As I was going home the other day, I passed a group of
students waving Catalan flags. I didn’t stop to find out what they were
demonstrating about. Rather confusingly someone handed we a leaflet about
socialism in Chile. Were they Chileans complaining about Catalonia, Or Catalans
complaining about Chile? The flags have a certain similarity. But these were
definitely Catalan flags. I’d seen enough Scottish nationalists waving them in
sympathy. I moved swiftly on.
A little later I wondered if I might have asked them (L'esprit
de l'escalier) what they thought about the fact that they were only studying in
Aberdeen because they were Spanish citizens and because Spain was part of the
EU. Otherwise they would have had to pay full fees like the Chileans. But I had
seen enough scenes of Catalan anger over the past couple of years, to realise
that the mixture of Southern European volatility and truth does not always end
well.
Catalans have taken to the streets once more mainly in
Barcelona, but no doubt also wherever one or two are gathered together, because
their desire for Catalonia to become an independent nation state has not merely
been thwarted, but quite possibly reburied in a different grave like Franco.
Catalan independence supporting parties demanded a
referendum on leaving Spain. When the Spanish Government refused, they
organised an illegal referendum. This referendum did not lead to independence
for Catalonia, rather it has led to long jail sentences for those who organised
it. There have been demonstrations. Some people in places like Scotland have
sympathised with the Catalans. But these things will pass. It is quite clear
now that Catalonia isn’t going anywhere. Spain will never give them a legal
referendum on independence and anyone who tries to go down the illegal route
will end up in prison.
Has anyone much complained about how Spain has acted?
No. It is quite clear that the Catalans who tried to organise secession from
Spain were acting illegally. They are Spanish citizens and they broke Spanish
law. It might be harsh to imprison them and especially for so long, but each
country in the world applies its laws differently and has the right to choose
how to punish lawbreakers.
There are though some oddities about this situation.
The EU fully supports Spain. Indeed, the EU would support practically any
member state, which was faced with an independence movement. There isn’t a
single EU member state that would allow a legal referendum on independence to
take place within its borders, except the UK. There are very few UN member
states which would allow such a referendum either. Canada allowed Quebec to
have two referendums on independence, but I understand that a third would now
be illegal and in any case is not wanted anymore. Where else in the world would
a UN member state allow an independence movement within its borders to hold a
legal referendum which successfully led to independence? I can’t think of
anywhere.
Crimea was annexed by Russia after an illegal
referendum, but almost no one in the rest of the world recognises that Crimea is
legally part of Russia. It didn’t matter whether Crimeans wanted to be Russian
or not. Crimea legally is part of Ukraine.
Kosovo was allowed to secede from Serbia, because the
Serbs started a war against their own citizens and the price they paid was the
loss of part of their territory. World opinion made Kosovo an exception, but
that same world opinion almost universally supports territorial integrity. The reason is obvious, member states of the EU
and the UN do not want to lose parts of their territory.
Neither, Russia, the United States, China or France
would allow secession under any circumstances. The past centuries and indeed
decades have shown that they have been willing to fight wars to prevent
independence movements succeeding. Have they acted illegally? No. The so called
right to self-determination does not apply to these places. Nor does it apply
to the UK. It only applies to colonies, which are not part of a nation states
territory. For this reason, the UN and world opinion generally will support and
sometimes demand that, for example, the United States gives up the Philippines,
France gives up Indochina and the UK gives up India, but this is simply because
these places were not parts of the USA, France and the UK.
Catalonia is a part of Spain, in exactly the same way
that Vermont is part of the USA and Scotland is a part of the UK. None of these
places are colonies. To suppose that they are would immediately give rise to
the question, who are the colonisers? If Scotland is a colony who are the
colonisers? The English, the Pakistanis or the Poles?
So, Scotland no more has a right to secede from the UK
than Hong Kong has the right to secede from China. Each nation state in the
world has the right to protect its territorial integrity using force if
necessary. It has the right to protect
its territory against foreign aggression and internal agitation. The rest of
the world will only intervene if there is oppression as in Kosovo. But even
here it will only do so if the nation state concerned (e.g. Serbia) is weak. No
one seriously thinks that Russia should be forced to allow Chechnya to become
independent. No one will intervene to give Uighurs in China freedom, though
they certainly are oppressed. There is zero chance of Xinjiang gaining
independence.
Some Scottish nationalists think that Scotland has the
right to independence because we are a country. But this is rather begging the
question. It is to ascribe a quality to Scotland that makes it different from
the parts of every other UN sovereign nation state in the world. But neither
history nor present circumstances warrant this. Taiwan, for instance is far
more an independent country right now than Scotland but try telling this to
Beijing. Scottish nationalists invariably assume that Scotland has the quality
of independence in order to prove that it ought to be independent. They argue
that Scotland is a country like France. But France is an independent sovereign
nation state. In this way they surreptitiously assume what they are trying to
prove.
Scotland is a country,
countries are independent,
therefore Scotland ought to be independent.
But Scotland in fact is more like those formerly
independent parts of Germany, France, Italy and the whole of the rest of the
world, that don’t nowadays have the right to independence. It matters not one
little bit how what is now Catalonia was incorporated into Spain. It may have
happened because a King married a Queen, or it may have been conquered in a war
long forgotten. It is now part of Spanish territory. So too Scotland is now
part of UK territory. The agreements that were made when the English and
Scottish kingdoms were united and when later the Act of Union was passed are as
beside the point as the Norman Conquest. It doesn’t matter what happened then,
whether it was just or unjust. What matters is that all four parts of the UK
are now part of UK territory. This gives the UK Government the right to prevent
secession by any means it pleases.
