18 September 2014. That is the day when the “Great” (may) disappear from Great Britain.
Tariq Ali is not fond of the “White Commonwealth” model to save the world. In his opinion it is an “union of rogues.” Also “Britain is a vassal state” and should be dismembered.
Having lived through two SAsian partitions already – no comments on the merits of those two (why not?), which many people in Britain will be familiar with- Mr Ali is now excited and enthusiastic about the third one that is forthcoming.
In doing so he soft-pedals the brutality of the Scots during the wars and their enthusiastic participation in colonial rule. Another sleight of hand is to divide the Scottish population into elites (who were weak and could not resist their vile English overlords) and sub-alterns (who were poor and subjugated). With all due respect this is nonsense on stilts. When a country is a super power the sub-alterns benefit hugely as well.
If Scots were not parochial and actually liberal minded, they would be looking for greater integration (into the EU) and not less (away from Britain). They want to have their cake and eat it too (which is to be fair true for all of us). But that may not yet happen. They may lose the sterling, North Sea oil and gas revenue is trending down, and membership in NATO and EU is not guaranteed.
Once more, Scottish independence will be the final nail in the empire story. Watching the Scots leave, Northern Ireland and Wales are likely to leave as well. England by itself should deserve to lose its UN veto (also France, and one veto awarded to the EU).
We have a suspicion that Tariq Ali will be a very happy man if all this comes to pass. After all, revenge is a dish best served cold.
…..
Independence is the only way Scotland can realise its full political and
cultural potential in the 21st century.
This is not always the case when new
states are born – the break-up of Yugoslavia is sometimes cited, and with good
reason, to demonstrate the opposite. But Yugoslavia was wrecked by the IMF with
disastrous consequences: ultra-nationalism, civil war and ethnic cleansings at
home exacerbated by a German intervention to divide the country, followed by the
Nato bombing. A better analogy for Scotland is Norway’s peaceful and
collaborative secession from Sweden in 1905.
Scotland was tricked into the 1707 union with England, sold down the river
by what Robert Burns called its “Parcel o’ Rogues”: What
force or guile could not subdue, through many warlike ages / Is wrought now by
a coward few / for hireling traitor’s wages / The English steel we could disdain
/ secure in valour’s station / But English gold has been our bane / Such a
parcel o’ rogues in a nation.
Later Walter Scott enlarged on this theme: “It may be doubted whether
the descendants of the noble lords … who accepted this gratification would be
more shocked at the general fact of their ancestors being corrupted or
scandalized at the paltry amount of the bribe.”
The weakness in traditional Scottish nationalism lay in its own inability to
grasp that identity could not be the only factor in the march to independence.
As the late Stephen
Maxwell, Tom
Nairn and other Scottish intellectuals have pointed out, the union was a
compact between the English bourgeoisie and a weak and desperate Scottish
elite. The latter obtained entry into English markets and, later, to its
colonies in North America and Asia. Five of the British viceroys who ruled India were members of the Scottish
gentry. Scottish administrators were a cornerstone of the imperial
bureaucracies in Asia and Africa.
For the latter half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, the
Scottish elites benefited greatly, the subaltern layers less so. (As a
proportion of population, Scottish deaths exceeded English ones in the
inter-imperialist war of 1914-18.) There were other downsides as well. Scotland’s
political identity was destroyed, and a huge Scottish emigration to North
America followed the brutal Highland clearances. These included every layer of
Scottish society, not just the remnants of the defeated clans. The reasons were
not only economic. Many Scots left a country occupied by redcoats.
Two processes combined to reawaken Scotland. The depression of the 30s left
a deep mark on the country, and the end of empire that followed a decade later
after another war created the basis for new thinking. Until 1945 the Labour party,
born in Scotland, had been pledged to Scottish home rule. Clement
Attlee’s reforms, it was thought, made the idea redundant, and certainly
few in Scotland thought otherwise. But the emergence of a new nationalism was
the result of a democratic deficit.
The bulk of Scotland voted against Margaret Thatcher, and her brutal dismantling
of the 1945 compact shook the union’s foundations. When Tony Blair followed
suit, belittling the Scottish parliament as little more than a local council,
the haemorrhaging of Labour votes began. The real tartan Tories in the Scottish
parliament today are the visionless careerists of New Labour, incapable of
producing a leader with even one-fifth of the qualities that distinguished the
late Donald Dewar. Small wonder that support for independence is strongest
among working people.
The notion that an independent Scotland will be parochial is risible. The
“internationalism” of New Labour and its coalition lookalikes
essentially means subordinating the entire British state to the interests of
the US. They have made Britain a vassal state: on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on the
gathering of intelligence. An independent Scotland could be far more
internationalist and would benefit a great deal from links to both Scandinavia
and states in other continents.
A campaign of fear, based on dodgy statistics, is under way, with the failed
model of anglo-globalisation presented as the only model. Scotland’s
sovereignty, honour and dignity are within its grasp for the first time since
1707. It would be a dark day indeed if the parcel o’ rogues triumphed again.
regards
