One of the finest pieces of analysis on the general election campaign emerged from Alex Massie in The Spectator this week. The article contains various points of interest but one that got me stroking my barely noticeable stubble was Massie’s comparison of the SNP’s predicted electoral landslide and the historical electoral landslide by Sinn Féin in 1918.
My interest in Irish/British history is deep and stems from growing up in a west central Scotland housing scheme where, largely, the entire 800 or more year story of Ireland and Britain is painted in black and white. There is good guys and bad guys. You sing songs about the good guys triumphing over the bad guys, sometimes hideously offensive ditties, and that’s largely that. Even if your parents like mine did not hold those views your peers did so you soon would too. As many of you who have had the misfortune to read my writing, or the greater misfortune of knowing me in person, my own reading of history and opinions are a tad more nuanced these days. I have grown up and encountered such luxuries as a university education and started listening to those necessary evils, your parents. This is where my interest in Ireland begins and why such a few lines of Massie’s piece had me nodding at my computer screen like a Churchill dog.
As well as the 1918/2015 comparison one could also draw parallels between the 1916 Easter Rising and the also ill-fated 2014 Yes campaign. I know both comparisons seem remote and German rifles were not a prominent feature of the Yes Scotland but bare with Massie and I, as I think he is onto something.
Like the revolutionaries who led the Easter Rising in 1916 those at the helm of the Yes campaign in 2014 knew their fate largely before a bullet was fired or a vote was cast.
The Rising’s fate was largely sealed when the German ship Aud carrying much needed supplies was scuttled as it was intercepted by the Royal Navy. Indeed a call was given to volunteers to halt the planned uprising. Those in Dublin however chose a glorious defeat as they knew that this would, in the long run, aid the cause of independence.
Like the men and women who steamed into the GPO and other locations across Dublin the Yes campaign leaders knew that the likelihood of success was remote.
Opinion polling historically has shown support for independence in high twenties to low 30 percent mark. It is a minority pursuit. Throughout the campaign all but one rogue poll pointed to failure. Internal polling by Yes Scotland showed the campaign heading for an almost certain defeat. But defeat, glorious defeat, that most Scottish of pastimes would be so valuable for cause in months and years to follow.
This glorious defeat and the sense by some of somehow being ‘cheated’, ‘wronged’ and that the plethora of promises made by Unionist politicians being broken also resembles post-Easter Rising Ireland. For the treatment of the Rising leaders swung public opinion to the cause the British government from Dublin Castle sought to crush. Perhaps the style of how the Union was saved in Scotland may come back again to haunt those who seek to bind Scotland and the rest of these islands together.
So to 1918, that most peculiar of elections. A nationalist party only standing in its own area wins a majority of that region’s seats and becomes the third largest party in terms of seats across the UK. Sounds familiar to what is being predicted today by pollsters.
History may indeed repeat itself in May and Massie’s comparison between the two should stoke great interest. For if history is to be repeated those of a unionist disposition would do well to learn of the mistakes of their unionist forefathers.
The rise and rise of Sinn Féin propelled the British government of the day to implement Irish Home Rule. To devolve, as we would be familiar with, powers away from Westminster to the Union’s periphery.
How would Cameron or Miliband react to the Scottish problem when faced by 20, 30 or 40 SNP MPs across the Common’s floor? Would they stand tall and implement the Smith Commission or would they go further? Indeed Gordon Brown and Jim Murphy appear to have already began the auction of further powers earlier this month.
The 1918 election broke Ireland (well, most of it) from the Union. 2015 and importantly how unionism reacts to the aftermath could well decide which direction Scotland travels on. It could travel to a federal Britain, a looser Union. Though it is a very real prospect that Cameron or Miliband’s loosening of the ties will unravel the Union.
