Wings Over Scotland

If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you could be forgiven for thinking that the “positive case for the Union” was some sort of mythical beast, akin to the fabled unicorn. But that’s not quite the case. It did once exist, many moons ago, but has since become extinct – a victim of an ever-changing world where it was unable to compete and it couldn’t adapt to its new environment, thereby spelling its doom.

So just what was the positive case when it existed? Let’s find out.

We can break the benefits of the Union down into four strands; economic, military, political and social. Economic benefits were the driver for the creation of the Union (that and a little bribery), but over the intervening years between then and now, the world changed and new benefits accrued before they too were eventually lost.

Economic –  in our recent look into the Darien Scheme we saw how access to trade was the main driver for Scotland joining a union with England. Without the Union, Scotland would have struggled against the protectionist measures of the British Empire (or English Empire as it would have been). Being part of the British Empire gave Scotland access to the commonwealth markets and allowed the Scottish to flourish both as traders and as empire builders in the civil service. This brought wealth and prosperity back to Scotland and was responsible for the large Scottish diaspora throughout the world.

Military – the exploits of the British military are world-renowned (either for good or for evil, but that’s a discussion for another day). After 1707 the world changed around the Union – it became increasingly apparent that with warring neighbours and expansionist European powers, there was strength to be had in unity. With dangerous neighbours out for themselves and hell-bent on taking what they wanted by force, the Union provided security that Scotland could rely upon, and the spending on defence in such a world was appropriate to the size of the threat.

This meant that Scotland benefited greatly in its shipyards and communities from the money spent on the military. The Scots did however pay a heavy price in blood as they bore the brunt of military action and participated to a disproportionate degree in imperial wars and in defence of these islands. (For instance, a full third of Nelson’s navy was in fact Scottish, and therefore probably not all that fussed by his famous exhortation “England expects that every man will do his duty”. See also the higher levels of military service in the Scottish population versus the UK average, which persist through to the modern day.)

Political – although originally based on military power, the political influence of the empire was also paramount in securing a stable trading environment for the Scottish merchants. With the might of the British military behind it, the Empire could mould smaller countries to its needs, and where necessary dominate them. This left Britain with strong bargaining positions during negotiations, and international politics became an easier game to win. Today Unionists call this a “strong voice on the world stage”, but it needs to be remembered that the 18th century was a time when only the strong would be listened to, so for Scotland the Union was a roundabout way of having some sort of voice abroad. In today’s United Nations world, the situation is rather different.

Social – the Union created a common purpose and drive that propelled the Scots nation to the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, and provided the culture from which we still (just about) benefit today. It gave opportunities for trade in not only goods, but in tastes, beliefs, language and social norms throughout the nations of the Union, and created the generally-harmonious state (in both senses of the word) in which we now live. This shared social bond saw the creation of the two NHSs (NHS Scotland, and NHS England/Wales/Northern Ireland) and the advent of the welfare state.

These ties bind us all throughout these lands, from the following of Premier League football and watching of the same TV programmes, through to the common pain felt at the loss of soldiers on duty or the sympathy felt towards the victims of tragedy anywhere on these islands. The social fabric has been woven deep, with the Union historically acting as the only thing preventing barriers from being raised again.

But as we’re about to see, these benefits are no longer the sole preserve of the Union, and would exist today regardless of whether the Union remained or not. So where did it all start to go wrong for the Union, and what were the events that started it on its long decline down the slippery slope to the real prospect of dissolution?

The Union saw its first signs of weakness as far back as the 1880s, with the rise of Irish nationalism. This led to the development of so called “Home Rule” bills, the first of which (in 1886) was defeated in the House of Commons, while the second (in 1893) was passed by the Commons but rejected by the House of Lords.

A third home rule bill was introduced in 1912 and finally passed by Westminster. It was intended to provide self-government for Ireland as part of a devolved framework within the United Kingdom – the Act was the first law ever passed by Westminster that sought to establish devolved government. But subsequent developments in Ireland led to postponements, ultimately meaning that the Act never took effect.

There was uproar in Ireland at the tagging-on of a military service bill to the Act, so that Home Rule was tied to service in the British military. The likelihood of enforced conscription created a backlash and outraged the Irish nationalist parties at Westminster, who walked out in protest and returned to Ireland to organise opposition.

Upon the breakout of the Great War in 1914, the Irish found themselves with an opportunity to take action while the British military was otherwise engaged. The Easter Rising was an insurrection staged during Easter week in 1916. It was mounted by Irish Republicans, who seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic independent of Britain. After seven days of fighting the rising was suppressed, and its leaders were court-martialled and executed.  The impact on the Government at the time meant that they could not afford to ignore or delay on the subject of Home Rule any longer – a fact that was highlighted at the UK general election in 1918, when republicans won 73 seats out of 105 in Ireland.

