26.07.2006
Nationalist myths are not Marxism
Jack Conrad argues against the Scottish Socialist Party's claim that Scotland is an oppressed nation, an English colony. Prior to the 1707 Act of Union Scotland was not a nation
Before they so spectacularly fell out, before they became irreconcilable political enemies, before they icily denounced each other as liars in Edinburgh's court of sessions, Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCombes happily authored the joint book Imagine (Edinburgh 2000). Herein the chums repeated the standard nationalist tropes of medieval Scottish resistance to English expansionism and the gallant role of William Wallace; the 1707 Act of Union and the bitterly resented loss of hard-won independence; Bonnie Prince Charlie's popularity in 1745 and the destruction of highland culture after the overwhelming Hanoverian victory at the battle of Culloden. All this was capped, as a kind of historic revenge, by their strategy for an 'independent socialist Scotland'.
The usual leftwing celebrities were lined up by the publisher (Kevin Williamson's Rebel Inc) to give back-cover endorsements. They proved very obliging: "I commend it," wrote John Pilger, while Ken Loach pronounced it "excellent" and Tony Benn went into characteristic overdrive: "It is one of the very best books that I have ever read on the subject of socialism," he gushed.
Sadly, this trio were far from alone. Alan Thornett's International Socialist Group gave the SSP fulsome and uncritical programmatic support. So did the old Socialist Alliance - be it fronted by Dave Nellist, John Nicholson or Liz Davis. The Socialist Workers Party took a little time to salute the 'Parade of the old new': "I stood on a hill and I saw the Old approaching, but it came as the New".1 Factional advantage had to be calculated. But salute the old new the SWP did. Even Neil Davidson, the leading thinker in the SSP Socialist Worker platform, lent his not inconsiderable authority to this miserable tailism (whether willingly, or as a matter of party 'discipline', who can tell, given the SWP's bureaucratic centralism?).
The SWP officially decreed the SSP's 'break-up of Britain' road a lesser evil compared to the status quo. As if these were the only alternatives on offer. Typically, though, with the SWP's opportunist turns, this was never backed up theoretically.
The 'break-up of Britain', was, of course, excitedly presented by McCombes-Sheridan as the first decisive breakthrough that would inexorably lead to their wonderfully novel goal of a Scottish national socialism. So what of the SWP's much professed loyalty to Trotsky and his damning critique of Stalin's socialism in one country? Obviously, that is old, retrospective, nothing new. It has no operational value. It is a carry-over. Platonic. Just for show. The sole guiding principle recognised by the SWP nowadays is short-term advantage.
Given the SSP's gravitational pull, it is hardly surprising that small groups such as the Socialist Alliance mark three, the Revolutionary Democratic Group and the Democratic Socialist Alliance have been captured as distant satellites. They salute the SSP as the organisational model that everyone should aspire to copy: "Here comes the New, it's all new, salute the new, be new like us!" Similarly, there are SSP 'opposition' platforms which revolve around the programme outlined in Imagine, except they are in near orbit. A case in point being the Republican Communist Network. As can be seen from the article recently penned by Bob Goupillot, it has completely surrendered to the "old new" (Weekly Worker July 20).
Like McCombes-Sheridan his central thesis rests on the notion that Scotland was an independent nation-state before it was absorbed/conquered by England through the 1707 Act of Union and thereby became a sort of colony. Frankly, the thesis does not stand up to serious examination. Below we shall explain why, first and foremost by interrogating claims of a medieval Scottish nationhood (1707 and the nature of the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite risings can be specifically dealt with at another time).
When was Scotland?
National romantics of all stripes and hues, establishment historians and putative freedom fighters, TV academics and the plain cranky are all prone to automatically place the beginning of Scotland far back in the mists of time - to the ancient Picts, or the arrival of the Scots from Ireland, or perhaps the accession of the mac Alpine kings in the 9th century. That, after all, is how standard history tells the story. That is what children are taught in Scottish schools. Indeed virtually every country that exists at the present moment is projected back into prehistory by the propagandists of nationhood. A common sense reflected in the history sections in libraries and bookshops and their arrangement into neat, alphabetically ordered national sections - Albania, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, India "¦ Scotland.
