Scotland Referendum Open Thread.

Aren’t you an English Protestant? Since English Protestants occupy the privileged position in the social hierarchy in the UK, it’s natural for them to be hard-core unionists. It would be unusual for you not to be.

“if the No vote wins, and you are very disappointed indeed, you might want to wait a year or so”

According to “the Scottish Government” — which seems to actually be a name assumed by the SNP, as far as I can tell:

“The Edinburgh Agreement states that a referendum must be held by the end of 2014. There is no arrangement in place for another referendum on independence.

It is the view of the current Scottish Government that a referendum is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. This means that only a majority vote for Yes in 2014 would give certainty that Scotland will be independent.”

Shetland : No

Live tracker:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11106917/Scottish-independence-live-results-as-they-happen.html

I think Scotland should have taken her chance. The alternative is just more of the same, and that’s no good.
~

While eagerly awaiting the Queen’s statement to sooth things over, it has occurred to me to wonder about the fate of the Union Jack should Scotland vote yes (I know this is looking unlikely at this stage).

The repercussions of the change to the Union Jack would reach to Australia , having great implications for our fairly regular public debates on appropriate flag design.

The Union Jack would look very empty without the cross of Saint Andrew. How was this vexing issue of flag design covered in the English press?

Ok, I will confess an embarrassing reading comprehension failure here. When you wrote:

Two minutes later the student, sounding quite distressed, said “Yes, that’s what I’ve found out too”.

The meaning is that the student was distressed to discover that she was a firm unionist, yes? Not that she was distressed to discover that her respected teacher Harry was a unionist, while she herself was the other thing, right? And what was the source of the distress here? Why would suddenly understanding one’s own preferences better make one upset? Sorry for the confusion, I must be lacking some essential (and otherwise obvious) context to make sense of this story.

@17: Thank you for the clarification. That makes a lot more sense. And I believe ‘Republican’ in this context means being against the monarchy, rather than supporting Rick Perry for President. To paraphrase Graham Greene, we are two countries divided by a common language.

Right, well, in the English sense. Certainly not the Rick Perry sense. I enjoy sowing confusion by using the term that way.

I think the reason they have been unwilling to do the extrapolations is that they really don’t know enough — usually extrapolation depends on lots of previous observations, and a great deal of information about constituencies etc; whereas here there is no prior experience to go with. And 16 year olds — how do you know what they are telling you?

As for energy. Well, I’ve heard that about energy being on the yes side but, on the day, the energy seems to have come from the no side.

BBC called a NO win.

Rich Puchalsky:
Just to clarify, the Scottish Government is the actual executive governing body of Scotland, which is ‘assumed’ by the SNP in the sense that they have an elected majority in the Scottish Parliament and thus constitute the current government of Scotland.

Meredith,

But to be specifically Protestant don’t you have to have something especially Protestantish about your church – not just replace the pope with Henry VIII?

I thought there were various tenets to be Protestant – like not having saints and liking words not pictures and presumably some positive ones instead of just nots etc? I think Lutheranism does have specific tenets rather than just not having a pope , one of my aunts is Lutheran.

Who are Mrs Proudie and Mr Slope?

I found out how the parliament wields its influence – the general synod which is the legislative body if the Anglican Church, must get all it’s measures approved by both Houses of Parliament .

“The Union Jack would look very empty without the cross of Saint Andrew.”

It would essentially be getting rid of the blue–the red-on-white Cross of St. George superimposed on the red-on-white x-shaped Cross of St. Patrick is what would be left.

On the referendum, I’ve found myself in the opposite position to Harry – I’ve been much more invested in Scottish independence, and disappointed by the no result, than I thought I would be, despite being generally hostile to nationalism in general and having only fairly distant connections to Scotland. I saw both the weakening of the British state and the political opening which could have been created by Scottish independence as positive things, and not just for people in Scotland. I don’t particularly have faith in the SNP (who seem more neoliberal than social democratic despite their rhetoric), but the ‘yes’ campaign has clearly galvanised people on the basis of opposition to austerity. And one thing the Scottish nationalist movement can take some credit for is largely avoiding the kind of reactionary, racist ethno-nationalism which has blighted Quebecois nationalism, for example.

