A Preventable Death: Part II
Kenneth Roy
Simon Fuller and Angus Skinner
Bob Dylan not thinking British
In an article for Scottish Review which appeared early last year, I described Britishness as, ‘being like a light-sensitive recluse’, but I’m beginning to think it might actually be under house arrest.
British identity remains a feature of Scottish society despite becoming largely undemonstrative and increasingly divorced from unconditional identification with the institutions of the British state. Why, then, are we not talking about Britishness?
The explanation might have something to do with having a weak tradition of doing this very thing. Whatever tenacity British identity or sentiment might possess here in Scotland probably owes something to the sheer number of ways it has historically found expression. But publicly talking about it is not chief among them.
We have had much talk, one way or another, about the economic implications of the decision facing us. It is puzzling, however, that the issue of identity has been so thoroughly and deliberately neglected.
Some will state that identity has little or nothing to do with how they view the debate. What is currently called social justice is far more important for them when deciding which way to jump next year. I see no reason to doubt the sincerity of anyone, Yes or No, who considers this the defining issue of the referendum campaign. But even this is complicated by the extent to which class and nationality have become proxies for each other, a point skilfully made by Ian Jack in one of his recent articles for the Guardian.
Social justice for whom is a question that reveals much in the current climate. Hoping to achieve it by leaving Britain is a bit like high-tailing it out of Dodge and then showboating about how good you’ve got it from the outskirts of town. The prospect of Scotland becoming a socialist North Star for the rest of the United Kingdom is an assertion made, I hope, partly out of guilt.
The same people who prioritise social justice (or some variation on this label) are often the most averse to seeing identity issues given equal prominence: introducing identity to the mix, so the argument goes, will just make things nasty. That would be all well and good if we had so far experienced a campaign without rancour and bitterness. But this is clearly not the case.
Furthermore, assumptions and stereotypes about identity are rampant away from the relative niceties of the mainstream campaigns where media attention imposes some sense of decorum. The same cannot be said, for example, of the comment sections of newspapers which are the contemporary equivalent of the Wild West. There might be a case for arguing that this should be recognised and identity brought to the fore so that it can be discussed in what would hopefully be a more responsible fashion.
Regardless, it’s unlikely it will be avoided for the duration of the referendum. If Yes campaigners want to seriously shift the opinion polls and, ultimately, the vote in their favour then it seems they will be compelled to address the issue with a degree of seriousness at some point.
Talking about identity would not be without difficulties. The stakes are higher when discussing this subject and people might suddenly find the debate pressing on them to an extent they are not entirely comfortable with. There are dangers inherent in talking about who we are that simply don’t apply when we’re talking about the type of money in our pockets.
Are we equipped with the political language to give voice to something more complicated than even the intricacies of hypothetical currency unions? As Andrew Wilson argued in Scotland on Sunday, ‘so deep do the rivers of identity run that real care is needed when engaging them in public and political debate’. Danger lurks in being unable to positively describe who we are as opposed to negatively stating who we are not.
Wilson is one of the few people on either side of the debate who has the potential to win converts because of the obvious generosity with which he considers the anxieties of those with whom he disagrees. Writing in the same article, he recalled a speech on the subject of Britishness from 1999 in which he had contended the SNP ‘had to carve a route-map for people to retain it while voting for independence’.
The difficulty, mainly for Yes Scotland but for others too, is to come to terms with an identity no longer securely moored to the British state yet still a significant force operating against its dismantlement. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, the challenge is to capture the essence of a thin wild mercury identity.
Dismissing British identity or attachment to the union as some sort of lingering post-imperial false consciousness, a national hangover, is seriously misguided and bordering on insulting. The briefly popular ‘social union’ concept was an attempt to offer a more sophisticated remedy for this deficiency. Caricaturing Britishness in such a way merely confirms the suspicions of those who detect a fundamental inability on the part of some within the nationalist movement to regard it as a legitimate identity choice for people in Scotland.
Alasdair McKillop is a writer based in Edinburgh
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