When studying in England more than a decade ago, most of my local friends, Scots included, snickered at the Scottish independence movement. It was never very popular and most people believed it was just a strategy for getting money from the central government. Yesterday, Scots went to the polls to vote for or against independence. It is hard to predict which side will win.
The impetus behind the Scottish independence movement has developed over a long time. In the 1980s, then-British prime minister Margaret Thatcher cut social welfare, and her Conservative government’s right-wing policies that discriminated against the working class were very unpopular in Scotland. After New Labour came into power in Britain in the mid-1990s, it promoted regional autonomy, pulling the Scottish and Welsh nations together and using this to solve the dispute in Northern Ireland.
The policies of Scotland’s current ruling party, the Scottish National Party (SNP), are closer to social democracy and their opinions are even more leftist than those of the Labour Party. For example, New Labour removed controls on tuition for higher education, leading to increases in tuition fees. Under the SNP, the Scottish government has kept its policy of free tuition for Scottish students, but not foreign students, including those from England.
The Conservative Party, currently in power in Britain as part of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, is implementing an austerity policy that cuts social welfare payments and public expenditure. It is also using this as an opportunity to privatize public firms, including some public health services, and this has been opposed by many in Scotland. One of the main demands of the independence referendum is to uphold social welfare and stop public expenditure cuts. About three weeks before the referendum, independence supporters declared that they would safeguard the public health system.
The reason why the Scottish independence movement has turned British politics upside down is the Labour Party has lost its advantageous position in Scotland. Even if the referendum does not pass, the British government has promised to give Scotland more power over taxation and social welfare. However, this will only increase the contradictions in Britain’s constitutional system. For example, because England does not have an autonomous parliament, English members of the British Parliament cannot influence Scotland’s internal affairs, while Scottish MPs can vote and decide on England’s internal affairs, creating an imbalance in regional power. Regardless of the result of the referendum, it will have an impact on Britain’s constitution.
The rise of the Scottish independence movement is something that Taiwanese should reflect upon, because independence movements can learn from different political and economic ideologies and social visions. Public opinion in Scotland predominantly leans toward social democracy, differentiating it from England. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which claims to support Taiwanese independence, has in recent years been mocked by social groups as just being a smaller version of the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — one of the reasons being that its policies on wealth, tax and big businesses are similar to those of the KMT.
If the DPP limits itself to talking about stimulating the economy like the KMT does, fails to address real-estate hegemony and complains about President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), while touting its mantra of lighter taxes and a downsized government, the independence that the DPP talks of is built on a very shallow basis indeed.
Li Shang-jen is an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology.
Translated by Drew Cameron
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