This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/shortcuts/2014/mar/24/will-orkney-shetland-join-micronationalists-independence-vote
The article has changed 3 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| Will Orkney and Shetland join the micronationalists? | Will Orkney and Shetland join the micronationalists? |
| (about 17 hours later) | |
| Alex Salmond should always have expected it. Once you stir the nationalist pot, you can never know where it will lead. Residents of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles are petitioning the Scottish parliament at Holyrood for the right to hold their own referendum on independence, but this time from Scotland rather than the UK. In one scenario, the islands might vote to leave Scotland and remain in the UK. | Alex Salmond should always have expected it. Once you stir the nationalist pot, you can never know where it will lead. Residents of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles are petitioning the Scottish parliament at Holyrood for the right to hold their own referendum on independence, but this time from Scotland rather than the UK. In one scenario, the islands might vote to leave Scotland and remain in the UK. |
| That's the problem with nationalism. Where does it end? I once visited Sanday (population 550) in Orkney, and locals told me one side of the island was so distinct from the other than the accents were different. Perhaps west Sanday and east Sanday should consider splitting. Chaos beckons. | |
| At the same time as the Scottish islanders are thinking of going their own way, Venice and the Veneto region have also declared their desire to break away from Italy. An online poll, in which 2.3m people voted, registered 89% support for secession. They have a point of course: Venice is sui generis, a world entire unto itself, culturally different from the rest of Italy. No doubt if Venice secedes, the islands of Murano and Burano will want to consider their own futures. We may be entering the age of the microstate. | At the same time as the Scottish islanders are thinking of going their own way, Venice and the Veneto region have also declared their desire to break away from Italy. An online poll, in which 2.3m people voted, registered 89% support for secession. They have a point of course: Venice is sui generis, a world entire unto itself, culturally different from the rest of Italy. No doubt if Venice secedes, the islands of Murano and Burano will want to consider their own futures. We may be entering the age of the microstate. |
| All nations are constructs. Anthropologists say humans are preconditioned to want to live in extended family groups numbering about 150 people. So perhaps we are in a period when we are working towards our ideal. Even east and west Sanday may be too big. The peninsula in the north of the island will also have to declare unilateral independence. | All nations are constructs. Anthropologists say humans are preconditioned to want to live in extended family groups numbering about 150 people. So perhaps we are in a period when we are working towards our ideal. Even east and west Sanday may be too big. The peninsula in the north of the island will also have to declare unilateral independence. |
| The list of would-be seceders around the world is staggering. In Spain, the Basques and Catalans have long wanted to break away, but there also active nationalist movements in most of the other regions. In Belgium, the Flemish and Walloon halves of the country exist in a state of mutual loathing. Carinthia wants to break away from Austria; Brittany from France; Bavaria from Germany; Moravia from the Czech Republic; Frisia from the Netherlands, and on and on. And that's just Europe. Imagine how many secessionist movements there are in Africa (six in Ethiopia alone), Asia (a dozen in Burma) and the Americas. The US doesn't just have secessionists at federal level; in quite a few of the states, there are counties that want to break away. | The list of would-be seceders around the world is staggering. In Spain, the Basques and Catalans have long wanted to break away, but there also active nationalist movements in most of the other regions. In Belgium, the Flemish and Walloon halves of the country exist in a state of mutual loathing. Carinthia wants to break away from Austria; Brittany from France; Bavaria from Germany; Moravia from the Czech Republic; Frisia from the Netherlands, and on and on. And that's just Europe. Imagine how many secessionist movements there are in Africa (six in Ethiopia alone), Asia (a dozen in Burma) and the Americas. The US doesn't just have secessionists at federal level; in quite a few of the states, there are counties that want to break away. |
| Unless you want a UN that runs into thousands of members, the only measure to judge a country is by the way it treats its people. Where there is oppression, especially on ethnic grounds, nationalist agitation is legitimate. The anti-colonial movements of the mid-20th century were clearly necessary. But in some parts of the world, nationalism – a respectable word for tribalism – is fetishised. Countries may be historical accidents, but if they more or less function let them be. Otherwise we will be back to a world of warring villages. | Unless you want a UN that runs into thousands of members, the only measure to judge a country is by the way it treats its people. Where there is oppression, especially on ethnic grounds, nationalist agitation is legitimate. The anti-colonial movements of the mid-20th century were clearly necessary. But in some parts of the world, nationalism – a respectable word for tribalism – is fetishised. Countries may be historical accidents, but if they more or less function let them be. Otherwise we will be back to a world of warring villages. |
| Where this live-and-let-live thesis leaves Crimea, I'm not sure. Perhaps this explosive Turkish-Russian-Ukrainian mishmash is the exception that proves the rule: a place that doesn't fit anywhere, a historical quirk, a Black Sea San Marino. I'm not opposed to manifestly ridiculous pseudo-countries, just self-justifying statelets with pretensions. | Where this live-and-let-live thesis leaves Crimea, I'm not sure. Perhaps this explosive Turkish-Russian-Ukrainian mishmash is the exception that proves the rule: a place that doesn't fit anywhere, a historical quirk, a Black Sea San Marino. I'm not opposed to manifestly ridiculous pseudo-countries, just self-justifying statelets with pretensions. |
| • This article was amended on 25 March 2014. An earlier version referred to Sanday in the Orkneys, rather than in Orkney, in contravention of our Style guide. |