Slightly less fanciful is the notion that Scotland achieved national consciousness and therefore nationhood in medieval times. The 'wars of independence' against 'England', the famous 1320 Declaration of Arbroath and William Wallace's victory at Stirling Bridge are cited as clinching evidence. McCombes-Sheridan confidently state that "Scotland is one of the oldest nations in Europe", going back to the 13th century and the struggle against Edward I.2
A 'theoretical' underpinning for this widely accepted account was supplied by the 'official communist' John Foster - international secretary of the Morning Star's Communist Party of Britain and a Glasgow university academic. Unlike most Marxists, who link nations with the rise of capitalist relations of production, he maintains that the Scottish nation was almost entirely a "feudal creation". The "founding elements" of Scottish law, language (lowland Scots) and literature (the so-called 'markers') all "stem from the last three centuries of the middle ages", he claims.3
According to this version of history, the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 thereby become as much expressions of Scottish national resistance against English colonialism as a dynastic struggle between the deposed Stewarts and the newly installed Hanoverians. The Stewarts pledged to restore the Edinburgh parliament. As a result in 1745 Charles Edward Stewart "built mass support in the highlands and passive support even in the presbyterian lowlands".4
Scotland's popular culture, as it comes down to us today, is supposedly therefore one of national resistance against foreign domination. Not surprisingly Britain and Britishness are dismissed as nothing more than an elitist unity, a fragile and fading imperial construct, beneath which the 'real' nations of England, Scotland and Wales lie ready waiting for their moment of freedom - the McCombes-Sheridan version, of course, culminates in a Scottish socialism or a Scottish workers' republic.
Yet it is a fundamental mistake to imagine today's nations backwards. Medieval kingdoms did not have a predestiny to form modern states - moving through the stages of establishing national consciousness and simultaneously finding their rightful contemporary borders. Most disappeared in the constantly interrupted course of history: eg, Mercia, Navarre, Arelat, Sicily. Modern states do, though, invent for themselves, and crucially their citizens, a history which draws on traditional stories and supposedly ancient ideologies and thereby create a commonality. That is why nations have been called 'imagined communities'.
This work of inventing nations, as emphasised by Patrick J Geary, professor of history at the university of California, amongst many others, was begun in the late 18th and early 19th century by the "creative efforts" of politicians and nationalists.5 Subsequently their work was continued, enlarged upon and disseminated by a whole army of paid persuaders. Because they were invented, however, does not mean that nations are imaginary in the sense that they do not exist. But in order to gain the leadership of the nation Marxists are surely obliged to provide truthful explanations about the past, not join in with the work of invention and embellishment.
Eg, official France claims origins in ancient Gaul, forgetting that the French language is Latin, not Celtic, in root and that the name 'France' itself derives from 4th and 5th century Germanic conquistadors. Continuity and therefore commonality is also traced from Hugh Capet (who ruled from 987-96) and the Capetian dynasty based on the territory around Paris. In the process the other 'Frances' of Burgundy, Brittany, Gascony, Provence, etc are swept away in favour of an Ile-de-France which supposedly inevitably swept all before it.
Then there is Jean-Marie Le Pen and his Front National. They have concocted an anti-foreigner cult around Joan of Arc. Fancifully, her divinely inspired mission is said to have been 'England for the English and France for the French'.6 A code for 'Turks go home'.
Not to be left out, the French Communist Party (PCF) has laid claim to Vercingetorix - the 1st century BC chieftain of the Arverni. He is painted as a precursor of the 1940s French resistance by the PCF. Unfortunately, and this is what is inexcusable, his social position at the top of an exploiting warrior elite is ignored or downplayed.
