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Home , Unionism in Scotland

Narratives of Belonging and Union Anne Crerar (University of )

A review of Linda Colley, Acts of Union and Disunion: What has held the UK together - and what is dividing it? (London: Profile Books Ltd, 2014), ISBN 978-1781251850; Paperback, xiv+171pp; £8.99.

Colin Kidd, Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in , 1500-2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), ISBN 978-0-521-70680-3; Paperback, ix+312pp; £19.99.

Alvin Jackson, The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland, and the Survival of the , 1707- 2007 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN 978-0-19-959399-6; Hardback, xv+467pp; £35.

With only a matter of months until the referendum on and an increasingly tense debate taking shape in the public sphere, scholarship on union is in demand. A series of short talks commissioned by BBC Radio 4 in 2012 from Linda Colley form the basis of her latest publication, Acts of Union and Disunion . A leading historian of British identity, Colley maintains the professional historian should offer an alternative to the constant stream of media commentary and has woven the distant past into her essays which were broadcast in January 2014 (x). The possibility of a future referendum on UK withdrawal from the European Union also provided a starting point for this work. Accordingly Colley not only includes relations between , , Scotland and Ireland but transatlantic connections, links with mainland Europe and the configuration of the British Empire within the scope of Acts of Union and Disunion. Comments on the pressures of globalisation also feature, widening the scope of this work still further.

A requirement of the commission was that Colley’s words would be ‘intermixed with snatches of music, poetry, diaries, biography, novels, drama and political speeches’ (ix). With consummate ease Colley introduces and deconstructs such source material offering thought-provoking historical perspective in a bid to provide answers to two questions; ‘What has held the UK together and what is dividing it?’ The essays are organised in three sections; a section on narratives of identity and belonging; a section on divisions, in which England, the English North/South Divide, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are considered in turn and a section on contexts, in which links with the wider world are discussed. Colley covers an impressive amount of ground within the tight constraints imposed by the broadcaster and displays expertise on the history of the British Empire throughout, although a couple of essays concerned with what is dividing the UK might have benefitted from closer attention to the more recent past.

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The central thesis of Colley’s highly influential and justly acclaimed book Britons Forging the Nation 1707-1837 , first published in 1992, was that Protestantism, warfare and empire contributed to the formation of British national identity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. A sense of developed in the context of recurrent warfare, particularly war against the French who were construed as the ‘other’. It drew heavily from the commercial and imperial success of Great Britain. She also notes that it co-existed with Welsh, English and Scottish cultural and national identities. Colley concluded that key pillars of British identity began to collapse in the latter half of the twentieth century. Protestantism was no longer central to identity. Warfare with continental Europe had come to an end. Britons found it increasingly difficult to maintain the conceit that they were superior to their continental neighbours or subject peoples. The days of commercial supremacy and imperial hegemony were long gone. A re-evaluation of Britishness appeared unavoidable.

In this latest publication Colley revisits such ideas. Under the headings of islands, sea, liberty and monarchy Colley analyses concepts which have helped build a collective sense of identity and highlights some of the more problematic aspects and consequences of traditional narratives. The island motif has been used variously; to highlight England’s distinctiveness even though it is not actually an island, to assert a geographic imperative for union between Scotland and England, to promote the notion of a shared island history despite the diverse histories of the numerous islands which surround Great Britain, to propagate myths about a divinely ordained Protestant island which fed the sense of mission and racial arrogance within British imperialism (Acts of Union and Disunion , pp.14-18). A providential Protestant insularity was a narrative of belonging with which the Protestant Irish minority could identify, at the same time it marginalised Catholics (p. 17).

In addition the sea has been seen as a protective barrier, something over which Britain exercised extensive mastery, a metaphor for Britain itself. A view which has been severely threatened by the steady erosion of British supremacy as a military and commercial power, undermined by mass air travel and the discovery of which fuelled the debate over the economic viability of an independent Scotland (pp. 27-31). Colley traces the history of these ‘master narratives’ with apparently effortless aplomb while at the same time ensuring her audience face unpalatable truths about aspects of British identity, for example the ‘cult of superior British liberty’ which more often than not was used to provide arguments to invade the liberty of others abroad and ‘maintain the political status quo at home’ (pp. 38-40). To Colley then, the decline of master narratives has loosened bonds between the constituent parts of the United Kingdom; monarchy, alone has provided ‘a semblance of continuity where little really exists’ (p. 51).

