Liberal Arts vs Knowledge Economy

Liberal Arts vs. Knowledge Economy

There are two parts to the following.

The first concerns the immediate background to the threat to the University of Glasgow’s ‘Liberal Arts’ courses at their Dumfries/ Crichton Campus.

The second concerns the wider implications of attempts to develop a ‘Knowledge Economy’ as a response to globalisation.

Part One

On the 15th February 2007, the threat (now realised) that the University of Glasgow might withdraw from the Crichton University Campus in Dumfries was debated in the Scottish Parliament. However, it was a remark allegedly made by a senior member of the Scottish Funding Council which attracted the strongest criticism. This remark was to the effect that “The Liberal Arts courses offered by the University of Glasgow at the Crichton make no contribution to the economy of Dumfries and Galloway”.

So what kind of economy does Dumfries and Galloway have? The following is a rough outline:

The region is one which has a low wage, low skill, economy based on self-employed and micro-business operating mainly within traditional / primary sectors of farming, forestry and fishing . These in turn support related processing industries - creameries, sawmills and sea-food packaging. Finally, the region supports a highly fragmented tourism sector, which is likewise based on self-employed and micro-businesses.

The region lacks its own metropolitan/ major urban centre and therefore lacks the modern economic/ industrial infrastructure associated with such centres. This is a critical factor, since in the absence of such infrastructure, the region creates little demand for a high skilled/ high waged workforce.

The region has a ‘conservative’ or ‘traditional’ social structure in which low aspirations combine with low expectations to perpetuate a passive, risk-avoiding business culture. Lacking dynamism, this business culture‘s horizons rarely extend beyond the immediate locality. Effectively, the region’s economy operates at little more than subsistence level. Dumfries and Galloway could be classified as having a ‘pre-industrial’ economy and society.

Given this background, it can be argued that what Dumfries and Galloway needs to do is ‘catch-up’ with the rest of Scotland. To do so the region first requires the development of essential levels of education , skills and training. The relocation of Dumfries and Galloway College onto a Crichton site shared with a merged Paisley University and Bell College ‘West of Scotland University’ presence will deliver this essential objective. The Crichton would then become what is best described as a ‘Polytechnic Campus’.

If this does reflect ( as I suspect it does, see 1. below) the Scottish Funding Council/ Lifelong Learning Group’s objective assessment of how best to create effective educational provision in Dumfries and Galloway , then some of the confusion surrounding the University of Glasgow situation can be removed. If it is considered that what Dumfries and Galloway needs is a ’polytechnic’ level of further/ higher education, then it follows that the level of educational provision provided by the University of Glasgow in Dumfries and Galloway is unnecessary and therefore not an efficient use of resources.

That the University of Glasgow courses, if continued, would pump ‘over-qualified’ and ‘over -educated’ graduates and post-graduates into a regional economy which lacks the structural capacity to make effective (or even any) use of their skills. The graduates and post-graduates would then either have to accept lower skilled and lower paid jobs (denying employment opportunities to others) or seek employment elsewhere.
In which case, it would seem entirely reasonable for the Scottish Executive to allow the University of Glasgow’s presence in Dumfries and Galloway to ‘wither on the vine’.

The above is based on a presentation given by Professor Ewart Keep to the Scottish Executive’s Lifelong Learning Group in 2004. It was Mark Batho, Head of the Scottish Executive’s Lifelong Learning Group who was briefing Deputy Minister Allan Wilson during the February Crichton Debate . Professor Ewart is a professorial fellow at Warwick Business School and Deputy Director of the Economic and
Social Research Council on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance. I have highlighted key remarks made by Professor Keep in his Presentation.


1..From http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/07/14121258/13037

Mark Batho set the scene for Professor Ewart Keep's presentation on the challenges for lifelong learning policy as described by his thought-provoking paper ' The 'Bottom Half' and the Dangers of Labour Market Polarisation'. Mark emphasised this is an area in which the Executive's Lifelong Learning Group has a very keen interest. In his presentation Professor Keep:

argued that lifelong learning was not a substitute for a strong industrial policy and welfare state, and that the value of skills in terms of economic success and social justice were in his opinion over estimated. Professor Keep maintained there is a growing polarisation in the labour market with a rise in the number of jobs at the bottom deciles of job quality offering lower pay, career prospects and learning opportunities, with in-work benefits subsidising the least efficient employers.

He suggested members also consider the impact on the labour market of an increasing number of university graduates. For example, more employers explicitly want people with degrees thus pushing non-graduates down the job ladder. In his view the product market strategies and quality of available jobs pose challenges for government policy and skills development and suggested that one-size fits all interventions will produce sub optimal results.

An alternative proposition would be to take a long-term approach by tailoring and targeting need to create a high wage, high skill economy for the majority of the workforce. This would require policy makers and stakeholders asking 'hard questions' about where to target resources to achieve the greatest impact and would only be successful with buy in from a wide range of actors. In his view the scale of change envisaged to adjust product market strategies and job quality might take 10-15 years to achieve.


