You Vote: Should Scotland go its own way?

Margaret MacMillan : A few weeks ago I heard Scotland’s First Minister speak at the Edinburgh Festival. Alex Salmond was bright, charming, appealingly self-deprecating – a Scottish René Lévesque – as he made the case for Scotland’s independence. It was all about a small proud nation struggling to be free from the toils of a cold-hearted uncaring England. The separation would be easy and painless. Scots would be better off, their social benefits and economic well-being underwritten by all that North Sea oil. More important they would be happier. The arts would flourish. Many in the audience loved it and groaned when the man with the English accent pointed out what might go wrong – that, for example, an independent Scotland might still use the pound but that it couldn’t expect to have any influence over the Bank of England’s policies.

For a Canadian it was all too familiar. The assurances that nothing would really change in people’s lives. Indeed that they would certainly be better off in a kinder, gentler Scotland out from under the thumb of Ottawa or Westminster. Why, Mr. Salmond has even promised that an independent Scotland can have its own entry in the Eurovision song contest. When Bloc Québécois leader Lucien Bouchard was asked during the 1995 referendum campaign what independence would mean he said it would be like waving a magic wand.

Above all – and this was an audience heavy in writers and intellectuals – there was a sense that voting Yes for Scottish independence was somehow more authentic, more daring, and more exciting than going for the stodgy status quo or paying attention to those boring arguments about economics or self-interest. Never mind if the amount of offshore oil (much less who it really belongs to) is open to question. Never mind whether taxes in Scotland will have to go up to maintain the same level of services. Perhaps Sean Connery, a long-time supporter of independence, who lives in Monaco, will move back to help pay the cost of what he says is a promise of “inclusivity, equality and core democratic values.”

Like nationalists in Quebec and across Europe, the Yes supporters in Scotland have made a highly selective use of history to build a story of grievance and of repeated slights. What they do not talk about are the ways in which peoples of different regions, religions or ethnicities have so often intermingled and have a shared past. The Scots have been an important part of the Union ever since they joined. They played an outsized part in building and maintaining the British empire. So many of the businessmen in Calcutta were Scots that the annual St Andrews’ Day dinner was the leading social event. Think of the great intellectuals of the Scottish Enlightenment such as Adam Smith, Robert Adam, David Hume or Walter Scott who so enriched the United Kingdom, of the many politicians from north of the border, among them Harold Macmillan or Gordon Brown, or of the inventors, whether James Watt who developed the steam engine or Alexander Fleming the discoverer of penicillin.

Until recently it was possible in Scotland to be both British and Scots. Indeed my own ancestors who moved to western Ontario in the mid-nineteenth century were quite comfortably Scots, British and Canadian all at the same time. They never felt they had to choose. Today in Scotland, as the vote draws closer, people are having to make a choice and that is starting to divide families and friends. Whatever happens in the vote next Friday, the damage will have been done.

What is also so dispiriting to a Canadian who lived through the 1995 referendum is how the No side is repeating the mistakes the federal government made then. Its message has been largely negative, focusing on the reasons why Scotland should not leave rather than assuring the Scots that they are wanted and valued. The English elites have suddenly focused on the challenge in Scotland. This past week the trains heading north have been filled with politicians who have discovered that they might miss Scotland if it left.

If the vote is Yes, the next months will see prolonged negotiations between Westminster and Edinburgh and they will not be friendly. The Czech Republic and Slovakia had their Velvet Divorce because both sides wanted it. That is unlikely to happen here. The English, who are facing a sudden diminution in their size and their standing in the world, are going to be angry and resentful.

Mr. Salmond, not surprisingly, promises that there will be no fallout. The Scots will be able to have their cake and eat it too. The English will come round. And Scotland will still be part of the European Union and that will provide Scotland with the security of membership in a much larger economic and political entity. It is not clear, though, that the EU will play along. It has little interest in setting a precedent for other separatist movements whether in Spain, Italy or Belgium. Even if it does join the EU, Scotland, with a population of some five million out of the 500 million in Europe, will have little leverage in Brussels. And it may in turn face an independence movement within its own borders; the Shetland Islands are strongly in favour of remaining within the Union.

