Renewing the social union
Britain isn't a dysfunctional family on the point of divorce; it's a group of neighbours who don't get round to meeting up very often.
THE modern-day chronicler of London, the writer Peter Ackroyd, said it right. His city, he once wrote, “goes beyond any boundary or convention. It contains every wish or word ever spoken, ever action or gesture made, every harsh or noble statement ever expressed. It is illimitable.” After a long, pandemic-enforced break, an Easter break down to the Big Smoke with the family reminded my why I love the place so much.
For my bookish 14-year old, it was the country’s biggest Waterstone’s in Bloomsbury. For my football mad 16-year old, it was the Spurs game he managed to get tickets for. For me, as always, it’s the variety, the size, the boundlessness; the feeling that all around you, life always has, and always will, take place with an urgency and a vibrancy enough to power battleships. Actually live there? No, thanks. I don’t have the money. But from Monopoly board stops on the Underground, to the blue plaques proclaiming “here lived…”, to the incredible diversity of its food and culture, London somehow connects you back into history, and pushes you into the future, and beyond our shores. In so far as teenagers can be, ours were impressed.
The trip was a reminder of this larger nation we live in, right here on our doorstep. And it felt timely. Thanks in part to those restrictions during the pandemic, it’s been too long since we got out of our small corner of Glasgow to see what else the country has to offer. And this lived separateness has become a problem. What might be termed the ‘social union’ of the UK - the common bonds and experiences we share on this island - has rarely felt as frail. I’d guess that the average family living in Scotland is more familiar with parts of Spain than with London or other parts of the UK. When it comes to Scotland’s relationship with the rest of the UK, we look like ships passing in the night. Whether Scotland is in the Union or becomes an independent nation, this cannot be allowed to hold.
Of course, our social bonds are still strong: according to the most recent data, some 750,000 Scots live elsewhere in the UK while 400,000 English born people live here. Every year, thousands of us move back and forth. But those numbers are lower than they once were, and few would argue that the social ties between us are weaker.
Partly, it’s because of big long-term changes to the nature of Britain, which no longer provides as strong a common bond. The end of Empire, no more National Service, a smaller army and navy - all can be picked out as evidence of a changing state. The Queen’s forthcoming Platinum Anniversary in June will provide a glimmer of those former days but the Imperial nation has gone and a shared sense of Britishness no longer superglues the country together as before. A common “demos” has withered.
Devolution has had a profound impact. Only a few years ago, a civil servant in Scotland would expect to have experience working right across the UK. Today, in a Scotland marked by the political differences between the administrations in London and Edinburgh, it is the exception not the rule (the appointment of former Whitehall man John-Paul Marks as the new Scottish Government Permanent Secretary notwithstanding). Our government, our media, and our institutions have turned inwards.
Policy plays a role. For example, free University tuition, only available for Scottish students who choose to remain in Scotland, acts as a £40,000 incentive for Scots to stay put. Three times fewer Scottish students enrol to study in England than their Welsh counterparts. The number of Scots choosing to live and work south of the border has fallen markedly over recent years.
And then there is the impact of our frenzied politics that dominates our public discourse and which, in recent times, has given us our country’s near-death experience. Thirty years ago, the social interaction between Scotland and England was best embodied by Saint and Greavesy on a Saturday morning making each other laugh harmlessly over football. Today it is characterised by Boris Johnson and SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford fighting it out over Brexit and Scotland’s right to self-determination at Prime Minister’s Questions. Identity politics, not our social bonds, has come to determine the relationship between us. No wonder, after a decade in which England had a nervous breakdown over Brexit, while Scotland dithers and obsesses over independence, that it feels that we have less in common socially than we did before.
We all can see why the SNP wants to play this up. With the two nations apparently “moving apart”, it makes it easier to argue that political divorce is on the cards. There are two reasons why this is the wrong-headed strategy. Firstly, strong relationships across the UK – in politics, business, and culture – are vital for us all. A healthy cross-fertilisation of experience and people moving back and forth within the UK is central to Scotland’s vitality. It also makes the whole UK a happier, more diverse, and more interesting place to live. It strengthens trust, on which all successful societies are based. Perversely, if Scotland ever became independent, the need to foster stronger relationships with England would only increase. Good luck with that after the last few years of grievo-max.
Secondly, it doesn’t tally with the facts. Far from being two countries moving apart, recent polling has shown how all parts of the UK share remarkably similar values and priorities. Strengthening the NHS, the iconic British institution, is seen across the UK as the key priority for all. If there is an outlier in the UK here, it isn’t Scotland but London, reflective of its unique demographic character.
The SNP has got it wrong. The more accurate reading of events isn’t that Scotland and England are moving apart, but that we just live on parallel tracks. This isn’t a couple on the point of divorce; we are neighbours with much in common, divided by a thick hedge who just never get round to talking to one another.
What’s needed is a way to trim the hedge. Government could help here: imaginative policies aimed at improving social and business connections and incentivising exchanges would be welcome. For example, if exchange programmes for University and College students abroad are a good idea – and they are – why not have a similar programme here in Britain? Better still, civic organisations and institutions including the Royal Family could get involved too by, for example, sponsoring schools to twin up as environmental champions in their respective communities. Doubtless there would be complaints from Nationalists that this was all a plot designed to save the Union. To demonstrate that the aim is to boost a sense of solidarity and joint working, Britain should invite Ireland to join up too. The British Isles will always be a family, no matter the politics of the moment.
In 2014, the pro-independence Yes campaign pointed out that even in the event of independence, we should maintain our “social union”. They were entirely right to do so. As we emerge from the pandemic, and with both Unionists and Nationalists seeking better ways of joint working, it is time to ensure the bonds of that union of peoples, across the British Isles, are strengthened. A short trip to London was a reminder of the benefits, even to teenagers.
ENDS
This article first appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail, 20th April 2022