Scotland's Independence Referendum (and the People's Climate March)

As most people who follow world events already know, last week voters in Scotland rejected independence, choosing to remain part of the United Kingdom. Whether this was the right decision is of course debatable. There were quite a few observers who argued that Scottish independence would ultimately be harmful to both Scotland and the remaining United Kingdom (of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and various dependencies and territories scattered about the world). Independence supporters naturally argued the contrary, and asserted that some of the dire predictions were little more than scare tactics. For instance, while UK officials said in the last few days before the election that an independent Scotland would not be able to continue to use the British pound, others pointed out that many countries around the world use the US dollar as their currency without asking the permission of the US, and likewise the UK couldn’t actually stop Scotland from using the pound (though perhaps they could create other difficulties for the Scots if they wanted, such as blocking them from attaining EU membership).

Regardless of how one views the arguments pro and con, in the end Scottish voters went with the safe choice of the status quo. While this was a major disappointment for independence supporters, it was not by any means a great shock. Scotland has been part of the United Kingdom for three centuries, and while many Scots justifiably feel that England has treated its smaller neighbor shabbily for much of that time (as Englishman John Oliver acknowledged), the English (at least in recent centuries) have certainly not been remotely as oppressive as the Chinese are to the Tibetans, or as the Indonesians were to the East Timorese, or the Russians to the Baltic states, just to name a few examples. Since things weren’t really awful for Scotland as part of the United Kingdom, it is hardly surprising that a majority of Scots decided to let well enough alone – after all, most people are naturally somewhat conservative and tend to fear change. If anything, it is more surprising that the vote was as close as it was. After all, when UK Prime Minister David Cameron first agreed to allow the referendum to go forward, he did so largely because polls at the time indicated that a large majority of Scots would vote against independence. Though the final results were not as good for the pro-independence side as some of the polls in the last week or so indicated they might be (many of the late polls showed the two sides within a few points, and independence even had a slight edge in a few polls), they were far better than anyone would have expected a few months ago.

But as far as I am concerned, the real point of the referendum is that the Scottish people exercised their right of self-determination, reinforcing the point that this is a basic right for peoples all over the world, especially those that are currently being ruled by governments dominated by another people or nation. For places like Tibet, West Papua or Chechnya, the issue is not whether a majority of the people would vote for independence, but that their foreign rulers (China, Indonesia, and Russia, in these cases) won't even permit a vote in the first place. In fact, they treat even advocacy of the right to self-determination as if it were a crime (unless it is in their interest to do otherwise). How many Tibetans have been arrested for supporting "separatism"? How many times has the Chinese government accused the Dalai Lama of being a "splittist"? Perhaps if China really treated the Tibetans well, instead of driving them to self-immolate in protest against Chinese rule, Tibetans would actually vote to remain under Chinese rule. But by arresting people who merely speak in favor of the idea of independence, the Chinese government just reinforces the fact that it is just a harsh, oppressive imperialist ruler, and the same goes for other countries that suppress independence movements with harsh measures. While not all the arguments made for or against Scottish independence may have been convincing or even firmly grounded in fact, the point was that the debate, however passionate, remained in the realm of verbal arguments, TV ads, editorials, and blog posts, rather than arrests, beatings and muzzling of free speech. That is the lesson that nations like China need to learn from this.

In other news, the People's Climate March in New York and elsewhere brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets. Now let's just hope that world leaders (and everyone else) will finally wake up and start taking strong measures to deal with climate change before it is too late.