Nationalists at Westminster: Ireland and Scotland a century apart

[randomness]

This is a good paper. If you believe as I do that the lessons of Ireland can provide insight into the current politics about Scotland, give it a look. It gives a helpful overview of the history of both cases and an analysis of the situation in the run-up to the 2015 general election.* I read it as an attempt to slow the SNP's clear momentum in the polls, but written to provide information and history in its arguments. Even if you don't agree with the paper's contention that the SNP is only progressive inasmuch as it advances the nationalist cause, its suggested compromise of removing Scottish MPs from Westminster, and its conclusion that the SNP needs to keep its alliance options open in order to maximize its bargaining leverage, it's still worth a read, particularly for its capsule history of Irish nationalist representation at Westminster. (cerebralpaladin, I'm looking at you.)

One sure prediction about this election is that it will have a strong territorial dimension. Indeed, it is set to be the first UK election since 1910 in which territorial issues are crucial to the result. While MPs from Northern Ireland could come to play a key role in post-election negotiations, they are relatively few in number. This pamphlet therefore concentrates on the Scottish National Party (SNP), which looks likely to become the largest of the small parties after 7 May. Despite their rejection of independence in last year’s referendum, significantly more Scots are saying that they will vote nationalist in this general election than in the last one.

...

The UK has been here before: from 1874 until the two elections of 1910, the block of Irish nationalist MPs led first by Isaac Butt, next by Charles Stewart Parnell and then by John Redmond had, in the phrase attributed to Parnell, ‘a knife to the throat of Westminster’. It is perhaps no accident that Parnell is famously the hero of Alex Salmond, the former SNP leader who hopes to be returned to Westminster in the upcoming election. There are lessons to be drawn from, and contrasts to be made with, the approach of the UK’s two main parties then and now. The idea of a ‘progressive alliance’ between nationalists and Labour is touted today, just as it was between (Irish) nationalists and the Liberals 100 years ago. It wasn’t quite that simple then, and certainly isn’t now. In both cases the nationalists’ motivation was, and is, to gain greater autonomy by whatever the available means.

...

2015 looks a bit like 1910. One hundred years ago, Irish nationalists demanding home rule had been a powerful political force for more than 30 years, and were guaranteed to the hold the balance of power whenever the two main parties were evenly balanced. Ireland had joined the UK (‘the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’) in 1800. The Irish parliament agreed to dissolve itself in return for various promises, one of which was greater civil rights for the Catholic majority of the population. However, that promise was broken as soon as the Irish parliament voted itself out of existence. King George III decided that Catholic emancipation, as it was called, was incompatible with his coronation oaths. His opposition cost him his best prime minister, William Pitt the younger, but he also lost, if he had ever had it, the loyalty of the majority in Ireland. From the day of the royal veto, the union was illegitimate among Irish Catholics.

...

The general election of 1874 introduced a changed world. A Protestant barrister named Isaac Butt got 59 Irish MPs elected under the banner of the Home Rule League. He was soon pushed aside by the far more ruthless Charles Stewart Parnell, who set the tactics that the Irish Party was to follow from 1880 to 1918. It quickly secured every seat in Catholic Ireland – never fewer than 80, with the bonus of the Liverpool Scotland constituency from 1885 onward. It had no interest in forming a coalition with either main UK party. The Irish Party’s sole legislative demand was for home rule (which as it was then conceived of would actually have involved much more modest powers than Scotland already has today), and it was willing to obstruct Commons business to get its way.

