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No party’s campaigning
efficiency is improved if its members begin to be too wholly convinced
by their own propaganda. When that happens there follows the
assumption that the case is fully accepted by all, and that the main
fight is won. We can then turn to optional disputes, and divert our
own attention from essentials. We have a military history of disasters
which occur when our leaders have fought on ground of their enemies’
choosing. In politics the same lessons apply.
However, the Scots can
usually be relied upon to add to their own difficulties, and this we
have done, in recent years, by allowing ourselves to be impressed by
the propaganda of others.
There is a principled
basis to our case for independence. We are all aware that it exists,
though many, by reason of youth or educational experience, may not be
fluent in its details. Our case was the same as that which sustained
the national liberation movements which led the subject peoples of
Europe in their campaigns to free themselves from the internal Empires
of Europe. The message was that there were such things as nations,
capable of definition, and identifiable to themselves and others. Such
communities had the right to be recognised and to govern themselves
fully. This nationalism went historically in unity with liberalism,
and British Liberal politicians helped for decades to secure national
freedom for Slavs and Italians from Austria, and Greeks and Slavs
again from Turkey. These allies are the traditional good guys in our
history books, and their cause was triumphantly concluded in the peace
treaties which ended the Great War.
How and why has it come
about that what once seemed obviously just is now questioned and
offered up for rejection? There was always a distinction between the
case made by our Party for independence, and the motives which
prompted the proposals from those who saw that Home Rule of some sort
held out prospects for more efficient administration or a more
productive economy. These two aspirations coexist and are still with
us.
In the day to day
hectic bustle of devolved practical politics, the balance has moved
decisively one way. Understandable, of course, and justifiable too.
Reflection and speculation are luxuries for busy people with deadlines
to meet and constituents to serve, but do let us remember our
distinctive nature, and champion it too.
We have need to do so,
because here and now the very concept of national identity is under
sustained and mounting intellectual attack. The attack is coming
particularly from American scholars who, for obvious reasons, have no
inherited awareness of Europe’s long sufferings on the way to
recognised nations. For nations who did not have states their very
identity was questionable. It is all very well for a people to know
they exist, but they need to have the confirmation of recognition from
others. From America now we are hearing that identity is "a bloody
business", condemning the world to obsession with "us v them". It can
become so, but it need not become so, and in our tradition it has not
become so. But this is an angle of attack which has been gratefully
investigated by our ill-wishers from whom we will hear more. Please
prepare yourselves, and above all, do not let yourselves be impressed.
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