Perhaps Mr. Salmond has his own magic wand and with one wave the week after next all will be well. The sun will shine on both sides of the new border and blue birds will sing. I wish I could believe it. And I wish that the lure of nationalism was not threatening to turn a worldly and cosmopolitan people inward and break up the United Kingdom. When the world is facing such a multitude of threats, whether from a belligerent Russia or from Islamic jihadists, destroying a major democratic player seems a dangerous luxury.

Duncan Ross : Like Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes, the referendum campaign in Scotland has been a story of two nationalisms. One – British nationalism – has told a tale of an enduring partnership, of 300 years of union, of the British Empire on which the sun never set, of pulling together and shared sacrifice that delivered victory in two World Wars. It speaks of great scientific and cultural achievements and of Britain’s greatness on the world stage. It is profoundly backward-looking and steeped in nostalgia.

The other – Scottish nationalism – tells a tale of optimism and opportunity, of using the resources at our command to build a stronger economy and therefore a better and more inclusive society. It recognizes where we have come from but is more interested in where we are going. It is forward-looking and eager to bring what the Scottish historian Angus Calder called a Scottish ‘accent of the mind’ to both domestic and international affairs.

As a historian, I recognize the importance of the past. I try to ensure my students develop a sympathy and understanding of how the modern world has been created. But we must not be prisoners of the past. Critical reading is important: One might ask what is so great about the legacy of British exceptionalism if up to 25 per cent of children in Scotland live in poverty, if parts of my home city of Glasgow have male life expectancy lower than Gaza, and if thousands of families rely on charity and food banks to feed themselves. Is a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council so valuable that we are willing to keep weapons of mass destruction fewer than than 65 kilometers from out biggest city?

Scotland has changed dramatically in the last 50 years or so. The traditional sectors that delivered industrial strength between 1870 and 1960 – textiles, coal, steel, shipbuilding and heavy engineering – have largely declined. For much of the period after the Second World War that decline left a legacy of slow growth and unemployment that was addressed by channeling the resources of the British state. The main tools were a combination of welfare payments and regional policy designed to divert industrial employment to particular unemployment blackspots. Many analysts say this created a culture of dependency and hopelessness that pervades Scottish society; and it is a short step from there to arguing that Scotland is too wee, too poor and too stupid to survive on its own, which is the essence (though not the words) of the No campaign. Don’t bother about important things like running an economy, dealing with international events or trying to make your own voice heard in the world, they suggest. Better to leave that to those in London who know best and have experience in these matters.

But Scotland is no longer the country it was. Four things are important.

First, there is oil and gas. Close to £1-trillion in revenue has flowed from the North Sea directly to U.K. Treasury coffers since oil came on stream in the mid-1970s. The U.K. government tells us (every 10 years or so) that the oil is about to run out and, anyway, the price is too volatile to support economic prosperity. Scotland, it seems, is the only country in the world for which such a windfall would be a burden. Oil matters, but it is not the only, or even the most important, factor in the economy.

Second, one of the most striking aspects of Scotland’s industrial structure in the last few decades is the extent to which it has diverged from the rest of the U.K.: tourism, education, food and drink, biotechnology, computer gaming and renewable energy have flourished alongside a remarkable creative sector and the traditional strength in financial services. This has created a diverse and robust economy that attracts more inward direct investment than anywhere in the U.K. except London.

Third, since the 1980s, we have seen a cultural renaissance in Scotland that has been astonishing to behold. Writers, artists, poets, musicians and filmmakers have set about the task of representing Scotland to the world and to itself with gusto, enthusiasm, enormous talent and, perhaps most important of all, confidence. Everything from Trainspotting to the Gaelic singing in Disney’s Brave, from Alexander McCall Smith’s novels of life in Botswana to the poetry of Edwin Morgan and Jackie Kay reflect a particularly Scottish view of the world in which we live.

The fourth pillar of recent change is political – the devolved Scottish Parliament in 1999 was designed to acknowledge Scots’ desire to have some influence over their own lives, but equally to ‘kill nationalism stone dead’ in the words of one prominent politician of the time. Instead, it has established itself at the heart of a Scottish political culture that has begun to articulate a set of values and aspirations that appear to be diverging from those of the Westminster Parliament.

This referendum is very much about a choice between two futures. We either take responsibility for ourselves or we decide it is all too difficult and frightening and London really does know best. I am confident that we will vote Yes on Thursday: We have the talent, the wealth and the resources. We should look to the future with confidence, not be hidebound to a rose-tinted version of Britain’s imperial past.