Integration versus disintegration in international relations

In order to understand the issues involved when political parties seek independence it is necessary to look at the topic in terms of its fundamentals. This involves looking at two processes. One is the process by which countries or parts of countries integrate. The other is the way in which they sometimes disintegrate. There are in history examples of unification and examples of secession. These two processes both describe something fundamental in human nature. Only by exploring them will it be possible to understand the essence of the political issue.

Why do we have nation states at all?

It is important to explore the historical issue of how people living in small villages in antiquity gathered together. We moved from tribes, to areas ruled by warlords or chiefs, then to kings. Every European country is made up of places that once were independent. This process of integration is generally called progress.

Looking at a map of Britain at the time of the Romans we find that there were many peoples inhabiting this small island. 

Even the names of these peoples have for the most part been forgotten. Whatever once divided them has ceased. The reason for the division was, no doubt due to problems with communication. Travelling from the south of England to the north in those days was, no doubt a major journey. For this reason rulers were localised. 

Scotland too was just as much a divided territory in Ancient times. There too were numerous tribes with names that have now been forgotten. Later at least four peoples could be found in Scotland and the British Isles. This happened because of migration and also because of the processes of division and integration. Tribes fought and made peace. Territory was won and lost. The whole was in flux. 

The history of the British Isles is the process by which Celtic speaking people, became English speaking people. It was above all language that united these many peoples, but it was also the process by which modern nation states came into existence. Gradually different people found that they had something in common or through conquest and assimilation were made to have something in common. Small weak local rulers were subsumed by larger stronger ones. This began in Roman times, but continued when the Romans left. 

If we move forward a few hundred years we can see that the process of integration has continued. The Celts have been pushed westwards. Germanic/Scandinavian peoples have continued to spread from the East and to the North. There are still quite a large number of kingdoms in Britain, but there are many fewer than when the Romans first arrived. 

Britain is still not united, nor for that matter are England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland. The idea that there was such a thing as an English or a Scottish people in antiquity is refuted by history. There were many different peoples in the various parts of the British Isles, but they had not reached any sort of unity. They were however moving towards unification.

At this point in British history there are still a number of different languages spoken in Britain. People in the north and west tend to speak Celtic languages in the south and east Anglo-Saxon/Scandinavian languages. If this division had continued then so might the division of Britain. But it didn’t. Gradually and with the help of further invasions from the Normans, modern English arose. Within another few hundred years, by 1707, Britain was united into a country that for the most part spoke English.

This process of integration could be illustrated in nearly every European country. Examples can be found in other countries around the world as well. As people develop they tend to come together. We can see the same sort of thing happen today with the rise of multi-national companies and globalisation. There are economies of scale when people come together to form a nation state. There are advantages to being ruled on a national level rather than allowing every small village to have its own chief. Unity allows people to achieve more than when they are separate, both in terms of security and in terms of economics. The story of human development is to a great extent the story of its unification. This is what we mean by progress.

Is there a limit to this progress?

Why should we stop integrating? Why not end up with a world government, like the Federation in science fiction’s Star Trek? If unification is so beneficial why do we stop? Why don’t the world’s present nation states continue the process of joining together that begun in antiquity?

If the EU could succeed in creating a Federal United States of Europe, could this be a model for other continents. Given that Europe is an arbitrary continent why not make it the Eurasian Union? Why not go still further and treat all human beings as citizens of one nation state?

Two models of nationalism

Nationalism can go in two directions. Patriotism, by the way, is not nationalism unless it becomes extremism. Nationalism can be unifying, for example German unification in 1860s and 1870s and Italian nationalism during Risorgimento. Here nationalism describes the process of integrating German and Italian speaking peoples into a nation state. Many independent statelets become one.

The other sort of nationalism is by means of secession: A part of a nation state votes or fights to leave. Poland leaves the Russian Empire. The Austro-Hungarian Empire falls apart, Ukraine leaves USSR. Slovenia leaves Yugoslavia.

There are two factors at play in world politics. One separates the other unifies. These two factors are always present. While there is a tendency towards unification that is connected with human progress, there is also the tendency towards division. These processes are present even today. At almost the same time as West and East Germany united, Czechoslovakia divided. Just as unification is grounded in human nature, so too is secession. In order to look at these processes in more detail it is necessary to explore the reasons why people unite or divide.

The process of unification

Small territories are conquered by larger ones. But this usually occurs only when they already have similarities. For example, the gradual unification of Russia from small territories ruled by warring princes occurred in the context of fighting a common enemy, the Mongols. Only by gradually uniting could they stand up to common enemy. As a consequence of this unification Russia could then move towards expansion, by which it brought other peoples into the ever increasing Russian empire. Without the initial unification Russian power would never have developed in the first place.

However a united country normally has certain key factors. The population is already similar or else it becomes similar.

Typically a country is united because its people speak the same language, have a similar history, culture, ethnicity and religion. They are normally geographically distinct from other countries.

The process of unifying a country frequently irons out difference. In France in the middle ages there were many variants of French. Now there is only French. The process of unification created this common language and common identity.

The process of division

Secession happens most frequently when a nation state includes people who are in some important respect different from their neighbours or where there is a political disagreement that cannot be overcome otherwise than through secession, or where there is a significant geographical divide such as an ocean.

The fundamental reason why the USA split from Britain was geography. The disputes between the American colonists and Britain could have been overcome, but the Atlantic Ocean could not. The difference between an American and a British person even today is quite small. We understand each other quite easily. Culturally we are very similar. But people prefer to be ruled by someone who lives on the same continent as they do. For this reason also Australia and New Zealand although linguistically and culturally almost identical to Britain do not wish to be ruled by someone who lives on the other side of the world.

Identity is crucial to the issue of secession. If people in a nation state feel different in a crucial respect to others living there, then a desire to live in a separate country may arise. For example, the now independent countries of the former USSR now have an identity that is different from that of Russia. Many of them speak a different language, e.g. Armenian, Kazakh. 