There were, of course, regional and linguistic commonalties in the pre-modern world, but they should not be equated or confused with our present-day notions of nation and nationalism. Take the Greeks of ancient Hellas. These people spoke a common language, albeit with distinct dialects. They shared the same territory, but fought innumerable wars against each other. They had a recognisably common culture vis-à -vis barbarian outsiders, but they were not united economically. Scattered, self-sufficient peasant agriculture, tribal identity, petty artisan manufacture and painfully slow internal communications saw the Greeks living in numerous rival poleis. There was no Greek nation. Objective conditions did not allow it.
The same applies to medieval Europe. Virtually everyone was a christian and regularly attended church. Besides the commonality of religion there was the commonality of class. The feudal ruling class, however, had far more in common with each other culturally, psychologically and economically across the frontiers of crown domains than with the exploited peasants below. The masses themselves had lived relationships that were constrictingly narrow - essentially local, being determined by village, manor and church dioceses.
To the extent there was a wider popular consciousness it was regnal - one founded on loyalty to the monarch or the institution of the monarchy. Hence Kentish peasants in 1381 could imagine a bond between themselves and the boy-king, Richard II. Needless to say, that bond was not national. The first language of the Anjou and Plantagenet kings of England was not English, but Norman French. Moreover, these kings of England were also overlords in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, as well as being feudal magnets exploiting large tracts of France. Indeed, as far as surplus extraction was concerned, these 'English' kings derived most of their wealth and therefore their accumulated political-military power from their French, not English, possessions. In that sense Henry II of England is best thought of as Henri of Angevin.
As to 'nation', it is, of course, an ancient term. For example in the 3rd century Vulgate bible the Greek word ethnos and Latin natio referred to the semitic tribal formations whose "dismal fate" is recounted in the book of Jeremiah. Natio was transformed into nacioun in the first English versions of the bible and became 'nation' in the authorised version of 1611. For these authors and translators of the bible, a nation was something more than a state or kingdom. It corresponded to a 'people' who were assumed to be a natural, inherited community of tradition, custom and law. The nation designated therefore the gens or populus, who were presumed to have a common biological descent.
Origin myths were used to establish and explain the commonality of people. For example, in medieval times the Franks were traced back to the arrival of exiled Trojans in the Rhineland. Hence, if the nation was defined in ethnic or biological terms, then the idea of the nation was based on the possession of a common language: ie, language makes nation. During medieval times university students in Prague were therefore organised into four 'nations', as were the knights of the Hospitallers in the Levant: eg, the 'Bohemian' and 'Frankish' 'nations'. The material fact of language could only but produce a distinct consciousness when confronted by others. The medieval kingdom of Scotland was, we note, home to not one common language or 'nation' - more like four (perhaps the subject of another article).
A medieval 'nation'
So what of medieval Scotland? We have already referred to the so-called 'Scottish wars of independence'. My view - which still upsets left nationalists in Scotland - is that the popular belief that William Wallace (and, following him, Robert Bruce) led some sort of liberation struggle against the English is a combination of 19th century myth and Hollywood hokum. As for the celebrated Declaration of Arbroath - written in Latin and purportedly representing the Scottish equivalent of the American declaration of independence - it did not acquire that iconic status till modern times.
In essence the conflict between 'England' and 'Scotland' after 1296 was no different from the Wars of the Roses: ie, an internal struggle between rival feudal interests, whose ideology was based on past notions of fief and vassalage, not future notions of nation and nationality. The castellan Norman lords in Scotland were 'traditionalists', defending their right to exploit their serfs without anyone higher up the feudal ladder siphoning off the bulk of the surplus. Edward I was the 'revolutionary' centraliser who wanted to do just that.