I speculate that, faced with Glasgow University’s threat to quit Dumfries and so having to ask ‘hard questions about where to target resources to achieve the greatest impact’, and , having looked at the regional economy of Dumfries and Galloway, the Lifelong Learning Group have advised the Scottish Executive and Scottish Funding Council that continued support for Glasgow University’s ‘Liberal Arts’ courses at the Crichton is not an efficient use of educational resources.

For more on Professor Keep’s business focused critique of ‘Lifelong Learning’, see Appendix 1.

Part two : the Bigger Picture http://www.ces.fas.harvard.edu/publications/docs/pdfs/Andersson.pdf

In his presentation to the Lifelong Learning Group, Professor Keep recommended the work of Professor Paul Thompson of Strathclyde University who is a critic of the ‘Knowledge Economy’ (of which Lifelong Learning is a subset.) This led me to a paper presented by Swedish academic Jenny Andersson to a conference held at Lancaster University in 2006. [See Appendix 2]

This is a more ‘politically engaged’ approach than Professor Keep’s as the following quotations show:

the Third Way is a political economy based on the assumption of the reality of globalization, and accordingly it redefines the role of social democratic politics to act for the creation of wealth within the parameters set by globalization. Since capital is uncontrollable, what government must do is to provide the stable framework and infrastructure so as to attract capital and inward investment. The other leg of
this strategy, however, is to increase the value of the capital within its borders, that is, the human capital or the potential of the people. Attracting foreign investment has a parallel here in those labor-market policies, education policies, or asylum policies which attempt to attract the “best brains.”

Practically all New Labour policies, whether they be aimed at social inclusion, the pre-schooling of young children, or the preservation of the historical heritage, are economic in the sense of being given a role for the strategic creation of the human and social capital of the knowledge economy. In the same way, virtually all social or cultural values, from trust to curiosity and aesthetics are in New Labour thinking also economic values and therefore legitimate objects for economic intervention.

This expansion of the field of the Economy has meant that areas such as education policies,
cultural policies and social policies have become new forms of industrial policies.

.
From this perspective, the institutional acceptance of Glasgow University’s decision to withdraw from Dumfries is equivalent to recognising that Dumfries and Galloway could not support a major cutting-edge industrial development. [As opposed to investment timber or other primary processing forms of industry].

From this same perspective, the ‘knowledge economy’ is also a ‘knowledge industry’. An industry which depends on the exploitation of intellectual rather than physical labour. However, since my own views on this process have been influenced by those advanced by Guy Debord in his ‘Society of the Spectacle’ [1967] but which are not considered by Jenny Andersson in her paper, I will refrain from further comment.

Alistair Livingston

22 May 2007


Appendix 1

http://www.open.ac.uk/lifelong-learning/papers/39295485-0007-585D-0000015700000157_EwartKeepOUCONF-Paper.doc.

Learning Organisations, Lifelong Learning and the Mystery of the Vanishing Employers
Dr Ewart Keep University of Warwick

ABSTRACT
This paper reviews UK employers' provision of lifelong learning. It opens with an overview of the concept of the learning organisation and the barriers that stand in the way of its adoption, arguing that relatively few UK organisations have or are about to become learning organisations. It then examines the
record on providing lifelong learning to its adult workforce, which suggests that certain groups of workers (part-timers, older workers, those in low status jobs, those working in SMEs, and the less well qualified) are at risk of receiving very little non-task specific training. The paper then highlights the dwindling role, which policy makers are according to employers in their strategies for lifelong learning. The structural factors that explain this picture are outlined, including firms' product market strategies, the impact of the structure of the domestic market, the persistence of routinised forms of work organisation and job design, and the pressure for the maximisation of short-term profits. The paper concludes with a plea for a different style and type of policy approach to lifelong learning, that engages with these issues and which addresses the often-limited demand for higher levels of skill in the workplace.


A Snapshot of Current Employer Demand for Skills
The cumulative effect of the issues sketched in above needs to be underlined. At aggregate level, employers' conceptions of the skills the majority of their workforces need ought to be a source of very serious concern to policy makers. Two examples are offered here.

First, data from the 1997 Skills Survey (Ashton et al, 1999) shows that the following percentage of workers believed that their employer required no qualifications whatsoever from applicants that might fill the job which they currently held:
Manufacturing - 35.5 per cent
Construction - 22.6 per cent
Wholesale - 57.0 per cent
Hotels - 43.0 per cent
Transport - 32.7 per cent
Overall, 31.4 per cent of workers believed that their employer required no qualification of any sort from applicants for posts similar to those they currently held. At the same time, about one third of respondents to the survey appeared to be over qualified for their current job and to hold qualifications that were at a level higher than those required by their employer.

