This is a polemic.
It's important to understand that from the off, because while you will find impassioned yet logical argument over the next few paragraphs, you won't find a clinical academic text that presents mountains of figures and statistics and then claims that they represent the most probable future for a post-referendum Scotland. No economist, pollster, business leader, social scientist or pundit of any stripe is capable of producing analyses which are entirely unbiased, due simply to the fact that they are human beings. This, coupled with the great difficulty of predicting an uncertain future faced by even the most talented of such qualified 'experts', has made me somewhat wary of the "proof" produced by both sides in this debate regarding subjects such as currency, oil reserves, welfare spending, tax, EU membership, and so on and so forth. These are non-issues for me when deciding how I will cast my vote on 18th September, because there simply doesn't seem to be any truly reliable way of predicting their long-term outcome in an independent Scotland.
I am much more interested in a principled argument, one in which we are on a much surer (if more abstract) footing. My points are few, but I'm hoping they might kick-start a different line of debate in the few days we have left before Scotland goes to the polls.
Before I explain my reasons for voting the way I will be on Scottish independence, I'll mention two very important factors (both of which have featured prominently in the debate thus far) that WON'T be influencing my vote.
THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE 'YES' AND 'NO' CAMPAIGNS
Political campaigners, whatever the virtue of their cause, are salespeople. Their sole objective is to get you to vote the way they want you to; this is beyond dispute. It is necessary to look past the often unsavoury tactics and conduct of such people and make up your own mind on the issues at hand based on the information available. Often campaigners can play an important role in bringing such information to light, albeit one driven by their aforementioned ulterior motive, but bias is rampant (as has been amply evidenced by the recent conduct of the BBC) and thus a measure of voter discretion is always required. Everyone, in short, has an agenda, but it's vitally important that it is the merits of a political cause, rather than the behaviour of its campaigners, that influences the way you vote.
A great deal of mud has been slung in the debate on Scottish independence, and neither side has come out of it particularly well, in my opinion. Both sides have been guilty of scaremongering, smug self-righteousness, hypocrisy and cynical appeals to emotion. The 'yes' campaign in particular have disappointed me; fuelled by the belief that being the perceived 'underdog' allows them to occupy some sort of moral high ground, many 'yes' campaigners' frequent displays of condescension and barely-concealed contempt for those who do not share their views have demonstrated a shocking lack of self-awareness. Recent attempts to discredit the pro-union position in general by attacking the (admittedly shockingly bad) marketing efforts of Better Together smacks slightly of desperation, but mainly of cynicism. None of which is to say that the 'No' campaign have generally been any better (they have frequently been worse), but I expected more from a movement which likes to associate itself with progressive politics. (I should also stress that, obviously, many campaigners from both sides have managed to conduct themselves in a more admirable fashion as well.)
The point I'm making here is that nothing in the preceding paragraph, nothing about the conduct of either campaign, has had any affect on the way I'm voting. Nor should it.
NATIONALISM AND ITS POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES
I have no truck with nationalism of any kind. I was born in England to English parents, but have lived in Scotland for 23 of my 30 years. I could reasonably claim to be either Scottish or English, but consider myself neither. Nationality is not an essential component of human identity, and is, historically speaking, a fairly recent development in human thought. Nations are, as Benedict Anderson put it, imagined communities; if one wishes to imagine oneself as a member of a national community, one may do so, and a powerful sentimental attachment it can be, too. But to assume that this national sentiment automatically translates into political legitimacy is fallacious in the extreme. (This issue is further complicated by people's persistent confusion of the very separate entities 'state' and 'nation') In the context of the debate about Scotland independence, recognising this fact has two main implications:
(1) A complaint frequently made by pro-independence groups is that Scotland is currently (and also historically has been) subjected to a Conservative government in Westminster which it did not, as a group of constituencies, vote for (the so-called democratic deficit). However, just looking at the 2010 general election results, the same can be said of (a) Yorkshire & the Humber, (b) the North West and (c) the North East of England as geographical areas. Why is it that, although several regions of the UK are currently being governed by a party for which they did not vote, only one of them (Scotland) should secede on this basis? The problem with being part of a democratic state is that not everyone is going to agree with you, and you have to live with that. After all, I (as an individual) didn't vote for the Conservative party, and yet I find myself governed by them - that's the nature of living in a democracy. To suggest that it is a special outrage for Scotland to be in this position is to presume the special political legitimacy of the Scottish nation. If it can be argued, with sound reason, that there is nothing morally or politically special about nations per se, then the case for Scotland to secede on this basis evaporates. The only alternative is to argue that any region which disagrees with an election result can legitimately secede on this basis, but this is a patently absurd position, because where do you stop? In any democracy, you cannot always be on the winning side.
(2) The protests of Scottish ex-pats who insist that they should have a vote in the referendum are without merit, because this is not about cultural heritage or the imagined national community (of which, despite their geographic remoteness, they can still consider themselves a part), but is about the possible formation of a brand new state, concerned with the present and the future, not the past. The fact that this new state will bear the name and cultural identity of the nation known as Scotland is, in my opinion, quite incidental. (I recognise that this a controversial point of view, and will expand upon it below.)
So if I've no interest in the conduct of the campaigns or in any notions of nationalism, what will be determining the way in which I vote?
A NECESSARY ACT OF CONSTITUTIONAL VIOLENCE
Having read the above, you might assume that I'll be voting 'no' on 18th September, but you'd be wrong. The reasons are three-fold: (1) the political system we currently live with is badly in need of reform (for reasons too numerous to list here) and, of particular concern to me, (2) the creeping privatisation of essential public services like Royal Mail, the prison service and the NHS, and (3) the possibility of decommissioning Trident and taking steps towards a post-nuclear age.
