The retiring General Secretary of the Scottish
TUC, Grahame Smith, has today called
on Labour to support, rather than oppose, holding a second independence
referendum in Scotland. He is just the
latest in a line of Labour figures in Scotland who accept that it is impossible
to argue that winning 48 seats out of 59, under the rules governing UK
elections, does not give the SNP a mandate for calling such a vote. The argument might look a little different
under a fairer voting system, but as a member of a party supporting the retention
of the existing system he clearly recognises the difficulty in denying the
result of the election. He doesn’t go as
far as saying that he’d support a ‘yes’ vote, but there is a key part of what
he says with which I find myself entirely in agreement.
He argues that “While the question on
the ballot paper may remain: ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’, the
real question is what powers, or what elements of Scotland’s sovereignty, are
Scottish voters willing to share and with whom?”, and this very neatly goes
to the heart of the difference between the English/ Anglo-British nationalist version
of sovereignty which has been driving Brexit and the more internationalist view
of Scottish (and Welsh) independentistas. Many Brexiteers have failed to understand why anyone
could argue for being part of one union whilst wanting to leave another, but
this question goes a long way towards answering that.
The nationalists behind Brexit appear to
have an absolutist view of sovereignty as something belonging to and exercised
solely by the people of a defined nation, in their case ‘Britain’ (or perhaps more
appropriately, ‘Greater England’). Mostly, they
seem to be against both co-operation internationally and devolution internally,
wanting all power to be held in one place.
Are there independentistas in Scotland and Wales who hold a
similar view but simply want to draw the boundaries differently, based on a
different understanding of nationality and history? Yes, of course there are, and it would be
disingenuous to argue otherwise. In my
long experience, however, they are not the mainstream majority as they seem to
be in the case of Anglo-British nationalism, nor do most independentistas
have a vision of their nation which implies it to be special, unique, or
exceptional. Mainstream independentistas
recognise exactly the point being made by Smith; independence is merely a redefinition
of the way in which the people of these two nations relate to, and share their sovereignty
with, others - and on what terms. Absolute independence, of
the sort being sought by Anglo-British exceptionalists, makes no sense in a modern
interconnected world in which common problems need to be faced and solved
collectively.
By posing the question in the way he does,
Grahame Smith is much closer to the internationalist view of Labour’s pioneers,
to which I referred
earlier this week. It’s just a pity that
it has taken the near-annihilation of Labour in Scotland before some of them
have felt able to start such a debate, whilst their colleagues in England seem
to want to lead their party down the same Anglo-British nationalist route as the
Tories.
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