Even in death, the Queen united her Kingdom more closely
Granted that, due to the universal mortality of human beings, Queen Elizabeth, sadly, was bound to die, she could not have done so in a more fitting place than in Scotland. The accident of her demise occurring at Balmoral has enabled Scots to rediscover their identity to a degree that has surprised many of them. This is a hugely significant development, with very constructive implications.
For the Scots, largely without being consciously aware of it, have been experiencing an identity crisis over recent decades. During the War, in which the young Princess Elizabeth was just old enough to serve in The Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the Scots’ contribution was disproportionate, as had been their participation – military, administrative, educational and entrepreneurial – in the expansion of British power and influence from the late 18th century onwards, so that Scotland was an equal and willing partner in the great enterprise that, from 1801, became the United Kingdom.
It was not always thus: Scotland’s relationship with England had been one of unrelenting hostility, from the death of Alexander III without a male heir in 1286 until the inheritance of the English crown by James VI in 1603. That latter date is far more important than the Act of Union in 1707. People talk loosely about “the Union”, but there were two: the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the Union of the Parliaments in 1707. Today, it is generally the parliamentary union that commentators cite, so that the all-important Union of the Crowns is almost overlooked as a constitutional event of the highest magnitude.
The 1603 Union of the Crowns has been described as the biggest reverse takeover in history. The ruler of Scotland, an impoverished kingdom with a much smaller population, took over the rich realm of England, already a European power at the end of the reign of Elizabeth I, with a much larger population. The historical irony of this event was that England, which had expended much blood and treasure over centuries in attempting to subdue Scotland, found itself being taken over by the Scottish king, without a blow being struck.
The crucial difference between the two unions is that the first was voluntary, the second, regardless of the great benefits that may later have accrued to Scotland, was coercive. Scots lost their native Stuart dynasty and their parliament: three times during the 18th century they took up arms in protest, only to be ruthlessly crushed. Insofar as a specific date can be allocated to their eventual reconciliation with their southern neighbour, the process began in 1783 with the accession to power of Pitt the Younger, with Henry Dundas as his manager in Scotland.
The Napoleonic Wars further cemented the common British identity, as did the industrial revolution, the expansion of empire and the vast opportunities that opened to any Scottish “lad o’ pairts” in a huge variety of careers. Scotland grew rich alongside England and made massive sacrifices in two world wars. By 1945, the British identity had never been stronger. That was the national culture in which Princess Elizabeth began her public life.
The post-War years were times of austerity, with a shattered economy and a dissolving empire. Britain offered fewer opportunities than at any time since the late 18th century. The discovery of oil in the North Sea in the 1970s lent a patina of plausibility to the claims of Scottish nationalists: “It’s Scotland’s oil.” Momentarily, it seemed a separatist Scotland need not have a Third World economy. Yet, even under the impetus of oil revenues flowing in, the SNP only contrived to secure a modest presence in Parliament.
The problem that then arose was not the separatist movement per se, but its useful idiots, the supporters of devolution and the creation of a Scottish parliament. For that dire development, the Union has to thank that supreme wrecker, Tony Blair. Blair was motivated by mindless neophilia: he was incapable of seeing any venerable institution without wishing to abolish it (“Hey, look, I mean, this is a young country…”), he was driven to mend things that were not broken.
His so-called reforms, from the Supreme Court to Holyrood, were alien, un-British attempts at modernity for its own sake, with wrongly shaped pieces forced into the jigsaw of a previously seamless and evolved constitution. George Robertson, his Scottish satrap, boasted that devolution would “kill nationalism stone dead”. At that time, in 1995, the SNP had three seats at Westminster – leaving free space in their taxi; just 12 years later, in 2007, they were elected to government at Holyrood and they have remained in power ever since.
Under that regime, despite losing a referendum on independence in 2014, the SNP has created a claustrophobic political monoculture. Everything has somehow diminished – the word “wee” has become ubiquitous (“Could you give me a wee signature here?”) – Sturgeon’s Scotland has become a landscape viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. All Scots love their national flag, the saltire of St Andrew, but it has assumed sinister political undertones.