The second vignette comes from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS). Despite the endless rhetoric about the need for dramatic upskilling across the entire workforce in order to cope with competitive pressures, data from WERS indicates that managers in many organisations believe that large sections of their workforce require limited skills. Companies were asked what percentage of their non-managerial employees could be regarded as 'skilled' (i.e. having professional, associate professional and technical, or craft and related status). The proportion of workplaces indicating that less than one quarter of their non-managerial workforce was skilled was as follows:
Manufacturing - 44 per cent
Electricity, Gas & Water - 10 per cent
Construction - 31 per cent
Wholesale and Retailing - 80 per cent
Hotels and Restaurants - 82 per cent
Transport - 75 per cent
Financial Services - 80 per cent
Other Business Services - 30 per cent
Public Administration - 58 per cent
Education - 2 per cent
Health - 55 per cent
Other Community Services - 53 per cent
SOURCE: Cully et al, 1999:31-32)

In Wholesale and Retailing, 40 per cent of workplaces believed that they employed no skilled non-managerial employees. In Financial Services this figure was as high as 57 per cent.
It is more or less irrelevant if these figures represent the real skills of the workforces in question. The fact that managers believe that the distribution depicted above is real will influence how training is planned and distributed.

Appendix 2

From http://www.ces.fas.harvard.edu/publications/docs/pdfs/Andersson.pdf



In his presentation to the Lifelong Learning Group, Professor Keep recommended a book by Paul Thompson of Strathclyde University entitled ' Skating on Thin Ice' which explores the myths of the knowledge economy. Following this suggestion, I found a recent (2006) critique of the ’Knowledge Economy’ .

Center for European Studies Working Paper Series #145 (2007)
Socializing Capital, Capitalizing the Social:
Contemporary Social Democracy and the
Knowledge Economy
by
Jenny Andersson
Institute for contemporary history
Södertörn University College
14189 Huddinge, Sweden
Jenny.Andersson@sh.se

Quotations :

the Third Way is a political economy based on the assumption of the reality of globalization, and accordingly it redefines the role of social democratic politics to act for the creation of wealth within the parameters set by globalization. Since capital is uncontrollable, what government must do is to provide the stable framework and infrastructure so as to attract capital and inward investment. The other leg of
this strategy, however, is to increase the value of the capital within its borders, that is, the human capital or the potential of the people. Attracting foreign investment has a parallel here in those labor-market policies, education policies, or asylum policies which attempt to attract the “best brains.”

Practically all New Labour policies, whether they be aimed at social inclusion, the pre-schooling of young children, or the preservation of the historical heritage, are economic in the sense of being given a role for the strategic creation of the human and social capital of the knowledge economy. In the same way, virtually all social or cultural values, from trust to curiosity and aesthetics are in New Labour thinking also economic
values and therefore legitimate objects for economic intervention.

This expansion of the field of the Economy has meant that areas such as education policies,
cultural policies and social policies have become new forms of industrial policies.

Conclusion
I set out a provocative question in the Introduction, does social democracy have a critique of knowledge capitalism or merely a theory of knowledge capital? In the previous pages I have argued against the interpretation that has tended to dominate much of the literature on the Third Way, and that has seen it as essentially a continuation of neoliberalism.

Rather, I have pointed to important continuities between the Third Way and the historic
discourses of social democracy. I have argued that the Third Way is informed by a logic of capitalization of the social, a logic through which elements of the Social become forms of capital. While this has elements that are specific to the Third Way, it also holds similarities with social democracy’s historic rationalization discourses, and particularly with a technocratic or productivist legacy of Fabianism. In the knowledge economy, however, Fabianism takes new forms, as the economic policies of the Third Way target the capital embedded in human beings, in the disposition and character of individuals. This is a highly radical form of social intervention, directed towards the “tapping of potential” and the exploitation of talent and creativity in order to extract the value of human capital.

In this process, I argue, the Third Way turns what in the social democratic project have been articulations in critique of capitalism into arguments for capitalism, thus incorporating strands of utopian critique in the social democratic tradition into an economistic discourse of improvement. On the one hand, then, in the Third Way this stands in a continuity with a technocratic strand in social democracy, from an Enlightenment value of “useful knowledge,” where knowledge and skill were always parts of discourses of capitalist amelioration, productivism and Taylorism.

On the other, it marks a break with radical notions of self-fulfilment or wholeness as critiques of capitalism. The idea of self-improvement, of fulfilling one’s potential, of bridging the gap between what we are and what we have it in us to become, a deeply emancipatory notion in the history of social democracy, is in Third Way discourse a question of adapting to the demands of the market. Its notions of emancipation and exploitation in the knowledge economy, are fundamentally blurred. Freeing the potential of all, and exploiting the value of human capital, are seen as processes virtually without friction. The possible tensions and conflict between them are silenced.

Red and Black flags fly in Dumfries

Scottish Anti-nuclear Alliance

SCOTTISH NATIONAL PARTY & SCOTTISH GREEN PARTY COOPERATION AGREEMENT

1. The Scottish National Party and the Scottish Green Party have reached agreement
on how a new Government in Scotland will be established that pursues a progressive
programme and which places addressing climate change at the heart of its agenda.

2. The two parties agree on the following core issues and commit to working together
on them. Both parties:

i) oppose the building of new nuclear power stations;

ii) agree to early legislation to reduce climate-change pollution each year;
and

iii) have long believed that Scotland can be more successful with
independence and will work to extend the responsibilities of the Scottish
Parliament, always trusting the people to decide their constitutional
future.

