- 1 For more about the event, see for instance Brooks (2024). For examples of the phrase “it’s shite be (...)
1“It’s shite being Scottish”. Thirty years after its publication, the phrase most often associated with Irvine Welsh’s novel Trainspotting in popular culture is paradoxically one that does not appear in the novel itself and is instead taken from Danny Boyle’s eponymous 1996 film, whose success has made the catchy maxim into somewhat of a national joke—one that for instance made a recent come-back after the story of a Glasgow Willy Wonka “immersive experience” scam went global in late February 2024.1 When a longer extract is quoted, “it’s shite being Scottish” is generally followed by some of the lines said immediately afterwards by actor Ewan McGregor (playing Mark “Rent-boy” Renton), namely:
We’re the lowest of the low, the scum of the fucking earth, the most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was shat into civilisation. Some people hate the English. I don’t. They’re just wankers. We on the other hand are colonised by wankers. Can’t even find a decent culture to be colonised by. We’re ruled by effete arseholes. (Boyle, 1996)
This passage is a variation on an actual extract from the novel in which narrator Mark Renton makes the following tirade:
Ah hate cunts like that. Cunts like Begbie. Cunts that are intae baseball-batting every fucker that’s different; pakis, poofs, n what huv ye. Fuckin failures in a country ay failures. It’s nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don’t hate the English. They’re just wankers. We can’t even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We’re ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the fuckin low, the scum of the earth. The most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was even shat intae creation. Ah don’t hate the English. They just git oan wi the shite thuv goat. Ah hate the Scots. (Welsh, 1996 [1993], p. 78)
2As underlined by a Welsh critic, “[t]he novel Trainspotting is interspersed with allusions to Scotland as the victim of an English colonising mission”, with this oft‑quoted extract being “one of the most forceful and vigorous passages of the novel that comment on Scotland’s status” (Homberg-Schramm, 2018, p. 53), to the point that it has become “a Scottish postcolonial shibboleth”, in the words of another critic (Macdonald, 2006, p. 126). However, it has also been noted that “[i]n many instances, the description of the English as colonisers is combined with the description of their class status” (Homberg-Schramm, 2018, p. 53), which underscores the fact that such allusions are intended as emblems of relations of domination on multiple levels, rather than more narrowly as claims to colonial status. Even within a strictly colonial framework, Welsh’s work has been convincingly described as helping to “dissolve a mechanistic binary between coloniser and colonised, in this case a division of the British metropole and Scotland as already agreed and monolithic entities” (Kelly quoted in Macdonald, 2006, p. 127).
3And yet, this specific passage from Trainspotting is regularly invoked in popular culture to back up literal claims to colonial status. The quote “It’s shite being Scottish! We’re the lowest of the low! The scum of the fucking earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was shat into civilisation!” was for instance used to point to Scotland’s state as an actual colony of England in an ordinary Scot’s tweet made on 23 November 2022 in the wake of the UK Supreme Court’s judgment that the Scottish parliament cannot hold an independence referendum without the British parliament’s approval (McGrory, 2022). As evidenced by the popularity of the #ScotlandaColony hashtag at the time of this judgment, Anglo-Scottish relations continue to be seen in colonial terms in certain Scottish nationalist circles. The aim of this article is to study this enduring colonial interpretation of Scotland’s place in the Union.
- 2 Mullen and Gibbs argue that the shift mainly occurred as a result of international developments suc (...)
4In an article published in 2023, historians Stephen Mullen and Ewan Gibbs delineated a recent shift in nationalist thinking away from an understanding of Scotland as an “internal colony” of England within the borders of the UK State to one that better accepts its role as part of the imperial core (Mullen & Gibbs, 2023).2 However, in a book published a few years earlier in the context of the Scottish independence referendum, historian Linda Colley had anecdotally noted that when visiting Scotland in recent years, she had been “struck by how many Scots complain[ed] about feeling ‘colonised’ by the English and/or by London”. After reminding the reader that “[i]n historical fact, Scotland has never been a colony” as it was “never conquered or forced to submit to waves of alien settlers as Ireland was”, she had commented that “historical facts are not the point here” and hypothesised that “[t]o claim that Scotland is a colony is to assert that it is imprisoned within the United Kingdom” (Colley, 2014, p. 93).
5Such remarks raise the following questions: if there has indeed been a growing acceptance of Scotland’s historical role in the colonial enterprise in Scottish nationalist circles and beyond, to what extent has the reference to Scotland as a colony been abandoned in contemporary nationalist discourse? What’s more, to what extent have claims to colonial status been meant in a literal, material sense? It is to answering these questions that this article is directed. The primary research hypothesis that is tested is that there is now a gap within the Scottish national movement between the political party elite, on the one hand, and the nationalist grassroots on the other hand, in terms of the popularity and acceptability of claims to colonial status.
6The first part of this article studies the SNP’s use in pre‑devolution decades, more specifically the 1970s and 1980s, of what is here termed a colonial discourse of a type lampooned in Mark Renton’s previously-quoted tirades. While Mullen and Gibbs’s focus was on the SNP’s partial espousal in those decades of the “internal colony” theory and on its intellectual origins (see for instance Hechter, 1975), the present article offers a closer examination of SNP discourse itself, based on an analysis of the SNP HQ papers of the 1970s and 1980s held in the National Library of Scotland archives. The analysis sheds light on the relative popularity of a colonial rhetoric among SNP elite politicians (more specifically party chairmen and MPs) at the time, which partly explains why it percolated into popular culture in the following years. This first part also examines to what uses such a rhetoric was applied, and questions to what extent claims of colonial status were meant to be taken literally, or simply to point to economic and political subordination.
