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Reforging the Nation: Britain, Scotland and the Crisis of Unionism

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Multinational Federalism

Part of the book series: The Comparative Territorial Politics series ((COMPTPOL))

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Abstract

Something curious happened in the United Kingdom in the late twentieth century. The people of what was widely regarded as one of the oldest and most consolidated nation states stopped thinking of themselves as a nation. There is a now a small literary industry on the end of Britain and the crisis of union (Nairn, 2000, 2007; Bryant, 2006; Colley, 2003; McLean and McMillan, 2005; Weight; 2002; Colls, 2002). Opinion polls show remarkable indifference to the prospect of the break-up of the state. Perhaps the strongest indication, however, is to be found in the frantic efforts of the UK elite to reinvent the concept of Britishness. There are multiple dimensions to this, across the territories of the United Kingdom and in relation to immigration, multiculturalism and Europe but this chapter focuses on the Anglo-Scottish Union. I do not enter here into the economic, social and political reasons for the decline of Britishness (covered in Keating, 2009a). My concern rather is with the philosophy and ideology of the union, its death and the failure of efforts to reinvent it.

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Authors
  1. Michael Keating
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Montreal, Canada

    Michel Seymour (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Department of Political Science, University of Quebec, Montreal, Canada

    Alain-G. Gagnon (Professor) (Professor)

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© 2012 Michael Keating

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Keating, M. (2012). Reforging the Nation: Britain, Scotland and the Crisis of Unionism. In: Seymour, M., Gagnon, AG. (eds) Multinational Federalism. The Comparative Territorial Politics series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016744_6

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