Divisive

'Shall we have a second referendum on Scottish independence?'

'No!  Divisive!' comes the loud reply from supporters of the Union.

Divisive.  The reflex answer, without much thought going into it, parroted time and time again.  But what does that actually mean?

The dictionary definition of  'divisive' is 'tending to cause disagreement or hostility between people'.  On the surface I think both sides of the independence debate could agree on the 'cause disagreement' part.  The hostility seems to me to come more from the Unionist side, but I'm pretty sure they would argue that it mainly comes from the independista side.  Certainly it is always deployed by the Unionist side as a reason not to have another referendum, but I don't believe I've ever heard the independence side use it in any context.

If we dig a little deeper though, and look at the derivation of the term we find

Mid 16th century (as a noun denoting something that divides or separates): from late Latin divisivus, from Latin dividere (see divide).

Isn't division the very reason we have politics in the first place?  You're never going to get an issue that 100% of the population agrees on, so there are always going to be sides, and therefore division no matter what the particular issue under discussion is.  If you have an election, there are going to be two or more sides competing for the votes of the electorate in any democracy, and they may have wildly differing views on how best to run the country.  So why aren't General Elections viewed as divisive? To take another example, the Brexit referendum was a very close run thing, far more so than the one on independence.  Yet, when it's suggested that there should be another one before we actually leave the EU, you don't hear cries of 'divisive!' from the leavers or remainers.  Rather you hear from the leavers that the will of the people has been expressed and is therefore inviolate.

What makes the issue of Scottish independence uniquely 'divisive' then?

Some Unionists have argued that the previous referendum on independence resulted in fallings-out between friends and family members, causing wounds that have barely begun to heal.  I have to say that neither I nor anyone else I know has found themselves in the position of not talking to friends or family because they voted different ways.  Indeed, my experience was that, where opinions differed, there was a lot of friendly banter, but nothing serious.  This is not to say that this never happened, but I think it's not nearly as common as the Unionist side are claiming.  The same could also be said of the Brexit referendum.  At best this is a superficial reason.

Let's dig a little deeper.  Here in the UK we have two major parties and a number of minor parties who take part in Westminster General Elections.  The major parties are the Conservatives (Tories) and Labour.  During most of the twentieth century the Conservatives represented the interests of the property-owning classes, while Labour represented the interests of the working classes and had close ties to the trade unions.  Conservatives believe in minimal governmental regulation while Labour believed in more governmental regulation to prevent exploitation of the majority of the populace by the property-owning classes. In the 1990s, however, Labour under Tony Blair became much more 'business-friendly' and much less tied to the trade unions.  Nowadays the Conservatives and Labour have very similar core values, with some tinkering at the edges of governmental regulation, Labour being more inclined to have it and the Conservatives not as far as business is concerned, while both are becoming ever more draconian in their attempts to control what ordinary people do.  There is a third UK party, the Liberal Democrats, but most people would be hard-pressed to say how they differ from the Conservatives and Labour.  All three parties have in common that they support the status quo in the form of the monarchy and control by the Westminster parliament.

In Scotland the SNP have existed for seventy years, and for most of that time they were very much a tiny, special-interest party, held of no account by the Establishment.  However, since devolution in 1999 the SNP have seen a meteoric rise, resulting in the first independence referendum in 2014.  At that point the UK parties woke up to the fact that there was a real threat to the comfortable status quo where each of them had a turn at power to one degree or another and were free to do whatever they liked with Scottish resources.  The independence referendum made many people realise that there might just be an opportunity to run things differently from the UK model.

Here, I think, is the real root of the cry of 'divisive'.  The division is between those who are comfortable with the status quo and resent/fear being made to think about it and those who dare to dream that things could be very different. The fear from the Unionist side shows in their desperation not to have another referendum, since the last result was far closer than was anticipated and there is no guarantee that they would win another one.

So, next time the idea of a second independence referendum is met with the clarion cry of 'divisive', perhaps we should push right back and ask why division is a uniquely bad thing in the context of Scottish independence.  I think the Unionist side will be hard-pressed to explain it.