My premise is that during this medieval period both 'Scotland' and 'England' were little more than geographical expressions. There was then no war between Scotland and England. Rather wars by the kings of England in Scotland - a crucial distinction. In this context the Declaration of Arbroath - which took the form of an appeal by the earls and the feudal elite in Scotland to pope John XXII in Avignon - was to all intents and purposes no different from the Magna Carta in England, the Charter of Ottokar in Syria or the Golden Bull in Hungary. Lurking behind the fawning appeals to the pope and the stirring phrases about "good men" and being "for freedom alone" there was indeed the fight over "riches".7
Under the rubric of their ancient liberties the 'traditionalist' barons were determined to limit the 'revolutionary' centralising power of a hegemonic crown so that they could secure the greater share of the surplus product squeezed from the downtrodden peasantry. The preamble of the declaration is typically medieval: the "Scots nation" came from "Greater Sythia" and sailed through the Pillars of Hercules (Columpnas Herculis). Having dwelt in Spain and Ireland for 400 years, they move to Scotland, where they triumph over Britons and Picts and survive attacks by "Norwegians, Danes and English". If, as nationalists claim, Scotland was a proto-nation in the 14th century, then logically so must the Britons and Picts. However, the purpose of the declaration is crystal clear. It was an attempt to gain papal backing for the earls in Scotland, in part through recourse to myth and invention, in part through an appeal to feudal legitimacy.
There is no unbroken thread joining the forms of consciousness manifested in the Declaration of Arbroath and that of the modern Scottish people. The kings and nobles of both England and Scotland were feudalists - with a Norman French-derived culture (they married wives from across the whole of north western Europe). This cosmopolitan class entertained no modern-day notions of nation. The idea of a national liberation war would have been utterly incomprehensible to them. War was a normal, almost permanent state of affairs, for members of the feudal ruling class, because their realms of exploitation invariably overlapped with the claims of others.
'Scottish' nobles - such as John Comyn - fought with Edward I in his conquest of Wales. The 'Scottish' Balloil family still held lands in France. Robert de Bruce, the Earl of Carrick, was a vassal of Edward I. As we have noted, the Plantagenet and Anjou 'English' kings themselves held sway over tracts of France - notably Gascony, Aquitaine and Poitou - and often actively pursued claims on the French throne. The 'English' armies of Edward I and II used in Scotland were recruited in large numbers from domains in France, Ireland and Wales. Crucially, their wars in Scotland were solidly based on feudal, not national, rights.
Edward I certainly sought to incorporate the territory of the kingdom of Scotland into his feudal empire. At first the means were peaceful. The Treaty of Birgham in 1290 set out terms of a future dynastic union through the marriage of Margaret, the 'Maid of Norway', and Edward's son. The interests of the ruling elite in Scotland would have been left unaffected. The merger was to be of crowns with no disturbing change. There was to be no 1066-type takeover.
As we know, the United Kingdom had to wait for another three centuries or so before seeing the light of day. Margaret died and triggered a constitutional crisis in Scotland. Edward I quickly moved to assert his overlordship. John Balloil was appointed king under Edward's sponsorship and duly paid homage to him in December 1292.
Internal feudal contradictions in Scotland and Edward's onerous demands placed on his vassals drove king John to rebellion. Instead of meekly accepting Edward's domination, the 'Scottish' feudalists raised an army at Caddonlee. The Scots were comprehensively routed in a 17-day blitzkrieg. Edward I stripped a captured Balloil of his feudal trappings in a humiliating ceremony held at Montrose Castle in July 1296. His tabard, hood and knightly girdle were physically torn from him.
Yet, though Edward's means shifted from those of peaceful diplomacy to naked force, this did not end his individual fief-vassal relationship with the great Norman families in Scotland. Here lies the explanation for the 'sinister' role of the elder Bruce, etc, and the constant shifts in alliances as the 'Scots' feudalists gradually turned the tables on the 'English' - Stirling Bridge being a crucial early battle. But there were, of course, no national patriots, defeatists, collaborators or traitors in the modern sense. After winning at Bannockburn in 1314 the 'Scottish' nobility sought to expand its influence into Wales and Ireland. The 'wars of independence' continued as an internecine conflict between the Bruce and Balloil families.
