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Reluctant Hero
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Macwhirter -Even Blair knows independence is a viable option | Quote: | ‘Even Blair knows independence is a viable option’
By Iain Macwhirter
HOLYROOD COMMENTARY
IWAS A witness to history last week as the 650 pupils of Kelso High School voted by a majority of nearly four to one in a referendum to remain an independent state.
The events will be broadcast next Sunday on BBC Radio Scotland's Passport To Kelso. Prominent figures from the UN and the European parliament had been to Kelso to advise the students on arcane issues such as how to rejoin the European Union and whether or not to have a separate currency. Far from turning the students against separatism, it made them keener to embrace it.
Now, I'm not suggesting for one moment that this tells us anything about the results of the May election, still less the outcome of any independence referendum. Schools have always held mock elections. But what was impossible to ignore was the enthusiasm for autonomy and the absence of fear among the pupils here.
These increasingly confident and outward-looking young people seem to have no concept of "the dark side of nationalism". People of my generation watched the former Yugoslavia fracture into a multiplicity of poisonous ethnic nationalisms and wondered if Balkanisation could happen here. Socialists said that nationalism divided the working class. And didn't nationalism help cause a century of war?
Such ideas are ancient history in classless Kelso. Independence doesn't make them think of separation, of dividing people against themselves, but rather of joining a wider community of nations.
And as Kelso declared UDI, over at the other end of the age and income spectrum Sir George Mathewson, the former boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was announcing his intention to vote SNP. He too said he "does not share the fear of independence", seeing it as "the best chance for escaping the dependency culture that pervades Scotland at every level". Labour were left spitting blood.
Now, there are still plenty of unionists in Scottish business, and Mathewson has always been outspoken. Nevertheless, it was a dramatic intervention, and confirmed the sense in Kelso that something is stirring in the undergrowth.
Tony Blair's attack on Mathewson's "pure self-indulgence" during the PM's visit to Glasgow on Friday was extraordinarily inept. Mathewson is a national icon, and probably the most respected figure in Scottish business today, having turned RBS into the fifth largest bank in the world. It was a bit like calling Sir Bob Geldof self-indulgent over G8 - there may be some truth in it, but there's nothing to be gained politically from saying so.
Labour are perfectly entitled to say that nationalist economics don't stack up; that independence would leave a fiscal deficit, economic instability, expensive restructuring of the state to reproduce UK institutions. But all that is missing the point. People aren't afraid any more.
SCOTS are feeling a bit better about themselves. Partly this is a consequence of Labour's economic success and 10 years of steady growth. Scots have lost some of their fear of change, if only because they have had to change themselves.
Thirty years ago 80% of Scots lived in council housing, a similar number were unionised and most worked in heavy industry. That Scotland was swept away in the 1980s. In its place came a middle-class society, a service economy, private housing. Class identity has been replaced by cultural identity, collectivism by self-reliance.
Even Blair felt obliged to recognise that independence now is a viable option. Not an option he would advise, not an option which would be risk-free, but an option nevertheless.
Labour would probably have been better advised to stick to this line all along. Wrap themselves in the Saltire, much as Jack McConnell sought to do last year; celebrate diversity; proclaim their own vision of national renewal. Challenge the SNP to say what difference exactly independence would make. But the first minister seems to have sunk without trace, leaving his UK leader dangerously exposed to a political culture that he doesn't fully understand.
So does this mean the SNP are on their way to office, as Alex Salmond will claim today? The SNP leader is looking so confident it hurts. He has a right to feel good about what he has achieved. The recent run of opinion polls has forced sceptics, in and out of the party, to wonder if the SNP really are going to do it this time.
But there is still a long way to go and cause for caution. The launch of the local income tax policy last week did not go well, with Labour claiming that it would hurt middle-income working families and exempt rich old people living in big houses. In an age of rocketing house and share prices, it seems odd to be abandoning taxes on assets and shifting the burden on to income. New taxes are always unpopular, but new taxes on income are political suicide, even if they seem fairer on paper.
Civic Nationalists cannot but be concerned too about the influence of the ultra-conservative Stagecoach owner Brian Souter, who has gifted the SNP £500,000. The architect of Keep The Clause (the statute outlawing the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools) is a divisive figure, one of the few politicians ever to raise a libel suit (later dropped) against a cartoonist - the Guardian's Steve Bell, who had portrayed him as a homophobic bus driver. Long spoons may be advised.
But Souter is unlikely to lose the SNP many votes. If the party can continue to tap into the growing sense of Scottish self-worth, anything is possible. Today Kelso, tomorrow the world.
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http://www.sundayherald.com/oped/opinion/display.var.1267671.0.0.php
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kevin04
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the more I read Iain Mac's comments and editorial's i really think he's pro-independence, he says he's not a nationalist but i think he's more and more for a independent scotland,
keep up the good work mac and roll on may,
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Aventinian
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Somehow I don't think declaring a school independent is quite the same thing as a nation.
Making up countries and calling themselves king is what children do best after all.
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voiceofourown
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| Quote: | Somehow I don't think declaring a school independent is quite the same thing as a nation.
Making up countries and calling themselves king is what children do best after all. |
Oh dear, oh dear.
Been sucking on lemons again Ave?
Let's hope there's a bumper crop come May.
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patriot1320
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I think you need to remember, children will one day be able to vote. Yes some may change there mind, But i doubt it...
I think you need a little acceptance Av, Independance is coming wither you approve or not....
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wisnaeme
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| Aventinian wrote: | Somehow I don't think declaring a school independent is quite the same thing as a nation.
Making up countries and calling themselves king is what children do best after all. |
Children grow up to be adults, don't ye Know "Aventinian". It is so nice that they are allowed to question why and discuss what they would like to happen as savvy participants in their country's future. I believe they call that nationhood awareness and the possibilities of themselves being part of something beautiful and worthwhile, which is the right to vote in the near future and be part of a society that solves it's own problems instead of being spoonfed garbage solutions to their and their country's problems from an other place. Garbage solutions that may not be in their or Scotland's best interests by the way.
Children growing up to stand on their own two feet in a country/nation/state mature enough to stand on it's own has a nice,logical ring to it.
Excellent. Makes a change from God save whatever and the unrelenting bias of 1066, 1966 and whatever else was thought to be important to previous generations of brainwashed kids by a malignant growth called unionism. Once apon a time this talk of empire,greatness,patriotic flag waving and so called togetherness may have an advantage when Britannia ruled the waves and many of the countries bordering the waves, but that was once apon a time and to be a unionist dreaming tired dreams of bygone eras is no longer an option to todays bright young things who regard themselves Scottish first and foremost.
We ought to stuff you, your convictions and place you in a glass case in some dusty back room of a museum for exibition in the the future next to the D for Dodo.
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Corby Boy
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Coming back to the title of the thread. I think every man and his dog can see that Scotland independent is viable.
It's whether people want it badly enough. Over time I think it will become a natural progression, where the new generation who tend to be pro-independence minded(evidenced by Kelso as an example) take over from the old.
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kevin04
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another thing is that no one south of the border in the media seems to be taking into account the Scottish Election and like wise up here regarding the Welsh assembly elections, How are Plaid doing? Do they have a good chance of winning down in Wales? I've even tried the bbc-wales website and nothing on it regarding opinion polls or anything for the senedd,
Maybe they're will be more coverage on the bbc in later april, early may of the elections but if the snp win it's surely a historic moment for the United Kingdom and it might even come as a shock to the english as they have had a lack of coverage of the political landscape in scotland at the moment
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