Scotland - Willing Partner or Forced Marriage?

 

 

I had always shunned the description of Scotland as a colony.  The term seemed a wild exaggeration associated with the more irrational elements of the independence movement.  Colonies to my mind were overseas and how could we be a colony when we had freely entered into union with England in 1707?   I recall being taught in school that that proved to be a beneficial move which both “civilised” the Highlands and restored some financial equilibrium after the ill-fated speculative venture which was the “Darien disaster”.  Of this more later, because it is probably key to the question of the country's status within these islands.

 

While devolution has given Holyrood powers to manage limited areas of governmental activity, it does so as a devolved administration of the UK Government and key areas of our economy and politics remain reserved to Westminster, including –

•     Constitutional matters;
• Foreign affairs and international relations;
• Defence and national security;   
• Economic and fiscal matters, monetary policy, currency, most taxation;
• Immigration and border control;
• Energy: Nuclear, electricity, coal, oil and gas, Energy regulation;
• Employment rights, industrial relations, Health and safety;
• Social Security: Most welfare benefits, Pensions;
• Broadcasting: BBC, media regulation;

This might seem appropriate for a union established voluntarily for the benefit of both countries, but doubts began to creep into my mind over the management of oil and are being reinforced by the ongoing management of renewable energy.  While Norway used oil proceeds to establish a financial reserve for the benefit of its citizens, Westminster largely sold the extraction rights to multinational companies and used the proceeds to finance tax cuts and kick-start a neoliberal political strategy.  There’s a detailed analysis here.

Topical at the moment is renewable energy where production from Scotland, which already exceeds our requirements, is being stepped up to power homes and industry south of the border with no effective consultation with directly impacted communities, while homes and industry here in Scotland face the highest energy prices not just in UK but in Europe, putting Scottish commerce and industry at a competitive disadvantage.  Again most production facilities are foreign owned, with much of the profits flowing outwith UK, Westminster benefitting only from the associated taxes.  Scotland is powerless to change this.

In both cases the lack of consultation and the unilateral management of proceeds is far removed from how a healthy partnership should work.  Colony or partner?  It’s for you to decide but the deliberate concealment of the McCrone Report and Ed Milliband’s recent shunning of localised electricity pricing on the ground that it would give Scotland an "unfair advantage" might serve to clarify your thinking.

 

Let's look at how things were prior to the union and at the circumstances which brought it about. 

Since the middle ages Scotland had enjoyed cultural and trading exchanges with Norway, the Baltic states and much of Europe. For instance,  there were strong trading links between the east coast ports and European countries, particularly Poland, with Scottish merchants setting up premises in Gdansk and vice versa.  Key exchanges involved educational travel to universities and the importation of artistic, architectural, religeous and political ideas from France and the low countries.  An Aberdeen merchant, Alexander Chalmers, famously became the Lord Mayor of Warsaw in the late 17th century.

 

England's overseas adventures, in marked contrast,  tended to be combative and acquisitive.  The wars with Spain and France, for instance, and attempts to excercise control over Scotland.  

 

Prior to the union attempts were made to undermine Scotland's economy and overseas trade. 

 

Legislative Pressure. 

The Navigation Acts of 1650 and 1651 were a series of English laws that developed, promoted, and regulated English shipping, trade, and commerce with other countries and with its own colonies. These laws were introduced primarily to frustrate Dutch maritime trade, Holland being regarded as a competitor in that field, but they also restricted Scottish and Irish participation in trade with countries that had become England's colonies and restricted those colonies from trading with countries other than England.  This significantly impacted Scotland's economy.

More directly aimed at damaging Scotland's interests, The Alien Act of 1705 provided that Scots living in in England were to be treated as foreign nationals, and estates held by Scots would be treated as alien property, making inheritance much less certain. It also included an embargo on the import of Scottish products into England and its colonies, (This amounted to about half of Scotland's trade) 

The act contained a provision that it would be suspended if the Scots entered into negotiations on a proposed union of the parliaments of Scotland and England.  There's some interesting notes on the Act and its purpose here courtesy of the UK Parliament website.

