Blain's Porridge Extra - A history lesson on why the SNP is so angry... about everything..

Blain’s Porridge Extra – A Scottish History Lesson – March 17th 2017

“We’re bought and sold for English Gold.. such a parcel of rogues in a nation….”

I was ranting about Scotland and the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) on Bloomberg this morning – as a result I’ve been “trolled” on the net, and abused for being a phoney Anglo-Scot.

There is an old song – A Parcel of Rogues In a Nation – telling how the Scots aristocracy sold out Scotland in return for English Gold in 1707. That’s when Scotland and England were joined by the Act of Union to form the United Kingdom. The SNP have painted it as the great betrayal of our proud history – their whole aim is to reverse that moment and re-establish Scotland’s independence.

As has been shown this week – their leader, Nicola Sturgeon, won’t hesitate at anything to further that goal!

The song was quoted at me this morning - loudly. It’s a curio, a piece of irrelevant 300 year old political pamphleteering.

Instead of dwelling on the past, perhaps the SNP might sensibly consider the future? Scots should be asking themselves serious questions about the union. It might be better to put the SNP’s demands into context using a more modern idiom, borrowed from Monty Python:

“Apart from better sanitation, medicine, irrigation, public health, roads, freshwater, baths, public order.. what have the Romans done for us?”

Time for a history lesson – which I hope neutral observers of the current Scotland versus Common Sense debate might find useful.

It is said the Angel Gabriel asked God why he’d given the Scots such a beautiful land, given them Malt Whisky and made them the most heroic people on Earth. “Yes, I have Gabriel,” replied the Lord, “but look who I’ve given them as neighbours..”

Scotland and England coalesced into separate political entities sharing a border about 1000 year ago. For the next 600 years they fought, fought some more, and generally grew to hate each other – just like every other European nation.

The Scots got the worst of it – being conquered innumerable times by the much larger England. While the English torched most of the Central Belt of Scotland on a regular basis , the Scots occasionally returned the compliment as far South as York. On balance, it’s left we Scots in awe of the much larger nation to our south.

Everything changed In 1603 when the Scots King James inherited the English Throne following the death of Elizabeth 1st and the crowns were united. A begrudging peace broke out.

Until 1707 Scotland and England remained two entirely separate countries. They shared the common monarch and a common language by which they could mostly understand each other. The major differences were religious: the Church of England being a watered down state version of Catholicism, while the Scots were militantly Protestant (except in the thinly populated Highlands and Islands).

England was among the wealthiest, strongest countries in Europe, while Scotland was dirt poor.

Trading between the two counties was limited. Both put high tariffs on each other’s exports – not that the Scots had much the English actually wanted. England’s wealth was increasing from trade with the continent and increasingly with its new colonies in the Americas – tobacco from Virginia and Beaver Pelts from Canada. England aggressively protected its continental trade, making it costly for Scottish vessels to pass through English Ports.

The Scots wanted a share of the expanding merchantile wealth. In the 1690s they planned their own overseas colonies and looked at the map. They decided the spot between the Caribbean and the Pacific, the ithmus of Panama, would become a critical global trading nexus. They decided to plant their first colony in Darien – right in the middle of the zone. They neglected the fact it was already claimed by Spain, who quite rightly avoided the place due to hostile Indians and malaria. The Scottish expedition was a disaster. It sucked up most of the country’s wealth. Scotland went bust overnight.

Concerned their bankrupt Northern neighbour might get troublesome, the English came up with a vile plan to unify the two countries. (It had been tried many times before – with little success.) The English made an offer: in return for the Scots recognising the common monarchy’s line of succession from the last of the Protestant Stuarts to the German Hanoverians, (rather than the crown passing to the Catholic Stuarts who’d been chucked out in 1688), Scotland would be granted unfettered access to all English Markets.

The default Scottish mode is that anything offered by an Englishman must come with some hidden trap. The Scots were deeply suspicious, right until the liberal application of copious amounts of English gold to members of the Scottish Parliament saw it through.

The deal got worse – in addition to an unfettered zero-tariff common market, the Scots also got full representation in Parliament, while their separate church, legal system and educational system were protected. There was much opposition to the deal – especially from those who hadn’t been bought off by the bribes! Crucially that included the disenfranchised Catholic Stuarts in exile in France and Italy – who have been issuing propaganda against it ever since.

