A space, not a race
A space, not a race
In the 1997 edition of his pamphlet Why Scots Should Rule Scotland, the wonderful curmudgeon Alasdair Gray begins his “carnaptious history of Britain from the Roman times until now” with two clarifying points. He defines “Scots” as “everyone in Scotland who is able to vote”, and argues for independence not “on differences of race, language or religion but geology” – the natural divisions created by seas and mountain ranges. (Writing for a Scots audience, he doesn’t bother to explain that “carnaptious” means bad-tempered.) “But no national barrier can contain human curiosity, greed and desperation, so invasions and migrations have kept national boundaries expanding and contracting like concertinas,” he notes, launching into a chronicle-rant spanning from the Roman invasion to New Labour’s “increasing Toryism”, and his fear that the Scottish Assembly would only be “a big London firm’s branch office where local complaints get stifled by the locally complacent”.
In this collection of essays, Mark Perryman is concerned with similar issues, although his perspective is an English, and far less eccentric, one. But he argues for the total dissolution of the UK, and a rescue of English national pride from the irresponsible clutches of the far right, invoking Billy Bragg on this recurring, uplifting theme: “Englishness has more to do with space than race.” It is a kind of sequel to Tom Nairn’s landmark book The Break-up of Britain (1977), which predicted that a “radical left breakthrough” in England would lead to the fragmentation of the Union. What followed was 18 years of Tory leadership – but that did encourage devolution. Perryman predicts the rise of Cameronism in England will set the march towards independence in motion, and by 2019, “Britain will have moved decisively towards Tom Nairn’s ‘Break-up’.”
Each of the book’s four sections contains four essays, one from each of the four “nations after Britain”. This neat framework belies a profusion of styles and a wide range of perspectives, many of which, Perryman coyly admits, “don’t entirely endorse the Break-up thesis” (or else completely disagree). Contributions include a truncated version of Gerry Adams’s speech to the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis in 2009; the Guardian’s John Harris on the divide between the English north and south; Salma Yaqoob of the Respect party on the place of Muslim women in British society; and a deeply wonky “consideration of Welsh constitutional aspirations” from the think tank head John Osmond. This makes for uneven reading, but maybe that’s the point. It’s not just that each national experience feels different from the others, either: there is a sense that the culture of each country is a vibrant and diverse mix, too.
Many of the writers share a frustration with the UK government and Gordon Brown’s blandly inclusive definition of “Britishness”. But Perryman’s argument that the Union is heading irrevocably towards the end is just not convincing. It seems self-evident to me as a Scot that English people should enjoy the same degree of political self-determination as Scots do. But most of England seems not to agree. The 2004 referendum on a north-east parliament returned an overwhelming No vote. And research quoted here indicates that only a fifth of English voters want devolved governance.
In any case, devolution would not automatically lead to the break-up of the Union. Partial self-governance may satisfy many who would otherwise want separation. The Scottish National Party government in Edinburgh is very popular, but only 36 per cent of Scots support independence – more or less the same proportion as two years ago, when the SNP came to power. Perhaps that will change if David Cameron wins the next general election, but the present, very real threat of a Tory government hasn’t yet had any effect.
Perryman’s central thesis may not be convincing, but his enthusiasm for an inclusive Englishness, “all mixed up with myriad influences that turn any search for the purity of its essence into a futile and thankless task”, is infectious: just as enjoyable an assertion of national identity as Alasdair Gray’s historical ramblings, and a lot less carnaptious.
Breaking Up Britain: Four Nations After a Union
Edited by Mark Perryman
Lawrence & Wishart, 256pp, £16.99
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