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mac

Breaking up Britain - four nations after a union

Just discovered this - I'm going to read Mark Perryman's essay explaining his thinking behind the book, while I sit on the fence...  Cool

http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/books/archive/breakingupbritain.html
Luke P

An "unhappy union". If I might be so bold as to judge a book by its cover for one moment... The UK became the world's greatest inperial power, industrial power and economic powerhouse for quite some time. It has led the world in engineering, technology, sport and culture. It has punched above its weight in almost any area you care to mention. A British passport was once the most prestigious in the world. Barring the Jacobite rebellions there has been no civil war, no great unrest, and apart from the potato famine, no mass starvation (the Irish got out soon after). We have largely got on awfully well and many parts of the world greatly respect us. This smacks of rampant revisionism with a divisive agenda.

"Apart from the acqueduct, the roads, public order, the sanitation, the education, wine and literature, what have the Romans ever done for us...?"
Holebender

Never mind the rioting in the streets at the time of the union eh? We were all so grateful.

I'm afraid you're the revisionist.


Oh... and the Romans? They make a desert and call it peace. (Calgacus)
magister ludi

Luke P wrote:
Barring the Jacobite rebellions there has been no civil war, no great unrest, and apart from the potato famine, no mass starvation (the Irish got out soon after).



eh?
Jimbo

Quote:
The UK became the world's greatest inperial power


I don't think raping, pillaging and stripping other countries of their resources/assets is something to be proud of.
Fidget

Do you hold the same views planetary-wise?
Zed

Alan Cochrane wants to fight to preserve the union  Shocked

We must fight to preserve the Union
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-ma...fight-to-preserve-the-union.thtml
Alasdair

I found this particularly amusing:

Quote="Alan Cochrane"]It has been adopted by all of the indigenous Scottish media, none more so than BBC Scotland who confuse us in daily news bulletins with their talk of ‘the government’ — meaning whatever Mr Salmond’s up to — and then referring to the ‘Westminster government’ [/quote]

It might confuse him but I think the rest of us might just manage to work it out!

Why do unionists persist with this 'the electorate is thick' stance with statements like:

Quote:
However, they may be duped by the question. Mr Salmond plans to ask not for approval for a completely separate state outside the UK — which is the reality — but merely for permission to open negotiations with Whitehall leading to independence for Scotland.


It doesn't take a genius to work out what the proposed question asks.
Aventinian

Alasdair wrote:
Why do unionists persist with this 'the electorate is thick' stance


Because the electorate generally is quite thick - or at least uninformed - about certain issues.

Quote:
with statements like:

Quote:
However, they may be duped by the question. Mr Salmond plans to ask not for approval for a completely separate state outside the UK — which is the reality — but merely for permission to open negotiations with Whitehall leading to independence for Scotland.


It doesn't take a genius to work out what the proposed question asks.


Independence is not defined - indeed, no-one here seems able to offer a consistent definition of an 'independent state' in the modern world. Moreover, it has been shown time and again in polls that people do generally choose different answers on this issue depending on what question is asked: so clearly it is an important issue.

If the British Government is to recognise the Scottish Parliament as having the authority to hold a consultative referendum on the independence issue - which it does not explicitly at present, it would seem - then it ought to adopt something akin to Canada's Clarity Act governing the conditions on which it would accept negotiations.
calum

Looks like a good book. I read Williamson's piece a while back after he posted it on the Scottish Patient.

Union Jack? Thall is cac!
dubscot

Quote:
Barring the Jacobite rebellions there has been no civil war, no great unrest


you either have a very short memory or are totally thick, what exactly would you call what happened in Northern Ireland during the 60's, 70's & 80's??



Quote:
no mass starvation


apart from the 2 million Irish people who died during the famine? wtf is that if it's not mass starvation?
Aventinian

dubscot wrote:
you either have a very short memory or are totally thick, what exactly would you call what happened in Northern Ireland during the 60's, 70's & 80's??


Certainly not a civil war, anyway!

Quote:
apart from the 2 million Irish people who died during the famine? wtf is that if it's not mass starvation?