Perhaps you begin to see why the Scottish Nationalists regard the Union as such a great “betrayal”. They are the inheritors of the tradition that the Act of Union has proved to be an utter disaster for Scotland.

In 1707, Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh was a dirty, flea-bitten city clinging to the Castle-Rock, famous for the shout of “Gardy-loo” as the night soil was flung-out tennament windows on the streets below. 70 years later, Edinburgh was being hailed as the “Athens of the North” as burgeoning wealth and a successful merchantile class saw the New Town of Edinburg expand into the greatest real estate development of its time.

Scottish universities became the centre of global learning with Adam Smith, David Hume, Napier and others leading the modern age. Industry thrived as Watt improved the steam engine. Literature followed in a line from Robert Burns through Walter Scott to the modern age. Scotland went from being the poorest nation in Europe to among the richest in just a few generations – reaping the fruits of uninterrupted domestic peace and rising trade.

There was some unpleasantness when the Catholic Stuarts decided to try to take back the whole United Kingdom. Today we celebrate the illusion the whole of Scotland rose up with Bonnie Prince Charlie in the Great Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. The truth is less than 6000 Highlanders (commanded by their Catholic clan chiefs) fought for him, while more Scots fought in the Scottish Regiments of the British Army for the Hanoverian government on the final battlefield of Culloden. Even the Highland Clans were divided, with most of them against the Prince.

Sure it’s a wonderful romantic fiction to imagine what Scotland would have been like if the Jacobite’s had succeeded… Brigadoon indeed.

150 years after the sell-out Act of Union, Glasgow had become the second city of the British Empire and was producing 80% of the global shipping. The UK was the richest nation on Earth. Scots played a leading role in developing and administering the largest empire yet seen.

250 years after the Union, the UK had led the resistance to the Nazis and provided Europe’s bulwark against Russian communist expansion. Even as the flag fell on the Empire and the UK went into relative decline, the flag flew over the new Commonwealth and there was never a suggestion of anything other than Britain as the United Kingdom. There were a small number of diehards who still argued for a dissolution of the Union, and jolly japes like “liberating” the Stone of Destiny (nicked from the Scots in 1203) from Westminster Cathedral occurred. Around the globe expatriate Scots in their kilts would happy toast the King Across The Water while working for the British State.

Since the 1960s the equation has changed. Scotland’s industry has been neutered. The shipyards are largely gone. The steel mills are shut. The carmakers have moved elsewhere. The mines have been closed.

That’s not London’s fault – the same loss of jobs has happened in every post-industrial society. The difference in Scotland is the blame game.

When I was young the Commonwealth Games came to Edinburgh. I remember waving a flag as the Queen opened them. There was perhaps one SNP MP – a harmless crank loved by all. But through the 1970s more feisty SNP firebrands were elected – warping Scots’ natural socialist tendencies in anti-British rhetoric. They knew who to blame – and it was London and the English.

Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth. The SNP blamed London for spending the money from Scotland’s North Sea Oil. Every closed factory was blamed on London. They have made much by comparing the success of other small countries like Ireland and Norway who seized their independence and made it work. How did they make it work? Because they weren’t beholden to London.. they said. The lies have stuck.

The simple SNP world view ignores realities. Scotland was always a more integrated part of the Union in a way Ireland never was. 310 years after the union and the SNP say its over. As the last referendum demonstrated, 45% of Scots believe them. Their success is a function of the relative decline of the UK, the de-industrialisation of Scotland, the centralisation of government in London creating a sense Scotland is neglected, and fermenting envy of other nations’ success. It’s a powerful and addictive drug-like message to sell to Scots.

The reality of an independent Scotland without English subsidies (currently running an 11% budget deficit), or the fact its major 60% plus trade is with the rest of the UK rather than Europe, or the likelihood Europe and Nato are unlikely to welcome Scotland, are all moot at this point. These are all sensible doubts to consider with care and reason.

Instead, the Nationalists want Scotland to address its future fuelled by emotion..

That has been deliberately engineered by the Nationalists who know their countrymen well. The best way to get a Scotsman angry is to remind him of some imagined English Slight. The danger is Scotland repeats the mistakes of the past, for instance military disasters like Falkirk, Flodden, and Culloden, when Scot’s blind fury lost out to the steadier Englishmen.

Time for Scotland to breathe deep and act like an adult.

Normal Non-Scottish Comment resumes next week..

Bill Blain