Many former Soviet citizens living in the non-Russian republics, no doubt, had a Soviet identity, but this was not enough to prevent the break-up of the Soviet Union. At what point is a common identity not enough to overcome the feeling of difference? Here we see the two processes of integration and disintegration working. There is something in human nature that brings us together, a common identity, but there is also something that splits us apart, a separate identity. The limit of a common identity may turn out to be the limit of unification.

Political disagreement may give rise to secession even when identity is very similar. For example, the southern states (the Confederacy) seceded from the USA because of a potential political disagreement over slavery. In nearly every other respect an American from the south was not very different from someone from the north. Even today there have been instances where some Texans talked about secession because of the election of Obama, while some Californians talked about it due to the election of Trump. In any nation state a part will frequently vote differently from the whole. This is not a fault of democracy, it is a feature. But if a part of a nation state cares deeply enough about a political issue and if they feel that the state as a whole prevents the fulfilment of this political goal, then there may be a tendency toward secession even while identity issues are not really a factor.

If there is a tendency for countries to secede because they speak different languages or have different cultures and religions, how can the process  of unification progress? The issue here gets to the heart of why we have countries and how far disparate peoples can be united. There are, of course, examples of countries which have many different languages, ethnic groups, religions and identities. China, Russia and India contain many different peoples. But what do they share? Are they held together by a common identity? Do most citizens speak a common language as well as their own language? Are such states held together by choice or because they are never allowed a choice. Most nation states in the world do not give parts the right to decide whether they which to leave. The United States would fight to maintain Texas in the Union. Germany would not allow Bavaria a vote on secession, nor would France allow Corsica such a choice. But sometimes as we have seen in recent years nation states like the USSR reach a point where they collapse. What lessons can be drawn from this?

The USSR for all its faults had a common language (Russian) which everyone spoke at least in the workplace. It had a common ideology (communism), similar schooling and a common identity. If the USSR could not succeed even though much of it had centuries of shared history in the Russian Empire, then what hope is there for the EU or other attempts at multi-national unions? Given the choice the peoples of the Soviet Republics voted with their feet. At the point when the USSR was at its weakest it found that what it held in common was not enough. This demonstrated that all along the bonds of the USSR were not the bonds of choice, but rather lack of choice. They were “forced to be free”.

But is it possible then for different peoples to join together to form a new nation state? Yes it is. We have numerous examples of different people in history gradually joining. But what is the lesson from this process for future attempts to join different peoples? If the Soviet Union failed what lessons can be learned for the European Union?

The condition for the possibility of a successful union

What does the EU need to succeed? It needs its people to have a shared identity. East and West Germans were able to come together and unite because they thought of themselves as one people. West Germans were willing to transfer billions of Deutsche Marks to East Germany. But they are not willing to transfer money to Greeks. Why? They don’t think that they are the same people as Greeks. Greeks and Germans are both Europeans, but this common identity is not enough for them to think of themselves as countrymen. They do not feel as if they share a common identity. Without that common identity it is hard to see how the European Union can become a nation state. This after all is the goal. It is the reason that the EU introduced a single currency and border free travel. It is the reason why the rule of Brussels supersedes national rule. But how then can EU political union ever be successful without a common identity?

How is it possible to create a common EU identity? There needs to be a common language and common education. There would have to be a common language like in the USSR (Russian) that is spoken in every EU workplace. The obvious candidate is English.  This massively help free movement of people for everyone. In this case, if I trained to be an accountant I could work just as easily in Germany as in Greece. At present I can’t do this as for linguistic reasons. The United States works as a union because I can live and work in any state without much difficulty. The same was true in the USSR. The reason for this above all else was a common language. Without a common language the attempt to create a state from different countries will lead either to force or failure.

But even here there is no guarantee. Unification didn’t work in the USSR.  There are numerous secession movements in Europe often even when the people involved are very similar, speak more or less the same language and have been part of the same nation state for centuries.

The problem is that as soon as one secession movement succeeds it tends to encourage others. In a very short time Yugoslavia went from being one country to being seven or perhaps eight depending on how you count. If every European secession movement succeeded the number of European countries would more than treble. There are over 185 different ethnic groups in Russia and 22 different Republics. If each of them demanded secession, there would be chaos and war. The same can be said for many other countries. Imagine if India or China attempted to split up along ethnic or linguistic lines. The problem is that all of these people are mixed. There are no clear boundaries dividing one group from another. Anyway if the world’s nations started splitting up where would this stop? It would be a retrograde step taking us eventually back to the warring tribes of the Roman Empire.

Could the USA face fresh secession problems not only over political difference, but also because of the changing ethnic and linguistic makeup of its population? The middle states and coastal states are very different. What would happen if Hispanics became a majority in some western states? Could they ask for reunification with Mexico?

Czechs and Slovaks are so similar that only they can tell that they are in any way different. If even people who are this similar cannot bear to live in the same nation state, how can we expect a nation state called the EU to succeed?

If a successful country like the UK is in danger of falling apart even though the only difference between Scotland and England is an accent, how can we expect Spaniards and Poles to live in the same nation state?

The right of secession versus the nation state’s right to territorial integrity

Under what circumstances is secession justified? There is a difference of opinion about this in various parts of the world. China under no circumstances will allow secession. If Taiwan declared independence there might well be war. Tibet has no choice but to remain a part of China.

Likewise in the USA they moved from the Constitution saying that anyone can throw off a Government they don’t like to the Gettysburg Address, which is about how a democracy can long endure in the face of attempts to break it up. Secession is seen as a threat to democracy by Lincoln. The Gettysburg Address together with the United States Constitution form the foundations of modern western democracy. But they are going in different directions and appear to contradict each other. 

Is it anti-democratic to prevent a part of a country seceding if it wishes to? After all, the majority of voters in the southern states did want secession. There is no question of this. The results of the 1860 Presidential Election show it. By what right were they prevented by force of arms?

The USSR allowed the Republics to secede. But Russia did not allow Chechnya to leave. Was this just because of the chaos in 1991? If given the chance again would Putin, or someone similar, try to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union by force? If he had no-one could complain that Crimea had changed its Republic or that the Donbass had moved from the Ukrainian SSSR to the Russian SSSR. These would have been internal Soviet matters.

