23 May 2013

Not Scandinavia, but Ireland...

In a column in last weekend's Scotland on Sunday, former SNP MSP Andrew Wilson returned to a familiar theme, arguing that "British identity is key to debate on independence."   

Andrew worries that "fewer than one in ten Scots with a “strong sense of British identity” back independence".  What is to be done? Andrew's answer is that the Nationalists should cunningly hijack British identity, and rearticulate it in a form more amenable to our constitutional ambitions.

"... the SNP and the Yes Campaign have just over a year to communicate cleverly that Britishness is about much, much more than the functions of state government. Indeed, who the government is and what it does is the least important aspect of Britishness and most urgent to reform. The familial, cultural, social and economic ties that bind will endure and strengthen when the politics is taken out of the equation."

But is it really a question of "cleverly" articulating a new, non-state account of British identity, as Wilson contends? I'm not so sure. As I tracked in a post here some time ago, nationalist politicians have been using the language of a "social union" after independence for a good while now. The idea that Britishness and this "social union" can and should be used interchangeably, seems a more recent development in pro-independence rhetoric. And for me, one of the least convincing.  

On BBC Question Time a while back, the SNP MSP Alex Neil told the audience that "I am an Ayrshireman, I am a Scot and I feel British and European as well." Now, I've no window into the Health Secretary's heart. A cherished sense of Britishness may warm his cockles.  If so, little of that heat communicated itself in his answer. His Britannic protestations looked strained, and hollow, altogether too pleased with themselves. Some independence supporters may feel profoundly British, but I doubt most prominent Nationalists do, and for them to pretend to do so looks decidedly shifty, and decidedly not convincing.

SNP MP Pete Wishart has been at the forefront of the argument that we should think about Britishness in geographical, super-state terms, detachable from national governments, and independent from the question of whether Scotland sends parliamentarians to Westminster.  As is so often the case at the moment, Pete offers us Nordic models in justification.   

"Britishness is as much about geography as it is about identity and history. Coming from Perth in the northern part of the island of Greater Britain I am as much British as someone from Stockholm is Scandinavian."

This argument has a superficial allure to it. Scots won't lose Britishness if we vote yes. Fear not fellow citizens! We'd be just like those friendly folks lining the fjords of Sweden, and of Norway and Denmark. But what do most folk know about shared Scandinavian solidarity and identity? Bugger all. How does the reference connect up to Scots' lived experiences? Not to any significant extent. So why the devil should we think that recasting Britishness in terms of an alien concept of regional identity of which most folk know nothing is going to do the trick? 

Wilson's choice of words is significant. Such a strategy is "clever", but I think, too clever by half, and unlikely to make much sense to your average Scot, with hazy British sympathies, and at most a couple of days in Stockholm, or a couple of episodes of the Killing under their belts. 

By making Britishness the answer to Yes Scotland's campaigning problems, Wilson's argument conflates two points. As he diagnoses, rightly, if the referendum resolves itself into a question of "do you feel British?", the SNP are stuffed. On the Better Together side, we've heard Ed Miliband's identity-driven British nationalist case for the Union.  According to the Labour leader, the referendum turns on the question of identity, his message to Scottish voters: Feel British? Vote No.  Independence supporters must resist this framing of the question.  Hitherto, they have done so by focussing on independence as a constitutional, civic and political issue, about powers, not identities.  The question before voters is not whether they feel British, but whether they want Scotland's democratic institutions to make key political decisions about their public services, their wars, their social security and taxation. 

One of the surprises of the Better Together campaign hitherto has been the absence of the full-scale sentimental British nationalist campaign promised by Miliband's intervention. You could do it marvellously. Twinkle-eyed Corby grannies, born in Dumbarton but long in the south, surrounded by a giggling knot of grandchildren, and ideally, with a son and daughter living on both sides of the Tweed, whose laughing children sound an untroubled mixter-maxter of accents. The young couple, one Fifer, one Londoner, who met at university in Edinburgh, and settled down, all invested in the idea that the noble goal of a multi-national state is worth preserving, all arguing we're "better together", as the saying has it. And so on, and so on.  

It might be an idea for Yes Scotland to get their retaliation in first, and to shoot a counter-intuitive ad with similar characters on both sides of the border endorsing independence, relaxed about the implications for their families and relationships. For Yes campaign to make the case for companionable Britishness, however, would be madness, and do Better Together's identity politics for them.

As many of you will know, since 2009, I have lived in the south east of England. I don't feel British to any significant extent. I enjoy warm and convivial relationships with my friends, neighbours and colleagues in Oxfordshire, unencumbered by any requirement that we share some defined regional supra-identity. I get along without Britishness quite happily. More and more, I've been wondering if independence supporters, tickled by the novelty of Scandinavian parallels, and the cul de sac of reclaiming Britishness from the British state, are neglecting the more obvious, more helpful contemporary example of the Republic of Ireland in talking about social, family and commercial bonds, after independence.