I hope some of the grassroots political engagement generated by the referendum continues, and escapes from the hegemony of the SNP specifically and Scottish nationalism in general, but I think this is less likely following the no vote than it would have been following a yes result. Sure, there will be something of a political opening created by the promise of further devolution (etc), but there just doesn’t seem to be the kind of substantial UK-wide social movement that could really take advantage of this, and I suspect that the leverage won by the Scottish independence campaign is likely to be pretty well captured by the SNP, and used as leverage in pursuit of their own more narrow interests.

The way in which the campaign has opened up the political imagination in Scotland is definitely a positive thing, and I hope that it can be further developed outside of the narrow confines of the politics of ‘nation’ and ‘state’. But I fear it’ll end up strangled through an uninspired and uninspiring process of elite political manoeuvring, and perhaps redirected into a more regressive politics of nationalist resentment.

This has nothing to do with religion any more, except where nominal religion is part of a residual tribal identity. In Glasgow, to no-one’s surprise, Celtic defeated Rangers – again.

The final result, 55.3%-44.7%, is enough to be decisive – for now. As I and others suspected, it looks as though some NO supporters may have less than candid with the opinion polls.

However, unlike Mr Cameron, I don’t think this is “settled for a generation”: it gives a breathing space of at most ten years. The 45% YES in Scotland on a very high turnout is more than any political party in Britain has achieved since 1970. In a few years, a 5% swing would not be difficult to achieve if the establishment fails to learn the lessons.

The Westminster system is broken. Britain as a whole is divided, not so much between England and Scotland, but approximately along a line from the Severn to the Wash. North of this line, the old industrial heartlands continue to suffer from the triumph of the “make money, not things” philosophy which is a legacy of Thatcherism.

South of this line, despite extremes of wealth and poverty, a majority of population benefit from the rent-extraction by the City which is at the root of the problems elsewhere in the UK. This area is the real power base of the Tories and UKIP and is where belligerent English nationalism is taking root most deeply. A Tory/UKIP victory next year would lead to an even more arrogant government than we have at the moment, and torpedo any real chance of healing the UK’s divisions.

When the Queen shuffles off her mortal coil many questions will be opened/reopened. Charles is not popular in the same way, and republicanism will be given a boost. The House Of Lords will be even more of an embarrassing pustule on the face of the British body-politic than it is at the moment.

The other danger is the rise of fascism. If Britain carries on being America’s military lapdog, and more of our own Muslims reject our society, then the atmosphere in some cities could become very ugly indeed. I do not believe that any part of Britain would be immune from the consequences.

Britain is a divided country in crisis: a return to business as usual will leave the wounds to fester and the political gangrene will destroy us.

A constitutional convention as suggested by Chris Bertram the other day would help, but I’m not optimistic. If I were young enough, I’d emigrate.

@33, rea
How about a new flag with the English St George’s cross, the Welsh dragon and the red hand of Ulster?

” How about a new flag with the English St George’s cross, the Welsh dragon and the red hand of Ulster?”

https://ronanfitz.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/image.gif

Kambing,

I think some Anglican churches are Protestant , but not all of them, so I think the broad Anglican church as a whole is not Protestant but has within it Protestant churches. It was not really started out of differences of opinion about scripture etc but just because Henry VIII wanted to be head of all the churches in England and have more power. You are thinking of the Oxford movement I think but high church has a longer history than that – I think as the national church Anglicanism had to accommodate people of more catholic and of more Protestant liturgic views from early on. The Oxford movement argued the opposite of what you are arguing in fact – that the Anglican Church was like the catholic and orthodox churches rather than Protestant churches – but they did not represent the whole Anglican Church and certainly some churches were more Protestant. I also think another reason Anglicanism can be Protestant is because the head of the church is the king or queen and that is inherited by birth – I do not think Luther or Calvin or any other great Protestant argued headship of churches is inherited by birth and the heads of churches should be the king or queen of the country or that decisions by synod should be approved by the two Houses of Parliament – the latter would be very worldly indeed. Calvin would definitely not argue it because Queen Elizabeth 1 must have been the head of the church – and he did not even want her to be queen so likely he wished much less she was head of the church.

