The Radical Nation

Published on National Collective 12/06/12

Scotland's 'radical' identity is imaginary. Thanks to a new and changing world of ideas, we've got a chance to make it real. 

During the unification of the Italian city-states in the 1860s, the novelist, artist and statesman Massimo d'Azeglio wrote: "Italy has been made; now it remains to make Italians." Italy remains deeply divided, and d'Azeglio's words have grown in power as a reminder of the complex relationship between statehood and identity. It's no surprise that politicians struggle to talk about it, as Ed Miliband did with concepts of Englishness and Britishness, because identity is a deeply subjective idea. As Mike Small of Bella Caledonia points out, if I want to describe myself as Scottish, English (I'm half-and-half), British or all three in a post-independence Scotland, it's entirely reasonable for me to do so. Americans have happily been Irish, Scottish or German for years despite having only the most tenuous of familial or geographical links with their chosen heritage, and it's only the most petty of geopolitical scrooges who seeks to deny them that pleasure. Identities are flexible.

But the derision that greeted Miliband's brave but clumsy attempt to define a left-wing English civic nationalism betrayed a complacency about our own national identity that is yet to be properly examined. Too many Scots still look to left-wing heroes like Keir Hardie, Jimmy Reid and James Maxwell as proof that we are a profoundly 'social democratic' nation, with a political culture far to the left of England's. The 'we're more left wing' argument remains the foundation stone of the Left's rationale for independence, and the SNP are equally guilty of propagating the delusion that independence is the magic spray that'll repel the bloodthirsty midge of Thatcherite Conservatism once and for all.

Anybody who's had the pleasure of dealing with those tiny carnivorous tyrants (midges, not Tories, though it works for both) will know that no matter how much you douse yourself in Avon Skin So Soft (trust me, it's the best there is), they still won't go away. There's no magic spray for the left, no easy way out for those who're sick of the Daily Mail and Theresa May and rampant consumerism and rocketing inequality and greed and banks and the monarchy and UKIP and Eton and Blairism and people who still use the phrase 'socialist yahoo' like it's an insult. With independence, those things aren't going to vanish. Sure, some of them would cease to be features of the UK and become features of whatever a post-Scotland entity would be called, but that doesn't absolve us of responsibility. Over the course of our coexistence with the British nations, we've played a significant role in shaping the nature of the union and we bear some of the burden of what we've created. We can't sweep Britain's shared challenges under the border and forget about them - regardless of whether you feel British or not, you should feel bound by the simple fact of your humanity to strive for a better life for those with whom you've shared a history.

In fact, some of those things would become problems that we would actually have to deal with ourselves, in our own parliament, putting trust - god forbid - in our own politicians. The idea that the Scottish people will automatically vote for the radical government needed to tackle the problems Scotland faces is a dangerous one. John Curtice and Rachel Ormston's paper 'Is Scotland More Left-Wing Than England?' tackles the issue head-on, using Social Attitudes Survey data to show that while Scots do display a slightly more social democratic mentality than the English, with higher levels of support for redistribution and greater equality, this has been in decline since devolution. More powers have not made us more radical. Those who believe that independence will automatically result in progressive, egalitarian policies should take note, now. The belief in 'magic spray' independence is an excuse to let the ends justify the means. I've argued before that a nation is forever defined by the nature of its creation, and we must not allow ourselves to follow the SNP down the road of appeasing small-c conservatives in order to win a Yes vote that would ruin our right to be radical. That's why the Greens are right to openly criticise the way Yes Scotland is being run.

Despite all the above, Scotland can be radical. The problems we face today can be boiled down to two things: concentrations of wealth, and concentrations of power. Throughout the 20th century, the ascendant theories of liberalism hoped to harness the deeply competitive side of human nature in democracy and economics. Through democracy and its checks and balances, sociopaths could no longer manipulate and cheat their way to absurd levels of power thanks to their own sheer disregard for ethics and their fellow humans; but through the modern, perverse reimagining of Adam Smith's free-market capitalism, opened up to pure competition, those same apostles of amorality could wield an equal or greater influence over the people they employed and the planet they destroyed. In his book 'What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets', the philosopher Michael Sandel argues that the free market encourages a degree of antisocial behaviour amongst its executives and elites that has been morally and socially damaging to a frightening extent. After all, it is profitable to use advertising to make people think that buying a big, gas-guzzling range rover will give them more status and happiness: those who can afford nice things get trapped into a spiral of unfulfilling consumption and environmental degradation, while those who don't have the cash become increasingly insecure about their own status as they see the material wealth of those happy, attractive and prosperous families in the adverts.

