2008 March 31 | eurealist.co.uk

Its all England’s fault who would have guessed it?

Apparently according to some the The English are to blame for Scottish nationalism it our fault that they want independence.

Whilst the Freedom and Whisky Blog argues the avoidance of the word England in Scotland has been one of the main contributors to the growing desire for independence in Scotland, there is no mention of the United Kingdom!

So the Scots are not avoiding England or the English, they are merely displacing England with the United Kingdom, along the way continently forgetting that Scotland has been an important equal partner and an important contributor to the United Kingdom.

Of course as Scotland has never been part of England it serves the purpose to replace the United Kingdom with England to reinforce the concept of a down trodden nation.

The name very Freedom and Whisky is redolent of the idea of a downtrodden Scotland struggling to be free from an oppressor, and of course the oppressor is England, this is only so much crappy propaganda.

Freedom and Whisky

One of the I’ve noticed recently in the blogosphere goes something like this:

We can say “Scotland“, but not “England“.

We can say “Scottish”, but not “English”.

We can fly the Scottish flag, but not the English one.

Now, I have every sympathy with English folk who are angry at asymmetrical devolution. The current set-up is indeed a nonsense. The solution is a small-state symmetrical federalism as outlined here.

But I think that our English friends have missed something. It’s perfectly true of course that Gordon Brown has his own reasons for avoiding use of the “E” word. English votes for English Laws, or an English Parliament may well lead to Mr Brown being reduced to selling copies of the Big Issue on Kirkcaldy High Street. Preferably outside Adam Smith’s birthplace…

What folk down south don’t seem to realise though is that the very avoidance of the “E” word - long before devolution - has been one of the main contributors to the growing desire for independence in Scotland.

For example:

Why is it The Football Association down there, but The Scottish Football Association up here?

Similarly, The Rugby Union, but The Scottish Rugby Union.

Or The National Trust, but The National Trust for Scotland

Or, The Law Society, but The Law Society of Scotland?

And so on and so on: in charities, government departments, sporting bodies, the professions and the trade unions. No Scottish prime minister or politician has ever stopped English institutions from so identifying themselves. They’ve simply chosen not to do so.

This presumption of the English norm, as I have dubbed it, is intensely annoying to Scots. Being English is seen to be such a natural state of affairs that it’s the exceptions to Englishness that are defined, not Englishness itself.

The two countries seem to be talking past each other and those of us with a foot in both camps find it all too depressing.

I posted the following

I think you are stretching the credibility of your argument beyond breaking point- Pre-devolution we were one country with one parliament, not withstanding Scottish ambivalence to the concept of Britain as a nation state in which we were all constituent parts.

In any event is was never the “English” National Trust just the “National Trust” which initially included but Scotland since 1931 Scotland decided it wanted a separate body to separately promote Scottish natural and cultural heritage. Please note this was a division introduced by the Scots, there never was an English National Trust.

So pre-devolution Scotland already had its own National Trust distinct from the rest of the Country.

Rugby: The name of the game came from the English public school Rugby, when the rules were formulated in 1871 the rules were for the game irrespective of where it was played and Scotland was part of that process because the game was already being played in Scotland. Scottish members of the new Union challenged the English members to a match and the first international match between Scotland and England was played at Raeburn Place, Edinburgh on 27 March 1871 The first match. The Scottish Rugby Union was set up in 1895 Irish Rugby Union was formed in 1879 and the Welsh Rugby Union in 1880.

So pre-devolution Scotland already had its own Rugby Union distinct from the rest of the country.

The Law society was founded 1825, although the organisation became known colloquially as the Law Society its first formal title was ‘The Society of Attorneys, Solicitors, Proctors and others not being Barristers, practising in the Courts of Law and Equity of the United Kingdom‘.

The Scottish law society was established by the Legal Aid & Solicitors (Scotland) Act in 1949.

So Pre-devolution Scotland already had its own Law society distinct from the rest of the country.

I don`t know about you but I am beginning to see a theme arising here. The only mention of England is in relationship to Rugby and that is only because the other members of our union decided on a separate unions, perhaps so that we could play the game between ourselves within the United Kingdom.

But all three of the examples you mention were initially conceived as inclusive United Kingdom institutions rather than English intuitions, from which Scotland was omitted. Each of the subsequent separations were at the behest of Scotland.

There is and never was a presumption of an English norm, as you put it, there might have been a presumption of a United Kingdom norm, but that is as separate from an English norm as is a Scottish norm. Whoever norm might be? You have therefore confused England with the United Kingdom by referring to the English norm when really meaning a United Kingdom norm, leaves no place for England.

In every case it has been Scotland that has chosen to go its own way and when it has it has separated from the United Kingdom never England, Wales or from Northern Ireland. It is the Scottish nationalist feelings that have challenged the concept of the United Kingdom, which is strange considering that in the first place England was taken over by the Scottish King and the two nations were original joined under the Scottish Crown.

Whatever all this is piffle in any case, if the Scots want independence from the rest of the union then somehow we will have to try to accommodate their wishes. But it will be the rest of the Union who will be doing the accommodating not England.

I do not know where you have seen the recurring “memes” But they seem to me to be misrepresenting what I have read. It is important in any devolution to try to maintain an equality between the actors, something which you and certainly Scottish Nationalist party at Westminster acknowledge.

The asymmetrical devolution that has been created was created by a Scottish Prime Minister with a mainly Scottish executive. England does not feature in the devolution process as a nation, only as Nine separate regions. When the Present Scottish Prime Minister talks of the Nations and the regions of the United Kingdom, the Nations are Scotland and Wales and the regions are England, for some reason Northern Ireland is omitted. There is no England as a separate nation distinct from the United Kingdom in the minds of the Scottish administration in Westminster, and that is where you are making your mistake because you cannot continue to refer to England when you are in fact referring to the United Kingdom.