If Ukraine has the right to leave the USSR, why doesn’t Crimea have the right to leave Ukraine?

There is a tension between the right of Ukraine to keep its territory intact and the right of Crimea to leave. These rights are balanced rather like the balance between the US Constitution and the Gettysburg Address.  There is a contradiction at the heart of the foundation documents of western democracy. A tension between the American right to independence from Britain, but the lack of the Confederacy’s right to leave the USA. Is it simply a matter of might is right? How are we to balance the rights of unity and the rights of secession? Both involve self-determination of the whole people versus a part of the people.

Most examples of secession take place after political collapse or war

The Russian Revolution led to Finnish, Polish and Baltic States’ independence. The fall of the USSR led to independence for the Soviet Republics. But it went further. Transnistria seceded from Moldova. Nagorno-Karabak seceded from Azerbaijan and over time there were further conflicts. Abkhazia and South Ossetia seceded from Georgia. These secessions are not recognised by most of the world. But what makes one secession justified while another is not? How do we decide which to recognise and which to ignore?

In general it is unusual for secession to happen peacefully with neither political collapse nor war. Few countries in the world would allow a part to democratically vote to leave the whole. Exceptions to this include the UK and Canada. Spain is reluctant to allow Catalonia a vote on secession. But why is it fine for Scotland and Quebec to have a vote but not Catalonia? Why if it is all right for Scotland to have a vote should the USA be justified in preventing secession by force? Would the USA still use force if Texas tried to leave?

Given that there is a right to secession how on earth can the EU have any long term future? The EU is not at present a nation state, for which reason leaving it is not strictly speaking secession. But could it reach a stage where the EU became a nation state that forbade members from leaving, just as Spain forbids Catalonia. Unless the EU forbade members leaving it is hard to see how it can have a long term future. 

But what would such a refusal look like? What if Poland became so thoroughly sick of EU membership that it decided to leave? What if it had a revolt against EU membership which was then crushed by EU troops? This would look awfully like the revolts of 1830 or 1863 against the Tsar.

So long as people have a Polish, or a German or a Greek identity and so long as they don’t share the identity of their fellow EU citizens, for so long the EU project is in danger. Unifying only works when there is a common identity such as was the case with Italian and German unification. But there is no strong European identity. The difference between someone from Portugal and Hungary is just too great for them to share an identity. They don’t even both speak Indo-European languages. They probably know next to nothing about the history or culture of each other’s countries. There is nothing to unify because there is nothing in common.

At some point a political crisis is liable to envelop the EU. If the UK can successfully leave the EU without disaster, it will make it much easier for someone else. At some point a politician will be elected somewhere who realises that leaving the Eurozone and devaluing is a better alternative to years of recession and austerity. Once one goes, another will soon follow.

The EU is trying to unify that which is dissimilar without trying in any way to make it similar. Secession is a threat to any nation state even when the people living in it are similar (see UK, Czechoslovakia). It is hard to see how the EU can avoid eventual secession and following in the footsteps of the USSR for the simple reason that it lacks even those advantages that the USSR had.

People are by nature tribal. We prefer to live with people who are similar to us. This is something that goes back to the time when we first emerged from caves and began tilling the land. It is the desire to live with people who are similar that explains why we have countries where people are broadly from the same tribe. They speak the same language, worship the same God, have the same culture and tastes. This is a deep rooted part of human nature. If it were not, we would not have developed countries at all.

But given that human beings on the whole wish to live in countries where people are similar to us, the idea of a world government falls by the wayside as does the idea of a Federal United States of Europe. It will be contrary to the basic desire of people to live in a nation state with people who are similar to them. In the end Poles mostly prefer to live with Poles, Germans prefer to live with Germans. Until they have the same identity there is no point trying to make them live in the same country. 

History shows Germans and Poles living together for centuries without a common identity emerging. The end of that project happened between 1939 and 1945. If hundreds of years of sharing a territory ended in the expulsion of the Germans from Polish lands, it is hard to see how these people can ever form a common identity owing to the EU. 

The modern experiment of trying to change human nature by making us live in a nation state called the EU, as also making us live with mass migration from other countries and cultures, is going to fail. The USSR tried to change human nature and spent 70 failing to do so. Human nature is deep rooted and goes back 40,000 years. We prefer to live with our own kind and until you make Poles the same as Greeks each of them speaking the same common language and eating much the same food, you will find that they do not think of themselves as compatriots. For this reason they cannot very well live as part of the same country. If people cannot live together it is better that they live separately.

Capitalism with a human face

I spend a lot of time criticising nationalism and the SNP. This is primarily because of experience. I’ve seen the power of nationalism in Eastern Europe. It destroys lives and divides people. I’ve also experienced a government that tried to impose socialism on a human nature that opposes the attempt. I can assure you first hand that it leads to poverty and a loss of freedom. It would lead to that here too. But it’s all very well constantly criticising. Some of the more reasonable people I discuss these sorts of issues with quite rightly ask me what I am for? Well I can answer them. I want Capitalism with a human face.

I voted for New Labour in 1997. It’s rather hard to get across to younger people what that moment felt like. Tony Blair has an absolutely terrible reputation. His interventions over the summer didn’t go down at all well. The New Labour candidate (Liz Kendall) got 4% of the vote in the leadership election. Yet New Labour won three elections in a row. An awful lot more of the British people voted for New Labour than 4%.

What did we like about New Labour? We liked that we weren’t going to get the seventies all over again. We weren’t going to get the “Winter of Discontent” that had so damaged Old Labour’s reputation. We liked that over a period of many years under leaders like Neil Kinnock and John Smith, Labour had reformed. We liked that Labour had ceased to be a socialist party and had become Capitalism with a human face.

The vast majority of UK voters are capitalists. We accept free markets are the best way to obtain growth. We accept inequality of outcome so long as there is equality of opportunity. But we don’t want ‘tooth and claw’ capitalism even if it would make us richer. We want universal free healthcare. Personally I’m not bothered about the method by which this is achieved, but I never want a UK citizen to be denied treatment because he can’t afford it. We want a welfare state. All of us have known people down on their luck and many of us have experienced that position ourselves. We don’t want someone who is struggling to be cast to the four winds. We want to have a degree of security in work, so we want workers to have rights as well as responsibilities. We want to have the right to paid holidays and to continue to be paid when we are sick. We nearly all of us like to get some things for free, or rather to be paid for by the tax payer.