Thankfully, ideas are changing. At the end of the 20th century, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama proclaimed 'the end of history' as liberalism triumphed. By the end of the 2000s, 'liberal' markets and democracies across the west lay discredited and depressed. Across the political spectrum, concentrated wealth and its accompanying inequality is condemned, while the concentrated power of centralised governments and corporate lobbies is mistrusted. In Scotland, the Jimmy Reid Foundation's report 'The Silent Crisis' sets out a radical new vision for local government which has the potential to redistribute political and civic power from central government. It is also the UN's International Year of the Cooperative - an increasingly popular business model that redistributes economic power from dictatorial executives to workers and consumers. The emerging disciplines of behavioural economics and positive psychology show a new way of thinking about humans as complex, often irrational beings motivated by human interaction more than money. Decaying theories are being challenged by a paradigm whose time has come - one that says that we are people, not robots, and we work best when we work together.

Like it or not, Scotland has been central to that old, dying model of the western world. From Adam Smith to Fred Goodwin and Gordon Brown, we've been one of the leading lights of a discredited way of doing things. With independence, we've got the chance to redeem ourselves. There is a new way of doing things, one that is bubbling under the surface, looking for a vent through which to spill into the international political consciousness. In leaving the United Kingdom, we wouldn't be leaving just any old country - we'd be deliberately and determinedly withdrawing from one of the main offenders of 20th century psycho-capitalism and beginning again at a time when there are new, truly progressive ideas about what a nation is for and what it can do. Those ideas will be at their most powerful in the next few years, as Europe struggles and the UK sinks, and they will undoubtedly play a central role in the foundation of a new Scotland. The UK is chained to the past, and no matter how hard it tries, it won't be able to make it out of the last century before it's overtaken by other, nimbler states. An independent Scotland must chain itself to the future.

We may not be as left-wing as we'd like to be. We may not be as British, or as English, as Ed Miliband would like us to be. But we are in a unique position to reforge ourselves as a nation in the heat of a new and inspiring world of ideas about what we can be. On October 6th, National Collective will attend the Radical Independence Conference in Glasgow, where these ideas can be shared and developed among leading figures of the Scottish Left. It's an opportunity for us all to look at the radical national identity we've been imagining for decades, and do something with that energy. In our minds, a radical Scotland has been made; now it remains to make radical Scots.

What Nationalists Should Learn From 1992

Labour’s transformation after their 1992 defeat created a centre-right southern consensus that deprived Scots of a political voice – Independence offers an alternative. 

“Free by ‘93”, they said, but it was not to be. In the UK general election on April 9th, 1992, The Scottish National Party’s hopes for a new dawn were dashed by a Scottish electorate of what their then-deputy leader Jim Sillars called ’90 minute patriots’. They were passionate about Scotland (and by extension the SNP, according to Mr. Sillars) within the confines of Hampden Park, but loyal to the unionist Labour party when it came to the ballot box. Thus the significance of the 1992 election in the drive for Scottish independence has always been seen through the lens of a Nationalist ‘false dawn’, where Labour’s staying power in Scotland was a setback, and the first breakthrough was with the triumph of pro-devolution New Labour in 1997.

This view must be challenged. It makes the mistake of equating progress towards independence with electoral success for the SNP, and is overly Scotland-centric. The modern, centre-left civic nationalist drive for Scottish Independence did not begin in Scotland, and its midwife was not the SNP, nor was it Thatcher, as many have suggested. It began in 1992, in the south of England, and was unwittingly instigated by the Labour Party.

John Smith's death was the beginning
of the end for Labour in Scotland.
Courtesy of riotcitygirl

My contention is this: Labour’s loss in 1992 convinced them of the need for a shift to the right to win over voters in the south of England. This alienated their voters in the north of Britain, and led to policies geared towards the desires of an affluent and influential (affluential, anyone?) swing minority of voters – known as ‘Essex Man’ or ‘Mondeo Man’ in political PR-speak – who voted with their wallets and led the retreat from traditional, entrenched party loyalties that has been occurring since the 1970s.

