If you support Irish nationalism, why not Scottish nationalism?

Nodin

Long Gone wrote: »

It was a Freudian slip - Self-deterioration is a far more accurate description of what the consequences of "independence" would be. Independence ? - All that Bo**ix Salmond wants is more attention for himself. He claims he wants independence but wants to keep the pound which means they wouldn't have fiscal independence - Says it all ! The English would be all in favour of independence if it meant that all the smelly socks (jocks) in England would clear off back north of the border....., but of course they want it both ways for petty nationalistic reasons. Too much lookin' at friggin' Braveheart has caused all this rubbish ! The vote will be NO.

Charming.

A Dub in Glasgo

SpaceTime wrote: »

There's no question of it just signing up to the UK membership with all of its opt outs.

There is a question, the facts of what Scotland would face is not at all clear. The clarity was not sought by the UK Government

A Dub in Glasgo

Long Gone wrote: »

It was a Freudian slip - Self-deterioration is a far more accurate description of what the consequences of "independence" would be. Independence ? - All that Bo**ix Salmond wants is more attention for himself. He claims he wants independence but wants to keep the pound which means they wouldn't have fiscal independence - Says it all ! The English would be all in favour of independence if it meant that all the smelly socks (jocks) in England would clear off back north of the border....., but of course they want it both ways for petty nationalistic reasons. Too much lookin' at friggin' Braveheart has caused all this rubbish ! The vote will be NO.

Oh dear

DarkyHughes

SpaceTime wrote: »

Self-determination I hope!

Hahaha damn spell check.

MakeEmLaugh

MakeEmLaugh wrote: »

You are entitled to that, but if you truly had no opinion on the matter, I don't know why you'd post in an online discussion forum about the subject.

Khaleesi Putrid Self-pity wrote: »

Oh for pity's sake! So any thread is only for like minded people to have post after post saying the same thing. Then those self same people say there is 100% agreement on their view?

Erm... no, I didn't say that. Quite rightly we have seen people with several different views on the subject. However, saying 'I don't care' doesn't really contribute to the thread at all.

I don't go into forums that do not interest me (e.g. ones about football) and say "I don't care about this subject, it makes no difference to my life!". That sounds a lot like trolling to me.

Anyway, you and I aren't getting anywhere with this back and forth. Probably best to get back to the subject of Scottish independence.

SpaceTime

If they do declare independence it will be very interesting to see how the EU reacts though.

Given that the UK may withdraw from it anyway, I wonder if they might just bend the rules for Scotland and let it in without much fuss?

The only downside I see is that Spain and possibly Belgium might not want to see the EU giving an easy ride to breakaway regions as it would be a huge incentive for the Basques, the Catalans and the Flemish.

Grayson

SpaceTime wrote: »

They were fairly useless, often incompetent and always sucking up to the Church but they didn't preside over a famine that killed a huge % of the population or religious genocide. So let's keep things in perspective.

The track record of British rule in Ireland was abysmally bad and left huge legacy issues in Northern Ireland. That's the reality of it.

The reality is that Ireland, economic bumps and Church-State abuse scandals and other warts included has a higher standard of living than it did at any stage in history.

So that comparison really isn't very realistic to be perfectly honest.

To be fair, there were plenty of famines all across the UK and it was Irish landlords that made it worse here.

Cromwell was a cnut. But the English civil war killed something like 1/3rd of the population.

Lets face it, however bad the english were to us, they were just as bad to their own citizens.

SpaceTime

Grayson wrote: »

To be fair, there were plenty of famines all across the UK and it was Irish landlords that made it worse here.

Cromwell was a cnut. But the English civil war killed something like 1/3rd of the population.

Lets face it, however bad the english were to us, they were just as bad to their own citizens.

Regardless of what their record at home was, it doesn't really make their level of governmental competence in Ireland during the 1800s in particular any more impressive.

The famine here simply shouldn't have happened and it was British mercantile economic policies that drove it through a doctrine of total lack of state involvement in social welfare and a notion that there were 'deserving poor' and 'undeserving poor' and that somehow the Irish and done it it themselves by not being 'good' or 'godly' or whatever their daft criteria was at the time.

Establishment Victorians weren't really very nice people by any standards. Strict adherence to a class system and a lot of notions that you deserved your fate and that you shouldn't be helped seemed to prevail at the time.

In some respects, modern very right wing US politics is very similar to the norms of Victorian Britain i.e. that the state shouldn't really do anything other than wage war to protect profit of the empire.

The simple reality from an Irish perspective was that people were demanding change from an almost unreformed feudal land ownership system and a harshly mercantile economic dogma that was literally killing people.

