Opinion Two cheers for Scottish independence

However, the simplicity of the Scottish referendum resides in other considerations, too: watching developments in Libya, Iraq, and Syria, one admires the Scots for attempting to settle this question through something other than the gun. The Scottish referendum, if nothing else, gives one hope that American-style electoral democracy, a furious sound show signifying absolutely nothing except the lifelessness of an American politics that has been consumed in equal measure by money and sheer stupidity, is not the last word in electoral politics.

Many arguments have been advanced by both the proponents and detractors of Scottish independence. Not surprisingly, nearly all the arguments that have been encountered in mainstream media verge on the economic and what might be called the narrowly political. England’s three major political parties have spoken in one voice in suggesting that the dissolution of the Union will be a major blow to Scotland itself. It has been argued that bereft of its union with England, Scotland would experience the loss of jobs, the British pound, and the flight of capital; as a small nation-state, it is likely to become quite invisible and would be without the benefit of the political and economic security umbrella under which it is presently sheltered.

The advocates of Scottish independence argue otherwise, insisting, before anything else, that Scots must be in a position to decide their own future and political outcomes. Scotland’s priorities, argue the proponents of independence, are poorly reflected in the constitution of the British government. There is little appetite in Scotland, for instance, for foreign wars, and a good many people would be only too happy to be rid of the nuclear submarine base. Scotland has 59 members of parliament in Westminster but only one belongs to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s ruling Tory party. On the economic front, the cheerleaders for Scottish independence have argued that the Scots are much more hospitable towards the idea of a welfare state than the English, and working-class support for Scottish independence is particularly high. The notion that revenues from the North Sea oil and natural gas fields would, in the event of independence, be used only on projects for the advancement of the Scots is often trumpeted as the clinching argument, though it is germane to point out that the $8 billion in North Sea energy revenues that the British government received in 2013 amount to only about 3 per cent of the Scottish economy.

If there is to be a compelling argument for Scottish independence, it must surely emanate from the tortuous history of the Union and the brutality with which the Scots were treated by the English for the greater part of two centuries. To suggest this is by no means to excuse the Scots from the part they played in forging the British empire; indeed, they occupied a disproportionately prominent role in Indian administration. But it is perhaps a truism that only those who have been brutalised go on to brutalise others, and the first principle for the student of colonialism is to come to the awareness that the English did not practise in their colonies in Asia or Africa anything that they had not first tested out on their subjects in Scotland and Ireland. A few fragments of this history are essential to convey the enormity of English injustice.

Following the Jacobite uprising of 1745, an attempt by “Bonnie Prince Charlie” to win the British crown for the Stuarts, Scottish Highland clansmen, who aided in this failed attempt, had to bear the burden of callous retribution. What the English effected in Scotland was nothing short of ethnic cleansing: the clan system was destroyed and the English struck at the heart of the Scottish way of life. The tartan plaid and kilt were banned by the Act of Proscription of 1746-47. In the precise language of the act, which would not allow for any lesser penalties, the offence of wearing Highland clothing would attract “imprisonment, without bail, during the space of six months, and no longer; and being convicted of a second offence” would make the offender “liable to be transported”. Highlanders were deprived of the right to own arms. Gaelic could no longer be taught in schools. One might easily add to this list of persecutions, but nothing summarises better what would become the pacification — an ugly word, which describes well how colonial powers acted with utter disregard for human life in their colonies — of the Scots than what is known to historians as the “Highland Clearances”, which led to the mass-scale removal of the population of the Highlands, leaving it, wrote the popular historian John Prebble, “void of most, possibly 85-90 per cent, of its people, trees and forests.”

In his charming but now little-read book, Two Cheers for Democracy, E.M. Forster, while championing English-style democracy over other forms of government, withheld the third cheer. The English, he argued, had one insufferable vice: hypocrisy. How far this is peculiar to the English rather than a common condition afflicting a good deal of humankind is a question that need not be addressed at the moment.

Taking my cue from Forster, the argument for Scottish independence deserves two cheers. England, frankly, has not been humbled enough — its immigration policies continue to be rotten, its visa regimes for citizens of its former colonies are not merely absurdly insulting but draconian, its disdain for the contributions of its own working class to the shaping of a humane society is appalling, and virulent racism is encountered in nearly every aspect of English life. The non-violent break-up of Great Britain is a most desirable thing; one hopes that if the referendum for Scottish independence succeeds, it will be a prelude to even more desirable outcomes, such as the break-up of the US, which is far too big and powerful for its own good and certainly for the good of the rest of the world.

Second, no arguments are too strong for the devolution of power, the decentralisation of authority, and autonomy for people who might choose their independence for ethnic, religious, linguistic, or other reasons. There is an optimum size for a nation-state, and a great many nation-states are already far too big to both be governed efficiently and at the same time give all their people equal opportunities.

Nevertheless, there is something to be wary about in the demand for Scottish independence: nationalism is almost always accompanied by a diminishing capacity for self-reflection. When the Union dissolves, who will the Scot set herself up against to know better her own self?

This is the problem that nationalism has not yet been able to resolve, and there is little to suggest that Scottish independence will yield new wisdom on this old and intractable problem.

The writer is professor of history at UCLA.