Happy Birthday To Us

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Scottish National Party. It might surprise some to learn that the party has been around for so long given that most history books don't have much to say about the SNP until the late 1960's. However, as Scotland's current party of government, there can be no doubt that it's come an awful long way since 1934 – and what a journey its been.

From the early days of the Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association and the eventual merger of the National Party of Scotland and the Scottish Party (an offshoot of the Unionist Party), the SNP faced an uphill battle against the prevailing politics of union and empire. However, Dr MacIntyre's short-lived 1945 triumph in Motherwell proved a harbinger of what was to come. The societal changes of the 1960's and parallel organisational advances brought talent to the party, resulting in the steady growth which led to Winnie Ewing's breakthrough at Hamilton in 1967 and what has since been a period of continual parliamentary representation for the party.

Oil fueled the party's fortunes in the 1970's, just as the SNP's success drove Labour and the Conservatives to seriously contemplate home rule. However, the weakness of the Labour Party at Westminster and inability to control its backbenchers saw devolution fall and with it, the Labour government. The SNP fell back dramatically at the resulting election and entered the 1980's a divided and marginalised force.

The party managed to hold itself together, though, and the social democratic strand of thought began to take precedence over centrist tactics. As discontent grew over the lack of a mandate for the Conservatives to govern Scotland, the party began to pick up support once more. Following a triumph at Govan in1988, the SNP saw its vote rise by 50% at the subsequent election, allowing it to enter the 1990's as the main challengers to Labour.

With the Westminster pendulum swinging back to Labour in 1997, the new government legislated swiftly for devolution. While Labour and the Lib Dems formed the first post-devolution administration, the SNP established itself firmly as the main opposition and by extension, the government in waiting. Credibility was built up and although the party fell back in 2003, the organisational reforms made in the interim allowed the party to gain in strength and to capitalise on the unpopularity of the Labour/Lib Dem administration in the 2007 election.

For a party funded solely by its members and lacking the support of any newspaper, taking power, however narrowly, was an astonishing achievement. There's never been any shortage of loud voices over the past eight decades, in Westminster and elsewhere, prepared to use the full authority of their standing to talk the party down and predict its demise. Yet despite all this, it is in government and on the verge of presenting a referendum bill for independence that the SNP celebrates this most auspicious of anniversaries.

Those loud voices have accused the SNP and its followers of many vices down the years. It might have been tempting for some in the party to go down the route of Anglophobia but it didn't, instead proposing an inclusive citizenship policy and an impeccable model of inclusion and civic nationalism. It might have tempted some to go down the road of violence as in Ireland, yet here the party stands, on the verge of achieving what it set out to, without so much as a punch having been thrown. The national movement has always been wider than the SNP, of course, but the party still deserves enormous credit for shaping a civic rather than ethnic goal for independence as part of what has been unquestionably the best behaved nationalist movement in the world.

From a position of imagined moral and intellectual superiority, there are some who will still try to argue that nationalism (by which they invariably mean Scottish rather than their own brand of British nationalism), has inherent deficiencies, or somehow goes against modernity. These assertions are as threadbare as they would be in reverse. Exactly as Scottish nationalism was once caricatured, public expressions of Britishness now more than ever seem to be defined by vacuous platitudes, perceived external threat and misty-eyed romanticism.

There's nothing at all inevitable about independence, yet the ground has shifted irreversibly. Scotland is now closer than it has ever been to re-establishing independence, and with a peaceful majority which will accept the outcome either way. That's not a situation which has arisen by accident – rather, it's the result of decades of patient argument made by Scottish Nationalists of all backgrounds and abilities, imbued with the simple belief that the best people to govern Scotland are those who've opted to make their lives here. The Scottish narrative of a small, prosperous, socially-just, peaceful, culturally rich nation which is respectful of difference, democracy and international law, and which has resolved its political status peacefully, could provide no more compelling example to the rest of the world, and is one which many other stateless nations in less benign circumstances would be wise to follow.

The SNP has given voice to many visionaries and pragmatists down the years to allow Scotland to progress to become the modern, inclusive nation she is today. As Scotland mourns one of her finest scholars and the SNP her most steadfast supporters, here's to those whose efforts have gone before, who despite their patient labours, are no longer around to see the fruits of their work in delivering a Scotland which has become increasingly at ease with itself. Truly, we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Going Soft On Independence

One of the main arguments deployed against Scottish independence is loss of influence. Scotland would be trading being part of a big country to be a small country, we are told. Influence in the world is all about willingness to use armed forces; having a permanent seat on the UN security council; having Trident - the implication being it's only the big boys that count when it comes to making friends and influencing people.