What we want is the Holy Grail of British politics. We want the Government to run the economy successfully so that it grows over the long term, but we want them to use that economy to make everyone’s life more pleasant. This can be described as being fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. Another way of describing it is Capitalism with a human face.

The New Labour project failed. There’s no point going into the reasons. Perhaps the problem in the end was that the ordinary members of the Labour party just didn’t have their heart in it. They didn’t want Capitalism with a human face, they wanted socialism.  That’s why all those long years of reform have in the end come to naught and we’ve gone back to 1983 or is it 1917? The idea of New Labour being a new danger may not have applied to Blair himself. I don’t believe that his eyes were really red. But socialism never went away from Labour. It was there in the hearts of all too many MPs and supporters who waited through the dark years for their moment to come.  That moment is now.

New Labour didn’t work out and it isn’t coming back any time soon. The membership doesn’t want it. But the British people still do. The party that best presents the Holy Grail of British politics, sound finance with compassion will win and keep on winning. Where does someone who voted New Labour go now? Well you can still vote for Capitalism with a human face. Will you find that with Corbyn’s Labour party? No. Will you find it with the SNP? No. But why is that?

Imagine I used my savings (capital) to start a sweet shop. My aim would be to provide a service and to bring some happiness into the world, but I would also aim to make a profit. Not to make a profit is not to be a capitalist at all. A country is not a sweet shop, but a country that continues to make a loss is not going to be prosperous long term. The British people want prosperity, because it increases the standard of living of all of us and it allows us to spend some of this profit on the things we like such as healthcare and the welfare state. Not to make a profit is long term not to be able to provide those services.

What do capitalists do when they are making a loss? They try to increase profits and cut down on expenses.  They try to run their business more efficiently. Which party in the UK at present is trying to do this? The Conservatives. The method by which they are doing it is to very gradually try to make the UK make a profit (cutting the deficit) and then very gradually to pay back our debts. They are doing this because they are capitalists and that is how any capitalist would behave. Both the Labour party and the SNP at present oppose these measures. They oppose austerity. But anyone who opposes austerity, by definition doesn’t want the UK to make a profit at all. So they can hardly be described as capitalists at all, let alone capitalists with a human face.

Cutting expenditure is tough, but not cutting it is tougher still. If you disagree with this you really ought to visit somewhere like Greece. When a government tries to make a country live within its means hard choices must be made. Unfortunately any policy that applies to 64 million people will give rise to situations that are very difficult for some. But the correctness of a policy cannot be judged by isolated examples. Rather we must consider whether the policy generally is having a good outcome for the country as a whole. 

No capitalist country can continue to see the solution as raising taxes ever higher. If you raise the taxes that my sweet shop must pay beyond a certain point I can hardly expect to be able to make a profit. At some point I will vote with my feet and go to somewhere where I can. Again if you disagree you are simply not a capitalist at all.

Rather than try to reform human nature through re-education, capitalists accept human nature as it is. What that means is that we accept that people respond to incentives and disincentives. Britain would be a much healthier and happier country if all those who could work did so. But all of us have the temptation to prefer idleness. How many of us would continue to get up and go to work if we didn’t have to? The incentive to do so is usually called ‘wages’, the disincentive to leaving work is that I would be poor.  But this situation also benefits millions of us in the following way. Even if work is sometimes a chore, working makes our lives more fulfilled. It is therefore kind for a government to encourage people to live fulfilled lives. It is good for a government to discourage people to live without work. Moreover, as more and more people find work in a UK which is creating jobs at a miraculous rate, we will be able to be more generous to those who are identified as really being unable to work. Again if you don’t believe in incentives and disincentives, you can hardly describe yourself as a capitalist at all, because that is how capitalism works.

Imagine if the UK could get to a position where there was no debt at all. Imagine the money we would save on interest payments alone. This is a prize worth having. It is a goal worth reaching. But only one party is even trying to get us there. It’s not Labour and it’s not the SNP.

Lots of New Labour people are on a journey back to Capitalism with a human face. It will take time for them to realise where their journey is leading. Why? Because of prejudice and tribal hatred of a word and the memory of a lady who haunted their childhood. I’ve been reading certain New Labour journalists who in their youth hated Tories, but who now can no longer hate them. The reason for this is that they agree with them. They are far closer to the politics of David Cameron than to the politics of Jeremy Corbyn. Only prejudice stops them making the next step. But isn’t the left all about trying to abolish prejudice? Well there is one prejudice left in Scotland especially that is allowed and even encouraged. It’s OK to hate Tories, because they are Tories. There's a word for a hating someone for what he is. It's not a very nice word.   

New Labour voters are correctly called “Red Tories”, so really it’s a small step to becoming a blue one. If you believe in Capitalism with a human face that’s what you are.

The battleground of British politics over the next few years is back to be a debate between capitalists and socialists. In Scotland the SNP is full of socialists. They despair of ever bringing socialism to the UK, but they think they can bring it to Scotland. It is for this reason primarily that they support independence. New Labour voters in other parts of the UK are going to desert Labour in droves for the simple reason that they want Capitalism with a human face not socialism. With a gradually improving economy the Conservatives have the argument to win, not only in the UK as a whole, but also in Scotland. The vast majority of Scots also want Capitalism with a human face. They are not going to get it from Corbyn and they are not going to get it from the SNP. It is for this reason that all of us who think breaking up a successful capitalist country in order to live in an unsuccessful socialist one must join forces. Socialism does indeed make you “too wee, too poor and too stupid”. The SNP is the anti-Tory party, but that equally makes them the anti-capitalist party and indeed the anti-prosperity party.