He did mention that, in case you didn't notice.
dubscot

Quote:
Certainly not a civil war, anyway!


of course it was, Northern Irish people killing Northern Irish people - a civil war



Quote:
He did mention that, in case you didn't notice.


It was the way he said it, no mass starvation, oh em, apart from 2 million people dying - an awful lot of people, so he can't say there was no mass starvation!!
Alasdair

dubscot wrote:
Quote:
Certainly not a civil war, anyway!


of course it was, Northern Irish people killing Northern Irish people - a civil war


nah, it wasn't civil war, no no no!  It was "the troubles" Rolling Eyes
Aventinian

dubscot wrote:
of course it was, Northern Irish people killing Northern Irish people - a civil war


People killing people does not a civil war make. The worst open conflicts in Northern Ireland were no more than relatively minor-scale riots.
Alasdair

Aventinian wrote:
The worst open conflicts in Northern Ireland were no more than relatively minor-scale riots.


War though does not need to be 'open conflict', I doubt I need to explain that there are different styles of war.  Open Conflict being the popular image, but Gorilla warfare is still a form of war.
Stevie

I'm of the the mind that a civil war is a struggle to take control of the whole governing body of a territory.

The Irish wished to break away rather than take over.

Still Dubscot has a point and he could argue that if a war was taking place within this territory to take control of part of that territory then that could be called a civil war... maybe.

Still folks, it would be nice if people could stop calling each other 'thick' on this thread.
Holebender

Surely the wish to break away exactly fits your description of a struggle to take control of a territory.

In the American Civil War one side (the Confederacy) was not attempting to take control of the entire United States, it was attempting to break away and form a new state outwith the control of the United States. The other side in that conflict was attempting to preserve its complete territorial integrity as it was before the war.

If you substitute Irish Republicans for Confederates and Loyalists/The UK for the US Union, what's the difference between the American Civil War and the Northern Ireland Troubles?
Dave Coull

Holebender wrote:
what's the difference between the American Civil War and the Northern Ireland Troubles?
The answer is that, whereas Irish Republicans sought to overthrow the established power in Northern Ireland, what the politicians of the Confederacy wanted was to PRESERVE THE STATUS QUO. They were already in power, and they wanted to keep it like that. Nearly all of the Presidents of the USA had been Southerners, and nearly all of the Presidents of the USA had been slave-owners. So long as they held federal power, "states' rights" never entered their heads. In fact, they actively opposed states' rights, for instance, insisting that no state had a right to opt out of enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. That act not only said fugitives had to be returned to their masters, it also gave slave-owners the right to contract gangs of specialist slave-takers to pursue their "property" throughout ANY state. It was only when it looked like federal power was slipping from their grasp that they sought to break away. And it was the GOVERNMENTS of those states which sought to break away. The government and established powers in Northern Ireland have never attempted to break away.
Holebender

Of course anyone can find any number of differences between the American Civil War and the Northern Ireland Troubles. I was trying to point out the similarities to someone who seems to think a civil war can only be defined in terms of an internal struggle for control over an entire existing state.

Would the various armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia at the end of the 20th Century be considered civil wars? None of them involved antagonists who were exclusively trying to gain control over the entire territory of the former Yugoslavia.
mac

Perryman's essay makes a lot of good points

As a Scotsman, I also like Williamson's essay. Very Happy
Dave Coull

Holebender wrote:
I was trying to point out the similarities to someone who seems to think a civil war can only be defined in terms of an internal struggle for control over an entire existing state.
In practice, the definition of "civil war" can depend on the outcome. John Adams, who was Vice President of the USA under George Washington, and then succeeded Washington to become the second President, estimated that, during the "American Revolution", one third of Americans backed the USA, one third of Americans were loyal to the British, and one third of Americans favoured neither the USA nor the British crown, but just wanted to stay neutral. And it wasn't just Americans who were divided   -  the Church of Scotland was more or less equally split between supporters of the Crown and supporters of the American right to secede. The leader of the Opposition at Westminster organised parties to celebrate reverses suffered by the British army. A situation where the numbers on each side could be described as more or less equally balanced meant the war certainly could be described as a "civil war". But it isn't. The reason is simple: the "Revolution" succeeded. So we speak about the American War of Independence. But the later attempt by the "South" to secede failed. Therefore that was the American Civil War.
Holebender

