Self-determination

Well, today is the day that Scotland votes on independence.  It's strange how the closer the world becomes, through technology and globalisation, the more people want to see themselves in smaller compartments of it.  Over the last twenty five years, with the break-up of the old Soviet Union and the former communist states, plus the demise of colonialism, the number of countries in the world has increased markedly.  Everyone seems to want to have an identity with something smaller, to live in a country where more people are like them.  So we see frontiers drawn within countries on the basis of religous and ethnic groupings, each of whom want to have self-determination.  It seems to me that the more the world comes together, the more people want to be separate.

I was born to parents who were, on the face of it English.  They were both born in England and they spoke English with no hint of an accent from some far-away - or even nearby - land.  However, my father always told me that his mother was from an Irish-American family.  And that his father came from a wealthy Irish family and was disinherited when he decided to marry my paternal grandmother, because she was nothing but a shop girl.   And my mother told me that there were Scots and Irish in her family tree too.  So I grew up believing that due to my ancestors, I was 9/16 Irish, 1/16 Scottish and the remaining - er... well work it out for yourself - English.

So for me, as a child, I always saw Ireland as my second country - I felt an affinity with the Irish people, and whenever England wasn't doing too well in something (the World Cup, for example) I always had the Irish to fall back on.

This received knowledge stayed with me right through my adult life, up until the internet age, when I decided to research my family tree.  Well, the truth is that although I've gone back quite a few generations, and traced the main line of both my parents' family trees to the beginning of the 19th century, all I have found is English families.  

My mother's mother was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, to a methodist minister and his wife.  My mother's father was born in the East End of London, where his family had been river policemen and customs men for generations.  My father's mother was a shopgirl, that's true, her father was a butcher in Portsmouth, as was his father before him.  My paternal grandfather was a naval officer, who was also born in Portsmouth.  But given that my father had given me that story about him coming from some grand Irish family, I went back further, and discovered that his father (also a navy man) was actually born in Tollesbury, in rural Essex, and his father before him was born in Mersea, not far away, where his family had been farmers since the mid 18th century.  This latter Moore, John Ayrton, lost his first wife in a cholera epidemic in the 1820s in Colchester, sold the farm and used the proceeds to set up a carting business in the East End of London, living in the infamous Ratcliffe area, where he somehow managed to attain the ripe old age of 91 before pegging out.

Not a hint of Irish anywhere, as far as I could see.  And when I went back further in my mother's ancestors I discovered a family of preachers from Todmorden in Greater Manchester, and a family of farmers and general rural labourers in Sedgeley, Staffordshire,  not a lot of Scots or Irish there either.

So all of that would seem to suggest that my affinity with the Irish was purely imaginary on somebody's part, and I am pretty much pure English through and through.  Did it make me feel any different, knowing that I was largely descended from Essex Man?

Well, no, not really.  At the time, I felt a mild disappointment in being "just English" but in the years since, I have come to terms with it and even felt a little pride from time to time.

All of which leads me to this idea of Scottish independence.  Having lived and worked in Edinburgh for five years in my twenties, and loved it, I can quite see the attraction.  But needing to have a separate identity?   To me the whole idea of nationalistic pride comes from some tribal instinct that fosters a "them and us" attitude.  It's all to easy to find the rigours of life too demanding and to find someone else to blame for it.  In the Scots case, it is clearly the English, which probably explains the cries of "English Bastard" when I first opened my mouth and let forth my own accent in a pub one night during my introduction to Edinburgh at the time of the 1982 World Cup.

On that note, I guess that if Scottish independence becomes a reality tomorrow morning, and English independence becomes something of a reality afterwards, I'll probably not be mourning the passing of the Union too much...