Capitalism with a human face is the argument that can defeat nationalism in Scotland. There is one thing that hinders it. It’s the word “Tory”. Scotland isn’t in reality 88% left wing we just think we are. But it is this that creates the division between England and Scotland, because in England most people are happy to admit what they are and be that. We can never heal the division in the UK until people in Scotland get over their hatred of Tories. It drives voters into the SNP. The folly is that the huge numbers of SNP voters are also Capitalists with a human face, ex New Labour voters who would find their natural home with the modern Conservative party. Nearly all of us in the centre ground of UK politics want the same thing. It’s time to vote for a party that agrees with you.  There’s only one remaining, which has any chance of winning. 

We must put out the spark of nationalism in Europe

Whenever there is a Scottish nationalist march, you may notice that amongst all the Saltires there are usually some unfamiliar flags that have never appeared on the flag posts outside the United Nations. There will be groups of nationalists from other parts of Europe and indeed the world, representing places such as Quebec, Flanders, Catalonia and Corsica. Some of these people may come from the most unlikely places. Their support may be tiny at home, but still they march. After all, they can reflect that the SNP once were a group of eccentrics with next to no support. The seed of nationalism may remain hidden in darkness for a long time, but given patience it may well grow into something rather larger.  This is why people from far away take an interest in Scottish politics. They hope that what happens here may influence events at home.

This hope is not one-sided. Scottish nationalists tend to support other secession movements abroad. The reason is obvious. They hope that events in faraway countries will help the cause of independence in Scotland. At the moment many SNP supporters are delighted that Catalan nationalists have won the majority of seats in their regional elections. Why should they be so interested in a regional election in Spain? I know almost nothing about the regional elections in say Germany. I doubt very much that SNP supporters know any more. Why then this sudden interest in a part of Spain?

(By the way the English spelling of this region of Spain is ‘Catalonia.’ Until and unless you write Россия when you mean Russia, I would suggest you stick to it.)

I think I can explain why Scottish nationalists and also some Pro UK people like me are interested in Catalonia. We think that what happens there might influence what happens here.

Imagine the following scenario. Let’s say the Spanish Government said, OK, you’ve won the election, you can now have independence. We’re in a mood to be generous to our Catalan friends. You’ll get to keep the Euro, you’ll get to remain in the EU, we’ll cooperate on defence, we’ll keep our “social union” and Catalan citizens forever more will have all the rights they enjoy at present.  We’ll even allow Barcelona to keep playing Real Madrid. You can have absolutely everything you want right now, but you’ll never have to share your wealth with us Spaniards ever again. Imagine if all this happened easily and seamlessly in a remarkably quick and cooperative fashion. Imagine if in a couple of years we had a new state called Catalonia. A shining example of how easy it is to achieve independence.

Let’s reflect for a minute. Would this make Scottish independence more or less likely to occur? The answer seems obvious. The pros and cons of Scottish independence would still have to be debated, but the Catalan example, would be on the pro side.

Imagine on the other hand, as I suspect is far more likely, that Spain digs its heels in. Spain, after all, thinks Gibraltar ought to be part of Spain even if the vast majority of Gibraltarians disagree. So let’s imagine what might happen if Spain refuses to allow negotiations on Catalan independence and refuses to allow any sort of referendum. After banging their head against the brick wall of Madrid, the Catalans may decide to declare independence anyway. What might happen with such a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI)? Well Catalonia could be kicked out of the Euro and kicked out of the EU to boot. Imagine if Spain refused to cooperate, imposed financial sanctions, froze bank accounts and shut the border. I have no idea whether any of these things would happen in the event of UDI. It strikes me that we would be in a sort of #Grexit situation all over again. But just suppose that UDI goes very badly, suppose lots of Catalans were to lose their jobs, suppose indeed that there is political and economic chaos. Imagine then if the Catalans said to Spain, OK, you win we want to be a part of Spain again.

Let’s reflect again. Would this scenario make Scottish independence more or less likely? Again the answer is obvious.  It is natural therefore that Scottish nationalists hope that the first scenario occurs. It is equally natural that Pro UK supporters think that the second scenario is more likely. This does not mean that we have anything against people in Spain or wish them ill. Far from it I imagine the vast majority of Spaniards hope to keep their country intact right now. I sympathise with them and hope they do as well as we have in the UK. 

The reason that I oppose nationalism is fundamentally because I have seen what it can do in Eastern Europe. Secession rarely leaves people better off, but frequently leaves them much worse off. You can count yourself lucky if secession leads only to economic and political chaos. Frequently it leads to war. The vast majority of wars are disputes about boundaries. It is for this reason that I would prefer that the present boundaries of the world, no matter how arbitrary they are should largely remain fixed. The alternative is nearly always worse. I’m not against all independence movements, certainly not in an historical context. There have been good reasons for people to seek independence.  But these reasons rarely apply in the context of a modern western democracy, where each citizen has the same rights as every other citizen.

How many potential states are there in Western Europe? You could make five or six countries out of Spain alone. But if you look at the history books, nearly every EU country is made up of places that were independent, sometimes quite recently. How many wars have started in Eastern Europe since 1991 because of secession? It’s not a small number.  In Russia today there are dozens of peoples with a better claim to independence than those in either Scotland or Catalonia. There are peoples with different languages, religions, cultures and ethnicities. Moreover they don’t live in western democracies. Far from it. If all of these people were to seek independence, Russia would descend into chaos and in the process of fragmenting that huge country I promise you there would be war, possibly nuclear war. The same, no doubt, can be said of China, India and other places.

The problem with nationalism is that there are competing claims and competing ideas on what ought to be a border. Peoples are mixed and have differing identities. Someone in Ukraine during the Soviet Union could feel Soviet, Ukrainian and Russian. But now these mixtures of identities are scarcely possible. People who didn’t even think of themselves as particularly different forty years ago, now fight over identity and because of borders. I oppose nationalism because I have seen what it can do.

Nationalism begets nationalism and if we let it spread it will eventually lead somewhere to conflict, chaos and war. This is why I oppose it everywhere, for even if the UK or Spain might split amicably, the spark of nationalism would spread because of this split and might open a division that would better remain closed. For this reason also I don’t want an example of successful secession in Catalonia. If Spain splits into five or six states, Britain into four and Italy into five and so on, at some point we will reach a split that cannot be resolved amicably.