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This broad-brush approach has its drawbacks when it comes to a consideration of the factors dividing the UK. The essay on England includes the remark ‘It is striking that, in the 1990s, Wales and were each accorded devolved national assemblies, and Scotland received its own parliament. England, however, was left to muddle along as before: not so much Cinderella, as the big sister whose reliability could be taken for granted’ (p. 61). Colley suggests that England lacks a forum solely devoted to its own affairs because politicians assume it is a cohesive political unit. This characterisation of the devolution settlement fails to scrutinise debates over the Question and efforts to address the constitutional anomalies within the devolution settlement through English regional assemblies. Nor does it take account of the fact that London received an assembly at roughly the same time as devolution in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The essay on Scotland also suffers from a lack of engagement with the recent past. Colley is keen to point out that historically unionism in Scotland was a form of and states that a different type of nationalism has arisen since the 1970s which inaccurately portrays Scotland as a colonised nation. Colley seems unwilling to delve further into the reasons for the emergence of a new type of nationalism other than attribute it to the decline of manufacturing industry and of narratives of belonging (p. 93).

Acts of Union and Disunion bears comparison with other recent studies of union. Colley describes layers of British identity based on shared attitudes, institutions and endeavours. That being so, it becomes apparent from Colin Kidd’s Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500-2000 that unionism in Scotland has deep roots. Kidd sought to challenge attitudes towards unionism which have developed within Scottish historical and literary studies since the time of the Scottish literary Renaissance which preceded World War II (p. 2). Typical assumptions were that that Scottish unionism was somehow un-Scottish, a quisling ideology which subordinated Scottish interests to those of English paymasters. Kidd sees this as a caricature of unionism but one that was given greater credibility by Thatcherite unionism described as ‘a stridently unitarist conception of the British state which left little scope for the defence of Scottish particularity within the Union’ (p. 4). Unionism increasingly came to be seen as merely a willingness to do ‘Westminster’s bidding’ (p. 4). He warns that there has been a tendency to foreground nationalism within Scottish studies and pay insufficient attention to the unionism for long embedded in Scottish political culture thereby distorting our treatment of the past.

Countering this tendency Kidd traces the origins and development of Scottish unionism through an analysis of debate from the juridical, ecclesiastical, constitutional, cultural and historical spheres. In seven detailed and eloquent chapters Kidd introduces and analyses a wide variety of unionisms in

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Scottish political discourse. He begins by outlining problems in the historiography of unionism. Drawing from studies of nationalism he fashioned the term ‘banal unionism’ to describe the silences over union from the 1750s to the 1970s, when union was so generally accepted that it sparked little interest or comment (p. 24). To avoid confusion Kidd capitalises Unionism when referring to the political platform of the Scottish Unionist Association, a fusion of and Liberal Unionists in 1912 who objected to for Ireland and a were major force in Scottish politics in the first half of the twentieth century. Having prepared the way Kidd traces the emergence of unionism in the early sixteenth century in Scotland, highlighting its Scottish origins, showing it was a minority view born of an aspiration to resist English claims to the right to rule over the whole of Britain.

Proposals for union were a pragmatic, sometimes idealistic way of avoiding bloody wars of independence and of halting English imperial ambitions. Kidd skilfully explains the rich and varied schemes for and attempts at union which predated both the and the Union of Parliaments and outlines the intense debate over the Union Treaty which centred on the type rather than the principle of union, unionism having become a much more mainstream position amongst the Scottish elite. Despite disturbances and popular demonstrations against union in the early eighteenth century, a ‘banal unionism’ is evident from the 1750s. Such inarticulate unionism has also been punctuated by eras of profound discussion amongst practitioners of public life and there are chapters on; the issue of sovereignty, historical interpretations of union, the journey from assimilationist jurisprudence to legal nationalism, the ecclesiology of union and early nationalism as a form of unionism, all of which are illuminating. The chapter on jurisprudence challenges the belief that a separate Scottish legal system formed a bastion of Scottish identity. The chapter on ecclesiology exposes the recurrent tensions between the Presbyterian , which claimed spiritual authority independent of the British state, and the Erastian British parliament; Protestantism acted as the ‘grit in the Union’ in a number of ways (p. 211).