In the "English Civil War" the Parliamentarians defeated the old order and won their revolution, yet it is known as a civil war. I think the only thing we can say about it is there are no hard and fast rules about when a civil war is a civil war and when it's a revolution.
Dave Coull

Holebender wrote:
In the "English Civil War" the Parliamentarians defeated the old order and won their revolution
Yes and no. Some permanent changes were achieved, but nothing like what the more radical elements of the New Model Army and the Levellers etc had been aiming for, and, after all, the monarchy WAS restored. So the end result was something of a compromise rather than one side unequivocally "winning".
mac

For a "Union", let's say like a "marriage" to work, there has to be an equitable split of resources - to be treated as equals, the four nations deserve an equal share of the pooled resources - that is the real test of any so-called "Union"...
Aventinian

mac wrote:
For a "Union", let's say like a "marriage" to work, there has to be an equitable split of resources - to be treated as equals, the four nations deserve an equal share of the pooled resources - that is the real test of any so-called "Union"...


The thing is, the union was not a marriage. In a marriage, two parties make a binding agreement to live together. The union was incorporating: not only did the states agree to unite, but they also ceased to exist independently of one-another.

Scotland and England (and later Wales and [Northern] Ireland) have never been equals in the union. There is only one equality that has been aimed at: the legal and political equality of British citizens, which involves completely undermining any equality between a group of five million people and a group of fifty million.
Dave Coull

mac wrote:
For a "Union", let's say like a "marriage" to work, there has to be an equitable split of resources - to be treated as equals, the four nations deserve an equal share of the pooled resources
You're mixing up "equitable" and "equal". These are two completely different things. "Equitable" means something like "fair shares", whereas "equal" means just that, an exact, mathematical equality. If Northern Ireland (population around 1.5 million) was to receive an equal share of total UK resources, exactly the same share of total UK resources as the 5 million people of Scotland, or exactly the same share of total UK resources as the much larger population of England, this would have the effect of making the population of Northern Ireland fantastically rich compared to the rest of us, which would be very far from being "equitable".
Aventinian wrote:
There is only one equality that has been aimed at: the legal and political equality of British citizens, which involves completely undermining any equality between a group of five million people and a group of fifty million.
Which, given that the "group of five million people" to which you are referring is the population of one of the two kingdoms which formed the UK in the first place, and given that this group does appear to have some different priorities regarding what is equitable from the larger grouping, is a good reason for this aforementioned geographically based grouping in Scotland to withdraw from the UK.
mac

My apologies, DC!

Yes, you're right DC, I did confuse "equal" and "equitable".

I'm ok with the idea of equal shares Cool
Aventinian

Dave Coull wrote:
Which, given that the "group of five million people" to which you are referring is the population of one of the two kingdoms which formed the UK in the first place, and given that this group does appear to have some different priorities regarding what is equitable from the larger grouping, is a good reason for this aforementioned geographically based grouping in Scotland to withdraw from the UK.


Says you.
Holebender

Yes, we can all see he said it.
mac

Having read two essays of Breaking up Britain, I'm thinking that maybe this could be one of those rare occasions when the whole is NOT as great as the sum of it's parts.

Still on the fence.
Cool
Aventinian

Holebender wrote:
Yes, we can all see he said it.


Pipe down in the back there.
mac

I'm no longer on the fence.

http://www.boycottscotland.com/
Alasdair

That site was obviously constructed by an angry mob!

boycottscotland wrote:
Lest there be any doubt, this boycott is not aimed against the people of Scotland or the United Kingdom, but against the governments of Scotland and Britain. The unfortunate reality is that initiating boycotts against the tourism, banking, and oil industries of a particular country are necessary in order to force that government to listen and understand and admit their error.


