Whatever else it is, nationalism is about belonging.
The need to belong is instinctive, a hedge against isolation, a bonding of supposed ‘like’ and a place of shelter against harm and ‘other’.
Some, for whatever reason, need their belonging to be badged, branded and often barred to ‘other’, which is where racism creeps into the brand.
It remains a curiosity that, where one would expect nationalism to be hard wired to love of place, there is no evidence that the majority of those most aggressively nationalist have any great first hand knowledge of the nature, scope, scale and diversity of their country.
This suggests that the ‘belonging’ that is nationalism is more often driven by negative definitions – about what one is not [usually in contrast to an 'other', crudely perceived in hostility] rather than about what one is.
If nationalism is a type of narrow belonging which some need more than others, its nuancing is varied.
It may:
- have a fortress mentality in the urge to create a state where anything or anyone disliked or regarded as ‘other’ will be kept beyond the moat;
- be powerfully chauvinist, which, in its original definition and in Scotland’s case, is sharply etched in the First Minister’s ‘exaggerated patriotism and belligerent belief in national superiority and glory’;
- seem a salve to a perceived historic hurt – and a means of hurting in retribution today those to whom blame for the historic hurt has been attributed;
- be a form of ‘playing house’ – creating one’s own utopian state where everyone is imagined to have the same values, the same commitment, the same sense of responsibility, the same dedication to the collective; with the dream being of the unchallenged instinctive harmony and affinity that even the blood bond of family rarely delivers.
Nationalism may be a crude simplification of life but is is many not singly stranded.
Some of its strands are honourably and attractively idealist. Some are fascist and terrifying. The tensions between these two are not visible in the heat of battle to establish separateness and self-determination; but when the battle is over, those tensions become manifest. The confrontational fascist will, by nature, inevitably overwhelm the gentler philosophical idealist.
The trouble with any manufactured singularity of vision or dogma or state is that it defies the reality of life. Life is essentially about the positive benefits of creative tension between the like and the unlike. It is not about the imagined – but fallacious – ease of existing only with ‘like’.
This is why no utopia has made it to sustainability.
It is the variety, the diversity of life that supports its own endless renewal in the responses to change that are evolution; in that hybridism that protects against the diseases of distilled ‘like’-ness.
This is why no utopia has made it out of nappies.
It is why loners who make unilateral decisions create thinner, less robust and more limited solutions than do those working in teams, with all of the abrasions teams generate alongside the richness of collaboration.
Whatever else is in the compound of a particular nationalism, it is difficult to come up with an inspirational example of a nationalism that is open and inclusive; that does not demean or demonise those against whom it has chosen to define itself; and that does not evince a fortress mentality that exists to exclude.
Because nationalism is a doctrine of formal discrimination between ‘them’ and ‘us’, it progressively deepens the gulf between the two; and the more distant and ‘other’ the ‘them’ become, the more bizarrely are they demonised by the ‘us’ of the nationalists.
Here in Scotland, the First Minister has led the country as if it were a state hostile to the United Kingdom of which it is a member. No one has seriously taken cognisance of the deforming impact of that covert grooming of the electorate for the seduction of independence.
In Ireland, the nationalist party is called Sin Fein which, translated, sums up the endemic weakness of nationalism. It means ‘ourselves alone’. It preaches for a narrow huddle of self-satisfied exclusivity and an inadequate philosophical gene pool. It’s like a form of tribal agoraphobia.
To return to the oddity that the majority of nationalists seem short on the wide-ranging first hand experience of place that generates a love of the country whose name they take, the No Borders website recently published a letter which seemed to us to sum up what is important in the case for the Union and has remained hitherto unspoken.
It is born of the love of the nature and constituent parts of the place that is the United Kingdom. It is therefore, almost by definition, from someone who declares himself to be no nationalist of any kind.
We asked the author for permission to reproduce it here – because what it has to say – on being British – is worth listening to.
This is not the voice of a politician with a professional vested interest; or the voice of a self-important celeb. It is essentially the voice of a thinking but helpless victim, the voice of a single private citizen of the United Kingdom who had a Scottish upbringing and, like most of us, has a hybrid bloodline connecting him to each of the constituent parts of the Union.
It is the voice of someone who has become angered by the way he and all those living south of the border are being grossly stereotyped as ‘Brit Nats’, fitted up with fictional characters and scheming natures in order to make the Scottish Nationalists’ case more attractive.
It is the voice of someone who relishes the sheer tolerance of Britishness, a tolerance that has no place in the nationalist campaign north of the border.
Here it is – and no better last word on the matter:
‘It is usually accepted that there are 4 nations that make up the United Kingdom, yet the Nationalists have taught me something.
‘There are actually five.
‘When Americans speak of the Sioux Nation or the Cherokee Nation they may be speaking of a geographical area – or they may be speaking of a member of a “Nation”- a collection of people with common language, culture, attitudes, language, discourse groups and so on.
‘When I first saw the word “Brit Nat” I felt defensive because it seemed to be placing me on the level of a right wing National Front type fanatic- but I am none such. But the contempt with which the word “Brit Nat” was spat out made me think of what it meant, because being British does not just mean waving a Union Jack, singing patriotic songs or supporting the Monarchy- though it can do all of those things.
‘Being British is a quiet comfort in a way of life spanning from one end of these islands to another; and a way of life we often take for granted. It enjoys a certain standard of living, is offended by corruption, knows that things are wrong that need to be put right and believes that there is a right and wrong way to do things. It takes the excellence of our services for granted, the NHS, the Schools, the Railways – which of course are not perfect but they do work, they do save lives and they do give us great conveniences.
‘It’s a tolerant way of life, an accepting way- and an all encompassing way. Our Press is free and our television. Our institutions are entrenched by tradition, our customs hallowed by time and our comradeship cemented by common experience.
‘Nowhere in these islands must a person from Scotland, England, Wales or N.Ireland feel foreign because it is all theirs.
‘We do not need to shout about it or boast about it or say we are better than anyone else. We just want to be comfortable in our own land, and preserve our freedom within it – and for this we are derided as ‘Brit Nats’ by people who wish to segregate and divide and who often express their superiority and see no good in us.
‘I was born in England of a family descended from Scots on both sides, and brought up in Scotland. My blood has in it Scots, Manx, English, and Northern Irish – there may even be some Welsh because my great great great grandmother had a strange name I will not reveal here.
‘How could I be English? Or Scots?
‘The British are the fifth nation of the United Kingdom and I claim the right to be heard, not as a Brit Nat, discarded as some sort of Nationalist fanatic, but as a citizen of a country over 300 years in the forging who welcomes the diversity within these islands, loves the different cultures, but calls himself British.
‘That’s right
‘Not Scots and British. Not English and British.
‘I am British. Full stop.
‘This is my country the Nationalists want to smash and I claim the right to be heard. I have an opinion which is not to be dismissed, labelled, boxed or sneered at.
‘I live here. It’s my home. Why break it up?’
