honesty was distinct from the dishonesty of the settlers (my paraphrasing, do not have the book with me).

Francis Spufford 09.15.14 at 5:36 pm
“It’s also in the most literal sense a necropolis, populated by those who like the protagonist Duncan Thaw have died in the un-surreal Glasgow to which it is the surreal counterpart. ”

That reminds me of the realm of the Elf king in Sir Orfeo a bit

“The English parliament with its history of empire and colonisation and enclosing common land and harsh punishment and transportation if people convicted of minor crimes to The Southern Hemisphere. Is not really a great beacon of fairness and light in the world – so I think it a shame it did not get overturned before causing 2 world wars (with other European empires). Common people and women didn’t even get the vote! Let alone the far flung foreign subjects if Empire.”

I really, really disagree with all of this. Some democracy is better than none, that parliament allowed for eventual peaceful transition to full democracy and blaming the UK for the WWs is crazy with a capital C.

European imperialism is a fairly standard explanation for the WWs happening. England had an enormous and strategically placed empire. The Anglo speaking remnants of which since ww2 have made up 5 eyes.

I dunno if “That pie was sitting on the windowsill begging to be eaten” is what people mean when they talk about imperialism starting the war.

England never had a system of absolute monarchy to my knowledge. Can you point to a period of absolute rule by a king or queen there?

@179 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobitism#Jacobite_ideology

Wait so you are claiming that the Jacobites did not want to install an absolute monarch?

Wow. Okay I am bowing out of this one ZM.

There was a Scottish Enlightenment, but no Scottish Revolution, and certainly in the 18th century the battle between Whigs and Tories would take place in Edinburgh as easily as London. Should we complain that the Dutch invented Parliamentary supremacy and are unacknowledged for it, as well as providing William III?

ZM, as many people have struggled to explain to you, there has been no ”English parliament” since 1707, Scotland is not a colony, and the British (not English) empire was a joint Anglo-Scots project, with full enthusiastic Scottish participation. They are partners, not victims.

I will now answer my own question from before about how many members of the British parliament were from Scotland since everyone complains when I call it the English Parliament.

From the parliament of 1708

“The new Parliament of Great Britain was essentially a continuation of the English parliament elected in 1705, with the addition of 45 Scottish Members to the Commons”
This is out of a total of 558 members all together!

“and sixteen Scottish Representative peers to the Lords.” I can’t find out how many peers there were altogether in 1708, I’ll try again later.

“Within the UK, the project of getting from there to here has been a joint enterprise”

It was not – lots of people oppressed others. There was not a joint project that progressed along happily getting from there to here at all – this is just post hoc-ery.

And exactly how does the fact that the parliament was not representational as well as not having a proportionate number of Scots members support the odd unjustifiable argument that the union was fair and good?

ZM – have a look at this: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1690-1715/parliament/1708

The new Scottish contingent in the Commons managed to (a) create a solid Whig majority, with consequent powers of leverage for themselves, and (b) to quash an attempt to extend English treason laws to Scotland, as being contrary to the terms of the Union. Not bad for poor shivering victims of English oppression.

And now I’m going to go from anxious citizen to irony-loving writer, and go and start work. Bye!

Lots of people oppressed others, but the division of oppressing vs being oppressed was not England vs Scotland. Winning democracy for the UK wasn’t unopposed and didn’t progress happily at all times, but people from all parts of the UK were on both sides of the struggle.

Meanwhile back in the twenty-first century…

FactCheck Scotland: 10 facts you need to know before you vote

And a handy primer on the contemporary cultural background:

If Scotland Goes Independent
(A beer blog – starts from the question What would change for beer drinkers, if Scotland were to vote on Thursday to become independent? but looks much further afield.)

Um, the Rubinstein of many abbeys , should read the ruins of many abbeys

ZM, you admit yourself that you’re learning this stuff as you go along. As well as being ill-informed (and hence inviting correction), your comments are uniformly tendentious (inviting counter-argument); more importantly, they’re irrelevant to the topic of the thread. In short, you’re derailing the thread and I think you should stop.

“(inviting counter-argument ”

I think this is how I get the most out of commenting – i make one comment, someone makes a counter comment, and so on, checking for more sources. Then I learn quite a bit about topics.

I am not very fond of how there are so many comments in this thread glossing over things the English parliament etc did. You can just skip reading my comments if they vex you. I have provided quite a lot of sources as evidence – just because you don’t like it is not really a reason I should stop commenting – think of all the learning I would miss out on.

Phil, I invite you to cast your eye over this, from Francis Spufford

“ZM, … the British (not English) empire was a joint Anglo-Scots project, with full enthusiastic Scottish participation. They are partners, not victims.”

Pretty tendentious, I suggest. In particular, raises the question, if they were so damned enthusiastic about this wonderful completely equal partnership, why are so many of them trying to break up?

I don’t know the history well enough, but the idea of the Scottish being victims of the English does seem odd. My impression is that the Scottish (at least in recent history) were willing participants in the Union (and the British Empire) and this reduction of ‘history to morality play’ with the English forever stamping on the face of the Scots doesnt make a huge amount of sense(afaict) (it doesnt even make sense solely as an explanation for the Irish relationship with the Union, which was far more oppositional, but still not easily reduced to such a caricature – admittedly it can’t be reduced to Stephen’s revisionist nonsense either, but that’s a different story)

At least, comments 20-90 (roughly) were about the imminent Scottish referendum – just about everything before and after those points has been excursions into history, largely initiated by ZM (34 comments and 23 direct replies on this thread; I’m up to 17 and 9, and I’ve been pretty garrulous).

ZM, if you’re not trying to derail this thread and make it harder for a discussion on the referendum to develop, please consider that your interventions may be having that effect.

I have read further in the history of the union book now , and have come across Sir Francis Bacon (master of torture, utopian new world science fiction writer etc) being involved , in support of union.

