In the final hours of this year's election the Daily Mail attempted one last scare. Declaring that the United Kingdom was in danger, it urged its readers not to vote Labour to maintain what it trumpeted as '1,000 years of British history'.
Had the Daily Mail's editor gone back to 997 AD what would he have found? In south western and central England there existed a rump Anglo-Saxon kingdom under Ethelred the Unready (parallels there with John Major). Most of the eastern part of what is now England was settled by the Danes. The Lake District was a separate Norse kingdom and Northumberland a law unto itself. Even those of Anglo-Saxon descent would have spoken mutually incomprehensible regional dialects.
In what is now Wales there was no centralised monarchy or national identity. There was nothing approaching a unified Scottish state encompassing the Lowlands. The kernel of that was created by King Duncan in 1034 centred on the Saxon kingdom of the Lothians and bringing together Saxon, British and Pictish peoples who spoke separate languages. North of the Highland line a Celtic society existed which was an offshoot of Irish Celtic culture with a heavy splash of Norse influence.
There is no seamless, 1,000 years of British history. The idea that Tony Blair would preside over the break up of the United Kingdom is hard to swallow. Within weeks of the election we saw Blair's emotional reaction as the Union Jack came down over Hong Kong. The handover of Hong Kong provides a good starting point for any examination of British nationalism. The British ceremonies were entirely military and carried with them a reminder of the bloody history of Empireand a reminder of Scotland's fullhearted role in this. Among the various quotes banded around was one attributed to Lord Palmerston that Hong Kong was a mere 'barren rock' until Britain seized it. This was not quite true. Its importance lay in the fact that it controlled the Pearl River, a trading route more ancient and more important than the River Thames.
There were complaints too that the Chinese were fixated with history and with the alleged crimes of British colonialism. This is a familiar taunt thrown at the Irish. It begs the question as to why Chinese, Indian or Irish people would still resent British colonialism. And of course Britain is hardly the country in the world least concerned with glorifying its past!
The images of British history we are familiar with are of afternoon tea on the lawn, of a society free from the social explosions which affected its continental neighbours, a society which had developed peacefully and gradually, donating its parliamentary system to a grateful world. In response to a speech by the Tory prime minister Stanley Baldwin in 1925 which celebrated 'gradualism' and the peaceful evolution of Britain, Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary, pointed out, 'The very history of Britain testifies in practice that "peaceful development" can only be ensured by means of a succession of wars, colonial acts of violence and bloody shocks. That is a strange form of gradualness!'
Britain grew out of revolution, civil war, international war and the shock of the industrial revolution. Great Britain as a unified state is little older than the United States. If we want to place a moment when the British state was fully forged the long wars against revolutionary and then Napoleonic France would do. Many of the symbols of Britain which are presented as timeless were created in those and subsequent years. The aristocracy was largely recreated in the late 18th century when the existing nobility married into the new wealth of commerce and trade. During the Napoleonic Wars a new nobility was created from the bankers, generals, admirals, senior civil servants and judges as part of a process of buttressing the British state against France.
In 1700 the vast majority of the upper classes were still educated at home but by 1800 a full 80 percent of English peers had attended just four public schoolsEton, Harrow, Winchester and Westminster. The public schools were recast again in the 1840s under the prompting of Thomas Arnold of Rugby with an emphasis on character building through Christian athleticism. In 1700 less than 35 percent of English peers had attended Oxford or Cambridge. By 1800 the figure had risen to 60 percent.
The ultimate symbol of Britain, the royal family, was virtually reinvented in the 19th century at the instigation of the Tory leader Disraeli. He brought Queen Victoria out of seclusion because he realised that, with the extension of the vote to at least a section of male workers for the first time, the British state needed to popularise itself. The coronation ceremony, the pomp of the royal weddings and the various royal orders were the products of the last century. When George III was crowned he had to travel to Westminster in a hired sedan chair and went unnoticed in the streets. It is perhaps no accident that the popularisation of royal processions coincided exactly with the launch of the first popular paper, the Daily Mail.
What of Scottish or Welsh nationalism? The symbols of Scottish nationalismthe warpipes, the kilt, the Black Watchare very much a product of the 19th century. The kilt was an 18th century invention of a Lancashire iron-smelter based in the Highlands. The supposedly traditional clan tartans were bought off the shelf from a Bannockburn textile firm to celebrate George IV's visit to Edinburgh which was so skilfully choreographed by the Tory novelist Sir Walter Scott. These images have adorned countless shortbread tins and whisky bottles. In the 19th century lowland Scotland appropriated the cultural trappings of a Gaelic culture which it had previously regarded as alien and which it had largely destroyed.
