Scotland the Not-So-Brave?

The initial emotions of last week’s Scottish independence referendum have retreated a little even if they still lie close to the surface for many people. It is also clear that both the emotions and the political bargaining that were unleashed in the last few weeks leading up to the vote will take years to work through. Good luck with that, whoever ends up leading the UK after the next General Election.

I know that this is a gross simplification of the debate, but I think that there is some truth in the assertion that for many people (though not all) their hearts said yes to independence while their minds said yes to the Union. Their eventual vote depended on which was stronger: the pull of the heart or the demands of political logic.

I have also been struck by the number of English people that I have spoken to who realised for the first time that they were, in fact, British and not just English. The Union matters to them in a way that they had not understood before its dissolution became a possibility through a process in which they had no say: their country might have been hung, drawn and quartered by four million Scots in belated revenge for the grisly sentence meted out in Westminster Hall to William Wallace some seven hundred years previously.

All of which leads me to ask, what is it that shapes our identity? Regardless of the economic and social arguments, I suspect that most people who voted for independence and some who voted for the Union did do because of a sense of what they were or (for some) of what they were not. Where do such things come from?

Again, I suspect that very many people simply accept that they are what they are without thinking that they can decide which things they want to shape their identity. I cannot alter the place of my birth and upbringing or the history associated with it, but why should that demand my loyalty or shape my present sense of identity? At the very least, ought I not to determine to what extent my ethnicity, nationality and cultural upbringing ought to be relevant to whom and what I consider myself now to be?  Why should such things simply be accepted with much feeling and without much thought?

The heart is too precious a thing to be handed over to an accident of birth and the mind is too powerful an instrument to be allowed to sleepwalk through issues of identity. In the end, I wonder if either hearts or minds were really sufficiently engaged in the referendum debate….

Ian Paisley: an Unexpected Peace-maker?

I did not know Ian Paisley personally so I know nothing about him as a friend or relation. I knew only the public figure: the politician and preacher.

In that context, I did not like him and I did not like either his politics or his religion. He was a demagogue who sneered at other people, denigrating their beliefs, trying to impose his ideologies on others.

There is nothing to suggest that Ian Paisley was directly involved in paramilitary activity; he kept on the right side of the law in spite of occasional sallies up mountains with men waving their fire-arm certificates in not-so-veiled threats at what they might do if ‘Ulster’ was sold down the river by Westminster. At the same time, the Paisley brand of religion and politics helped to stoke passions that others used in the recruitment of young men into paramilitary gangs, resulting in the deaths of many Catholics.

It is difficult, therefore, for me to acknowledge that Ian Paisley played a crucial part in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. Without him, it is certain that ‘the Troubles’ would still have happened, but it is unlikely that they would have been as ‘contained’  as they were or that they would have ended as early as they did.

Ian Paisley acted as an unwitting lightning rod for the bigotry of many people who found that he expressed their fears and feelings and having done so, they were prepared to leave it at that. In the absence of Paisley’s rhetoric, obnoxious as I believe it to have been, more people would have made they way directly into the arms of the paramilitaries. That is one reason why paramilitary leaders were always suspicious and critical of him.

In his eventual decision to talk to Sinn Fein and to enter into partnership government with them, he truly took a courageous step.  He suffered for this departure from his previous path at the hands of both his political and religious peers, but had he not acted as he did we might still be witnessing weekly bloodshed on our streets. In truth, (and I find this very hard to admit) had he tried to effect an agreement earlier than he did, there would have been no chance of it being accepted by those he led.

The unpalatable truth of this is that, in the final analysis, it is not peace-loving people who make peace, but rather those who are fighting and for whatever reason change their minds. I hate to say it, but Ian Paisley was able to make peace because he first was an integral part of the conflict. What that says about the processes involved in peace-making has to be embraced, however offensive it might be to those of us who want to have no part in conflict.

Ebola? Not in my Backyard

Ebola is a very nasty virus. The current outbreak in West Africa has infected and killed more people than all previous outbreaks combined and the death toll is certain to rise further as governments and health services in the affected countries struggle to contain the spread of the disease. After months of warnings from the World Health Organisation there are signs that researchers and pharmaceutical companies in ‘the West’ have begun to stir themselves into action to provide a vaccine or a cure.

The reason for their inaction is clear: historically the virus has been confined to remote rural areas, it has been easily contained and it has caused few deaths. This time, major population centres are involved and there are no immediate signs that the spread of the disease is slowing down.

That, of course, is not the main reason why Western groups are now scrambling for a cure; they have known about the nature of this outbreak for some months. The motivating factor is fear that Ebola will spread via international travel to a major Western city and from there spread throughout the economically developed world. Ebola is a problem worth solving only when it looks like it might be lurking in our backyard.

In truth, Ebola is unlikely to present a huge threat to the populaces of London, New York, Sydney, Berlin or other affluent cities. The less virulent Lassa fever is endemic in West Africa and kills some 5,000 people each year but in thirty years there have been only eight ‘travel associated’ instances of it occurring in the UK, with no onward transmission to the wider population. Fear, however, is a powerful motivator and it is a combination of self-interest and fear that has finally caused us to do something about Ebola.

One of the most annoying things about the international reaction to Ebola is that it looks as if a cure might not be very difficult to find. As this type of virus spreads through the human population it tends to mutate and become less deadly and more susceptible to medical intervention. In the current outbreak the mortality rate is 55%; in some earlier, smaller outbreaks it was as high as 90%. If left to run its course naturally it would probably become like Lassa fever with a 5% mortality rate. Of course, to reach that level, many thousands would first of all have to become infected and die.

The disturbing thought that presses itself on my mind is this: if there was not a fear that it might spread to the West, would we simply have let this happen? My intuition suggests that this is precisely what would have occurred. After all, one European or American life is worth more than a thousand African lives; isn’t it?