English-speaking, sharing a land-border and abiding historical ties, you'll find few people who seriously think, in Johann Lamont's ugly phrase, of the denizens of Tipperary or Cork as "foreigners" in the United Kingdom today. As is well known, Irish nationals enjoy a number of rights under UK law, including the ability to vote in our elections, free movement and immigration rights (above and beyond the rights of EU nationals in this respect).  For most folk in Great Britain, the Irish are betwixt and between, resisting the straightforward binary of the Self and the Other.  From my experiences in England, they are not significantly different from Scots in this respect, despite my Irish friends' "separate" government in Dublin, and "our" shared parliament in Westminster.

Identities don't belong to states. The Irish lesson shows us, in concrete terms most people in our country will understand, that our shared bonds in these islands won't break up if Britain breaks up.  We don't need any mediating concept of Britishness to make this happen, to maintain the to-and-fro of immigration and emigration, wandering carelessly over lightly-drawn borders, comfortably befriending, loving, working and belonging.  I don't need any pseudo Britto-Nordic construct to feel that my Irish friends here in England aren't the "foreigners" Johann Lamont would have them be. 

23 comments :

  1. Fair argument. A Scan-type regional identity would require the Irish to agree they're British because they live geographically in the British Isles. Don't see that happening while 'British' still pongs a bit of The Empire, racism, europhobia, etc.

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    1. I agree. What we need is an adjective describing somebody from the British Isles. Let's imagine this word was 'Brisly'. The Irish would then happily agree they were just as Brisly as the Scots, the Welsh and the English.

      In the independence debate, we would then have people saying things like this: "After independence, we might not the British any more, but of course we'd still be Brisly, and that's what really matters at the end of the day!"

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    2. Indeed yes. 'Twas Brisly and the slithy toves did etc.

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    3. Surely the real question is, will the borogoves still be mimsy in an independent Scotland? What guarantees have we, that the mome raths could afford to be outgrabe?

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  2. I've been wondering about the absence of Ireland from the debate, too. So many of the questions raised by Better Together can be answered by looking at Ireland.

    Separate currency? Ireland's example suggests keeping the pound at first, then a currency board, then a free-floating currency, and finally the euro.

    Will we need to passport to visit England? Ireland's example suggests we won't.

    Will we need our own international dialling code? Ireland doesn't use +44, but +353, so yes.

    Etc.

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    1. From responses I've received on Twitter, a couple of explanations seem to be popular for the absence of the Eire connection. Firstly, their financial crash. A bruised Celtic Tiger. Bad connotations. The second, understandably, is that to talk of Ireland is to recall the Troubles, and is not, therefore, a compelling tale to tell contemporary Scots about their imminent future. While I can understand the first point, I'm profoundly unconvinced about the second. Whatever George Galloway may believe, the situation in Scotland and in Norn Iron really doesn't lend itself to obvious comparisons, and I doubt most folk meet their Irish neighbours, friends and colleagues in Scottish towns, and instantly recall intractable sectarian hatreds and difficulties. The thought would never occur to me, and although Scotland may have its share of sectarian boneheads, I'd strongly contend that most folk share my worldview, and not theirs.

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    2. Yes, I agree. We should be comparing an independent Scotland the Republic of Ireland, not to Northern Ireland, and I don't understand why invoking the former should make people think of the latter.

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  3. Great stuff, Peaty One. I often think a better comparison to macro-Britishness are the Americans rather than the Scandinavians. After all, the latter are divided by their languages - Swedish, Danish, particularly Finnish - where Americans all speak English (or at least it's the majority language in the majority of places).

    And despite their living under one federal government for which they share a universal contempt, their regional differences - in accent, political inclinations and even culture - are profound. I live in New England, where the culture is defined by leafy suburbs, fanatical devotion to Boston-area sports teams, high taxes, decent public services, gruff, no-nonsense but still warm hospitality and a lingering attachment to the sea, particularly in the local diet. Compare and contrast that with the citizens of mountainous Colorado, swampy Florida or dry, flat Texas and you begin to see what I mean.

    Cultural differences are as inevitable across any geographic area as regional accents. Making a political issue out of them to justify institutional links is the wrong sort of politics for Yes Scotland - or anyone, really - to pursue, hence my general distaste for Better Together's "we're aw family" argument. I'll seriously campaign for No if they can convince me of the institutional merits of the United Kingdom as it currently stands and how it will be shaped in the near future, but I won't hold my breath. In the meantime, I'll campaign for Yes as long as we stay one step removed from the kind of tawdry identity politics that our opponents have to rely on to succeed.

