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FRAMING THOUGHTS OF SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE DURING THE INTERREGNUM
…the Scottish Parliament, which adjourned on 25 March 1707, is hereby reconvened Winnie Ewing, 12 May 1999.
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Catriona M.M. Macdonald
In 1999 Winnie Ewing’s statement at the opening of the Scottish parliament proved that even in the ‘New Scotland’, the past would be mustered in the service of politics, and that – in the process – historical accuracy mattered less than the extent to which precedent appeared to serve the passions of the moment. You see, the parliament adjourned in 1707 has not been nor likely will it ever be reconvened: while it was the (less than) representative chamber of an independent country, the Scottish parliament of twentieth-century vintage is a devolved assembly with a restricted remit – parliamentary sovereignty is retained in Westminster. It is simply not the same, and that matters. The years separating Union and devolved government were not a ‘three–century interregnum’, as Tom Nairn has suggested. 1 To style them as such is to underestimate the sheer ambition and success of the Union project and similarly to over-estimate what devolution in and of itself can actually achieve. If the post-Union years are an interregnum between states of independence, we are still living in that time, and its duration and resolution remain a matter of conjecture. At present, claiming the phrase of the Edinburgh poet, Ron Butlin, past and future are ‘contrapuntally combined’. In addressing whether, how and when Scottish independence is to be secured, this piece follows a long-standing precedent in these matters, being ‘a work not of research, but in the main at least, of inference’ – a framing, if you will, of likelihoods.2 It is unsettling territory for the historian, and perhaps because of this, it begins by addressing which arguments best ground a claim to independence before cautiously exploring whether many, if any, of these might convince enough Scots that the difference between independent and devolved government matters enough to effect changes that would eventually end the interregnum. Why independence? Arguments grounding claims for independence have typically been predicated on either intrinsic and/or utilitarian interpretations of constitutional alternatives. For some, like Paul Scott, independence is seen as a nation’s ‘normal’ state, and is therefore claimed as a ‘right’.3 Neil MacCormick, meanwhile, rejected independence as simply an end in itself.4 With Scott, he saw in independence a means to an end – the best means of facilitating the health of the nation, however that might be interpreted. Indeed, the richest debates and the most convincing arguments are to be found when the purpose of constitutional change is foregrounded, and claims of rights which tend to foreclose on debate and are often of dubious authenticity at best, are kept
at arm’s length. The wars of the twentieth century taught Scots that the righteous rhetoric of selfdetermination cost – cost peace, cost lives. As war-torn Europe reworked the jigsaw of national borders with each generation, and as former colonies struggled with the realities of independence in a world dominated by multi-national corporations, Scots were justifiably sceptical that independence was simply an unalloyed ‘good’. What then might and ought to convince Scots that independence should be seized and the Union broken, or at least re-negotiated? The claims of the past cast long shadows in this debate, but it is clear that, no matter their romantic allure, demands for independence in the twenty-first century cannot simply select from the rhetoric of 1320 (Declaration of Arbroath) or 1638 (National Covenant). Instead, quite simply, Scots will have to be convinced that in the future things will be better under independence than they are now. What ‘things’, and when and in what ways ‘better’, is the stuff of argument. And here there is forewarning in the devolution settlement: it may be argued that the ‘settled will’ of the Scottish people at the end of the twentieth century was not in favour of devolution per se, but in favour of constitutional change that cost Scotland little but was a means of securing ‘Scottish solutions to Scottish problems’. Couched in the principles of popular sovereignty and social justice the devolution moment marked the re-territorialisation of British politics – the affirmation that Scotland was a more meaningful geo-political space than the UK for most Scots and that nationality mattered. But it was not so much that Scots wanted vastly different things for their people than the rest of the UK (although there is evidence to suggest that in some respects more collective responses to welfare are, for example, more popular in the north). Rather, there was a certain matter of emphasis, a certain set of priorities that could be marked out territorially and was informed by interest groups and traditions with few parallels in England. 5