 

The Darien Scheme

The Darien Scheme was an attempt by both Scottish and English investors to eastablish a trading post on the Darien Gap on the border between Panama and Colombia, thus affording access to The Pacific.  The drivers for this were largely the effect on Scottish trade of The Navigation Acts referred to above and of England's continual wars on European nations, and a desire amongst the Scottish elite to Emulate England's colonial wealth.  

 

I was taught in School that the venture failed because of a combination of poor planning and inhospitable conditions, leaving Scotland broke and setting up the conditions for a welcome rescue by England.  The reality is a little different.

 

Firstly, there was no public money at stake in Darien. The venture was wholly funded by private capital in speculative response to persuasion hy financier William Paterson (founder of The Bank of England) whose vision was to forge an opportunity to capitalise on the lucrative trade with the Indies by obviating the need for the long sea passage around Cape Horn.  The failure of the scheme didn't therefore directly impact on state finance or that of the general population. In fact, Scottish public finances were in good health  It did however leave most of the private investors broke.

 

Secondly,  the English East India Company, fearing the loss of its monoploy on that highly lucrative trade with the Indies, successfully lobbied the English Parliament, which threatened Paterson's company with impeachment, leading the English investors to withdraw.  

 

Alongside this, Spain grew concerned about the incursion into what it had come to regard as it's corner of the world which led England, eager to remain on the good terms it had then reached with Spain after years of war, to prohibit its colonies from having anything to do with the Darien scheme.

 

This combination of events was enough to kill off the scheme, leaving its formerly well-to-do investors, many leading individuals of wealth and position according to historian Murray Pittock, impoverished and eager to make good their losses.

 

Military Pressure

In 1705 English troops were moved to the Scottish border in response to Scotland's 1704 Act of Security, an Act asserting Scotland's historic right to appoint a king or queen of its choice and which had been considered necessary because of The English Parliament's declared intention to appoint a Scottish monarch of its choosing to replace Queen Anne. (Queen Anne had inherited the crowns of both Scotland and England on the death of her father William the Second, and England was fearful that the appointment in Scotland of a Stuart monarch would rekindle the "Auld Alliance" between Scotland and France).  It should be understood that while in England sovreignty was vested in the monarch and excercised through parliament, the situation in Scotland was very different.  Sovreignty historically lay with the people, represented by "the three estates" - clergy, nobility and burgh commissioners - and was excercised through parliament, which in turn appointed the monarch.  It should be clear from the above that there was never any "Union of the Crowns" as we had been taught in school.  The differing bases of sovreignty precluded coronal merging and there is not, and never was, any crown of UK.  There is an English crown and there is a Scottish crown, just as was the case in Queern Anne's day.

 

This positioning of troops was, alongside the Alien Act, intended to put pressure on the Scottish Parliament to either relent in the matter of choice of monarch or to enter into political union with England. 

 

At the same time the Royal Navy was sent to patrol the Scottish coasts to disrupt sea communications with France and a frigate was put at anchor in Montrose basin to demonstrate English naval power and no doubt intimdate the local population.

 

Financial Inducement 

Seizing an opportunity to maximise pressure for political Union, the English Government offerred to make good the losses suffered by the Darien Scheme investors if they would persude fellow countrymen to drop their resitsance to the prospect of union.  Some £398,000 was paid, equivalent to about £100 million today.  This wasn't however a straight cash payment.  It was borrowed money, as England's finances were heavily in debt due to miltary campaigns, and it carried repayment obligations.  For a detailed analysis of The Darien Scheme and how the Scottish "bailout" was structured see this in depth paper by The Angry Pict.  It makes very interesting reading.

 

George Lockhart MP, of Carnwath, unearthed in 1711 how some of that sum was used to bribe MPs to vote in favour of the Union.

 

 

Burns' Parcel o' Rogues?

 

When the Act of Union with England came before the Scottish Parliament on July 22, 1707, 106 voted “aye” and 69 voted “nay.” 

  

"By 1705, a joint Anglo-Scottish parliamentary commission had drawn up a draft treaty of union. The Scottish representatives were selected from supporters of the Hanoverian succession, followers of the Dukes of Queensberry and Argyll. Nonetheless, anger was mounting as it became clear that this was an elite stitch-up. In both Dumfries and Stirling the treaty was burned in public, and rioting broke out in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The writer Daniel Defoe reported a ‘Terrible Multitude’ on Edinburgh’s High Street led by a drummer, shouting and swearing and crying ‘No Union, No Union, English Dogs and the like’.