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The Parliament Act provided that a bill, most importantly a home rule bill, would be enacted even if rejected by the Lords, on the condition that it was passed by the Commons in identical form in three successive sessions. This meant that everybody knew that the bill would be presented in 1912, 1913, and 1914, identically every time, and enacted in 1914. The bill as presented in 1912 contained no provision for a Protestant Ulster opt-out; with 20/20 hindsight, it should have done. However, Prime Minister Asquith did not anticipate the spiral of violence that was to follow. It peaked with the Curragh mutiny and Larne gun-running of spring 1914. In the first, army officers in Ireland announced that they would resign rather than obey any orders to protect munitions dumps in Ireland from Protestant paramilitary raids. In the second, the Protestant paramilitaries landed 30,000 German guns and five million ammunition rounds in the Protestant port of Larne. The leader of the Conservative party, Andrew Bonar Law, probably knew of the gun-running plan and may have contributed money towards it. Civil war in Ulster was averted only by the outbreak of World War I. Home rule was enacted, but immediately suspended for the duration of the war. In the post-war election in November 1918, the Irish Party was crushed by Sinn Féin, who refused to sit at Westminster (as their successors continue to do). They constituted themselves as the provisional government of Ireland. After a guerrilla war, the bulk of Ireland became independent in 1921, with the six counties of Northern Ireland remaining in the UK.

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Some features of this dire history will not be repeated if the 2015 election leads to a Labour–SNP understanding. There is no equivalent now of the militant Protestantism of Ulster (although the mainly Protestant DUP will bitterly oppose any Labour–SNP understanding, so it is therefore unlikely that they and the SNP can both be brought into the same deal with Labour, or indeed with the Conservatives). The House of Lords does not now represent the landed class, and will be much more cautious with its veto, which now extends for only one session rather than two. However, the Lords will have an anti-government majority, so the possibility of trouble from that quarter remains. There is little risk that the army and the monarchy will behave as they did in 1914, or that David Cameron’s successor as Conservative leader will behave like Bonar Law.

However, in every left government between 1885 and 1918 except the one that served between 1906 and January 1910, unionists held the majority of seats in England. In 1907, when the poet G K Chesterton wrote,‘We are the people of England / That never have spoken yet’, he was describing the voicelessness of the poor rather than the voice of English nationalism, yet the lines are often used to express a unionist sentiment. On this issue, the self-appointed leaders of England were, however, anything but silent. The unionists held two contradictory views with equal passion. One was that they, and not the elected government, spoke for England. Any unelected body that could help them block the plans of the government was therefore a legitimate ally, and their means therefore legitimate means. These allies included the unelected Lords, two successive kings, and numerous army officers. The other of these views was that Ireland must forever remain an integral part of the UK. Yet as long as it remained so, it would continue to elect MPs who demanded home rule. The unionists never overcame that contradiction.

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The SNP’s increasingly vehement ruling-out of any alliance with the Conservatives is electorally advantageous: the swing voters they hope to attract will envisage a Labour-led UK government as the outcome. However, it would leave the party with no negotiating leverage: why should Labour offer any concessions to a party that has nowhere else to go? Parnell did not make this mistake in 1885, and was able to extract serious concessions from Salisbury. It was only Salisbury’s double-dealing that subsequently made the Conservatives an implausible partner. It was this that left the Irish nationalists in the hands of the Liberals, who offered them concessions only when, and for as long as, they needed them.

Amusing pull quote: "The SNP is an insurgent party but, unlike the new Greek government, it is not guided by a game theorist."

Britain's voters go to the polls a week from Thursday.

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*Here I'll borrow some disclaimers Neal Ascherson includes in his piece in the Guardian (also worth reading) comparing Irish and Scottish nationalism at Westminster: "Any comparison with Ireland rouses alarm in Scotland, so here come the disclaimers: Scotland was never a colony settled by foreign conquerors; England did not control Scotland by fire and slaughter; Scotland has no Fenian tradition of conspiracy in the cause of independence; and, best of all, Scotland has no political Ulster."

Edited to fix link to Ascherson piece.

Comments

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm skeptical of the Ireland-Scotland comparison, simply because the depths of the divisions are so much less deep. I think there's a big difference between "the UK is too conservative for our political beliefs and Scotland would be better off on its own," on the one hand, and "the English government is oppressing the Irish people with massive religious discrimination, dreadful policy leading to starvation, and all around disaster." But it is definitely very interesting.

