Let me introduce you
to the internet version
of the pub bore
Quintin Jardine
Catalonia and language
SR’s remarkable growth as an independent magazine is based largely on word of mouth. Here are examples of our journalism:
* SR played a leading role in the successful campaign to save St Margaret of Scotland Hospice
* SR campaigned for greater transparency in Scottish public life and won a landmark judgement from the Scottish information commissioner which has led to a transformation in the information available about executive salaries and pensions in public bodies
* Having discovered elderly people still living in a near-derelict block of flats in Glasgow, sometimes without a water supply, SR campaigned to have them decently re-housed. With the help of Scotland’s housing minister, Alex Neil, we succeeded
* SR continues to campaign – so far without success – to broaden the range of appointments to national organisations beyond a self-perpetuating elite
Britishness should no
longer be seen as a
light-sensitive recluse
Alasdair McKillop
The coverage of the recent British-Irish Council summit was largely given over to Alex Salmond’s comparisons between the campaign for Scottish independence and Ireland’s own violent struggle to be free of the British embrace.
His comments were dismissed as a crude attempt to play to the gallery – ‘grandstanding on stilts’ as Lord Trimble described it – but in one respect they might have rang uncomfortably true for unionists in Northern Ireland.
Just as the Irish struggle for independence resulted in an unwanted constitutional settlement, so too might Scottish independence have serious constitutional implications for Ulster unionists and the British project which they wrap around themselves to ward off the chill winds of Irish unification. Henry McDonald, writing in the Belfast Telegraph last October, likened such a scenario, coupled with Sinn Fein advance in the Republic, to a ‘pincer movement pushing them inexorably out of the union’.
Last week an article in the same paper posed the question: ‘Where will Scottish independence leave Ulster unionists?’. The answer appeared to be ‘orphaned’. This was based on the argument that constructions of Britishness and loyalty in Northern Ireland have a far more pronounced Scottish, as opposed to English, dimension. Thus Scottish independence, if it were to transpire, might provoke a sort of existential crisis in Ulster unionism that could lead to them limping meekly towards Dublin.
This analysis probably does a disservice to the resilience and adaptability of notions of Britishness amongst unionists, for whom it possibly retains more of an ethnic or national edge given recent history, but it does seem to be the case that Scottish independence would be felt as a keen loss. The affection for Scotland is based on the importance given to the considerable historical interactions between the two places. One academic titled a study of the political and cultural interactions ‘Intimate Strangers’, thus memorably capturing the awkwardness that characterises them and casting Scotland and Northern Ireland as relatives who don’t see each other very often. The movement of people has provided the crucial conduit for the mutual exchange of ideas, organisations and identities.
Northern Ireland’s first minister Peter Robinson, also speaking at the council summit, addressed the possibility of Scottish independence as a unionist but also as an Ulster Scot, thus invoking the population movement between the two places and the acknowledged role this continues to play in the cultural and identity politics of Northern Ireland. He suggested that the people of Scotland need to know that there are many people throughout the United Kingdom who feel that they have a valuable contribution to make to the UK as a whole.
Robinson’s short statement was exceptional because it came across as an individual trying honestly to express his affection for Scotland and its importance in his own sense of identity as opposed to the empty political posturing coming from Westminster politicians. Here was an attempt, by someone elsewhere in the UK, to articulate the sense that Scottish independence would feel like something being broken or irretrievably lost.
Martin McGuinness then argued that the Scottish people had the right to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to remain within the UK, just as the people of Northern Ireland had the right to decide their own future. If unionists weren’t sure where they stood before, McGuinness might have gone some way to clarifying the matter for them.
These positions are a neat reversal of the situation in the 1990s when Ulster unionist leaders like David Trimble and James Molyneaux saw Scotland as a catalyst for constitutional debates that would allow them to manoeuvre the emerging peace process into a more securely UK-orientated framework while nationalists opposed them for the same reason.
During the devolution campaign William McIlvanney described Scotland
as a ‘mongrel nation’ but Britain too is a mongrel. Part of the problem
for those in a Westminster state of mind has been the tendency to act as though it were a pedigree.
On the same day, Lord Kilclooney, also identifying himself as an Ulster Scot, had a letter published in the Scotsman suggesting that Scotland should be partitioned if certain areas voted against independence but the outcome found a majority in favour. The letter was rightly criticised for displaying a serious lack of knowledge about contemporary Scottish politics and most readers would surely recoil at the idea of partitioning Scotland but arguably it has to be understood as being the product of a more general Ulster unionist anxiety about retaining political links with some part of Scotland, preferably an area perceived to have the strong ties with Northern Ireland.
His use of Strathclyde as an example – as though the regional council was still in existence – was telling. Future contributions would do well to display a firmer grasp of political realities if they want to be given the serious consideration they desire.
What was interesting was that both of these Northern Irish politicians – Robinson and Lord Kilclooney – referred to a British identity in which a sense of Scotland and Scottishness were important. It would be fair to say that most people living in Scotland today probably wouldn’t give consideration to Ulster Scots when asked to define what it meant to be Scottish. In Northern Ireland, however, Ulster Scots identity has a higher profile, not least because the promotion of Ulster Scots culture and heritage plays an important role in the development of tourism strategies. This is particularly true with regards to America where attempts have been made to appeal to the millions of people who consider themselves to be of Scots Irish ancestry.
County Tyrone boasts the Ulster American Folk Park which tells the story of emigration to from Ulster to America. In the colonial era many of these people were Ulster Scots. Only this week, DUP MP Gregory Campbell felt compelled to write to the US ambassador in London to complain about the US Census Bureau removing Scots-Irish as a distinct ancestry category because he felt this might be detrimental to the tourism industry in Northern Ireland. It was reported that he had informed Scottish MPs of this development but not whether they had rallied to his support but this seems unlikely.
In Belfast, the Ulster-Scots Agency endeavours to promote an awareness of cultural issues and the language known as Ullans. Just a stone throw away from its offices is Sandy Row, a visibly loyalist part of the city. In loyalist areas throughout the city, references are made to the Ulster-Scottish connection in other ways. It is not unusual to see murals – now performing an important tourist function themselves – with the Saltire taking pride of place alongside the Union Jack and the Northern Irish flag. Apparently this comes as something of a shock to many Scottish visitors and seeing the Saltire painted as part of a paramilitary mural is certainly a disconcerting experience.
Other murals depict a less controversial celebration of the links between the two places. One mural, just off the Ravenhill Road, commemorates the links between Ulster and Rangers and features Sam English as its focal point.
During the devolution campaign William McIlvanney described Scotland as a ‘mongrel nation’ but Britain too is a mongrel. Part of the problem for those in a Westminster state of mind has been the tendency to act as though it were a pedigree. Talk of Ulster Scots and connections with Northern Ireland will leave many in Scotland feeling uncomfortable. As Tom Gallagher noted at the end of last year, Scotland ‘kept the head’ during the troubles and it did so, to a large extent, by turning the back. As a result, it often seems like we struggle to comprehend or even talk about the ways in which culture, identities and politics have flowed and continue to flow between two of the constituent parks of the UK. And this is but one tributary of something even bigger.
Those who care about the union need to find ways to talk about Britain that acknowledges the manifest interactions between its peoples, regions, nations and cultures. Warmth, affection and emotion expressed in a diversity of accents are needed. Too often Britishness has appeared to be like a light-sensitive recluse, rarely seen in public and usually dressed in 1950s hand-me-downs. It should be brought out into the light and treated with kindness and consideration. It might still have some interesting things to say.
Alasdair McKillop is a PhD student in history at the University of Edinburgh
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