In many countries, secession is a matter of life and death, bitterly fought over, with war and and civil conflict costing thousands of lives and inflicting a toll of misery and dislocation.
The British have undertaken the contest over the separation of Scotland by argument and voting. The arguments have often been vitriolic; occasionally visiting politicians from the south have received a hostile reception. The vote has ended up being far closer than expected months ago, but Scotland’s independence will be decided one way or the other today as the result of a vigorous democratic process in which Scottish voters have turned out in numbers unseen for generations.
If the “no” camp triumphs (and it looks like it will), it will primarily be because British Labour has, perhaps belatedly, thrown itself fully into the fray against the Scottish Nationalist Party and not cared that it was aligned with the British Tories (the Conservatives barely exist as a separate entity in Scotland) in the process. Along the way, former prime minister Gordon Brown, once maligned as a political disaster, has become the unlikely hero of many unionists in the media who once vilified him.
It’s all a stark contrast to how such issues are handled across the world, even in parts of Europe that have been dislocated and terrorised by separatist campaigns — and even in the UK itself of earlier times. Deeply divisive issues of the utmost importance can be determined by a people through debate and democracy. It’s an outcome of the Scots, the British, and those countries that share that democratic tradition, including ourselves, can be proud.
I am an Aussie, married to a Scot, and we are profoundly disappointed at the emerging outcome.
Having been to beautiful Scotland many times, and lived there for awhile many years ago, my heart says that the NO result is a disaster for them.
We were there last year, and the poverty and deprivation is just getting worse. There are closed and boarded-up shop fronts, many people on welfare and some extended family members unemployed or taking jobs far below their educational level, just to survive.
Very, very sad result.
The most disasterous result will be a close decision, because those who lose will believe that they have been cheated, that the vote was not a true indication of what should have happened, that for whatever reason the result is invalid and will not be accepted. Votes must be recounted, re-examined and re-voted. There will be bitterness and lack of co-operation, ancient injustices will be raked over and aired to demonstrate the wrongness of the vote. Wales (of my ancestors) still regards England as a foreign power and that wonderful land of Ireland – that island will be forever torn. Is that the fault of England or of those united with it?
In Ausralia 55/45 is a landslide with a completely forgone conclusion, yet the same numbers elsewhere are a knife edge?
With Salmond falling on his claymore after the rejection of his raison d’etre the point is well demonstrated that the Establishment, bu$ine$$, politics (laughably deemed to be a two -and a half- party system) and the invisible government will always cohere to prevent anything that disturbs their comfort & trough snouting.
Ay och, t’noo.
What about bloody Northern Ireland! The Poms and the Irish disgraced themselves over that, and while the killings of centuries has stopped, they still haven’t solved the problem.