Jim Murphy: Scotland's strength lies in Britain's unity

Published on Saturday 27 December 2008 18:51

I AM a Scot with Irish antecedents and an English wife whom I met while we were both growing up in South Africa. I am like many Scots.

I have my own personal cultural melting pot and it makes me no less Scottish. Scotland's culture is not closed. It's confident and it has a pulse that beats with an energy born from throughout Scotland. But today it also comes from the Punjab, Warsaw and a thousand other towns and cities from across the globe.

The past 10 years have seen so many changes for the better. The widest possible anti-discrimination laws, new rights for workers, flexible working for parents, a Disability Discrimination Act, and civil partnerships for gay men and lesbians. The expansion of the European Union means that we live in a community of over 450 million people. As the new Europeans have arrived in Scotland, they have been welcomed. To all our credit, 21st-century Scotland is becoming in many ways a model of modern mainstream European values.

What does this mean for Scottishness? It means we must – and can – match our ambition with action. These are the hopes I have for our society as a fair, safe and tolerant place in which to live, work and bring up a family. It means we should also celebrate the broadening of our horizons and, in doing so, embrace a wider and more interlinked global society. It is no longer tenable to believe we are wholly self-contained in determining our idea of ourselves – there is much to learn from the wider world, and as Scots we have much to teach it.

One traditional cry around our identity has been "Wha's like us?" I believe we should also ask "Wha 're we like?" and, regardless of their geography or ethnicity, celebrate the values we share with them. The modern Scottish identity is inclusive and real rather than idealised.

But in the past, on occasion, Labour has not made this case strongly enough. During the 1980s we surrendered the mainstream in Britain, shying away from patriotism and its symbols. Labour's weakness helped in part to create a vacuum for Mrs Thatcher to fill with the argument that her soulless economic rationalism was in the national interest.

More recently, but much less dramatically in Scotland, Labour's reticence about the symbols and emotion of patriotism enabled the SNP superficially to conflate patriotism and separatism.

It is, of course, a shallow assertion. The SNP do not, have not and will not ever in the future have the right to claim "Scottishness" as their own. My modern sense of patriotism matches Scotland's multi-dimensional culture. It is not owned by anyone. No political party has a monopoly on patriotism. And while for the Labour Party unity is strength, that is a unity founded on diversity, since uniformity has always been the hallmark of a weak and under-confident country. Scotland in the UK is not that country.

I love Scotland. And like most Scots, I'm proud to be both Scottish and British. The format of the Scottish Government's draft form for the 2011 Census tells us much about the narrowness of their approach. The choice is a binary one: either British or Scottish, but with no third option to describe yourself as both. A narrowing of identity, not a celebration of the breadth of modern Scottishness.

One aspect of the Scottish character is surely its reluctance to be co-opted into the simplistic agenda of "others". Our history shows how steadfastly such attempts are resisted. The future, with its multitude of modern identities, communities and allegiances, will be no different.

Because there is very little patriotic about walking out on the most successful, and longest-lasting, union of nations on Earth. Quite simply Britain makes Scotland bigger, while Scotland makes Britain broader. This Union which we helped build allows us to maintain our identity and be part of a larger whole. We trade more with England than our total trade with all the other 195 nations of the world combined. We are game-changing players in the UN, EU and G8. In truth, within the UK, we are probably the most influential small nation on Earth. We also have scale to weather these economic storms in a way that other countries in the SNP's now defunct "Arc of Prosperity" never could. Today Scottish Labour is more confident at the intersection between our politics and our patriotism. Iain Gray and I are working together to fuse modern social democratic values with Labour's progressive patriotism. It's a patriotism that is welcoming, tolerant, open and liberal.

So while Labour is proud of our patriotism and is in tune with the kaleidoscope of our culture, the SNP are narrower. They seek to mimic our values because Labour's social democratic values are Scotland's. But they are found out by their inaction. As unemployment rises, they fail to give extra help to the newly unemployed. As fear of home repossession rises, they fail to give homeowners extra protection.

Here on the cusp of 2009, we are changing and being changed as Scots by the forces that surround us. The pace of political, economic and cultural globalisation is unprecedented and will quicken still further. In the digital age, which allows communication and links which go far beyond the traditional limits of our geography, a pessimistic sense of national self which excludes us from the best of the future is impossible to maintain.

In the year to come, I again vow to work with anyone across party lines who will work in the interests of Scotland. Another example is that, even though I haven't been asked by the Scottish Government, I will do all I can through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to make the Homecoming an international success.

So despite the nature of change, the slogan "Unity is Strength" is timeless. These three words of our trade union movement explain perfectly today's Union of our four nations. The United Kingdom helps make us prosperous in good times and stronger in the more difficult times that we now face. There is a patriotic Scottish case for the Union. We should make it.

Jim Murphy is Secretary of State for Scotland