Nations vs imperial unions in a time of globalization, 1707-2007.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Nairn, Tom
• Date: 22 March 2007

In the circumstances of intensifying globalization, all nations are becoming mongrels, hybrids or foundlings, but old empires die hard. May 2007 marked the three-hundredth anniversary of the state that founded Australia--the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. This elderly piece of multiculturalism has endured various titles like 'Britain' and 'Great Britain', all intended to make it sound more united than it ever was. At one time a rather swank lodger hung about the place as well: 'the Empire'. This dubious character was addicted to corporate planetary takeovers, thanks to a naval fighting machine that outclassed all competitors, and a similarly overblown financial apparatus, the City of London. The lodger's formula was neat but effective: punish the populations that object to the takeover terms. Is this too summary a definition of 'GB'? Yes, but objectors need not protest too much: the most successful imperial recipe from history's cookbook can stand plenty of disparagement. Also, it has always been apologized for with every sort of civilization-and-culture attachment, from Shakespeare of Stratford down to TV's 'Little Britain'. By comparison, Spain, France, Germany, Japan and Russia were failures in the imperium business. As I write, we find President Bush lounging awkwardly by the side door of the same has-been's club, hoping that he may yet sidle in without attracting too much attention. Until 2006, Britain alone appeared to have managed a half-convincing post-imperial act--a return to something like national normality, without revolution, defeat or humiliation.

But that was yesterday. Today something different is emerging, and there is little doubt about the four-letter word that has made this difference. British imperialists thought up 'Iraq' in the early 20th century, with motives not unlike those of Bush nearly a century later. In 2003, Tony Blair's New Labour government made the deadly mistake of both trusting ancestral creation and motives, and 'helping out' with another invasion of Mesopotamia. John Howard trotted on behind, fortunately on a much smaller scale. Both thought that national advantage lay in continuing to support the Greatness business. However, fortunately, the world has changed and, 'terrorism' notwithstanding, not wholly for the worse. We will not know for some time yet what the full costs will be for the United Sates and Australia. For 'Britain', however, they could not be more serious: extinction.

People are getting used to the idea of Iraq disappearing, divided between Kurdistan and one or more Muslim-Arab states. However, an analogous fate may overtake Britain's faltering Union if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland opt for new directions, as they seem to have done at recent elections. If they alter their relationship to Britain, still another acronym may come into play, the 'RUK' ('Rest of the UK'). That would be mainly England of course, though now with the curious sense of 'Little England' plus London--a cosmopolis with nothing little about it, outside of Westminster and Buckingham Palace.

The re-shuffle would affect Anzac Day. The old committee-agreed 'Union Jack' of 1707 would have to go. It was a smart-schoolboy montage of the older saint-nation emblems, minus the Welsh Dragon (mistakenly believed extinct), with St George's Cross emphatically on top. So what will become of those vestigial corners on the banners of Australia and New Zealand? More important, what will happen to what they have signified in the popular identity of these countries?

Britain's History Wars

Australians have already learned that big political shifts lead to 'history wars'. Inga Clendinnen's recent Quarterly Essay, The History Wars: Who Owns the Past has resumed the long dispute provoked by John Howard. (1) Now an analogous debate has been launched in Britain, thus far ably crowned by Michael Fry's definitive new book, The Union: England, Scotland and the Treaty of 1707. (2) The book is a mixture of careful history of the Treaty of Union, as well as polemical argument for its repeal and for the resumption of Scottish independence--'resumption' (note) rather than 'claiming'. (3) Sometimes rows of this kind are dismissed as academic reinventions of the past to suit party factions or interests in the present. But there is more to it than that--as anyone in Australia who has dipped into the books and commentaries of Keith Windschuttle, Stuart MacIntyre or Robert Manne knows. The British case offers a still longer list, including Linda Colley's Britons, Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (2004) (4) and Captives: Britain, Empire and the World (2005); T. C. Smout's History of the Scottish People 1560-1830 (1998)(5); Neal Ascherson's Stone Voices: In Search of Scotland (2002), (6) a survey linking pre-history to the present day; Tom Devine's The Scottish Nation 1707-2000 (2001) (7); and Christopher Harvie's Mending Scotland (2004) (8) coming after No Gods and Precious Few Heroes (1998) and his Short History of Scotland (2002). (9)

Passionate identities are at stake in such wars. And these passions are the past: that is, the cumulative life-and-death baggage carried forward on the vessel of the present. The fate of the ship will actually depend on which bunch of stowaways gets control of bridge and helm. If rage over the past overcomes the present, it is for the sake of the future. And one characteristic pattern of such disputes is provided by disasters--exorcism of those past, and dread of others to come.

In the British case, Blair has been shaken out of office by the sheer unpopularity of the Middle East War and his obsequiousness to Bush. His successor, Chancellor Gordon Brown, is currently entering an unprecedented and vociferous campaign--justifying not just New Labour and his own economic successes, but British identity as such. He launched a 'Save Britain' movement in January 2006 with a Fabian conference called at Imperial College to debate future...