Things Written Randomly in Doubt Page 18

  The vote on the 18th of September is not on where our country will go; it is on whether we will have the right to decide on where it will go. It is not sensible to divide the two things entirely. If, for instance, Scotland was going through a period of sectarian violence, which has been a danger in the past, independence might be risky. We have seen the woeful effects of such sectarianism in the tragic break-up of Yugoslavia. No one in their right mind would want to follow that path. But Scotland is very united in its condemnation of sectarianism, which still exists, but is marginal. History shows that such evils can return from the margins, but this would be more likely in the unionist scenario than the independence one, because the Union has always fostered sectarianism for its own political purposes. Independence appears to point in the direction of a polity – a new kind of state based on citizenship (politeia meant “citizenship” or “government”).

  The nation in the nineteenth-century perception never existed and was always an “ideal”, although not one that many of us would consider ideal today. The ideal nation was one homogeneous people united by language, culture and often religion. They were considered to be an ethnic identity and, ignoring all historical evidence, an unchanging entity which occasionally finds itself under foreign domination, but always returns to its pristine state – as though the nation were not only a discrete entity but also a natural one, rather than a political community shored up by a legal and cultural tradition. This perception continued into the twentieth century, and started to become more of a reality. Dialects died out, “inaccuracies” in national borders were at least partially removed, often forcibly through education or internal migration,3 obligatory national education systems standardised language, mass warfare mobilised and mixed populations, and television came in like a cultural tsunami. As often happens, defeat was engendered by victory or near victory. The delayed backlash of minority cultures against dominant national ones came in the sixties, when television brought the prospect of annihilation. The deindustrialisation and fragmentation of the workplace, a human tragedy in many ways, did bring another myth to an end – that of the mass society, the cousin of nationalism. I would always claim that “mass society” was actually more variegated than our consumer society, and people had more autonomy within the undoubted regimentation of industrial society. And most importantly, the global free market eventually set off a chain of mass migration on a global scale, similar in magnitude to the migration coming out of Europe in the nineteenth century. This created the potential for a much more variegated and exciting society, in which cultures mix and create new cultures. This is the kind of society that could be created by the Scottish Polity based on civic nationalism.

  However, we could go yet one step further. The idea of the polity is looking outdated even before it has been established: the creation of a truly open society with a strong commitment to social rights and the use of the state to guarantee education and health could become one of those insular utopias that end up a generation or two later as sealed into their pasts and unable to keep up with the pace of change they helped to start. The ideas and values that created success are undermined by that success. Perhaps what we need is a cosmopolity. Immanuel Kant wrote of a cosmopolitan right, which is the right of every human being to travel everywhere on the surface of this planet, the only imposition on travellers being that they have to respect the laws and customs of the societies they visit. In Kant’s time they almost had that right; it was not a revolutionary demand. It will now take a long time to get back to Kant’s time, let alone to the full implementation of the cosmopolitan right everywhere. But we could make a start. This is not just about a more liberal approach to immigration, which most nationalist forces in Scotland are committed to; it is also about getting out into the world – about Scotland exercising its cosmopolitan rights and responsibilities. Jim Sillars in his book, In Place of Fear II, argues that Scotland should build and operate hospital ships to deal with the healthcare crisis in the Third World. It appears that the Westminster government has ordered two aircraft carriers without having any aircraft to put on them and only enough seamen to man one of them, so it could at least sail out of port.