In Wales the first Eisteddfod was created by London based exiles in the 18th century. The supposed national dress of Welsh women with a tall dark hat and red shawl was created by Lady Llanover in 1834. This was not unique to Britain, as 19th century Europe was marked by the invention of national symbols. In Bohemia young Czech intellectuals were forging medieval manuscripts to provide a supposed historic basis for a new nationalist movement. In the existing states, as each was forced to extend the franchise to the working class and following the shock of the 1871 Paris Commune, there was a conscious attempt to surround the institutions of state with pomp and grandeur. In republican France this led to the creation of Marianne as symbol of the nation and from 1880 onwards the celebration of Bastille Day.
Any common British sense of identity did not exist prior to the second half of the 18th centurydespite the attempt by Cromwell to create a truly British state in the 1650s. If there was any sense of identity it was one of a common Protestant faith that must be defended from the Spanish and French (and their allies in Ireland and the Highlands). Yet by 1815 Waterloo was seen as a Britishnot an English triumph. Just 40 years before the London mob had rioted in support of John Wilkes's claim that George III was promoting Scots to rule England and that Scots were enemies of liberty (there was a high degree of truth in this concerning the Scottish upper classes). Only 70 years before Waterloo in 1745 a Highland army had reached Derby in a desperate attempt to restore Stuart absolutism. At the time of the Act of Union in 1707 Scots were seen as aliens.
What really distinguishes Britain as a nation is its mid-19th century world dominance, the ideological dominance of empire and the longevity and sophistication of the British ruling class.
The long period of capitalist development meant that the British working class created a labour movement based on narrow craft defensiveness rather than on generalised class politics. The long gestation period of the British working class (the first unions date back into the 18th century) led to a high degree of sectionalism. This was reinforced by the fact that working class organisation reached maturity in the period between 1850 and 1880 when the ruling class enjoyed international pre-eminence based on its industrial dominance and overseas empire. It could thus guarantee a level of social stability and peace which left its mark on the workers' movement. This was reflected ideologically as Trotsky points out:
'The dialectic of history has in this respect played a cruel trick upon Britain, having converted the advantages of her forward development into the causes of her backwardness. We can see this in the field of industry, in science, in the state system and in political ideology. Britain developed without historical precedents. She could not seek and find a model for her own future in more advanced countries. She went forward gropingly and empirically, only generalising her experience and looking ahead insofar as was unavoidable. Empiricism is stamped on the traditional mode of thought of the Britishthat means above all of the British bourgeoisie. And this same intellectual tradition has passed over to the top layers of the working class.'
The hold of gradualism, religion and empiricism marks out the British Labour Party and the trade union bureaucracy. It ensured there was never a formal identification with Marxism or syndicalism as in the French, Italian or Spanish trade union federations. The partial exceptions to this were Clydeside and South Wales at the turn of the century which suddenly found themselves thrust into rapid industrialisation accompanied by mass immigration. This did create a radicalisation and generalisation which allowed syndicalism and then Marxist ideas to gain a significant foothold.
But the argument on the left that Britain is different rests on an altogether different scenario. The former editor of New Left Review, Perry Anderson, has argued that the English Revolution of the 17th century was simply a conflict between two sections of the landed nobility and that subsequently the industrial bourgeoisie never gained full power. This remained with the aristocracy and with the City of London. For Anderson this is the root of Britain's decline and what he calls 'the suffocating traditionalism of English life.' Anderson's ally Tom Nairn argues that today's royal family is more than an ideological sideshow. It is a symbol of Britain's failure to become a modern democratic nation. The crown is important as 'an aristocratic symbol' of an economy in which 'industrial production was always secondary, and is now quite peripheral.'
This might seem all rather academic but the Marxist rhetoric of supporters of this view can easily dovetail with other champions of 'modernisation.' So when Perry Anderson first presented his arguments in 1966 he backed the then Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, in his drive to modernise including his incomes policy. In the 1970s Nairn championed Britain's membership of the European Union and, even stranger, saw Margaret Thatcher as the instrument for modernising Britain. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are keen to adopt the rhetoric of modernisation in order to provide themselves with some radical chic.
There is not the space here to go into a refutation of Anderson and Nairn's arguments about the English Revolution of the 17th century (Scotland's bourgeois revolution was a longer process stretching through two centuries and reaching its conclusion at Culloden in 1746). However, Britain at the close of the 18th century was a thoroughly bourgeois society as reflected in Jane Austen's novels where every possible bride or bridegroom has a clear price label attached.
