Post-229: Scotland’s Secession Vote / Reminiscences of a Scottish Friend

(This follows on from post-228: “Scottish Independence”).

Three days till the Scotland vote on secession from the UK.

I’ve known one true Scotsman in my life (and it’s no fallacy). Back in the interesting years of 2011-2012. I knew one who worked in a nearby institute to mine. His name was R.W. and he was truly interesting to talk to, even down to his dramatic last day in Korea, when fortune would have it that I was with him almost to the end.

I’ve lost contact with R.W., but all the same I’m quite sure of two things:

• He’ll support union,
• He’ll have had frequent arguments against secessionists about this issue, often involving alcohol.

This is the kind of thinker R.W. was: I imagine him reflecting on the “Scotland secession referendum” by going on about it being a sign of the UK’s long-running decline: The UK was the “global superpower” in 1914. By 2014, a short century later, it’s lost it all and reached a point of such weakness that the UK itself may dissolve.

Here are some pictures of “pro-secession” rallies (“Yes”) supporters (also more R.W. reminiscences below):

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As I put pen to paper here (so to speak), more comes back to me. I do remember that R.W. addressed the secession issue directly, once, after I brought it up. He spoke negatively about the left-wing Scottish National Party and its leader, whom he may have called a “communist”.

(The “oddest/cleverest demonstration sign” award goes to the boy in the middle, below:)

R.W. spoke with a classy “British” accent (nothing of the thick Scottish accent), and was a “Tory” supporter, a fact for which he was mocked by M.G., a coworker from England. According to M.G., himself quite left-wing, the Tory Party had almost no supporters in Scotland. [M.G. has this very year married his longtime girlfriend E.R. back in the UK..]

Sunday also had pro-Union demonstrations. Here is one in Edinburgh, led by the Protestant Orange Order:

Americans who know the Orange Order will remember it from Northern Ireland. It is a Protestant fraternal order, whose marches in Belfast and so on have often “incited” riots by Irish-Catholics.

Speaking of Northern Ireland, another article today says that police fear street fighting during and after the vote so much that they are deploying heavily. This is inevitably reminiscent of decades past in Northern Ireland, though also of the hallowed tradition of British soccer rioting. (Much of the soccer rioting was ‘nationalistic’, split along ethnic/religion lines, I’m told: Most famously Glasgow’s Rangers [Protestant] vs. Celtic [Catholic] football clubs.)

There is an American in my Korean class, L., from Texas. I asked him about the Scotland secession vote. He apparently hadn’t heard of it, which surprised me. He then started talking about the possibility of Texas secession. He says some people in Texas talk seriously about it but he is not for it at all “unless things got really bad with the USA”.

Maybe this is why the Scotland secession vote interests me: It may be a possibility down the road (again) in the USA.