3. Therefore, the Scottish Green Party is committed to supporting the Scottish National
Party in the votes for First Minister and Ministerial appointments. For their part, the
Scottish National Party agrees to consult Scottish Green Party MSPs in advance
regarding the broad shape of each year’s legislative and policy programme (together
with any key measures announced in-year), and in relation to the substance of the
budget process. The Scottish National Party also agrees to nominate a Green Party
MSP as Convenor of a subject committee for which the SNP is the nominating Party.

4. In the context of the wider Parliamentary consultation and engagement involving all
parties which the SNP wants to see develop, they also agree to give sympathetic
consideration to issues raised by the Green Party in Parliament, including via Motions
and Members Bills.

5. The SNP and the Scottish Green Party believe this agreement sets an example for
the new Parliament of parties working constructively together, seeking consensus and
agreement, to deliver a progressive agenda for Scotland. Both Parties will consider
further opportunities to work together co-operatively, as other policy issues arise.

Signed:
Alex Salmond Robin Harper
SNP Leader Scottish Green Party Co-convener
Shiona Baird
Scottish Green Party Co-convener

Unionists to suffocate SNP?

After writing my 'history essay ' - see blog below - found a rather bleak analysis of current Scottish Parliament situation by Neal Ascherson. Have pasted final section below.


Neal Ascherson’s view
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/scotland_election_4602.jsp

But winning campaigns, even winning elections by a whisker, does not always add up to winning power. The SNP now finds itself in a trap. It has no overall parliamentary majority at Holyrood. And its chances of finding enough coalition partners or allies to allow an SNP government to govern suddenly look remote. Alex Salmond is reduced to the prospect of a minority government, living from day to day, at the mercy of its enemies.

In the two previous Scottish parliaments (1999-2003 and 2003-07), the Liberal Democrats were junior partners in coalition governments with the Labour Party. Now that Labour has been defeated, the Lib-Dems are the only plausible partners for the SNP. And yet they have flatly refused all Salmond's approaches. Their leader Nicol Stephen insists that negotiations are pointless until the SNP gives up its intention to hold a referendum on Scottish independence by 2010.

There is something very odd about this. At first, people thought Nicol Stephen was bluffing, trying to raise the price for his support. But he is not. And yet none of the reasons for his refusal make sense.
It's worth looking at the Lib-Dem case in detail:

1. "We are a Unionist party, and can have no part in any independence project".

This is ridiculous for two reasons.

Firstly, because the Lib-Dems are actually a federalist party, not really a unionist one dedicated to the preservation of a centralising British state governed from London. They demand sweeping increases in Holyrood's power over finance, which under the British system would almost inevitably lead towards full independence.

Secondly, the grounds for opposing a referendum don't hold water. If the Scots do want Scotland to become an independent state, then blocking their opportunity to say so is a violation of democracy. If they don't want independence (and at present most do not) then a "unionist" party has nothing to fear from a referendum.

2. "The only referendum that counts is the vote on May 3rd - and by voting mainly for Unionist parties, the Scots have already rejected independence".

This is a quite childish view of politics. "Independence" was not on the ballot-paper, and constitutional matters hardly ever direct people's choice between parties at elections. In Scotland, every politician knows that party loyalty doesn't tell you about a voter's views on the union. For many years, the biggest single block of pro-independence Scots was composed of committed Labour voters - although their party was rigidly unionist.

3. "The SNP won't compromise on their referendum; it's their only policy".

Nobody believes this. Salmond, who originally wanted a one-question, yes-or-no ballot, now repeats that he would accept a multi-option referendum (making an absolute majority for independence almost impossible). He makes clear that the poll could be delayed for years. Finally, he would consent to parking the whole independence / referendum question with a cross-party constitutional convention, leaving the parliament free to get on with normal business.

The convention idea was also in the Lib-Dems' manifesto. Neither is the "one policy" gibe true. The SNP does in fact have a detailed programme of reforms - many of which are close to the Lib-Dems' own. As well as the constitutional convention, the SNP shares the Lib-Dem demands for expanded powers for Holyrood and a local income tax. Labour and the Tories would not touch either notion.

4. "The suspense of an independence referendum would overshadow the whole parliament, making coherent reforms impossible".

There is no evidence whatever for this, especially since it's common knowledge how unlikely a "yes" majority for independence is at the moment. In any case, a referendum has to be decreed by Holyrood, and the SNP - even if it did form a coalition - would probably lose that vote.

The power of suffocation
It follows that, given the feebleness of Nicol Stephen's arguments, there must be some other reason for his stubborn refusal to seek a deal. In Scotland, a rather convincing conspiracy theory is gaining ground. This reports that an ambitious bargain has been struck between the two "big beast" Scots at Westminster: Menzies Campbell, leader of the British Liberal Democrats, and Gordon Brown, soon to become Labour prime minister in succession to Tony Blair.

The terms would run like this. In Scotland, the Scottish Lib-Dems will boycott all contacts with Alex Salmond and instead join an unofficial "unionist bloc" of Labour, Tories and Lib-Dems at Holyrood. The bloc (already nicknamed "the unholy alliance") would treat the SNP ministers as outlaws, despite their democratic mandate. It would oppose and frustrate every attempt they made to govern until the SNP-led Scottish executive collapsed and the minority government resigned.