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From all this, then, the most obvious conclusion to be derived is that support for independence (or an alternative constitutional arrangement, e.g. federalism) will rise if, as and when it is appreciated that – despite the costs (and these have yet to be established) – devolved government within the Union no longer promises the best means of ensuring ‘Scottish solutions’ to the Scottish problems that then matter most. There are few absolutes in all of this. Given that we cannot see in to the future, conjecture is at a premium. This is familiar territory for Scottish historians: conjectural history was one of the most important intellectual foundations on which rested many of the gifts of the Scottish Enlightenment.6 As noted by Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), ‘when we cannot trace the process by which an event has been produced, it is often of importance to be able to show how it may have been produced by natural causes.’7 In turn, conjectural history would inspire Scottish novelists: Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814) is a case in point, as is John Galt’s novel, The Annals of the Parish (1821) which he described as a ‘Treatise on the history of society in the west of Scotland during the reign of George the Third.’8 If only the future was behind us, then this author would be well placed to offer a convincing analysis, or at least a plausible frame of analysis, or perhaps a fictional fancy. Yet, extrapolating from all this an approach to the future is difficult: despite rumours to the contrary, we have yet to reach the end of history, and predictions are fraught with danger.9 Politicians and academics have been caught out. Five years before devolution was secured Paul Scott found it ‘improbable’ that a British government would deliver Scottish devolution.10 Meanwhile, Michael Keating’s prediction in 2009 that ‘it is unlikely that a single party will ever gain a majority in the Scottish Parliament’ was proved wrong two years later, when the SNP recorded a remarkable victory at the Holyrood elections.11 What this seems to point to is that when it comes to debates around independence the one thing that can be studied with any degree of confidence is less the likelihood of a certain outcome than the types of argument that will most likely influence the will to change – no matter what shape change takes. Arguments, however, rely on reflective and predictive assertions, thus reaffirming the temporal aspect of constitutional change. There seems to be no escaping the conditional and contingent quality of the debate. When one asks the question can be as important as why and how one asks it. This makes how one understands the past, the present and the future more than simply contextual issues: they are, rather, foundational. Time matters.
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Past The poet, Edwin Muir, reflected in ‘Scotland, 1941’, We were a tribe, a family, a people. Wallace and Bruce guard now a painted field, And all may read the folio of our fable Peruse the sword, the sceptre and the shield. In similar fashion although in a different tongue, Sydney Goodsir Smith gave ‘The Declaration of Arbroath, April 6th 1320’ the poetic treatment: In Thirteen-twanty Scotland tauld The warld in the words o raucle men She humbled neck til King nor State The commontie was soverain! But until we lowse the land The men of Arbroath sleep in shame. What both these extracts suggest – and what many commentators have sought to prove – is that the past is one of the most sure foundations on which to build the case for independence.12 Having been independent once, so the reasoning might run, we ought to be/ should be/could be independent again. Thereafter, there are optional extras: like Muir and Goodsir Smith, one view might suggest that we somehow ‘owe’ it to our ancestors whom we have let down by cowardly compromise and/or military defeat to reclaim our freedom. Associated with this is the more damaging suggestion that there are ancient wrongs that can and ought to be righted. Yet another option might be styled the ‘special case’ argument. Alasdair Gray comes close to this in Why the Scots Should Rule Scotland (1992) where he informs us that the ‘Bannockburn victory made Scotland the first European nation state’.13 While history certainly offers emotive power to what can be otherwise uninspiring constitutional debates regarding the minutiae of sovereignty, it can be, however, a most unruly ally for nationalists. Looking forward, it actually has the power to impede the next step in the conjectural future of Scotland. Over the years, the reliance by nationalists on arguments rooted in history has saddled the cause of independence with a disabling baggage of myths and heroes. The medieval guardians of Scottish independence have become so closely associated with the cause that Scottish independence itself seems almost impossible without them and all the more unattainable for having been elevated to such a revered status for so long. It is not, perhaps – as some authors might have it – that we are lacking in confidence or enfeebled by the inferiorising intentions of the metropolitan chattering classes, but that we have come to see independence as something bigger than it actually is, perhaps even
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bigger than the nation itself.14 Having a timeless quality, our present seems unable to contain it: it seems implausible that something so idealized might be realized by the prosaic mechanisms of modern politics. The ballot box and the committee chamber are as naught when compared to the sword and the battle field. Falkirk (1298), Flodden (1513), Culloden (1746): despite our better judgements, we have yet to fully abandon the belief that only countries worth dying for have a right to exist. Indeed, having contrasted for so long the courage of Bruce, Wallace, and even Prince Charlie in opposition to the pen-wielding Commissioners of 1707 (Burns’ ‘parcel of rogues’), whose deals behind the scenes appeared to speak more of malice and self-interest than statesmanship, it seems somehow rather inappropriate that independence should eventually be delivered in similar fashion – over a table and at the cost of reputations rather than lives. Here we stumble on the central paradox in the nationalist interpretation of the past. It is hardly the strongest defence of independence that it was so easily surrendered in 1707.
