This article appeared today in Spanish in El Mundo
I write, in the week Scotland votes for or against independence, as the son of a Scotsman and a Spanish mother who spends most of the year between his homes in London and Sitges (Catalunya) . I have worked and enjoyed enduring friendships over thirty years of life as an author and journalist throughout the UK and Spain. Because I am not a British citizen resident in Scotland , I am not entitled to vote in the Scottish referendum but the historic nature of the event cannot leave me silent. I owe I to my paternal ancestry.
Prompted my friend and colleague’s John Carlin’s excellent piece-another hispanic/scot/brit- in sunday’s El Pais http://internacional.elpais.
I too can imagine that my late father-were he alive-would be voting NO while I myself have few doubts that Scotland, the UK, and Europe would be much diminished were the Scots to go independent.
And yet Carlin’s Scottish background is different from mine.My grandfather Charles Burns was a Scottish presbyterian from Brechin (Carlin’s father was from Glasgow) who in the late 19th century went to Chile where he married a daughter of English and Basque immigrants and worked as a bank manager when this was considered a noble profession.
The Burns’s were adventurous Scots-other great uncles went to far away places like Argentina and Australia-the kind that effortlessly engaged with other communities and with their hard work and inventiveness contributed to making Britain Great.
Unlike Carlin’s father, mine, Tom Burns, did not have a visceral dislike of the English establishment because of Churchill. My Chilean grandmother was a Catholic,and Charles converted to Catholicism in late life. My father who was brought to England after being born in Chile, never saw a contradiction between his faith, his Scotishness,and his patriotism towards Britain. His older brother David joined the Black Watch regiment -which has its own much respected tartan kilt and colours-as a young soldier and was killed days before the end of the First World War. He is buried in a cemetery in Belgium with his grave marked by his service to a a British regiment and a Celtic cross. Scottish rebellions form part of our shared historical narrative , as do great British military victories and defeats involving Scottish soldiers fighting for Queen or King and country (and democracy).
My father worked for Churchill in WW2 in the British embassy in Madrid, countering Nazi propaganda and engaged in other pro-ally intelligence activities. I was brought up in London as a British citizen proud of his Scottish and Spanish roots , feeling enriched and made more tolerant by my multiculturalism. I learnt to love Scottish dancing as I did flamenco, and sardanas. Malt whiskey flowed as did Rioja wine. We celebrated the poet Robert Burns once a year with haggis and his verses.(My Scots family were not related to the poet but we do have an ancestry that links us to a wife of the Scottish King Robert the Bruce!)
My father preferred playing chess to football but my mother was a Real Madrid supporter, and I became a Barca supporter because I thought they played the most magical football.I become as emotional walking the Highlands of Scotland as I do looking out across the Channell from the cliffs of Dover. Scotland is part of a great island people who ae proud their traditions but also look outwards.
I am a member of the Labour Party. I can see why some Scottish Labour supporters might believe an independdent Scotland will be a better country, serving their ideal of the common good. They look at the UK and think Conservative government with an upper class Eton boy as a prime-minister, and a Labour party that has abandoned its founding principles of human solidarity .
I do not share this view. Cameron has demonstrated his democratic credentials by allowing Scotland to have its referendum on negotiated terms. The referendum campaign has allowed all the issues to be openly debated. Labour MP’s who are themselves Sots,are highly principled men and women , as is party leader Ed Milliband. Not only is there now a broad political consensus to devolve greater powers to Scotland short of independence, Labour could well be returned to government to the UK in the next election , delivering on a programme that will better serve the interests of the British and Europe, Scots included. But whatever the outcome of the next election, a ‘Yes’ vote later this week is based on illusions that will be shattered at an enormous cost to those who hold them. Scotland will not become freeer. It will not only become poorer economically- it will become a smaller , meaner place,in heart and soul -and Great Britain will become little England, closed in on itself.
