If Scotland had voted for independence on September
18th 2014, it was proposed by the SNP that we would actually have become
independent on 24th March 2016. In that case it is likely that this date would
have been celebrated every year as Scotland’s national day. In nearly every
country in the world there is such a day. In fact the only two countries in the
world who appear to lack such a day
are the UK and Denmark.
In the UK there are a variety of different holidays.
Each part of the UK, for instance, has a saint’s day, but these are still normal
working days and they are not particularly observed or even for that matter noticed.
There is something typical about the UK going it
alone with regard to national holidays. Nearly everyone else has a written
constitution, but we don’t. Nearly everyone else drives on the right, but we
don’t. Britain is quirky, we don’t follow the crowd. There has always been
something to be said for this, but there comes a time when we desperately need
what others have.
The UK as a nation state is in some trouble. It is
crucial that we recognise this. As I always say, we’ve been in tight spots before
and, no doubt, we’ll muddle through well enough, but it’s time to face some
facts. Just before the independence referendum, there were many people
including senior politicians who thought there was a reasonable chance that
Scotland would vote for independence. In all our history the UK was never under
such an existential threat as we were last September. I will doubtless be accused
of hyperbole for saying this, but it is in fact self-evidently true. France,
for instance, in the past 300 years has suffered catastrophic military defeat
on a number of occasions, but the existence of France per se has never been
threatened, even when it was occupied. The threat of secession, even when
achieved peacefully, is an existential threat to a nation state. The USA could
hardly have called itself united if the Confederacy had won the Civil War,
likewise the UK could hardly call itself united if we had lost Scotland.
It had been my hope prior to the referendum that a
No vote would strengthen the UK. Most people do not have the good fortune to choose
to remain in their nation state. Up until that point only the people in
Northern Ireland had made such a choice. For people in Scotland, the origin of
the UK was a matter of distant history. It had something to do with the Darien
scheme, bankruptcy and other events of early 18th century history that were
dimly remembered. But after 300 years of successful marriage we had chosen not
to divorce, but rather to renew our vows. Yet it doesn’t feel like that in
Scotland today. The SNP have surged in popularity. They threaten another vote
on independence. Would they win if there were such a vote? Who can say? The
arguments for independence are much worse now than they were a year ago. But
Scotland has gone beyond argument. Many independence supporters simply have
ceased to have any feeling for the UK. Even many people who voted No have
little sentiment for Britain. Too many people in Scotland are Scottish first
and British a very distant second if at all. This is our problem.
What is it that creates a sense of common identity?
Why do people in the United States, for instance, feel a kinship with everyone
who lives in the fifty other states? These people sometimes have only recently
arrived from elsewhere, sometimes they can trace their ancestry back to the
first settlers from Europe, sometimes still further to those settlers who in
ancient times crossed the land-bridge from Asia. Some people were taken to the
United States by force and made to work without pay. There was great injustice
in the past, but these people too despite the trauma of their arrival and the
conditions under which their ancestors lived, love the United States.
There is no threat of secession in the United
States, not because it is a more pleasant place to live than the UK. Our
countries are both prosperous and we both have points that can be raised in our
favour and to our detriment. The reason that the United States is not
threatened by secession is that as a matter of history the question was solved once
and for all and forever. No part of the United States as a matter of law could secede today even if it wanted to,
but more important no state would want to.
Having been threatened with secession, the United
States made quite sure that every citizen would have common identity. It didn’t
matter where your ancestors came from, every citizen would love and feel
loyalty to the United States. How did this happen? It happened in a number of
ways. Every school child, every morning pledged allegiance to the flag and
affirmed that the United States was “one nation, indivisible”. Every time there
was a sporting event, people stood up, put their hands on their hearts and sang
the ‘Star Spangled Banner’. Every year there was a huge national holiday on
July 4th and throughout the year, other patriotic days were celebrated. It is
the fact that nearly all Americans celebrate Independence Day, Thanksgiving,
Labor Day and the birthdays of Lincoln and Washington that creates the common
identity and the feeling of shared history.
We in the UK must work very hard on creating a
shared identity. Far too many people across the UK are feeling less and less
British and more and more English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish. This was
all very well when our country was not threated with secession. But the bonds
that join us together are becoming weaker. If Scotland left the UK, how long
would it be before England chose to leave, or Wales or Northern Ireland?
There needs to be much more of a celebration of our
shared history. The SNP would like Scottish children to only learn about what
Scots did. They don’t want those children to feel anything in common with
English people. Naturally if you don’t feel anything in common, it is far more
likely that you will vote for separation. But even if the SNP control
education, the UK controls broadcasting and much else besides. We can make
films that celebrate what we have achieved together over the past centuries. We
can publish books and organise shared events that focus on what we have in
common rather than on what divides us. Let us do more of this, even if it
requires central government funding.
We need to work on creating a common identity
through sport. For this reason the UK Government should do all in its power to
create UK sporting teams and other UK organisations. Why should there always
have to be a Scottish version of every charity? Why should nearly everything in
Scotland be prefixed by the word Scottish? It is this that underpins
nationalism and undermines our shared British identity.
We should create a series of shared holidays in the
UK all connected with our shared history. At present in much of the UK there
are Bank holidays, but no-one knows why they are when they are. The problem
also is that these Bank holidays for the most part are not celebrated in
Scotland at all. We in Scotland have local holidays. For reasons that are
entirely obscure one small town has a local holiday while everyone else works.
Many people don’t even know when such days occur. While the rest of the UK has
Good Friday as a holiday and Easter Monday too, most people in Scotland work as
normal.
This has all gone well enough up until now, but as I
have been arguing the UK is in danger if we don’t begin to feel that we all
have something in common and that we share the same identity. A national
holiday like July 4th could gradually become a tradition that brought about
unity. If in addition throughout the year there were days that celebrated
important shared historical events, we might gradually turn the tide against
nationalism.
Naturally the parties that support the break-up of
Britain would oppose these holidays. They will always oppose anything that
serves to bring people in the UK closer together. But there are far more people
in the UK who love our country and feel kinship with everyone who lives here.
We must begin to do what every other country in the world does as a matter of
course. We must begin to celebrate our unity.
In time through shared celebration of a shared day
we will all gain the confidence to fly our shared flag everywhere and cease to
wish to do things separately. This long term is the key. We must begin to think
of our identity as primarily British just as people in the United States think
of themselves as primarily Americans rather than, for instance, Californians. We
will keep our Scottish identity, just as Germans keep their identity as Saxons
or Bavarians, but it can all be mixed together such as to think of the one is
to think of the other. A shared national day will not in itself be enough to
bring about the unity that Britain needs, but it is one more step to defeating
division and turning talk of secession into a distant historical memory.
What could be the date of our UK national day? Why
not September 18th? Let us always remind ourselves of the day when we defeated
the greatest threat to the UK in all our shared history. Let us always
celebrate that decisive victory and remind everyone in the UK that we are one
nation, indivisible.