Looking back at the emergence of nationalist groups in the nineteenth century Kidd demonstrates the extent to which such groups sought to affirm Scotland’s rights within the union. Successive Scottish Home Rule movements strove to assert Scotland’s right to be treated as an equal partner, looked to reform the union and the empire along more federal lines and even to accord Scotland equal status with England as ‘mother nations’ of empire (p. 288). Kidd rightly notes that this study demonstrates the complexity and assertiveness of unionism. It is a far from passive ideology and the boundaries between nationalism and unionism are by no means clear cut, rather he states that historians should be careful in their use of unionist and nationalist as categories for analysis. In

4 addition constitutional thinking in Scotland bears the hallmark of its past. When the SNP announced in 1988 that they stood for ‘independence in Europe’, it was reminiscent of a long nationalist tradition in which Scots envisaged a capacious constitutional settlement which included association with a supra-national entity; be it the British Empire, the European Union or a federal version of the United Kingdom (p. 299).

If the long view repositions unionism within the history of Scottish political thought, Alvin Jackson’s recent monograph directly addresses the questions raised by Linda Colley, what has kept the UK together and what is driving it apart? The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland and the Survival of the United Kingdom, 1707-2007 is an important book for a number of reasons. Jackson stresses the degree to which union touches on national sensitivities and he continually reviews the historiography of union. He notes that the formation of the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707 has been revisited by scholars many times, typically at anniversaries but also when challenges to union arise. The ‘origins’ historiography for the Scots union now benefits from a wide interpretative framework whereas the focus within Irish historiography has been predominantly the collapse in 1921-22 of the British-Irish Union of 1801 (p. 125). In addition much of the scholarship on late eighteenth-century Ireland is devoted to the radical and republican politics of the 1790s and the rebellion of 1798. Furthermore, within the field of Scottish political history the rise of nationalism has attracted considerably more attention than Scottish unionism and the survival of the Scots union. Jackson’s study seeks to address such omissions and in so doing demonstrates the value of comparative history, particularly when executed to such a high standard.

The two unions exhibited striking similarities and distinct differences, the significance of which is effectively highlighted by comparison. Through his investigation of the origins and course of the two unions Jackson has been able to shed light upon their complexity. His two major themes are the shared experience of union and their longevity, making this an extremely useful work of reference for scholars working in a number of areas not least those working on union more generally.

The book is divided thematically into three sections. The first is concerned with the origins of the two unions and is followed by a section on the institutions which contributed to their longevity. The third section examines the survival of the British-Irish Union in its truncated form in Northern Ireland through a detailed comparison of Scottish and Irish Unionism. In the first section numerous and lively comparisons are drawn from the contexts and debates over union. Both the Anglo-Scottish Union and the British-Irish Union had long pre-histories, diverse but interconnected. In both cases union followed periods in which the Scots and Irish parliaments had claimed greater autonomy, exercised it regarding the crown and contained substantial patriotic factions which resented English

5 influence (p. 88). Despite previous overtures regarding union from both Scotland and Ireland the timing and nature of both unions were conditioned to a large extent by English and later British military and strategic needs, (p. 54). The manner in which both parliaments accepted an incorporating union was controversial and led to accusations of bribery, treachery, corruption and latterly in the case of Scotland ineptitude, (pp. 90-107). Both unions had inauspicious starts. The strength of this work is that it systematically explores the origins of the unions and the institutions and politics which contributed to their survival highlighting the extent to which union has been a flexible political arrangement, despite the shortcomings inherent within each union settlement.