“Although the King had declared that the Englishman “who doth not love the Scotchman as his brother is a traitor to God and the King” [the English Parliament] was not prepared , in the imperative profession of its affection, to surrender the national patrimony. James had striven in vain to reassure them on the score of Scottish preferments to English posts of State. “I shall never be that greedie of Scottishmen’s preferment” , wrote he to Lord Cranborne, “as to prefer any by whom occasion might be given to the least discontent of the people here.” Sir Francis Bacon, the solicitor general, seconded his master in a lengthy speech in which he answered the objections and showed the groundlessness if the fears of the [English parliament’s] anti-unionists. But the current of English jealousy of naturalization was too strong to be over borne by arguments in favor of the benefit of the union, conceived in the most telling language. The discussion went no further than a debate, tending to show that, though England might be willing to adopt Scotland as a province under her laws, she was not prepared to share her privileges with her, on terms of equality.”

ZM, your most recent source is over 100 years old; what bearing does it have on Trident? On a post-independence currency? On the BBC or the NHS in Scotland? This is why other people are suggesting your posts are less than helpful.

From a contemporary review: “[James MacKinnon] writes as a Scot even to the extent of dropping into an occasional Scotticism, and makes the Scottish side of the case the more prominent throughout” http://www.jstor.org/stable/1833631.

But the Scottish relationship to the UK is not the equivalent of the indigenous people to Australia.

Rich – thanks, good spot.

One of the authors of this pair of books is a dyspeptic Scottish socialist prone to exaggeration. The other is Gordon Brown.

I’m ok with ZM keeping going. Interesting things have come up that I didn’t know about.

To everyone else,

What do you think about the increasing talk from Westminster parties of new powers if Scotland votes no? What precisely are they offering? It’s hard to figure out details from the news reports, which makes me a little suspicious that the parties themselves don’t agree on what they are willing to devolve to the Scots.

Ugh – italics fail. That whole post is a quote from the linked story (which I found by searching for ‘devo max’).

After reading all of this, the most influential piece for me is the one linked to by H.P. Loveshack @131: this one.

I’d wondered what happened to Canada in the last couple of decades. “post-referendum syndrome” is a good phrase. It seems apparent to me that, given their attachment to neoliberalism, the promises made by Britain to Scotland for what will happen if they stay united are worthless. Nor will it be easy to get another referendum if this one comes close but fails, because this time the political class will be on guard from the first to oppose it.

I don’t think any of the claims of political-economic benefits from either union or disunion are particularly convincing. Yes, Scotland would have to find its own money and alliances, etc., but those problems will be worked through. I don’t think anyone can predict the future well enough to know whether Scotland would end up better or worse off. Therefore, this becomes largely about risk calculation.

Once you make the question about risk, the safe answer presents itself as “keep the status quo.” But you can’t go back to the status quo ante, not at this stage. You either go to an independent Scotland, struggling with huckster politicians and having a make national institutions, or to an area of the U.K. that has seen a risky chance ahead of it and has given up that chance quite possibly for our lifetimes, afterwards getting nothing but scorn and broken promises in return. If my kids were Scottish, I wouldn’t want to do that to them.

Better to flounder out of Britain, and if the whole thing goes down the tubes, flounder back in. It’s not like the geographic connection is going to go away.

RP: “I don’t think anyone can predict the future well enough to know whether Scotland would end up better or worse off. Therefore, this becomes largely about risk calculation.”

Classic! Probably no one else will find this funny, but I laughed.

(That was a response to Rich Puchalsky @ 224.)

“Probably no one else will find this funny, but I laughed.”

I did mean it to be kind of drily funny, but in all seriousness, dealing with estimation of risks despite lack of knowledge is a big part of risk calculation.

“nobody should vote to be part of a political union that they fundamentally can’t trust”

The un-trustworthiness of neoliberal political promises is an observable fact, not merely assumed.

I don’t think Scottish people can trust SNP politicians either. There is no likely solution that I see that results in promises being kept, on either side.

“We can’t know the effect of this hugely disruptive change. But how much worse than the current state of affairs can it really be? My opponents say it will be really bad, but it might be awesome! You wouldn’t want to tell your kids you had the chance to do something awesome and didn’t. Besides, now that we threatened it we have to follow through or else no one will take us seriously in the future.”

World War I makes a lot more sense now.

Jake: “We can’t know the effect of this hugely disruptive change.”

It’s not a decision to go to war. There are good reasons for flatly opposing those, in all but true cases of invasion. And I really was saying that going back to status quo would be safest — I just don’t think it’s possible.

I went and read the article Rich mentions. JK Rowlings makes the arguement that a Scotland which votes ‘no’ will be in the same position as a spouse who *almost* leaves the marriage. However, she thinks that the spouse is in a *better* position, which tells me that as an adviser she’s an excellent writer of fantasy.

For those interested, George Monbiot, whom I respect greatly, has weighed in pro Scottish independence.

Scots voting no to independence would be an astonishing act of self-harm
http://www.monbiot.com/2014/09/02/someone-elses-story/

The rest of the UK doesn’t need to be rescued by Scottish votes: independence could inspire transformation everywhere
http://www.monbiot.com/2014/09/09/england-the-brave/

Phil 09.16.14 at 4:49 pm
“Barry – why? Has the history of Holyrood been marred by broken promises & British encroachments on devolved matters? Genuine question – I believe the answer is No but I’m willing to be corrected.”

This is speaking from limited knowledge, but I believe that Thatcher serves as a recent example, one which the Tories would like to repeat.

In general, my argument is that Rowling is so full of it she could fertilize a field. Threatening to leave, putting your stuff in the van, and then changing your mind is more likely to make the other person stop taking you seriously, because you’ve shown that you won’t do it. As somebody in the thread over there said, Rowling should visit a battered woman’s shelter.

@240: The Scottish Parliament was established in 1999. Thatcher left office in 1990. How exactly is she a recent example of Holyrood’s suffering “broken promises & British encroachments on devolved matters”?

Plume@167

Very interesting. Many thanks.

ZM@174:

“Please back up your claims about Scotland’s independent legal system, rather than just making an assertion.”

Even rudimentary knowledge about Scottish law might have helped you, but try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_law

hix 239, I know you are joking, but for those confused about Bavarian lederhosens: There is no Bavarian independence movement. The Bavarian independence party (Bayernpartei) recently got all of 2% of the state vote, and that was its highest in almost 50 years (well maybe the movement is just about to take off). You may arguably identify an equivalent of cultural nationalism in Bavaria but no political aspirations at all. There is not the remotest interest to hold a referendum on Bavarian independence. For those really into these things, Bavaria as a political entity has a long history but in its present borders is a product of Napoleon, who allowed Bavaria to annex Franconia (to this day a region with a very distinct identity). (Full disclosure: Ich bin aus Franken). A few years ago there was actually a movement for Franconian independence (from Bavaria, not Germany). It was not implausible but got nowhere.

