On Orcadian Independence

[danieldwilliam]

Yesterday, I was catching up on a bit of Scottish independence referendum chat.*

I came across some talk** of Orkney and Shetland making a counter bid for indepedence.***

It set me thinking about what the minimum size of a practically independent nation-state is. There appear to be lots of institutions that nation-states need one of. Not necessarily a large one of whatever it is but definitely one. Difficult to be a nation-state if you don’t have a diplomatic service. Then there are a bunch of things that a nation-state, or any community needs access to. A police training college, someone to write regulations for hotel health and safety. Someone who knows how to buy fire engines and lifeboats.

I’m not necessarily thinking about the minimum size to have an economy large enough to afford these things or to afford to buy them in. Orkney, for example, is likely to have significant oil and fisheries and renewable energy to sell.

But with a population of 20,000 would Orkney have enough people to do all the things that needed doing? And, if it contracted out a lot of services does being reliant on (foreign) suppliers for a bunch of important stuff undermine the idea of a nation-state.

Two examples. An Orcadian diplomatic service that wanted to set up embassies in the top 50 countries Orkney wanted to influence, with 5 staff in each embassy would require to base abroad more than 1% of the population of Orkney.

If Orkney contracted with, say Scotland for access to the Police Scotland training college for the training of the Orcadian Constabulary how much of the culture of the Orcadian Constabulary is actually the culture of the Scottish Police and therefore determined by the government and people of Scotland?

How big do you need to be in order to be large enough to do in-house enough of the things that shape and project your national character?****


*To be honest I’m not paying that much attention to the substance of the debate. I’ve already made up my mind pretty firmly. I’ve come to terms with the necessary ambiguity and uncertainty. No new information that might reasonably be expected is going to change my mind. I want to avoid getting in to an argument with my wife about it.

** Often this talk is by some agrieved English person and is along the lines of “Ha, ha, just you wait Scotland / Salmond (for the two are interchangable like the Kim family and Korea), just you wait as soon as you leave England, Orkney will declare independence and take all “your” oil with it. Then you’ll be bankrupt like Zimbabwe. Ha, ha, ha.”

To which the only rational response is, “Cheers, cheers for that. Perhaps we’ll manage to not treat Orkney like some second rate provence or the personal fiefdom of second rate Labour politicians and, if we fail, well, we’ve still got a higher GDP per capita than you, so I reckon we’ll be just fine thanks all the same.”

*** Which I think they would be entitled to do and I can see why they might not fancy being run by the Central Belt.

**** If indeed that is a thing you want to do.

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I feel very conflicted about this. As someone who lives in England, I don't want to lose Scotland and would be very concerned about the consequences. But as someone who tends to share the yes-voters' view of UK government, I would adore to see the Scots stick two fingers up at it. I'm not sure which of those views fits more closely with the way I try to approach politics.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Difficult to tell which chimes more closely with political approach.

I think there is a good scenario for politics in England etc in the event of a Yes vote where everyone gets shaken a bit, is forced to examine some of their fundamental assumptions and the competition for people and leakage of ideas across the border encourages the UK government to think about satisfying its own citizens better.

Equally, there is a downside where the Tories just win election after election and insist on talking about Europe as if it weren’t a question of destroying workers’ rights.

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure you'd be "losing Scotland".

We'd still be here. Unless we voted to saw things off at the border and tow the country somewhere warmer.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I have often thought that a wizard scheme would be to rotate the entire British Isles (including Shetland) around the Scilly Isles so that Shetland ended up approximately off the coast of Lisbon.

Not only would this open up North Western Europe to a more direct Gulf Stream but Scotland would have a postively perfect climate.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, former Premier of Queensland, apocryphally, had a scheme to dig a trench around the Queensland border, thus creating a small salt water canal around the entire state.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this and trying to work out why it would feel like losing Scotland.

Then I remembered a conversation I had with Danny a while ago, almost certainly at about three in the morning, where he said "Scotland is closer to its soul", and those words really resonated with me. I think that if Scotland votes yes, England will be a little bit further away from its soul. Possibly more than a little bit.

[andrewducker]

I can totally understand that, and I am sure that there will be a change.

I would love it if this kicks people into realising that they have a problem, and a democratic deficit which means that many, many people feel cut adrift from their country.

But I am not hopeful. If I was hopeful that the remainder of the UK was both aware of its problem and willing to fix them then I would not be voting Yes.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I would feel the same way.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I think the awareness is beginning to dawn. Too slowly to affect the result of the independence referendum.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting discussion, isn't it? From the news coverage, I've got the impression that the Islands are quite keen to have more powers locally and probably feel as distant from Edinburgh as they do London. It will be interesting to see who they think will give them those powers. I've got the impression they are more inclined to vote no but then everywhere on the news seems more inclined to vote no than Dundee... i suspect it will be the disillusioned Labour voters in the central belt who will swing it, but I honestly don't know which way it's going to go now. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much for a yes vote.

Must be hard to be divided at home on the issue - most of the no voters I know seem to be really depressed about the whole thing.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

My dad has a house on Orkney and he and I were chatting about his recent trip up there where he’d been discussing the referendum. Orcadians, or native Orcadians, seem more likely to vote no and they also seem keen on having more power locally. (I’m all in favour of more local power. In some ways I think independence is not the most important constitutional question in front of us. I think increasing local council power and protecting it might be more important.) They seem general sceptical about any of the governmental choices from down south. Non-native Orcadians, like my dad’s neighbour, seem a bit more disposed to an independent Scotland.