Left nationalists not only cite the Declaration of Arbroath, but William Wallace and the social composition of the army which fought with him at Stirling Bridge and for Bruce at Bannockburn as proof of a popular, nationalist consciousness. These fantasists actually put Wallace and his army in the same league as Spartacus, Wat Tyler and the Levellers: ie, a revolutionary class movement from below. According to Thomas Johnston (1882-1965) in his influential The history of the working classes in Scotland (1920), those responsible for the defeat of the 'English' army in 1314 "were the working class, and it was their charge on the field that won the battle of Bannockburn".8 Apparently the presence of urban plebeians and peasants is meant to show that the 'wars of independence' had a popular character.
So did Wallace lead a slave revolt? Bannockburn, won under Bruce, the future Robert II, involved no decisive action by commoners. Stirling Bridge did. However, there is a huge difference between rallying an army of commoners and being an army of and for the commoners. The fact that Wallace's forces at Stirling Bridge in 1297 consisted mainly of foot-soldiers and his tactical deployment of pikemen in tightly packed schiltrons hardly demonstrates nationalism or national consciousness.
There have been popular mobilisations in support of rival elites since the dawn of history. The Greek city-states and their peasant-citizen armies being a case in point. Surely the ability of Wallace to form a peasant-plebeian army rested not on any nationalism or national idealism: rather the ideology of regnal solidarity, which can be seen in the Declaration of Arbroath itself. While some middling elements might have been provoked by Edward I's tax demands, the mass of peasants would have remained politically inert as a class. The idea of illiterate peasants - who lived short, brutish and localised lives - embracing modern notions of nationalism is stretching the imagination too far.
For the sake of left nationalists in Scotland it is also worth stressing the fact that Edward's army, assembled before the battle of Falkirk in 1298, included 4,000 cavalry ... but also some 25,000 infantrymen. It is true that Edward represented a rich feudalism. His elaborately armoured and expensively mounted knights were the tank divisions of the day. It is also true that the kingdom of Scotland was a poor feudalism and could afford neither the same numbers of infantry nor heavy cavalry.
That the 'English' feudalists suffered defeats at the hands of the 'Scots' feudalists is testimony in my opinion not to a people's war. Rather military incompetence. At Bannockburn the 'English' army under the command of Edward II fought on almost suicidal terrain and, no doubt due to aristocratic arrogance, launched a frontal cavalry charge against massed pikemen. The 'correct' tactic, which soon became standard, was to unleash the English and Welsh longbowmen. These equally plebeian, though highly skilled, forces would wreak decimation on any stationary formation. They would fire arrows at a rate "three or four times" faster than a crossbow and with equal accuracy and reach.9 The longbow even proved a match against the cream of French feudalism. Needless to say, neither Crécy nor Agincourt make Edward III and Henry V leaders of a slave revolt. By the same logic Wallace and co's reliance on pikemen proves nothing in and of itself, except that the kingdom of Scotland was a poor feudalism.
All in all, the suggestion that Wallace led a revolt from below in the manner of Spartacus and Wat Tyler is unconvincing. Following Edward I's victory in 1296 many nobles languished in England awaiting ransom. Others had been injured and were unable to take to the field. Others again were temporarily cowed. The imposition of Edward I's puppet parliament and plans for a deep feudalism provoked widespread opposition, including from small landowners. However, no 'natural' leadership stepped forth willing to fight. It was into this vacuum that Andrew de Moray emerged in the north and William Wallace in the south. Moray was the son and heir of a leading baron. Wallace had a less elevated lineage. He was the son of a Renfrewshire knight.
In the summer of 1297 the Moray-Wallace campaign made rapid progress. Nevertheless, over these two "commanders of the army of the kingdom of Scotland, and the community of that realm" there stood two great magnets - Robert Wishart, bishop of Glasgow, and James the Stewart, Wallace's own lord. The respective roles of Moray and Wallace are much obscured by the fact that the former died of wounds suffered at Stirling Bridge. Either way, Wallace became guardian in Scotland not in the name of the people, but the "illustrious king" in exile. He was Balloil's regnal champion.