The Anglican Church also has ecumenical relations with the Catholic Church and presumably other churches as well – ecumenical is just relations between different sorts of churches. I had not heard of such close relations between Lutheranism – that is quite interesting – maybe it depends on the region? We do not have many Lutherans , and a lot of the other smaller churches joined together as the uniting church.

I guess it’s about taxonomy of Christian denominations – but such taxonomies seem to range a bit doing a very brief search – some separate out Pentecostal churches as not being Protestant too. – I guess there is no authoritative taxonomy of denominations.

Gosh – I only found the tip of the iceberg of the extent of the wielding of power by parliament

Can’t say that I really had a horse in this race, so I’m somewhat bemused by the whole matter. I’ll just restrict my comments to saying, if the federal government holds a poll, and 45 percent of the people vote for seceding, that should be taken as evidence the federal government really needs to improve the job its doing.

My point was merely that I very much doubt that you would use the term “hard-line unionist” unless you were not Catholic. I don’t think Unionism is fodder for jokes in the same way in other parts of the UK.

On a more serious point. This result is a Tory/New Labour victory. It’s full speed ahead for financialization and austerity. It’s also a sop to the centralizers and right-wingers in other European states.

Tom Hurka, I can’t remember where I saw it, but I did see some polling that suggested that “no” was stronger among the younger and the older voters than among those in their 30s and 40s (something similar happened in the Australian republican referendum, if I recall correctly). It’s the pattern you describe as applying in Quebec.

That would mean that waiting a generation for another go could miss the boat as the strong “ayes” would mostly have become less active by then, yet an earlier attempt would be unrealistic. However, there is a complicating factor: I’m pretty sure that Salmond and the S.N.P. are deliberately or unconsciously emulating the tactics of Boston’s Mayor Cooley, being unpopular and counter-productive in ways that drive out those that don’t support them and that concentrate the rest, a “Scots flight” that gives them a larger slice of a smaller pie. I see that in the very selection of the vote, giving it to residents of Scotland rather than to self-identifying Scots on the basis of ancestry and affiliation, despite the latter being the basis of Celtic culture – and thus excluding those in England and elsewhere who are more likely to have self-selected into the framework of Britishness, and even though a residency basis is importing the alien concept of identity of England which would take any independent Scotland formed on that basis in that alien direction, assimilating all the wrong things.

P M Lawrence @ 44: that’s not how Anglican bishops are appointed any more. Google “Crown Nominations Commission” if you have an immense amount of time on your hands, or sleep is eluding you.

ZM, the Porvoo Communion is much more than just an ecumenical gesture, it means members of one church in the agreement are to be considered a member of the others. This holds for ordination, too.

You seem to be applying an overly narrow definition of ‘Protestant’ that excludes not only the high church Anglicans but also some of the largest Lutheran denominations, which also have doctrines of episcopal authority, apostolic succession, a doctrine of the eucharist which is pretty close to transubstantiation, a traditional liturgical mass, etc.

Tom Hurka:

Here is the source for my numbers (@54) : https://twitter.com/LordAshcroft/status/512895230132371456/photo/1

But having a look at it, I think it does not add up. YMMV.

Kambing,

I just think there are disagreements in the Anglican Church – some want to be catholic-ish and some want to be Protestant-ish – so it does not fit neatly in either. The Oxford movement says it is like catholic and orthodox – you say it is like Lutheranism and Calvinism – but you all agree you are Anglicans. So I will just classify it as a national church given there is no authoritative taxonomy of denominations and since the queen is the head of it and the parliament has some role , although it remains unconfirmed exactly what , and now I have spent too much time researching things to look into yet another.

