Tom Nairn: It’s pointless to hold back the tide of history
David Cameron's government has the hallmarks of another era. Picture: PA Wire
Supranational forces are turning Great Britain into ever more of an anachronism
The new turn of events over Alex Salmond’s proposed referendum poses even more questions than those certain to be debated over the coming two years – more, and deeper, than the legality or propriety of the vote and its timing. It’s tempting to think something like a new age may be on the launchpad. That is, one where the established “-ism” of nationality politics is visibly shifting, and not in the British-Irish archipelago alone. This is surely because wider circumstances are changing at the same time: the conditions of “globality” will not efface nation-states and “sovereignty”, but they do seem likely to alter the meaning of such familiar terms.
Scotland’s move towards the 2014 vote is part of this greater alteration. It used to be said that the Scots were “belated” in recovering self-government: tail-enders, who had missed the main tide of national liberation in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, it may be that such delay has led to a disconcerting conclusion. Globalisation has changed the context so much, that lateness has turned into a new start: from the overdue to the premature, one might say.
Under the emerging circumstances, independence may be just as important, or maybe even more important, than during the epoch of imperialism and recurrent warfare. However, a new style and vision is required for the shift: something better than the old “-ism” of colonisation and the Cold War. Couldn’t the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish – the former “periphery” – contribute to this novelty, rather than revive the old? The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain (Cape, 2009), as Ian Jack called it in his book, has had its over-long day. Under David Cameron’s coalition government, it’s beginning to sound more like an ancien régime.
For the latter, civilisation is deemed unthinkable without the old “unwritten constitution”. Honour and trust must not vanish for good in a post-British fog of rights and formal entitlements. Unwritten remains best, because more easily changed, and more readily in touch with changing times. Unfortunately, there is little evidence of this in Cameron’s Westminster. The world may be moving on, from Cold War and state socialism to post-war hopes and new starts; but not the fake-Gothic palaces on Thames-side, depositories of Antiques Road Show and Countryfile wisdom.
Two serious efforts to reform the old-style UK have now failed: John Prescott’s proposal for regional assemblies in England, rejected by the north-east; and more recently, the Lib-Dem idea of switching to a fairer Australian-style of election with the Alternative Vote (AV). The case looks ever more incurable. But this is rarely taken seriously enough by the substantial body of voters still wishing to “Save the Union”.
Shouldn’t they think again? The weird controversy about “devo max” is shifting the terrain once more, by implying that self-rule just short of standard-issue statehood is conceivable: a de facto independence avoiding awkward external relations and preserving Britain’s Security Council status: the Banquo’s ghost of international affairs, as it were, mummified for all eternity in Special Relationship solution.
“Saving the Union” in a socio-cultural sense is of course comprehensible. Nationalists in Scotland and Wales have not been persecuted and imprisoned, like so many others over the past two centuries. “Anti-Englishness” is indisputable, but also widely misunderstood: what it comes down to is less ethnicity, than an unwillingness to tolerate the different status deriving from having been historically first, and then using this priority to build an outward-going imperium.
It was spelt out rather well by Ernest Gellner (himself from an immigrant family) in the conclusion to Nations and Nationalism (Blackwell, 1983), and put even more strongly by Liah Greenfeld in Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Harvard 1992), as “God’s First-Born”, where the English were “symbolically elevated to the position of an elite…[and] created a new type of collectivity and social structure unlike any other, and a novel, at that time unique, identity…It was the first, expressive, act of national self-assertion.”
That kind of priority was the launch-motor of nationalism, and unavoidably carried the periphery of the Anglo-Irish archipelago along with it. From 1706 until yesterday, the deal has been presented in Viscount Stair’s 1707 terms as “raising the status of Scotland…an equal; partnership in all things, a sharing of fortunes in good times and bad” (Michael Fry’s The Union, Birlinn, 2006). “A few days later,” adds the author, “this most expert and effective advocate of the Union dropped dead”. A few centuries later, so has his work.