Defoe, there as an agent for the London government, added that the Scots were a ‘hardened, refractory and terrible people’ and the Scottish ‘rabble’ the worst he had experienced. As the vote was to be taken, troops surrounded the parliament building and the royal palace of Holyrood while two more regiments were stationed in Leith and Musselburgh. It was sufficient to allow the vote to ratify the treaty to be held."

Chris Bambery, A People’s History of Scotland.

 

I feel cheated that these documented historic facts were deliberately concealed from me, and indeed from generations of Scottish schoolchildren, in favour of the false narrative of benevolent rescue of a hapless nation.  I don't blame my teachers.  They were simply following the curriculum, and I think most folks in Scotland believed that false narrative. It speaks volumes that many still do. I have gleaned these facts only by searching them out.

 

How can we understand our politics and form views on the way forward, if we have no understanding of how we got to where we are?

  

 

Government and ECHR - the inside story

 

“We don’t care much for society’s wishes.  They too often conflict with our objectives and frustrate progress.   

 

"Progress is vital if we are to thrive, by which of course we mean  continue in power.  We can best do this by retaining the support of those who are aghast at what they see as the huge problem of immigration facing our country.  We know this is a comparatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things and that the boat people are mostly asylum seekers who are entitled to come here but can’t get here any other way, but ‘immigrants’ sounds much better doesn’t it?  We understand too that some of these asylum seekers have skills we badly need and so could contribute much to our country and its economy and that their taxes in such a situation would help to forestall future tax increases which would be disastrous for our reputation.   

 

"The more astute amongst us realise that what would really make a difference to UK would be investment in infrastructure, skills training, and the like, but those things are all a bit long term for us and don’t hold much appeal for our older supporters whose votes we are so desperate to hold on to, particularly following the recent all too public references, with distressing amplitude, to Boris' Covid gaffes (which even The BBC, whom we thought we had under control through judicious senior management placements and steady whispers in their ear about the possibility of changes in financing arrangements, felt obliged to air).  Moreover, previous promises in this vein are seen as shallow by the ‘red wall’ that, well and truly charmed by Boris, came to our aid in 2019.  Also, investment’s fallen out of favour ever since the late Lady Thatcher pointed out the need to manage the UK’s finances like the family budget. We simply can’t afford to invest if we don’t have the money.  Other countries seem to manage it, but then they don’t have our wisdom and standing in the world. We used to control more than half the world, for goodness sake.  A few of us know we invested in former decades and that that led to an economic boom, rising living standards and a good supply of social housing, but that was then. This is now, and priorities have changed.  As we said, we don’t care much for what the wider electorate think they need.  They’re just the electorate.  We’re the government.

 

“Anyway, what’s getting in the way now with stopping the boat-bound immigrants is The Supreme Court’s pronouncement and the European Court of Human Rights.  The latter is a real nuisance.  It prevents us from getting so much done.  Just as that awful, overbearing EU environmental legislation got in the way of letting us enable the water companies to press on with what they need to do in order to maximise their shareholders’ dividends.  Some of them were in such a parlous state that they had to borrow to finance dividends!  A real Brexit benefit, and what’s government for if we can’t help our friends in business to thrive?

 

“Without our corporate donations, where would we be for goodness sake?”

 

“ECHR has huge potential to frustrate progress with our exciting Freeport and Charter City plans, which can hugely empower our corporate donors. Our plans to strengthen links with multinational corporate interests and help them ease their way into UK stand to be undermined.  Our donations from fossil-fuel companies are under threat from increasingly frequent and high-profile demonstrators and protest groups.  We see from polls that most of the public favour the phasing out of oil and gas but our trusted advisers in Tufton Street assure us that they're just deluded and worrying unncessarily.  We can't have protesters getting in the way threatening our income stream. Also, holiday pay, maternity pay, and all those sorts of perks are impacting on our donors’ production costs. So, for all those sorts of reasons, we must do all we can to extricate UK from ECHR’s misguided focus on people rather than profits.  The trick’s going to be in persuading the electorate that it’s in their interests too for us to take UK out.  That’s where all our references to us ‘being on the side of the British people’ and taking a stand against a range of counter-agents such as judges, lefty lawyers, and do-gooders come in.  We managed it with Brexit thanks to some very clever propoganda, a compliant and powerful media, and a none too astute electorate, so we're reasonably confident we can pull it off again. 'Stop The Boats' provides a perfect hook to hang it on as it has considerable support. Once we're out we're out and then we can capitalise on all the other new-found freedoms."