Tom Hurka:
I don’t have any up-to-date demographic data, but earlier info that I’ve seen is that the situation in Scotland is quite different to Quebec. Independence is more popular among the young than the old, and hasn’t been linked to racism and Islamophobia the way Quebecois nationalism often has been (and there’s no equivalent to the anti-indigenous racism). The PQ and friends allowed the federalists to take the (not really earned) moral high ground as the defenders of multiculturalism and indigenous rights in a way that’s simply not the case with Scottish nationalists vs British unionists. The Scottish independence campaign has stressed integration with Europe, an openness to migration, and a civic and cosmopolitan definition of Scottish citizenship. Some of this may be down to the SNP and the yes campaign taking the support of hardcore Scots ethno-nationalists for granted, so they haven’t felt the need to really pander to that group, but I haven’t seen much evidence that they even constitute a notable constituency. One of the big factors driving support for Scottish independence (though I’m pretty sure it’s secondary to a general hatred of Tory austerity) is opposition to a rising English nationalism and English-masquerading-as-British nationalism which manifests itself in xenophobic terms. So there’s quite a different dynamic there.

To lower the tone: the most interesting thing, by far, is that the results in Glasgow and North Lanarkshire make it clear that Celtic supporters voted Yes. Also, I’m pretty sure that the Other Lot did not rally round the Union Flag in overwhelming numbers.
This is an object lesson for me: I assumed throughout the campaign, indeed I have assumed for forty years, that things were as I left them when I graduated from university and Jock Stein’s Celtic Park. Today, I find that things have changed: SNP = Soon No Pope, = Tartan Tories, no longer applies. Professor Tom Devine was right when he said it was safe to proceed on the basis that sectarianism was no longer a factor in Scottish politics and daily life.
Two-thirds of a lifetime’s-worth of certainty trumped by the insights of an intelligent and thoughtful academic. Very hard.

Very disappointed. Suspect it’s a victory for fear.

“I’ll just restrict my comments to saying, if the federal government holds a poll, and 45 percent of the people vote for seceding, that should be taken as evidence the federal government really needs to improve the job its doing.”

Actually, it’s 45% of Scots, which constitute 8% of the population of the UK, so hardly as damning as you make it out to be. A bit like polling only the residents of Alabama on secession, I’d say, with likely a similar result. If you select a portion of the electorate with a high rate of unhappy citizens, you shouldn’t be surprised if the result shows a high rate of unhappiness. This does not if course dismiss the grievances of Scots, about which I’m no expert.

Yes, my position is that, in a federation, if a really large percentage of the people living in one of the ‘states’ within the federation are willing to vote to secede, then the federation is doing a lousy job. The point of a federation isn’t to play favorites, running things so that the people over here are happy, and the people over there are pissed off. Its supposed to function in the interests of all the states, not just some of them.

Why was Cameron going on about the ‘Westloadian question’ or something ?

Whether 10 years from now or 100 years from now – a big part of what was going to make Scotland a viable independent nation was oil exports and those will continue to deplete. Unless they adopt policies to develop a replacement industry (possibly a much greener one as well) they are likely to become more not less dependent on tax flow payments from the South.

I had remembered reading (too long to explain why) that the Episcopal church, as Wikipedia puts it, is “Protestant, yet Catholic,” but Wikipedia goes on to nuance this quite a bit, and the official website is less specific than whatever I remember reading a dozen or more years ago, so whatever that signifies . . . some official Episcopal institutions seem still to have the word “Protestant” in their names, even after 1979.

#73 Trader Joe

Whether 10 years from now or 100 years from now – a big part of what was going to make Scotland a viable independent nation was oil exports and those will continue to deplete. Unless they adopt policies to develop a replacement industry (possibly a much greener one as well) they are likely to become more not less dependent on tax flow payments from the South.

If they stay in the bigger government where they are a relatively small minority, when they depend on taxes from elsewhere to live on, they will likely find that money dries up.

They need a replacement industry either way. Which way are they more likely to get it?

CJColluci, that’s my basic understanding as a British agnostic. The C of E is protestant because it split from Rome around the same time as other protestant churches. So in Britain we have 3 broad categories of Christianity, Papists (and other non-protestants, eg. orthodox and coptics), Anglicans, and non-conformists (basically other protestants). The Monarch is now free to marry a catholic but can’t become one as he or she would be the head of the C of E so it would cause some constitutional issues.

78,

Catholic just means “universal”. Everybody imagines their peculiar beliefs to be universal, so the label is not a distinguishing mark of any one set of peculiar beliefs.

