Beyond the spurious assertion of a major difference in political preferences between Scotland and England, another plank in the Yes campaign's platform comprises the claims that membership of the UK inhibits Scotland's economic growth and that an independent Scotland's standard of living would be higher. Here Scottish nationalists descend to the not-so-noble level of their Catalan and Lombard equivalents in adopting a regionally egocentric, pounds-and-pence rationale for independence. In Scotland's case, the claims depend for their truth upon a number of variable and (in the crucial matter of the price of oil) volatile factors. They are also highly speculative and fiercely contested. As we have seen over the past 12 months, the economic debate goes back and forth and appears quite finely balanced. The very least that can be said is that it isn't certain that independence would make the Scots better off economically, that there is no reason at all to be confident that it would make them dramatically wealthier, and that there is considerable reason to suppose that it would actually make them poorer.
If tales about higher political ideals and greater wealth are planks too weak to bear the weight of the Yes campaign, then what stronger alternatives might there be? One recurring theme in nationalist talk is the vision of a Scottish future purified of the taint of oppressive empire and of aggressive foreign policy. Thus Alex Salmond has written of Scottish independence as a happy surrender of Britain's post-imperial delusion about global influence, and in his 2012 visit to Dublin he tried to dissociate the Scots from empire's agents and align them with its victims, claiming that the people of Ireland would know that "bullying and hectoring the Scottish people from London ain't going to work". (His opportunistic misreading of history was rebuked by Seamus Mallon, former leader of Northern Ireland's moderate Irish nationalist party, the SDLP, who gently reminded Salmond that the Scots had been among the perpetrators of British bullying in Ireland.)
This anti-imperialist rationale for Scottish independence has achieved greater sophistication in a recent book by the Glasgow churchman, academic and Yes campaigner, Doug Gay. In Honey from the Lion: Christianity and the Ethics of Nationalism (SCM Press, £19.99), Gay reads Scotland's history in the 19th century as a tale of normal national development arrested by greed for the economic benefits and political power of the British Empire. Correspondingly, secession from the UK would be a morally purifying act of repentance from imperialist sin. For this reason Gay reckons that "the question of defence displays the contrast between unionism and independence like no other issue". As he and other Scottish post-colonialists see it, British identity is essentially bound up with empire, and empire is by definition culturally oppressive and politically aggressive — as is confirmed by Britain's continuing tendency to involve itself in American military interventions overseas. Independence, therefore, would mean Scotland's penitent withdrawal from the role of imperialist global policeman; and if it would also force Britain's early retirement from that role and the loss of its permanent seat on the UN Security Council, then that would be good for the rest of the UK.
This moralistic reading of imperial history and international relations is facile. Of course it's true that the imperial British were usually convinced of the moral superiority of their own culture — which is sufficient to damn them in the eyes of multiculturalist Yes campaigners. But I doubt that many multiculturalists approve of cultural customs and social institutions such as female genital mutilation, forced marriage, honour killing, the self-immolation of widows or slavery. In those cases, they presume to stand in moral judgment upon cultures that do. Then arises the question of whether or not to tolerate such appalling practices in one's own national community. I wouldn't tolerate them in Britain, and I very much doubt that self-styled "progressive" nationalists would tolerate them in an independent Scotland. If so, the further question arises of why we should tolerate among others what we will not tolerate among ourselves. This is a morally complex matter, but if the decision to intervene is a morally fraught one, then so is the decision to turn a blind eye. Christian and liberal imperialists sometimes decided to take the risks of intervening and I, for one, admire them for it. Ideological multiculturalists and anti-capitalists might want to repent of David Livingstone's Scottish efforts to encourage the production of cash crops in central Africa. Others, however, will be proud of him, when they learn that his motive was to enable the Africans to trade in something other than slaves. Yes, the British Empire presided over the infamous massacre at Amritsar in 1919 and the outrages of the Black and Tans in Ireland in 1920-22; but it also pioneered the suppression of the slave trade in the 19th century and was the only opponent of fascism in the field from May 1940 until June 1941. The existence of the Commonwealth is evidence that the empire's historical record was not simply execrable. Rather, it was morally mixed — as was Scotland's before the Union and as it would be after it.
If tales about higher political ideals and greater wealth are planks too weak to bear the weight of the Yes campaign, then what stronger alternatives might there be? One recurring theme in nationalist talk is the vision of a Scottish future purified of the taint of oppressive empire and of aggressive foreign policy. Thus Alex Salmond has written of Scottish independence as a happy surrender of Britain's post-imperial delusion about global influence, and in his 2012 visit to Dublin he tried to dissociate the Scots from empire's agents and align them with its victims, claiming that the people of Ireland would know that "bullying and hectoring the Scottish people from London ain't going to work". (His opportunistic misreading of history was rebuked by Seamus Mallon, former leader of Northern Ireland's moderate Irish nationalist party, the SDLP, who gently reminded Salmond that the Scots had been among the perpetrators of British bullying in Ireland.)
This anti-imperialist rationale for Scottish independence has achieved greater sophistication in a recent book by the Glasgow churchman, academic and Yes campaigner, Doug Gay. In Honey from the Lion: Christianity and the Ethics of Nationalism (SCM Press, £19.99), Gay reads Scotland's history in the 19th century as a tale of normal national development arrested by greed for the economic benefits and political power of the British Empire. Correspondingly, secession from the UK would be a morally purifying act of repentance from imperialist sin. For this reason Gay reckons that "the question of defence displays the contrast between unionism and independence like no other issue". As he and other Scottish post-colonialists see it, British identity is essentially bound up with empire, and empire is by definition culturally oppressive and politically aggressive — as is confirmed by Britain's continuing tendency to involve itself in American military interventions overseas. Independence, therefore, would mean Scotland's penitent withdrawal from the role of imperialist global policeman; and if it would also force Britain's early retirement from that role and the loss of its permanent seat on the UN Security Council, then that would be good for the rest of the UK.
This moralistic reading of imperial history and international relations is facile. Of course it's true that the imperial British were usually convinced of the moral superiority of their own culture — which is sufficient to damn them in the eyes of multiculturalist Yes campaigners. But I doubt that many multiculturalists approve of cultural customs and social institutions such as female genital mutilation, forced marriage, honour killing, the self-immolation of widows or slavery. In those cases, they presume to stand in moral judgment upon cultures that do. Then arises the question of whether or not to tolerate such appalling practices in one's own national community. I wouldn't tolerate them in Britain, and I very much doubt that self-styled "progressive" nationalists would tolerate them in an independent Scotland. If so, the further question arises of why we should tolerate among others what we will not tolerate among ourselves. This is a morally complex matter, but if the decision to intervene is a morally fraught one, then so is the decision to turn a blind eye. Christian and liberal imperialists sometimes decided to take the risks of intervening and I, for one, admire them for it. Ideological multiculturalists and anti-capitalists might want to repent of David Livingstone's Scottish efforts to encourage the production of cash crops in central Africa. Others, however, will be proud of him, when they learn that his motive was to enable the Africans to trade in something other than slaves. Yes, the British Empire presided over the infamous massacre at Amritsar in 1919 and the outrages of the Black and Tans in Ireland in 1920-22; but it also pioneered the suppression of the slave trade in the 19th century and was the only opponent of fascism in the field from May 1940 until June 1941. The existence of the Commonwealth is evidence that the empire's historical record was not simply execrable. Rather, it was morally mixed — as was Scotland's before the Union and as it would be after it.
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