But that was then and this is now. On May 6 the peoples of Scotland and Wales voted for their own Parliaments–the first outside London since the Act of Union, in 1707, abolished the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. The Labour government that proposed these devolved Parliaments believes they will strengthen the United Kingdom in which the Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish Unionists are jointly called “British.” And given that after last week’s elections, Labour will be the largest part in both new Parliaments, that judgment may seem sound. And yet plenty of skeptics think it as likely that at least one of the fledgling institutions in Edinburgh and Cardiff will eventually demand full independence for Scotland or Wales. At that point, the English may be left bleakly looking at one another, like two people who throw a party and find no one turns up. What did we do wrong?
Of course, England’s two Celtic neighbors differ hugely in their ambitions. Wales–united with England since the 16th century–has been pretty lukewarm about its proposed assembly, and it took a concerted effort from government, logrollers and most of the local media to squeak the tiniest of majorities in favor in a referendum in which half the electorate didn’t bother to vote. Scotland is different. You can smell the self-confidence in the air. After years of blaming the English for everything, there’s increasing talk of a national destiny in the European Union, decoupled from their fat, southern neighbor. The model is Ireland, which has used its truckloads of European subsidies to shrug off its image as a land of peat bogs and whimsy to reinvent itself as an information society.
Thus far, the English have watched the restiveness on their borders with a sort of bemused indifference. They have a profoundly ingrained sense of right and wrong, and generally believe that it’s up to the Scots to decide what’s best for the Scots. The English also suffer from the fact that there is no political organization to bang the drum for them in the way that all the parties in the Scots and Welsh elections are thrashing the Celtic drum. Things are complicated for the English by the fact that their government is dominated by Scots: the prime minister, foreign secretary and chancellor of the exchequer are all products of the Scottish education system.
But sooner or later the English are going to wake up to the inequities of devolution. Three immediately spring to mind. Despite having better schools and better state health service than much of England, Scotland receives much higher per capita public spending. It takes fewer votes to send a Scottish M.P. to Westminster than to send one from England. And the system will allow those Scottish M.P.s to vote on legislation affecting the English, while denying English parliamentarians the right to vote on Scottish affairs.
Historically, the English have been slow to respond to alarm calls. Deep down, they are wise enough to know that politicians’ promises are a devalued currency and so treat them with a healthy skepticism. But it is hard to see how the new arrangements can continue without political consequences in England. The challenge for the English will be to prevent the championing of their causes’ becoming the preserve of small-minded bigots–traditional “Little Englanders.”
Because the English have not had to think about what being English means, they don’t know where to start looking to rediscover their own sense of identity. The icons are missing. The Scots and Welsh have their own national anthems, while the English have to share that old imperial dirge, “God Save the Queen.” The Scots have kilts, the English have the business suit which they invented and now must share with the rest of the world.
But national identity is more than symbols; it is about values. And here, the English have plenty to discover, should they choose to dig. My own list of English qualities would include reticence, I-know-my-rights, irony, the sense of home, unpredictable oscillation between crudity and civility, verbal exuberance and vigorous politics. Above all, the progress of English history has been a story of the assertion of the rights of the individual against the rights of the state. It is more or less the exact reverse of French history, which has been preoccupied with bending the individual to the shape of the state. It is, in truth, the English civic tradition, which sees government only as a necessary evil, that lies at the heart of English suspicions of the European project.
But the English would do well to console themselves with the thought that all over the world, the nation-state is in decline. Symbols mean little. If the English could only rediscover their individualistic values, they might find a national identity, beyond flags and anthems, that would equip them well for the next century.