A few years ago, when the Bavarian PM (Stoiber) visited Quebec, it was interesting to observe that Quebec nationalists felt an affinity with the supposedly independence-minded Bavarians. They assumed that the desire for national independence came naturally. It just doesn’t. Bavarians like to exhibit their cultural distinctness (often jokingly) and they do keep a mock consulate in Quebec (http://www.baviere-quebec.org/office/mission/index.php.de) but the state of Bavaria has far fewer powers than the province of Quebec. Qubeckers also misunderstood the significance of the Bavarian official designation as “Freistaat” (there’s nothing in the name, it just historically so happened). The Quebec PM was actually criticized by the opposition for not using that designation when he greeted Stoiber but he had just followed protocol, as the Bavarian representative clarified.

Didn’t mean to distract from the much more important question at hand…

ZM@174: re “How the first Hielanman was maid”

“I might read that later.”

Do so. If you have an open mind, it might persuade you that the, shall we say, cultural incompatibilities between Highland and Lowland go back to a time when Scotland was a separate kingdom, and both were Catholic.

Or if not, not.

ZM@179

“England never had a system of absolute monarchy to my knowledge. Can you point to a period of absolute rule by a king or queen there?”

No, but it wasn’t for want of trying by Scots kings who by dynastic fluke found themselves on the throne of England.

James VI and I wrote extensively in praise of the Divine Right of Kings, a French idea which seemed possibly appropriate to Scotland but did not go down well in England (as the ghosts of Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI might have warned him). He had the sense not to push this further.

His son Charles I, in an eleven year period of personal, parliament-free rule, did his best, before it collapsed into what the English call the Civil War but was far more complex (Scots v. English, English v. English, English and Scots v. English, Scots v. Scots, Scots and Irish v. Scots, English and Irish v. Scots, English and Irish v. English, Welsh and English v. English, Welsh and English v. Irish, Cornish and English v. English … I’m not sure there wasn’t an Irish v. Irish somewhere. There usually is).

His son James VII and II made a final effort, in alliance with the French king Louis XVI, a really Catholic and absolute monarch, to establish an absolute and Catholic monarchy in England – the decisive power, I think, was of “dispensing’, which means that if statute or common law says A, the King can declare that it means not-A – but was sorted out by the invitation of many Englishmen to Dutch Billy, his son-in-law.

After which absolute monarchy in Britain was finished: not, alas, in France.

It could be argued that Henry VII was basically trying to be an absolute monarch on the line that was developed then (I understand the concept itself was a rather early modern idea, not a medieval one) and he succeeded rather well at being one, don’t you think?

Ronan @217 I wasn’t trying to make a parallel (actually I think that’s pretty obvious), I was talking about history and how contemporary issues often have long historical antecedents.

Also on the subject of history, perhaps I can use another example: I studied Australian history for many years, but if there was a contemporary Australian issue that was generating widespread interest, and a person from another country showed a genuine interest in the history of that issue, I hope I would treat them with more respect than some people (eg Phil, Guthrie, Stephen at times) here treat ZM.

Patronising people does not demonstrate your superior knowledge or intellect, rather the opposite.

However I would also acknowledge that ZM could be more succinct, and use quotes from secondary sources more sparingly. Go for the brief quote that’s punchy, and summarise the rest.

I feel guilty even trying to disagree with Francis Spufford, but when he claims it to be false that Scotland was ever a colony, he runs afoul of the immortal words of Mark Renton: “Some hate the English. I don’t. They’re just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. Can’t even find a decent culture to be colonized by.”

If you can’t trust as authoritative the word of a fictional Edinburgh junkie who grew up to be Obi-Wan, then who can you trust?

Just for purposes of clarification – although we share a last name, I am not the “guthrie” on this thread.

“Patronising people does not demonstrate your superior knowledge or intellect, rather the opposite.”

Who is patronishing whom ? Am I patronising ZM ? I couldnt care less about the correct lineage of the British royals or the relationship between the lowland and highland Scots, so I skipped that part and didnt say nought; but people can debate it to their hearts content as far as I’m concerned.
I think people have the right to correct others misconceptions, or to complain if they’re going off topic. Of course the person complained at doesn’t have to listen. That’s hardly ‘patronising’so much as having a conversation.

..just to add, I’d (personally) assume the factors driving independence are far more rooted in the present day (primarily economic failure) than ancient grudges and remembered grievances. IMO *that* would be a more relevant avenue for explaining why they are where they are.

“and a person from another country showed a genuine interest in the history of that issue, I hope I would treat them with more respect than some people (eg Phil, Guthrie, Stephen at times) here treat ZM.”

Although, sorry missed this part due to reading on a phone. That seems fair enough (although I havent really picked up that tone from Phil or Guthrie..Ill leave it there though.

This just in: Flying Rodent has decided which way he’s voting, and written about it. And it’s excellent.

Up against the solid example of an actually-operating system, Yes Scotland have deployed a wondrous vision of an optimistic, creative, self-confident nation that can do whatever the fuck it likes without having to face any serious consequences at all.

If you’ve paid attention, you’ll notice that we’re being offered a caringly socialist business-friendly independent country of huge financial innovation that exploits its petro-chemical wealth to the full to create an environmentally-responsible future, while retaining all that’s best about Britain.

That’s not the best bit by any means. Oh hell, I’ll quote some more:

I’m going to vote no for the same reasons why I don’t take e.g. the libertarians seriously – because I don’t trust people who publicly proclaim that one thing and one thing only is the magical cure for almost everything that ails the nation. There’s something a little creepy about movements that can be succinctly summarised with only one word and one flag.

I’m voting no because repeated experience has taught me that people who propose theoretically simple schemes for the enrichment of the people, but then get ridiculously aggressive when you ask straightforward questions, are probably attempting to pull the wool over our eyes about something or other.

Excellent stuff – read it all.