As was entirely predictable, Westminster is already working to break the promises they made in panic mode just last week

If so, they’re leaving an open goal for not only Labour but the Lib Dems, who have much more to lose in Scotland than do the Tories.

I recall a lot of people assuring me that the promises of devolution for a No vote were ironclad. I’ll go on record now as suggesting that they will not be fulfilled.

It will be more pain for the Scots, now that they have proven themselves to harbor secessionist thoughts without being able to commit to them.

christian_h @ 80:

Bad outcome.

Could you elaborate on why “Yes” would have been a good outcome from a left perspective? Because I just haven’t been able to see that in what was on offer: cutting the corporate tax rate, making Scotland a financial services haven, monetary policy in the hands of pro-austerity outside interests, wealth from fossil fuel extraction, etc. It would mean a smaller electoral body to shift left, but what else?

“like a small American city that was annexed by a much bigger neighboring city, but some people in the smaller city think they pay in more than they get back in this arrangement, ”

They’ll normally be right about this, or else they wouldn’t have been annexed in the first place…

I am another who would have voted No, but can’t help feeling a little disappointed at the outcome, and is now seriously concerned that the Tories will renege on their last-minute promises. I suppose that if they did, the Scots could punish them by unseating all the Scottish Tory MPs at the next election. Oh, wait…

Ths sub-thread on different varieties of protestantism is fascinating. . . . The first American Episcopal bishops were consecrated by Scottish Episcopal bishops, not Anglican bishops, the failure of the Church of England to provide for bishops in the colonies playing a role in both the colonies becoming independent and the small size of the Anglican affiliated church in the US.

Yes . . . but:

The small number of Anglicans in the Northern colonies is also obviously due to the fact that they were established by dissenting sects: Quakers in Pennsylvania and Delaware, Puritans in New England, other sects in the rest of New England as they were expelled from Massachussts; and Dutch Reformed in New York. There was no Anglican, non-dissenting, Crown-chartered university in the North until 1754. In the 17th century, the Puritans and their descendants considered themselves Anglicans, but at some point this changed, with the urban elites tending toward loyalism, and the rural population content with their Harvard-trained ministers. The Boston colonial-era churches are now Episcopalian (Anglican), but the small-town ones are generally Unitarian (by way of Congregationalism until the 1820s or thereabouts).

The distinctly anti-establishment and non-elite nature of evangelical proselytizing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries probably has something to do with it too.

Pretty far afield, but I too was bemused by Harry’s comment @ 3.

Bianca explains why Bishop Berkeley wanted to establish a university in North American in 1728 to educate Anglican clergy.

urban elites tending toward loyalism

This was of course an effect of capitalism, but also of the increased requirements for conformity with the Church of England in order to hold appointed office, and possibly even elected office. And of course an effect of increased wealth, but also of later immigration by groups favored in London.

“You’re confusing ‘intent’ with ‘outcome’. ”

No, I’m presuming that people are entitled to have their own preferences, and that the purpose of a federation is not to over-ride local preferences in favor of what somebody elsewhere thinks is better, but only to help effectuate those local preferences.

If you’re pissing off 45% of the population to the point where they’re willing to secede, you’re not doing federalism right.

“If a representative body passes a law they believe to be in the best interests of everyone in the demos, it could still be the case that some individuals, ethnic or geographical groups are less satisfied than others.”

Yeah, I tend to think that if passing a law is going to seriously piss off 45% of the population, it’s probably a topic you shouldn’t have been passing laws about. Democracy isn’t an excuse to stomp all over whoever happens to have slightly fewer numbers. Stick to subjects where there’s substantial agreement.

@Sasha Clarkson: I can’t help wondering whether non-Scots get the perverse pride with which McGonagall is regarded. I applaud the working in of “the silvery Tay”.

Too lazy to use the google and see if the Harry Potter professor is a shoutout.

This past August, we rented a house upstate from a Scottish couple. It had a numeric key-pad lock instead of a key. The number was 1736, but I kept getting it wrong until I realized that no Scot would use 1746.

wouldn’t the cross of St. George and the dragon of Wales (as suggested above) be incompatible?

`Impaled’ is a possible heraldic arrangement… (no more applicable than tactful here, I think).