I think the swing vote is definitely disillusioned Central Belt Labour voters and you can see than in the way the rhetoric on independence from the Yes campaign has changed over the last year. There seems to have been an assumption by the Labour Party that their members and supporters would also come out for No and be prepared to campaign for the No campaign and that doesn’t seem to have been as true as they assumed.

Whole thing appears on a knife edge to me.

I keep waiting for Cameron to appear on a platform with Miliband and Clegg announcing the setting up of a Constitutional Commission to determine the details of Devo Max but I think we might be too close to the UK general election for that.

If I were Salmond I’d ask to debate Farage on the subject.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

Salmond vs. Farage would be a sight to behold...

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Can you imagine?

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I hope you're claiming the prescience point on this.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I’m not finding it that hard. MLW is not as strongly no as I am yes and I understand and respect how she’s arrived at her point of view. I think she feels more British than I do and therefore values being part of Britain slightly more than the expection that Scotland would become more like the country she wants Britain to be if Scotland were independent.

We rarely discuss the matter. I occasionally look at a UK GE opinion poll, mutter darkly as the Conservative polling improves about a Tory-UKIP coalition government in 2015 and make a joke about how if I’m going to be forced to live in a neo-liberal hell-hole I’m going to go an live in Australia where at least it’s sunny and I’ll get a pay rise.

But, this is about the only think she and I have ever fundamentally disagreed on.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

National identity is a funny old thing, isn't it?

I guess if I'm honest, I always felt English rather than British and now I feel more Scottish because this is my home, I've lived here since I was 21, only ever owned property here, got married here etc etc. I'm not sure I really know what a British identity really is; before I lived here, Scotland may as well have been a foreign nation for all I knew about it, and it *feels* like a different country every time I go back down to the Midlands to visit family.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

It certainly is and I wonder if my own national identity situation gives me more or less insight in to the question of national identity in general.

Born in England to English parents but brought up in Scotland and Australia. I hold UK and Australian citizenship. Feel more Scottish than British at the moment and don’t feel English as far as I can tell.

(If Orkney becomes independent I’m definitely trying to get citizenship up there too.)

I certainly don’t feel national identity very strongly having had so many.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

It is now a standing joke between a friend and I that every time she introduces me to someone online as English, I complain that no-one would ever know these days if it wasn't for my complete inability to pick up a Scottish accent despite living here for 15 years ;)

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I recommend adopting as strong a comedy Scottish accent as you can. Obviously, no one will be fooled but as a nation Scots are famously delighted whenever an English person gives it “Awauhey, Jimmy, it’s a broad, bricht, moonlicht nicht the nicht” in a spirit of banter and mutual respect.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

When I started going out with f4f3, my mother's comment was "Does he sound like Billy Connolly?" I'm not sure she'd ever actually met a Glaswegian.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

*chortle*

When I decided to move to Aberdeen to do my PhD, a lot of folks down in Lancaster commented to whether I would be able to understand anyone when I got there. Actually I found my supervisor from N. Ireland much harder to follow than any Scot I've met before or since! I have never lived in Glasgow though...

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I am still entertained that the Australian TV network subtitled John Smeaton.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I required John Smeaton to be subtitled.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

People's ideas about history seem to come into play as well. I am thoroughly bemused by the attitude that having independence would somehow invalid all our shared history or be a betrayal of it. Kind of like all the people who are acting like we can physically remove ourselves from being part of the same land mass. There are a lot of English folks living down south making comments that make me have to refrain from saying 'if we had just declared independence one day without any fanfare, would you have even noticed we were gone??'

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I’m not so sure the south of England would have noticed if we’d just quitely left. Cynically, until they decided to start a war and realised that large parts of the cannon fodder had also left.

The question of independence seems to be very personal to most people, rather than a technical discussion about governance.

People don’t tend to get this personally excited about the idea of spinning out a subsiduary of a large company.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

If we vote Yes, Culloden will never have happened.

(Failing to recognise that most Scots alive today would have been on the Hanoveran side.)

[matgb]

Microstates are weird.

You don't necessarily have to have a diplomatic service, you do need to have contact with a sponsoring nation and immediate neighbours.

As examples, look at the Isle of Man, and the two Channel Island bailiwicks, both are theoretically independent but part of Liz's realms, in practice they let the UK foreign office do their treaty obligation stuff and occasionally make a fuss when told to to conform to some law or other (Man and homosexuality springs to mind).

Technically, there are multiple small independent states scattered around the USA, but all basically have the foreign policy of "talk to Washington and remind them they owe us money", etc. I believe there are treaties that make the US deal with their international stuff, etc but it's ages since I knew all this stuff.

On the other hand, there's the Vatican, which is obviously a special case. Greenland might be the place to look at for guidance on it actually, tiny population, etc.

IIRC Jersey sends senior cops for training in England (and I think pays for the courses somehow), and buys in occasional services like labs &c. But how much of that is stuff I know from studying it years ago, and how much is from watching Bergerac reruns I can't say.

[auntyros.livejournal.com]

How do very tiny nations currently manage? Are there San Marino embassies in multiple foreign countries? Or, I don't know, Nauru ones? I feel like a lot of the things which larger nations need and take lots of expertise and/or time and/or money might not need to be nearly so complex in a very tiny nation, and some might not need to exist at all.