262: I assumed that any references to Bavarian independence were joking but I also, as explained in 249, experienced some misconceptions that I thought worthwhile to preemptively address.

Btw my 236 wasn’t a joke.

Also, currently – some lawmaking is devolved to the Scots parliament – and other lawmaking is still done in Westminster

Oh, sorry Phil, I realise now I misinterpreted your comment quoted above – I though you were arguing like others that Scotland has always had a separate legal system. Sorry about that.

Stephen,

““Please back up your claims about Scotland’s independent legal system, rather than just making an assertion.” Even rudimentary knowledge about Scottish law might have helped you, but try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_law

Did you read the rudimentary source you recommend? For it does not seem to indicate Sctots law was so separate, since laws were made in the parliament in England after union. Possibly our definitions of separate /independent differ?

“Under the terms of the Act of Union, Scotland retained its own systems of law and education separately from the rest of the country.
The Parliament of Great Britain otherwise was not restricted in altering laws concerning public right, policy and civil government, but concerning private right, only alterations for the evident utility of the subjects within Scotland were permitted. The Scottish Enlightenment then reinvigorated Scots law as a university-taught discipline. The transfer of legislative power to London and the introduction of appeal to the House of Lords (now, by appeal to the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom) brought further English influence. Acts of the Parliament began to create unified legal statutes applying in both England and Scotland, particularly when conformity was seen as necessary for pragmatic reasons (such as the Sale of Goods Act 1893”

Stephen,

“Gaelic as far as can be made out became the main language of the Highlands after the Scottish [Gaelic-speaking Irish] invasion and conquest of the North and West of what is now Scotland, with the extermination of the previous Brythonic [ie Welsh] and Pictish [who can say?] rulers of those parts.”

The language question is quite interesting , see @270 – Wikipedia says Garlic was spoken almost all over Scotland except in two small areas.

Also – Can you add dates for this – it seems maybe from an older period than I am thinking of. I fear you seem to have attributed to me an odd sort of argument that the England pushed the English language into Scotland before it was spoken in England.

Just to dot a couple of “i”s

The term “Scot” originally meant a Gaelic/Goidelic invader from Ireland. Gaelic was not native to Scotland.

The “Brythonic” Kingdom of Strathclyde spoke a language akin to modern Welsh and Breton. “Aberdeen” is like Welsh for “The mouth of the Dee”, but “Inverness” is Gaelic for “the mouth of the Ness”. Both Welsh and Gaelic are Celtic languages, but of different strands: Q-Celtic and P-Celtic. The Pictish language is a mystery, and there is no agreement that it was even Celtic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aber_and_Inver_%28placename_elements%29

The Kingdom of Northumbria was Angle rather than Saxon: that is, the language originated in Angeln in Schleswig (part of southern Jutland). Saxon originated further south.

Just because people spoke a Celtic or Germanic language, does not mean that they were racially Celtic/Germanic or whatever. Fashions and rulers changed, but there is little evidence for ethnic cleansing in most of Britain, although there was certainly immigration. The British Isles were populated long before the Celts arrived, and much of the original genetic stock remains. A significant part of the gene pool in Scotland, and even more in Wales, is similar to parts of the Iberian penninsula. If someone unfamiliar with Britain was shown a photo of Alex Salmond and told it was the Prime Minister of Portugal, he would look the part.

There are plenty of Celtic genes in England, even though the language changed.

Most people in most parts of Britain speak not the language of their ancestors, but the (evolving) language of those who conquered their ancestors – physically or culturally.

In fact, the original Scots were always a minority in Scotland, just as Angles (and even Saxons) were always a minority in England.

On second thought, never mind. I keep neglecting the obvious, that this thread is about the Scottish independence vote, not about separatist movements in general. Apologies to Francis and Ken.

…and to Belle, of course.

Having a separate legal system is different from having its own legislature. Scotland has always had its own legal system, and would continue to do so if an Act of Parliament abolished the Holyrood assembly (which won’t happen).

If you say that Scotland didn’t have its own legal system in the years when no laws were made in Scotland, you are using the phrase “legal system” to mean something different from what lawyers mean by it, and the discussion isn’t going to go far.

Any other thoughts on the referendum? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

“every single No voter whom I asked about it would vote for devomax were it an option on the ballot”

The absence of DM from the ballot paper is a curious bit of politics – it seems it was the one thing on which Alex and David concurred, but why – at least, why Cameron went for.it – is unclear. Perhaps it was just agamble on No beating Yes and thus saving the status quo with minimal effort. I wonder also if Cameron was worried about vote-splitting – a putative 65% Unionist bloc splitting 50-50 and letting the 35% definite Yessers carry the day. Either way it’s backfired – DM is on the ballot paper now, written between the lines of the No option.

ZM @270 If Wikipedia says that “Gaelic … was once spoken everywhere in Scotland except the extreme south-east”, then Wikipedia is talking oblate spheroids. It is simply untrue. Unfortunately many Wiki articles connected to Scotland have been vandalised by those trying to rewrite history. Britannica is more reliable, if old fashioned; (remember that its founder, William Smellie, was also a Scot – in the modern sense – not an Irish invader!! ;) ).

Your comments on the (alleged lack of a) separate Scots legal system are incredibly uninformed: they would offend the overwhelming majority Scots – in both Yes and NO camps. Many Scots institutions are very different from those in England and Wales. Recognising this, even after the Act of Union, the UK parliament often enacted separate legislation for England and Wales and for Scotland.

This not only affected civil and criminal law, but also such things as local government, the education system and, of course, religion.

For example, the famous Butler Education Act of 1944 only applied to England and Wales; there was a separate Education (Scotland) Act 1945 to deal with the different system which had evolved there under the aegis of the elected Scots local authorities.

An interesting thing in Scots law you don’t get in English ones anymore is Hamesucken:
http://www.scotslanguage.com/word/Aug-2008

I first encountered it in a John Buchan book.

Sasha Clarkson and Stephen,

It would be handy if when you give an overview of the language changes you provided so sort of dates. You seem to be going back to the 500s and earlier with your hypotheses of a Gaelic invasion from Ireland.