Present It is no coincidence that Scottish politics have matured alongside our historiography: that doesn’t mean history now offers a clearer guide to the future (in fact quite the reverse). While early modern notions of sovereignty – take Scotland in 1603, for example – may offer valuable insights into possible new (non-unitary) constitutional frameworks in the UK, they do not make them more likely simply because we have been there before.18 Indeed, it is a contention of this piece that nationalist arguments that eschew the allure of the distant past – in the current context at least – are perhaps the strongest they have in their arsenal. Since devolution, the present has rhymed into reason a vocabulary of possible futures that was previously the lingua franca of only a small coterie of political scientists. Now more Scots than ever before, it appears, are no longer fearful of words that once appeared to threaten the very essence of their identity and interests: separation, divorce, independence.
The story which followed was no less perplexing. Since 1707 experience has taught Scots that while statehood might well be for some the pre-eminent expression of nationhood, the nation itself can be preserved in states short of full independence. Unionists, like nationalists, are well within their rights to pick and choose which episodes in Scotland’s past best suit their contemporary purposes, and modern historians have dealt them a powerful hand with which to play the nationalists at their own game. Instead of the death warrant of the Scottish state, the Treaty of 1707 is seen by some as nothing short of a constitution of Scottish rights in the Union. As Rait noted in 1920, ‘the terms of the Act of Union and its working support and protect the true nationalism of Scotland’.15 In more recent times, Colin Kidd has made the counterintuitive point that nationalists too have even adopted this interpretation: ‘several nationalists have… launched grievances and claims on behalf of the Scottish people on the basis of the rights for Scotland guaranteed within the Articles of Union.’16 He concludes: ‘There was a narrower line between unionism and nationalism than most Scottish historians and political scientists have hitherto imagined.’17 Again, history offers few facts that might exclusively ground the claims of either side on the future of Scotland. If the Union has actually guarded aspects of Scottish distinctiveness for three hundred years, why should we resist full independence, or (from the other side) what need is there to break a marriage of convenience that has survived this long? You can have it both ways.
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For what it is worth, the metaphor of matrimonial divorce is a useful one, and something not lost on our poets. Anne Frater, for example, has implored Beautiful Alba Remember the noble woman that you were and end this marriage before the three hundred years have passed. So far, Alba still wears her ring. Nevertheless, in Scots law there are at present basically three grounds for divorce: adultery, unreasonable behaviour, and living apart. If we extend these grounds to the nation itself – aside from a brief flirtation with a Frenchman in 1745 – both partners have been true since their marriage in 1707. Yet, one might suggest that unreasonable behaviour and increasingly divergent life-styles have had their part to play in where we are now. In 1970, Donald Dewar – the Labour politician who would eventually become Scotland’s first First Minister – reflected that, ‘Throughout the United Kingdom there is a disrespect for government resulting from continuing economic crises and the failure of the parties to satisfy the expectations they themselves have done so much to raise.’19 (We might ask, ‘What’s new?’.) The solution then, according to Dewar, was to ’make government more accessible to those who will be affected by a particular decision.’20 A not unrelated but far more palpable discontent with government from Westminster emerged again in the 1980’s as a democratic deficit became starkly apparent when Scotland, governed like the rest of the UK
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by a Conservative administration, returned a diminishing number, then, in 1997, no Tory MPs to Westminster. At much the same time sleaze allegations cast doubt on the moral integrity of the administration, and – by association – the constitutional understandings it was tasked to uphold. Whether or not such a scenario constituted ‘unreasonable behaviour’, is a moot point. What is undeniable is that it caused Scotland to question its relationship with England, and the extent to which the marriage was ‘working’. For generations, most Scots – even radicals and nationalists – had shared a respect for and commitment to the ‘Mother of Parliaments’ and the liberties that were upheld by its offices. (Arguably, the Magna Carta had more meaning for the Scottish Radicals of the early nineteenth century than the Declaration of Arbroath.) By the 1980’s, however, Scotland’s marriage partner had not lived up to expectations, and the promises made in the past seemed hollow.
