Free at last or Free at least?

#38

   The case for Scottish independence resembles nothing so much as a big fat haggis. Both are woolly and hugely symbolic concoctions. The haggis is unctuously celebrated in myth and legend by the many, but swallowed with relish by the few. For those who haven’t yet been tempted, the traditional haggis is made from a sheep’s stomach, turned inside out and stuffed with the heart and lungs of one lamb, assorted beef or mutton trimmings, fat and lean[1]….mouth-watering or what? (Pass the sick-bag, Alex. Oh, I see that you have…)

   A fully independent haggis would solve ‘The West Lothian Question[2]’ at a stroke but spew a huge mess of other, undigested, issues requiring many years and squillions of £s to sort out. The only good thing it would do is to bring about Britain’s immediate, unilateral, nuclear disarmament. An independent SNP government promises to require the closure of the Trident submarine base at Faslane on the Clyde. Re-locating its facilities elsewhere would take forever and cost unimaginable sums; forget it.

   There are two very different groups of people for whom Scottish independence can’t come soon enough. The first are those Scots who believe that for the last three hundred years they and their homeland have been down-trodden, exploited and oppressed by the wicked and greedy Sassenachs[3]. Free at last, free at last… The other group are those who find it difficult to grasp how Scotland’s situation would have been much different if their ruling class had been purely Scots and operating solely from Edinburgh.

This group are also sick of hearing the SNP whingeing (as only a true Scot can) as if no one else in these islands has ever suffered from bad weather, poor housing, massive industrial decline and serial disappointment in the soccer World Cup.

   Following full independence, the nationalists would ideally be thrown into an existential confrontation with their own shortcomings. Free at least, free at least… In reality, tha Inglish bash-tords will remain entirely to blame if life anywhere north of the border continues to be nasty, brutish and short. Glasgow’s adult life expectancy rate is currently on a par with that of Albania[4]. Males residing in Kensington & Chelsea can expect to live fourteen years longer than do those in Glasgow[5]. And, if you live south of the river Tweed and the Cheviot Hills, it’s apparently all your fault.

   Large numbers of Scots have done very nicely - thank you - from the UK as a whole. Of the twenty UK Prime Ministers to have held office since 1900, five were actually born in Scotland (Balfour, Campbell-Bannerman, Ramsay MacDonald, Blair & Brown) and at least another three had recent Scottish ancestry (Macmillan, Douglas-Hume and our own Dear Leader, Cameron). Put that together with the number of Scots enjoying senior positions in Whitehall and the City of London and perhaps there remains some truth in Samuel Johnson’s famous jibe; “The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!” [6]

   The main problem with the ‘United Kingdom’ has always been the disproportionate size – and therefore influence - of England. In 2010, 82% of the UK population were living in England – ‘though not all of those could meaningfully be labelled ‘English’. In round figures, the remaining 18% consisted of 9% living in Scotland, 6% in Wales and about 3% in the six northern counties of Ireland.

   Of the present 650 UK parliamentary constituencies, 59 seats (9% of the total) are in Scotland. This is roughly in balance with the population figures. When the results were in from the 2010 British General Election, Scotland had returned 41 MPs for Labour, 11 for the Lib-Dems, 6 for the SNP and a single Tory (bless). Labour and the Liberal-Democrats are bound to oppose full independence because it would significantly reduce their representation at Westminster and thereby their chances of forming a government. You could almost feel sorry for the Tories who have most to gain, politically, from ditching Scotland but are saddled with calling themselves the ‘Conservative & Unionist Party’. Tough sh*t.

   The SNP Leader Alex Salmond has been First Minister of Scotland since the Scottish Parliament reconvened in 2007 after that famous interval of three hundred years. He represented Banff & Buchan in the UK Parliament at Westminster from 1987 to 2010. The Scottish Parliament has 129 members and by confining himself to Holyrood, Alex has ensured his future as the biggest fish in a decidedly smaller pond. For the referendum on independence he wants to give votes to Scottish teenagers aged 16 and 17. Excluded from the vote will be those Scots – of any age - living elsewhere in the UK (let alone the worldwide Scottish Diaspora) and therefore not eligible to vote in Scotland. Extending the referendum to the entire United Kingdom would give a say to many more Scots but it would also encompass the English and Welsh electorates. And could they resist the temptation of raising two fingers to Alex Salmond? I very much doubt it. In a UK-wide referendum, independence for Scotland would be a racing certainty.