The borders of Europe are largely the result of war. Germany once stretched much further to the East. Hungary once had a much larger territory than it does now. France was involved in three devastating wars with its neighbour in a conflict that in part had its root in land that each claimed. These conflicts are buried because in most of Europe nationalism is buried. But nationalism is part of human nature. It is in our genes from the time when the tribe had to fight off the outsider. It only needs a spark, for nationalism to spread and then people remember injustices from long ago. We who care about peace, security and prosperity in Europe must stamp out the spark of nationalism before it catches fire in the dry grass. Better by far a little political and economic chaos in Catalonia, or indeed in Scotland, if that should be what's necessary to  put the spark out. The alternative is far, far worse.

To remember you need to know what you're remembering

When I was very young I watched what must have been a repeat of the extraordinary 1964 television series The Great War. I always remembered the haunting music that accompanied the opening credits, the face of a soldier staring at the camera and a skeleton dressed in a uniform. I watched the whole thing again relatively recently. There were twenty six parts, with archival footage and photographs, but mainly with men talking about their experiences fifty years earlier. I’ve been reading about the First World War on and off since I was a teenager, but here was television that could still tell me things I didn’t know and give a perspective I’d never thought of. Where is the equivalent of this today?  I remember a newsreader dashing through the First World War in three or four episodes, which was so "accessible", it assumed the viewer knew absolutely nothing about modern European history. I realised then Television was not for me.

By one of those generational quirks, both my grandfathers were born in the 1880s, one near Dublin, the other near Aberdeen. They both fought in the First World War and both survived, which is lucky for me not least because I had the chance to know them while I was a very little girl. For this reason the Great War has always been very close to me. I take it very personally as do many other British people whether or not they met those who fought in Flanders. It’s not as if I were told wartime stories as a child. That generation was very quiet about what it had experienced. Still there were those few occasions when something was let slip. It was sometimes only twenty years after a grandparent had died that I understood a chance remark that had been told to me.

I’m not a First World War obsessive, nor am I an expert, but I believe that if we are to remember we have to know what we are remembering. There is a distorted view of 1914-1918.  What is it that everybody knows? What are the famous battles? Most people know a little bit about the Somme and they know a little bit about Passchendaele. There’s the idea of brave men charging against barbed wire and being mown down by machine guns. There’s the idea of vast expanses of mud and futile attacks ordered by generals safely behind the lines who were fools or worse. Above all, there’s the idea that the First World War was wrong, stupid and unnecessary. 

A view that is partly true is far more insidious than one that is wholly false.  There was mud, there were trenches, there were attacks that cost thousands for little gain. It’s easy to point to the futility of it all. But this way of looking at the events of 100 years ago is not remembering, it is distorting. Almost everything most people think they know about the First World War is false in the sense that it misses the whole picture that is the truth.

Who started it? The Germans. No. Read, Christopher Clark’s Sleepwalkers to find that everyone was in some ways to blame. Some of what he writes is, of course controversial, other writers disagree with him, but at least you should realise that there are two sides to this argument and that it is complex.

The generals were stupid. Can you come up with a plausible strategy that would have broken the deadlock of the Western Front? I can't. At least I can't without hindsight. The fundamental problem was that due to the nature of the weaponry, especially machine guns, the defenders had a massive advantage, and breakthroughs could be contained. The defensive side could always reinforce more quickly than the attacking, for they weren't reinforcing across a no-man's land all churned up and fought over. It took until 1918 for both sides to learn how to break the line. The Germans did so in March 1918, the allies in August 1918. This happened because of developments in tactics and technology. Above all, it required lessons to be learned.

The Somme and Passchendaele show that General Haig was a buffoon. Not so. The British and the French won The Battle of the Somme. It lead to a massive retreat on the part of the Germans and crushed the German army. Without these battles there could have been no victory in 1918. It was precisely because the German Army was being put in such a desperate position in 1917, that in  March 1918 it launched the Kaiserschlacht offensive that eventually led to short-term success but long-term self-destruction.

Nobody won the First World War. Not so. The British Army won the First World War. We defeated the German Army and by 1918 were the dominant army in the field. We broke the Hindenburg line and did what had seemed impossible two years earlier. But it only became possible because of what we’d learned on the Somme. The greatest victory in British Army history occurred in 1918. It's usually known as the Hundred days. Hardly anyone remembers how we won, only the tough times getting there. It's as if the Russians only remembered the desperate days of 1941 and forgot Berlin 1945. I assure you they don't, quite the reverse. 

Was the war worth fighting? If we had not fought the First World War, it is probable that the French would have lost in 1914 or a little later. This would have led to a Europe dominated by Germany. We can speculate about counterfactuals as much as we like, but Britain did not think this was something we could allow to happen. To suggest that we could have avoided fighting just does not fit in with how people, both the public and the politicians, thought in 1914. Given that we were going to fight, there was no real alternative to fighting the way we did. Mistakes were made, but there is no possible general who could have fought the First World War much better than the ones who did. Ferdinand Foch in my view is second only to Napoleon as the greatest general in French history. Haig had his faults, but was a much greater general than Montgomery.

Now that we’ve got those myths out of the way, we might briefly look at some others. Some Scottish nationalists are pointing to the supposed fact that more Scots died in the First World War proportionally than people from other parts of the UK. Firstly, I would question whether this is true. It’s always possible to manipulate statistics, especially given that many Scottish regiments contained non-Scots and many Scots fought in non-Scottish regiments. Secondly, so what? Must we always hunt for grievances in our history? Does anyone seriously think that wicked English generals deliberately used Scots as cannon fodder? The best regiments always suffered the highest casualty rates. This was certainly true of the Anzacs, Canadians and South Africans, let alone the Newfoundlanders who suffered 80% casualties in twenty minutes on July 1st 1916 .  Scotland has one of the best military traditions in the British Army. Our regiments are famous because they have always contained some of the bravest soldiers. Tragically, the brave have a greater chance of being killed. This is something we should all be proud of, rather than turn into just one more moan at the injustice of history to the Scots.

