My interest in this topic, certainly a sensitive one in contemporary Scotland, was sparked by social media posts that were scathing about a letter published in The National, a newspaper that fervently supports the SNP, highlighting the xenophobic and anti-English sentiment contained in the letter as symptomatic of the bigotry that underlies Scottish nationalism, and indeed most nationalist movements. letter The full text is reproduced below.
So now we have a part-time deputy leader. Angus is out of the country four days a week. He's an MP, he was the leader of the SNP caucus in London and now he's a deputy leader with a key role in the independence campaign. This part-time attitude to independence has to stop. Angus also played a key role in the independence referendum and we lost. We are the same people in the same old positions, making the same old mistakes.
I am also very concerned about the inclusionary policy that this party is adopting. The most important vote that Scottish people can have is to vote for independence for our country. Our precious right to vote has been given to whoever happens to be in Scotland at the time.
An English woman who had been living in Scotland until she was granted a visa to go to Australia did not want Scotland to become independent, so she voted No in the first independence referendum and emigrated to an independent Australia two weeks later. Since the EU referendum, I have been outraged by the number of EU citizens who have voted No for independence. They were given the honour of voting for the Scottish independence movement, but instead voted No for me and my grandchildren to have the citizenship rights that we take for granted in our own country.
Now retired British people are buying houses in the Borders, the Highlands are experiencing a housing boom as expats buy cheap homes, and in my own county of Fife, builders are building houses for British expats.
I am a born and bred Scottish man and have lived here for 75 years and can only hope and pray that these one night stands who have been in this country for 2 minutes will give me the right to independence. Scotland's vital independence has been reduced to a cheap lottery where anyone can claim a ticket and enter. You don't have to buy a ticket because that means you value your independence vote. Our precious independence vote has been given away to the lowest bidder.
I suspect my party is so enthralled by their inclusive mantra that they are completely unaware of the insult they are inflicting.
It is those people who are born and live in Scotland, and who have lived here for the last 20 years, that are the value I place on the right to take part in a referendum – 50 years less than the right my generation has given Scotland.
Have you ever wondered why our generation is not entrusting our pensions and assets, which we have saved up over our lifetimes, to a government that can so easily and cheaply give up the right to decide the country's future?
gross
Rosyth
To my surprise, I found myself more sympathetic to the author's difficulties than I had expected. This does not mean that I have any anti-British sentiments. I am not. I outlined why in a talk I gave in Winchester called “Who are we British?”, in which I touched on our common history and future, our common identity and heritage.
Rather, I am sympathetic to the larger truth the writer was confronting: the conflict between state-conferred citizenship and full membership in the state. States employ crude rules to assess who is and who is not eligible for the magic ticket called citizenship. The holder of this ticket gains a right to claim on his neighbors’ wealth and income through the welfare state, and a say in his neighbors’ future through democracy. Let us always remember that democracy is simply majority rule (or mob rule). Through that same democracy, the holder of this ticket can take away or add to his neighbors’ rights, and even add or remove legal protections that his neighbors enjoy. In the cases highlighted in the letter, the holder can help determine the nature of the government’s future, even when the individual has no intention of submitting to that government.
Recently I read another article on the same issue. It takes up the hypothetical case of a Turk migrating to the Netherlands and gaining citizenship. He or she would instantly exercise equal citizenship rights to the son of an old Dutch clan whose ancestors fought and shed their blood to reclaim land from the North Sea and escape the rule of the Spanish king. Moreover, the Dutchman who puts on the clogs may be fully integrated into the culture of the country, embrace reformed Christianity, cherish democratic ideals, respect the limits of power, and value pluralism. The migrant may not embrace these attributes at all, may be completely foreign to the culture, may be hostile, and may even want to weaken it and change it beyond recognition at all. The state does not care about such subtleties. How is that possible? The state cannot take into account the wealth of the state, just as it cannot acknowledge the wealth of a family. Rather, it imposes crude measures for even cruder reasons.
What is the reason?
Ensuring a workforce that can deliver on the promises made to the generations before them as they retire.
Having an alternative to compensate for declining birth rates in a country where taxes are high, the cost of living is high and it is becoming harder for families to survive.
Provide voters for political con artists and opportunists who seek power at any cost
… Often it is one of countless short-term solutions to problems of the state’s own making.
In Scotland we have a strange form of national socialism that calls itself “civic nationalism”. It was born at a time when left-wing dogma was unwavering and social justice warriors were raging. To talk about race, ethnicity, culture or history was the biggest crime. Nationhood was defined simply (or, as we will see, by geography), no other social sciences mattered. It was all about where you were, and if you crossed a line on a map with the right papers or the right excuse, you were one. No further questions asked, no permission given.
