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The American right and Scottish nationalism
By Steve James
3 February 1999
Staffordshire University research fellow, Dr. Euan Hague, spent four years
in America researching the marketing of "Scottishness" by organisations
such as the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Tourist Board. In a
lecture delivered to the Royal Geographical Society, "The Production and
Consumption of Scotland and Scottishness in the USA", he paid special
attention to the celebration of "Scottish culture" and support for Scottish
independence amongst America's right wing and fascist movements.
Hague noted the dramatic increase in cultural organisations such as St.
Andrews Societies and Caledonian Groups, which celebrate Highland Games,
Burns Nights, bagpipes, clan genealogy and tartan. In 1969, 20 groups
across the US organised Highland Games. Now there are 200 such groups.
In part, these activities are harmless, if not to everyone's taste. At the
same time Dr. Hague brought out the distinct militarism, the celebration of
a muscular backwardness--drinking and throwing trees--and the distinctly
all-white character of most of the proceedings.
They also reflect the search for an identity that apparently has nothing to
do with contemporary, socially polarised America. One man interviewed at a
Caledonian event told Dr. Hague, "I think the clans have nothing to do with
how people usually sort themselves, e.g., by class, race, sexuality, or
whatever."
Of the promotion of a wider "Celtic identity", Hague says, "An added level
of this spectacle is that much of it perceives a wider Celtic relationship
between Scotland, Ireland and Wales, all conjoined in an anti-English bloc.
Thus, in the construction of Scottishness understood in the United States,
Celtic imagery and cultural commodities are to the fore. This is seen in
the associations made between Scotland and Ireland in 'Celtic festivals'
across the United States and in the Hollywood film, Braveheart.
"What is appealing about asserting a strong Celtic Scottishness within this
imagination of Scotland? They [the Celts] are the original primordial folk
and it is their culture and community that are embedded in Scotland. Deeply
and spiritually immersed in, and at one with, the physical territory of
Scotland, the purity of the Celts is understood by many in the Scottish
American community to have been corrupted by Anglicisation."
This interest is not confined to the traditionally right-wing Caledonian
Societies. Southern secessionists and outright fascist groups have both
adopted a version of Scottish history as their own, and celebrate Celtic
culture.
Contemporary Southern secessionist Dr. Michael Hill, leader of the racist
League of the South, said in 1997, "Our Anglo-Celtic Southern culture and
its history, heroes, songs, symbols, and banners are under attack and their
defence could serve as an immediate rallying point. But we should go beyond
that to the task of educating our people about their ties ... the names and
deeds of William Wallace, Andrew de Moray, Robert Bruce.... Sir James (the
Black) Douglas, James Graham of Montrose among scores of others should
become commonplace." All these are from the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries of the feudal era in Scotland.
The connection between the Southern right and Scotland has a historic
progeny. The Ku Klux Klan is said to have been formed by emigrant Scots
cavalry officers within the Confederate Army in 1860. Its oaths were
imported from the Society of the Horseman's Word in North East Scotland,
and the burning cross was used as a call to arms by Scottish clans in the
fourteenth century. The Confederate flag bears a distinct resemblance to
the Scots Saltire.
The sinister and openly fascistic Christian Identity is viewed as one of
the more influential fascist networks in America. It has circulated 50,000
copies of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath championing Scottish
independence. Christian Identity view all "Celtic" races including Scots,
Irish, Welsh, regional English, as descendants of the 10 tribes of Israel,
with the Scots being the "purest". Jewish people by contrast are described
as descendants of the devil.
The Scotsman newspaper interviewed Thomas Leyden, a former white
supremacist, who told of a visit to an Aryan Nation's compound in Oregon
where haggis and bagpipes were as praised as Hitler's brownshirts and the
Ku Klux Klan. Leyden told the Scotsman, "There is an image they like to
cultivate of tough, hardy people in the Highlands who fight a London
government which cares nothing for its culture or its people."
