The Current State of Scottish Nationalism
What warning lessons can independence causes across the world take from what has unfolded in Scotland?
This is a guest submission from a longtime supporter of Scottish Independence: Dr. Paul Gilfillan of Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, Scotland. Dr. Gilfillan has twice been a guest on From Steal to Secession AM: (1) Scottish Nationalism moving from Left to Right? (2) Did 2024 Elections begin Great Britain’s Breakup?
The Current State of Scottish Nationalism
By Dr. Paul Gilfillan, Ph.D.
Earlier this year the nationalist commentariat was saying how ridiculous it was that 2 pro-independence marches were about to occur a fortnight apart in the same city of Glasgow, AUOB (May 4th 2024) – all under one banner - and BIS (April 20th, 2024)– Believe in Scotland. This simple fact for many showed how the broad nationalist movement is no longer united. So I would propose that on two fronts it is at a stalemate.
First Stalemate: Constitutional
It is well known we are at a constitutional impasse / crossroads. In the 1980s and 1990s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her successors taught the Scots a lesson in where sovereign power lies. Thatcher defeated the miners, and they stayed defeated. So the miners – in Scotland at least - learnt a new politics. The politics of nationalism i.e. a politics without England. It was partially successful thanks to 1999 and the setting up of the devolved parliament in Edinburgh. Now though, in the post-2014 situation after the failure of the independence referendum, Westminster Prime Ministers – Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak - are teaching a new generation of Scots the same lesson in where sovereign power really lies. The place the Scots occupy in the hierarchy. We are the new Catalonia vis-a-vis Spain. Just as the Spanish constitution forbids the Catalans to have a referendum without the approval of the Spanish Cortes – and that ain’t going to happen – i.e. Spain will not let itself be dismembered. Spain gives nobody the right to dismember Spain. Similarly, the English will not give permission to the Scots to secede; and the Scots know they have no legal right to hold an independence referendum. They need English permission and England will not give it. They have too much to lose. So the only way the Scots will get another chance to escape England’s veto on Scotland’s future is to win another absolute majority in the Holyrood parliament as happened back in May 2011.
But here is where the ‘blame game’ begins and where another important impasse comes into view:
Second Stalemate: Organisational
The absolute majority of seats won in the Scottish parliament by the SNP in 2011 meant the British PM David Cameron had to give in and let the Scots have a referendum on independence or he would appear to be un-democratic. However that 2011 majority was won because there was a united nationalist movement behind the SNP. Here is where the blame game begins because slowly, slowly, and then quite dramatically and very publicly, that unity has totally gone. The debacle of the SNP persisting with the strategy of ‘both votes SNP’ to spite Alex Salmond’s new Alba party is a good example.
Let me explain. There are 129 members of the Scottish parliament. 73 are Constituency MPs and 56 are List MPs. The Constituency MPs get elected by winning the most votes in a geographical area or constituency. It’s the ‘first past the post’ system we are familiar with. The remaining 56 List MPs, however, are elected by the De Hont system which aims to introduce an element of proportional representation. For the past few elections, the SNP have had great success in getting lots of Constituency MPs, but because they have been so successful, they have been heavy ‘losers’ when it comes to winning any of the 56 List MPs. We have the situation, then, where despite the SNP winning huge majorities in what is called the List votes, they don’t get large number of List MPs. They are punished by the system for doing well in the Constituency vote. From a nationalists point of view, then, the way to get around this is quite simple: get nationalist voters to vote for a nationalist party other than the SNP that doesn’t do well in the constituency vote. This was a key strategy of Alex Salmond's Alba party. They wanted nationalist voters' second vote. Many outside the SNP thought if this strategy was followed the Scottish parliament would have a clear nationalist majority and another democratic mandate for another independence referendum. Nicola Sturgeon famously rejected this strategy. Many nationalists saw this as a betrayal and have been bitter towards the SNP leadership ever since.
The more general problem is that the post-2014 SNP has gone woke so that many non-woke nationalists will have nothing to do with the SNP. [Many say the same thing has happened to the American Democratic party of course]. Then the 2021 decision of the SNP to formally pact with the ULTRA-Woke Scottish Green Party was the last straw for many. Scottish nationalism, then, is also at an impasse and stalemate in terms of its political organisation and political representation. The SNP is nationalism’s only political form. That has to change because it’s no secret we have a civil war going on between liberals and conservatives. This civil war is actually very similar to an older civil war within the Scottish National Party that relates to the question of social class. For decades the Scottish National Party, founded in the 1930s, did all it could to NOT take sides on the issue of social class. It was seen as too divisive. It was seen as if, should anyone even mention it, there would be trouble. In the history of the SNP, something called the ‘79 Group’ (led by the late Alex Salmond) had to be formed within the party, and then its members were expelled from the party by the leadership as a ‘faction within.’ This group wanted the SNP to become a left-leaning social democratic party. Their new Left-wing nationalism eventually won the day in the 1990s because the SNP decided to explicitly appeal to working class voters. Today we have a similar problem. We need to have a new grouping that wants to force the issue of liberal v. conservative or progressive v. reactionary. This battle needs to happen and take political form. I think an end to the civil war or unity of a kind in the broad nationalist movement will only be possible when a new centre-right nationalist party forms.
So you might say the problem is diversity. The Scots have grown up and the Trojan Horse of what sociologists call ‘deep value pluralism’ has entered the Scottish nationalist movement. So as a sociologist, I say Scottish nationalism is divided because Scottish society is divided. We can no longer unite or happily share the same platform never mind party or united political strategy come election time. The curse of pluralism has fractured us into a million pieces! A unitary nationalist subject and political movement has disappeared…
Dr Paul Gilfillan (B.A. Hons, MSc. (Taught), MSc. (Research), PhD) is a Senior Lecturer in the Psychology, Sociology and Education Division at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is also an associate member of the Centre for Applied Social Sciences.