Or so it is argued. The reality, as always, is more complicated and more threatening. Even the SNP realised that geography alone was not enough. But as good social justice warriors, they saw ethnicity, history, culture and faith as “divisive”. Rather, they implicitly introduced another requirement: loyalty to the party’s core principles. Hence the now demonised “other” is the “Tory” (with echoes of the American War of Independence built on the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment). I initially thought that “Tory” was simply a euphemism for “Englishman”, a means of concealing shared prejudices. But that is a mistake, for while the less educated and more strident supporters of “civil nationalism” certainly display this trait, it is do not have Party line. “Tories” are Scots who have become “traitors”, “traitors”, “Uncle Tam” and “Yoons”. Therefore, by the SNP definition, they are no longer truly Scottish. Although they are the majority, they are still foreigners in their own country.
Thus, eschewing the traditional idea of the state being an extension of the family, the SNP/Scottish Left also turns away from the tolerance and pluralism inherent in that view, i.e. the acceptance of diverse opinions as part of the mix. They would tolerate any diversity except diversity of thought. But that approach, while pernicious and inherently totalitarian, ignores all the really important questions about what makes a state a state, and what defines a people. It makes no distinction between being kind to a stranger in one’s midst, and allowing that stranger to become a full participant in the life of the nation. It repeats the error made by the Left across the Western world: it belittles the very idea of the nation.
We have seen a classic example of contempt for the nation recently, when Tony Blair's Labour government, without consulting the people of course, tried to change society through mass immigration, which was belatedly reported in the newspapers. Telegraph:
According to Andrew Neaser, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett, the huge increase in immigration over the past decade is partly due to politically motivated attempts by ministers to fundamentally change the country and “up the right's nose with diversity”.
So there is political manipulation taking place, resulting in major changes to the country without any debate or approval by the people it will affect.What's worse, it seems to be built on two equally shaky foundations.
- The politically correct mindset that the race/culture of our island (and indeed, Western society as a whole) is flawed and must be changed in order to learn tolerance, and that any attempt to question or highlight this premise makes the critic a right-wing racist and xenophobe.
- The new religion of the political left – multiculturalism, equality for all, absolute majority rule, identity politics that fragments every nation into competing interests – will create from any group of humans a nation as secure as one built gradually over time, based on extended family ties, common culture and values, laws and history.
If you think this summary is too strong, read the German Green Party's Dr. V. Berg Germans are making statements in parliament that it's a good thing they will soon be a minority in a new “super-cultural” society that is replacing their own German culture.
The absurdity of this position in England and Scotland was spectacularly highlighted recently by a stalwart of the metrosexual media. Huffington Post:
Scottish independence now represents the last bastion on which people across the UK who believe in human solidarity, internationalism and a multicultural society must rally to stem the growing poison of Brexit that threatens to drown us all.
It's no myth: nationalism is now the last, greatest hope for internationalism.
This folly is indicative of a wider problem. The political left (in the UK, all the major parties are on the political left) no longer matters. Things are now driven by forces they cannot control and do not understand. These influences are largely due to their amateurish tinkering with the nature of the state and with the concept of the nation (as well as their equally amateurish tinkering with the economy). That tinkering goes back a century to the aftermath of the First World War and the Wilsonians' dream of a new order in which all nations were equal (and the US was more equal than any other). This included attacks on both European and British culture, which imperceptibly took root on the left. Add in the unfortunate influences of Gramsci and Lukács, the Frankfurt School, the Communist Manifesto and political correctness, and you have a political culture that is, in fact, already perceived as outdated, anachronistic and backward. The state must be replaced by a supra-state and, eventually, a world state. Thus the SNP and the mainstream left have abandoned the idea of Britain (a viable, strong, independent state) in favour of the European project.
But no one has asked the people. Instead, the people are asking questions that the political elite cannot answer.
I argue that we must find our own answers, rooted in an understanding of both who we are as a people and the nature of humanity. We must reaffirm the absolute values of good and evil, truth and deception, peace and conflict, love and hate. These are personal issues first and foremost, for we see daily evidence that the nation cannot discern between good and evil, that it runs only on lies, that it finds strength in war, that it is incapable of loving. We must each make those choices and re-establish what nationhood means. It is more than a welfare system, control over taxation and spending, or the NHS. It is shared values that do not prevent disagreement, mutual consideration that does not depend on tax grabbing, a shared faith that does not prevent an honest examination of that faith, a loose extension of family to both blood relatives and adopted kin from other countries.
Our political leaders have sought to destroy everything that holds us together — family, church, country. We must refuse to follow their path of destruction and rebuild what they have wasted.