In January 1919, the elected members of Sinn Féin who were not still in prison at the time issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) and convened the first Dáil, establishing the Irish Republic. The British government refused to accept the legitimacy of the newly-declared nation and instead pressed ahead with a fourth home-rule bill. This led directly to the Irish War of Independence the same year, with a ceasefire only being declared in 1921.

Yet in the intervening years, the fourth home-rule bill continued its progress through Parliament and was eventually enacted as the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The post-ceasefire talks led to the December 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, which ended British rule in most of Ireland, and after a ten-month transitional period overseen by a provisional government, the Irish Free State was established.

This was the first great schism to afflict the Union, although the impact of what would later become known as the First World War was also a great driver in showing the massive divide in power within it, with the poor relied on as cannon fodder for a war few at the time understood and would not have participated in were it not for national pride.

The (now slightly less-)United Kingdom ploughed on, despite what was effectively an amputation after the exit of (most of) the Irish. The implications were clear – the great empire was not impregnable and not all-powerful, a message that would reverberate around the globe. It wasn’t until after the Second World War, however, that the power of the British Empire – and by association the positive case for the Union – began to unravel.

The greater British state, aware of this threat to its continued unity, had already begun to deploy the rhetoric of fear against the various nationalist movements within its borders. In 1931, for example, Winston Churchill said of Indian independence:

“At present the Government of India is responsible to the British Parliament, which is the oldest, the least unwise and the most democratic parliament in the world. To transfer that responsibility to this highly artificial and restricted oligarchy of Indian politicians would be a retrograde act. It would be a shameful act. It would be an act of cowardice, desertion and dishonour. It would bring grave material evils, both upon India and Great Britain; but it would bring upon Great Britain a moral shame which would challenge for ever the reputation of the British Empire as a valiant and benignant force in the history of mankind.

“The faithful discharge of our duty in India is not only a cause, but a symbol. It is the touchstone of our fortunes in the present difficult time. If we cannot do our duty in India, be sure we shall have shown ourselves unworthy to preserve the vast empire which still centres upon this small island. The same spirit of unimaginative incompetence and weak compromise and supine drift will paralyse trade and business and prevent either financial reorganisation or economic resurgence.”

Churchill was right about being unable to preserve the vast Empire, as dominions began to break away after the end of the Second World War such as Rhodesia, Kenya and India. They employed varying methods, yet all were successful in achieving independence. It’s no coincidence that Unionists harp back to WW2 as a beacon for Britain – it’s because after 1945, the Britain they like to portray to the world no longer existed. The war had left the UK and the remains of its Empire facing a massive mountain of debt, and provided opportunities for more independence movements to take hold.

But the two world wars had other effects too. They’d united the world community of nations in determination to work together to ensure that such catastrophic events could never be allowed to happen again. It was to this end that global organisations were commissioned (building from the failure of the League Of Nations) to act as arbiters in the world of international politics, finance and trade. To this end, the concept of economic security in a liberal international economic system that enhanced the possibilities of post-war peace was created, in the form of the Bretton Woods system.

The link between economic stability and security was widely perceived by many – one of whom was Cordell Hull, the United States Secretary of State from 1933-44. Hull believed that the fundamental causes of the two world wars lay in economic discrimination and trade competition. Specifically, he had in mind the trade and exchange controls of Nazi Germany and the imperial-preference system practiced by Britain, by which members or former members of the British Empire were accorded special trade status (itself provoked by German, French, and American protectionist policies). Hull argued:

“Unhampered trade dovetailed with peace; high tariffs, trade barriers, and unfair economic competition, with war… if we could get a freer flow of trade… freer in the sense of fewer discriminations and obstructions… so that one country would not be deadly jealous of another and the living standards of all countries might rise, thereby eliminating the economic dissatisfaction that breeds war, we might have a reasonable chance of lasting peace.”

Setting up a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the international monetary system, the planners at Bretton Woods established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which today is part of the World Bank Group. Although the United States unilaterally terminated convertibility of the dollar to gold on August 15^th 1971, with the result being that the Bretton Woods system officially ended, the lasting effect was to set up the systems of international trade in currency and set the path for the world we live in today.

With the Bretton Woods system in place, the nations now turned their attention to the political interactions of the international community. Hold tight, readers, we’re going to zip you through all of this as swiftly as possible, in a one-stop reference guide to the creation of the modern world, or Everything You Ever Needed To Know About Earth But Couldn’t Get A Unionist To Tell You.