My emphasis.  That'll be the American way then, if a foreign power makes a decision they don't agree with then obviously you need to "force" them to "understand and admit their error".

Mac, which side of the fence you on now then?
Lord Pitsligo

Aventinian wrote:

not only did the states agree to unite, but they also ceased to exist independently of one-another.


Sounds like a few marriages I've seen  Wink
Lord Pitsligo

Holebender wrote:
what's the difference between the American Civil War and the Northern Ireland Troubles?


The establishment lost, so it wasn't able to be written off as "sedition" or some such other euphamism.
Aventinian

Lord Pitsligo wrote:
Holebender wrote:
what's the difference between the American Civil War and the Northern Ireland Troubles?


The establishment lost, so it wasn't able to be written off as "sedition" or some such other euphamism.


I may have made a major historical c**k-up, but didn't the 'Establishment', if you want to call it, win in both of these cases and prevent secession?
Lord Pitsligo

Aventinian wrote:
Lord Pitsligo wrote:
Holebender wrote:
what's the difference between the American Civil War and the Northern Ireland Troubles?


The establishment lost, so it wasn't able to be written off as "sedition" or some such other euphamism.


I may have made a major historical c**k-up, but didn't the 'Establishment', if you want to call it, win in both of these cases and prevent secession?


I read it as the American War of Independence. I blame the fever I'm suffering from.

I'm not sure the "establishment" won in Northern Ireland.
Stevie

Bravehand wrote:
I'm of the the mind that a civil war is a struggle to take control of the whole governing body of a territory.

The Irish wished to break away rather than take over.

Still Dubscot has a point and he could argue that if a war was taking place within this territory to take control of part of that territory then that could be called a civil war... maybe.

Still folks, it would be nice if people could stop calling each other 'thick' on this thread.


I felt I had to correct my post here.

In fact the American civil war (war of succession) was aimed at declaring a republic in the South and separating themselves from the North, hence by this definition the separation of Ireland from the British state would under these conditions be considered a civil war.

Sorry for taking so long to correct it but I've been holidaying in the Dordogne.

Dubscot is therefore right.
Nautilus

Will people on the site stop categorising  the Troubles as a civil war. It was a petty squabble between two traditions which resulted in the squalid (not heroic) murders of hundreds of civilians.

There were more murders in Glasgow during this period. It was not a civil war.
Alasdair

Nautilus wrote:
Will people on the site stop categorising  the Troubles as a civil war. It was a petty squabble between two traditions which resulted in the squalid (not heroic) murders of hundreds of civilians.

There were more murders in Glasgow during this period. It was not a civil war.


Regardless of the death toll it certainly involved the use of what could be accurately described as the machineries of wars (arms, ammo, and relatively sophisticated explosives).

'Troubles' is merely a euphemism for civil war.  Was it to so with traditions?  I always thought of it more of a border dispute or at the least a dispute over who has the right to govern that particular corner of the island of Ireland.

The number of murders in Glasgow (or anywhere else) over the same period are irrelevant, individual murders are generally not motivated or organised by a group with a particular aim as is the case in NI, they are individual acts for individual reasons/motivations that obviously couldn't be classified as 'war'.

Of course, we don't actually have civil wars anymore, any sort of military action not involving the 'allied forces' is generally labelled as 'terrorism'.

In fact don't most of the organisations involved in the NI civil war refer to themselves as Army or Force, suggesting a level of organisation entirely consistent with more traditional armed forces involved in wars?  Indeed, do they not also have disciplinary measures (albeit brutal ones) that are also entirely consistent with Armies and Defence Forces?

At best I think we could label it as a Gorrilla War, 'Troubles' is vaguely insulting to those who have died due to the conflict.  My three year old sometimes has 'troubles' going to the toilet on time, but nobodies died!
Stevie

Nautilus wrote:
Will people on the site stop categorising  the Troubles as a civil war. It was a petty squabble between two traditions which resulted in the squalid (not heroic) murders of hundreds of civilians.

There were more murders in Glasgow during this period. It was not a civil war.


I get your point but I was talking about the separation and creation of the Republic of Ireland and not the  troubles in the North.

