Scotland the Brave

...But there are no geography classes nowadays, as there were in my schooldays, where much of the globe was colored pink—signifying allegiance to the British Empire or Commonwealth—to inspire enterprising Scots to further their ambitions beneath a British parasol under a blazing tropical sun...

...A Scottish accent was virtually the only regional variation of Standard English tolerated—certainly in the offi cers’ mess—in the armed services, but the historic Scottish regiments have been so amalgamated and abolished over the years that there is now only one left: the Royal Regiment of Scotland, even if its fi ve regular battalions all still retain some of the famous old names, such as the Black Watch and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders...

...The root cause is almost certainly the fact that, for a great many people, being “British” doesn’t mean anything in the 21st century...

...And it is no longer necessary for Scots to go through London to travel abroad, given that there are direct fl ights, now, from Scottish airports to virtually every part of the world...

...Just as I’ve seen people scribbling “USA,” rather than the continental catch-all “American” in that part of hotel and other registers that ask for a declaration of nationality, so “Scottish” is the designation of choice for most of my compatriots when traveling abroad...

...No longer...

...Thus, they say, Scotland would not be suffering from the current downturn in the world economy, or at least not as much as it is, because the Scots would have the benefi t of “their” oil...

...No one disputes that Ireland’s recovery has been fueled, in part at least, by her enthusiasm for European Union membership and the regional subsidies that have fl owed therefrom...

...Professor Pittock has fairly accurately chronicled the road we’ve traveled in these islands, and is sympathetic to the aims and aspirations of those who wish a signifi cant transformation in the relationship between the constituent parts of this Union...

...And so there we’d have it...

...An experienced and skillful politician, he is cannily playing all the best cards—scrapping university tuition fees, ending bridge tolls, freezing local property taxes, saving local hospitals from closure, phasing out charges for prescription medicines— and all the while saying to the Scottish electorate: “Look how good it is now...

...Even the English, in numbers undreamed of only a decade or so ago, fi nd themselves considering seriously the option of the United Kingdom breaking up, to the extent that many in Britain’s southern and vastly more populous kingdom now say to the Scots, with more than a hint of weariness and exasperation in their voices: “If independence is what you want, in the name of God, go...

...Bradley professor of literature at the University of Glasgow, and charts the changes, often dramatic, that have occurred within the constituent parts of the U.K...

...he has a good working relationship with the queen, and he and other nationalist leaders have spent weekends with her majesty and the prince of Wales at their rural retreats in the Scottish Highlands...

...The principality of Wales was seen as part of England when England and Scotland united their parliaments in the 1707 Treaty of Union, 104 years after the Union of the Crowns when Scotland’s James VI succeeded Elizabeth and became England’s James I. Ireland joined up in 1801 and then the 26 counties of the Free State, now the Republic, of Ireland went their separate way in 1922, leaving the six counties of Northern Ireland as still part of the United Kingdom...

...within the last half-century and does nothing to conceal his sympathy for the view that something has got to give, following the signifi cant devolution of powers from Westminster to an Edinburgh parliament, as well as the lesser transfer to the Cardiff and Belfast assemblies, during the last decade...

...He plans a referendum in 2010, and wants to make the question as bland as possible so as not to frighten the voters...

...Salmond is riding high in the polls...

...In spite of this handicap he reigns supreme over a shell-shocked and demoralized Labour party, which has lost control of Scotland for the fi rst time in 50 years, and the largely irrelevant Scottish Tories...

...After three centuries—301 years to be precise—the maintenance of the union between England and Scotland is no longer a given...

...Imagine how great we could be with complete independence...

...An independent Scotland would be modeled, at least in the economic sense, on the Republic of Ireland, where corporate tax is 12.5 percent, compared with the United Kingdom’s (and hence Scotland’s) 28 percent...

...His party has the most seats—47 out of 129—but no overall majority in the Scottish parliament...

...The Scots’ military tradition and their generally better standard of education meant that they were ideal colonial pacifi ers, administrators, and, as in the case of Andrew Carnegie in the United States, Max Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook) in Canada, Rupert Murdoch (in Australia), and the Jardine Matheson clans in the Far East, successful entrepreneurs and merchant-venturers...

...in fact, I’m often surprised how few and how infrequently young people of my acquaintance travel to London...

...But the London-based, and thus English-dominated, media are deemed to be the worst culprits...

...Scots were happy to subsume their nationality inside the British carapace if there were new lands to conquer (often literally) and vast tracts, on which the sun never set, to administer and govern, for the most part effi ciently...

...If he gets his way there will be nothing on the ballot paper about Scotland being a “completely separate Country outside the United Kingdom”—which, in a recent opinion poll, attracted only 19 percent support...

...It is their numerical dominance in the British Isles that skews the relationships between the constituent parts, and it is their refusal to accept the changes that devolution has wrought, Pittock argues, that threatens ultimately the maintenance of the Union...

...The rapid downsizing of the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, and British Army after two world wars left a bankrupt Britain only too eager to divest itself of its colonial responsibilities, and this has also impinged on the Scots’ association with a British identity...

...And if international companies with headquarters in London are thinking, as some are reputedly doing, of moving to Ireland, then why not to an independent Scotland...

...Foreigners are perhaps most guilty of this confusion...

...Scots, who used to be simply irritated when the terms English and British appeared to be interchangeable, now protest loudly...