Next week: the Bus Lane goes off-road with Newt …

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[1] See: www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/haggis_66072

[2] The WLQ = Why do Scots, Welsh & Irish MPs at Westminster still vote on England-only policies? See www,guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/17

[3] Sassenach: a Scottish Gaelic term for a Saxon.

[4] Guardian 08.06.2011

[5] Guardian 19.10.2011

[6] James Boswell Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)

Call it a Draw?

#37

   The Black Knight (played by John Cleese) in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail is plainly a bloody idiot. Having had both arms and both legs chopped off in combat with King Arthur (Graham Chapman) he shouts after his departing foe, “All right; we’ll call it a draw.” The more I read back into Anglo-Scottish history, the more I am reminded of the Black Knight. Between us, the English and the Scots have a long and extraordinarily repetitive history of doing harm to each other. You might expect the issue of Scottish independence to be decided in this twenty-first century by reference to contemporary evidence and future projections. Not a bit of it. The burden of history is exploited to deny the common heritage and make people take sides in atavistic disputes. It’s so easy to do this when what we share are folk-memories of mourning over blood spilled long ago and our enduring propensity for collective idiocy.

   Alex Salmond wants to set Tuesday, 24^th June 2014 as the date for his referendum on independence. This marks the seven-hundredth anniversary of Robert the Bruce’s famous victory over the English[i] King, Edward II at the Battle of Bannockburn. Cue the anthem:

                        O Flower of Scotland,

                        Whan will we see

                        Your like again,

                        That focht an dee’d for

                        Your wee bit Hill an Glen…etc[ii].

Alex has his reasons for not choosing a slightly earlier date, say, Monday 9^th September, 2013. This will be the five hundredth anniversary of the defeat – and death in battle - of Scotland’s James IV at Flodden in Northumberland. Another inauspicious date might be Saturday 16^th April 2016. That will be a mere two hundred and seventy years since the bloody defeat at Culloden of the final Jacobite revolt. After which the victor, William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, began the ruthless repression of the Highland clans; leading to the ‘Clearances’ and the destruction of Scotland’s remaining Gaelic culture. Even the wearing of tartan was forbidden by law.

   Scotland’s medieval independence from England had been confirmed in writing six years after Bannockburn by the Declaration of Arbroath, a document which Mr Salmond doubtless knows by heart:

“…for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule…”[iii]

The Declaration is seen by some as advocating modern ‘contractual kingship’ against the ‘Divine Right’ principle. It explicitly threatens to drive out even Robert the Bruce as king if he ever appeared to subject Scotland to rule by the King of England or the English.

   For the next three centuries after 1320, warfare between England and Scotland was mercifully intermittent. The best guarantees of Scotland’s independence turned out to be England’s Hundred Years’ War with France, the Black Death and the fratricidal dispute between the descendants of Edward III which we call The Wars of the Roses. Eventually, in 1502, England’s Henry VII agreed a Treaty of Perpetual Peace with James IV of Scotland. To confirm this, Henry married-off his daughter Margaret to James. The ‘Peace’ proved to be less than wholly ‘Perpetual’. In 1513, James invaded England in support of the Auld Alliance with France only to get himself defeated (and killed – see above) at the battle of Flodden Field. Cue lone piper and lament:

                                  Dool and wae for the order

                                  Sent oor lads tae the Border!

                                  The English for ance

                                  By guile wan the day.

                                  The Flooers o’ the Forest

                                  That fought aye the foremost

                                  The pride o’oor land

                                  Lie cauld in the clay.[iv]

Despite James’ death, the rules of dynastic succession held sway and when Queen Elizabeth I died, childless, in 1603 she was succeeded on the English throne by the great-grandson of James and Margaret - James VI of Scotland / James I of England.

