I have to confess that I detest all political nationalism. I am a ‘repentant sinner’ in this respect, having supported the SNP in my younger days, but I have been in the Labour Party now for well over forty years. That’s not to say that the arguments about national identity are all clear cut. Most Scots have to wrestle with an innate tribalism, a pride in our Scottish identity that can spill over very easily into xenophobia. The best example of this is in sport. I was brought up to see Scotland v England football matches as a rerun of Bannockburn. As a young man, I was either elated or deeply depressed for days on end after a Scotland/England match, depending on the result. It was only a small step from this to seeing ‘my enemy’s enemy as my friend’ and supporting whoever was playing against England. Is this just harmless support for the underdog and a fairly innocent pride in our national identity, or is it part of something more dangerous? Is patriotism sometimes the name we give to a nasty nationalism passed off as mere ‘banter’?
Last month we had relatives from New Zealand staying with us. Father and son were watching the T20 women’s cricket clash between England and Australia. The 12 year old declared his support for his Australian neighbours, while his father was rooting for the ‘Poms’ over those bad ‘Aussies’. The name ‘Pom’ was given to British immigrants to Australia. The term ‘immigrant’ was first personified into ‘Jimmy Grant’, then to ‘pomegranate’ which in turn morphed into ‘pom’. The T20 moment reminded me that we are far from alone in experiencing this ‘enemy’s enemy’ syndrome. As well as New Zealand and Australia, other examples of ingrained national rivalries are Sweden and Finland, Turkey and Greece, India and Pakistan. Or think back to the history of the voting of national juries in the Eurovision Song Contest. Considerable research has been undertaken into the role of cultural, linguistic and geographic factors over song quality in determining Eurovision voting patterns.
Last November, Gordon Brown wrote an article for the Guardian - ‘Nationalism is the ideology of our age. No wonder the world is in crisis’. He wrote, ‘If, for the past 30 years, economics drove political decision-making, now politics is determining economic decisions, with country after country weaponising their trade, technology, industry and competition policies. The win-win economics of mutually beneficial commerce is being replaced by the zero-sum rivalries of “I win, you lose”, as movements such as “America first”, “China first”, “India first” and “Russia first”, “my tribe first”, threaten to descend into an us versus them geopolitics of “my country first and only”.’
Perhaps everything from sport to geopolitics now hinges on whether competition or cooperation is the dominant ethos - whether we are driven by a need to dominate or an ability to appreciate each other’s strengths. Appreciating each other’s strengths is too big an ask for many nationalists. They tend to base their arguments on a view that Scotland is a progressive modernising nation held back by the reactionary English. It doesn’t suit their argument to recognise England’s radical past. Far from being a cultural backwater, England had The Bill of Rights, common law, Thomas Paine, The Tolpuddle Martyrs and most of the Chartists. Then there was the reformist zeal of Shelley and Blake's vision of Jerusalem, a radical notion of paradise on earth - England's Green and Pleasant Land. "Rule Britannia", on the other hand, was written by a Scot, James Thomson.
With the first ever FIFA Women’s World Cup to be held in Oceania now in its final stages can I ask a question? Were you secretly hoping the Lionesses would go out or were you able to ditch that chip on your shoulder and join in the chants of ‘Come on the Poms’?