In return, Gordon Brown would look kindly on the Liberal Democrats if - as seems possible - the next United Kingdom elections in 2009 destroy Labour's absolute majority and produce a hung parliament at Westminster. Then there could be a Lib-Lab coalition at the British level; and - if Brown is feeling especially grateful - some assurance that proportional representation would be introduced for Westminster elections.

And in Scotland, a third Lib-Lab coalition executive would be constructed. The Nats would be shown, once and for all, that they were aliens and intruders with no right to govern Scotland. No referendum would be allowed, and the independence idea would be discredited for ever. End of story, with everyone happy...
Could this frightful scenario really be taken seriously by anyone? It seems that it could. And yet it is not only a democratic disgrace. It is a script for uncontrollable political upheaval at some point in the future. The desire for change in Scotland is authentic. A steady current of opinion is moving towards wider self-government for Scotland, including fiscal autonomy - extensions of devolution which the UK framework and Prime Minister Gordon Brown may be unable to tolerate.

Pretending that all this isn't happening by suffocating its messenger - the SNP majority in the elections - is suicidally daft. The implication is that devolution amounts to a sham, and that the important decisions about Scotland - not just policy decisions but even the choice of which party governs in Edinburgh - are still taken behind closed doors in London. What conclusions are Scottish voters supposed to draw from that?

So Alex Salmond is left with no alternative. It's minority government or nothing. Westminster tradition sees this as un-British. In fact, there were two minority British governments as recently as the 1970s, both Labour. Harold Wilson ran one in the immediate aftermath of the February 1974 elections. After Wilson resigned in March 1976, the narrow parliamentary majority of his successor James Callaghan became ever tinier thanks to a series of by-election defeats over the next three years. To keep the wheels of government turning he had to rely on "arrangements" with the Liberals and - as it happens - the then sizeable SNP contingent to get its laws through. It has to be said that neither was a success story. Wilson gave up after a few months, and called fresh elections in November 1974 which gave him a working majority. Callaghan struggled on, until his failure to ratify Scottish devolution in 1979 moved the SNP MPs to bring him down.
But minority governments can survive, even get things done. All depends on the tolerance and responsibility of the opposition parties. And those who planned the Scottish parliament in the 1990s had a vision of a new sort of democratic assembly, far removed from obsolete Westminster patterns, whose watchword would be cooperation rather than confrontation. Party boundaries would be relaxed and party whips would not dragoon their flocks.

Some of that - although far from all - has become reality at Holyrood. But will the opposition parties remember those cooperative dreams as they close in on the helpless SNP? Alex Salmond's hope, even more urgent than holding that referendum, is to show the Scots that the SNP can govern sensibly, effectively and constructively. It does not look as if he will be allowed that chance.

When Empires Fall...

This is a rather lengthy history lecture, so here is my conclusion upfront


7.4 The Roman Empire in Britain did not suddenly collapse. It slid slowly into decay , falling apart region by region. The centre, Londinium, could not hold the broken pieces together. The Union of 1707 between English and Scottish parliaments began falteringly but as the British Empire grew, it success forged stronger and stronger ties between Scotland and England. But now the British Empire is no more. As it recedes into history, so the constitutional foundation of the United Kingdom has began to change. Although it is alleged that the United Kingdom has no written constitution, the British Parliament was established by Article III of Treaty of Union of 1707 : That the United Kingdom of Great Britain be represented by one and the same Parliament, to be styled the Parliament of Great Britain. Regardless of what powers it does or does not have at present, the Scottish Parliament, simply by existing, will eventually trigger a British constitutional crisis. This will be a crisis of sovereignty. Out of which either a single federal state or two separate sovereign states will emerge.



1. The Roman Empire in Britain

1.1 Forget where I read it, but one of the most useful suggestions I have found is that the Romans were not really interested in ‘conquering’ the whole of Britain. All they really wanted was the more fertile lowland zone - from the Cheshire Plains in the north west down through the midlands to the south-east plus the south west as far as Devon. That region would have ‘paid for itself’, I.e. would have produced enough agricultural surplus to have supported a small Imperial army and bureaucracy and would have generated enough trade to make it a positive contributor to the Imperial economy.

1.2 The problem the Romans then had was that in order to maximise the prosperity of this lowland zone, they had to neutralise the upland zone ’tribes’ (in Wales, in the Pennines, in the far south west ) who threatened to disrupt it economy through raiding. So they had to push their frontier north and west into the upland zone. But the upland zone was a drain on resources - needed lots of forts and soldiers and roads (and eventually Walls) to keep the ‘tribes’ in check, but did not produce enough agricultural surplus / trading opportunities to make the investment self- financing. So the Romans had to carry on even further north into what is now (but was not then : no Scots) Scotland . Militarily, they could defeat the north Britons and ‘Picts’ , but economically/ practically they could not sustain the Empire in the far north.

