Less Catalonia, Less Wales, More Scotland

Independence is a markedly cooler topic these days, insofar as it isn’t the hot topic it once was, and it grows ever clearer that support for the cause and support for the party who champion it are two distinct, endlessly mutable things. The recent election made it clear that Nicola Sturgeon assumed those voting for her party were indirectly marking a ballot for independence, and it cost her dearly. Nevertheless, the success of the SNP and the chances of Scotland terminating its union with England and Wales still exhibit the symbiotic relationship that’s been familiar for some time now. An observable truth that seemed to be blithely ignored by Sturgeon is that independence is not as voguish as it was in 2014, and this is simply because a scheduled referendum on a huge constitutional issue rather excites people more than the arduous uncertainty of dragging things back from a sound defeat. “Second time lucky?” Sturgeon said to the nation, and we could all see how sapped of righteous conviction this proposal was. Scottish independence was a solid stance for too few, evidently. The young, semi-apathetic voters whose turnout always becomes an important metric for how “engaging” (I read “entertaining”, and certainly not “important”, into this word) a particular issue has been, always seek out a flashpoint to facilitate transient, fashionable activism. Accordingly, we saw the excitement and “real alternative” rhetoric in the 2014 referendum, we saw the time for fury over the election of President Trump and we saw people who previously hadn’t spared the EU two free thoughts on a rainy day suddenly screeching about the triumph of the far-right on the day Britain elected to leave a political organisation against which there is actually a strong left-wing case (if you want to know what that is, just ask the Labour leader). No Brit is that angry about Trump anymore, most people have settled into hoping for the best out of Brexit and, ruinously for the SNP, the zeal for Scottish independence has proven fleeting. A large part of this is down to Jeremy Corbyn — in 2014, the YES campaign had something of a monopoly on youthful, left-wing idealism; three years later, a vote for Labour seemed much more in that vein. The SNP, who had been more than happy to exploit this type of sentiment then, found it cruelly stripped away from them by the Glastonbury star (whom, I hope not too soon, will likewise have it stripped from him). That this could happen proves that the reasons put for Scottish independence were attractive at the time, but tarnished; in other words, the campaign relied too much on the ephemeral, and less on the strong historical precedents for independence which, I believe, do not evaporate once Corbyn becomes the new way to escape the Tories. (Note, by the way, that whereas a Corbyn victory would achieve temporary respite, Independence would banish for Scots the British stripe of Toryism, which is self-evidently different from its Scottish equivalent, for ever.)
For this reliance on the ephemeral, endlessly contestable, reasons for Independence which made the campaign a victim of capricious fashion, I blame several parties, but foremost among them is the SNP and the independence activists who continue to damage the case with ignorant “solidarity” gestures towards far less credible independence movements abroad. Let us fly to warmer climes, and consider the Spanish region which so impressed itself on Scottish independence.
Casting one’s mind back to 2014, one cannot fail to remember the much trumpeted warning that an independent Scotland trying to join the EU would be vetoed by a grasping Spain, attempting to cruelly hinder the country that would serve as an example to their own errant Catalonians. It is clear to me, that however strong the case for Catalonian independence, it was only ever a potent weapon in the hands of the NO campaign. Therefore, if one was serious about achieving independence for Scotland, one would think it best not to push the Spanish into this position which, as we later learned, they never held anyway. And yet, there was never any shortage of fools, riding on nothing but the vague and cosmetic tierra y libertad sentiment, waving the Catalonian flag beside the Saltires and YES banners which stirred such positive sentiments. The position of the Spanish government is clearly that Catalonia is a different case entirely to Scotland, and they would not veto Scotland’s entry into the EU. But what are they to think when they see the flags flying beside each other in George square? What is any Catalonian Spaniard to think? It all seemed to be wilfully creating a connection that we really didn’t want made. At the very moment Scottish Greens wunderkind Ross Greer made his contribution to the decision of the Scottish parliament to officially request a second referendum by confirming that Spanish minister Esteban Pons had said Spain would not veto Scottish EU membership, activists were outside Holyrood flying the Catalonian flag! Verily, my hand raced towards my face in a collision of enervating despair.
