The case for Scottish independence
David McVey finds food for thought in Ben Jackson’s analysis of the history of Scottish nationalism
Ben Jackson
Cambridge University Press, 2020 210 pages
Hardback, £59.99 / paperback, £18.99 ISBN: 9781108835350 / 9781108793186
The title of Ben Jackson’s book might mislead some. This isn’t a book making the case (or a case) for independence. The subtitle makes things clearer; ‘A History of Nationalist Political Thought in Modern Scotland’. So you can judge this book by its cover, so long as you read the small print.
Jackson is associate professor of modern history at the University of Oxford and co-edits the journal Political Quarterly. He is also an engaging and involving writer. Even when navigating some of the more tortuous reaches of Scottish Nationalist thinking, he is both readable and informative.
In a polarised political culture, where the tweet is the longest text many political activists ever read (or write), this book is especially welcome. I suspect few supporters of independence for Scotland, and even fewer of their opponents, will have any knowledge or understanding of the intellectual roots of modern nationalist thinking. Now they have no excuse.
Jackson describes this as a work of ‘intellectual history’ and focuses on examining the philosophical currents in Scottish nationalist thinking since the 1960s and 1970s. He makes the point that, after the union of 1707 had settled into being, there was little serious independence-focused thinking done for many decades. However, in a valuable opening chapter, he details some early 20th-century developments, particularly following the founding of the National Party of Scotland in 1928.The thinkers discussed in the book – some of them explicit supporters of independence, some not, some who would shift their perspective between the two – include expected names like Tom Nairn and George Davie as well as earlier figures such as John MacCormick and Robert McIntyre. Few of these names will be familiar to activists on either side of the divide today, but it was their thinking and writings that formed the tectonic plates that shifted and collided to influence policy and action at the surface level.
Many of the pre-1960s thinkers had focused largely on the economic case for independence. Sometimes an argument was made on the basis of Scottish cultural distinctiveness (which Jackson describes as ‘fundamentally about the retrieval of the distinctive character of Scottish institutional life and the values that it represented’ [p.56]), but perhaps against expectations, Jackson tells us that ‘a romantic culturalism was never at the core of the case for independence made by Scottish nationalists’ (p.19). Indeed, by the 1960s there were serious left-wing thinkers joining the debate, often wrestling with combining socialism and whatever form of ‘nationalism’ they favoured. Historians may frown at some of the more dubious claims made by some thinkers that Scotland was an inherently more ‘democratic’ or socially-just nation than the rest of the UK in ideology. George Davie’s Democratic Intellect (1961) is not the only guilty party here. Jackson quotes an egregious remark from the nationalist writer Charles Stewart Black that reads almost like McGlashan the nationalist playwright from TV’s Absolutely: ‘Class antagonism is a thing quite foreign to the Scottish spirit. It was unknown here until it was imported from England’ (p.33).
A related area tackled by nationalist thinkers, and examined by Jackson, is the colonial issue. It’s a matter of record that, even before the union of 1707, Scotland had attempted, disastrously, to become a colonial power. Afterwards, many Scottish business interests bought enthusiastically into the idea of empire, profited from it and even (in the case of the tobacco lords, for example) profited directly through slavery. Given this history, those nationalist thinkers who portrayed the union as a colonial relationship, with Scotland a subservient nearby colony of the UK, faced something of a dilemma; could Scotland, even metaphorically, be portrayed as a UK colony if many of its inhabitants had welcomed the wider colonial project? Jackson also points out that some early Scottish nationalists sought independence for Scotland alongside a shared role in administering the empire.
Perhaps Jackson’s principal achievement is to outline the philosophical positions of the main players, and the debates and discussions between them, in a way that is clear and understandable. It’s no small feat given the recondite nature of some of the discussions he covers, and the shifts and changes in thinking that the major figures (not least Tom Nairn) displayed in their writings over time. Were activists, on both sides of the Scottish ideological divide, to read the book, perhaps our national politics would benefit greatly. Inevitably, however, the book is perhaps most likely to serve as a resource – a valuable one – for academics, researchers and students within Scottish history and politics. Jackson’s breathtaking range of references provides a valuable reading list for any academic working in the area.
I hope, though, that the book will find a wider readership amongst general readers, whatever their political perspective. It’s perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay to Jackson that he sticks to his task in a dispassionate way that will neither annoy nor alienate any readers, whatever their political outlook.
David McVey is a regular contributor to History Scotland and lectures at New College Lanarkshire.