I grew up hating nothing more than
nationalism. But I am hoping Scotland will vote Yes to independence in 2014. I have come to believe that Scottish independence can be a welcome step to a more people-centred Europe. Here is why - with many thanks to Mike Small and all at bellacaledonia for being interested in my thoughts and therefore making me write this down:
Among the progressive German
community that I grew up in, nationalism was the slippery slope to fascism. I
was proud to call myself a global citizen or European. Only when I left Germany
to study at the internationalist United World College in Canada, did it dawn on me, that there could be nothing more
German than my resistance to being German. The way I thought of “global
citizenship” and the nation state – all of it was a perfectly rational response
to Germany´s genocidal history. But that did not make it any less German.
Listening to new friends from
Asia, Africa and Latin America I soon learned of the liberating role their nationalisms
had played in the fight for decolonization (and often plays in the fight against neoliberalism to this day). I learned to differentiate and to listen.
When I moved to Scotland in
the early 1990s, I encountered communities reeling from Thatcherite
destruction, caught between the depressed apathy Fish describes in Internal
Exile and a movement to rejuvenate
communities. I learned that the people fighting to regain control over their
destiny were often driven by a notion of community and belonging – by a deep
emotional connection to land. This was alien to me - Hitler had, after all, made talk of a
connection to the “soil” synonymous in my mind with murderous destruction. But
I couldn´t be but inspired by the battles to take back the land, from the Eigg Island Trust to the fight against the Harris superquarry. The attempts to rejuvenate a national progressive discourse
as the battle for the Scottish parliament intensified also impressed me – not
least through the excellent theatre and writing they produced. That wonderful
writers from Alasdair Gray to the late Ian M. Banks endorsed independence for
reasons I could understand and support – from never wanting to fight illegal
wars again to strengthening culture to local control over resources – certainly
helped. Meanwhile, the rules being imposed from the Conservatives in London
were so obviously not in line with the views of the majority in my adopted home,
it felt indeed like an being governed by aliens. That feeling of being
disenfranchised as two thirds of Scots said no to neoliberalism at every
election and yet remained unheard is one that I will never forget.
And, crucially, it did not
end in 1997 as New Labour – at the very least in terms of economic policies - proved
yet another alien force.
There were striking parallels
to the tales I had heard from my friends from the “South” and those I heard in
Scotland´s communities. Any look at who
owns Scotland, and for whose benefit
the economy was (is?) being run, made me think more of Brazil or South Africa
more so than other European countries. And I wasn´t alone in drawing the paralels.
George Monbiot founded “This is Our Land” because he
saw parallels between the landless struggles he had encountered in his travels
and the culture of enclosure in Britain. And the fellow activist I met
protesting against the M77 or the proposed new A 701 described the imposition
of neoliberalism from London on the social democratic majority in Scotland just
like my African friends described how their economies had been distorted to
serve the colonialists first. The struggle for environmental justice and
community control didn´t seem much different from the Gorbals to the South
African townships I was studying for my MA thesis.
Slowly I realized that
Scottish self-rule has the potential to be a building block for the “Europe of
the regions” that my anti-nationalist German self had been advocating all along
(initially to overcome the German nation state). The fact that Scotland is so
self-consciously pro-European made this realization easier. Indeed, to me, it´s
much easier to imagine Scotland alone thriving in the EU, than for a truly
trusting relationship between the “United Kingdom” and the Continent ever to
develop.
In the end, though, my
reasons for saying YES are not about the past or my personal tale of learning
to understand certain forms of nationalism as liberating. I say Ja to an
independent Scotland because of the future and the promises it holds. A Yes
vote, it seems to me, is simply the best way to ensure that more communities
can take control of more of their own destiny.
As Patrick Harvie has argued: A yes vote is needed for Scotland to have
a chance to “take responsibility for the challenges of the 21st
century” – and to chart a different
course than the suicidal, City dependent and fossil-fueled trajectory that the
London-dominated UK is on.
A yes vote does not guarantee
anything. The struggle to bring back power to the lowest possible level and to
deliver the fairer society that polls show Scots want will continue long after
a Yes vote has been secured. But the nationalism that is one part behind the
Yes vote is not the nationalism I was – quite rightly – taught to hate. David
Greig says it best, I think:
“I've kept my eye on Scottish nationalism, watching and waiting, distrusting
it, expecting it to reveal its true dark heart. But it never has. For 25 years, Scottish nationalism has been a civic,
social-democratic, multicultural movement. Nationalists have opposed the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan, they opposed Trident. They have openly campaigned for more
immigration. ... Nationalists promote and engage with the EU. They advocate
sustainable energy, land reform, arts funding… the list goes on.“
It´s a list I like. And of this „to
do“ list more items will be „ticked“, I believe, if Scotland has the courage to
say „Yes“. The rest of Europe may be baffled for a moment if Scotland indeed
goes it alone. But then, I hope, we fellow European will lbe inspired and work
where we are to take back our destiny in whatever we can as well.