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support’. By 2011, it was not only the ‘hard-core separatist’, as Dewar styled things, who ‘looks forward to the day when Scotland sits in the United Nations between Saudi Arabia and Senegal’.22 You see, divorce often follows on from an awareness on the part of one partner at least that they could/ would/ might be better off alone (not simply financially). Yet, things are seldom that simple, and realizing that the honeymoon is over is only part of the decision-making process: models found in others who have gone it alone are also an important influence, as can be images of potential new partners. Thus, Scotland’s hesitant steps (if that is what they are) towards independence (or at least contemplating that possibility) ought not to be understood simply within the limited dualities of the UK marriage. It is no coincidence that comparisons with Quebec, Catalonia and – at least until 2009 – Ireland, have all played a part in how we got to now; equally it is hardly surprising that the contested question of Scotland’s continued membership of the EU following a ‘yes’ vote has been a significant feature of the debate so far. No matter how apt the divorce metaphor, however, its predictive potential is limited. While the divorce rate in Scotland has been falling in recent years, it does not follow there are more happy marriages. As a nation, after all, banal unionism (the phrase is Kidd’s) has sustained constitutional arrangements for generations. We return to the question: what will it take?
Identifying devolution as a first step towards separation has a long lineage, and certainly since 1999 devolution has altered the way in which Scots now approach issues relating to national autonomy. David McCrone and Lindsay Paterson have noted: ‘Whereas the constitutional debate before [devolution] was structured around whether Scotland should have a parliament or not, since then it has refocused around whether that parliament should be devolved or independent, or around the extent of the powers of the parliament.’21 Quite simply, they suggest that the terms of the debate have changed. Arguably, the election of a majority SNP administration in 2011 was testament to this state of affairs. Had he lived, it is doubtful that Dewar would have said with as much confidence in that year as he had in 1970 that ‘separatism’ was ‘a policy which can never make sense and which has only the most limited general
Contingency and circumstance While we may be loathe to admit it, it is likely that circumstance will ultimately shape our constitutional future more than principle. After all, we have been debating the principle of independence for centuries and done precious little about it. As Deric Bolton’s poem suggests, ‘Between what was/ And what might have been/ There was no wall’: for Scotland, the important point was the lack of a will. Nevertheless, subtle changes in our approach to independence are evident: now it appears that we are less afraid of independence than we were. In large part this can be explained by the fact that after the recent banking crisis, the emergence of a deeply unpopular coalition government in London, and – contrary to gloomy Unionist predictions – having already survived four years of an SNP administration, we have more cause to believe that independence will not threaten what we value to any greater extent than maintaining the Union has done to date. You do not have to be a Bruce or a Wallace now to suggest that we may be
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better off alone: indeed, quite the contrary, banal unionism is more likely to be extinguished by a similarly banal sense of self interest than a patriotic call to arms. Like the Jacobite soldier in Alasdair MacLean’s poem, ‘After Culloden’, the goal may be nothing grander than ‘untroubled evenings’.
Interests and independence It is fair to say that the resolution of these various contingencies will be found in circumstance: the extent to which either side is willing (or able) to make definitive statements on what independence will mean or how the Union might change to address discontent, the extent to which the public will believe them, and the extent to which external forces (the global economy for one) will influence the priorities of the electorate. This is not to say much. It amounts to a simple ‘mibbe’ if asked whether independence will be realized. Yet at times circumstance is shaped by interest groups as much as by political parties: their priorities and the relative weight they carry in important decisionmaking processes is crucial, not just to the outcome of the independence referendum but how the result of that referendum will be translated into the real world. Put simply, one thing we can say for sure is that in any new constitutional arrangement there will be winners and losers, and identifying at least some of these and anticipating their powerbrokerage is possible, even at this distance.