A big vote to be out of a federation is a strong signal but not necessarily a useful one; the secessionists could be evenly split between incompatible goals.

I’ve been thinking about `max devo’ in light of Ferguson or other captured states. I like local control for both philosophical and practical reasons, but when small local-control places go bad, they go very bad indeed. Having a roaming group of verify-and-enforce Feds seems unreliable or Inquisition-like or both, outside the movies. What is the max of devo?

Love the not-McGonagall!

As for the demographics, interesting that 18-24 year olds voted much less for the Yes than 16-17 year olds — or maybe that’s just a quirk of the survey. I don’t imagine that the 18 year olds have started drinking. Presumably Scots do that much earlier.

Picking up on various things:

I enjoyed the Sansom book but he goes far too far in linking the contemporary SNP with fascism. He is a bit of an ideologue on Scottish matters, quite on a par with the extreme nationalists.

Is Rich, at no. 5, being facetious when he wonders whether “the Scottish Government” is “actually . . . a name assumed by the SNP”?

wrt Harry at no. 17 and elsewhere, while I was for NO, I’d never translate that into terming myself a hardline unionist, just as I know some of my nearest and dearest who were for YES who would never think of themselves as nationalists or SNP.

and wrt all those adverting on religion:
First of all, it’s pretty depressing to go through a thread supposedly centering on Scottish matters to encounter an almost unrelieved discussion of religion that is so thoroughly anglocentric. Should any of you be wondering why some Scots just couldn’t take it anymore and voted YES, contemplate that. (And should any of you have watched the BBC coverage of the Commonwealth Games, you may also contemplate the fact that again and again the commentators, supposedly speaking to a broadly British audience, slipped unconsciously it seemed into referring to the English athletes as “our” athletes betraying an eagerness for them to outdo the others. –And in case these Games are equally a mystery to you, they were held this time around in Glasgow and featured separate teams from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as from England, and teams from a great many of the Commonwealth countries.) Note this news is coming to you from someone who did not favour YES on independence now, but who, like almost everyone he knows in Scotland, finds it annoying and tedious to have to point out again and again that the metropolitan English discourse on things British proceeds blithely on its way casually indifferent to the fact that the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish and the inhabitants of many parts of England live with different histories and cultures. And if you’re not yourself a participant in that metropolitan English discourse, you owe it to yourself as well as to all those whom it treats so condescendingly, to explore the matter and rid yourself of some very questionable verbal tics.

But back to the religious complexities. I’ve been accused, quite recently, of being a Presbyterian–another sort of protestant–who doesn’t believe in God. There are a in fact a whole lot more Presbyterians than Anglicans in Scotland. And the origins of Scottish Prespyterianism have a whole lot more to do with Calvin in Geneva than with that awful Tudor autocrat who ruled south Britain. But to make things even more difficult: another term for the Anglicans is, I think, Episcopalians; and there are indeed Scottish Episcopalians. They are also a minority, their origins too lie in Scotland, not England. And finally, I read somewhere recently that the Roman Catholics are now the largest single sect of practicing religionists in Scotland.

@Brett Bellmore:

45% is certainly embarrassing. Going by that result, the current UK government would seem to be among the worst for the last two hundred years or so (an actual ‘Yes’ victory could have clinched bottom place).

But I find myself puzzled as to what you believe constitutes legitimate government. Based on what you’ve said, the Scottish referendum shows the UK system falls short – but the Chinese approach to unrest (forcibly relocate the discontented throughout more reliable areas) seems to be a better one? I don’t believe that’s what you meant…

“I don’t believe that’s what you meant…”

I should hope not, since I not only didn’t say anything of the sort, I didn’t say anything that even vaguely suggested anything of the sort.

Rich – I think it’s a difference of usage. “Government” appears sometimes to be used in the UK (and maybe in other English-speaking countries with parliamentary systems) in the same sense that “administration” is used in the US, referring to (as one Google definition suggests) “the group of people in office at a particular time.” Thus a BBC article says “The Queen is the only person who can invite someone to form a government and to become prime minister” and the Encyclopedia Britannica refers to “the Blair government’s first major initiative.”