Scotland, whose ‘national party’ had been Labour since the 1950s, was left without any obvious voice at Westminster after the death of John Smith in 1994. The cabinet may have been packed with Scots, but their policy and rhetoric were geared towards an aspirational southern suburban mentality far removed from that of their countrymen. For a while, this transformation was tolerated – after all, years of Thatcherite rule were ended in 1997, and cross-generational loyalties take time to die.

Devolution gave the SNP a new platform from which to challenge Labour, and their quick emergence as the official opposition at Holyrood showed how easily they fitted into the new arrangements. From there, it was only a matter of time before disillusionment with New Labour translated into electoral success for the Nationalists, and with Gordon Brown’s downfall and the Holyrood result in 2011, the destruction of Labour’s Scottish identity was complete. In Scotland, this shift was not led by a middle-class floating vote, but the gradual transference of working-class loyalties from Labour to the SNP over the same period that saw the change in Labour’s ideological focus.

Paul Richards, a former special advisor to Hazel Blears and a contributor to Blairite bible ‘The Purple Book’, has written a piece for Labour’s influential Progress faction where he discusses the lessons learned from ’92, and why he believes they are still relevant. One passage is particularly important:

If Labour cannot win over the hard-working, car-owning, owner-occupiers in southern and eastern towns and suburbs, piling up majorities in northern cities will count for nothing. This substratum of our society decides who governs. This is the real ‘political class’ – the people who decide who forms the cabinet. They do not like high taxes, an out-of-control benefits bill, or an interfering government. They have never been to Wales, Liverpool or Newcastle, but they have been to Ibiza and Majorca. In 1992, they preferred a grey man and party which had bashed the miners, brought in the poll tax and could not give a hoot about mass unemployment.   

Labour’s leader has to look them (or their grown-up children) in the eye and win them over to a party they rejected in record numbers barely two years ago. No one said it was going to be a walk in the park. 

I couldn’t have said it better. And it perfectly demonstrates why Labour’s loss in 1992 was, ultimately, the SNP’s gain. No longer are Labour a party for Scotland. They are not even a party for most of the UK. Scotland has a fallback in the shape of the SNP – which is why Scots have deserted Labour while the English have not (unless we include Gorgeous George, of course) – and if, within the United Kingdom, there appears to be no means of escaping the southern, centre-right metropolitan consensus that turned 20 years old this week, then the Scots will eventually choose Independence.

Identity, Independence and the Americans

American Independence was partly brought about by a rapidly narrowing perception of ‘Britishness’ - The rise of the SNP and the drive for Scottish Independence is no different.

I have recently decided to become a student. I mean technically, I’ve been at the University of Edinburgh since 2010, but I realise now that my relationship with the academic side of things was somewhat distant. In first year, being a ‘student’ involved trying desperately hard to live up (or perhaps down) to a crude, self-destructive (but apparently very enjoyable) stereotype created and reinforced by Hollywood and the wider media, as seen in the highly entertaining series 'Fresh Meat'. However, there comes a point during the early weeks of second year, as the deadlines pile up, that you realise being a ‘student’ is at least partially connected to the concept of ‘study’. So, I have been trying very hard to move from my bed to my desk, open my laptop, close Facebook, and open this nifty little programme called ‘Microsoft Word’. I have, in a somewhat radical departure from that crumbling stereotype, begun to ‘study’.

Why is this in any way relevant to Scottish politics? Well, what I’m trying to point out is that our perceptions of our own place in the world, and the definitions we attempt to give ourselves, are endlessly flexible. They are almost entirely dependent on circumstance, and as circumstances change, we begin to define ourselves and those around us differently. In addition, one of the great advantages of my new approach to the art of studentry is that I have begun to learn things. In particular, I have begun to learn things about the American Revolution, and I will focus on that here.

It turns out that in the modern Scottish political climate, various historical interpretations of the American Revolution offer some thought-provoking insights. For those unfamiliar with the basics, here’s a very brief outline – the colonies of North America were largely self-governing states until political changes in England led to increased intervention across the Atlantic. Growing protests against commercial tax rises and a lack of British democratic legitimacy in the colonies led to rapidly escalating tensions, eventually boiling over into full-blown revolution and finally American Independence.

This is obviously an incredibly generalised and easily disputed version of events, but it will have to do in setting the scene. What is important is that the early days of the revolution raise an important question: Why did increased intervention lead to such passionate and escalating anti-imperialist protest, when Americans had previously been so comfortable with their place in the empire?

