Britain

Introduction by Mark Perryman , editor of Breaking up Britain : Four Nations after a Union

Breaking up Britain is a book-length conversation between individuals, parties and social movements who with or without borders nevertheless rarely talk to one another. Each contributor presents their own national context for the collection's four themes; post-devolution national identity, models of civic nationalism, formations of exclusion and states of independence. Yet each account, whether based on an English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish perspective seeks to be universal too. In essence this is what a politics of the progressive nation would look like. A civic nationalist politics now exists in Scotland and Wales prepared to push the devolution settlement to it limits, its breaking point. In Northern Ireland Irish Republicanism is now the majority party representing the nationalist community. In England a growing body of opinion and ideas demands that England must find a part to play in this process too. Ten years ago Scots and Welsh voters went to the polls to elect a Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. Northern Irish votes have elected their Assembly too. Breaking Up Britain seeks to chart the past, present and future of this course . A direction towards states of independence in which we will surely witness a reformation of four nations after a Union that has run out of time.

Our Kingdom today features edited extracts from contributions to Breaking up Britain from Arthur Aughey, Mark Perryman and Charlotte Williams. Together with critical responses by Gerry Hassan and Paul Kingsnorth:

Breaking Up Britain is published by Lawrence & Wishart, available from lw books 

A FREE download of Mark Perryman's opening chapter ‘A Jigsaw State' in Breaking Up Britain is available here

"The contrast [over the last 25 years] has been between a determined (if stricken) agent of history and a mere sleep-walker. In 1977 the Cold War political palsy still prevailed, a profound inertia favouring all the tropes of states, parties and intellectuals I have described. By 2000 most instinctive allegiance to ‘establishments' had drained away, leaving hollow routines and vacant symbols behind. A combination of official servility with violent socio-economic changes led to universal ‘apathy'; but such withdrawal is also a still voiceless wish for better political things - for democratic nations that peoples can more honourably call their own."

Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain, 2003 on the difference between the context of the first and latest edition

Breaking Up Britain summons in its introduction The Break-up of Britain, Tom Nairn's powerful and controversial thesis, written over the course of a series of inter-lapping domestic and global crises in the 1970s and originally published in the year of the Queen's Jubilee.

Here in part lies the problem for the outset. Nairn's thesis was not just a blast from a northern outpost about Scottish nationalism, but a counterblast about the whole edifice. Nairn examined and took apart the English, Welsh and Northern Irish dimensions, while addressing the problematic nature of the British state and irrevocable way in which the European project challenged this and the small nation, little islander British left..

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Next week's Tory conference in Birmingham will no doubt have the special buzz associated with what many see as a party on the path back to power. The new e-book Is the Future Conservative? (pdf) edited by Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford provides some timely insights into where the party might take the country.

Alan Finlayson's interview with Oliver Letwin, From economic revolution to social revolution, highlights an interesting difference of emphasis with the Thatcher era.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): One of Britain's leading political thinkers offered a fresh new analysis of the history of British democracy yesterday, one which may explain the country's current fin de siècle political mood, and offer a way beyond it.

In a speech to the IPPR, David Marquand delivered a precis of the argument of his new book, Britain after 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy, which interprets the history of the past 90 years as the product of four main strands of political tradition, each of them distinctive, but all of them deeply interwoven with each other.

Can the study of supposedly peripheral regions provide insights that are not visible from the centre?

Arthur Aughey finds a fresh perspective on Britain's past in Christopher Harvey's  A Floating Commonwealth: Politics, Culture and Technology on Britain's Atlantic Coast, 1860-1930.  Writing 'British history with London left out', has enabled Harvie to uncover the wider significance of great Atlantic cities like Glasgow, Belfast, Liverpool and Bristol.

Aughey sees in the diversity highlighted by Harvie an underlying unity which illuminates a key question for the future. What is to be the fate of the political union which once dominated this Atlantic world, and does change mean disntegration or simply transformation?

Arthur Aughey reviews A Floating Commonwealth: Politics, Culture and Technology on Britain’s Atlantic Coast, 1860-1930 by Christopher Harvie.

(Oxford 2008, 319pp +xii)

G M Trevelyan once described social history as ‘history with the politics left out’. Christopher Harvie’s A Floating Commonwealth could be described as British history with England left out. Or to put that more accurately, British history with London left out, for Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester get their proper due in this story of the industrial, commercial but above all, intellectual, intercourse across the Irish Sea and its Atlantic connections through the North and St George’s Channels. In the ecumenical spirit in which Harvie writes, where the British Isles has become (p31) ‘These Islands’ (which would probably mean, as Terence Brown observed, that when Harvie is in Tuebingen he should properly call them ‘Those Islands’) the possessive ‘Irish’ should become, I suppose, ‘Our’. His extra-metropolitan focus does a great service and helps us to see the country as others, outside London, saw it. This sensitivity to the historical texture, vibrancy, energy, creativity and significance of the provincial world is Harvie’s great contribution to historical study.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): It seems the Westminster/Holyrood faultine inside the Scottish Labour Party extends to the question of whether there should be a UK football team at the 2012 Olympics.

