This coming Thursday in the UK election regional parliaments will be up for grabs. This election is significant because pro-independence parties may win a majority in the Scottish Parliament.
In this diary I will state my arguments against Scottish secession from the United Kingdom. It is largely inspired by and a response to the comments in this diary where some of my fellow Americans displayed stunning and epic ignorance of British political and ethnolinguistic history.
Of course the political future of the UK is up to its citizens, but as an interested outsider, here is my perspective.
As I mentioned in the intro, it seems that many Americans seem to lack even the most basic understanding of the UK, England, and Scotland, what the difference is, and what the history is. I hope this diary can clear up some serious misconceptions.
In Scotland, secession from the UK is advocated by the Scottish National Party (SNP), and the Scottish Greens. To their credit, these parties advocate a non-ethnic nationalism, and are otherwise social democratic in outlook. Still, I believe that their desire to break up the UK is misguided.
Before I tackle the case against, we first have to clear up some basic background.
Oversimplistic misconception #1: Scotland has been largely "colonized" by England
Well, the short answer is not really. If you are getting your history from that time you watched Braveheart, or confusing Scotland with Ireland, you don't really know the story.
From about the year 900 until almost 1600, Scotland and England were seperate kingdoms that were almost constantly at war, in the manner of all pre-modern states. However, royal marriages and successions were such that in 1603 King James VI of Scotland also became King James I of England, uniting the crowns of the kingdoms. In 1707, with the Act of Union, which was passed by both parliaments, the two countries were united politically with one parliament and one government, which they have been since.
There were many factors leading to the decision of the Scots to enter into the Union in 1707, and of course the decision cannot be said to have been democratic given the non-democratic parliaments of the day when only a tiny percentage of the population could vote, but it still must be understood that England in the end did not conquer Scotland militarily. Rather, the two countries unified.
Oversimplistic misconception #2: Scotland is a "Celtic" Nation:
Partially true, but partially false. From when the Scottish Kingdom first formed, it has always been extremely multi-ethnic. At the beginning, the Kingdom had Celtic speaking Scotti (originally from Ireland) in the central North, Norse along various coasts, Brythonic speakers in Gallaway, and Anglo-Saxons in the Southeast.
Yes, those Anglo-Saxons - the same ones that settled England. In fact, before Scotland was unified, Edinburgh - the Scottish capital - was a predominantly Anglo-Saxon kingdom called Lothian, a name for the area which persists to this day.
By the middle ages, Scotland was ethnolinguistically divided between Celtic speakers in the North and West, and Anglo-Saxon speakers in the South and East. The Anglo-Saxon language came to be called Scots, and is in fact the closest language to Standard English in the World. (You know when you sing Auld Lang Syne and the words sound almost like English? That's the Scots language.) With increasing population in the Southern Lowlands and the rise of their medieval town system called the Burgh, with its immigration of Normans, Dutch, and Germans, the Scots language came to dominate so that by the time of the union of the crowns in 1603, Scotland and England were essentially two English speaking polities.
In sum, the process by which Scotland transformed from a Celtic speaking nation 1000 years ago to an English speaking one today is not primarily the result of anything England did or the union of the two countries. Rather, it was the result of the multi-ethnic nature of Scotland itself.
Ok, now on to the present day, and the case against:
1) Secession would break up families and friends
One of my favorite people is a professor in Edinburgh. He is originally from England but has lived in Edinburgh for years. It is not fair and completely ridiculous that he would suddenly find himself on the opposite side of an international border from his family and friends. Likewise for hundreds of thousands of others, both in England and Scotland.
In the 300 years of unification, England and Scotland have developed into one British society with many common institutions. They have a common history of building and dismantling an empire, and saving the world from Napoleon and then Hitler. The Union has been successful for 300 years, so much so that there are so many people of multiple ancestries in Britain that it would be impossible to sort them all into separate countries.
2) It proposes to create essentially a petro state
One of the major arguments that the SNP has used over the years is that the North Sea oil revenue should just benefit the 5 million Scots rather than the 60 million collective British, and if it could, those 5 million could live high on the hog off that money.
First I note the irony of a supposedly leftist party proposing to become a petro-state. But beyond that, what gives them the right to not share the wealth? On this blog, we rightly mock notions of Alaska or Alberta suceding from their respective countries because they don't like the idea of sharing the oil revenue. This thrust of Scottish secession is not really that different. The oil was discovered in the territorial waters of the UK. In fact, it was mostly found in the Shetland Islands, which were stolen from Norway by Scotland way back when anyway. It is as much the UK's oil as it is Scotland's oil.
3) The UK is a democracy and Scotland is represented
Another major argument from the SNP and others is that Scottish political views are not being represented nationally because they have only 59 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons. However, this is exactly the proportion of seats they are entitled to based on population.
On this blog we rightly mock whenever people in Texas talk of seceding from the United States because they don't like Obama or the heath care law or whatever. This is indeed mockable because the fact is that Texas was not denied representation, they were allocated representatives, and the law passed in spite of them in a democratic process. It is no different with Scotland. They are given entirely fair representation in the Westminster parliament, the same as any other region in the UK, and the policies of the UK government are chosen through democratic processes.
In fact, Scotland is doubly represented because they have the correct number of seats in proportion to their population in the UK parliament, and they have their own parliament which makes policy for Scotland. The same is not true of England, leading to what is called the "West Lothian Question" where Scottish MPs make laws for England but English MPs don't make laws for Scotland. Furthermore, in spite of being 10% of the UK population, Scots have held the Prime Ministership roughly 30% of the time, including the last two, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Scotland is not denied democratic rights or a political or cultural voice in the United Kingdom.
4) The SNP's idea of 'independence' is conflicted and contradictory
The SNP's platform is that an independent Scotland, upon seceding from the UK, would be a full member state of the European Union, in the Euro currency, and would withdraw from NATO. I find it odd that an independence party would want to exchange a fully democratic government among the people they share an island and a language with in London for a much less democratic government in Brussels. Note I am not opining against the EU in general here, but it sure is an odd position for an independence party to hold.
Why is Brussels better than London? I have not received a satisfactory answer for this. Already, in the present situation, Scotland has control over much of its internal policy with the Scottish Parliament. That leaves the UK in charge of foreign affairs and monetary policy. Exchanging the UK for the EU in this regard seems like a strange version of independence.
conclusion
As I said, the constitutional future of their nation is up to the people of Britain. This was just my opinion, and an attempt to clear up some misconceptions that I saw were common here at DKos. I should also note that even if pro-secession parties win a majority in the Scottish parliament, the process of secession could only begin with a referendum, and it is clear that at the present time secession does not have majority popular support.