On March 20 last year, the US Senate passed a resolution inaugurating an
annual Tartan Day every April 6. This is to "recognize the outstanding
achievements and contributions made by Scottish Americans to the United
States". Tartan Day emerged after several years of campaigning by the
Scottish Coalition of business and heritage groups. Though it won
Democratic backing, the Republican right, most notably party leaders Trent
Lott and Newt Gingrich, heavily promoted the Tartan Day resolution. Lott
had moved the resolution for three years running before it was finally
passed.
The resolution bizarrely claims the Declaration of Arbroath as the
inspiration of the US Declaration of Independence. It goes on, "This
resolution honors the major role that Scottish Americans played in the
founding of this Nation, such as the fact that almost half the signers of
the Declaration of Independence were of Scottish descent, the Governors in
9 of the original 13 states were of Scottish ancestry, Scottish Americans
successfully shaped this country in its formative years and guided this
Nation through its most troubled times."
Linking the Arbroath declaration of the late Middle Ages with the
Declaration of Independence--a document inspired by the progressive ideas
of the Enlightenment--is at best highly dubious. But it encapsulates the
right wing's preoccupation with Scotland. As Hague explains, "Scottish
identity in the USA is substantially more than just romantic nonsense.
Scottishness in the USA is constructed within a specific political
rhetoric.... Tartan Day reasserts the authentic, original America, using as
a route to this an assertion of Scottish ethnicity and Scottish
tradition.... Today's society, by contrast, is perceived to be amoral and
superficial, whereas the 'ancient' Scottish and especially Celtic
traditions are understood as authentic and spiritual.
"This Scotland is strongly imagined in terms of being white, militaristic
and family oriented. Such opinions tally with the US political right, and
hence it is no surprise when Republican and right-wing conservative leaders
sponsor Tartan Day."
The Scottish National Party raises support and maintains an office in the
US, and its recruiting leaflets are circulated at Celtic fairs and events.
Hague warned them: "Scottishness in the USA is tied up in a politics much
further to the right than the SNP advocate for Scotland. Perhaps this could
come back to haunt Scotland, especially as the feeling is that American
Scots should have more say in Scottish affairs."
It is apparent that sections of the US far right, including those presently
assailing Clinton, find a mythical version of Scottish history useful for
their present political purposes. This fabricated Scotland closely echoes
contemporary rhetoric. This nation of "Bravehearts" has no social classes,
only Scots. It devotes itself to defending "ancient freedoms"--that are
thankfully bound up with land, property and religion--against a foreign
threat, both external and internal.
This is not a recent invention. In addition to portraying Scotland as
classless, Scottish nationalism has always had a pronounced right-wing
element. The origins of the SNP itself lie partly in the National Party,
one of whose 1930s pamphlet declared, "Class antagonism is a thing quite
foreign to the Scottish spirit. It was unknown here until it was imported
from England.... In Scotland there is no such inherent feeling of a
separation between classes."
In 1937, at a time of considerable anti-Catholic hysteria directed against
Irish workers in Scotland, the SNP warned of a "Green Terror" caused by
Irish immigration, and called for the Scottish people to be given the "key
to the racial destiny of their country" or face a race war.
Today, the SNP present themselves as a left-wing party of "civic
nationalism". They dismissed Hague's warning, albeit rather nervously, and
attacked him in the Scottish press. Both the SNP and the Labour government
welcomed Tartan Day as a means to win more US investment in Scotland.
Nevertheless, the ease with which the extreme right in America has
assimilated Scottish nationalism and its historical icons contradicts the
view advanced by the SNP and others such as the Scottish Socialist Party
that Scottish nationalism is inherently progressive. It should, as Hague
cautions, give pause for thought regarding the true political character of
the current resurgence of nationalism.
See Also:
Labour's Scottish land reforms play to the nationalist gallery
[15 January 1999]
Scottish Socialist Party fosters nationalist divisions
[24 October 1998]
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