But this hypothesis seems now to be contested , as it seems to have been based on only a slim amount of history written from the 10th c (which is 500 years after the event)

“The Gaels gave Scotland its name from ‘Scoti’, a racially derogatory term used by the Romans to describe the Gaelic-speaking ‘pirates’ who raided Britannia in the 3rd and 4th centuries. They called themselves ‘Goidi l’, modernised today as Gaels, and later called Scotland ‘Alba’….
Recently archaeologists have challenged this idea. If the Gaels did invade from Ireland then new objects and differing types of building style could be expected to appear. What archaeologists point to is the continuity in building styles of crannogs and forts found in Argyll and Ireland, suggesting the Gaels had lived in Argyll for many centuries before Fergus Mor and shared a common Gaelic culture with Ireland.” from the BBC website

Ewan Campbell seems to be the most famous of the archaeologists challenging the Gaelic invaders thesis. He writes that the thesis became fixed in the public mind during 18th and 19th c debates in the origins and authenticity of the Scots:

“After a period of virulent sectarian debate on the origins of the Scots in the 18th and 19th centuries (Ferguson 1998), the idea of a migra­tion of the Scots to Argyll has become fixed as a fact in both the popular and academic mind for at least a century.
…
Exactly why colonialist explanations should have survived in the ‘Celtic West’ while being hotly debated in eastern Britain is of con­siderable interest, but not the purpose of this paper, which is to provide a critical examina­tion of the archaeological, historical and lin­guistic evidence for a Scottic migration, and provide a new explanation for the origins of Dal Riata.
…
I suggest that the people inhabiting Argyll maintained a regional identity from at least the Iron Age through to the medieval period and that throughout this period they were Gaelic speakers. In this maritime province, sea communications dominated, and allowed a shared archaic language to be maintained, isolated from linguistic developments which were taking place in the areas of Britain to the east of the Highland massif in the Late Roman period,.”
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/articles/scotsirish.htm

Sasha Clarkson,

“Your comments on the (alleged lack of a) separate Scots legal system are incredibly uninformed: they would offend the overwhelming majority Scots – in both Yes and NO camps. Many Scots institutions are very different from those in England and Wales. Recognising this, even after the Act of Union, the UK parliament often enacted separate legislation for England and Wales and for Scotland.”

I am pretty sure no one in Scotland would be offended at me asking how the legal system of Scotland is completely separate as claimed – when the lawmaking from 1707- to 1998 was done in Westminster, and some is still done in Westminster now in 2014. Making laws is part of the legal system one would presume?

In Australia we had our own parliaments over a century earlier in the 19th c, and all oversight from Westminster was completely stopped in the 1980s – but – our legal system is still not separate from the the English legal system – we get lots of enduring laws and legal principles, types of law like common and conscience, and constitutional things etc from English law and English case law is still used in court cases.

Claims of a totally separate Scottish jurisprudence seem quite unlikely – and no one has provided any decent sources showing the independent legal system if Scotland. Someone provided Wikipedia – which noted Westminster made laws :/

Stephen,

““England never had a system of absolute monarchy to my knowledge. Can you point to a period of absolute rule by a king or queen there?”

No, but it wasn’t for want of trying by Scots kings who by dynastic fluke found themselves on the throne of England.
….
After which absolute monarchy in Britain was finished”

So it was finished without ever having happened – how logical an argument indeed my good fellow! By such reasoning all sorts of imaginary events can be said to be historically concluded without ever having eventuated !

I congratulate your ingenuity on making such an original sort of historical argument .

The idea of invading Irish displacing true Scotsmen cannot be divorced from truly horrific sectarianism in Scotland toward Irish Catholic immigrants during the period when these historical theories were proposed.

Just saying that, to fight properly, you have to stay together. For the sake of the children! We children in the U.S. and Canada and Australia and New Zealand (why no NZ voices at CT?) and Hong Kong and South Africa and and and…. I gather many Scots married to English are upset about all this. Well, think of how we far-flung chillins feel! We, for whom the whole Scots-English thing (via Scotch-Irish, often), feel! We are far away, but we are both. (And in all the discussions of language and invasion and such, I do appreciate especially the posts that stress that language is not biological DNA. I’m waiting for the Danes to weigh in here at some point, along with the experts on the Norman “French,” who were, well, part Viking, no?) It’s a wonderful mess, like any family. Home is where you have to hang your hat, said the poet (I never should have quoted Frost to my mother, once. I live with the pain of having done so.)

I sound like an echt colonialist, perhaps. But no, I am for reparations to native and black Americans. (Hell, if it could work, Massachusetts would return to the Neponsets and the Wampanoags, and to the Mahicans who work in my local Stop ‘n Shop — if they wanted it, which I don’t think they do, not in the terms being argued here. The Mahicans had to give tribute to the Mohawks, after all. Really? Mass paying tribute to NY? Unthinkable. I’d really like to know what Ta-Nehisi Coates makes of all this.)

The orientation (ah, the rising sun! origin!) should be argued forward — future from the past, not as hold but as ballistic. Forward from a present that engages rather than denies that past. But then, all this, not my decision to make. Child as I am, I can only look on and hope.

I am pretty sure no one in Scotland would be offended at me asking how the legal system of Scotland is completely separate as claimed,

I am quite sure that most Scots would indeed be offended – not by the question but by your persistence in denying the answer. The distinctness of the Scottish legal system is a very basic and widely known fact, and being sceptical of it makes you look silly – all the more so when you’re being sceptical on grounds you have already been told aren’t good grounds for scepticism (lack of a legislature). As I said earlier, if you say that Scotland didn’t have its own legal system in the years when no laws were made in Scotland, you are using the phrase “legal system” to mean something different from what lawyers mean by it.

You’re talking about subjects you admit you know very little about, and challenging detailed statements made by people who do know about those subjects. You’re also talking about subjects (e.g. the original spread of the Gaelic language) which have no, I repeat no, connection with the topic of the thread, which is a really important and interesting topic – a referendum on the break-up of the United Kingdom, happening tomorrow. If you’re not actually trying to disrupt this thread, please give it a rest.

PS A comment which is in moderation (because of links) suggests some more interesting and relevant things to talk about.

ZM wrote:-

If the referendum will not have any effect on the ‘completely separate scots law system’ – how come the law schools of Scotland have set up a website with articles and arranged conferences – on the implications of the referendum on scots law?