1.3 The eventual outcome was a compromise. The Forth/ Clyde ( Antonine Wall ) became the northern limit of Roman influence, the region between the Forth / Clyde and the Tyne / Solway ( Hadrian’s Wall) boundaries became a buffer zone controlled for the Romans by client rulers. The upland Pennine/ Cumbrian area became a military zone controlled from York, with Wales in a similar situation controlled from Chester. The main lowland/ southern economically viable zone was left in civilian hands.

2. Geography and politics

2.1 This Roman ‘rationalisation by geography’ of Britain survived the end of Roman rule. What did not survive was the Imperial administrative structure. Unlike mainland Europe, there was no massive movement of ‘barbarian tribes’ into Britain. Rather there were constant sea-borne raiding by Picts (from north of the Antonine Wall) and Scots ( from Ireland.) into the lowland/ civilian zone. These raids were similar to the later raids by the Vikings.

2.2 To defend the civilian zone, an attempt was made to use Saxons and Angles as ‘auxiliaries’ - but once established, the Saxons and Angles became more of a problem than the raiders. They had to be paid, but once the immediate threat had gone, there was little willingness by the main landowners to stump up the cash to pay them. There was also the fear that the Saxons were being used as a private army in power struggles between politicians seeking control of the province.

2.3 An alternative source of military strength lay in the militarised zone. Here, the soldiers of Roman garrisons had been settled for so long they had become part of the local population. Since ‘Romanisation’ had never fully occurred, the non- Roman local population retained features of their ‘Celtic’ Iron Age past. As a result, small ‘kingdoms’ based around chieftains and their warrior-bands (re) emerged. These warrior-bands were happy to fight the Saxons and Angles, but were no less disruptive of the post- Roman ‘civilianised’ society and economy. They too demanded payment for the ‘protection’ they offered and were in a position enforce their demands.

2.4 The precise details are lacking, but the end result was the total disappearance of Roman Britain and its replacement by dozens of warring kingdoms. Some were Saxon, some were Anglian, some were British. Gradually, the Saxon and Anglian kingdoms pushed west - to create what is now England, leaving the British in control of Cornwall, Wales and parts of southern Scotland [ not sure about Cumbria].


3. Scotland.

3.1 In Scotland , it was the Irish ‘ Scots’ rather than the English ‘ Anglo-Saxons’ who gained control. Starting from a foot hold in Argyll, in the 6th and 7th centuries they expanded east to absorb the Picts before moving south to come in conflict with the Angles of Northumbria who were pushing north as well as west. The Scots checked the northward expansion of the Angles, but the Angles consolidated their hold in the south - as far west as Whithorn in Galloway and also into Ayrshire. In between, the Britons of Strathclyde managed to hold on until they were weakened by Viking attacks in the late 8th century after which Strathclyde came under Scots influence.

3.2 The Vikings from the 8th century onward, and especially once they (especially the Danes) could deploy land-armies throw more confusion into this picture. For example, the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 - which may have been fought at Burnswark in Annandale involved West Saxons, Irish Vikings, Northumbrians, Scots and Britons. This battle has been claimed to have secured the existence of ‘England’ as a distinct entity.

3.3 It was this England which William of Normandy invaded in 1066. However, William’s conquest was initially that of the old Roman civilian province of southern England. In 1069/70 William had to forcibly subdue the north of England, devastating the region in the process. Even at the time of the Domesday book in 1086, Westmoreland, Cumberland, Northumberland and County Durham remained outwith its detailed description of ‘Norman England’ .

3.4 Effectively, despite the battle of Brunanburh, the boundary between what was to become Scotland and what was to become England - the territory of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria - remained uncertain right up until James VI of Scotland became James I of a ‘United Kingdom of Scotland and England (and Wales) ’ in 1603. At various times for 1000 years up until 1603, depending on the ebb and flow of national and local power, the south of Scotland was under English rule and the north of England under Scottish rule - whilst the Borderers themselves did their best to live by their own rules… Nor did the numerous armed conflicts between England and Scotland often, if ever, stray further south or further north of the Roman ‘military zone’.

4. 1638 to 1746

4.1 Although the Union of the Crowns in 1603 pacified the immediate Border zone, it did not bring peace. Rather it set in motion a struggle which lasted nearly 120 years. In Scotland the Stewarts’s may have held the throne, but their effective power was constrained by the almost equal influence of Scotland’s other powerful families. On several occasions, Stewart kings (and queen Mary) were held hostage by on or other of the rival ‘noble’ houses of Scotland. But as rulers of a united Kingdom, the later Stuarts were not so directly constrained. What they failed to realise was that in England (unlike Scotland) Parliament had come to act as a constraint on royal power.

4.2 The result was a power struggle which became a long drawn out civil war. It began with a skirmish at Turiff (near Aberdeen) in May 1639 and ended at Culloden (near Inverness ) in April 1746. Although the power struggle was fought out across Scotland, northern England, Ireland and Wales and although France, Spain and Holland became involved, at its heart lay a city founded by the Romans - London. Here wealth and power were concentrated . This why, in a last, desperate gamble for power, Charles Edward Stuart led his army south towards London in 1745.