Yet all this contingency has limits. One would like to think – and here I appeal to the past – that a country that sunk much of its floating capital in the swamps of Panama (1698) and brokered a union that within a year had killed off the Scottish Privy Council might, this time round, be cautious about buying a pig in a poke from either side. Again, our past is rich with precedent and premonition here: it is unlikely that the vote in favour of devolution in 1997 would have been as convincing had it not been for the fact that the Constitutional Convention had gone some way down the road to developing what – in terms of practical politics – the principle of devolution would actually mean in real terms. If further proof is required, this can, of course, be contrasted with the ‘unsuccessful’ Referendum of 1979, when a public and civic consensus on the practical implications of devolution had not been galvanized in advance… and Sir Alec Douglas Home’s promise of ‘something better’ never materialized (at least not in the way anyone had anticipated). But we are told that now things are different: the detail (a term which seems to worry the public more than the politicians at this stage of the debate and is often greeted by sage-like commentators with a dismissive shake of the head as if the naïve lumpenproletariat have failed to appreciate the rules of the game this time round) will be worked out later. One hopes that this time next year the Scottish people will be offered, from both sides, something more than principles to decide upon, something more than the shadow boxing of recent months during which we have been asked to wait for a ‘prospectus’ from the Yes Campaign, while the Scottish Secretary has refused to make contingency plans for a ‘yes’ vote. On past experience, if this is not the case, and if public trust in the promises of politicians has as a consequence been eroded (or at least their patience exhausted), then the reign of banal unionism may have some way to go.
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Over the years Scottish nationalists – nay, Scots in general – have taken heart in the fact that the model of nationalism advocated by the majority interest in Scotland has been rooted in civic culture, thus – we are told – avoiding the taint of racism, ethnocentrism and the worst excesses of mid-nineteenth century Romanticism. (That having been said, even the economist, Sir Alec Cairncross admitted in poetry that ‘This is the home of ancient persecution/Ungovernable wills, the spirit of denial/ Fanaticism’.) Whatever the truth of it, we have been apt to reassure ourselves that – in contrast to a range of more sinister alternatives – civic nationalism is inclusive, respectable and civilized, resting on such admirable concepts as justice, service and the greater good. As far as it goes, this is all very well, however it goes nowhere near far enough. In particular, two complicating factors which have consequences for the debate so far are neglected when we languish in this reassuring balm. First, the identification of civic nationalism as a straightforwardly ‘good thing’ avoids the reality that instead of being more inclusive, civic nationalism is perhaps simply as exclusive as other alternative renderings of nationalism, just differently so.23
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It goes without saying that any definition of citizenship – and for civic nationalism, this is a foundational concept – will define itself as much against what is not part of the established civic sense as what elements it. In turn, this may mean that certain behaviours, groups, and individuals will find themselves either on the periphery of what constitutes good citizenship or excluded altogether. Adopting a civic form of nationalism does not avoid the challenge of defining who the nation is (and is not) and what the nation ought to be (and ought not to be). It is more than simply conjecture to suggest that a significant proportion of Scots may feel as excluded from the body politic, should civic nationalism direct the ship of state, as those already at a loss as to how they relate to unionism. There will be losers, and they too will have a vote in the referendum. Secondly, nationalism’s commitment to its civic manifestation may have paradoxical consequences. While arguably it offers the nationalists their strongest case for independence at present, in practical terms it may also place that cause in jeopardy. More so than other forms of nationalism, civic nationalism has meaning only insofar as it is expressed by individuals and interest groups. It is thus, perhaps, commendably less abstract than other forms.