Go back and look at those again, once you appreciate the material distinction between the questions “what is law?” and “what is the law?”. (By the way, desuetude was not an English tool to control the Scots that was thrust upon them, and a law among the Scots does not require an action at Westminster to prevent it from lapsing the way sunsetting or grandfathering did for the Mutiny Acts etc., it only needs to be in – possibly implied – use.)

Guthrie, thank you for your well informed contributions. I would merely have preferred it, as a matter of style, if you had written “James IV was the last monarch who had the Gaelic …” rather than “James IV was the last monarch who could speak gaelic …”.

As, when, and if I have time, I may chip in more on this background, possibly with links, but I do want to keep it as very necessary background to this thread’s theme rather than digression. But here’s one digression, free and for nothing: I myself have the Dalriada gene.

ZM- completely separate is something you’ll have to define, but to all intents and purposes it still does, despite what you have said. I’m afraid there’s no way I can persuade you to understand that, short of your going and reading a textbook on the history of the Scottish legal system.
Which is actually a weak point in my personal library, I’m going to have to go and get some books.

Well done LD @ 310 :)

And now for some light relief: I’m not sure whether proud is the right word, but I’m very happy to have grown up in a UK which made this artist a star, and this “poet” a national institution. Long may this cultural richness continue!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opCGFmPKiE0

What’s amusing is that if you google “Alas, I am very sorry to say”, the top results refer to McGonagall.

For rather less subtle amusement, google Mayor of Fishguard”

Quotes From – “Scots Law: Mixed from the Very Beginning? A Tale of Two Receptions”
By W D H Sellar

“Large and unjustified claims have sometimes been made as to the extent to which Scots law is based on Roman law. In fact, from the time of its emergence in the Middle Ages, the common law of Scotland has been open to influence from both the common law and the Civilian tradition. It has been a “mixed” system from the very beginning.”

“The model for the emerging Scottish common law was undoubtedly the Common Law of England, to such a degree that it is legitimate, I believe, to speak of a Reception. This early Reception of the English Common Law, so integral to the emergence of Scots law as a separate system, was sharply focused, both as regards time and substantive legal content, to the extent that by the end of the thirteenth century both could be subsumed, with some colour of truth, under the description lex anglicana.
However, the common law of Scotland and the Common Law of England were never the same, and came increasingly to diverge, a process already well under way before the end of the thirteenth century and the Wars of Independence.”
…
[I would like to ] focus for a time on the years between 1500 and 1700, and explain what I had in mind when we wrote that Scots law was always open to English influence, even during this period.
…
I would suggest that there are at least three ways in which substantial English influence can be measured, and shall deal with each in turn. The first lies in the continuing legacy of the Scoto-Norman law; the second in further occasional direct borrowing from England (although I certainly would not wish to contend that such borrowings amount to a further Reception); and the third in the views of contemporary writers, particularly towards the close of the sixteenth century, on the relationship between Scots and English law.
…
It would seem then that we cannot say that Roman law was ever in itself
authoritative in Scotland. We cannot point to any narrow band of time and say that this was the period of the Reception of Roman law. We cannot assert that Roman law has been the major influence in shaping most of the areas of our substantive law-certainly not if we leave the canon law out of account. This Reception then, the Reception of Roman law, was not like the earlier Reception of English law. It was not specific as regards time or substantive legal content. Its character was entirely different. This Reception lay not so much in the adoption of one piece of Roman law or another, at any particular time; it lay in the gradual acceptance of a vision of law as a dynamic whole, as an intellectually coherent entity, as set out first by Gaius and Justinian and refined by the jurists of the medieval ius commune.60 It lay in the recognition of the law as a system, and an understanding of the relationship of the parts of that system to the whole; in the acceptance also of legal categories and terms of art such as “obligations””

Now I have found an article on the crisis in Scots law in contemporary times. This author – a scholar of Scots law – states – upsettingly for the proud experts on the separateness and independence of Scots law – that Scots law is not self-sustained . Oh great heavens above! And – Oh dear me! – he does mention that the Act of Union in 1707 changed Scots law – and even goes so far to mention some specific changes introduced like appeals to the House of Lords.

Also – take a deep breath and steady yourselves – this scholar happens to mention that a legislature is indeed a part of a legal system, – great heavens above! – something that has been disputed many a time now by experts on the ever-independent Scots legal system in this thread. The relevant quote being that before 1998 “the most obvious gap in a legal system in Scotland [was] the absence of a legislature dedicated exclusively to its maintenance and development…”

Quotes from: “Invincible or Just a Flesh Wound? The Holy Grail of Scots Law” by Hector MacQueen (2014) [FYI the title refers to Monty Python – with Scots Law being the Black Knight…]