The other hollow solidarity gesture was made by the SNP themselves, although thankfully only implicitly. This took the form Nicola Sturgeon’s cosiness with Leanne Wood of Wales’ Plaid Cymru, inviting her to the 2014 SNP conference and creating a visible link between the stirrings of Welsh nationalism and the case for Scotland seceding from a moribund union. Anyone who believes that Wales is a similar case to Scotland, in terms of independence from political union with England, is deeply ignorant of the solid historical precedents of modern statehood which exist in Scotland and are decidedly absent in Wales. At the point of the swindle of 1707, and the quite literal selling out of independence by a Scottish exchequer bankrupted by a failed colonial enterprise, Scotland had the full apparatus of a modern state, and the institutions, cultural and otherwise, which separated us very distinctly from our English neighbours. When the will of virtually the whole country was ignored and Scotland entered the union, the country was characterised by a distinct legal system, a completely different, Calvinist-orientated, state Church and a higher education system of three ancient universities (to England’s two) which continued for a long time to be very different in character to Oxbridge. All of this meant that Scottish identity is based around the idea of a modern-style functioning state in a way that Wales has never been. Many people forget that Wales, as it is demarcated today, has never existed as an independent country and was very much subsumed into England. Wales, accordingly, is an ethnic, cultural and linguistic identity, defined by such things as William Morgan’s Welsh Bible translation and the resultant flourishing of both Protestantism and the Welsh language, within a wider, unified country. It is for these historical reasons that whereas Scottish Independence would not be the break-up of a country but the exiting of union (the only argument against it which can convincingly be made is that of “shared history”, which I can have some truck with), Welsh independence would very much be the break-up of a deeply unified country. This isn’t to say for a second that Welsh identity is any less strong for this reason — it is just a different case when it pertains to independence. The different national emphases and neuroses of Welshness orientate the culture in a unique way and the Welsh language, precisely because of this, flourishes and is essential to Wales in a way that Gaelic is not to Scotland. But Welsh independence does not have the precedent its celtic relative manifestly does. The link forged between Plaid Cymru and the SNP is fatuous at best, wilfully misleading at worst and harmful to independence in either case.
As one will no doubt remember, these high roads of Scottish history weren’t much travelled during the campaign for independence, but however hard it is to square them with the idea of a country of progressive millennials creating a new utopia, it should have been. Whilst it would be counterproductive to condemn the overall emphasis on “hope” and “the future” (because a campaign for such a radical constitutional change must surely be orientated forwards), these historical precedents provide a foundation upon which to propose the manifold future benefits of running our own affairs — they show that we build our house on solid ground. The only time I can remember this sentiment being semi-convincingly deployed was when Alex Salmond extolled some kind of indigenous economic sense on the grounds of Scotland being “the country of Adam Smith” but unsurprisingly, this excerpt from his showcase of our greatest sons seemed to be taken as vaguely jingoistic, and probably rightly so (it was later overshadowed utterly by his hubristic “the Scottish lion has roared” crap following the SNP’s 2015 landslide). Hailing from a small country, Scots must be continually sensitive to the kind of silly sentiments which point to hefty shoulder-chips crippling their spines. And so I do not argue for tea-cake munching silliness (which, ironically, characterises those “internationalists” who harp on about Catalonia) but instead for recognition that Scotland has all the apparatus of a modern, sovereign country and is only aiming to check out of a political union. After all, such an emphasis on Britain’s sovereign, independent character proved a winning tactic for the Brexiteers, and there was nothing at all dishonest in that aspect of it. This isn’t a particularly left-liberal argument, but if we learned anything at the latest election it’s that Scotland isn’t as left-liberal as many of us thought and the YES campaign should not be without reproof for orientating itself so clumsily around vague progressive sentiment. Scottish Independence, more than anything else, should appeal to all Scots and be Scottish in character. By relying so utterly on a flashpoint of youthful left-wing sentiment, the SNP all but stepped right into Corbyn’s shadow two years later. The primary thrust for independence, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell any Scot, is still the 20th century political disjunction with largely right-wing Tory governments (after the colonial honeymoon of the 19th) and it remains, on balance, a decision which can’t help but raise the floor on issues pertaining to social justice and wealth distribution. But a deference to our history and the sovereignty we have always been equipped to take is, I think, quite essential if we are to put the case for independence honestly to the Scottish people. Scots should assert what we all know and feel to be true — that Scotland isn’t just a region of the UK and it does have rather more claim to independence than some cultural area of England with a comparable population. Scotland is in a kind of political agreement, one tempered by history, but one from which to leave would not tear the guts out of England like the sting from a honey bee. The border does not signify some hazy cultural melange, but the break between two countries which grew to full maturity beside, but not within, each other. So leave the Welsh and Catalonians to the struggles we’re doomed to misunderstand when we try square them with our own — Scotland is Scotland and nothing else.
