Cultural historian Prof Murray Pittock (University of Glasgow) is delivering a lecture entitled The British people? Hope, delusion, memory and trauma in the Scottish referendum of 2014 in QUB’s Canada Room (Lanyon Building) on Wednesday afternoon (12 Feb) at 4pm.
His presentation will be followed by the launch of his updated book The Road to Independence? Scotland in the Balance (whose foreword has been penned by First Minister Alex Salmond).
Murray Pittock’s book concludes:
A loosely federated or virtually confederal UK with clearly distinct locales for control of politics, culture and society and their representation through the media could be the most stable solution the Union can now enjoy: indeed, Ireland would probably still be in the UK had this begun to happen a century earlier.
However, serious doubts must remain that this will be recognized by Westminster, or that English politics can change enough to accommodate a multinational policy, taking account too of control over natural resources and the development of a new generation of weapons of mass destruction.
Devo max is too much of a unilateral sweetheart deal for Scotland to be accepted at Westminster as it is now constituted, while pure federalism is both unwanted in England and would be unstable given England’s relative size.
You can also still listen back to his Radio 4 series on The Roots of Scottish Nationalism.
Alan Meban. Tweets as @alaninbelfast. Blogs about cinema and theatre over at Alan in Belfast. A freelancer who writes about, reports from, live-tweets and live-streams civic, academic and political events and conferences. He delivers social media training/coaching; produces podcasts and radio programmes; is a FactCheckNI director; a member of Ofcom’s Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland; and a member of the Corrymeela Community.
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