I'm pretty sure the main reason the establishment were so keen to quash any uprising in Ireland is that conditions in parts of Britain weren't an awful lot better and there was a significant risk of the revolutionary notions spreading. Had push come to shove or had their been a serious economic crisis in Britain, you could have very easily seen a situation where there was a revolution of the "lower classes".

The British aristocracy absolutely hated the French for similar reasons. There was a terror that the French revolution was going to cross the channel at any time an the smelly peasants might rise up. The reality is that Ireland's leaving sort of was a limited "UK revolution". They just don't like to talk about it in those kinds of contexts and prefer to just tidy it all up as "the Irish Question"....

The rights, wrongs and reasons for the policies are largely irrelevant though.
The simple fact was the Irish were *very* annoyed with the establishment and supported revolutionary change because of the circumstances they were faced with at the time.

The Irish situation during the 1800s was extremely grim, even by comparison to poor parts of England. The only scenario as bad was the Highland Clearances in the 1840s

You also had a lot of pseudoscientific racism aimed at non-English populations in the UK in that period. There were a lot of ridiculous notions that the Irish and the Scots and the Welsh were literally racially inferior.

Scotland doesn't really have anything remotely like that situation at the moment and really the only arguments in favour of leaving are just purely nationalism.

All that I'm saying is that 2014 Scotland is not 1916 Ireland or 1840s Ireland nor is it Northern Ireland in 1976 for that matter either.

I don't really see the urgent push factor that would tip them over the edge to be annoyed enough to leave the modern UK.
They may well have had arguments for it in the 1800s (although the Scottish Establishment was also to blame there too).

You can't really compare Victorian UK to 21st Century UK. Ireland really left at what was effectively the tail end of the Victorian era and the start of the Modern Era.

Britain's fundamental change in society and politics really happened after WWI and more dramatically after WWII.

...

To sumarise a long post:

Ireland's 19th century history and Scotland's 21st century present aren't really comparable situations in almost any way.

GaelMise

bnt wrote: »

I'm Scottish, and fairly Nationalist in outlook....

I'd go so far as to say that Nationalism is a red herring

So not all that nationalist in outlook then?

GaelMise

SpaceTime wrote: »

If they do declare independence it will be very interesting to see how the EU reacts though.

Given that the UK may withdraw from it anyway, I wonder if they might just bend the rules for Scotland and let it in without much fuss?

The only downside I see is that Spain and possibly Belgium might not want to see the EU giving an easy ride to breakaway regions as it would be a huge incentive for the Basques, the Catalans and the Flemish.

Not sure about Belgium but Spain has already said that it has no issue with an independant Scotland joining the EU. They see the agreed referendum in Scotland as an internal UK matter, essentially if the UK gov is ok with it then thats all that matters to them. They expect the same hands off approch from the rest of the EU to their handling of their own internal affairs and the Spanish constitution forbids regions from breaking away.

Camac Hibs

bnt wrote: »

Nationalism and Independence aren't the same thing. I'm Scottish, and fairly Nationalist in outlook, but if I could vote in the Referendum it would be No. There's a Nationalistic justification for Independence, but I don't think that's sufficient to make it work. The economic arguments aren't doing it for me.

The NI situation, on the other hand: no-one's suggesting that the six counties go independent, the idea is that they would be absorbed in to one country of 32 counties. No real comparison to the Scottish situation at all.

I'd go so far as to say that Nationalism is a red herring, a distraction from the real issues which are economic. It was a failed economy (after the Darien Scheme) that led to Scotland joining the UK in the first place, not a military defeat or anything like that.

What is the nationalist justification? The main drivers of the movement for Scottish independence have nothing to do with nationalism. Besides a small minority of fundamentalist Scottish nationalists who see independence as a goal for its own sake, for everyone else it is very much about the economic and social issues, and a belief that to achieve the desired outcomes on these issues, constitutional change is necessary.

There is clearly a centre-left consensus in Scottish politics that does not exist in westminster. The political centre ground in Scotland is significantly to the left of where it is in the UK as a whole, and the ability of devolution to buffer this is limited.That is what is driving the campaign for Scottish independence, not nationalism itself.

This is something that has been in my opinion deliberately ignored by mainstream UK media, as to characterize the YES movement as an SNP project fueled by appeals to sentimental patriotic notions allows it to be trivialized and allows the major social and economic issues that are the main factors in how people will vote, to be ignored. The no campaign cannot provide answers to these questions, apart from an appeal to wait for the day when a progressive, renewed Labour party dominates UK politics indefinitely - which appears increasingly fanciful.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

GaelMise wrote: »

Not sure about Belgium but Spain has already said that it has no issue with an independant Scotland joining the EU. They see the agreed referendum in Scotland as an internal UK matter, essentially if the UK gov is ok with it then thats all that matters to them. They expect the same hands off approch from the rest of the EU to their handling of their own internal affairs and the Spanish constitution forbids regions from breaking away.

