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?