Why was Scotland granted an independence referendum in
2014? Was the UK Government forced to do this? No. It chose to. In the same way a Corbyn Government would choose
to grant a second independence referendum while a Conservative Government would
choose to refuse. But why would any UK Government choose to grant Scotland a
vote on secession when no other Government would do something similar? This is
because of a political convention that has existed in the UK for many decades.
Rightly or wrongly we do not view ourselves as being
as united as France. Each part of the UK has an identity the like of which
hardly exists anywhere else in Europe or indeed the world. Most nation states
in the world did there best to eliminate such separate identities. No one now
in the United States thinks that he is first and foremost a Virginian, but this
was commonplace until the Civil War. No one in Saxony thinks he is Saxon, but
not German, as some Scots think they are Scottish but not British. But as I
keep pointing out Saxony has a much greater claim to independence than Scotland
does, not least because it was made a part of Germany by force.
English people used to think of themselves mainly as
British, secondly as English, but this has changed. There has been a response
to Scottish nationalism in England, which frequently amounts to good
riddance. This is unique in Europe. How
many Spaniards outside Catalonia want to lose a large chunk of their territory?
How many Germans would say good riddance if Bavaria campaigned for
independence? The UK is different. We do things differently here.
While no other member of the EU would give up one foot
of its territory without a fight, the UK would and perhaps will give up both
Northern Ireland and Scotland. This would mean the UK ceased to exist. What the
remnant would be called is anyone’s guess. England and Wales? Perhaps just
England. But I don’t think anyone is going to anything to stop it if it becomes
clear that this is what the people living in the UK want.
The UK gets little enough credit for this attitude. In
no other nation state would Scottish independence supporters even get one
chance to legally achieve independence, let alone two or indeed three. No other
nation state would make peace with terrorists by promising to give up a part of
its territory if that should prove to be the wishes of those living there.
The UK is different, we don’t force anyone to remain.
We could force them. But we choose not to. But there is a danger that people
both inside and outside the UK take advantage of our good nature.
Ireland has no claim whatsoever on UK territory. It
has no more right to annex Northern Ireland than Russia did when it annexed
Crimea. Likewise, it matters not one little bit that parts of Slovakia used to
belong to Hungary. If the Government of Hungary issued Hungarian passports to
Hungarians living in Slovakia and continually agitated to get its land back,
the EU would support the territorial integrity of Slovakia. The borders of
nearly every EU member state are arbitrary and due to the accidents of history.
They leave peoples on the wrong side of the border. But nowhere in Europe does
this cause a problem except in Ireland and Ukraine.
The EU upholds the international borders of each and
every one of its member states except the one that exists between the UK and
Ireland. It does everything it can to undermine UK territory in Northern
Ireland while doing what it can to help Irish irredentism and Ireland’s attempt
by gradual steps to gain the territory of its neighbour by continually
undermining UK sovereignty. It allows Ireland to behave in a way that it would
condemn in every other EU member state and indeed every other UN member state.
The UK does not have to allow any further referendums from
secession movements. The UN allows each nation state the right to defend its
territory and this right supersedes other rights or treaties. So, there can be
no demands from either Scottish or Irish nationalists. But the UK will neither
hold itself together by force nor by law. But here is our problem. How are we
to give the majority what it wants and how are we to determine what that
majority is?
We have learned both in Scotland and the whole of the
UK that referendums decide nothing. If there were to be a second independence
referendum, neither losing side would accept the result unless it were
overwhelming. The lesson learned from the Brexit referendum is that if the
losing side is tenacious enough, it can delay, obstruct and perhaps overturn
any referendum result it doesn’t like. If Pro UK Scots sided with London after
losing indyref2, they could ensure that Scotland got the worst possible deal
imaginable. They could use the inbuilt UK majority in Westminster to delay
Scottish independence and demand second and third referendums until the result
was overcome. This would hardly improve the atmosphere in Scotland.
Many Northern Irish people are rightly bitter about
Irish interference in their internal affairs. They are also bitter that the
other parts of the UK are happy to treat them differently. Northern Irish
politics remains divided with neither side voting for the centre and each side
still voting according to its background rather than Left and Right. Any future
referendum on Northern Ireland’s future would be still more divisive. An
overwhelming vote for one side or the other, might be accepted, but how could
that occur when the demographics are close. If a close referendum on Brexit is
not accepted by Remainers, why would a close referendum on Irish unity be
accepted by the losers? How overwhelming would the result have to be before
each community accepted its final defeat without a murmur? Would a close vote
be accepted peacefully? Is it worth the risk?
There has to be another way to determine these issues.
I don’t want to go down the Spanish route, but those of us who support UK unity
cannot have it threatened continually. It may not be fair for Irish or Scottish
nationalists to have the route to their goal blocked politically, but neither
is it fair that Pro UK people in Scotland and Northern Ireland should face the
continual fear of having to leave the nation state in which we were born. No
one else in the world has to live with this. No one else would. The UK is my
country, I don’t want it to be destroyed, nor do I want to live outside it as a
foreigner. Germans, Japanese and Americans feel exactly the same way as we do,
but their countries are not threatened with secession and never will be. If it
was wrong to partition Ireland it would be equally wrong to partition Britain.
Both Irish and UK citizens are going to need to find a way forward that gives
all of us something of what we want, without depriving some of us of
everything.