Rich Puchalsky,

“No one else thought that was weird, I guess. In the U.S., if the Democratic Party or Republican Party won an election, and then put up party talking points as the opinions of the American Government, it would be a scandal. It’s not supposed to be winner take all.”

In Westminster sort of parliaments “the government” just refers to the majority that is formed after an election by MPs in the lower house of the parliament . So it is always referring to only a part of the parliament, not the whole.

@114

I didn’t see any evidence of this ugly British nationalism in the campaign: can you point to some?

As for “British nationalism” in Glasgow tonight, isn’t this a spillover from the Orange/loyalist streak endemic to Glasgow and parts of Northern Ireland, and which everyone else in the UK has always found embarrassing and repellent?

Does it make me a bad person that I had an entire classroom almost convinced that the national anthem of an independent Scotland would be “500 miles”? (After learning from John Oliver that the Scots’ national animal was the unicorn, a national anthem by The Proclaimers maybe didn’t seem like much of a stretch.)

My best moment last week was driving 4 13-old girls home from soccer practice and having them, suddenly, decide to sing “500 miles” as loud as they could, in pretty good Scots accents.

robinm: I have an important piece of information for you. Crooked Timber is accessible outside the UK! The religion discussion has largely been driven by an Australian.

“Ugly Scenes”

There will always be ugly scenes which dishonest partisans of one side or another will cherry-pick to use to smear ALL their opponents, exonerate ALL their own side, and play the “why aren’t you condemning this instead” game.

Having been involved in politics for 40 years, not always for the same party or cause, I can say from experience that elements of one’s own side are always an embarrassment or worse. Political campaigning inevitably brings out the worst in some maladjusted individuals who persuade themselves that a “great cause” justifies violent, abusive and bullying behaviour. It’s part of the human condition.

jwl@118

The contrast between hopeful Yes voters waving the saltire and a bunch of skinheads sieg-heiling while waving the Union Jack gives me pause, too.

But I assure you, I wasn’t recommending any kind of ‘nationalism’, but the possibilities a British identity (baggy, plural, trans-ethnic, flag-averse) holds for doing solidarity on an other-than-national footing. In the video with Ken Macleod, I was trying to insist on the morally equivocal nature of the British history that England and Scotland share – the human costs of our industrial capitalism, the loathsomeness of our imperialism – so that we might be able then to name advantages and points of pride and potential and actual virtues in the British project, without lying by omission about what else it has entailed. I was trying to recommend (as demagogically as possible of course) a bit of moral realism about ourselves, a reckoning with the difficult past like the one many countries need to make, America for slavery and genocide, Russia for the Soviet horrors. Not the aggressive self-pity and self-approval and enemy-seeking that ‘nationalism’ involves, when it goes with the grain of existing power, rather than against it.

” I was trying to insist on the morally equivocal nature of the British history that England and Scotland share – the human costs of our industrial capitalism, the loathsomeness of our imperialism – so that we might be able then to name advantages and points of pride and potential and actual virtues in the British project, ”

It would go to more good use if you tried to think of something to cure the ills in the current British way of life, not just nominate isolated virtues hidden away somewhere – such as using the infernal financial doings of the city of London to unsustainably and unfairly import more resources and labour from around the world than you give in return, global spying with the former Anglo colonies, foreign interventions, ghg emissions leading to unremediable climate change etc…

I did find that New Lanark has a very interesting history in the history of hopeful urban planning. British hopeful urban planning was a glimmer of hope and virtue in the British project, especially when it stayed in Britain. the New Lanark project fell apart when they took it overseas to America to build New Harmony which did not work, and poor Robert Owen (a Welshman) fell out with everyone and said to his one last friend “All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer”.

Although you might not like hopeful urban planning I suppose since you thought the idea of Red Plenty utopian?

ZM – I’ll tell you what, you get the carbon tax reinstated in Australia and I’ll sort out the City of London.

Igor @ 132 : “The problem with ‘British’ identity is that the few people that really possess it often tend ……”

Strong assertions with no evidence! I perceive that many people have a British identity: as much as anything because there’s been plenty of intermarriage between the peoples of these islands.

