So I haven’t blogged here in a while but it’s not because
I’ve run out of things to say – a busy life with lots of lovely weddings and
holidays has gotten in the way of this somewhat. But I thought I’d break the
silence on something slightly off-topic for this blog, because it’s a
conversation I’ve increasingly been having these past few months, and I thought
I’d get down on paper (rather than inarticulately ranting in the pub, although
god knows I love that too) what my thoughts are about it. The other reason I
want to get this out there for posterity, as it were, is that it’s a big
sociopolitical issue which I’ve basically completely changed my mind about.
This doesn’t happen very often to me (entrenched? Moi?) but I like to hope I’m
not someone who’s afraid to say she’s changed her mind, so here goes: I want to
talk about why I’ve changed my mind about Scottish independence.
If you are a self-exiled Scot, like I am, you might have
been having this conversation too, perhaps especially with your English friends.
Let me say this right off the bat: I wholeheartedly love England. I have chosen
to make my home here for the last fifteen years (albeit in London, which for
various reasons often feels more like living on another planet than living in a
specific country). Many of my friends are English, and indeed my very best
friend is English. So is my mum, and as a consequence that entire side of my
family. My nieces and nephews were all born here and are delightful in their
embryonic and very London-centric Englishness. I love many things including a
huge glut of music and literature which are quintessentially English. That
doesn’t mean I love everything about England – the preponderance of Tory-lite
views and the EDL are the first two things off the top of my head that I could
definitely do without, for example. But for the most part, I love the country I
have made my life in. So let’s get this out of the way right from the start:
this isn’t personal. A lot of the time my English friends seem to take my
‘rejection’ of England as a personal affront. Please know, this really isn’t about
you guys. I really do love you and your wonderful country.
I have also often been embroiled in the tangled argument
that it’s not about being joined to England, it’s about being British. Well,
not that I have much love for the word with its colonial and royalist
overtones, but of course I am British. I mean, it says so in my passport
anyway. What I mean by that is that legally, I am British. In the eyes of the
world, I am British.
But I don’t feel
British.
I don’t even really know what it means. If it means ties to
this country’s historical past, well all I want to do with that is say sorry to
all the people who were ruthlessly destroyed by our many, many wars, conquests,
colonial takeovers and mismanagement, slavery, child labour and religious
persecution. I love and am fascinated by how rich and varied Britain’s past is,
but it is not something I am proud of having an association with. If it means
the current state of affairs in Britain, then I am not too sure about that
either. We have a government composed of dangerous and ineffectual opportunists
which I and many others loathe, we have a national healthcare system which is
falling apart under the unsustainable strain it has been put under by said
government, we have an appalling asylum system which targets the poorest and
most vulnerable people, a shonky economy, and a woeful ‘peacekeeping’ record in
other states.
If it means a shared culture, then in some ways for me that
is easier to get behind – British music, British literature (although let’s not
forget that when you’re filling in your UCAS form it will be to do an English,
not a British, literature degree), British sense of humour – but even then
these concepts are shifting and amorphous, and I can’t shake the feeling that
when a non-British person is asked what they think of as being particularly
British the examples they give will in fact be English examples – roast beef, Wimbledon, strawberries & cream,
Shakespeare, Wordsworth, The Smiths, and so on. I doubt many people would
mention Tam O’Shanter or whisky or haggis; or leeks or Irish country dancing
either for that matter. The simple fact is that while I am documented as a
British citizen, it is not what I identify with. You can argue that that’s not
a particularly strong political argument, and you might be right, but for me
it’s a strong cultural argument – and politics is not the only fruit.
There is also the argument that essentially, the Scots
should ‘get over’ the historical injustices of the past and look to a future
which is inclusive and forward-moving. But I can’t help finding this a bit rich
coming from a country whose English half has been trying to secede from Europe
for the best part of a decade. I also don’t see why we can’t be inclusive
across a border – surely this is in fact the entire point of systems such as
the EU (whatever you might think about how they are actually run)? Again, this
is a kind of ‘independence as revenge act’ argument, which I think applies only
to the most rabid of Scottish independence supporters (and of course
unfortunately there are plenty of them, and they are xenophobic fuckwits whose
views I in no way support). I don’t think the vast majority of Scots who
support independence want revenge. I think, without meaning this in an
inflammatory way, they just want their country back.
Another argument, and probably the strongest one, is that
Scotland would not survive economically without being tied to the rest of
Britain. I am no economist, but even I concede that this is the strongest
argument (and the one most likely to put the kibosh on Mr Salmond’s longed-for
yes vote). Yes, we have offshore oil, but that is hardly likely to last forever
and without Westminster revenue it is probably inevitable that public spending
would push up taxes. There are some rather hysterical commentators who suggest
that the entire economy would collapse; my instinct is that this would be
unlikely – we are a canny race, after all – but of course this is a strong and
scary argument. But if the last five years has shown nothing else it is that
no-one has a crystal ball, and shit happens mainly when corruption and greed
are the main driving forces in the global economy. Just as no state is immune
to this, it is impossible to say whether or not Scotland would ‘survive’ (what
does that even mean, anyway? Bankrupt and debt-ridden states still ‘survive’ as
entities – states do not simply implode like a dying star when their credit rating
is downgraded – look at Iceland). The world is in a right old financial mess at
the moment and it’s perfectly correct to ask the question of whether the people
of Scotland be poorer-off? Maybe they would. But maybe they would be anyway. Scotland
already has separate healthcare, educational, and legal systems – and it also
has (or it seems to me at least) a quite distinct culture and heritage (and, in
some regions, language). I’m not entirely convinced that given a chance we
couldn’t sort the economy out as well. After all, arguably Britain’s most famous
economist was a Scot.
I used to feel very strongly that Scotland should never be
independent from the rest of Britain. It’s what my parents believe and indeed I
suspect they will be mildly horrified to read this post. But now that I am a
bit older and have visited lots of countries which have gained their
independence from larger states I just don’t feel that way any more. These
states have often seceded via war (Croatia, Serbia), or revolution
(Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia), or political machination of a different kind
(Peru, Finland). Their success has been varied and often there has been
suffering and upheaval. But of the people I have spoken to in all of those
countries (mostly young and not a scientific sample, but still), I didn’t hear
a single one say they’d like to go back to a non-independent state. Would they
like better government, less corruption, lower taxes, better social welfare? Of
course. But don’t we all want that, and shouldn’t we all be fighting for that
anyway, wherever we live in the world?
Finally, there are those people who might accuse me of
suffering from the inevitable nostalgia of an exile. They might be right,
although in fact I have been writing love letters to Scotland (in the form of
poetry) long before I left and made my way down south. Is it easier to see your
original country through rose-tinted glasses when there is six hours of
crappily-maintained railway line between you and it? Perhaps. But the fact is I
go back often enough, have retained enough (in fact almost all) of my Scottish
family and social connections, and keep up with the news enough to know what I
feel about my own country. Because this, in the end, is what it boils down to
for me. It’s not about where I belong
– I belong here in London, after all – but that I belong to Scotland. The land grips where my heart sprang its roots, in
that red soft soil. If that sounds sentimental then so be it – what’s wrong
with being articulate and sentimental at the same time? (A patriarchal argument
if ever I heard one).
The fact is that Scotland will almost certainly vote no
in any case – almost every poll ever taken shows this. But I think the argument
is worth having, and I ultimately I think there is great power and humility in
admitting that you’ve changed your mind.
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