If you find yourself starting to flag at any point, just look at the unicorn-sex cartoon again for a few seconds until you calm down. You’ll be fine. You’re safe here.

The United Nations came into being in 1945. The UN’s stated aims were (and are) facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace. One of the first actions of the UN to have significant impact was the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a multilateral agreement regulating international trade with the purpose of achieving “substantial reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers and the elimination of preferences, on a reciprocal and mutually advantageous basis”. It was signed in 1947, and remained in place until 1993 when it was replaced by the World Trade Organization.

The WTO deals with regulation of trade between participating countries. It provides a framework for negotiating and formalising and administering trade agreements, and a dispute-resolution process aimed at enforcing participants’ adherence to WTO agreements. Additionally, it is the WTO’s duty to review and propagate the national trade policies, and to ensure the coherence and transparency of trade policies through surveillance in global economic policy-making. Essentially it removed the protectionist measures of the age of empires and opened trade to free competition. The inherent benefits once provided by the Union, of a monopoly on trade, vanished into the modern world of global commerce.

Closer to home, further advances in integration and cooperation were undertaken as a result of the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 under the Treaty of Paris. The ECSC was first proposed by French foreign minister Robert Schuman on 9 May 1950 as a way to prevent further war between France and Germany. He declared his aim was to “make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible”.

The Treaty was signed not only by France and West Germany but also by Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Between these states the ECSC would create a common market for coal and steel and act as the forerunner to the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC), now the European Union (EU).

The EU advanced this integration through the development of a single market through standardised laws which apply in all member states. Within the Schengen Area (which includes EU and non-EU states) passport controls have been abolished. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital, enact legislation in justice and home affairs, and maintain common policies on trade, agriculture, fisheries and regional development. An alternative but related strand of organisation was developed in 1960 by Norway and Switzerland, with Iceland and Lichtenstein joining later; it became known as the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

The EU and EFTA now worked together to create the European Economic Area. The European Economic Area (EEA) unites the 27 EU Member States and three EFTA States (Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway) into an internal market governed by the same basic rules. These rules aim to enable goods, services, capital, and persons to move freely about the EEA in an open and competitive environment, a concept referred to as the four freedoms.

In addition, the Agreement covers cooperation in other important areas such as research and development, education, social policy, the environment, consumer protection, tourism and culture, collectively known as “flanking and horizontal” policies. It guarantees equal rights and obligations within the internal market for citizens and economic operators in the EEA. This meant that membership of the EEA and not the Union became the necessary issue to ensure free trade and access to markets.

The UN, EU and EFTA have resulted in a shift from large nations dictating international politics and having the only effective voices, to the more common form of “flotilla” politics where small nations band together to lobby for common goals – constantly changing partners depending on the topic at hand, and amplifying the voice of small nations. It allows a small country like Scotland to always campaign in its own interests as even if it loses the argument, it gets its views across and can influence decisions to reduce negative impacts.

The UK as a whole also has to do the same thing in these international communities, so within the Union the Scottish voice is already diluted before the arguments even reach the supra-national body. The benefits of having a strong voice no longer reside with the Union, but out of it.

In addition to the trade benefits, the development of the EU, EFTA and the EEA brought about a stable European community that was so tightly interwoven as to make war between member states highly unlikely – the costs to any country had now become more than any benefits that could accrue from aggressive action. But further integration and consolidation was also achieved in response to the presence of threats from outside Europe. The Cold War helped to secure peace in the new community by forcing the member countries to forge an alliance with the USA against the threat of Soviet Russia. Its name was NATO.

NATO is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack on any member by any external party. The combined military spending of NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world’s defence spending, and members regularly interact and participate in joint projects and training. NATO requires that member states harbour nuclear weapons for the alliance and are trained in their deployment, even if the country involved has no nuclear deterrent of its own.

In addition to the 28 full NATO member countries there are also 22 countries participating in NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, aimed at creating trust between NATO and other states in Europe and the former Soviet Union. This involves joint exercises, support and training, while allowing the countries involved to maintain their non-nuclear defence positions. This has provided unprecedented cooperation and support throughout the western world in military aspects and has meant that the West is, after the fall of Communism in the early 1990s, without a credible enemy threatening its borders.

The benefit of being tied to a large neighbour for mutual defence no longer holds sway as it is the alliance of many countries, some even smaller than Scotland, which now provides that stability. Whether Scotland contributes to that alliance via the Union or independently is of little consequence, as the outcome is the same in both instances.