  Sillars believes that the time has come for Scotland to rid itself of its military tradition, of which it has been so proud in the past, and replace it with another one:

  Juxtaposed to that military tendency, there is a broad streak of idealism in the Scottish people, which makes them ready to respond to those in need or danger across the world. This policy gives expression to that tradition; it tells the world that we are committed to helping and healing, and that we can take a weapon originally intended for war, and turn it into an instrument that is wholly peaceful. The policy is idealism in practice. If not swords into ploughshares, then a war ship into a peace ship.4

  This is an example of how the cosmopolity works: it acts towards other states in an I-thou fashion, to use Buber’s terminology (or should it be an I-I relationship?). It does not think that its duty is to stymie contrary developments in another state, because those trends come out of another reality and another tradition, which may make sense to its citizens. It does not see itself as a separate and sovereign unit entirely in control of its own destiny and in competition with all other states, but as a part of a whole. It is built on citizenship which in turn is based on residency, so it does not believe in citizens and aliens, as it does not perceive a great distinction between the citizen and the non-citizen, who can become a citizen by becoming resident, just as a citizen can become a non-citizen by becoming a non-resident. A cosmopolity does not believe in the homogenisation of culture or political systems. Because certain policies and structures work better in different countries and different periods, variety is the better way of developing a global economy. Each country should be able to follow its own economic strategies without the IMF and the World Bank interfering, as long as certain basic liberties exist. Only these should be protected by the UN. For instance, the right to property should not be considered a fundamental liberty, like freedom of speech or the ban on torture, even in the selective way it is protected now (currently only the property of the rich is protected). Each state should develop its own system for dealing with property, as long as it is equitable. If property exists, then it can only be confiscated, taxed or requisitioned in accordance with laws that apply to all citizens. The outward-looking cosmopolity should coexist with other traditional nations, and if it prospers, more countries may follow. The struggle to the death between economic systems that started after 1917 distorted the development of both and must be brought to an end; economies should pick and choose, and learn from each other. This may seem utopian and unlikely, but the nineteenth-century nation-state would have appeared equally so to a merchant of Cologne or Milan in the previous century. In urban areas of such fragmented nations, there was already feeble pressure for change, which would grow. Today there is already an increasingly global consciousness, which may be the one positive thing brought to us by extreme free-market capitalism in the late twentieth century, and it is this shift in ideas that will eventually bring change about. Independent Scotland is hopefully going to be born into this new cosmopolitan mix and it seems to be in the mood for radical experimentation. States could develop in a new direction if they respond to the current mood amongst most populations of the world to a greater or lesser degree. That is a big if, and it too concerns only a moment in time. If states do not start to relate to each other in a new fashion, then in times of financial crisis and an increasing global population we will inevitably slip towards xenophobia and war. The small nation is some way more manageable, and with a population of over five million, Scotland is around the average size for nations on this planet: unheard of by many, it could find its place in the world by becoming the first cosmopolitan state. It cannot change our globe, but it could set a precedent and become part of a movement of small and smallish countries.

  Some people – often those who support our insane wars,
despise the European Union and talk of British tolerance and honesty – say that it is not good to increase the number of borders. Their internationalism goes no further than their own country’s right to decide the fate of other countries. It is not about borders; it is about the types of border, the worst of which are often within a sovereign state. Can you think of a more absurd border than the one that divides communities in Northern Ireland and calls itself the Peace Line, adopting the Orwellian tone of bureaucratic euphemism? Of course you can; there is the border between the two halves of Cyprus. Surely you can’t think of an even more absurd border than that stretch of wired-in no-man’s-land. But you can; there are the multiple borders within the land now under Israel’s sovereign control between Israel and the openair prison called Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, and around all the little bantustans set up by that apartheid regime. Now think of the border between France and Germany or the endless one between the USA and Canada: there’s nothing there. To achieve this you need balanced economies and a perception that hostilities between the two countries could never happen again. That is what we need for the whole world, although it is sadly a long way off and may never be achieved. The balanced economies have to come first and at the moment they’re becoming increasingly imbalanced. In fact the redistribution of wealth between rich and poor countries is the most pressing political issue, because from it flow all the other ecological problems and conflicts over resources. Redistribution of this kind can only be achieved by creating a genuinely cosmopolitan culture on a global scale. This could be more likely in small nations. For a long time, intellectuals have argued that only large countries are viable, but the self-sufficiency of these nations is what can make them so insular. Small nations have to go beyond themselves and their citizens are much more likely to travel abroad. In Schengen, people are constantly crossing borders; they can do this for a meal or a trip to the theatre.