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    1. Craig,

      An interesting viewpoint, which reminds me that I have decreasing number of excuses (save for the traditional graduate student penury) to explain why I've never visited America, even once.

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  4. There are certainly a great many spurious BetterTogether questions to which "Ireland" is the only answer we need give. I suspect in terms of the 500 Questions document, the number of questions which are null and voided by the existence of Ireland - particularly the UK's land border with Ireland - is probably in the hundreds.

    So with such an obvious example of a "social union" - one that is already in existence - I wonder if the reason it's not talked about more is the fact that it's a touchy subject in a particular area of Scotland? I would hope not, because it would just be pandering to idiots, but it does seem weird that Ireland isn't used as an example more often, and Scandinavia is obviously a fairly neutral example to use instead.

    (Or perhaps we're just trying to keep the Orcadians onside?)

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    1. I imagine Ireland isn't used more often because it is not currently seen as a success eonomically. And its financial collapse and bail out by the EU would also open up many more opportunites for scaremongering attacks by the Bitter mob and the dis-United with Labour crowd

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  5. A fine healthy attitude to the "identity question" with which I find myself in total sympathy. when I read the phrase, "I get along without Britishness quite happily.", I was immediately put in mind of an article I wrote almost a year ago under the title, Identity and ideology - http://peterabell.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/identity-and-ideology.html.

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  6. Being or feeling "British" is something that can be understood in different ways. In opinion polls, surveys and even the census, the question is asked in different contexts, but the answers are nearly always interpreted as saying something about nationality or national identity.

    The key, therefore, is not to ask people to what degree they feel Scottish or British, but to ask people what they consider their nationality to be. I'm not sure what the figures for Scotland are, but the census figures for Wales and England show that the vast majority consider their nationality to be Welsh or English only, with less than 10% considering their nationality to be "Welsh and British" or "English and British". I commented on this here.

    It is perfectly possible that someone in Denmark would identify themselves as "equally Danish and Scandinavian" ... but they would not consider their nationality to be Scandinavian. And someone in the Netherlands would be more than likely to identify themselves as "equally Dutch and European" ... but they would not consider their nationality to be European.

    The nations of Britain share closer geographical, historical, cultural and family ties with each other than we do with the other nations in the world. But there's nothing unique or unusual about this, for exactly the same is true of the nations which make up Scandinavia, Arabia, Iberia or the Caribbean.

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  8. Interesting comment from a London-based Irish friend on this. Her mother is from the UK and lives in the Republic. As she points out, its "a two-way street, too: UK citizens have equivalent voting/living/working etc. rights in Ireland. My English mum can vote in almost every type of democratic process in Ireland, as I can in the UK. We've essentially swapped domiciles, and neither she nor I have any real desire/need to apply for the citizenship of our adopted homes..."

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    1. That is pretty much the same throughout the EU though...

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    2. True. After 11 years in Scotland (and married to a Scot), I have presumably qualified for British citizenship for a while, but I haven't really had a need for it yet (apart from taking part in Westminster elections), so I'm waiting for Denmark to allow dual citizenship before I apply.

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    3. At least until the UK pulls out of the EU. Heaven knows what happens then...

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    4. Indeed. It will be an enormous change. Moving from Denmark to Scotland was such an easy thing to do -- I didn't really think it through, I just applied for a job and got it -- so if EU citizens suddenly need to apply for work permits and a' that, it'll be a very major change (psychologically more than practically, I guess).

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  9. I think the only really entrenched "British" position is with ardent royalists and their symbolism and people who have worn a "British" uniform and thereby been given a sense of importance they hitherto had not enjoyed. An honest nationalist knows that the British state is a confection, not a nationality. Britain is a state without nationhood. Scotland is a nation without statehood and a huge democratic deficit in the sanctified halls of Westminster. No self respecting seeker of Independence wants to retain an attachment to being British. The legacy is one with no sentimental attachment to the flag or the state. That is not to say that the social union of neighbourliness and a "Both Sides the Tweed" commonality cannot prevail. The new Britsh is of course "European" which has even less of a pedigree but is a similar confection to try and end the concept of nationhood and subsequently the nation state. Equally doomed to fail in my view.

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    1. Andrew,

      This is one aspect of Scottish nationalist rhetoric I can't agree with. Nations are, by their nature, confected. Nationality is confected. As a consequence, I don't see that such a sharp distinction can really be drawn between Britishness - as someone like Miliband might posit it - and the national identities of the composite parts of the UK, Welsh, English, Scottish, and so on.

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  10. Lallands Peat Worrier.

    I have never felt confected, exactly. Is it something you get in Nardini's?

    When you watch out deterrent go by?

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    1. "Confected" is perhaps an awkward choice of words, suggesting a negative evaluation, and a hidden allegation of bad faith. I really meant something along the lines of Anderson's concept of the "imagined community".

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