The “Britishness” of the “Ulster Scots” of Northern Ireland is something different. I remember Enoch Powell once saying “(Iain) Paisley is NOT a Unionist: he is a Protestant Sinn Feiner!*” Ulster Unionists wanted to govern their own colony, but have financial and military support from the mainland. Although Orangeism came back to the mainland, especially the Glasgow area, through re-immigration, I suspect that if there were a secret ballot on the mainland, most would vote to cut the Six Counties loose. Orangeism is nothing do do with the way most people who identify as British see themselves, and indeed, as Robert Hanks wrote is something that most other Brits find embarrassing and repellent.

I certainly would not like to encourage British or any other nationalism as, to me, nationalism is a form of cultural coercion and brainwashing. My alternative vision is of Britain as a confederation of communities which takes not so much pride, as joy in their local AND shared cultural traditions. For example, in poetry, from Burns, McGonagall and Stephenson, through the Lambton Worm, to William Blake, and then to Dylan Thomas: I feel that it’s all part of my own British cultural heritage. (Personally I’m happy to miss out Wordsworth, but a chacun son goût! ;) )

*Sinn Féin is usually translated as “we ourselves”.

..which is also to say that obviously Igor’s comment was overly generalised, but so is holding Paisley up as the embodiment of ‘Ulster Unionism’.

So, there is a “True British Nationalism” that all right-thinking people in the UK follow, and then there is the deviant, Orange inspired “Bad British Nationalim”, which is the source of all nasty events associated with British nationalism.

You do realize how ridiculous that sounds to someone who is not emotionally invested in the current configuration of the UK, don’t you?

P.S. Are you holding up “Rivers of Blood” Enoch Powell as the embodiment of TBN as opposed to Iain Paisley (BBN)?

The Jacobite rising was dynastic and Catholic, not nationalist: Lowland, Protestant Scots opposed it and celebrated its defeat.

Interestingly, and contrary to its Highland image, the biggest supporters of the ’45 were the Episcopalians, and its heartland was the towns of the East Coast. It wasn’t so much Protestant vs Catholic as Presbyterian Kirk vs Other. Probably the common thread linking supporters of the rebellion was their exclusion and disability under the Scottish power structures. But you are quite right that most Scots opposed the Pretender.

Ronan: There can be nasty strains to all nationalisms, the question that none of the people complaining about Scottish nationalism have answered is why is British nationalism assumed preferable ?

jwl: if you care deeply about being “British” and believe it can only be accommodated by a state encompassing the current borders of the UK, then you are a British nationalist.

Excluded middle. There were only two options on that ballot paper; the No box will certainly have been ticked by people who care deeply about being “British”, but it was also there for everyone who doesn’t believe in “Scotland” – or doesn’t believe in the SNP’s vision of “Scotland”, or doesn’t believe that giving political substance to the SNP’s vision of “Scotland” is a good idea right now.

Even the positive appeals made by the “No” campaign – the appeals to shared identities and common goals – don’t strike me as “British nationalism” so much as, well, appeals to shared identities and common goals, irrespective of national labels.

For what it’s worth, I would have voted “No” & I’m deeply relieved at the result (also sickened at the way the Tories are instrumentalising it, but that’s Tories for you). I don’t think there’s any such thing as “Britishness” and don’t give a damn about “British values”; I’d much rather see some sort of confederal state (and if the member states were republics, so much the better). But not this, not now, not like this. We’ll probably never know, but I bet this kind of position – “Yes-sympathising fearful and disgruntled Don’t Know” – accounted for a fair slice of the No vote.

I’m Edinburger, Scottish, British, European, then I suppose Earthling? Surely other people have a nested hierarchy of identity?

I am pretty sure Robert Burns, William Blake, and Dylan Thomas would not wish to be an excuse for British nationalism. Poetry lovers everywhere can read them in originals or translation , national borders be so whatever they may be

I am picturing the signage as you enter Britain from abroad should Britishness stop being about Westminster and the City of London and start being about poets –

“England, home to Britain’s first Dark Satanic Mills”
“Welcome to the United Kingdom : What force or guile could not subdue Thro’ many warlike ages Is wrought now by a coward few For hireling traitor’s wages”
“Great Britain : our discreditable secret is that we don’t know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don’t care that we don’t”