There are pitfalls to be avoided, many of them associated with expression and attitude, when you attempt to make the case for a nation’s independence.
These occur often and can be difficult to avoid. How do you proclaim the virtues of your nation and its ability to steer its own course without sounding boastful or conveying a sense of exceptionalism?
In the case of Scotland and its present struggle to determine its own future, there is another challenge. How does Scottish independence avoid being tainted by the bleak and bitter rightwing nationalist movements of other countries such as France, Italy and Germany?
“Let’s make America great again” sounds an awful lot like “Let’s make Scotland the best wee country in the world”, this being the favoured slogan of our government and tourist agencies when we seek to attract visitors and investment. How about we simply reach for making Scotland decent, functioning and capable of handling stuff, instead? There is a very fine line between reminding your own citizens of what you’re good at and stating that you’re better than everyone else, especially your closest neighbours.
Yet, unless Scotland’s first minister can find an alternative word to “nationalism” to describe a desire for independence, then she and the movement she leads will forever be saddled with the same term that darker groups use to convey a sense of superiority. They simply need to live with it and keep making the case for a more civilised and inclusive nationalism.
There are periods, though, when it becomes almost impossible not to notice the fissures opening up between Scotland and England. We are living through one of these historical chapters at the moment. Often, it’s the little events and seemingly unimportant ones by which the cracks in how Scotland and England perceive themselves and their place in the world that become apparent. In recent weeks, we’ve been able to observe a few of them.
By what sort of twisted and vainglorious thought process did the UK government arrive at its decision to strike a commemorative 50p coin to mark our departure from the European Union? Perhaps this could be the first in an exclusive set. Next year, the Post Office could release a set of stamps commemorating the start of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. What about special collectors’ issues for Gallipoli, the Charge of the Light Brigade or the loss of the American colonies... anyone?
Last week, too, I caught a glimpse of a forthcoming programme produced by the BBC to mark the 70th birthday of Prince Charles. The excerpt featured his two sons gurgling about how much work their auld da’ gets through, while Camilla sat in one of their stately homes cooing sweet nothings into his ear.
The state-funded broadcaster spends millions bringing us lavish propaganda productions about the UK royal family. The Queen gets one most years. Occasionally, some undiscovered footage is discovered of the royals as children. Any day now, we’ll probably be getting one about how Prince Philip at 97 still rides horses and carriages through the grounds of his palaces, jouks up Munros and shoots stags before carrying them back over hills and through glens for the royal dinner table that night.
These past few weeks, the process in recent years of turning the sad and innocent poppy into a propaganda tool has gained momentum. Once, we wore this little splash of colour silently for a day or so to mark those who fell in two world wars. Now, it has become a season unto itself, which seems to last forever. They should merge the the poppy season with Halloween, for they’ve made it something ugly and to be feared. If you choose not to wear one you risk ostracism and threats.
In this, the poppy has become something loud and intolerant; demanding homage and thus becoming all that those who fought those wars wanted to change, as the Irish professional footballer James McClean has come to discover. It is used to celebrate militarism and been expanded to glorify illegal conflicts and ones such as Northern Ireland, where the British army became the brutal instrument of an occupying state.
This is not a natural change in the behaviour of England, a curious historical quirk that will soon settle back down into something gentler and more benign. This fawning celebration of royalty, this spirit of strident militarism and the delusional euphoria about leaving the EU hark back to the England of empire and the old order.
It is a softening-up process so that when the consequences of leaving the EU begin to erode employment and wellbeing, the lie of British exceptionalism and greatness will have bought the architects of Brexit some time. And it will be time enough to put those wretched foreigners in the frame for the job.
It’s happening at a time when Scotland wants to take its place among the league of other independent nations and to be a contributing member of the EU. It wants to embrace foreign visitors and to persuade them to settle here. It seeks to be a safe haven for refugees fleeing the wars and famine that were the inevitable consequences of Britain’s overseas adventures. Rather than seek to blame minorities for economic ills, we want to invite them to be part of the solution we need to find for the oncoming challenges of an ageing population and labour-intensive public services.
Most Scottish nationalists don’t want to leave the union to sow division and conflict; rather, they want to return it to its natural and God-given state and become a good and supportive neighbour to that great country south of the border.