A cliffhanger finish in Scotland
On Sept. 18, the Scottish people will vote in a referendum that could break up the 307-year-old United Kingdom. This is significant not only for Britain, but to anyone interested in the future of ethnically or linguistically diverse democratic states containing a substantial secessionist movement.
In contrast to the notoriously ambiguous question in past Quebec referenda, in Scotland the wording could hardly be clearer: “Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?” The “Yes Scotland” campaign is led by the Scottish National Party (SNP) leader (and Scotland’s first minister) Alec Salmond, in coalition with the smaller Scottish Green and Socialist Parties.
The Yes side argues that Scotland cannot fulfill its destiny within the UK. Many Scots resent rule from London by a Conservative Party with very little support in Scotland. (At SNP events, you often see someone in a panda suit, symbolizing the fact there are more panda bears in Scotland—two in the Edinburgh Zoo — than Conservative MPs.) Hatred of Tory icon Margaret Thatcher is woven into the folk memory of the Scottish people.
The Yes side also capitalizes on declining support for the Labour Party, Scotland’s traditional governing party, as many in the Scottish left turn away from Labour, disillusioned by Tony Blair’s “illegal” 2003 invasion of Iraq and New Labour policies seen as abandoning Scotland’s socialist heritage.
The No side, styled “Better Together”, is an unlikely coalition of mainstream UK political parties including Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives. Their chief spokesman is Edinburgh MP Alistair Darling, a Labour cabinet minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Better Together says “No thanks” to independence, arguing the union with England has served Scotland well historically, and with the devolved assembly first elected in 1999 five million Scots have the best of both worlds insofar as the Scottish Parliament can set policy on domestic issues such as health care and education, while retaining the economic heft of the British state to protect against financial calamity.
While Yes claims that an independent Scotland would keep using “our pound” either in a formal currency union or an informal process dubbed “sterlingisation,” the No campaign warns that the UK will never agree to currency union, leaving Scotland either with an untried new currency or powerless to shape fiscal policy set in what would be a foreign capital. (The Yes side responds that if the UK will not agree to a currency union, then Scotland would not assume its share of the UK’s national debt!)
Yes promises that billions of dollars from North Sea oil will support public services in an independent Scotland, while No says the North Sea fields are drying up and will leave an independent Scotland dangerously dependent on fluctuating resource markets.
Yes pledges to remove all nuclear weapons from Scottish soil, while No supports spending $60 billion to retrofit the Trident nuclear subs based in the Firth of Clyde.
The No side claims independence will destroy the much-beloved National Health Service, while Yes insists the real danger to Scotland’s public health-care system comes from the deep cuts and push for privatization from the neo-liberal agenda of austerity-mad governments in London.
Naturally, the referendum is not only about pounds and pence. It is also about emotionally charged questions of national identity.
Nationalists affirm that Scots are an ancient people with a distinct national character and communitarian traditions. Unionists insist their British identity is inseparable from Scottishness as they take pride in shared institutions such as the monarchy, the military and parliamentary traditions they believe make Britain a force for good in the world.
So what will happen? It’s the political professionals vs. a grassroots army of tech-savvy “cybernats”. After leading the polls by a wide margin, the No side has seen its lead evaporate in recent weeks. The latest polls even give a slight edge to the Yes side.
But history suggests the Yes campaign is trying to do something extremely difficult, perhaps impossible: to win a democratic vote for secession in a non-militarized, admittedly not oppressive, constitutional context. The Parti Québécois tried and failed twice (the last time narrowly) to achieve this goal. We shall see if the Scots make history.