Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 09:47:21 +0100 From: Dave Coull <coull-AT-ocicat.demon.co.uk> Subject: Nationalisms Heather wrote > As far as I know there are no peoples that can be accurately > termed "Scottish" either Well like Greg said, at the end of the day we're all human. However, it is a fact that there are cultural differences between different groupings of humans. This is a good thing. It would be sad if we had total cultural uniformity all over the world. Yes, "Scottish" is a political construct, just as "British" is. However, I think it is a less harmful political construct, certainly a less imperialist political construct. To illustrate this, we only have to look at two "nationalist" parties, the British National Party and the Scottish National Party. The BNP is openly racist. It favours an end to immigration (particularly for people of the wrong colour) and in fact it wants "repatriation" of "immigrants" to "back where they came from". In practice, this would mean attempting to "cleanse" the UK of all non-whites, including people who were born here, and their parents were born here, etc. The SNP, on the other hand, not only doesn't want an end to immigration, they are actually actively in favour of promoting immigration, because they see this as "good for Scotland". Because the SNP actively supports ethnic diversity, the "asian" population here in Scotland (with origins in Pakistan, Bangla Desh, India, etc) are actually more likely to vote SNP than your average "native" Scot. Now, my point is that the total contrast between the policies of these two "nationalist" parties is not an accident, it didn't "just happen" to be that way. It is that way because "Britishness" is an inherently imperialist concept, a concept which was invented for the specific purpose of aggressive imperialism. The English ruling class wanted an end to the situation where France could attack them through the back door, through France's Scottish allies. The Scottish ruling class envied England's growing empire and wanted a piece of the capitalist action. So "Britain" was invented. That was the deal. The Scots gave up their independence, in return they got to profit from imperialism. The very concept of "Britishness" will, in my opinion, always, unavoidably, carry that imperialist baggage. For this reason, I don't call myself "British". Dave C
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