Great Britain minus Scotland?

Here’s the plot for a thriller: the invincible agent 007, James Bond, decides to challenge the London establishment and works to achieve disintegration of the United Kingdom.

I used to associate James Bond with Sean Connery. As a matter of fact, the latter is also an activist of the Scottish National Party and has recently ac­cused opponents of Scotland’s inde­pendence of “verbal terrorism”. “Let them tell us why Scotland cannot be independent, when San Marino with a population of 25,000 has its own seat in the UN and even- unstable Croatia aspires to such?” said the well-known film actor.

“They” are the British government which sent James Bond abroad on missions aimed at protecting the inter­ests of the British monarchy. How­ever, now Sean Connery has little con­cern for those interests: he is among those 50 per cent of Scotts who believe that their country could well become independent within the framework of the European Community. All in all, about 80 per cent of all Scotts favour the idea of their country’s independence. The Convention for the Scottish Constitution (which emerged three years ago with the help of the British Labour Party, the British Lib­eral Democrats, the Presbyterian Church and Trade Unions) identifies its political goal as the introduction of its own parliament in Scotland, leav­ing only foreign policy, and national defence in the hands of the British government.

The precipitous disintegration of the USSR and prompt recognition of the independence of former Soviet republics by the world community have given additional hope to Scottish na­tionalists. One widely held opinion is that Scottish independence is as good as decided regardless of the outcome of the general elections in Great Brit­ain, all the more so the positions of the Conservative opponents are rather weak.

Scotland has been using its own currency (which is pegged to the Brit­ish pound) and has a legal system and public education very different from such in England. True, Scotland has been united with England since 1707. But Ukraine had been united with Russia for 300 years before their split. There’s another tendency working against the Conservatives on the Scot­tish issue. The creation of a novel interstate European Union (which started in Maastricht) involves break­ing up Europe into smaller regions which have no state borders between them and represent political and econ­omic entities after the fashion of Ger­many’s Lander. Such a Europe of re­gions better corresponds to the ideals of the Scottish National Party.

British Conservative Foreign Secre­tary, Sir Duglas Hurd, recently laun­ched himself into a “counteroffensive” and said that Scotland could not enter the EC as a full member. However, that argument can be toppled, accord­ing to international law, if a certain country becomes independent by breaking its union with another country, both countries in question retain commitments of the former united state, provided they choose not to foregone commitments. Another argument in favour of the preservation of the status quo, advanced by the head of the Foreign Office is less vul­nerable. The Foreign Secretary says: It would be absurd and unjust to bereave Westminster of the right to pass laws which concern Scottish affairs and simultaneously let Scottish MPs decide on similar political issues with regard to England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Ironically, the upsurge of nationalism in Scotland on the verge of the elections is helping the Conservatives: they continue to enjoy stable support (22 per cent of the population), while the Labourists’ popularity has dwindled from 47 to 38 per cent. The reason is that part of the electorate are changing their allegiance and start to side with the Scottish National Party, which supports more radical action towards independence than the La­bourists do. Nationalists are currently supported by 28 per cent of the polled, according to a public opinion survey Home Secretary, Sir Kenneth Baker has recently noted with a glee that the Labourists and Scottish Nationalists are fighting each other like two ferrets in a sack.

However, the ferrets could find their way out of the sack and attack some­one else. Perhaps Conservatives should not awaken the predatory in­stincts in people, like Sean Connery, even though the latter isn’t actually James Bond.

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