State of the Union: Unionism and the Alternatives in the United Kingdom since 1707 (review)

This is primarily a work of political science, one of the authors being professor of that discipline at the University of Oxford, but they offer plenty of interest to historians too. Their basic thesis concerns unionism as an ideology of the British state ever since its original formation in 1707. Yet it is one that has seldom found explicit expression except at times of crisis—and then in terms doing less than justice to its complexities, mainly because these comprehended contradictions which, if subjected to too close a scrutiny, might have caused the whole unexamined structure to fall apart.

As history, then, the book is a welcome example of the British history which was long ago called for by J.G.A. Pocock but which has seldom seen the light of day. Attempts at writing it have often turned out to be repetitions of English history with mentions of Scotland, Wales and Ireland tacked on. This may be better than English history without mentions of Scotland, Wales and Ireland tacked on, but not much. If we are to get away from that, the central historiographical tradition of the United Kingdom, then its reverence for the majesty and perfection of the state has to be cast off. Questions have rather to be asked about episodes where reality failed to match ideology and where the system broke down or threatened to.

In the book the historical argument begins with the Union of 1707. For this the old piety, at its most fervent in A.V. Dicey, has been impossible since the searching, not to say cynical works of P.W.J. Riley appeared. They carried such conviction that they forced the orthodox unionist school of historiography to retire and regroup, which it has done for the most part behind a rather tired restatement of economic determinism. McLean and McMillan acknowledge the depth of Riley's case, yet point out it is not without its flaws either: for example, its stress on the strength of parties in the Scots Parliament sits ill with its insistence that in the end enough individual members could be bought. For themselves, they work systematically through all the various motives for Union adduced by Riley and others. They rely more on the force of their reinterpretation than on original research. Indisputably new, however—and standing at the crux of their argument —is their analysis of two crucial votes during the legislation of the Union in Edinburgh, on the first article of the treaty and on the Act of Security for the Church of Scotland.

Through this McLean and McMillan come to a fresh view of the Union, though it will need further research to establish it as a rival to the two prevailing interpretations, unionist and nationalist, each incompatible with the other. The first sees in the Union an act of far-sighted statesmanship, the second a squalid fix. What the present book brings out is how a degree of genuine bargaining did take place. It was not, to be sure, bargaining between equals. England was already rising to a place among the great powers while Scotland remained a small, weak, rudimentary state. Even so, she could not just be dictated to. As a last resort she might be conquered, but that was never going to be easy, what with a general European conflict raging. In all circumstances, Anglo-Scottish accord was preferable to Anglo-Scottish war. This meant some genuine concessions had to be made to the Scots. In fact the sole concession in which they showed any interest was free trade. The English did not like the sound of that, being as yet a mercantilist rather than a liberal nation. But when they looked at how much trade the Scots actually did (precious little) it could hardly be seen as a serious threat to the monopolies of the big chartered companies...