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Yet, as the mobilization of human capital is a necessary precondition of its being, it is perhaps more vulnerable to the whims, fads and selfinterest of groups over whom nationalisms (and political parties generally) have little overt control. The devolutionary process is suggestive of how powerful such interest groups can be: the Scottish legal establishment, the Scottish churches, Scottish educators, Scottish local authorities, Scottish trade unions, Scottish business interests, Scottish charities, and the Scottish press all played a part in either galvanizing support for or simply not creating obstacles to devolution in the latter decades of the twentieth century. This does not mean that a precedent has been set for the future, particularly as after a decade and more of devolved government, most have been reassured that devolution has not seriously threatened their interests, and many have reaped rich rewards. Scott Greer has reflected that at least in part, the drive for greater Scottish autonomy ahead of devolution represented ‘the summation of many narrower concerns’, and – looking forward – has warned that the ‘costs and benefits of secession are not so important as who bears them’.24
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The question to be asked in this context, then, is what will it take for civic Scotland to appreciate that its (often contradictory) interests will most likely be best secured by independence? Underlying this, of course, it the stark realization that no matter the vote next year, what comes next will likely not be determined solely or indeed mainly as the outcome of grand constitutional principles, but as the outcome of machinations and calculated risks similar to those of 1707 and amongst groups oft-times as unrepresentative of Scottish popular opinion as the powdered wigs and buckled shoes on the Royal Mile that year were of the Scots who had no seat at the table.
Generally, such challenges might be real or abstract, they might be financial or relate to the autonomy of distinctive Scottish bodies: whatever they may be, they will have to be serious enough to counter over three hundred years of relative stability and the tendency of the British state to avoid unseemly public conflict and sweeten acrimony with a fudge. Regardless, whether Scots vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in 2014, it will be civic Scotland that will ultimately translate the vote into the lived reality of the nation.
As ever, promise will be measured against risk. And experience of such matters in the past suggests that cautious conservatism will be the most popular response of civic groups to change of such magnitude. Remember, it took 178 years after Union for the Scottish Office to be established, and a further 114 years for devolved administration to be held accountable to an elected Scottish assembly. Experience would suggest that if we are waiting on Scottish lawyers to effect a constitutional earthquake, we may be waiting some time. It is difficult to identify what might tilt the scales of promise and risk in favour of independence for such groups, although it is likely that the most powerful influence will come from immediate challenges to elite influence against which – because of the Union settlement – they have little power to resist.
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Conclusion/ Contingency We may be less afraid of independence than once we were, but many remain afraid that it may deliver a Scotland less in real and intangible ways than the one we have at present: independence in real time rather than its timeless qualities. Whether we eventually choose independence or not will be the outcome of an extra-ordinary moment’s scribble in a very ordinary polling booth. Yet that moment’s meaning will be appreciated in relation to the experience of years, the memories of generations, the history of centuries, and very real contemporary fears for the future. Its meaning, even in anticipation, is not fixed. Nor has our support been so far. Survey evidence would suggest that of those who supported independence in 1997 only 54 percent still did so in 2000. Similarly, of those who supported independence in 2000, only 46 per cent did so in 1997.25 Experience shows that a commitment to independence need not be for life, and it typically waxes and wanes. As McCrone and Paterson have shown, this has profound implications: they are worth quoting at length. The fact that there is no stable core of supporters for independence implies not that this is a fragile option, but that many more people are prepared to countenance independence if they were persuaded that it would generate more responsive government, and would be likely to produce the kind of society they aspire to. Likewise, though, they may be quite open to options that are short of formal independence but nevertheless significantly stronger than the devolved parliament the country now has… [i]f Scotland does eventually become independent, it is much mo re likely to be the product of a series of events and processes central to everyday politics and practices. Not for the first time, the unintended consequences of human action hold the key to social and political understanding.26 Without a long-standing stable core of sufficient magnitude around which an independence majority can be easily gathered, circumstance and contingency loom large in the future of the independence debate. This makes independence appear more like a process than a final state. But this is confusing the probable route to independence with the final destination itself. Maurice Lindsay has considered Scotland to be ‘a sense of change, an endless/Becoming for which there was never a kind/Of wholeness or ultimate category.’ But independence has an incontestable manifestation in statute and will impinge in very real ways on the lives of those who reside north of
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the undulating lines of Tweed and Solway. As much as any national state of being can be grasped, independence can be real in a way that political process is not, that the Scotland of the imagination is not. We are too apt to unhelpfully conflate these. Independence is much more than its birth-pangs or the symptoms of a phantom pregnancy, but in and of itself independence will no more make real the Scotland of poesy than the Union by itself guaranteed Scottish economic wellbeing in the eighteenth century, or Enlightened Edinburgh, or won for Glasgow its appellation as the Second City of Empire. Native wit and circumstance made good at times the potential of the Union settlement: we have every reason to believe that the Union’s un-doing, or re-imagining, will demand similar engagement on the part of Scots themselves and rest on circumstances few as yet can predict. Catriona M.M. Macdonald is author of Whaur Extremes Meet: Scotland’s Twentieth Century (John Donald, 2009) which won the Saltire History Book of the Year Award in 2010.