   There then began the period of One King[v], Two Parliaments. This might have continued until even now, had it not been for the impact on both countries of the Reformation, the English Civil War, the Regicide, the Restoration and ‘The Glorious Revolution’ of 1689[vi]. It didn’t help either that by the end of the seventeenth century, Scotland was in dire straits, suffering famines and economic collapse. As the Tory (wouldn’t you know it?)Edward Seymour said in the English Parliament in 1700:

“Scotland is a beggar and whoever marries a beggar can only expect a louse for her portion.”

   The 1707 Act of Union adjourned the Scottish Parliament and created a single ‘united kingdom’ named ‘Great Britain’. The two previously separate national parliaments became a single Parliament of Great Britain housed in the Palace of Westminster. Securing the agreement of the Scottish parliament to the new Union was not without controversy and its opponents alleged that bribery and corruption had played a significant role.

                                       O, would, or I had seen the day

                                       That treason thus could sell us,

                                       My auld grey head had lien in clay

                                       Wi Bruce and loyal Wallace!

                                       But pith and power, till my last hour

                                       I’ll mak this declaration:-

                                       ‘We’re bought and sold for English Gold –

                                       Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!’[vii]

   Like I said, it’s a long and repetitive history. There are still lengths of Hadrian’s Wall to be seen running across the high moors of northern England. Its line, from the Solway Firth to the River Tyne, runs somewhat south of the present border with Scotland. The Wall was built between AD 122 and AD 130. It is unclear whether its purpose was to keep those who lived south of the wall in, or those north of the wall out. Either way, you have to wonder if Hadrian wasn’t onto something….

Next week: Let them eat haggis!

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[i] More accurately, Edward II was a Norman King rather than an English one.

[ii] See Flower of Scotland : lyrics by Roy Williamson / The Corries, 1967

[iii] 19^th Century translation by Sir James Fergusson of the Latin text to the Declaration of Arbroath, 1320. This was, in fact, a letter addressed to the Pope then residing at Avignon (Why Avignon? Don’t ask. History eh? Don’t you just love it?) The letter asserted Scotland’s status as a kingdom and not a parcel of feudal land controlled by the Norman kings of England. It also requested an end to the excommunication of Robert the Bruce.

[iv] The number of Scottish casualties at Flodden Field gave rise to another enduring folk song, Flowers of the Forest.

[v] Strictly speaking it was two kings (because there remained two kingdoms) but the kingships were embodied in one person.

[vi] Keep up at the back!

[vii] Sic a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation. Robert Burns, 1791

Resolution? Perhaps not...

#36

   The end of the first week in January is about the right time to unfasten, reveal or release those New Year’s Resolutions – if indeed any were made. What seemed like “a good idea” when seen through a glass, darkly, on New Year’s Eve should by now have congealed into a healing crust over last year’s wounds, ready to be scratched and picked before being flicked away to lodge forgotten for another twelve months in that derelict, tinsel-strewn corner of the mind where it is forever Christmas - day twelve.

   The very idea of making New Year’s Resolutions is, of course, hopelessly optimistic and betrays a child-like naivety; a belief that there is something we could do – or some habit we could change - that would make things better. Something as facile as Amazon’s yawn-inducing “The last customer also bought….”

  Calling a meeting or forming a committee usually generates a ‘resolution’ or two. Try doing that on New Year’s Eve and already the process seems complicated and unattractive. A case of ‘Gordian Knot Syndrome’ if ever there was one. Most of us can cut through any problem provided we are sufficiently ignorant of its complexity. Trouble is, for a lasting resolution to problems in the real world, you probably have to unravel the knot, not just slice arbitrarily through the tangle.

• Resolved! Change discord into harmony,
• Resolved! Reduce or separate matters into their constituent parts or components,
• Resolved! Replace a single force by two or more other, more preferable, forces which are jointly equivalent to it,
• Resolved! Adopt a measured approach and achieve an appropriate degree of detail…

…. All of which brings our New Year’s Resolution down to something quantifiable in terms of, say, the number of dots per unit of area. Ultimately, it’s all just a question of dottiness.

• Resolved! Can’t say fairer than that, can we?