  Independent Scotland should be open to the rest of the world and it should not laugh at foreign cultures but learn from them. It should be different and inventive in seeking solutions for its considerable problems created by decades of neglect, but it should be aware that invention requires the stimulus of other peoples’ successes and failures as well as its own. It should defend its culture by absorbing a little of other ones. It should be relaxed about having to change in order to continue to exist, but govern change in the interests of people not profit. It should contribute to the day when borders are no more than an open field, a dilapidated customs house and a rotting kiosk for passport control.

  On Class, Work and Politics

  I left school at sixteen and throughout the seventies and early eighties I did all manner of working-class jobs, mostly unskilled but skilled when working at sea. I did these jobs in two countries, Britain and Italy, producing what is now a very unfashionable CV. Nevertheless they provided me with experience and information I would not have been able to assimilate in any other way. I was able to see that beneath the different prejudices and cultures, working-class life and middle-class life were equally varied and complex. Many things that divide people are transversal to class.

  At that time, the working class was feeling stronger and more self-confident with every passing year in both Britain and Italy, but more so in Italy. It was enjoying greater affluence, although this was, as always, greatly exaggerated. The middle class was feeling that its primacy had been eroded, although this was fantastically exaggerated.

  Both countries had good state education – Italian education was even better at school level and British education was better at university level – and this was leading to greater social mobility, which has now all but disappeared in both countries. Unemployment was low and large sections of the middle class sympathised with working-class aims. It was just a particular moment in history, but at the time it felt like an unstoppable trend. Some of the left had unrealistic hopes, but what we now call centre-left parties were gaining a firmer grip on power. After a surprise Tory victory in 1970, the Labour Party returned to power in 1974. Until the Falklands War in 1982, Thatcher’s 1979 government appeared to be on course for electoral annihilation. In Italy, the Communist Party was kept out of power by a fragile coalition of five parties with just over 50% of the seats, while it continued to extend its grip over local government, particularly in Central Italy and Emilia-Romagna. By the early eighties, even leading industrialists were arguing that the Communist Party would eventually have to share power in government. The left faltered every now and then, but the direction of travel seemed clear.

  It was a long time ago.

  Since then, it has been fashionable in Britain to assert that class is a thing of the past, but quite the opposite, the victorious middle class in both countrieshas become increasingly assertive and the working class is increasingly humiliated. Being humiliated makes people very aware of their status, even if they don’t have a voice.

  Class is perceived differently in different countries, and also in different classes. In most European countries – and Scotland is one of them – there are two classes: the working class and the middle class, and this has been the prevailing view since the Second World War at least. In England, the country that was the first to shake off serfdom in the fourteenth century and had the first modern revolution in the seventeenth, attitudes were much more complex and old-fashioned until more recent times: the middle class was flanked by the upper middle class and the lower middle class, and there were and still are references to an ill-defined upper class. Marx spoke of the aristocracy of the working class in relation to the English situation, but his other term, the petit bourgeoisie, still has currency in France and Italy where until recently there was a large number of small businesses, shops and artisanal concerns, and there still is to some extent. Like lower middle class, this is principally a term of abuse.