4.3 Yet it was precisely to deter such an attempt that the Treaty of Union of 1707 was designed. It was meant to close the door against a return of the Stuarts to power in England (with French or Spanish support) via Scotland. But why this desire to keep the Stuarts out? “Business” is the answer. England was at the beginning of its progress towards Empire. What drove this process was trade and commerce. The last thing needed was a king who believed he had a divine right (a theory invented by James VI /I in reaction to the ‘contractual’ theory of kingship advanced by Scottish Presbyterians ) to interfere in the workings of the emerging economy.

4.4 The ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, when William of Orange replaced James VII/ II as king should have ended the Stuart threat to the growth of England’s economic wealth and power. But it had an unintended consequence. After 1689, the Scottish parliament revelled in its new independence from Stuart control and tried to set Scotland on its own, separate, path to economic prosperity. The ‘Company Trading in Africa and India ‘ - the Darien scheme - was the main result and received massive support. The failure of the Company (for which lack of support from king William was blamed) led the parliament to claim the right of Scotland to choose its own king. This raised the spectre, unlikely but possible, of the Scots returning the Scottish crown to the Stuarts, to James VIII.

4.5 To prevent such an eventuality, a deal was done. In exchange for giving up their parliament, the Scots were guaranteed their Presbyterian religion, granted freedom of trade with England and her colonies (with Scottish ships protected by the Royal Navy) and compensated for losses experienced through the failure of the Company Trading in Africa and India. The Hanoverian succession to the new United Kingdom of Great Britain was also agreed.

4.6 The Scots did not immediately prosper. The Jacobites (Stuart loyalists) played the nationalist card, arguing that the Treaty of Union was a ‘stab in the back’, pushed through parliament against the will of the Scottish people by a Whig elite ‘bought and sold for English gold’. However, the Stuarts, despite Charles Edward holding court in Edinburgh in 1745, were never interested in ruling Scotland alone - re-claiming the English throne was their goal. The Jacobite uprisings in Scotland - in 1708, 1715, 1718 and 1745 all had this objective and would have required external (French or Spanish) support to have succeeded in re-restoring a Stuart to the English throne.

5. Nationalism and Empire

5.1 Historians have puzzled over the absence of a ‘Scottish’ nationalism in the 19th century. One theory is that there was a Scottish nationalism, but it existed within a wider British/ Imperial nationalism. The Jacobite Scots could express their nationalism militarily through the courageous exploits of the ‘Highland’ regiments with their tartan kilts and bagpipes - the Scots as the shock-troops of an expanding Empire. For other Scots, national pride could be expressed through the engineering industry - the steam ships and steam trains for which the Scots became famous. Other Scots helped to manage and run the Empire. And for hundreds of thousands of Scots emigrants , the old (American) and new colonies (Australia, New Zealand) offered the chance of escape from what remained (despite industrialisation) a poorer country than England, though still more prosperous than Ireland.

5.2 This overlap between Scottish and British nationalism grew through the 19th century and survived into the 20th. But, as both Industry and Empire began their slow decline, so too did the once taken-for-granted dual identity. Whilst the two great ‘patriotic’ wars of the 20th century encouraged loyalty to the British state, their economic impact damaged Scotland. They reinforced Scotland’s economic reliance on heavy
( shipbuilding, iron/steel making, railway engineering, coal-mining) industry, a reliance which reached its peak in the 1950s when the Scots benefited from the war time destruction of Germany and Japan’s heavy engineering capacity.

5.3. In the 1930ies, the risk that a collapse in Scotland’s manufacturing base would encourage Scottish nationalism was recognised by both Conservative/ Liberal Unionist and Labour parties in Scotland.

Unable to do little more than scratch the surface of Scottish economic problems, Unionist politicians were forced to use scare tactics to dampen down Scottish nationalism. Whilst accepting that the Scottish economy was in considerable difficulty, it was argued that anything in the way of a severance or loosening of the ties with England would spell disaster. In short, if people believed that the situation was bad at the moment , it was nothing compared to the nationalist abyss of economic collapse which would be inevitable should the Scots opt for their own parliament… again and again it was emphasised that Scotland needed England to survive. Whereas unionism in the pre-war period was strident and confident, in the inter- war period it had become defensive and negative [ R. Finlay: Unionist Scotland 1800-1997: 1998:104]

5.4 The success of the wartime ‘planned economy’ created a belief (shared by both Labour and Conservatives) after the Second World War that Scotland could under go a managed industrial transformation away from its over reliance on heavy engineering, and a social transformation through massive investment in new housing and new towns. This post-war consensus began to break down in the 1970ies. By this time it was also clear that ‘planned economy’ was not working as planned. The nationalist upsurge, which had been so feared in the 1930ies, became a reality in the 1970ies to the benefit of the Scottish National Party. The SNP were able to counter a revival of the 1930ies ‘economic collapse’ threat by pointing to the newly discovered North Sea oil reserves.

6. Home Rule

6.1 To counter the SNP, a proposal to allow the Scots a limited degree of ‘home rule’ (originally proposed back in 1913) was drawn up. To satisfy the fears of Scottish Labour backbenchers, a ‘40% of all registered voters’ threshold was placed on the devolution referendum of 1978. Although there was a 51% majority for devolution, this was not enough to achieve the 40% of all voters threshold. The SNP Mps withdrew their support from a minority Labour government and in the 1979 General Election the Conservatives won.