I deplore the growing tendency to view everything in terms of Scotland and to attribute the adjective 'Scottish' to everything. Viewing the First World War through a nationalist lens is disgraceful, not least because if there is one thing that caused the First World War, it is Serbian nationalism. If the Serbs had not drunk at the poisonous well called nationalism, we would not have had the assassination at Sarajevo and we might just have escaped the whole thing. The First World War was not inevitable. If we’d got through just one more year, we might have avoided it altogether.

We voted against nationalism in September. What I remember most about my grandfathers is that they unquestioningly thought they were British. They were also Scottish and Irish, but first of all, they were Brits who had fought for their country. Every single one of their friends also considered themselves to be British, both those who survived and those who died. It will take time for us in Scotland to get back to that time, but we must begin by using the adjective 'British' about things in Scotland. I want to see the word 'Scottish' used less and the word 'British' used more. This is not because I don’t like the word 'Scottish', it’s because I see it as another way of expressing my British identity and I want some balance in the words we use to describe ourself. It is for this reason above all that the Royal British Legion have betrayed the Scottish soldiers who fought for Britain by rebranding themselves as Legion Scotland. This is not what they fought for; this is not what we remember. We remember how soldiers from all over Britain and overseas fought together for the sake of democracy and freedom in Europe. These people fought for Britain. That memory should unite everyone in Britain wherever our grandparents came from. Particularly this weekend I have absolutely no time for, nor any respect for people who would divide Britain. Having shown themselves to be the enemies of democracy, they have also shown that it is they who their grandfathers were fighting against. 

If you like my writing, please follow the link to my book Scarlet on the Horizon. The first five chapters can be read as a preview.

A vote for independence is a vote for the SNP

I’ve long been of the opinion that the SNP are in the business of hiding the truth from the Scottish people. This isn’t because they are bad people or anything like that, it’s because they believe passionately in Scottish independence, but know that people who share this belief are in a minority in Scotland. Less than a third of the Scottish population consistently support independence come what may and this figure has remained steady for years. These are the core SNP supporters, the people we meet online, who have believed in the SNP vision all their lives, who are desperate to win Scottish independence. I’m often impressed by their sincerity. They campaign effectively and they are very well organized. They are well funded too. They all know that the task is to convert the core nationalist support into 50% plus one vote. So they need to convert around 20% of Scots to their cause. This 20% are, of course, not SNP supporters; they may even be opposed to the SNP, but they need to be persuaded. How do you go about it?

The first thing you do is pretend that a vote for independence is not a vote for the SNP. Lots of Scots are put off by the SNP. I’m often struck by how many independence supporters object to being called nationalists. They seem blissfully unaware that one of the meanings of the word “nationalist” is someone who supports independence. Well then what is someone who is Scottish and supports independence other than a Scottish nationalist? This isn’t in any sense pejorative, but is an accurate description of someone’s political beliefs.  Ever since I can remember, to describe someone as a Scottish nationalist is to describe someone who supports the SNP, just as to describe someone as a Welsh nationalist is to describe someone who supports Plaid Cymru. People who support Welsh independence, but don’t support Plaid Cymru must be about as rare in Wales as dragons.  

One of the ways the SNP have set about trying to pretend that a vote for independence is not a vote for the SNP is by erecting a curtain between themselves and the independence campaign. This curtain is called Yes Scotland. But it’s rather like in the Wizard of Oz; in the end we find out who’s pulling the levers. Let’s look at who makes up Yes Scotland. The political parties that support Yes Scotland are the SNP, the Scottish Greens, the Scottish Socialist Party and Solidarity. The Scottish Socialists won 0.4 % in the last Holyrood election, Solidarity won 0.14 %, while the Greens won 4.4 % up from the 0.7% they had won at the previous General election.  By any normal standard these are minor parties. They have no chance of forming a government either in Scotland or the UK. Moreover even they realise that Yes Scotland is a front for the SNP.  Mr Harvie the Greens leader has described it as "entirely an SNP vehicle."

Naturally lots of people who previously have voted for other parties will vote Yes. But on what basis are they voting Yes? I assume it must be on the basis that they believe what is contained in the White Paper, Scotland’s Future. But who wrote Scotland’s Future? It was the Scottish Government which is made up exclusively of SNP members of the Scottish parliament. They are not in coalition with anyone as they won an absolute majority. Scotland’s Future is full of SNP policies many of them not shared by other parties and certainly not by other major parties. So clearly if I were to vote for Scotland’s Future, I would be voting for the SNP. It’s their manifesto after all. To suggest that someone can support a manifesto without supporting the party that wrote it is ludicrous.

When I was growing up in Scotland everyone knew which party supported independence. I can remember when they were a tiny party, but then they found their defining slogan “It’s Scotland’s oil” and they gradually became more popular. I remember when they opposed the Scottish Constitutional Convention and were against devolution because it wasn’t what they wanted. People who supported independence voted for the SNP, people who didn’t voted for Labour, the Liberals or the Conservatives.  The only party that has campaigned for independence for all of my life is the SNP. But now suddenly when there’s a referendum I’m supposed to believe that voting for independence is not a vote for the SNP? Well I’m sorry. I can see through the curtain. I know who’s pulling the levers.

Imagine if there were a policy that the Conservatives had which no other major party shared. Suppose, for instance, that they proposed reunification with the USA so that Britain would become the 51^st State. Well let’s say they put it to a referendum with the question “Should Britain become the 51^st state of the Union?” and imagine if the Conservatives campaigned for a Yes vote? Imagine if they had campaigned for this for years, but that Labour, the Liberals and the SNP had always opposed them. Well would it not be reasonable under these circumstances to say that a Yes vote would be a vote for the Conservatives? After all they would be the party in government; they would be the party that had always wanted to join the USA. Would it cease to be a vote for the Tories because a few tiny parties decided that they wanted to play the role of полезные дураки [useful fools]? Would it cease to be a vote for the Tories even though they admitted that in future USA elections they might not win?