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1. Tom Nairn, After Britain: New Labour and the
13. Alasdair Gray, Why Scots Should Rule
Return of Scotland (London, 2001), p. 254.
Scotland (Edinburgh, 1992), p. 17.
2. A.V. Dicey and R.S. Rait, Thoughts on the Union Between England
14. See C. Beveridge and R.Turnbull, The Eclipse
and Scotland (London, 1971), p. viii. (Originally published in 1920.)
of Scottish Culture (Edinburgh, 1989).
3. Paul H. Scott, Scotland in Europe: Dialogue with a Sceptical
15. Dicey and Rait, Thoughts on the Union
Friend (Edinburgh, 1992), p. 15; Towards Independence: Essays on Scotland (Edinburgh, 1991), p. 205.
Between England and Scotland, p. 343.
4. Neil MacCormick, ‘Independence and Constitutional
Scotland, 1500-2000 (Cambridge, 2008), p. 260.
16. C. Kidd, Union and Unionisms, Political Thought in
Change’, in MacCormick (Ed.) The Scottish Debate: Essays on Scottish Nationalism (Oxford, 1970), pp. 52-64.
17. Ibid., p. 263.
5. See L. Paterson et. al, New Scotland,
18. See Keating, The Independence of Scotland, p. 127.
New Politics? (Edinburgh, 2001).
19. D. Dewar, ‘Devolution and Local Government Reform’
6. H.M. Höpfl, ‘From Savage to Scotsman: Conjectural History in the Scottish Enlightenment’, Journal of British Studies (17.2, 1978), pp. 19-40. 7. D. Stewart, ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith LL.D.’, 21 Jan. and 18 Mar. 1793, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1793). 8. J. Galt, The Literary Life and Miscellanies of John Galt, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1834), I, p. 155, as cited by K. Costain, ‘Theoretical History and the Novel: The Scottish Fiction of John Galt’ ELH, 43.3 (1976), p. 344. (My italics.)
19
in MacCormick (Ed.), The Scottish Debate, p. 65. 20. Ibid., p. 76. 21. D. McCrone and L. Paterson, ‘The Conundrum of Scottish Independence’ Scottish Affairs (2002), p. 55. 22. Dewar, ‘Devolution and Local Government Reform’, pp. 66, 78. 23. Here I borrow from R. Brubaker, ‘The Manichean Myth: Rethinking the Distinction Between Civic and Ethnic Nationalism’, in H. Kriesl et. al (eds), Nation and National Identity: The European Experience in Perspective (Zürich, 1999), p. 65.
9. F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London, 1992).
24. S. Greer, Nationalism and Self-Government: the Politics of
10. Scott, Scotland in Europe, p. 50.
Autonomy in Scotland and Catalonia (New York, 2007), pp. 188, 183.
11. M. Keating, The Independence of Scotland: Self-government and the Shifting Politics of Union (Oxford, 2009), p. 85. 12. Poets have been particularly effective exponents of this line of reasoning. See D. Gifford and A. Riach, Scotlands: Poets and the Nation (Edinburgh, 2004).
25. McCrone and Paterson, ‘The Conundrum of Scottish Independence’, p. 72. 26. Ibid., p. 74.