6.2 Over the next 18 years , Conservatives adopted economic and social policies which favoured the ‘free market economy ’ over the ‘planned state economy’ . Whilst this benefited the City of London, the ‘service sector’ and new industries like the electronics industry, traditional manufacturing industries were decimated. The Conservatives also took a strong anti-trade union stance, determined to humble the miners in particular. [The miners were blamed for bringing down the 1970-74 Conservative government].

6.3 In structural terms, whereas 19th century industrialisation had to an extent dispersed economic and political power away from London and the south of England - to south Wales, to the Midlands, to north east and north west England and to central Scotland - between 1979 and 1997 this process was reversed. Although it can be argued that these regions were already in decline and the Conservatives simply made the process more obvious. For the Labour Party, this process was extremely painful, since the regions affected were their heartlands. Labour’s failure to win the 1992 General Election led to a total collapse in confidence and the party’s re-invention as ‘New Labour’ under Tony Blair. Re-positioned to the right of ‘old’ Labour, new Labour were able to keep their traditional voters in the former-industrial regions whilst winning over voters in the Conservatives’ southern heartlands and won the 1997, 2001 and 2005 General Elections.

6.4 In Scotland, it might have been expected that the break-down of the Unionist ‘planned economy’ consensus would lead to a nationalist resurgence, but this did not happen. Instead, the Scottish Labour Party presented themselves as defenders of Scottish industry and Scottish society against an attack by an ‘English’ Conservative Party. It is possible that this marked the end of Unionist Scotland. To reinforce their nationalist credentials , the Scottish Labour Party re-discovered the merits of devolution and pledged to hold another devolution referendum should Labour win a UK General Election. At this time, the assumption was that so long as elections to any such Scottish Parliament were held under a system of proportional representation, Labour would always have a controlling influence. When Labour won in 1997, a referendum was held and the first elections to the new Scottish Parliament took place in 1999.

7. The State of the Union - May 2007

7.1 In the Scottish Parliament, a minority SNP government is the most likely out come of a confusing election on 3rd May. On the same day in England, the Conservatives made gains in local council elections. With Tony Blair about to be replaced by Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, the Union could be in trouble. Unless Gordon Brown can reverse the slide in support for Labour, the Conservatives will be fighting hard to win the next UK election. But in Scotland, the Scottish Conservatives are unlikely to win more than one or two seats in any such election, having made no advance in the Scottish election in May. If the Conservatives are to win in 2009 or 2010 they will have to make gains in England at Labour (and the Lib Dems) expense. Scotland will be an irrelevance.

7.2 Will the Conservatives ( or more to the point, their supporters in the right wing press) be able to resist the temptation to undermine a Gordon Brown led Labour Party by playing the ‘West Lothian’ card - I.e. to ask why a Prime Minister representing a Scottish seat should have the power to make decisions affecting only England, when a Prime Minister representing an English seat would have no equivalent power to make decisions affecting Scotland? Another problem area is that of public spending. It is a cheap but easy trick to manufacture outrage by splashing headline figures about showing how much more public money the Scots get per head. The Scottish Labour Party no doubt held itself aloof from the Scottish Sun’s front page ‘noose’ on 3rd May. The English Conservative Party would likewise have no comment to make should any anti-Scottish hysteria grip the English tabloid press.

7.3 In the run up to 3rd May, it was difficult to detect any positive support for the continuation of the Union of 1707. The Unionists did little more than re-cycle scare stories first run in the 1930ies [see 5.3 above], whilst there was a strong anti-Union theme emanating from self- proclaimed ‘ English nationalists’ even in the ‘Comments’ sections of online Scottish newspapers. Most worrying of all for supporters of the Union, was the revelation (in the Spectator) that Francis Maude, chair of the English Conservative Party, was proposing a ‘velvet divorce’ with the Scottish Conservatives. Although the story was denied, out of 12 pieces of Conservative election material received ahead of 3rd May (for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, where the Conservatives increased their majority) the party is consistently described as ‘Scottish Conservatives’ , with ‘Scottish Conservative and Unionist’ appearing only twice - in the context of ‘how to place your votes’ examples of ballot papers on which the full party name was used.

7.4 The Roman Empire in Britain did not suddenly collapse. It slid slowly into decay , falling apart region by region. The centre, Londinium, could not hold the broken pieces together. The Union of 1707 between English and Scottish parliaments began falteringly but as the British Empire grew, it success forged stronger and stronger ties between Scotland and England. But now the British Empire is no more. As it recedes into history, so the constitutional foundation of the United Kingdom has began to change. Although it is alleged that the United Kingdom has no written constitution, the British Parliament was established by Article III of Treaty of Union of 1707 : That the United Kingdom of Great Britain be represented by one and the same Parliament, to be styled the Parliament of Great Britain. Regardless of what powers it does or does not have at present, the Scottish Parliament, simply by existing, will eventually trigger a British constitutional crisis. This will be a crisis of sovereignty. Out of which either a single federal state or two separate sovereign states will emerge.