Scotland and Me

Tomorrow morning the sun will rise and I will awaken. The occurrence will be a familiar one and no different to most other awakenings; but with one exception. I will not be immediately be sure whether the country I wake up in; will be the same country I was born in.
The consequences are profound. Like others I have opinions on these circumstances, that arise from politics, economics, history, society, and culture. Opinions that are well founded, and which like other views I articulate, may also prove to be painfully prescient. But I won't dwell on what might be, as I haven’t the energy, and might sound bitter. Afterall when analysis is based on emotion, there is a tendency to sound bitter.
I make no great claims to be an expert on Scotland, but I read a lot of history, am reasonably well informed, and am often correct in foreseeing what might happen in unforeseen, but circumstantial and shadowy future. I find such prescience a bore, as in projecting personal views on what might be, or what might evolve, I am generally ignored or mocked. Then years later, when What I suggested might happen, did happen, people then say something like; “you said that years ago”. This flatters and annoys, but my annoyance in this case is not about the macro consequences of an unnecessary divorce, but the micro aspects of personal emotion, and here’s why……..
As a somewhat precocious youth I always thought that there would be at least two things I would never see in my lifetime.
The first was British soldiers fighting in military conflicts. Like most boys I was fascinated by war and read vast numbers of books on military conflicts. I had family members involved in conflicts, including an American cousin in Viet Nam. In the early 1980’s, prior to attending Polytechnic, I’d even visited the SAS barracks at Bradbury Lines as part of my duties as a young civil servant helping to coordinate (with others) SAS military exercises, but I truly thought that the actions of British soldiers in military conflict was confined to history. Then in April 1982, I walked into the Wandsworth Road student bar of South Bank Polytechnic, prior to hitch hiking home for Easter, so see dozens of people glued to the TV. This was atypical, but Argentina had invaded the Falklands and Britain was going to war. Since then Britain has been embroiled in more and more conflicts for more and more conflicting reasons. This is such a disappointment to me, as I am sure it is to others.
The second was a feeling that despite the mess of Britain, and the post imperial decline and de-industrialisation of this hugely influential nation, I never once thought I would see it separate. Not once did it cross my mind. Why should it? It was a far fetched and self-defeating idea. It did not make sense on any imaginable level. But as I go to bed there is a 50:50 chance this will happen.
I could give endless arguments on why this is a mad idea. I could offer thoughts about the Darian Gap, financial catastrophes, unionism, Jacobite romance, the Union of the crowns, the highland-lowland divide, Scottish Catholicism, Clan romanticism, post 18th century modernism, RBS and the banking crisis , and more beside, but there seems little point now, given that the polls are closed, the dye cast, and the caber tossed.
Independence is not a right. It has to be earned. And you cannot earn it my emotion any more than you can analyse an argument
This vote is the most monumental decision made in this land in my lifetime. Tomorrow beckons and whatever happened in today’s poll booths, the UK will never be the same again. Maybe a review of the UK is no bad thing; after all the Scots are not alone in feeling antipathy to London and Westminster. That said to split a nation on the a romantic notion that its a bigger idea, and to do so on the basis of a minority vote is a recipe for disaster. Five million get to vote. 50 million do not. Thus some 90 per cent of the nation are disenfranchised. Its utter foolishness.
I feel the need to return to this topic at a future date, but for now it’s too painful. I hope the vote is no. If it is No, then I hope that a better Scotland, and England, will emerge. If the vote is yes, I will truly feel the need to leave the mess that such a choice will create, for the one simple reason that the country I will be left with, will not be the nation I was born into.