  The petit bourgeoisie or lower middle class, which are more or less the same thing, is an intermediate class which has been unfairly treated since Marx, although it can be radical. It is a fragmented class that looks in two directions, so it can also be reactionary. I like the varied, and in Italy I worked for many small businesses and found them to be extremely varied, covering almost every political colour. It is a class in which all sorts of oddballs and pleasant eccentrics mix with folk who would claim to be bourgeois, although the bourgeoisie would not accept them as one of their own. Thatcher was one of these, but she was by no means typical of the whole class. I was told of a shopkeeper on the Isle of Lewis in the post-war period who was a great reader. If a prospective customer came into his shop while he was in his sitting room at the back engrossed in a good book, he would deny the apparently innate human desire to turn a coin and ignore the customer no matter how many times that customer opened and shut the door to set the bell ringing. Capitalism has now squeezed out this class, and I think that on the whole we are the poorer for it. The typical petit bourgeois had more money than the average worker, but his expenses were not that much higher. That small amount of money created more freedom perhaps than that enjoyed by wealthier people with standards to keep up. They could spend it on aping the more affluent and identifying with the next class up or they could enjoy the margin of freedom offered. The Lewis shopkeeper had a horse and every Friday rode into town to get drunk. At the end of the evening, the publican would balance him on top of the beast, which knew its own way home. He could afford not only to turn customers away, but also supply himself with books and booze in sufficient quantities.

  The dismissive term “underclass” was invented in America for low-paid workers, casual workers, part-time workers and the unemployed. This term was quickly embraced by New Labour. The name says everything about how the working class is treated, following the assault on their organisations. Changing a name is a means of spiriting away an inconvenient reality. Organised labour had become an embarrassment to an organisation called Labour. Since then other strange terms have been coined – the precariat, emergent service workers, traditional workin
g class and new affluent workers – and these further fragment the working class. But the working class remains, because those who have only their labour to sell are constantly moving between employment, semi-employment and unemployment. They don’t feel that they belong to different classes, and they have good reason.

  Lumpen proletariat, another Marxist term, is also derogatory. It equates roughly speaking to the unemployed in the underclass, but where there is no welfare state, as in Victorian Britain or seventies Italy, the unemployed had to fend for themselves and this often meant criminal or unlawful activities. I lived on Via Ghibellina in the Santa Croce district of Florence in the seventies. It had been abandoned by the working class following the 1966 floods and replaced by the lumpen proletariat or sottoproletariato, if for a moment we accept this distinction. What did they mean by this expression? Mainly Southerners who came north to work on building sites and in other unskilled labouring jobs, Southerners who ran businesses on the back of the low rents in the area, such as dealers in old furniture, which then was just called old furniture and not flattered by the word “antiques”. There were plenty of students, a number of petty thieves and a scattering of prostitutes, transvestites and others who found a trade in the city centre. Finally a few drifters like myself. Conveniently for the authorities, the prison was in the same street. One night the guards shot a prisoner, and the next morning there was a crowd below my window. I remember a portly, middle-aged man who was reputed on I know not what authority to be a lawbreaker: he may have known the inside of the institution which was for short-term prisoners only. He was the self-appointed rabblerouser and he had every right, because he was agitated and clearly cared. He said that they were still shooting people in the prison, although this turned out to be incorrect. It was the only riot I have been part of, although it would difficult to say whether it was the citizens who were rioting or the police. They certainly made the first move with a barrage of teargas canisters. The crowd responded as though they knew the moves. I remember an athletic young man with a goatee beard picking up a canister and hurling it back – an image we have all seen in a hundred newspapers. Old ladies passed oranges down to us, as these gave some relief from the teargas. A friend said that we needed barricades and smashed a car window with a brick so that it could be manoeuvred into the road. The owner left a nearby bar and remonstrated with us. He called us ragazzi in a friendly way: “Come on lads, can’t you see that the door’s open.” He opened and shut the doors to demonstrate that he hadn’t locked the car. There had been no need to smash the window and lean in through it to release the brake and turn the steering wheel, while others pushed. The owner got into his car with a bemused smile and drove off. It was no longer requisitioned. If this was the lumpen proletariat, it was very polite and quite organised. The next day, the Communist Party newspaper, L’Unità, which was always nervous about any disorder and being accused of fomenting it, declared that the clashes with police had been caused by outside elements that were quickly distinguished from the democratic population of the district. There was little truth in this, and for days afterwards locals complained about the beatings the police had administered in an entirely random manner.1