Still, I think it would be reasonable to say that the 'troubles' gravitated to a war and not just a petty squabble.  And I certainly would not suggest that the deaths of thousands of people (far more than were murdered in Glasgow) over the period of time discussed were heroic in the slightest but rather tragic and terribly sad.  History has a way of deciding these things...
urchurdan

When is a war not a war?

Was reading these interesting posts,  during the 'Radical War', the Government of the day themselves called this a 'war', and they also called the skirmish at Bonnymuir a 'Battle'.
As the year was 1820, this officially made this the last battle fought in these Islands.
What brought this to my mind, was that the Radical 'Army' didn't muster more than 50 men at any one time.
So, if it suits a Government, 50 men can constitute an Army, and what was really a wee skirmish can be called a 'Battle.'
This is an official  account of the 'Battle.'

[b]Battle of Bonnymuir
An Account of the Battle which took place at Bonnymuir, on Wednesday the 5th April, 1820, betwixt about 50 of the Radicals and a party of the Military; with the names of the 15 Radical prisoners. - Also, the names of those Killed and Wounded at Greenock, on Saturday last.
Kilsyth, 5th April 1820
This morning a gentleman residing in this parish belonging to the Falkirk troop of Yeomanry Cavalry; left home to join his troop at Falkirk, and had proceeded a short way from his own house, when he came up with between 25 to 30 Radicals, all armed with pikes, muskets, and pistols, who stopped him and requested him to give up his arms, which he refused to do, and showed them a disposition to resist. They told him (at the same time presenting at him several pistols) that resistance would be vain, as they would kill him on the spot. He, however, got off retaining his arms and meeting with an Orderly from Kilsyth going with dispatches to Stirling, informed him it would be improper to proceed. They accordingly both returned to Kilsyth and reported, when the Commanding-Officer there ordered ten men and a serjeant from the 10th Hussars and as many of the Yeomanry Cavalry, to escort the Orderly and the other Gentleman on their several roads, and to endeavour to fall in with these armed Radicals if possible. The Radicals, in the interval, had been joined by a number more, who proceeded along the Canal Bank towards Bonny-muir, having taken several fowling-pieces and a pitch-fork from farmhouses in the neighbourhood of Bonnybridge.

The Cavalry, on their arrival at Loanhead, being informed of their proceedings, immediately went to Bonnymuir in search of the Radicals, and, on coming up with them, they showed a disposition to fight rather than fly; having taken their position behind an old dyke, they allowed the Cavalry to come within thirty yards of them, when they fired a volley; the Cavalry instantly charged, firing a few shots when going over the dyke; the Radicals received the charge with their pikes, and made all the resistance in their power, but they soon found themselves in a bad situation, and throwing away their arms, endeavoured to escape, when the Cavalry secured nineteen prisoners; three of whom are wounded, two remained on the field so badly wounded as not to be able to be carried to Stirling Castle, where the prisoners are lodged. Eight or ten of those who escaped are said to be wounded, and have not been able to go from the place where the affair happened. The whole number of the Radicals did not exceed forty or fifty. None of the Cavalry are severely wounded; two are slightly in the hand; and one horse severely wounded in three different places (since dead) and a number of horses slightly.[/b]
Stevie

Very interesting Tom, but I'm afraid I'm quite ignorant of the 'Radicals'.

What was their aim, who were they?
urchurdan

The battle of Bonnymuir

If you follow this link to Electric Scotland, it will tell you all about the 'Radical war of 1820' and about the Radical cause.
Just as an aside, the pend that goes under the canal from Bonnybridge Toll through to the Bonnymuir Road, is called the 'Radical Pend' in commemoration of this 'Battle'. A plaque bearing the name can be seen on the Bonnybridge end of the pend.
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/1820/
Rinty

to describe what happened in NI as a petty squabble between two traditions shows a spectacular lack of analysis and knowledge of the subject.

I dont know if civil war is the best term to use, but an armed organisation waging war on the british army, british institutions and british people for over 30 years is more than a squabble.

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