It lasted so long because the conditions of what one might call “first-round industrialisation” were so favourable to Stair’s assumptions. From 1745 until the end of the Cold War, one population after another was borne forward by the resultant tidal waves: the “-ism” of nation-statehood proved irresistible, because there appeared no alternative to what Gellner went on to describe as “the society of perpetual growth”. Globalisation is a kind of conclusion to the latter, not that all peoples are successfully modernised, but a certain finality has imposed itself on the process.
Plenty of hills and diversions ahead, but humanity at large is over the main hump. And, like other countries, Scotland will have to find its own place in the ongoing process. That’s what the 2014 vote will really be about. The final conditions of globality render peculiarities and inherited social “DNA” more rather than less significant.
The foe used to be imperialism; today it’s what might be labelled “all-the-sameism”, surrender to a uniformity of outlook and customs formerly blessed (and cursed) with terms like “internationalism” or “cosmopolitanism”. Globality has made these as superfluous as parochialism and “narrow nationalism”. It will only be tolerable via the incorporation of the many colours, not their blurring or extinction: by contrast, Anglo-Brit unionism now stands for a kind of tut-tutting over the way of the world – “Hey, not so fast out there, not so far! Make do with a bit less, for the sake of Union/ Commonwealth/the Rest of Us!”
What “the rest of us” means is actually the more comfortable decline of the Great-British ruling and political class, the club-armchair, Jeeves the butler, and the culture of class. One can’t just take the “Great” out of Britishness, leaving all the rest intact. That fusion was history’s deal, and England’s glory.
Only a breakthrough to “Little England” could undo the old alchemy, and this is surely what independence for Wales and Scotland will lead to. It does mean “going backwards”, but in order to make a more important leap forward: reculer pour mieux sauter, they say over the Channel. This is what the 2014 vote will be about, not just fuller self-government for edge-lands but contributing to a greater emancipation, the liberation of initiatives and multi-coloured ideas previously repressed by structures set up in the 19th and 20th centuries’ versions of mega-statehood – right for their own time, but now out-dated by globalisation.
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Comments
There are 28 comments to this article
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Buggerlugs
Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 10:55 AMIn reply to #7 Tennis C Williams I have been followin some of the threads, which can be more informative than the original article. In particular I have been struck by the number of mindless Trolls of the union persuasion who seem hellbent on destroying the flow and direction of the exchanges to their benefit. Step forward for the stupidest post this far. Do you not know the difference between a City and and Empire? It probably doesn't matter to you anyway in your dribbling points scoring playground game. If ever I was swithering about Devo Max and Independence, the paucity of the unionist arguments, not found one yet for the Union, and the imbecility of Trolls like Tennis C have convinced me. Independence it is.
bonechewer
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 09:40 PMHey Biscuit, I agree largely with your analysis on how little real influence the average person has in todays Scotland, but I found your conclusions to be both bleak and a tad overstated. We need to return to some basic democratic principles, which put the people's needs first, and politicians who will actually listen to what we have to say, and address our issues, instead of following their own, quite different, agendas.
Tartancult
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 09:14 PMMr Nairn is obviously paid for the quantity of his words, not the quality.
christelijk_recht
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 05:37 PM#4 - "3. What a pompius ass you sound ! "Great Britain" is not, and never has been, one"nation". To believe otherwise is fantasy politics." ................................................................................................................... Not into irony then, Broon Bairn.
christelijk_recht
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 05:34 PMTennis C. Williams - Scotsman and cybernats resident satirist wrote: . .. "Calling great nations an anachronism is not only an unwarranted insult to Great Britain & N. Ireland but also to proud states such as Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Tom Nairn must apologize to them forthwith before any more damage is done." ............................................................................................................................ Very well put Tennis C. As always, there is much wisdom in you humor.
douglas-home rule
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 05:12 PMAt some point in the mid-20th century, it was decided that London was the main concern of government. All their eggs have been poured into that particular basket and for the bright young things its Eton,Oxbridgeand the City. Vanity project after vanity project to keep London up there with Paris ,New york etc. Time for Scotland to leave.
florian albert
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 05:01 PMTom Nairn tells us that 'a new age may be on the launchpad.' Here Scotland, along with other 'edgelands', will be contributing to a 'greater emancipation, the liberation of initiatives and multi-coloured ideas previously repressed.' Tom Nairn has long been viewed as a guru on the Left, Why this is so remains one of life's mysteries.
samcoldstream
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 04:12 PMComment removed by moderator
fairfax
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 03:58 PM18: "Why would the SNP want to help Labour run the UK?" Such an administration would give the SNP cabinet-level authority, together with Labour, to orchestrate the abolition of the UK. In particular, the UK Parliament can revoke the Union by a single vote. Still, it's hardly likely to happen.