On the surface, it's a tricky one to argue against. For centuries, it was the countries which were most successful at mustering power on land and on sea which were best able to secure resources and influence over others. However, with the rise of 20^th century nationalism, the decline of the British empire and the rise of the USA, we began to see that it was not necessary to threaten or occupy a country in order to gain access to its resources or influence its people.

We learned that free trade could be mutually beneficial; that countries could expand their influence by working together in alliance. We even began to see that the brute military power of countries with the ability to destroy the planet, brought no guarantee of success even when brought to bear against smaller and supposedly 'inferior' forces. Admittedly, some of our recent leaders may not have learned very much from this, but the lesson was there for those prepared to see it.

Today, the world, as ever, is in flux. As US power wanes, we are heading for a multipolar world. Declining US influence means declining UK influence, at the same time as we see the rise of China and India. It's hard, for me at least, to avoid the conclusion that engaging effectively and winning influence in the world's emerging countries, is going to require a humility and openness for which even a century of steady British decline has failed to prepare our Westminster elites.

Whatever Lyndon B Johnson may have had to say about influence, hearts and minds are seldom won over these days by hard power alone. This is where 'soft power' comes in – the ability to influence others through culture, values and ideology rather than threat, violence or other forms of coercion. Yet for a state which was once described as having lost an empire but had not yet found a role, paradoxically, the UK has actually been remarkably effective post-1945 at building up its soft power around the world.

Respect for British institutions waxes and wanes. However, the institutions which work most effectively overseas are often not the traditional outlets of diplomacy, but those such as the BBC World Service and the British Council. While refusals to accept the limitations of hard power - such as the Iraq misadventure - alongside Labour's blatant attacks on the independence of the BBC, have helped undermine British standing in the world, the reputation of those institutions endures as a result of being built up over many years and the lives they have touched over that time.

Independence would mean Scotland leaving these institutions behind, at least in their present form. This gives us a tough act to follow in many respects, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. In fact, in many ways, Scotland is already well placed to build up a soft power which reaches the parts that no British institution can.

Firstly, independence would force a fundamental reappraisal for everyone on the British archipelago of who they are and who they want to be, but that is also a process which would demand great honesty. For better or for worse, Scots have had a huge and disproportionate impact on the way our modern world has been shaped. We can't, after all, re-write our history – we're as much a part of the history of the British Empire and recent ill-advised military adventures as our larger neighbours to the south.

Scotland is firmly part of the English speaking world. Nearly 9 out of 10 schoolchildren in the EU learn English, with at least 2 billion people around the world having either full or at least some understanding of the language. Our universities help teach the world, both by bringing students to live in Scotland and through distance learning. People around the globe are as curious about us as we are about them, which gives us a huge potential audience for our cultural output.

We also have the Edinburgh Festival, which has for decades been much, much bigger than the city or even the country which spawned it and gives us a cultural profile which any independent country would envy. Whether its to do with television, film, theatre, music, books or politics, for one glorious month, the world comes to us. As if this embarrassment of riches weren't enough, our three weeks in the sun means that whatever we happen to be thinking, planning, doing economically, socially or culturally in Scotland, is at the same time brought to the attention of the rest of the world.

Blessed may be the peacemakers, but they can through their actions achieve more influence than the warmongers. Previous SNP manifestos have committed the party to the establishment of a Scottish peacekeeping college, as well as a European Peace & Reconciliation Centre. The opportunity to enhance the global diplomatic capital which already exists is there if we wish to take it. None of this can physically stop a tank rolling across a border of course, but by opening minds, building links, by helping people to understand that they each have a stake in the future of each other, such approaches can be far more effective in building peace, security and prosperity than any number of nuclear warheads or Security Council resolutions.

With independence, we won't be starting from year zero. We will have a set of institutions, ideas, outlooks, values and histories which our forbears have built up, and which we ourselves will continue to build upon. Taking the narrative of a small, prosperous, socially-just, peaceful, culturally rich nation which is respectful of difference, democracy and international law, and which has resolved its political status peacefully, could provide no more compelling example to the rest of the world.

With our history, experiences of empire building and retrenchment, centuries-long exposure to industrialisation and 'globalisation', history of immigration and emigration, outlook, culture, philosophical, religious and epistemological traditions, we have a truly unique voice and perspective we can bring to bear. Set alongside our intimate understanding of the Anglosphere, who in reality could argue that Scotland wouldn't be a soft power superpower if she chose to become so?

Laugh if you like. These days, you don't need to be a military giant or even have pretensions of being a military giant to have influence. When it comes to power and influence it's no longer about the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog that counts.