...Alan Cochrane is Scottish editor of The Daily Telegraph...

...That way Ireland’s economic miracle of the last 15 years, creating the so-called “Celtic Tiger,” could be matched by a Scottish “Celtic Lion...

...An independent Scotland could become the 28th member of the EU...

...Young Scots—those in the 18-25 age group, which opinion polls suggest is where most support for the separatist case lies—don’t see London as their capital city, but merely as another big city in another country...

...Only some form of federal structure, he believes, will save the United Kingdom, a policy long advocated by the Liberal Democrat party—and also, incidentally, recently volunteered to me by a sympathetic (to my Unionist worries) visiting American politics student...

...The fact that the SNP has, as one of its main policy planks, withdrawal from the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, whose restrictions on deep-sea cod and herring fi shing have systematically decimated the Scottish trawler fl eet, is glossed over by the nationalists...

...However, this federal solution, says Pittock, may not arrive in time because the British (English) government “continues to act as if devolution hadn’t happened...

...Loss of empire, too, has helped the separatists’ cause...

...Scotland Since the Sixties by Murray Pittock Reaktion, 224 pp., $24.95 The question asked by Murray Pittock in his title is the question that has been asked increasingly throughout my adolescent and adult life, to the extent that there is nowadays almost no other political question asked by—or posed to—Scottish voters...

...This may be a welcome bonus for holidaymakers and business travelers, but it militates against a feeling of Britishness...

...No longer, in such a circumstance of “freedom” from Westminster, says Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National party and the fi rst nationalist to hold the offi ce of fi rst minister in the nine years of devolution, would some Scots have to pay what are claimed as the highest pump prices in the world...

...For instance, Jackie Stewart, a Scot, is deemed to be a “British” world champion Formula One star, but Nigel Mansell or Damon Hill, also F1 champs, are “English...

...He leads a party that, until recently, was often stridently republican in tone...

...they are easily forgiven as they know no better...

...How could the continuation of the United Kingdom, arguably the most successful union of two former enemies the world has ever seen, be threatened, as it most assuredly is today...

...Nevertheless, it is inconceivable that an independent Scotland would be granted entry if it tried to opt out of such a fundamental part of EU policy as the Common Fisheries Policy...

...Interestingly, the ‘B’-word is also more and more disliked by the English, too...

...But Pittock does ignore the bland—and to my mind disingenuous—assertions made by this accomplished politician...

...John Major, the last Tory premier, however, said that it was a recipe for “sleepwalking towards independence...

...With a majority of Scots still favoring the continuation of the monarchy, Salmond has now pledged that Elizabeth Windsor would remain Queen of Scots after independence and that Scotland would retain its “social union” with England...

...The English have also shown remarkable tolerance—coming to an end, I’m bound to conclude—about public spending in Scotland at roughly $3,000 per capita per annum more than that spent in England, and about the fact that Scots members of the Westminster parliament can vote on English domestic issues (such as health and education) while English MPs, by virtue of the responsibilities of the Edinburgh parliament, have no infl uence over similar issues north of the border...

...Instead of the United Kingdom, as presently constituted, Salmond says we’d have the United Kingdoms, bound together by the same monarch, by custom and practice and a shared love of the same TV soaps, but not by law or politics...

...Why not Scotland, ask the nationalists...

...They are everyone’s villains...

...I’m not so sure...

...Another huge irritant is the media’s often careless labeling...

...Most interesting of all, at least to my mind, but not mentioned at all by the author in this book, is Salmond’s attitude to the monarchy...

...Murray Pittock is the A.C...

...government to make Scotland independent...

...Nationalist politicians—that is, those who would break up the United Kingdom and set up a completely separate and independent Scotland—put their desire to be “free” of the supposed shackles of London rule at the heart of every policy...

...After three centuries, says the nationalist fi rst minister, this hugely successful union, whose empire once dominated the world, and whose infl uence still counts for something at the conference table, would be smashed asunder by the addition of the letter s. Doesn’t sound like much, now, does it...

...The fact that Alex Salmond was guest speaker at his book’s offi cial launch party may have been pure coincidence, or maybe not...

...This state of affairs may be what his party has stood for since its birth in the 1930s, but, instead, he will merely ask for permission from the voters to begin discussions with the U.K...

...In the Outer Hebrides, the archipelago off mainland Scotland’s west coast, a gallon now costs the equivalent of $13, and it’s still going up...

...The Labour and Liberal Democrat parties believed that devolution would buy off, or even fi nish, the nationalists...

...Last May the Scots elected a nationalist administration in Edinburgh, and there’s now no mystery as to whose analysis was correct...

...The English generally get a bad press, not least by the Scots, and I have a great deal of sympathy for the patience they’ve shown in recent decades as the caterwauling from my countrymen has increased...

...The North Sea oil fi elds, discovered in the 1960s and developed in the succeeding four decades, are “Scottish” not “British,” they say, and should be used for the benefi t of Scots, not Britons, say the Nats—just as the Norwegians, on the other side of the North Sea from Scotland, have used their oil tax revenues to underwrite their public expenditure...

...That “something” is, of course, the English...

...A recent independent report criticized the BBC for being too English, too concerned with what happens inside the M25 “Beltway” and for ignoring the Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish...

...The same goes for business taxation...