The answer to this question can be boiled down to one crucial factor, and it is this factor which gives the revolution such relevance in modern Scottish politics. The American academic T.H. Breen gives a compelling argument that one of the primary motives of the rebel colonists was a powerful yearning to express, or discover, their own national identity. This identity was not, however, that of the now-ubiquitous idea of the ‘American’, but instead it was a desire to be recognised as ‘British’ on equal terms with the famously liberated, respected and cultured ‘Englishmen’. Breen suggests that before and during the revolution, the concept of ‘Britishness’ was transformed from an inclusive, imperial definition that spanned colonies across the globe (although, perhaps, focusing largely on the white populations of those colonies) into an exclusive, metropolitan and distinctly English vision of Britishness. London and England, as the cultural, economic and political hub of empire, had become the model for Britain, and the peripheries were seen as just that – distant, secondary and relatively uncivilised.

This was particularly jarring with the American colonies - the jingoistic glory of the Seven Years’ War had given Americans a great deal of pride in their Britishness, as they fought beside their imperial compatriots against the French. The sudden recalibration of Britishness around an Anglocentric urban elite left Americans feeling shocked and betrayed, with an identity they had felt powerfully connected to suddenly wrenched away from them in a callous and aggressive manner. It was not, therefore, a yearning to be ‘American’ that motivated the colonists – indeed, the term ‘American’ was being used by the English at least a decade before the colonies – but rather a feeling of having their British identity pulled away from them in such an unexpected and insensitive way. It was, argues Breen, only natural that the attempt to fill that void should manifest itself with such passion.

So to Scotland. Over two hundred years later, it is becoming increasingly clear that the concept of ‘Britishness’ is not, as unionists and much of the media would suggest, being undermined and degraded by the proponents of Scottish independence. In recent years it has become evident that whenever the symbols of Britishness – the BBC, Westminster, the NHS and the military – become centralised and anglicised by a London elite, the forces of Scottish nationalism roar into life, buoyed by a Scottish public feeling excluded and ignored.

Let us look at those great ‘British’ institutions. The BBC, despite recent efforts, is undeniably London-centric. Scotland may or may not punch above its weight on national television, but the programming is still largely obsessed with the hustle and bustle of the UK capital. The NHS has already been devolved, and is now at risk of becoming a purely Scottish institution as Andrew Lansley somehow gets away with his brutal dismantling of one of the greatest institutions in the world, never mind the United Kingdom. The military has been sent on two extremely controversial wars in recent years, and as a result is irreversibly associated with the slimy and mendacious world of Westminster politics.

It is Westminster that is the most crucial part of this puzzle. Those other institutions have always been relatively London-centric, and the BBC has certainly improved recently, but when they are combined with the elitist, exclusive and quintessentially, archaically English world of Westminster politics, they make a potent cocktail of which the Scottish people have had more than enough.

Let us look now at the great figureheads of Britain over the years. Back in the smoggy, industrial days of the 20th century, the emerging Labour party was fuelled by the charisma and passion of working-class Scots, many of whom were incredibly capable statesmen. Thus, Scotland had its place in Westminster, and it was the Labour Party. Then, along came Maggie. The Thatcher/Major years, and their impact on Scottish and UK politics, has been written about enough, so I will not detail their impact here. What I will emphasise is the way that Margaret Thatcher’s success in the richest, most populous and metropolitan region of the UK allowed her to win three successive terms as prime minister of a south that was largely supportive, and a north that hated her on a furious, visceral level and still does. One of her greatest contributions to politics was to convince the faltering Labour Party that to achieve success, they needed to win over the voters of the south. If they could do that, they could rely on the loyalty of the Scots to win an enormous majority. The excellent C4 drama 'The Deal' demonstrates very clearly that one of Tony Blair’s greatest advantages in reforming the Labour Party and redefining their support was his Englishness, and that one of Gordon Brown’s greatest weaknesses was seen as his Scottishness. There is nothing more elucidating about the growth of modern Scottish nationalism than this. As Tony Blair’s success slowly created a new kind of politician – look at Cameron, Clegg and Miliband – the Scots began to wonder who was really representing them. Devolution, in this scenario, just is not enough. This is not about who makes policy – it is about identity. When all the potential leaders of your country come from a background, a place and an education that you are relatively incapable of relating to, is it not normal to begin to focus on where you really call home?