Gordon Brown held out that prospect during his visit to Beijing at the weekend:

'I think when people are looking at the Olympics in 2012 - Britain, home of football, where football was invented, which we gave to the world - I think people would be very surprised if there is an Olympic tournament in football and we are not part of it.'

Scottish Labour leadership candidate Cathy Jamieson has proposed an alternative plan:

"One option could be a home nations football tournament with the winners representing the UK at the Olympics."

Jamieson added: "Team GB should include a football team but not at the expense of Scotland's football team. It would be wrong to gamble with the identity of Scotland's team."

Tom Griffin (London, OK): 'One World, One Dream' is the official slogan of the Beijing Olympics, reflecting "the common wishes of people all over the world, inspired by the Olympic ideals, to strive for a bright future of Mankind. In spite of the differences in colors, languages and races, we share the charm and joy of the Olympic Games, and together we seek for the ideal of Mankind for peace."

It has long been argued, (classically by George Orwell), that such lofty ideals only serve to conceal the close relationship between nationalism and the sporting spirit.

David (Cambridge, Britology Watch): What is the Union from which Scotland would separate if it voted for independence? Is it the United Kingdom (that is, of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: the continuation of the 1801 Union between Great Britain and the whole of Ireland); or is it merely Great Britain (the Kingdom that resulted from the 1707 Union between England & Wales and Scotland)?

If it is the former, then I would concede the point that only those living in Scotland should have the automatic right to vote for Scottish independence in a referendum: irrespective of questions of national sovereignty, it satisfies the demands of natural justice that it is the people living in a particular country or region who should decide whether to separate from a larger national or supra-national entity of which that country or region has hitherto been a part. The analogy here would be with the 1995 referendum on independence for Quebec. It was right that only those living in Quebec were entitled to vote; and even if independence had been carried, the rest of Canada would have remained Canada without Quebec. Similarly, the United Kingdom would still be the United Kingdom without Scotland, albeit a continuation of the 1801 Union in which the absence of the southern part of Ireland would now be paralleled by the absence of the northern part of Great Britain. I hope we could then sensibly call it the ‘United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland' rather than what could well be regarded as a ‘logical' alternative in view of this ironic ‘symmetry' of Irish and Scottish independence: the ‘United Kingdom of Southern Britain and Northern Ireland'! Let's at least include England in the name of the state now that Great Britain was no more - even if England did continue to be governed, as it is now, as if it were the UK.

Anthony Barnett (London,OK): There was a very odd column by Simon Jenkins in Wednesday's Guardian. He says that we don't have democracy, we still have rule by clubland. Especially when it comes to choosing leaders. He is very much in the club in his own way, but writes as if he is quite untouched by this. He ends with these words:

But then all the constitutional reformers in the world will never persuade me that British politics is not stuck irredeemably in the 18th century.

Well hold on a second! He takes a knighthood but the blade has not touched him? Is he saying that "constitutional reformers" are just fiddling because the whole thing needs to be changed? In which case why did he patronise Charter 88 with his silence when its argument was precisely that the UK was stuck in the 18th century and should not be? Or is he saying that we are so "irredeemably" 18th century that there is no point at all in anyone calling for constitutional reforms? In which case why has he been such a consistent and eloqent advocate of localism, local democracy and the need for more elected officials, which is certainly a much needed constitutional reform.

David Marquand (Oxford, oD author): I notice some respondents to my comment on Glasgow East have queried my statement that the UK was the first modern state. On reflection, I think I was wrong. The Netherlands was the first, I now believe.

As to when the UK achieved that status, I think you can make a good case for saying England and Scotland both became modern states in 1688/9 when they drove the Stuart dynasty from the throne. But I still think the United Kingdom as such, rather than Scotland and England separately, really became modern at the time of the Hanoverian succession - a succession determined by Parliament, remember, not by descent. Perhaps the best date would be 1715, when the first Jacobite rebellion was defeated. Or perhaps you might prefer 1746 when Bonnie Prince Charlie was finally routed. Of course another possible line of argument is that the UK is still not a modern state, since sovereignty is still not firmly located in the people.