“On what basis might it be said that a legal system which has operated for around a thousand years is in crisis? After all, its existence is guaranteed by no less than two of the 25 articles of the 1707 Union between Scotland and England & Wales,2 while there is no suggestion in the relevant Treaties that the “ever-closer union” envisaged for Europe entails the removal of the domestic legal systems within Member States.
…
The starting (or perhaps scratching) point might however be said to begin with that guarantee of 1707. It is not always realised that discussions of, and, indeed, negotiation towards, voluntary Anglo-Scottish Union had taken place on numerous occasions since the late thir- teenth century.4 These usually involved marriages between heirs of the English and Scottish royal houses which would in course of time produce a single heir to both Crowns; which would thereafter be unified. In such negotiations prior to the ones that led to the 1707 Union, however, the Scots always maintained the separ- ate-ness of their law and legal system even after such a unification, with a particular point always being the exclu- sion of any appeal from Scotland to any court sitting in England. In the 1707 Union, however, the Scots aban- doned this traditional negotiating position.
In Article XVIII of the Union Agreement of 1707 we find the idea that “public right” is henceforth malleable to make it the same throughout the new United Kingdom, whereas “private rights” are to be changed only where that is for the “evident utility of the subjects within Scotland”.5 There was a vital contrast here: change to Scots law was envisaged, albeit with public law more susceptible to alteration than private law; indeed, Article XVIII itself authorized immediate Anglicisation in that “the Laws con- cerning Regulation of Trade, Customs, and . . . Excises . . . [was to] be the same in Scotland, from and after the Union as in England”. Further, while the courts of both Scotland and England were expressly to retain their separ- ate jurisdictions under Article XIX, nothing was said ( probably deliberately) to prevent appeals from the Scottish courts to the House of Lords; and these quickly became established practice in civil cases, to the extent indeed that there were more House of Lords appeals from Scotland than from England by the end of the eighteenth century.
…
These provisions for change to Scots law by the legis- lature sowed the seeds from which grew much legal development that was not so much actively hostile to the Scottish legal system as simply by-passed it.8 From the nineteenth century on legislation sought to deal with pressing social issues to which traditional legal analysis of any kind, Scottish or English, seemed quite irrelevant if not inimical – notably social and welfare law, but also the taxation which provided the resources with which to tackle these problems. The rise of the welfare state was the rise of the British state, not of distinct English and Scottish ones. Likewise the growth of commerce within the single market that now existed in the United Kingdom did not respect and was indeed rather im- patient with jurisdictional divides, and the Westminster Parliament responded with measures which, while some- times recognising Scottish differences, tended to treat them as peculiarities rather than as affecting the funda- mentals of unifying schemes.9 Commerce also threw up new ideas – corporations, insurance, intellectual prop- erty, consumer protection – which seemed to require new law altogether; and there also seemed to be little point in spending time devising distinct legal responses that would accord with either English or Scottish legal traditions.
…
But other great matters of state by and large fell to be played out elsewhere than in Scotland or the Scottish courts, and the big books on the subject were mostly written and published south of the border, only rarely considering the Scottish dimension or indeed the Union of 1707 unless to dismiss it or minim- ise its significance. Dicey’s characterisation of the Act of Union as merely another statute which the Westminster Parliament could amend or repeal in the simple exercise of its own absolute sovereignty is the best-known example.
…
In the relatively recent past, the process of legal inte- gration in social and commercial matters has been renewed by the processes of “Europeanisation” following the United Kingdom’s accession to what is now the European Union on 1 January 1973. This affects English as much as Scots law, and it may give the historically aware Scots lawyer a certain Schadenfreude to hear the cries of protest emanating from English lawyers against European Union proposals for changes to the law.
…
Some of the enthusiasm [for the European Convention on Human Rights] faded, however, as it became clear, not only that criminal law and procedure, hitherto one of the main bastions of Scottish legal autonomy, was subject to review for consistency with Convention rights, but also that for most purposes, the final say on these matters lay, not in the High Court of Justiciary as hither- to, but in either the European Court of Human Rights or, more concerningly, in Westminster, in the form of the House of Lords, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, or, after 1 October 2009, the new UK Supreme Court. The culmination of this was the Supreme Court’s decision in the Cadder case, handed down on 26 October 2010,15 that the Scottish legislation which allowed the prosecution to rely on confessions made by a suspect without access to legal advice during police interviews was contrary to that individual’s right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the ECHR as authoritatively defined by the European Court on Human Rights in Salduz v Turkey.16 This not only over-ruled the High Court’s view of the question, but also led instantly to a significant legislative reform of Scots criminal procedure in the form of the Criminal Procedure (Legal Assistance, Detention and Appeals) (Scotland) Act,
…
The Black Knight dismisses the loss of his left arm as but a scratch, and goes on fighting. The autonomy of Scots law and the Scottish legal system is certainly less than it was; but the essentially external factors just dis- cussed have simply forced upon the players within the system the need to change approach rather than give up the game altogether. Many of the same factors impact upon other legal systems in similar ways. Patched up, and with some rehabilitative treatment, the Scottish version can continue to perform in a useful way, even to the extent of using its limited but none the less still real autonomy to influence those wielding the power of final decision-making, whether legislative, executive or judicial. ‘It’s just a flesh wound!’ Things become progressively more difficult for the Black Knight, however, as one by one his limbs are severed; and however much he may dismiss each of his losses as just flesh wounds, the reality is that they eventually deprive him of any capacity to guard the bridge. Is there any reason to think that Scots law and the Scottish legal system are on their way to a parallel fate?”

There is much more – but I better not quote the whole article so extensively, because that would be too much quoting. It does however mention that if people voted for independence there would be a new constitution, and also various other changes to the law etc.

I might look at more law in the morning. Please do not be such rude people again overnight. You don’t seem to have any better than a flimsy grasp of Scots law yourselves, yet you have been so rude to me and my questions about what the legal implications of independence would be.

I’m incredibly tired, but I just think you vote no people are wrong.

ZM may ramble on a lot but I think there’s some truths there. I’m a child of Empire, like Meredith says (literally my mother was English, although her mother was Irish Catholic, so that’s a whole nother road I won’t go down at present), but living in Australia, if you have any sensitivity, you can’t help but be aware of the legacy of a genocidal imperial invasion.

The logic is
England was the centre of the Empire (even if some Scots came along for the ride and what they could get out of it)
The empire did some evil things
I’ve never really seen the English admit that, including on this thread.

So maybe ‘perfidious Albion’ is right, and Scotland is better off leaving? Not everything’s about money.

Model yourself upon Limericky Dicky, that mistress of words

Claims of a separate Scottish jurisprudence seem quite unlikely

It is always hilarious when someone is wrong at the top of their voice.

Apologies, ZM – the phrase ‘completely separate legal system’ was from Stephen – however I think you are still conflating ‘completely separate’ with ‘completely different’. The two are, and have always been, separate (“complete separate-ness” seems to me a pointless phrase) but share influences and are clearly not completely different.

ZM: Appeals to the House of Lords were allowed in civil cases but never in criminal cases; etc etc. The best you can come up with are half truths. You started off pontificating about something you knew nothing about, and then set yourself upon the path of trawling the internet, not to learn or to understand, but to find (inevitably out of context) quotes to back up your initial uniformed opinion and save your face.

To make an analogy, I feel its as if I am being lectured from the other side of the world that it can’t be sunny outside here in wet Wales, and furthermore that if I think I can see the sun, then I must be mistaken.