The Scottish National Party’s greatest successes of their history came at times when England appeared to have stolen the metaphorical duvet of Britishness, leaving Scotland shivering in the cold. In 2007, Tony Blair, with all his Islington charm, had been prime minister for a decade. New Labour had taken a clear leap towards the Thatcherite ‘New Right’, and were presenting a public face designed specifically to appeal to the South of England – a place that appeared as distant from Scotland as any other country. In 2011, David Cameron was at the head of a trio of distinctly English, metropolitan and Oxbridge-educated party leaders, shifting the country ever closer to the aforementioned neo-Thatcherite consensus.

The slide appears irreversible, as the ‘floating voters’ of the English south shout ever louder and the politicians cosy up ever closer to bankers and right-wing reactionaries. Scotland, relatively (but not entirely) safe in the protective bubble of devolution, watches in horror as English urban society degrades into violence and entrenched stratification. The Scottish Government, on the other hand, is clearly putting Scottish interests at the very front of its agenda, attempting to undo the damage done by decades of neglect. Unlike the American colonists, the Scots need not search frantically around for a new identity. Scotland is a far older nation than Britain ever will be, and the Scottish identity has never, despite the best efforts of certain political figures throughout history, been allowed to die. What we see now is that identity reasserting itself, after years playing second-fiddle to a sense of Britishness strengthened by world wars and a Westminster parliament that had a clear Scottish voice. That Britishness has, post-Thatcher, become dominated by the south of England once again. The people of Scotland, like the American colonists, know full well that they are not a mere ‘periphery’, and are in the process of refusing to be treated like one.

James C. Davies’ general theory of revolution proposes that the main force driving revolutions is that of ‘frustrated expectations… as a result of a general closing of society after a prolonged period of apparently becoming increasingly more open.’ This can, in this case, be refocused and applied to the changes in British identity. During the seven years’ war, Americans felt more British, and yet these expectations were frustrated when England asserted its exclusive ownership of the term. During the 20th century, Britain was united by two wars and the care of the welfare state, until the expectations of those on the ‘peripheries’ were frustrated by an aggressive dismantling of this welfare state by a London-centric political elite and the use of the military as a political and ideological tool (observe Thatcher’s use of the Falklands for political gain, and Blair’s clumsy invasion of Iraq), rather than the defenders of freedom they were perceived to be after the second world war. Let us also not forget the sheer horror of the nuclear weapons on the west coast. As the Westminster political classes continue to assert their hollow vision of Britishness in a way that only emphasises the gulf between them and the politics, culture and history of the Scottish people, the rapid disintegration of the shared identity that once bound the Union together will only accelerate.

What can be learned from this? Firstly, that Scottish nationalism is more than a political tool – it is a natural force, and most importantly not a negative one. Scottish nationalism is a reaction against an insular, exclusive national identity and a desire for something new, radical and forward-looking. Second, that no matter how much the referendum campaign focuses on policy, party leaders or media spend, the power of identity cannot be underestimated in shaping the direction of debate. If the unionists can persuade the Scottish people that they are still invested enough in the notion of Britain for a political union to continue, they can win the debate. That will be an uphill struggle. All the nationalists need to do is gently and carefully remind the Scottish people that they are no longer included in the modern framework of the British identity, pointing to the distant parliament of the south, and the debate for independence will be won.

There has never been a more exciting time to be a student and a nationalist. I may enter full-time employment in a newly independent Scotland. As Alex Salmond has made very clear, there is little doubt now that this will be the independence generation. Like the American revolutionary leaders, he has deftly steered a bandwagon towards independence that will be very hard to stop. One of those revolutionary leaders, Paul Revere, famously (although this is partly myth) rode his horse through Massachusetts, shouting “The British are coming!” In Scotland, though, it is quite different. The British are not coming, nor are they going. They are simply fading away.

Some further reading (and a rough bibliography) for those who are interested:

Breen, T.H. – ‘Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising’, The Journal of American History 84 (1997), pp.13-39

Reid Jr, Joseph D. – ‘Economic Burden: Spark to the American Revolution?’, The Journal of Economic History 38 (March 1978), pp.81-100

Countryman, Edward – ‘Indians, the Colonial Order, and the Social Significance of the American Revolution’, William and Mary Quarterly 53 (April 1996), pp.342-362

Greene, Jack P. – ‘The Social Origins of the American Revolution: An Evaluation and Interpretation’, Political Science Quarterly 88 (March 1973), pp.1-22