Trotsky argued, 'William Pitt [the Younger] likewise extremely close to a personal dictatorship, defended the interests of the monarchy, the privileged classes and the top bourgeois against the revolution of the petty bourgeoisie that found its highest expression in the dictatorship of Robespierre.' The French Revolution was able to mobilise the masses successfully to the shock of the European powers. In order to win what amounted to a world war the British ruling class had to do something of the same. Pitt used the monarchy, the celebration of warrior figures like Nelson and the creation of popular patriotism.
As the 20th century approached bourgeois confidence began to slip, faced as it was by its visible industrial decline. The 40 years of social stability during the middle decades of the century had been preceded by violent class conflict which re-emerged in the late 1880s.
This deep sense of decline is evident in the British ruling class. It runs through much of 20th century British literaturefinding popular expression for example in John Le Carre's novels. Speaking at the beginning of the century the imperialist, Joseph Chamberlain, declared, 'England [sic] without an empire! Can you conceive it? England in that case would not be the England we love It would no longer be a power It would be a fifth rate nation.' That was one that Chamberlain got right.
Introducing the defence estimates only a few years ago Tory defence minister Malcolm Rifkind stated, 'We have to get used to the idea that Britain is simply a small island off the north west of Europe.' No other previous defence minister would have uttered such words. They contrast with Lord Palmerston in 1850 who imperiously lectured the Greeks after they had interfered with the property rights of an erstwhile British subject: 'As the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity when he could say "Civis Romanus Sum", so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel England will protect him against injustice and wrong.'
Scottish and Welsh nationalism emerged as popular movements in the interwar years in response to the decline of the United Kingdom. They contrast with Irish nationalism which was in response to the rise of British nationalism and colonialism. The Scottish and Welsh nationalism of the last century emerged as part of a wider British imperialism. The Scottish ruling class, in particular, was and is an integral part of the British ruling class. Junior partner does not do justice to the role it has played. Equal partners is a better description. Scotland suffered no material oppression as a result of Union (though this was not the case in the distinct society north of the Highland line). The Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century expressed a strong sense of historical change which reached its height with Adam Smith. Within a generation Scotland had changed from a land of witch burning and castles to a capitalist economy spearheading the Industrial Revolution.
What should our attitude be to these nationalist movements as the 20th century closes? Firstly, socialists cannot defend the unity of the United Kingdom given its bloody record. British nationalism is our main enemy. However, socialists in Scotland and Wales have to point out that nationalism is an invented tradition and it rests on a dangerous myth that national identity overcomes class division. Scotland is one of the most class divided countries in Europe.
Devolution, home rule and even independence are not in themselves radical demands. At different points in this century they have been championed by Herbert Asquith, Lloyd George, the Tories under Churchill, the Scottish Daily Express in the 1930s and the Sun in the 1990s. The argument in the 1970s that the SNP were simply Tartan Tories was false but equally false is to swallow the notion that today they represent a radical, left of centre movement. All nationalisms are two faced. They combine a radical face and a reactionary one. In the 1930s the SNP called for the repatriation of Scottish-Irish.
Nationalism represents a dead end for the working class. In Scotland today the pro-devolution campaign, Scotland Forward, far from challenging the establishment, encompasses it. The move towards a nationalist agenda within the Scottish labour movement is the product of the acceptance of ideas which see the working class in decline and regard the collapse of Stalinism as having undermined the whole socialist project.
We should reject this pessimism, arguing Britain today represents a weak link in the imperialist chain. It suffers a twin crisis. One, common to all of its rivals, is that of recurring economic crisis which threatens to boil over into political crisis. The other is a crisis of a long term decline and the failure to halt this. This twin crisis has undermined so many of the symbols of 'Britishness'the church, the police, the legal system, the Tory Party and most spectacularly the royal family. .
At the last election the mood for change created a swing to Labour which was at its sharpest in southern England but occurred in Scotland tooto the amazement of much of the Scottish left. Modern British historyrather than being one of calm and gradual changehas been, from the onset of decline in the 1880s, stormy. Again and again it has been punctuated by outbursts of mass struggle from the New Unionism and Great Unrest to the victories of the 1970s and the great defensive battles of the 1980s.
In those battles Scottish, Welsh and English workers have fought together, won together and lost together. Whatever their ideas, Scottish workers know that they will have to rely on such support from their English and Welsh brothers and sisters again if they are to win in the battles ahead.