As a small country on an island off the coast of this large and benign buffer zone, there is no credible military threat to Scotland anywhere on the planet. Gone are the days when an invasion force from overseas is a realistic prospect – terrorism has become the new scourge of the West, and tackling this requires international coordination and cooperation, not armies. (Indeed, it is more likely that a small non-aggressive country would attract less attention from terrorism than the UK government and its foreign interventionism.)

These organisations are now so familiar to us that we forget that they are only slightly more than half a century old, and in many cases much younger. Their combined effect was to usher in an age of globalisation and mutual cooperation in which supra-national bodies hold ever more power over the activities of states and the lives of their citizens.

Meanwhile, the UK has seen the advent of a politics of neoliberal “consensus”, which has been resoundingly rejected by the Scottish electorate, yet due to disparities in size between Scotland and England has been foisted upon the Scots anyway. The Thatcher years saw a massive loss of industry and jobs as the economy was rebalanced along ideological lines, using the money obtained through oil revenues to improve the economic outlook of the South East of England and its financial services sector to the detriment of the economy elsewhere in the UK.

The huge concentration of power in London and the surrounding area was only partly solved by the advent of devolution. The Scottish nation remains tied to the decisions of Westminster through the Barnett formula, whereby the funding of Scotland’s devolved functions is determined in relation to 80% of the funding given to England. Scotland is not in control of its own resources, reliant instead on a “block grant”, often characterised by nationalists as “pocket money”.

The radically-different modern world has impacted on the Union by removing the privileges and benefits it once offered in international trade, politics and defence. It’s opened up a more collegiate approach to international relations, where it’s no longer necessary to be a military superpower or major economic engine to have a say, thanks to the creation of enduring supra-national bodies. Membership of the Union does not bring Scotland any inherent economic advantages in today’s world, a fact picked up nearly four decades ago in the infamously-suppressed McCrone report:

“Membership of the EEC affects the economics of Scottish independence in several important respects. It guarantees access to English and Continental markets in a way which would not be possible otherwise. Without EEC Scotland would always run the risk that England might find it expedient to impose an import surcharge, a quantitative control or even a tariff on goods coming from Scotland. It was largely to eliminate this that Scotland accepted the Union of 1707.

“New EEC rules would have the same effect and for all nine member states. In the unlikely event of England leaving the EEC, Scottish access to the other countries could in time largely compensate for any restrictions that might arise on English trade.

“Access to EEC should also help to provide a major stimulus to Scottish industrial investment. The EEC is not only a bigger market than the UK but its economy has been much more buoyant than that of Britain. There is no doubt that the exclusion of the United Kingdom had a damaging effect on investment and that foreign firms in particular preferred development within EEC. To gain the full advantage of this stimulus from membership it will, of course, be necessary to have a stable domestic economy. High rates of inflation and a declining currency such as the UK has had recently would do much to discourage foreign companies from coming to Scotland.

“North Sea oil could have far-reaching consequences for Scottish membership of EEC because of the tremendously increased political power it would confer. Without oil other members might pay little enough regard to Scotland; her voting power would not be large and it might indeed be argued that she could exert more leverage on the Community as part of the United Kingdom. As the major producer of oil in Western Europe, however, Scotland would be in a key position and other countries would be extremely foolish if they did not seek to do all they could to accommodate Scottish interests.

“For Scotland the net cost of Common Agricultural Policy, which features so large in British discussions would be at most some £40m a year, a small sum compared with the balance of payments gain from North Sea oil. The more common policies come to be decided in Brussels in the years ahead, the more Scotland would benefit from having her own Commissioner in the EEC as of right and her own voice in the Council of Ministers instead of relying on the indirect, and so far hardly satisfactory, form of vicarious representation through UK departments.”

On a social level, we still speak the same language, we can still enjoy the same TV shows and through the advent of modern technology we can remain in communication better than ever before. The end of the political union will have no bearing on the social union – for instance, there are no border posts between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (the UK), so as long as Scotland remains outside of the Schengen agreement and remains within the British Isles Travel Zone then the fabric of the social union will remain untouched regardless of the status of the political union.

All that leaves the positive case for the Union with is sentiment, and if sentiment is all that’s left of the “positive case for the Union” then it no longer has any relevance to the present day. The Union benefits of the past are more than outweighed by the democratic and economic deficiencies of the current Westminster cabal, of all three main parties.

The UK Government is acting as the living embodiment of Churchill’s statement that the “spirit of unimaginative incompetence and weak compromise and supine drift will paralyse trade and business and prevent either financial reorganisation or economic resurgence”.

The positive case for the Union existed until the end of empire and the advent of the modern age. Its funeral may be held in autumn 2014. Its children, though, will survive.