It’s time for a large dose of solidarity

If Westminster politicians thought that an earthquake in Scotland would leave the political foundations intact south of the border, they were fooling themselves. They have realised rather late that ties that bind nations are often more tenuous than they appear. History shows how painful the consequences of separation can be. Scotland has to wake up to the uncomfortable side effects of a campaign that has, over the last few weeks and months, begun to turn neighbour against neighbour, brother against sister, even wives against husbands. It has also divided neighbours in the wider geographical sense – Scotland against England, with Wales and Northern Ireland looking on, bemused and more than a little anxious.

The Scottish nationalists maintained at the outset of their campaign that the “social union” between England and Scotland would not be affected by the dismantling of the political union, the de-merging of the two Parliaments which came together in 1707. However, the very feeling of solidarity between peoples which was at the bedrock of the United Kingdom had to be undermined. Solidarity meant, for instance, that if necessary the health service in Scotland would be supported by English taxpayers, while Scotland shared with the rest of Britain the proceeds of North Sea oil. It was not an exchange of equivalents, but a sense of reciprocal obligation – driven more by moral than by economic imperatives.

  Those who arouse strong passions cannot always control their effects. As recent events have shown, a small minority of hotheads can feel entitled to act out how they feel in the streets, even using violence, or the threat of it, towards those with whom they disagree. Solidarity, the sense that “we are all in this together” or, as St John Paul II put it, that “all are responsible for all”, can then begin to look rather fragile.

Subsidiarity is often used to justify the right of a nation to be independent of outside control, but Catholic Social Teaching insists that subsidiarity and solidarity must stand together: one principle must not be subordinate to the other. The case for subsidiarity has prevailed thus far, whether in the form of complete independence or what has been called maximum devolution - “devo-max”. What Scotland plainly now needs for itself, as well as for its relationships with its neighbours, is a solid and sustained dose of solidarity to close opened wounds.

But the development of new relationships between Scotland and England will be vastly complicated by demands from the English regions, and likewise Wales and Northern Ireland, for their own version of “devo-max”. If Edinburgh and Glasgow can set their own rates of income tax or levels of welfare benefits, why not Manchester and Newcastle? Once such questions begin to be asked, the solidarity every nation needs begins to dissolve. To weather such turbulence, politicians will need to revisit the first principles of nation-building, asking what it is that holds nations together.

Otherwise they may find that the idea of “England” as a united civil society is just as vulnerable to subversion as the idea of the United Kingdom.