Wallace was, however, no military genius. He only successfully fought one set-piece battle - Stirling Bridge. When his army met the 'English' feudal host at Falkirk in July 1298, the longbowmen destroyed his schiltrons. His status as guardian was fatally undermined. The resistance of the high aristocracy receded still further. They opted for a peace deal. Like Bruce after 1309 Wallace was forced to turn to guerrilla or 'little' warfare and raiding the northern English counties. A risky business. In August 1305 Wallace was captured near Glasgow and taken to London where he was tried, found guilty of treason and executed.
Wallace was used many years later by the forces of radical democracy in inspiring poems, novels and songs. The same can be said of Hereward the Wake and the long-held beliefs in pre-conquest Anglo-Saxon liberty and heroic opposition to the Norman yoke. But to confuse origin myths for actual history is a foolish mistake and certainly not worthy of anyone who calls themselves a Marxist.
'Markers'
Most historians who think that the kingdom of Scotland was a nation or a proto-nation before the 1707 Act of Union with the kingdom of England also take the view that it was maintained afterwards through various institutions. Namely the kirk, an education system based on lowland Scots and law. Here we have the so-called key 'markers' of Scottish nationhood. A flimsy and unconvincing construct. If we can discover no modern sense of nationhood before 1707, the suggestion that these 'markers' were the bearers of national consciousness can only but be the result of circular reasoning. The whole idea of institutional continuity as a form of national consciousness is profoundly flawed anyway.10
How can a kirk sermon, a legal decision or a classroom lesson be the leading edge of national consciousness? If they played the role assigned to them, then they must have possessed a similar social salience prior to 1707, and yet none can be convincingly cited.
Education was not mentioned in the 1707 treaty. There was, though, something approaching universal education in Scotland in the 17th century. But it was religion which was central. Doing his best, the local minister would teach Latin, French, classical literature, sports "¦ and catechism.11 The parish school was essentially an outpost of the kirk.
As to criminal and civil law, here was not popular consciousness - rather bureaucratic continuity, which is by definition fundamentally undemocratic. Till the Act of Union the post of sheriff was typically heritable - in 21 out of 33 sheriffdoms. They were held by local barons, who would ruthlessly exploit their position "to profit themselves, not the king".12 The whole system reeked of corruption. Under these circumstances would a peasant proudly quote a judgement made by one of those grasping barons if asked what makes them Scottish? Hardly.
Crucially, for the mass of people in Scotland to have felt themselves to be Scottish, they would have had to be aware of significant differences between themselves and people of other nationalities. Experience of the law, the kirk and education would not have resulted in that. The English, Irish, etc had only a marginal or passing presence. Many within the kingdom of Scotland would, though, feel 'other' through contact with the institutions of law, religion and education. People in the Shetlands and Orkney still spoke Norwegian; most in the highlands, Gaelic. In the meantime the majority of Scots would have viewed what oppressed or hoodwinked them as no different from death and taxes. They did not think about these institutions as defining markers of Scottishness because they were ubiquitous.
There was nothing akin to the phenomenon in Ireland, where proto-national consciousness coincided with religion after 1690. Both Gaelic-Irish and Anglo-Irish became Irish-Irish with the persecution of the catholic religion and the imposition of the Anglican religion and the influx of protestant settlers from England and above all Scotland into north-eastern Ulster. No one denies the role of Calvinism in Scotland and the presbyterian state-within-a-state form of government. But the majority of Scots had no reason to view the kirk as part of their identity. It was taken for granted.
Having touched upon and dealt with the false claims of a Scottish nationhood prior to 1707, we must of necessity discuss Scotland's past and present in light of the Marxist theory of what modern nations are, how they are formed and why the categories of language, territory, economy, psychology and culture are vital in this respect. These categories and what they mean for our understanding of Scotland, Britain and the United Kingdom will form the subject of my next article.