The 11th Broadyard Workshop (博雅工作坊) of Peking University’s Institute of Area Studies (PKUIAS), on the theme “The Future of Scotland: ‘Divorce’ England or not?”, was held at PKU on September 14. Ten experts from universities and academic organizations including PKU, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Nanjing University attended the workshop. Their discussions ranged over history, politics, political parties and international relations, and included the Scottish separatist movement, the development of the relations between Scotland and the UK, and whether Scotland would split from the UK via referendum.
The presenters pointed out that the alliance of Scotland and England has gone through a more than 300-year journey of ups and downs. During the process, Scotland established close ties with England in many important aspects, including political constitution, economic construction, religion, and social and cultural integration; as a result, “British identity” has a relatively firm foundation in Scotland. Although there have been cries in recent years for Scotland and England to separate, the two sides are not likely to “divorce” unless the union faces political, economic and religious conflict breaking out at the same time.
Since the failure of the independence referendum in September 2014, the Scottish government has declared that it will hold another referendum this year. In this regard, some presenters opined that the “divorce” sentiment in Scotland is actually being hyped up by the Scottish National Party (SNP). Since the foundation of the SNP, its target has shifted gradually from “reestablishing Scotland’s sovereign status” to “realizing Scotland’s autonomy so that Scotland can enjoy the same status as England in the UK, fully exert its advantages and push forward its national development.” Although the shift lacks neither foundation nor rationality and was not embraced by the majority at the beginning, the “independence” issue has been increasingly sensationalized to become a “tool” for SNP to realize its political goals since 1970s, when the Scottish economy lagged behind the UK and its internal social classes saw some changes.
The scholars expressed their belief that, with the advance of the SNP, the plan for a split from the UK has been disguised as a “plan for everyone” with a “legal coating.” The reason why referendums are so frequently used to decide a given future political course is that referendums allow politicians to avoid accountability to their constituencies, whereas it would be harder for them to avoid accountability if they had to work for those changes in parliament. Although currently a majority of Scottish citizens oppose a split from the UK and the UK does not want to lose Scotland, Scotland’s split from the UK is still possible against the backdrop of UK’s Brexit resolution and the possibility of a resulting decline in its economic development and for the gross mismanagement of the situation by the country’s leaders.
During the Q&A session, the presenters answered questions from the audience.