The key to understanding the survival of the Scots union is the diversity of its support. The Scots were in a much stronger bargaining position in 1706 than the Irish were in 1800. Scots were looking to reorder the constitutional relationship, could draw from previous attempts, and were still a sovereign nation when they negotiated the . Ireland was offered terms in the aftermath of a major insurgency when there were troops on the ground. While the treaty with the Scots served the interests of the established elite it was not as divisive as the British-Irish Union which served the needs of the Irish Protestant Ascendancy whose legitimacy was already in question. The treaty of 1707 preserved a range of Scottish institutions and recognised the interests of a number of established Scottish groups. It was readily linked with the success of the Scottish economy in the later eighteenth century and access to the empire. As well as attaining a wide variety of administrative, military, medical and commercial positions within the empire Scots successfully integrated into British ministerial politics. Furthermore the Scottish elite have played a crucial role in administering the government of Scotland.

The union has also been aided by transport links and an urban landscape which expanded with the union and reflected it in its architecture and public spaces. Other institutions have played a part, the growth of Scottish civic society, the armed services, the monarchy and the honours system. Jackson also seeks to explain why the Anglo-Scottish Union has survived the loss of empire, despite the numerous ways in which the two were intimately connected. He stresses the importance of state intervention in building social and cultural ; directly, in response to nationalist sentiments through fiscal measures and administrative innovation and indirectly from a series of national institutions through which the role of the union state expanded; the civil service, the GPO, the BBC, the NHS, the nationalisation of industries which dominated the Scottish economy. The ideological attack on welfare provision and the role of the state, he argues, delivered a greater blow to the fabric of the union than loss of empire. The subsequent collapse of support for the Conservative party and more recent disenchantment with the Labour party has also opened up a serious gulf

6 between Scottish and British politics which renders the union precarious. The amalgamation of Scottish regiments, once a vehicle for Scottish patriotism within the union state, adds to uncertainty about Scotland’s place within the union. Colley argues that constituent parts of the UK become restless during long periods of peace but Jackson states that war does not necessarily bring the union together, citing the divisive nature of the Iraq war, particularly in Scotland (p. 178).

The factors which supported Anglo-Scottish Union point up the weaknesses in the British-Irish Union, but it is also evident that some institutions and political and social relationships which underpinned union in Scotland played a similar though weaker role in Ireland. The body blow to British-Irish Union was undoubtedly the failure to follow through on Catholic relief, British statesmen having led prominent Catholics to believe that if they quietly acquiesced to union emancipation would soon follow. Indeed Jackson details a series of missed opportunities and reminds the reader that garrisons and special legislation also sustained British-Irish union. Yet he shows how the monarchy, the empire, the armed services and the political flexibility of the union settlement itself could, to a limited extent, accommodate nationalist sentiments and Catholic aspirations. He notes reports that some Irish Catholic bishops viewed the union and British Empire as providential institutions in the nineteenth century (p. 346). While the Irish often saw themselves as the victims of British imperialism, empire provided opportunities for upward social mobility, latterly even for Catholics. Ireland, however, won access to empire through legislative independence rather than union and the material benefits of empire came too late to Ireland to reconcile the Irish readily to union, except where they were concentrated in the North East. Ireland had a highly complex relationship with and response to empire. Significantly, though, there is evidence of consensual politics in nineteenth-century Ireland and Jackson warns against the tendency to see union as a superstructure which was easily detached from Ireland, an observation which has resonance for Scotland.

These three monographs have much to offer in terms of methodology and scholarly insight. Jackson reminds us that union has proved to be a malleable political arrangement, perhaps because the two unions were contractual rather than visionary at their inception. Kidd highlights the depth of commitment the Scots have given to union and charts the migration of political ideas from the fringes of political thought to mainstream discourse. There is a consensus that the UK is a vulnerable political entity and the simultaneous collapse of key props to union and ruptures in British politics are common themes. Colley sees a requirement for a federal UK with a written constitution (pp. 152- 4). While Jackson finds that ‘the effective free market consensus binding the two unionist parties’ presents a major threat to union with the Scots in the 21 st century (p. 358).

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