More than any other part of the country, Scotland has been tainted by the policies of Northern Ireland.
Fortunately, this has been largely peaceful, albeit tense, through Old Firm’s rivalry between predominantly Catholic Celtic and largely Rangers’ Protestant football clubs, as well as regular orange marches across western Scotland.
But at the political level, the main political parties have done a pretty good job of rejecting sectarianism, focusing on class and economic arguments rather than religion. It was a welcome discipline, motivated by a conscious determination to avoid the divisions that led to so much bloodshed in a country separated from Glasgow by just a 25-minute plane ride.
Independence disputes have changed all that for the worse.
Perhaps inevitably, the prospect of the collapse of the Union in 2014 was too great to resist for some Irish nationalists. As Labor struggled with teeth and claws to vote “No” in the independence referendum, members of their sister party in Northern Ireland, the SDLP, arrived to campaign for the “Yes” vote. At the same time, much of the Rangers’ support went to No, as polls began to show a big swing among Scotland’s traditional Labor-backing Catholic communities in support of independence.
If the end result was something like the end of the debate, not a cornerstone, if ten percent of Better Together’s victory had drawn the line below the debate, as promised, Scottish politics could begin to return to the normal version of Scotland. But the debate – and the accompanying toxic polarization – continued.
This polarization reached its peak with celebrations last week by the SNP leadership over the triumph in the Northern Ireland parliamentary elections in Sinn Féin, the former political wing of the interim IRA. Nicola Sturgeon wrote breathlessly in admiration for the triumph of the Irish national: “Many congratulations to Michel O’Neill [Sinn Féin vice-president] and Mary Lou MacDonald [Sinn Féin leader] in a truly historic result for Sinn Fein. ”
Sturgeon was quickly followed by her deputy, John Sweeney, a man who is usually admired in Scotland’s political divide as less divisive than his boss, who raised the prospect of working with Sinn Fein against the UK government: “I think what [the Sinn Féin victory] would mean that we will have political leadership in Northern Ireland that is ready to challenge the UK Government on many aspects of its political approach.
Of course, the Welsh Sened has provided such a challenge for nearly 25 years, but for some reason Sweeney is less enthusiastic about endorsing the Welsh Labor as an ally of his party.
This is a really dangerous thing. The main parties in the United Kingdom in Scotland have always known about the worm box that they could open if they could afford to side with Northern Ireland. Even in the 1980s, while pursuing a formal policy of support for a united Ireland, Labor managed to avoid sectarian sectarian divisions.
Now, perhaps seeing the descent into sectarianism as an inevitability he could take advantage of instead of trying to stop, Sturgeon threw his caution to the wind. She is old enough to remember when Sinn Fein was nothing more than a mouthpiece for a form of terrorism that took thousands of innocent lives, as well as many Scots whose support she needs if she ever wants to achieve her goal of independence. .
More importantly, the first minister risks undermining his own central political strategy. She spent years seeking to rebrand Scottish nationalism as moderate, centrist and, above all, consensual. Her type of nationalism had nothing to do with the more disgusting varieties of blood and soil found around the world.
Yet her party’s embrace of Irish republicanism risks all this. She can believe and hope that she is simply supporting the whole new, peaceful, girlish force of the 21st century version of Irish nationalism, perhaps indulging in the myth that Sinn Fein nationalism can be (as she wants it to be). Scottish nationalism to be perceived) civilian, not militant.
But show me a civic nationalist and I will show you a nationalist. The SNP did not need to embrace Shin Fein; they chose to. That should tell us something.
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