David Marquand (Oxford, oD author): From 600 miles away, British politics seem more than usually dismal, and more than usually petty. The sight of Labour MPs running around complaining about Brown's faults only a year after they gave him the leadership on a plate is deeply unedifying, to put it at its lowest. Nothing new has happened to his character or style since he became leader. He is still the person he has been for the last 20 years and more. If his MPs have now changed their minds about him that tells us more about their gutlessness than about his inadequacies. If he's unfit for the job now, he was unfit a year ago. If he was fit then, he's fit now.

But Brown's personality is not the real issue in any case. The first and most obvious point to make about Glasgow East is that it happened in Scotland, and that the Scottish National Party won! I don't think it was a vote against the Union, but I do think it was a vote against the way in which the devolution legislation was framed. New Labour was trying to have its cake and eat it - to appease the manifest Scottish demand for Home Rule, while maintaining the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament and the inequitable absurdities of the Barnett formula on finance. It was always likely that this would blow up in Labour's face sooner or later; and in Glasgow East it did so with an almighty bang.

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Have we seen the last of the "British" acre? The 700-year old land measurement has apparently been banned by the EU following a meeting in Brussels last week.

The Sun (as you may have guessed) is not best pleased, informing its readers that "Britain" (don't they mean England?) has used the acre to measure land since " the late 13th century under Edward I’s reign." The word acre is apparently derived from the Old English for "open field" and was considered the amount of land tillable by a man behind an ox in one day. The measurement was eventually defined by law under Queen Victoria in the Weights and Measures Act of 1878 as being 4,840 square yards or 43,560 square feet.

This history was brought to an end last week when a "lowly Whitehall official" nodded through the EU orders that sealed the acre's fate. What do OK readers think? Surely the humble acre deserved better than this.

Fair Deal (Belfast, Slugger O’Toole): Sinn Fein is trying to engage mainland opinion in favour of Irish unity but what are Ulster’s Unionists going to do?

Throughout the Troubles, Unionism failed to engender significant public or establishment support in Great Britain.  Equally, Unionism failed to engage in the battle of ideas.  Northern Ireland was presented primarily as a security problem with a security solution.

Tom Griffin (London: The Green Ribbon) Some of the proceedings from last week's Inside Devolution 2008 conference at the Constitution Unit are now available online.

They included a fascinating roundtable discussion on the performance of the devolved governments over the past year: Iain MacWhirter, Martin Shipton, and Robin Wilson provided insightful analyses of the political situation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, respectively. (Audio here)

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The Crewe and Nantwich by-election will be concentrating many minds on the prospect of a Conservative government, not least in Scotland , where the Tories have only one MP.

That position has led some to suggest that the Conservatives would be better off conceding the SNP's case and hiving off Scotland altogether. In a speech to the party's Scottish Conference, Cameron set his face against that approach:

Mark Perryman (London, Editor Imagined Nation: England after Britain): On the eve of Labour's near meltdown in London, English and Welsh local elections last Thursday Gareth Young posed an interesting challenge for those of us on the political left who are interested in The English Question.

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): The handy security update sent out daily by terrorism.oD informs me that the MoD has now confirmed that the fifteen UK sailors taken captive by Iran in March of last year were not seized in Iraqi waters. In March 2007 Des Browne told the Commons that "there is no doubt that HMS Cornwall was operating in Iraqi waters and that the incident itself took place in Iraqi waters . . ." But documents released under Freedom of Information show that they were in waters that had been in dispute since the Iran-Iraq war. The boundary on the map which the MoD claimed was the “Iraq/Iran Territorial Water Boundary” had been unilaterally designated by the coalition without telling the Iranians. At the time our media was only too ready to parrot the official line and call for escalations against Iran. Can we now expect a retraction? I'm tempted to put this one down as another victory for the blogosphere, since readers of Craig Murray's blog will have known all along.

Felix Cohen (London, oD): Change is afoot, both here and across the Pond. Except more literally here. The Royal Mint has announced the introduction of new coins designed by Welsh designer Matthew Dent (more on his Welshness shortly).

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I’m working on my delayed response to Iain Dale down in the mean streets of Britain. When I lift up my head there is a very strong sense of fin de regime. The start of what may be a persistent double-digit poll lead for the Tories is a mere signal, with an election perhaps two years away. It’s the whole damn political class: politicians desperate for derisory expenses in comparison with speculators (sorry, our financial services sector) whose hopes for more are nonetheless collapsing in vast losses aided and abetted by global cheapskates such as BA unable to train its staff with the disaster of T5 a lead story around the world, topped off by a slobbering domestic media whose coverage of Mrs Sarkozy was the definitive end of sang-froid.