As an aside, I wonder if it will create any interest in PR within Labour. Labour would receive many seats from Scotland under a PR system (the Conservatives might get a few); if Labour is routed by the SNP, first-past-the-post may seem less attractive. Of course, PR would also give the UKIP many more seats, which would be highly undesirable from a Labour perspective.

Also, I'm really worried about scenarios where the Tories win a plurality of the seats but narrowly--that strikes me as likely to create a government with a really low degree of perceived legitimacy (assuming that Labour can put together a confidence-and-supply majority with the SNP).

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Realize that another way to describe this is a bit of FUD from some Tory-leaning academics, but well-written FUD. :)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

the depths of the divisions are so much less deep.

This is true. But nationalism is a powerful force, even when grievances are relatively minor. It seems from the reporting I've seen that something clearly has changed in Scotland in the last few months. Possibly the referendum campaign let the nationalist genie out of the bottle, or possibly it's something else.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Hello, I'm one of the people weegoddess forwarded this to :) I'm one of the small band of "English Scots for Yes".

One of the strange sights the referendum campaign gave us was politicians standing in front of Union flags denouncing the evils of nationalism. It's natural to assume that all nationalist parties are alike to save the work of investigating them in detail. But the SNP are quite different, and have gone to great lengths to be genuinely inclusive and diverse. They would not have done nearly so well otherwise. The SNP are not an overnight success either - they got to this point by running a Holyrood minority government and then majority government that people have been broadly happy with. However their opponents have not attacked them on their record's weak points (corroboration law reform, Police Scotland consolidation, Offensive Behaviour at Football Act etc) but instead gone for demonisation with the happy complicity of the press.

I think the general public are genuinely fed up with the negative campaigning. It works OK when there can be only two sides. When there are multiple sides it's possible to break out of the equilibrium. The public are also fed up with being misled. Part of the campaign has been the construction of nationalist media, especially social media "cybernat" communities. There's the arty/left http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/ and Common Weal (http://www.allofusfirst.org/); the attack tabloid and one man anti-bullshit squad http://wingsoverscotland.com/ ; and an actual proper printed newspaper The National (http://www.thenational.scot/), which is surprisingly anodyne by UK press standards. On the other hand we have the Sun running very different headlines on different sides of the border: http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-vortex-of-the-sun/

The SNP are the only people taking anti-austerity as a serious option, e.g.: http://www.thenational.scot/comment/alex-salmond-economics-is-about-human-beings-something-the-ifs-doesnt-understand.2383?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_term=Autofeed#link_time=1430114696

On Unionism itself, I'll refer you to the excellent Lallands Peat Worrier (http://lallandspeatworrier.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/harnessing-55.html). It's not much of a political force itself these days, compared to the economic considerations. Sectarianism is slowly fading, partly due to the Good Friday agreement, partly due to secularism, partly due to (half-hearted) attempts to ban signing the old songs at football matches, and partly due to the collapse of Rangers.

It's tempting to use the collapse of Rangers as a metaphor - synonymous with street-level violent Unionism in the sense of anti-Catholic, anti-Irish sentiment. It was also embedded in the old Glasgow Protestant/Labour social establishment. The club engaged in a number of offshore tax avoidance schemes in the payment of its players, and eventually was caught owing millions to the Inland Revenue. The managing director fled to Mexico but was eventually arrested and is bailed awaiting trial. The metaphor is that the Union itself is too dependent on dodgy business practices - tax avoidance, asset sheltering from billionaires from nonfree oil states, property bubbles. It's been hid by people covering for one another for many years (Dolphin Square passim) but eventually the bill falls due.

The plasticity of the constitution means that people can suggest all sorts of ways of dealing with the "SNP threat", but many of them are unlikely to come to pass. Personally I'm hoping for Belgian-style gridlock.