(1) However entrenched and mildewed the structures of Westminster and Whitehall, I believe that, given time (possibly decades) and a concerted, prolonged effort on the part of we, the electorate, its institutions can be made fit for purpose, and conducive to a healthier democratic system. There is one major advantage that an independent Scotland can offer in democratic terms though, and that is a government which is more representative because - put simply - it governs a smaller population. In his contribution to the Federalist Papers, James Madison (one of the founding fathers of the American constitution) noted that the greater the population and geographical area it represented, the less representative a government is. This inverse relationship is what made possible the 'direct' democracy of Plato's Athens and Rousseau's Geneva (albeit with the former being built on slavery), and although an independent Scotland's elected chamber would be a long way from citizens' assemblies in an idealised city-state, the fact remains that, under an electoral system analogous to proportional representation, the make-up of any Scottish legislature will be more representative of the electorate's choices than a UK-wide equivalent. Apart from the intrinsic democratic good of this state of affairs, such a system would also lead to less apathy on the part of voters, who would better flourish as citizens through being more engaged with a visibly representative political set-up.
(2) Much has been said and written about the privitisation of our public services, to the point where the familiar slogans and rallying cries seem drained of all meaning through overuse, and roll off campaigners' tongues as empty husks. It's important to understand why we should be worried about the exposure of essential public services to the vagaries of the market, rather than simply decrying it. Put simply, there are standards of living below which we cannot allow people to fall. Other than the need to preserve basic human dignity or some other more nebulous moral impulse, it is also imperative that we secure these minimum standards so that people may operate effectively as citizens within our society. The most essential of these services is arguably the NHS, an organisation which is being slowly eroded by neoliberal forces, but I extend this category of essential public services to postal and prison services, welfare institutions and nationwide transport links (primarily rail). These are all essential public services which constitute a universal human good for citizens, and allow them to live a minimally decent existence. (We could spend all day debating the definition of "decent" here, but there you are.)
Private enterprise is not concerned with moral minimums, or even greater efficiency, unless they contribute directly to increased profits. This is a fact. All other considerations take a back seat to the maintenance of the bottom line, whatever lip service might be paid to corporate social responsibility by company spokespeople. As neoliberal pundits are always so keen to remind us, such conduct is neither moral nor immoral, it simply is. Make of that what you will (I would argue that to be amoral is itself an immoral position). Often the quickest way to enhance profits is to cut costs, which means that increasingly privatised public services will be slashed further and further, while politicians carp on and on about the supposed "efficiency" which this arrangement will bring to their delivery and implementation. This trend of privatisation will be incredibly difficult to reverse, as there are vested financial interests for the wide range of capitalists who bid for government contracts, and the politicians whose campaigns they fund and whose pockets they will line with directorships further down the road. Even under a Labour administration at Westminster, I don't see this trend reversing itself, and I think the best we can hope for is a halt to it, barring some gigantic upheaval in the political and/or economic spheres. Remember, it took a world war for the welfare state to be established in the first place.
(3) Talk of a gradual reduction in the size of worldwide nuclear arsenals (with an ambiguous timeframe) is not helpful if we wish to take serious steps towards a post-nuclear age. What is needed instead is a powerful symbolic gesture by one of the developed world's nuclear powers, namely the decommissioning and removal of their nuclear deterrent. Idealistic perhaps, but someone has to put their guns down first, and as all three main Westminster parties are in favour of retaining Trident in one form or another, that someone will not be the UK.
Do I imagine that an independent Scotland will be a land of milk and honey, the socialist utopia envisaged by the SNP and others in the 'yes' campaign? Certainly not. Quite apart from reality's depressing tendency to fall short of theory, the much-vaunted Scottish leftist tradition is rooted in a political identity which has been forged by centuries of opposition to the London metropole; once you remove that conservative (small "c") counterweight, what becomes of that political identity? We'll see.
However, the three issues listed above are all problems that cannot be solved within the current political set-up in the UK. When a system is as entrenched and resistant to transformation as the one in which we currently find ourselves, refusing to admit serious reform through conventional channels, then only an act of violence can bring true and lasting change. To those (like me) of a pacifistic persuasion, this is an uncomfortable conclusion to say the least, but one must have a very narrow definition of the word "violence" to imagine that such an act can only consist of guns and guillotines. Breaking away from the UK to form a brand new state is an act which would be simultaneously destructive and creative ("the ultimate creative act", in the words of National Collective), and most certainly an act of epic constitutional violence. It is, however, a necessary act of constitutional violence. Necessary because, to achieve a decent chance (not a certainty) of (1) creating a more representative political system, (2) safeguarding essential and morally imperative public services, and (3) taking a genuinely meaningful step towards ridding the world of nuclear weapons, we need to, in a way, rip it all up and start again. Conventional paths of political reform in the UK are not fit for purpose, and instead we need to commit an act which is as forceful as it is symbolically powerful. That act is Scottish independence.
In line with my thoughts on nationalism, the fact that this new state would bear the name and culture of the nation known as Scotland is, to me, incidental. I do my best to think of it as "State X". What is important is that we, as autonomous citizens and dignified beings, have been presented with a decent chance (again, not a certainty) of forging a new political community which can be a better place to live and exist as engaged citizens, taking a hand in our own political flourishing. Scottish independence could be that highest of political ideals, a bloodless revolution.
I've been too simplistic in this piece, but I didn't want to spend too long on it with the short time left to us before the polls open. I'm hoping that it might encourage more debate on the topic, and at the very least make people think a little harder about their political decisions, which is frankly the least we can do as responsible citizens.
Jim Taylor
14th September 2014
