Peter Hitchens is a conservative columnist for the Mail on Sunday newspaper in the United Kingdom. He has authored several books, including The Abolition of Britain, The Rage Against God, and, most recently, The War We Never Fought. In 2010, he received the prestigious Orwell Prize.
Mr Hitchens generously agreed to answer a few questions for us at the Prince Arthur Herald about next week’s referendum on Scottish secession from the UK. Here is the text of our conversation:
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Jackson Doughart: If the Scots vote to become a country, how independent would they actually become?
Peter Hitchens: Not very. But then in a peaceful, prosperous, and stable world, small countries don’t need to be. The UK is not very independent either, its laws, foreign and trade policy being largely made by the EU and its defences either too weak to be of any use or under the control of the USA. Much of this will remain the same for Scotland, in or out of the UK. The problems of independence arise (especially over currencies, debts, and trade) when things get difficult.
JD: Would independence have been possible without this “crutch” of the EU and globalism, then?
PH: No, I don’t believe either devolution or ‘independence’ would have become serious prospects if Britain had stayed out of the EU. The EU, being itself a federal state based upon Brussels, dislikes and competes against rival federations sharing its territory. It encourages regional identity, and small nations, at the expense of larger old-fashioned sovereign states, which are harder to absorb and to supersede. Old fashioned Unionism, not especially conservative, was a very powerful force in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but died out in Scotland after about 1970.
JD: Does the EU therefore desire that the ‘yes’ vote succeed?
PH: No, not particularly, because of implications for many of its members with secessionist minorities. But EU aims have brought it about, a paradox.
JD: Do you think that international media sympathize with, or are at least less hostile to Scottish nationalism, because it is left wing? The UK Independence Party and France’s Front national are both nationalist parties, and actually support secession from the EU, yet are portrayed as reincarnations of fascism.
PH: Well, the FN’s founder has spoken sympathetically of the SS, and the FN will never escape that taint, nor should it. UKIP is just a rather doddery rebirth of 1980s Thatcherism and undoubtedly attracts some pretty silly people. But ‘international media’ tend to be dominated by conventional graduates of post-1968 universities, who are open borders fanatics, internationalists, and globalists. They don’t discriminate between Hitler and Nigel Farage because they genuinely believe that patriotism leads directly to the death camps. But even they can see that an ‘independent’ Scotland will be no such thing, and that its existence will be a torpedo beneath the waterline of any plan for an independent Britain, which might be the real thing. Mind you, they’re so busy attacking Russia (the one substantial European country which continues to act in a sovereign fashion) that they haven’t paid much attention to Scotland.
It’s been obvious for years that certain sorts of nationalisms, usually those aimed against the integrity of conservative countries, are fashionable on the Left.
JD: Do you have any antipathy toward Scottish separatists? And would you say that your countrymen tend to? Here in Canada, the experience of Quebec nationalism may lead one to believe that all cases of secessionism fuel enmity between the group wishing to leave a union and the rest of the population. But in following the referendum coverage, I haven’t observed much of this—Britons want the Scots to stay, but don’t seem to view them as traitors for considering secession.
PH: Why would I? These are my neighbours. I grew up among them and like them, speak the same language, and have a long shared history. Why fall out over such a small thing? For it is small. I wrote last February that I regard separatism as a reasonable response to the decision of Britain’s elite to surrender UK sovereignty to the EU. If Britain no longer believes it can govern itself, it’s hardly unreasonable for Scots to seek their own direct relationship with the EU, rather than dealing with their ultimate masters through London. Scottish independence is quite unlike Quebec independence. Quebec, if it ever broke from Canada, would actually be a real polity and economy, with all the joys and dangers of that condition. Scotland outside the EU will just be a province in the EU super state, adorned with flags, anthems, and protocol, but without true independence.
JD: You witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union firsthand as a journalist and comment regularly on foreign affairs in your writings. Do you see any commonalities between the potential breaking of Scotland from the UK and other events in Europe, or is this case sui generis?
PH: There are some similarities, not least the shocking speed with which apparently stable federations can break up. I’d also say that the influence of the EU, which is a continuation of Germany by other means, has been inimical to all federations within its range. In fact I think this is one of its purposes: Germany worked out in 1917 that it could break up the Russian empire by offering its provinces a limited form of self-determination within a liberal empire, a project which was then rained off by defeat in the West in 1918 and the events of the next 70 years or so, but which got under way again in 1989.
But there are also profound differences. The trick is to work out which are significant, and which are not. My years in Russia and the USSR were and are endlessly educational in so many ways.
JD: If the ‘yes’ vote wins, do you think that a negotiation for “devo max” [i.e. maximum devolution of powers to Scotland in lieu of separation] would be possible or even probable?
PH: Absolutely not. ‘Yes’ will mean separation of Scotland from England. That’s already understood, and to try to go back on that would be shameful.
JD: Last question: You’ve said that secessionism is a reasonable response to the decision of UK elites to cede sovereignty to the EU. Are you therefore ambivalent about the referendum result? And if the ‘yes’ side prevails, what will be the consequence for the UK?
PH: I shall answer both those questions in my next column for the Mail on Sunday. You’ll just have to wait.
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The Prince Arthur Herald
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.