It is a brave individual who displays the Union flag; and yet a majority of Scots voted by referendum for the Union that flag represents. One of the heartening aspects of the period of mourning has been the miraculous reappearance of the Union flag, and not just on buildings: many mourners lining Scottish streets have proudly displayed it. The St Andrew saltire is an integral part of the Union Jack; without it, it would become a red asterisk.
Had the Queen died at Buckingham Palace, Windsor, or Sandringham, her obsequies would not even have been English, but exclusively London-based. For her Scottish subjects, it would have been something experienced through television, not real life. As it is, the Queen’s body remained in Scotland for five days after her death. Her coffin has been borne by Balmoral ghillies and soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Scotland; it has been covered by the Scottish Royal Standard, with the lion rampant in two of the four quarters.
When the hearse was driven from Balmoral to Edinburgh, every bridge over the motorway was manned by mourning Scots. The ceremonies at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, where the Queen held court every summer, was a reminder of Scotland’s royal heritage. So were the Lord Lyon and heralds, the Queen’s (now the King’s) Bodyguard for Scotland, the Royal Company of Archers, the High Constables of Holyrood with their blackcock’s feathers on their top hats, the various kilted peers occupying ancient offices of state. Above all, on top of the coffin, the crown of Scotland, dating from 1540 and older than all the English crown jewels, spoke of a regal tradition.
The Scots mourned the Queen with impressive dignity. Nothing could have been further from the Diana hysteria of 1997 in London. The Scots are undemonstrative: they knew what mattered was simply being there, silent and respectful, to say thank you to someone who had represented two things they greatly value: service and hard work.
In Edinburgh on Monday, it was impossible for a latecomer to view the ceremonies: the crowds were too dense. By the end of the memorial service at St Giles’, the queue to pay respects at the catafalque was already a mile and a half long. Some commentators have created a distraction by claiming that St Giles’ is not a cathedral. That, though they may not know it, is a very Catholic position, since Pope Paul II elevated St Giles’ to the status of a collegiate church in 1466, but it received no further promotion from Rome. It was Charles I who raised it to cathedral status in 1633; the reason for contemporary commentators’ rejection of that royal decree is obscure.
Outside Scotland, a serious mistake has been made. The decision to transport the Queen’s coffin from Edinburgh to London by air, abandoning the original plan for it to travel on the Royal Train, down the East Coast mainline to London, when thousands of her English subjects could have saluted its passage, is ridiculous. The pretext is fear of protesters on the line. What kind of surrender to anarchy is it when the sovereign’s funeral ceremonies are curtailed for fear of demonstrators? Could a security detail not have travelled ahead of the train to disperse protesters?
In any case, only the most lunatic fringe of protesters would attempt to degrade the Queen’s funeral journey. How many protesters have surfaced in recent days? The outcome is that, unlike Scotland, Middle England will be denied the right to say farewell to Her Majesty. The Red Wall areas, where loyalty to the crown is endemic and where many cannot afford to travel to London, will perforce have to watch, without participating, as events proceed in the capital, which they regard as a foreign country. These northern counties have become flyover states, thanks to official cowardice.
North of the Border, the whole panoply of heralds and Bodyguards, cathedral and crown, was observed by Scots with quiet pride: their heritage of royal pomp and tradition normally receives less coverage than the metropolitan equivalent, so it was gratifying to know the world was watching. But their chief focus was on making a statement of gratitude to the Queen. Her death caused a cultural dam to burst: after decades of loud-mouthed separatist propaganda, with its republican undertones, the silent majority – still silent, but eloquent in their actions – demonstrated that Scotland’s recent identity crisis was an ephemeral impression.
A majority of Scots clearly recognise there is not the least anomaly in being simultaneously Scottish and British. Besides the enduring bond of mutual sacrifice in two world wars and cooperation over generations, the events of the past week have shown that the ultimate cement of the Union has been in place since 1603, when the Scottish crown peacefully absorbed England and Wales: it is the monarchy that guarantees enduring unity among the three nations of this island.
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