(I could go on, but I'll leave it there and see which way you'd like to take the discussion)

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Thanks for forwarding it on - I've left a long comment but LJ seems to have flagged it as spam.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reply. Good points, particularly about negative campaigning backfiring.

I personally feel like by reneging on the "vow" after the referendum result the major Westminster parties simply confirmed to voters--in and outside Scotland--that they were not to be trusted. (Not there was much doubt, but it was confirmation, particularly given the speed at which they backtracked.) I also thought if they did was ultimately going to be self-defeating.

(I'll see whether there's anything I can do about LJ flagging your post but I may just have to cut and paste it into a post of my own, because while I got email notification I can't see it here.)

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is very much the thing: once people have decided that a party is dishonest they stop listening, and once a party is too deeply embedded in the "spin" habit they're unable to speak honestly. And the UK press are terrible; they're really a dishonest political faction of their own. This all contributes to Labour's imminent destruction in Scotland: pent up dissatisfaction with Blairism and the party's inability to present anything new. Jim Murphy is an obvious crass opportunist out picking the wrong fights with the wrong people, such as promising the reintroduction of alcohol at football matches.

If I were handing out an award for "best performance by someone I disagree with", I'd give it to Ruth Davidson.

I've not really addressed the Irish history angle because I'm not too familiar with it. But there definitely is a risk of double-dealing, or a knife-edge election resolved in an unsatisfactory way, like Bush v Gore.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reply. Good points, particularly about negative campaigning backfiring.

I personally feel like by reneging on the "vow" after the referendum result the major Westminster parties simply confirmed to voters--in and outside Scotland--that they were not to be trusted. (Not there was much doubt, but it was confirmation, particularly given the speed at which they backtracked.) I also thought if they did was ultimately going to be self-defeating.

(I'll see whether there's anything I can do about LJ flagging your post but I may just have to cut and paste it into a post of my own, because while I got email notification I can't see it here.)

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

One of the other aspects here is that nationalism is a force that is mobilized by economic grievances. When unemployment is high, and poverty is high, and the chance of a prosperous tomorrow is low, people become radicalized and seek new solutions in things like nationalism. I found Nate Silver's comments about the parallelism of the rise of the UKIP and the SNP interesting: fivethirtyeight.com/features/six-lessons-nate-silver-uk-election/ Obviously, they're very different in policy orientations: one is a social democratic party with a strong Euro orientation, one is a conservative/reactionary party with an isolationist perspective (and some sense of an imperialist English perspective). But they're both nationalist movements, and they're both finding success precisely because of the struggles some parts of the UK are having economically. (They're also both selling snake oil, but that's part of the traditional nationalist package--if only we throw out our oppressors and stand up as the proud and capable ethnicity/folk/nation we are, all will be well.) I find this pretty grim--it's a long way from the UKIP getting 10% to fascism, or from the SNP polling well to an old school socialist government, but the history of nationalist movements leading to awfulness is pretty dark.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there's any reason that England should care. Scotland has 10% of the GDP and 8% of the population.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

mobilized by economic grievances

But it's one thing to be economically aggrieved and it's another for national independence to solve it. Once the North Sea oil runs out, Scotland will be a net gainer from the U.K. by a significant margin. It'll be like the movement some years back for the black areas of Boston to succeed as their own city -- emotionally satisfying but economic disaster.

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

Indeed--that's precisely what I mean by describing them as selling snake oil. It's hard to imagine the SNP's solution actually working well. But then, many other nationalist movements, including the Fascist movements of the 1930s, were not in fact economically successful as governments (except insofar as pillaging their neighbors created unsustainable illusions of economic success briefly)--but they were swept into power, in part, by deep economic woes.

People for whom life is basically going well don't tend to make really disastrous political decisions. People for whom life is going badly are much more likely to.

(It's possible that Scotland seceding would be merely a little ill advised, not disastrous. Extreme nationalism just worries me, because the downside risks can become very large.)