 

The above is all a bit “tongue in cheek”, of course, but is it that far from the reality of UK today?

Brainchild of Winston Churchill after the horrors of the second world war, and largely drafted by UK lawyers, the ECHR (which predates and has nothing whatsoever to do with EU)  bestows priceless protections on us all.  Here’s Amnesty International’s webpage about it. If you don't already know, as I'm sure many of you will, take a look at those web pages to learn what it does for us.

What will our children and grandchildren think if we let it slip away?

The dreary delivery of The King’s speech, and the malign influence of Tufton Street.

 

On a scale of 1 – 10 just how dreary was delivery of The King’s speech?  But let’s not be too critical. When a man who has spent much of his life promoting welfare of the natural and human environment and the need to cut back on carbon production has to proclaim “his” government’s intention to continue issuing oil and gas exploration licences it must be very difficult to muster enthusiasm.  Such is the token connection between monarchy and government, but it must have been particularly galling when he's waited his whole life for this opportunity.

There’s disconnection elsewhere too.  Polls show that a sizeable majority of the electorate favour policies which are geared to furthering decarbonisation. (Ipsos and UK Government). Some people certainly favour continuation of oil and gas extraction out of concern, in most cases, for local employment and economies, but the majority would prefer withdrawal from that sector in favour of renewables.  So why the push for more oil and gas?  It won’t cut energy prices in UK as the output will flow to the international market to be bought back again at market rates.  A boost for economic activity?  Perhaps, but at the cost of focussing less on development of exciting new technologies related to renewables, technologies which I suspect could bring substantial economic growth, as other countries are doing.  Are our politicians really so averse to strategic planning and devoid of long-term thinking that we'll forever be lagging behind more enlightened countries and dependent on them for supplying us with power?  At the cost, too, of engendering enmity from the growing band of nations seeking to reduce global carbon production let alone those suffering from its effects including, it could be argued, UK.

Why would a government act so perversely?  Like much in life, I suspect the answer is money.

With party memberships in decline, political parties need to find other sources of income to replace dwindling subscriptions.  Thankfully for the Conservative Party, there’s a steady flow of funds from oil-related interests.  There’s also pressure from lobby groups, not least those based at 55 Tufton Street and masquerading as respectable institutions acting in the public good while drawing a very opaque veil over their funding sources – sources which are widely understood to include carbon fuel interests.   You’ll recall Liz Truss announcing with unseemly haste a few days after moving into 10 Downing Street that new solar arrays on agricultural land were to be prohibited, followed in short order by her Tufton Street inspired mini budget.  The unfortunate realty, in my view, is that a change of governing party will make little difference in this respect.  Labour too need money.

With national energy strategies across the world increasingly turning away from carbon fuels, those whose businesses have been built on oil and gas production, and whose continuation depends on it, are understandably desperate to keep avenues to survival open.  It is suspected too that, just as tobacco interests did in the 1960s, they are using publicity campaigns to further their cause.  (Take a look at Wide Awake Media’s Twitter page, for instance.  They, too, are coy about declaring their funding sources.)

It's clear that the world’s climate has had warming and cooling cycles over the centuries.  It’s a fact too that El Nino is currently having a short-term warming effect.  But to my mind it defies all logic to deny that human activity isn’t exacerbating a warming trend.

So, with the balance of government loyalties between the interests of the electorate on one hand and those of its funders on the other tipping in favour of the latter, such funders are able to influence and manipulate strategies towards their own objectives and away from the national interest.  Democracy?  I don't think so, and I can’t see anything on the horizon which will reverse this trend.  What are we to do?  Any suggestions?