Two views of Britain
Brutain's hardy sons
My grandfather, who was in the Royal Navy during the second
World War, would probably (I’m putting words into his mouth) have thought of
himself as “chust one of Brutain’s hardy sons,” to echo Neil Munro’s
description of Para Handy. I imagine my grandfather thinking of Britain as the
plucky island that faced down the barbarity of a continental European dictator.
Britain, including England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and its many
colonies, because sailors and soldiers from Ghana, India, Kenya and across the
Empire also gave their lives to save ‘Brutain.’
For some, this is still the image of Britain; plucky
islanders, sensible, organised people, with a Queen on the throne and a mother
of Parliaments at Westminster. There is nothing wrong with this view. It is
founded in an era when her hardy sons and daughters had to fight and die for
her, leaving those acres of white gravestones across northern France, Belgium
and Holland.
Imperial Masters
But there is another, darker view of Britain. It’s the view
you get from outside the scepter’d isles, specifically from a place within
another former imperial power. From here in Catalonia, in still-Imperial Spain,
the view of Britain is of an Empire whose vassal states include Scotland, Wales
and the top right corner of Ireland, along with the convenient money laundries
in Gibraltar and the Channel Islands.
Compare Scotland with Ghana, and the parallels as a colony
of an English Empire are obvious.
The horror of slavery in Ghana has no direct
comparison in Scotland, but the Scots were cleared from their lands and sent
over the seas to the new colonies in the Americas. Ghana’s chieftains were
corrupted with land, power or gold in the same way as the clan chiefs in
Scotland were bought over with a mixture of threats and powers over their
‘tenants’ (formerly, the members of their clan). Ghana’s human assets were
stripped by slavery, as Scotland’s were with the Clearances, and Ghana’s gold
was smelted for Empire just as, much later, Scotland’s oil was refined to
enrich England. (Just note the levels of poverty in Scotland, an oil-producing
nation, or in Ghana, once West Africa’s richest gold-producing nation, to
understand how little of that wealth ‘trickled down’ to the poor.)
Ghana was
ruled from Westminster until 1957, in the same way as Scotland is now.
And Ghana’s concerns had little or no echo in the House of Commons, in the
same way as Scotland is ignored, and her MPs told to ‘go back to Skye’ by the English government.
The Bùrach
The Brexit bùrach has highlighted the Empire-colony relationship between England and Scotland.
Scotland’s parliament, it turns out,
has no powers. The end of the ‘Sewel Convention’, and the power grab by
Westminster are clear evidence of that. Scotland’s Government has been treated
with disdain by Westminster, its proposals ignored, and its representations
shunned. That Scotland has different needs from South East England has not
penetrated the Tory party conscience, in part because Scotland is represented
by a fluffy poodle, not a wee ginger dug. Specifically, Scotland needs young
migrants – none of whom will earn more than the £30,000 threshold set by the
anti-immigrants in the Cabinet – to fill the places in factories, hospitals and
the service sector that our ageing population cannot fill.
The easy racism of old Empire has been exposed by Brexit. In
the first Cabinet meeting after the half-cocked (that’s you, Mr Corbyn) Commons
Brexit debate, Ministers discussed their new post-2022 immigration policy,
designed to stop anyone who is not a high-paid executive, and thus probably
white-skinned, from entering the country. Nothing was said about the Empire’s
emigration policy…because of course British ‘expats’ are decent folk who enjoy
a pink gin on the terrace of their retirement villa in Malaga, whilst ‘foreign
immigrants’ eat a chapati on their front step in East Hackney [yes, this is irony.
It is hard to portray the easy, inherent racism of Empire without employing
it.]
Decline and Fall...
What happens next? With Brexit, I have no idea. But for
Empire, the pattern is 300 years old, and unlikely to change; the ‘Union’ of
nations will continue to be one Imperial power and three vassal states. Powers
will continue to be centralised in London, whether that is under a Tory or a Labour
government, because that is the only logic that works for an Imperial
Parliament. Poverty will continue to be obvious in the streets and housing
estates of Scotland, because whatever wealth we have will continue to be
removed South, for the sake of Empire.
...or Walk Free
Scotland is different from England, her needs are different
from those of Her Imperial Majesty’s Government, and she has no more need to
kowtow to Westminster.
It is past time that Scotland, like Ghana and most of
the rest of the Empire’s former colonies, stepped away from this abusive
relationship. We can still be Brutain’s
hardy sons and daughters (because we will still be living on the British
Isles), but no longer tied to the misery and warmongering of a concussed,
mortally wounded Imperial overlord.
