Are we beginning to see the emergence in the Scottish independence debate of a modern, ferociously complicated version of the ‘Ulster question’ that vexed Irish nationalism a century ago?
Following a campaign by Northern Isles MSPs the SNP have conceded that Orkney and Shetland have the right to exclude themselves from any independent Scottish state “if there was a big enough drive for self-determination” from their population.
The islands have always been markedly more hostile to rule from Edinburgh than the rest of Scotland, and the prospect of their ‘opting out’ of an independent Scotland – either to remain a part of the United Kingdom or to become the colder, rainier equivalent of a gulf oil sheikhdom – is an entirely credible one.
Naturally, attention has immediately turned to the impact of the loss of Northern Isles territorial waters on the SNP’s oil-based predictions of future Scottish prosperity. Yet the economic argument is only part of the broader debate surrounding independence. More important in the long term is the concession by the SNP that a part of what presently forms the country of Scotland would not be compelled to join a new Scottish state.
Is there any particular reason that this should only apply to islands? If Orkney and Shetland’s populations can elect, by constituting a clear majority in a geographically contiguous territory, to opt out of a vote carried by a plurality of Scottish voters as a whole, then why might loyal areas of the mainland not do the same?
Marching season in the Northern Isles
A similar, although much simpler, conundrum faced proponents of Irish Home Rule and independence a century ago. Irish nationalists faced an intractable minority of Irishmen who wanted nothing to do with the nationalist project. The problem this posed to the nationalists was nicely summed up by Bonar Law in the pamphlet Against Home Rule – The Case for the Union:
“Every argument which can be adduced in favour of separate treatment of the Irish Nationalist minority against the majority of the United Kingdom, applies with far greater force in favour of separate treatment for the Unionists of Ulster as against the majority of Ireland.”
Your mileage may vary on ‘far greater force’, but from the perspective of self-determination his basic point appears unanswerable: if it is oppression for London to dictate to Dublin, how is it otherwise for Dublin to dictate to Belfast? The only way to find the Unionist position unjust is to come at it from a nationalist position that assumes that Irish nationalism trumps northern self-determination and that both British and Ulster Unionist identities are somehow less legitimate than their pan-Irish rival.
Although doubtless problematic for the Irish nationalists, Ulster was in many ways a rather simple problem. With the exception of a few holdouts in southern Dublin, Ireland’s unionists were overwhelmingly concentrated in the north-east of the country. Although the question of exactly how many counties ought to remain British was troublesome, most of Ireland was strongly separatist and the loyal territories were relatively clear cut and easy to extricate. The same is unlikely to be true of Scotland, where unionism and nationalism are much less tied to geography and community.
This means that Scotland has no easily identifiable ‘Ulster’ that would possess both geographic and social cohesion in its loyalty to the UK. However, in the hypothetical scenario where large areas of the country were willing to ‘secede’ from a separate Scotland to remain in the UK, what basis is there for denying them the right if it was been extended to Orkney and Shetland. That they are not islands?
Does Edinburgh have any more right to compel Ayrshire and Dumfries, or even Glasgow, than London has to compel Edinburgh to remain in the union against its will? Would the SNP be happy to walk out of the union with only those parts of Scotland that agree with them? It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what the Irish eventually did.
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Philip R Hosking
August 25, 2012 at 6:06 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
So you would agree to the same logic if UK separatists get their way and a vote is organised on pulling out of the European Union then? If parts of the UK have a majority in favour of staying within the EU then they have the right to do so?
“Would the SNP be happy to walk out of the union with only those parts of Scotland that agree with them? It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what the Irish eventually did”
Would the Tories be happy to govern with only those parts of the UK that returned a Tory majority? Would the other parts, with Lib Dem, Labour or nationalist majorities have the right to form their own governments?
Henry CH Hill
August 26, 2012 at 4:01 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
No, on both counts. Those arguments are based on the fallacy that opting out of a secessionist project is the same as opting out of an election to a democratic institution whose legitimacy you subscribe to.
If a section of the UK – say, Cornwall – decided that it would rather be European than British and thus voted in a referendum to constitute its own independent state, that’s fine. Absolutely. But sections of the UK remaining in the EU while others left doesn’t work, especially as the UK is a unitary state, with the way the EU is constituted.
More importantly than the technocratic side of things, by opting not to secede the pro-EU bits of the UK have endorsed the legitimacy of the decision to leave.This ties into the second question. If Cornwall decided NOT to secede from the UK, then it agrees to the understanding of all democratic states that you get your vote and the person with the most votes wins power, even if you didn’t vote for them.
This is the same reason why a Conservative government with only one Scottish constituency nonetheless possesses an ironclad mandate to legislate on issues reserved to Westminster – because on reserved issues Scots have agreed to pool their sovereignty with the rest of the British and abide by the result.
They can withdraw that pooled sovereignty at any time, by seceding. This is the point on which your point falls: as no area of the UK is being coerced into staying (there are no tanks on the streets of Truro), those elements are choosing to accept the legitimacy of a pan-British democratic institution, even when the governments they might have elected are outvoted by other parts of Britain.
Likewise, any area could *choose* to endorse a nationalist project by opting to join it in seceding from the UK. Or they could elect not to, and remain in the UK. There is no basis outside nationalism that maintains that a certain group can draw a circle around a collection of people based on certain criteria and, if they have a majority of this imagined community, lay some unanswerable claim to the loyalties of the remainder.
My argument neither supposes nor requires this. The people who didn’t vote Tory in a given election nonetheless subscribe to the legitimacy of the institution that, as a whole, returned a Conservative majority government. If they didn’t, they’d secede.
The only fair comparison is a like-for-like comparison, and I believe the Ireland had as much right to democratically secede from the UK as Northern Ireland to ‘secede’ from the new Irish state.
Philip R Hosking
August 27, 2012 at 6:08 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
So only those who refused to vote in an independence referendum would have the right to organise a secessionist movement? If people from any potentially secessionist territory of Scotland, opposed to Scottish independence, do vote in any future referendum then they would be agreeing to abide by its out come?
Henry CH Hill
August 28, 2012 at 10:47 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Sure, within the context of that vote. But then they could always opt to try to secede if the vote went against them – I don’t deny that to Cornwall either.
You’ve misread my original point. I did not say that the europhile Cornish (in my example) endorsed the legitimacy of the result by participating, but by “opting not to secede from the UK”. Basically, by choosing Britain over Europe.
Simply put, my position is that the right to try to opt-out always exists. If say, Yorkshire participated in a UK general election, hated the result and tried to secede from the UK, it could. If Ayrshire voted in a Scottish independence referendum, hated the result, and wanted to stay in the UK, they could. There are no circumstances in which a nationalist – or unionist – can say “Your local self-determination is irrelevant compared to X, you’re ours!”
The phrase I used was that by participating in an election, an individual, area and group ‘lend consent’ to it and pool their sovereignty with it. They can always attempt to withdraw that consent. There is absolutely no reason why pro-union areas of Scotland couldn’t opt-out of the SNP’s new state if the pro-independence areas of the UK can opt out of that country.
JPJ2
September 3, 2012 at 1:52 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
The available evidence suggests that there is more interest in Berwick on Tweed for rejoining Scotland than there is in Orkney and Shetland for opting out of an independent Scotland