Independence is the core policy of the SNP. It is the reason the party exists. Indeed the goal of independence is the only reason the SNP has existed since its beginning. In many ways it would be more accurate to describe the SNP as the Scottish Independence Party (SCOTIP). Anyone voting for independence who thinks they are not also voting for the SNP is deluding themselves. 

Independence movements like UKIP and the SNP are enemies of the EU project

Like many Scots I have mixed feelings about the EU, I’ve even in the past been somewhat sympathetic to some of the Eurosceptic arguments. I’m becoming more and more in favour of the EU however, and this has most to do with my reflecting on the arguments for and against Scottish independence.

What do I like about the EU? Well I like the fact that I am able to live and work in any EU country. I used to work at the University of Copenhagen. I sometimes wonder if it might not be nice to retire to one of the Canary Islands or Portugal. I rather like the fact that there’s passport free travel in the Schengen zone and on the whole wish that the UK was a part of this. It would make life easier for my Russian husband. It’s much easier to be able to use the same money in Spain and Germany.  The thing I like most about the EU however is the single market. This is the major achievement of EU integration. The fact that we have access to European labour markets is one of the main reasons why the UK economy is doing so well just now. People complaining about Poles coming here to work understand nothing about economics.

What don’t I like about the EU? Fundamentally I don’t like the fact that power rests with unelected officials or the European Commission. I don’t like the fact that unelected people, whether they be civil servants or judges, can tell democratically elected politicians what to do.  I don’t like the way the EU seems constantly to try to make everyone follow the same rules. Some of this is necessary no doubt, but some is petty and pointless. The thing I like least about the EU is their attempt to have monetary union without a political, fiscal and transfer union. For all the convenience for tourists like me it has been a disaster especially for southern Europe.

What sort of Europe would I like to see? I suspect that many people in Scotland would like to see an EU like the one we voted for all those years ago, a trading block of sovereign independent states. But this is not on offer, and really we’ve been kidding ourselves if we thought that it was ever on offer. It is even less on offer now. The structural problems in the Eurozone can be solved only by breakup or by much closer integration. There may have been a time when large, sovereign, independent states could maintain a currency union without a political, fiscal and transfer union, but that time has clearly passed. There may be any number of reasons for this. Perhaps the sheer speed of modern currency transactions and the way markets work today makes such currency unions undesirable. Really the reasons don’t matter. The Eurozone is an experiment in currency union without political union and the experiment has failed. This is one of the main reasons why Quebec has pretty much recognised that independence is off the agenda. They know that the rest of Canada would never agree to a currency union. It would be crazy for them to do so.

The breakup of the Eurozone could turn into a catastrophe that would make 2008 look like a blip. But anyway if the Eurozone were going to breakup, it would have done so by now. The EU then is going to move towards becoming a single nation state a United States of Europe (USE). It has no choice. It has been moving towards this goal anyway from the beginning. What I hope is that this USE comes to resemble the USA. The USA has a democratically elected president and bicameral parliament. Each state in the Union has considerable devolved power, but is neither independent nor sovereign. If that model existed in the EU, I would grab it with both hands. I would also recommend that the UK join such a USE. It would be stupid not to. I strongly suspect over the next 20 or 30 years that this will be the choice for semi-detached countries like the UK or Denmark. The choice will be between remaining an independent nation state and remaining in the EU.

In the 60s the French blocked the UK from joining the EU, correctly fearing that we would act as a hindrance to EU integration. Countries that focus too much on their independence and their sovereignty are always going to act as a block to the EU project. But they cannot possibly allow this now. Too much is at stake. Eventually for the Eurozone to work, each nation state will have to forget that it is independent and treat everyone in Europe as if they were a fellow citizen. Thus wealthy Germans are going to have to be willing to transfer money to impoverished Spaniards in exactly the same way that they transferred money from West Germany to East Germany.  If that doesn’t happen and happen rather soon the impoverished parts of Europe, including France, will not sit idly while they endure permanent recession and austerity. They will break the Eurozone no matter what the cost.

It should be obvious now that the slogan “independence in Europe” is at best a misunderstanding at worst a lie.  If Europe becomes the USE we would have a devolved parliament in Edinburgh and we would vote hopefully for a democratic president and parliament in Brussels. But we would not be independent, for sovereignty would be in Brussels, just as sovereignty in the USA is in Washington. Fundamentally this is no different from what we have now. We have devolution and we are going to get more of it if we vote no. Sovereignty, beyond mere flag waving, in the end is not on the agenda no matter which way we vote in the referendum. It’s becoming an archaic concept.

There are huge advantages of being in a union of states. The USA has such economies of scale that it would be wealthy even if it only traded with itself. A democratic union of states in the EU would likewise be massively advantageous economically and socially. It would bring living standards in southern Europe up to those in northern Europe. But the price that has to be paid for this is that the various parts of Europe give up nationalism. If you can’t work successfully in a four nation state like the UK how do you suppose you’re going to work in a 28 or more member state like the USE. If the Scots and the English cannot bear to live together in one nation state, how are we to live together with the peoples of Europe in one nation state? If you’re unwilling to transfer your wealth around the UK, what are you going to say when told that you must transfer it to Portugal or Greece? Nationalism is the enemy of EU integration. So long as people focus on resurrecting historical borders, they will not be looking towards a future when such borders are no more. People who understand the European project realise that it is not only unnecessary for a place like Bavaria to seek the independence it lost in 1871, it would also be futile and self-defeating. Secession is the opposite of what is required and for this reason, if for no other; the EU would look on an independent Scotland’s application with distaste as something unhelpful and not to be encouraged.

Scottish nationalists who really want independence as opposed to merely creating a border between Scotland and England realise that real independence is incompatible with EU membership. It is for this reason that many of them are just as much Eurosceptics as UKIP. This position at least has the virtue of being consistent and logical, but it ignores the merits of countries pooling their sovereignty and working together. The process by which the UK came together all those centuries ago is precisely the example that the EU needs to become a successful nation state. There too former enemies are putting aside their differences and finding what they have in common and pooling their sovereignty to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. They must find our focus on refighting medieval battles rather quaint.