The patriot game is one the left can’t win
An otherwise unremarkable tenement flat in the street next to mine had a flagpole installed last year. After a break of a few months, it is once again flying a large Saltire.
The head of an ostensibly left-wing think tank compares Scotland’s place in the UK to that of Elisabeth Fritzl.
A few weeks ago the Scottish Labour party changed its rulebook to include a commitment to ‘the patriotic interest’.
These things aren’t connected other than that they all say something about Scotland’s ‘new political situation’. This is one where the Patriot Game is the only one in town, or rather the only one that anyone seems interested in playing.
This isn’t a state of affairs that anyone on the left, either in Scotland or beyond, should be happy with. Because ‘new political situation’ is simply a euphemism for an upsurge in nationalism, and the Patriot Game is one progressives can’t win.
That the prevailing political trend in Scotland is nationalism is seldom acknowledged. Had anyone managed to copyright the phrase ‘I’m not a nationalist but…’ they could long since have retired on the royalties. Instead, the flag waving and transformation of the SNP into a mass party is attributed to ‘anti austerity politics’, or ‘an embrace of democratic potential’ or other such warm words – anything but nationalism.
Advocates generally deny all nationalist motivation, claiming rather that the SNP deserve support because they will ‘push Labour to the left’ or, bizarrely, help ‘reclaim Labour’s soul‘ . This ignores the inconvenient reality that it is the SNP who have only recently adopted Labour’s plans for a 50p tax rate, having previously voted against the principle.
It took until after the leaders’ debates last week for the SNP to adopt a policy on zero hours contracts. They now support Labour’s proposals word for word. The SNP are widely proclaimed as an anti austerity party despite a governmental record that has seen over 50,000 jobs lost in public services, while they adamantly rule out using any of the tax raising powers they have and boast of having the lowest business taxes in the UK.
The SNP are a ‘radical anti-establishment force’, as anyone who has read the serialisation of Alex Salmond’s memoir in the Scottish edition of Rupert Murdoch’s Sun would know. The SNP are ‘progressive’ in a way that Labour somehow aren’t, having adopted all-women shortlists, some two decades after Labour. And so on. But pointing these things out makes little difference. In today’s Scotland, flags beat facts.
Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us. Nationalist movements, as Eric Hobsbawm put it, are ‘dual phenomena, constructed essentially from above, but which cannot be understood unless also analysed from below, that is in terms of the assumptions, hopes, needs, longings and interests of ordinary people, which are not necessarily national and still less nationalist.’
Put more bluntly, nationalist movements do not arise in a vacuum. As we can see right across Europe, they do better in hard times. And the last time a nationalist movement said ‘Let’s get rid of the foreign influence and get poorer’ was never.
Scottish Labour’s response to all this has been an attempt at a ‘Clause 4’ moment. The ‘Aims and Values’ statement of the Scottish Labour Party was rewritten by Jim Murphy so that it now has 12 references to ‘Scotland’ or ‘Scottish’ and a commitment to ‘work for the patriotic interest of the people of Scotland’.
It is difficult to believe this move stems from a sense of mission on Mr Murphy’s part. Rather it’s a response to grim polling numbers and an acknowledgement of a situation where arguments need to put more emphasis on saltire than sense. The ‘patriot clause’ exemplifies where Scottish politics is now – to gain permission to speak you have to be seen to be, and only be, ‘speaking for Scotland’. This isn’t progressive at all – it’s the opposite.
The politics of identity seem to have all but displaced the politics of economic interest north of the border. The party arguing that the country wins ‘when working families win’ is trailing badly behind the party that promises to be ‘strong for Scotland’.
The nationalist movement by definition seeks to divide rather than unite and looks to emphasise difference and particularity ahead of common endeavour. Their advance is not something the Left, however broadly defined, should be welcoming.
Stephen Low lives and works in Glasgow
225 Responses to “Nationalism is sweeping Scotland – and progressives should be concerned”
uglyfatbloke
What a curious response..
Firstly, I was n’t being precious about anything. My point was that in situations where there are no party representatives there is very little prospect of party coalitions; what that has to do with Obama is beyond me.
Secondly, Gordon Brown was the ‘distilled essence’ of the tribal authoritarian aspect of the Labour party in Scotland; there is no such thing as ‘The Scottish Labour Party’ – nor has there been since Sillars and Douglas in the later 1970s.
It’s been quite a while now since I was teaching undergraduates and marking their essays. They were n’t all exemplary students, but I would not call them either amateurish or adolescent.
uglyfatbloke
Thankfully, most people (grown-ups anyway) got over the Jacobite episode more than 200 years ago – and of course they were n’t that popular in Scotland in the first place. Even the majority of despot clan chiefs (and the not-so-despotic ones too) kept well away from Bonnie Prince Shortbread. The response was n’t ‘English’ though – it was British; there were lots and lots of Scots fighting on the government side in 1745-6. Unsurprisingly that tends to be overlooked by romantic dewy-eyed gnats of the ‘we wuz robbed’ variety. Can’t imagine why.
James (below) is quite right. The Culloden Visitor Centre does provide a pretty good insight. It’s a pity the new Bannockburn centre is so …now what’s the historiological technical term for this….oh yes….rubbish.
YESGUY
Utter bollocks.
How can you be so wrong and what about British Nationalism. You know the one that ripped flags off wee lassies and proudly waved their Union Flags with a few Nazi salutes thrown in.
The union seeks to divide us but we are not listening.
Tick tock LIEbour.
Comrade
Ha, it’s not as if you Labour lot didn’t have time to get things right is!! You stuffed up and you time is gone.
Stephan
I’ve lived and worked as a teacher in both London and Edinburgh. As an EAL teacher part of my role is to ensure understanding by schools of their responsibilities under the Equalities Act 2010. Compared to London, Edinburgh has by far the better record of race relations. Minority groups feel included in Edinburgh and many refer to themselves as Scottish-Chinese, Turkish-Scottish, Scots-Pakistani, etc. In London not a single one of my students acknowledged themselves as English despite many having been born in London and their families having lived there for 3 generations.
Regarding SNP policy, they are the most supportive of the parties regarding emigration and for encouraging foreigners to take up residence in the UK. While I have heard many complaints about the fact that England has to pay tuition fees when Scotland doesn’t. Much of the mandate for that was that educated foreigners might decide to stay in Scotland after completing their degrees and take up residence. Yes I think the word ‘Nationalist’ has negative connotations, but look at policy and diversity in Scotland, and the lack of any violent protests in Scotland from ‘Yes’ campaigners (the same alas could not be said of ‘No’ campaigners) following their defeat in the referendum. I really think to accuse them of being flag waving patriots, shows a lack of awareness of the situation in Scotland, and that you have not been following politics too closely.