VAL – the big difference between Scotland and Ireland is that its ruling class was local. The truth is that Scotland had a constitutionally privileged position in the UK between 1750 ish and 1979. Then the Conservative party abandoned both one-nation Conservatism and the post-war economic and social consensus. That is why, in the 30 years following, the Tories went from being the biggest party in Scotland to being a contemptible rump (just asking to be kicked!!). If Scotland as a whole hadn’t done well out of the Union, the Tories wouldn’t have been so popular after universal suffrage – especially as its education system was better than England’s.

AC @322
Ha. I thought somebody would fall into my trap and tell me it was irrelevant. I really have to go to sleep, but saying it’s irrelevant is evidence for what I’m saying. Sorry really too tired to say anything more right now.

Damn can’t go to sleep. Ok. I’m not a voter, but if I were, and I were making a choice to vote yes as I considered England to be a country that had acted badly in the past, and refused to acknowledge it or apologise for it, and you (as an advocate for the no cause) said to me “that’s not relevant”, you are not really telling me what’s relevant to my vote, because that’s up to me to decide, you are implicitly saying: “I don’t want you to vote on those grounds because I can’t effectively defend England on those grounds”. It’s a ‘look over there’ tactic.

Providing evidence is ok, but I think your evidence is a bit weak. Anyway it’s effectively undermined by the irrelevance claim.

Ok SC and LD, so is it like, Scotland’s just as guilty as England about being imperialists so they should stay together?

And even, they are as bad as each other, so should be guided by pragmatic self-interest only? (I know you didn’t say that but does it follow?)

And do you think maybe the Scots who are planning to vote yes don’t actually agree that Scotland is as bad as England re the imperialist history? (I know you might say they don’t care about it – that it really is irrelevant – but if you asked them?).

Anyway there were a lot of Scots settled and did well from dispossessing the Indigenous population here in Victoria, I grant you (v diff from Irish).

But my sense is that the yes voters are influenced by some sense of comparative moral worth (I freely admit I don’t know much about it). If so, do you think that would have a historical component or just be about comparatively recent social justice issues (eg)? I mean they do have a better record on social justice don’t they?

Oh man I really must go to sleep, but I am not trying to tell anyone what their weather is. I’m just attacking the English for being unrepentant imperialists. You tell me I should attack the Scots as well, you may well be right, but I still think they may not exactly be the victim but surely they were at least the weaker partner.

And there are are degrees in all this – I’m not really following it all but I get the impression some people (Highland crofters or such?) really were victims. And regardless of someone telling me a while back that that was irrelevant because they couldn’t vote (definitely wrong, voting ability is not required for cultural tradition), I think that sort of stuff matters. Anyway enough, I’m going to sleep. It’s very late here and I definitely can’t see the sun, so don’t try to tell me otherwise.

I did learn some British history as a young undergraduate, but of course it was forced down my throat and I have forgotten it as act against cultural imperialism.

Anyway I would like the yes vote to win, although I am no longer emotionally identifying the Scots with my particular passions about anti-imperialism etc. (well not so much). It would still be a victory against England. (I don’t hate the English truly I don’t … You’re great sorry)

Glad you’ve cleared that up.

ZM@277: “I fear you seem to have attributed to me an odd sort of argument that the England pushed the English language into Scotland before it was spoken in England.”

As many others have said, this is getting a long way off the topic of the independence referendum, but in the interests of factual accuracy: no, that is not at all the argument I was stating. What I was trying to get across was that the Anglian kingdom of Northumberland, in which at least some people spoke an Anglo-Saxon language, at one time covered most of Lowland Scotland; at a time when similar languages were spoken in most of what is now England. Look up the Ruthwell Cross.

Sasha Clarkson,

Can you leave off with the patronizing rude insultingness please? I am genuinely interested in the topic of English laws (more because of their legacy in Australia) – and your replies have consistently been rude rather than helpful and your statements have not been especially detailed on either Gaelic in Scotland or law.

“ZM: Appeals to the House of Lords were allowed in civil cases but never in criminal cases; etc etc. The best you can come up with are half truths. ”

It is not a half truth that appeals were able to go to the House of Lords. Appeals did go to the House of Lords.

“You started off pontificating about something you knew nothing about, and then set yourself upon the path of trawling the internet, not to learn or to understand, but to find (inevitably out of context) quotes to back up your initial uniformed opinion and save your face.”

I thought it was unlikely Scots law is separate from English law – because Australian law is not separate from English law and we do not even have the parliament in England making laws for us. We get many old laws from England and English case law is used at court. I actually do like to learn on threads , and usually do reading.

Please tell me what I have quoted out of context?

Sasha Clarkson and Limericky Dicky ,

I am not telling you anything about the weather over there.

I am discussing whether Scots law can be said to be separate from English law – when Westminster made all the laws from 1707 to 1998 and still makes some law now.

And you seem to think you will just like to keep maintaining the separateness – no matter what evidence I provide – so as you can keep insulting me for not being an expert on Scots law – But you yourselves only provide generalizations and don’t source your claims

Should be “devo max” above. Not deco max. Overactive spellchecker.

I’ll say again, I just don’t see how the promises of greater devolution can be broken at this stage. Nationally(!) we’ve got what’s effectively a Tory minority government propped up by a Lib Dem party which needs to assert itself before the next elections, opposed by a Labour party currently on track to get a small overall majority. All three have promised to implement devo max after the next UK election in 2015, and at least two of the three have very strong motivations for doing so. Whichever party forms the government, they’ll need to deliver if they’re not going to be wiped out in Scotland at the subsequent UK election – and, perhaps more importantly, at the next Scottish Parliament election in 2016.

The only government I can imagine reneging outright – or offering reforms so trivial as to amount to the same thing – is a Tory majority government; they’ve got very little to lose in Scotland and UKIP to fend off on the reactionary right. Fortunately that situation’s not likely to arise. But even if that did happen, can you imagine the mood in Scotland? We’d be looking at Referendum II by 2020 and Yes would get 80%. Even the Tories don’t want that – although they are, perhaps, just stupid enough to bring it about.

As for Labour and the Lib Dems, it’s in their interests to maintain the Union, it’s in their interests not to throw away their Scottish support, and they’re not led by idiots. Holyrood happened; the devolution of powers over health, transport etc happened and hasn’t been clawed back. If No wins, and as long as the Tories don’t win in 2015, devo max is on.