The West Awake
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 03:40 PM18 - I don't understand where you're going with that. Why would the SNP want to help Labour run the UK? They don't even vote on non-Scottish issues at Westminster at the moment!
fairfax
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 03:16 PM17: "Jeez - if Glasgow East was a political tsunami, then anything close to this would be bye bye UK. " You have missed an even more surprising aspect of Baxter's prediction: with Labour at 306 seats and the SNP at 36, Salmond could form an administration with Labour! Martin Baxter's site is excellent, although you're correct to point out that this was a small sample.
The West Awake
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 02:55 PMI've just looked at the new Electoral Calculus poll out today (Scotland part), Party 2010 Votes 2010 Seats Pred Votes Pred Seats CON 16.75% 1 15.00% 0 LAB 42.00% 41 33.00% 22 LIB 18.88% 11 6.00% 1 NAT 19.93% 6 42.00% 36 MIN 2.45% 0 4.00% 0 Prediction based on opinion polls from 25 Aug 11 to 29 Aug 11, sampling 1,002 people. I'd be the first to say "It's only a poll", and a UK one at that, but no Tories and only 1 Lib Dem? Best of all, 22 Labour to 36 SNP??? Jeez - if Glasgow East was a political tsunami, then anything close to this would be bye bye UK. Don't pass Go, no £200. Don't waste the money on a referendum - not required.
young reekie
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 02:52 PM#8 That's a rather limited comment by your pal Karl. How can you successfully change something you don't understand?
The West Awake
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 01:22 PMComment removed by moderator
Marsaili
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 12:20 PM'this most expert and effective advocate of the Union ' in 1707 who dropped dead a few days later after his drivel. That would be one of the king's Scottish ministers found reponsible along with the king by the enquiry into the order by the king in London to two companies of the Argyll regiment of the British army to massacre Scottish children at Glencoe? That guy? Not just a parcel of rogues, orchestrators of 'murder under trust', completely morally bankrupt, evil men. And we're told in 'what future the monarchy?' that there will be a king Charles and another king William. Really? Of course we have a king now, he's called David Cameron and he might have the tiniest of little minorities and have had to cook up a connivance with the LibDems but that's irrelevant once he is in Number 10 as then he has his shiny mitts on the royal prerogative and he now has more power in the confines of this country than Barack Obama has in America. He can take the country to war, write law, decree yachts, on his whim it stands. If there were a queen there she could do the same, and if there were a democratically elected governing body in the same city as she was like say for instance the Greater London Council and she didn't like who the people of London had voted in she could simply say "I abolish you" and that would be that. And that's exactly what she did. So people of Scotland have given Alex Salmond an amazing democratic majority and David Cameron is coming at him with the autocratic, unaccountable, corrupting, dangerous, tyrannical, fundamentally evil power of a king. Westminster is a creaking ancient mess and so is the unwritten constitution full of pointless precedents and traditions, only those in the government have any power to do things and Cameron trumps all else. Half the government is unelected and so is the head of state. So quaint in a 21st century 'democracy' don't you find? So sick. Scotland has a chance to escape this, to move into a new landscape where the people truly govern themselves. Only this will deactivate the SNP vast coalition with its one over-riding aim of indpendence, only then will Scottish politics breathe and move on. If we wait for more of the so benevolent 'giving' of powers that Cameron tries to kid us with as he 'gives' legal power (I give you the power to reform the cobweb-ridden half-baked joke that anachronistic Wesminster 'democracy' is Cameron, get on with it, but you'd better be quick), where are the Crown estate and renewable energy powers Alex Salmond asked for with his huge mandate from the Scottish people? Cameron and Westminster will give absolutely sweet FA powers to the people of Scotland, or England or anywhere else unless it's cooked up to the Westminster system's benefit. We must take those powers for ourselves. Absolutely all the way.
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