How do the feel about an independent Catalonia joining the EU?

SaveOurLyric

300 years, that why.
Give it another 500 Scotland, and you can compare Irish and Scottish independence.

FloatingVoter

Going by the polls, the stick in the UK brigade have a consistent lead built up. Theres about 12% undecided (and if they make it to the polls, they'll stick with the status quo. It won't happen.
I stopped giving a **** about it when I saw Sean Connery doing cheerleader from his palace in the Bahamas.
And David Bowie is all for them staying in - therefore that's what they should do. Me and Ziggy are political heavyweights that think alike.

A Dub in Glasgo

FloatingVoter wrote: »

therefore that's what they should do. Me and Ziggy are political heavyweights that think alike.

Not much of a floating voter are you?

FloatingVoter

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

Not much of a floating voter are you?

I'm only starting the daily piss-up. Watch closely and see me waiver as the session progresses.

kingchess

FloatingVoter wrote: »

I'm only starting the daily piss-up. Watch closely and see me waiver as the session progresses.

psssst-which direction are ye waivering towards?? ( in vino veratis.);)

FloatingVoter

kingchess wrote: »

psssst-which direction are ye waivering towards?? ( in vino veratis.);)

Scotland go brea.....where are the Englishmen.....I'm goin' to pick a fight.

oak1993

what's this 'Ireland was right to leave the UK' business, it makes it sound that the island was already divided into 2 countries before the independence, 'Ireland' never completely left the UK, sure 'Ireland' as in the Irish Republic never existed until a few decades later I thought?

hatrickpatrick

I support it 100%, just as I support any movement to break large international sovereign entities up into smaller ones, for the same reason I oppose EU integration and would support a US state attempting to secede.

The smaller a political area is, the easier it is for citizens to remain in control of their government's behavior.

stmol32

MakeEmLaugh wrote: »

.....
It just strikes me as odd that McCartney penned the 1972 song 'Give Ireland Back to the Irish', which advocated full independence for all of Ireland. That song was in response to Bloody Sunday, of course, and held the view that Northern Ireland shouldn't be divided from the rest of the island, which is an understandable view.
....

To be fair it's not unknown for someone to change their mind in the intervening 42 years.

stmol32

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I support it 100%, just as I support any movement to break large international sovereign entities up into smaller ones, for the same reason I oppose EU integration and would support a US state attempting to secede.

The smaller a political area is, the easier it is for citizens to remain in control of their government's behavior.

I'll drink to the peoples republic of Ballinspittle.

GaelMise

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

How do the feel about an independent Catalonia joining the EU?

They don't. The way they look at it, Catalonia won't ever get a chance to have an agreed referendum like Scotland (at least not without a change to the Spanish constitution) and as such any possible independant Catalonia seeking EU membership will be doing so in very different circumstances to Scotland.

If it were a case of Scotland unilaterally declaring Independance and the UK disputing it, then that would be quite different and Spain would most likely back up the UK and expect the rest of the EU to do likewise. (Which is what they would want in their own case should Catalonia try to break away and then join the EU as a seperate state).
Given that the UK has agreed to the referendum, they see it as a compleatly different situation, and not one that would ever apply to Spain/Cataloina.

RandomName2

biko wrote: »

I'm a nationalist, which means I oppose unnaturally constructed countries.
For UK and for many African countries where tensions run high because colonisers created countries on a whim with no regard for the peoples living there.

Cymry should leave too.

The United Kingdom (and "Great Britain" before it) was created by the the Scottish Stuart house.

*cough*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_the_Crowns

Although, to be fair, that doesn't invalidate your point.

GaelMise

RandomName2 wrote: »

The United Kingdom (and "Great Britain" before it) was created by the the Scottish Stuart house.

*cough*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_the_Crowns

Although, to be fair, that doesn't invalidate your point.

Well lets be honest. The UK was created by an agreement between the Westminister Parliment and a largely bought off Scottish Parliment (hence the parcle o' rouges lable).

The Union of the Crowns while not insignificant in the lead up to the UK did not at the time make England/Scotland one country any more than UK/Hanover or Saxony/Poland and many many other examples in Europe at the time were. It may seem an insignificant distinction but at the time there was a very clear destinction made between a Kingdom such as England or later the UK and the collection of territory held by a particular crowned head of state. Just because the same person held two or more crowns did not make those Kingdoms into the one state.