Scottish Independence; Voting ‘Yes’ is a very English thing to do.
“I don’t wan’t to change the world, I’m not looking for a new England….”
-Billy Bragg
I’ve been living in Glasgow for seven years, but I’m very much a Midlander. I make regular visits back for football, family and balti. All of my novels so far have been love letters to the Black Country, and I’m drawn into many debates up here in which I defend people south of the border. I think Scots have just as many easily debunked myths about the English as the English have about the Scots,
So how have I come to support Scottish independence?
If you were to read the news of the last week, you would think that the case for -and belief in- Scottish independence has come from nowhere. The politicians and commentators of London are now starting to admit that maybe there’s something in it, and the only surprising thing about this is that anybody is surprised.
Nobody was expecting the Westminster politicians to stay silent on the issue for long. Many people were expecting them to step in sooner. It was inevitable that the ‘big guns’ would be wheeled in at some point, and the threats and scare-mongering of the past couple of weeks were nothing new.
The real novelty factor has been in seeing just how shocked the London media are by the strength of feeling on the issue. They talk as if it has only just occurred to them that people north of Watford may be fed up. The way they talk about the Scots in their opinion pieces is enough to make this Englishman walk around Glasgow feeling the need to say, “we are not all that ignorant, honest.” They alternate between patting Scotland on the head to stay in the union, and saying that the independence referendum is all about Bannockburn and tin-pot nationalism.
I’m living proof that none of that is the case. I show that the English, once given more than one side of the story, could engage and understand fully with the issues at play in the referendum.
The difficult truth is that London’s relationship with the United Kingdom is comparable to Britain’s relationship with the empire, right before it crumbled. As I watched David Cameron make his speech from the site of the Olympics, I realised that for a whole class of people, that really was the best thing they could think of. I was still living in the West Midlands when London was granted the Olympics, and I saw how quickly the public funding dried up in favour of the development in the capital. The voluntary sector closed down overnight and community projects across the region vanished. David Cameron’s first instinct for saving the union was to deliver a speech from a site that represents all that is broken about it. I can well believe that the Prime Minister’s version of ‘Britishness’ includes some of the prized assets of Scotland, far less convincing is the idea that it includes the other regions of England.
People in the London media want to talk on behalf of the whole of England on this, without seeming to grasp that this very attitude is part of the problem. The West Midlands and Yorkshire don’t really need to hear of the collapse of mining and industry. People in Middlesborough or Hull don’t need to be told about being ignored by an economic superpower to the south. To say nothing of Wales and Northern Ireland, two countries who seem to be constantly left out of this conversation by both sides.
A common feeling among Scots is that they have been ruled over for too long by a party they don’t vote for. I not only agree, I go further. The UK as a whole has for too long been ruled over by a party it doesn’t vote for.
At every single election since 1955 (when Scotland also voted conservative) the majority of voters have opted for somebody else. If we ignore ‘first past the post’ and the current system of parliamentary seats, and look at the actual number of votes, the Conservatives never win a majority. This includes the height of Thatcherism. More people vote against them. They get in because of the way the electoral system is rigged, and because the left wing of Britain splits into different factions that steal each other’s votes. Year after year, election after election, the people are voting for something different and not getting it.
Is it any wonder that young voters in England are drifting away from the political system? If you express your voice through the correct means at every election, to no avail, where do you go next? These frustrated progressive voters start to look for a home in Anarchism, or Libertarianism, or Stay-At-Homeism. Politicians want to blame the electorate for not turning up -a move that you couldn’t get away with in any other job- rather than engaging with them. In a decade that has seen the largest mass demonstrations in British history, we are told that the public suffer from apathy.
The 2010 general election made the point as clearly as any other. The majority of people voted for policies that were –if not actually left wing- slightly left of centre. If the electorate had been listened to, then we would either have had a coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, or a minority Conservative government. If Nick Clegg was really interested in curbing the excess of the Tories, he would have allowed them to govern on their own and then blocked their policies in parliament. The fact that he made a deal with them shows the very drive for power in London that is bringing the union to the end of it’s days.
And if we set aside the Scottish issue for a moment, this broken union is destroying England. I visited my hometown at Christmas, and it proved to be a turning point in pushing me over to a ‘yes’ vote. The only real emotion I felt as I looked around the streets that had formed me was grief. The town is dead. Shops are empty. The bus station looks deserted. Even the pubs have gone. There are whole communities across the north of England on the verge of disappearing, and they may never come back. UKIP and the BNP see these towns as fodder, they try and draw on people’s fears and make them think it’s all about immigration and not about an economic policy that’s been pursued for two generations. What does Westminster offer as a solution? An over-priced rail project that is sold purely on the grounds that it will make everywhere feel a bit closer to London.
The regions of England, Wales and Northern Ireland need no more patronisation and no more attempts to bring them closer to the capital. They need investment and autonomy. And I don’t blame the right wing of politics for this. They do what they do. They appeal very strongly and very loudly to a minority of people who vote for the politics of self-interest. The real culprits for this mess are the left. The parties who have been turning a blind eye to their roots in a grab for centre-right voters. They seem ignorant to the idea that they wouldn’t need those voters if they tried to engage with the millions of ignored and struggling people to the north. This is the same mainstream left that, right now, is siding with the Tories on the side of Better Together. They stand with a Chancellor who this week stepped in to scold Scotland and try to tell it what to do. Labour argues week in and week out that George Osbourne isn’t to be trusted with the UK economy, but they’ll stand sniggering behind his coat tails in telling Scotland he knows best.
People may talk of federalism, and of a dream for a better union, but the silence from Better Together on that notion is revealing. I’ve been waiting for that argument, but it’s not forthcoming. They don’t believe it will happen, and neither should we. Scottish independence is the only feasible route I can see to save the West Midlands, and the other abandoned regions. A ‘yes’ vote will challenge the left on both sides of the border. In Scotland it will have to wake out of its complacency. There is an assumption up here that independence will rid them of Tories, but the politics of greed and self-interest will be alive and well. Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith are both Scottish, and though they may not find a home for themselves in the new politics of an independent Scotland, they show that people like them exist north of the border. They are proof that the struggle will go on. South of the border, the left will have to start listening to the people it has for so long ignored. Regional devolution can come back onto the agenda, and a new political landscape can be formed. By making room for a rebirth of the left in both England and Scotland, we could have the kind of international working class politics that hasn’t been seen for generations.
I have no worries for the political soul of the English. I’m not looking for a new England, I’m looking for the old one to wake up and roar. The country of radicals and trouble-makers. The country of John Thelwall, George Orwell and Thomas Paine. There will be massive challenges ahead for both England and Scotland, but since when did we ever run away simply because something was going to be difficult? We can change the political system on both sides of the border. And in what remains of the UK, London will need to listen to everybody else and, maybe next time, they won’t be so surprised at what they hear.
