Whenever I come across an English person wishing
Scotland would just go away and become independent, I respond with something
along the lines that if he is an English nationalist why doesn’t he support the
ENP. This usually gets a contrite response that he is just annoyed with
Sturgeon and doesn’t at all want to see Britain break up. I then point out that
wishing Scotland would just go helps the SNP and we need the support of English
people in order to keep Britain united. But when I point out that the person
might consider joining the ENP I am left to wonder why there isn’t an English
National Party.
Scotland is of course the most nationalist part of
Britain. In Wales some people vote for Plaid Cymru and rather fewer support
Welsh independence, but no one expects Wales to become independent anytime soon
if ever. In Northern Ireland a significant proportion of the population support
Irish nationalism, i.e. they wish to leave the UK and join another state. Those
people who wish to remain British are no more nationalists than French people
who wish to remain French. Wishing to maintain the territorial integrity of
your nation state cannot coherently be described as nationalism otherwise we
would have to describe the people in virtually every nation state as
nationalists and that would make the word “nationalist” meaningless.
But why is there no equivalent of the SNP in England?
The main reason I think is that English nationalism doesn’t really exist. I
have never met an English person who wants England to become independent from
the other parts of the UK. It is an idea that is so rarely expressed that it is
hard to take seriously. But why should it be that a proportion of the
electorate in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland wish to leave the UK, but
almost no one in England does?
There is a strange phenomenon in the UK. There is
almost no hatred in England for people from Scotland, Wales or Northern
Ireland. But the reverse does not apply. Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish people
will rarely if ever encounter hostility if they live in England. But English
people frequently come across hostility when they live in other parts of
Britain. It is this hostility that forms the soil in which nationalism can
grow.
Is the lack of English nationalism due to English
people feeling British rather than English? It may be for this reason that
English people think of everyone else from the UK as their countrymen, while
some Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish see English people as foreigners. The
British identity is weak in the UK. There is no European country that I can
think of where the national identity is so weak that it is frequently usurped
by a sub national identity. This is the fundamental reason why there are
secession movements in three parts of the UK. But why not the fourth?
Some people may suggest that parties such as UKIP or
the Brexit Party were expressions of English nationalism. But this is
undermined by the very names of these parties. UKIP wanted the UK to be “independent”
from the EU. But there was always a contradiction with UKIP anyway. The UK
already was independent. If it had not been independent, it could not have
chosen on its own volition to leave the EU.
The Brexit Party too wanted Britain to leave the EU.
At no point was there a desire for England to leave the EU, not least because
England was never a member of the EU.
Far right extremist parties are of course not
expressions of English nationalism, because they get few votes and fewer seats
and even they as far as I am aware do not want English independence.
Some people may suggest that English nationalism is
expressed in hostility to foreigners. But while some English people may wish to
limit immigration as do many people in other countries, this is rarely
expressed in personal animosity towards them. People from all countries and
races live and work together in places like London. They make friends with each
other and marry each other far more than anywhere else I can think of in the
world and certainly more than in Scotland. Yet almost universally white Scottish
nationalists point at Londoners and dare to call them racist.
Even at the height of the Troubles there was no
attempt to prevent Irish people living in England. No one has ever put White
Settler placards on telegraph poles to discourage Scots from moving to England.
No one has burned a single cottage owned by a Welsh person in the Lake
District.
In Scotland on the other hand Irish Catholics are
routinely abused because of their Irishness and Catholicism, while Scottish and
Northern Irish Protestants get abused in return. Nothing like this exists in
England.
Is the lack of nationalism in England a reflection of
its size and population? Is it like in North America where Canadians are
obsessed about being not American, while Americans barely notice Canada? But if
that is the case then England’s small neighbours ought to be careful what we
wish for.
Irish, Welsh and Scottish nationalism feels that it
can get away with hostility to England. It can blame the English for everything
that ever happened historically, while not being blamed in return. But what if
English patience ran out? I see this occasionally. I see it beginning to run
out. What if English people stood on the border telling Scots to keep out? What
if English people were as hostile to Scots as many Scots are to English people?
What would be the long-term result of this hostility whether or not the various
independence movements in Britain succeeded?
If Scotland became independent, we would still have
England as our neighbour and the English economy, population and influence
would still be much greater than ours. Imagine if English nationalists were
hostile to Scottish interests and did all they could to thwart Scottish aims.
The biggest danger to Scotland is not so much the SNP as the ENP. If there were
an English National Party with the same attitude to Scotland as the SNP has to
UK at present, then Scotland would suffer a geopolitical setback of huge
historical significance. It would take us back those rather unpleasant times
before our royal families joined together when England was our greatest enemy,
but England was much larger. We lost more battles than we won back then, and we
were one of the poorer parts of Europe. Imagine if the English sang about
Flodden instead of being unaware that it even happened. Imagine if they revelled
in their hatred of all things Scottish to exactly the extent than Scots do in
reverse.
The danger of Scottish nationalism is that it succeeds
too well, and it turns an English people who have largely forgotten their
Englishness into a people who no longer wish to cooperate with Scotland and the
Scots. The loss of their friendliness, their tolerance and their willingness to
treat us as family is far greater than any other loss than independence might
bring. The greatest danger of Scottish independence is that it resurrects the
English nationalism that used to send Scots homeward to think again.