London Calling

One time Revolutionary Communist NUS apparatchik turned New Labour luvvie, David Aaronovitch, has an amusingly bile-filled article in today's Times. I really can't be bothered to take his argument to bits (too easy), so here instead is an article I did for last month's Scots Independent newspaper, which kind of preempts his clumsy intervention into the debate.


'Over the past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying the BBC series on Suez. I’m not usually a fan of docu-drama, but this has been superb, bringing home how General Nasser brought the post-imperial delusions of the British ruling classes back down to earth with an almighty crash.

'In the SNP, we tackle daily many of the delusions that live on when making the Independence case. ‘Scotland’s voice would be puny’, it is said. ‘Being British is the only way to retain influence in the world’. At this we can laugh, setting recent abject failures in British diplomacy and the brittle posturing of Tony Blair against the positive roles played by much smaller European states.

'Something I find much harder to thole, though, is the faux-sophisticate sneering of the London-based left when it comes to the SNP. Perhaps this is because otherwise, we might have a fair amount in common with them when it comes to policy. However, I disdain utterly their self-proclaimed monopoly of concern when it comes to internationalism, social justice and the vitality of our civic society.

'Their dislike of the Conservatives just about allowed them to stomach devolution. A historic wrong was being righted, they told themselves around Hampstead dinner tables. Anyway, surely it will bring us closer together and what with Europe becoming more powerful and everything… sorry, I’m being terribly rude here. Shall I open another bottle of Chianti?

'And that was about as much thought as most ever gave it. However, with the unpopularity of Scottish Labour and the apparent momentum behind Independence, Hampstead has awoken. It seems discombobulated, neither understanding nor liking what it sees in the SNP. Perceiving a threat, instead of engaging with the debate it reaches for the comfortable and familiar anti-nationalist clichés so beloved by the 57 varieties of Brit left.

'Thus, we are now being treated to a series of articles telling us how Scottish nationalism is backward looking and exclusive, unlike the ‘given’ opposites of Britishness. Being British lets us share a greater destiny, we are told, instead of being isolated little Scotlanders, festering in the petty resentments of narrow nationalism.

'As a credo, it’s marked by fuddled thinking, rampant double standards and fraudulent assertions of conceptual superiority. It’s amazing how cosmopolitan citizens of the world, who would no more consider themselves isolated from Paris than from Pinner, can still somehow see Scottish Independence as isolation. ‘Britishness good, Scottish nationalism bad’ bleat the sheep, in an attempt to drown out any dissenting voices.

'Hugh MacDiarmid referred to the contradictory aspects of our character as the 'Caledonian Antisyzygy’. Perhaps its time to consider the Metro-Left Antisyzygy: the home of diversity which sees cultural difference as a threat. The force for good which undermines international law. The upholder of non-proliferation shaping to replace Trident. The guarantor of economic prosperity headed for a £700bn national debt by 2010.

'Devolution, Blairism and ‘Cool Britannia’ were the last roll of the dice for Britain. But far from killing the SNP stone dead, devolution has for many made Independence easier to contemplate. Blairism, meanwhile, is now being seen for the ephemeral cult of personality it always was. And as for the latter… despite the best efforts of Blairite thinktanks, it died an agonizing and lonely death somewhere between Noel Gallagher’s champagne glass and the fatuity of the Millennium Dome.

'With his sweeping majorities, Blair had the chance to reinvent Britain by introducing a written constitution, a bill of rights, scrapping the Lords, reforming the voting system and encouraging regional government in England. Instead, he seized the levers of centralised executive power with a Gollum-esque glee. Having enjoyed almost a decade of absolute power, Labour can hardly complain in future if the Tories decide to play by the same rules.

'An even vaguely competent Cameron leadership will surely see New Labour smashed on the rocks of English public contempt. Normal service will be restored, and the whine will resume once more that we need to stick together so we can return Labour to government.

'Well, I'm a democrat. If England votes Tory, as far as I'm concerned, that's who should govern England. No ifs, no buts. If the Metro-Left don't like the idea of the tyranny of the minority, they should be clamouring for PR to be introduced while they still have the chance, then buckle up tight for the kind of realignments we have already seen in Scotland.

'Approaching the 300th year of union, we find ourselves shackled to a decorative and decadent power centre increasingly irrelevant to the people it tries to govern. It is insulting to suggest that either England or Scotland needs the other as a bolt-on accessory to ensure its good conduct and high standing in the world. I’d like to think that in the SNP, our sights are set higher than that – would that these modern day Habsburgs could say the same'.