Time to break up the union? (From The Northern Echo)

Time to break up the union?

12:34pm Wednesday 7th December 2011 in Harry Mead By Harry Mead, Columnist

A RECENT correspondent to Hear All Sides, Tom Cooper, of Durham City, made a striking point about the British Isles: “We are practically separate countries now.” What convinced Mr Cooper of this was the ubiquity of the saltire in Scotland and the Welsh dragon in Wales. The Union flag is now virtually confined to England, though it is not our national emblem.

Mr Cooper will be gratified to learn that in foreseeing the demise of the United Kingdom he is in distinguished company. One of Britain’s most eminent historians, Professor Norman Davies, of St Anthony’s College, Oxford, recently spoke of circumstances that could lead to the same outcome.

In a new book, Vanished Kingdoms (Allen Lane £26), he traces the history of numerous European states that have disappeared.

Never mind Prussia, or the Hapsburg Empire, of which most of us will have heard.

What about Etruria or Galicia? Or Alt Clud, for 500 years a kingdom covering what is now southern Scotland?

Interviewed about his book, Prof Davies sketched a scenario arising from the current global financial crisis, in which the UK would join these forgotten kingdoms. “If the Tory Right manages to shift the blame onto the euro, they might be able to get a referendum to leave the EU. If that happens then the Scots...will probably vote for independence.

If they go, then Wales will go, and that will be the end of the United Kingdom. Vanished.”

The attraction of EU membership for Scotland and Wales would be that they would expect to be net beneficiaries, like most of the EU’s current small member states. Their defection to the EU is an intriguing prospect raised by Prof Davies. Those of us who would vote “out” in a referendum on EU membership, to say nothing of possibly urging Scotland, with its unfair privileges, to become independent, might not consider a British Isles consisting of some nations within the EU and others outside to be a good, or a wise, thing.

MEANWHILE, the tentacles of the EU continue to spread. From January, the MoT test will be tougher, chiefly with checks on the electronics – dashboard lights, power steering, stability control. Few will quarrel with these new EU requirements. But it’s significant that they are passed into law by our own Government. Very cleverly, the EU allows domestic governments to rubberstamp its demands, thus disguising their true origin. Not wishing to reveal their own impotence, the domestic governments go along with this pantomime. The loser is democracy, but who cares?

THE “page from the past” – the historic front page reproduced in this newspaper’s weekly Memories feature – is always fascinating.

Did you notice that above the masthead of last week’s choice, the front page of November 30, 1946, was printed: Close of Play Edition? Sharing almost equal billing with the lead item, headlined “U.S. Disarmament Plan,” was a longer report, almost three columns, of the second day’s play in an Ashes Test in Australia. “Bedser bowls again” said a prominent sub-heading and you could almost see the paper propped against the cornflakes as the nation read on. As a popular spectacle, cricket has pretty much expired since then. Even the Ashes are groggy. But at least we’re still where we were on disarmament.

Good news for those who cling to the past?