What has the Scottish election in 2021 got to do with
the Battle of Bannockburn? The obvious answer would be nothing. After all there
are any number of medieval battles that are important historically that have no
connection whatsoever with modern European politics. The Battle of Grunwald
(1410) is rarely if ever mentioned in either German, Polish or Lithuanian
elections. Neither the French nor the English much notice the anniversary of
the Battle of Crécy and it neither influences their relations nor their
elections. But elections are different in Scotland.
An election broadcast for Alex Salmond’s Alba party describes
the battle between the forces of freedom and the oppressor. King Robert urges on
the camp followers who after constructing homemade banners surge forward as a
fresh Scottish army and by this demonstration of people power become the straw
that broke the spine of English superiority. The oppressor flees south. The voice
of the Bruce tells us that people power will prevail again if only we vote for
Alba and unite the clans.
The only other country in Europe that could possibly have
such a broadcast would have been Serbia when it was controlled by nationalistic
forces invoking the Battle of Kosovo (1389) to justify all sorts of genuinely oppressive
actions against Bosnian Serbs and Kosovans who were made to flee southwards by
the people power of Serbs forming murderous militias. I suspect by now however
that Serbia has jailed such people wishing to move forward from some of the
darkest days in its history. But Scotland doesn’t want to move forward, we are
still stuck with the Medieval.
But if Salmond is invoking the sprit of Robert the
Bruce even using him to say that we need a similar act of people power in 2021
as Bruce used in 1314, who are the other characters in our modern re-enactment?
We can assume that Salmond wants to send proud Boris the Oppressor back
homewards to think again if he dares not bend to the will of Alex. But are we
to see Nicola Sturgeon as a John Baliol or else as a John Comyn and what is
Salmond going to do if she doesn’t bend to his will? Give her a sleepy cuddle
until she gives in?
It isn’t obvious that people power had any affect on
the Battle of Bannockburn and given that in an election each voter is supposed
to have the same amount of power, it isn’t obvious that voting for Salmond’s Alba
is any more an example of people power than voting for Douglas Ross’s
Conservatives. But it is not really that Salmond thinks that Bannockburn is
genuinely analogous as that he simply wants to invoke it as being the holy of holies
and indeed the essence of Scottish nationalism.
Scotland today has almost nothing in common with 1314.
There was next to no freedom in those days and many Scots were owned as serfs
by people like Robert the Bruce. Scots who fought for “freedom” in 1314 would
not get it. Scotland was not a democracy then, nor was it a democracy when it
formed the Kingdom of Great Britain with England. Only in the UK would Scots
gradually get to vote in elections. So, Robert the Bruce was just as much an oppressor
as any English King who invaded.
The reason Salmond is invoking Bannockburn is because
Bruce won a war of independence against the English and Salmond wants to win
another. But the use of Bannockburn tells us all we need to know about Salmond’s
Scottish nationalism. He is appealing to modern Scots to do what your ancestors
did. He is saying we are involved in the same age-old struggle against the same
oppressor.
It is amusing therefore to read English Scots for Yes
writing in response:
Please take this down.
Our movement is based on civic nationalism, where all who love and work in
Scotland are Scots, and have a say over our future.
Blood and soil
nationalism and dog-whistles about “the english” have no place in modern
Scotland.
The “English Scot” writing this must have believed that
the fig leaf called civic nationalism was real. But oddly Scots living in
England rarely describe themselves as Scottish English people and indeed are liable
to think of themselves as Scots even when they have lived in Canada or New
Zealand for many generations.
Without the sense of there being a Scottish people
stretching back to the time of Robert the Bruce and beyond there would be no
Scottish nationalism. There would be no desire for this piece of territory to
be independent if the people living in it could not appeal to an ancient
country which was independent and that the people living today are related to
the people living then and that they live in the same country.
Without the sense of the same people sharing the same
land, there is never any nationalism. Scottish nationalists may welcome the odd
English person and people from other places to their cause, but this does not
change the fact that the cause is about land and ancestry.
Without there being a genuine difference between Scots
and other British citizens living in the UK, the argument for independence
collapses as lacking all grounds. Its only on the assumption that this land
called Scotland is fundamentally different from that land called England that
there is a reason to separate them. But that ground cannot be that English
people live both in Scotland and in England. Rather there must be the idea that
the Scots and English are different peoples.
These Scots are our people, those English are people we send homewards
to think again.
No wonder the English Scot objects. The movement he
has been campaigning for has turned against him. He tries to tame Alba into
being a nice civic nationalist again. Alba may well pretend that it is. But if
you can’t trace your ancestry back to the Battle of Bannockburn, then be
careful supporting Alba or indeed the SNP for it might be you that is send homewards
to think again.
