My grandfather was sixteen when the Easter Rising took place in Dublin. His adventures in that April week in 1916 are the stuff of Boy’s Own stories, involving shoot outs, jumping on and off moving trains and escaping to Liverpool on a coal boat.
I found all these details in Ireland’s national archives and the image of my grandfather it portrayed was very different to the kindly old man I remember in my childhood. He was a revolutionary none the less and did his bit to ease Ireland out of the suffocating cloak of colonisation and to give the Irish people the opportunity to make a balls up of their own country. While there are many revisionists who seek to question the wisdom of Irish independence, I think my grandad’s generation were right to take up arms against perfidious Albion. He was a working class Catholic and they didn’t have many rights and privileges in the United Kingdom at the time. His religion would have barred him from high office in politics, law and the civil service and his social class and nationality would make him a 2nd or even a 3rd class citizen in his own country. His language and culture were also strangled by an occupier who didn’t understand the people it occupied and showed no inclination to learn.
Add to this the risk that he might be conscripted into the imperial armies that were busy slaughtering each other at the time. So like Serbs, Poles and many other people in those turbulent times in World history, Ireland took the first baby steps towards independence.
My grandfather’s adventures came to mind this week as the Scottish independence referendum reaches its conclusion. I find myself temporarily living in this country at a time of potentially momentous change and ironically I’m entitled to vote and to be a part of it.
I fear however that my vote won’t make a difference. Despite news that the polls are closing and that the Yes campaign is gaining ground, I personally don’t think it has a prayer. The Scots will vote no and agree to be governed by Westminster ad infinitum despite the lust with which they belt out ‘Flower of Scotland’ before football matches.
It is a classic debate between Hope and Fear, similar to Obama v McCain in 2007. Hope won on that occasion because the global financial crisis intervened and queered the pitch. The only kind of similar event that could make Hope win in Scotland would be the discovery of a secret pipeline taking all their oil to England. Unfortunately in these debates, fear still cheats and wins more hands.
But the Yes campaign will fail for a more insidious reason. People just don’t care enough. The birth of most countries is painful and comes out of revolution or social change, not polite conversation or intelligent debate. South Sudan did not come about through a vote and some friendly banter. Croatia and Slovenia were delivered with the rumble of tanks in the background and even that great example of velvet revolution, the break-up of Czechoslovakia, came about through the social turmoil that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Which reminds me, what happened the ‘Os’ when the Czechs and Slovaks went their separate ways? Are they wondering the Carpathian Mountains looking for a homeland?
Scotland has no such impetus. It has been part of the United Kingdom since 1707 when an ill-advised attempt to get into the Central American colonisation game led the country to virtual bankruptcy and caused the Scots to go cap in hand to their former enemies in London. Thus they became the only country in history to be become a colony after trying to make some other poor souls become one.
They have been relatively quiet for the three hundred years since, apart from the occasional attempt to pull down the goal posts at Wembley. Ireland on the other hand had a revolution every generation after her Union with Britain. And the Scots share a language (sort of, some of the accents here are impenetrable) and a physical island with the English.
So will they have the confidence to cast off and sail for the promised land of independence? I fear not. Inertia is a powerful emotion. The London press and particularly the organs owned by a Mr R Murdoch are running a scare campaign around money, oil proceeds and currency.
The mistake the Yes campaign made was to allow the campaign to become about money. A people are more than an economy after all. They should have concentrated on the emotional stuff. But I’ll be voting Yes nonetheless. Even though I do feel like a lodger in the house of a married couple who have asked for my opinion on their possible divorce. The Edinburgh Festival has just finished and there were a couple of good jokes about the referendum. Like how Scotland used to have lots of oil but used it all up with their deep fat frying. How England and Scotland should stay together at least until the Welsh grow up.
But most of the debate has been dull as dishwater. It’s none of my business but I wish there was more passion in this campaign. There are no flag waving rallies through the streets, no bonfire vigils outside parliament, no scuffles between opposing supporters. It’s all too civilised for what is such a momentous decision. Ireland’s independence came after a campaign that had been building since the 1860s. But they do reference Ireland occasionally in this campaign. We were the first to weaken the chains on the British Empire. India and many parts of Africa followed us.
My grandfather played a small part in the break-up of the British empire. I’ll do my best to carry on his legacy on the 18th September. I wonder how many Scots will be brave enough to vote with their hearts and not their heads. Will Scotland the Brave step forward? Unfortunately I don’t think so.