7The second part of the article widens the study to the whole independence movement and looks into more recent examples of Scottish nationalists’ colonial rhetoric, using five kinds of sources (presented later) and focusing on nationalist reactions to one specific event, namely the previously-mentioned UK Supreme Court judgment of 23 November 2022. This ruling lent itself particularly well to colonial discourse in that the Supreme Court itself based its conclusion that Scotland does not have a right to self-determination on the fact that it was never a colony.
8The article concludes that, thirty years after the novel Trainspotting destabilised it, the colonial understanding of Scotland’s place in the Union is still alive and well within nationalist circles even though the SNP elite now refuses to countenance it; it even seems to have gained popularity in the wake of recent SNP governments’ inability to obtain the right to organise a second independence referendum.
- 3 A party elite is a “wider decision-making circle held together by a community of values, interests, (...)
9In the decades which preceded the introduction of devolution, especially the 1970s and 1980s, it was not unusual for the SNP party elite (more particularly party chairmen and members of parliament)3 to use the words colony or colonial when speaking of Scotland’s status within the UK. Such discourse permeated society more widely, as evidenced in Welsh’s novel Trainspotting published in the early 1990s, where, however, “Scotland’s ‘postcolonial’ status” was not to be taken literally, but rather “in a cultural sense of inferiorisation” (Homberg-Schramm, 2018, p. 2). To what extent was this also true in the case of SNP speeches and literature? In those decades, the popularity of such type of language was in part linked to the international context of decolonisation, as was made clear when SNP chairman Gordon Wilson told delegates at the party’s annual conference of 1981 that “the colonial relationship has ended all round the world. It is overdue for termination here” (Wilson, 1981). Similarly, a motion selected for debate at the SNP’s annual conference of 1985 illustrates the party’s (partial and arguably superficial) adoption of a form of discourse linking support for post‑colonial, Third World countries to Scotland’s own experience as a colonised country:
Mindful of the suffering of the Scottish people under systems of economic, political and cultural colonialism, the Scottish National Party declares itself resolutely opposed to any state or government which wishes overtly or covertly to subjugate another people. In keeping with such a principle the SNP will seek to have implemented by a Scottish government policies on foreign affairs which give the maximum assistance and encouragement to Third World Nations and will positively support international agencies for cooperation and development. (SNP, 1985)
10Such explicit parallels between Scotland and former colonies across the world were however rare, and Scottish nationalist rhetoric was mainly British-centred. To what aims were claims to colonial status made at the time, and what meaning were they meant to convey? Analysis of SNP HQ sources of the 1970s and 1980s has revealed four major features. First, in terms of message, claims to colonial status were used to underscore both economic exploitation and lack of political control. Second, in rhetorical terms, the word colony was regularly used in combination with the words province or region and opposed to the word nation, which points to the fact that colonial discourse was not always meant to be taken literally and was rather used to point to Scotland’s lack of (economic and political) independence. Third, when the word colony was used, it was often accompanied with a justification in the form of a list of Scotland’s assumed colonial characteristics, illustrating the fact that even then, nationalists were aware of the problematic nature of such claims to colonial status. Fourth, a colonial rhetoric was mainly used in speeches that also exhibited two other, classically nationalist features: on the one hand, concern with the very survival of the nation, and on the other hand, features of what has been termed (in the Scottish context) “fundamentalist” nationalism, i.e. opposition to devolution in the name of independence and nothing less, as well as to an identification with either the left or the right (Mitchell, 1996, pp. 212–3).
11A first point is that colonial discourse was used to send two main messages: one of economic exploitation and the other of political dependence. Above all, describing Scotland as a colony was justified because it was being drained of its natural and human resources, as argued by SNP chairman Billy Wolfe in his party’s 1979 general election manifesto:
The drain of finance and resources has gone on for 60 years. It continues apace with the drain of tax revenues from Scotland’s oil. What other nation would accept a situation in which they were denied even a share in their own oil revenues? In this respect, as in others, the kingdom of Scotland is being treated as a colony. Scotland’s principal permanent resource—her land—has been sold up to foreigners on an unprecedented scale under Labour. (Wolfe, 1979)
More specifically, Scotland’s colonial status rested on a combination of economic exploitation and lack of political control, as argued in 1985 by Wolfe’s successor as SNP chairman, Gordon Wilson:
On this sixth anniversary of the Scottish Assembly Referendum, it is clear that Scotland has slid back from a position of rising confidence in the 1970s to being once more a subjugated colonial possession. […] The essence of colonial status is external political control combined with economic exploitation. That is exactly the scene in Scotland. While our oil wealth is steadily syphoned off by the Treasury, our share of UK public spending is consistently reduced. (Wilson, 1985a)
12A second feature of the SNP’s colonial discourse in the 1970s and 1980s was that the word colony was often combined with the words province or region and opposed to the word nation so as to point to Scotland’s lack of self-government and consequent relegation to third-rate status as a territory within the UK. This can for instance be observed in the following quote by chairman Wolfe in the context of the devolution plans reluctantly made by the Labour government in the wake of its conversion to the principle of a Scottish assembly in 1974: “[…] it is a provincial Assembly that is proposed […]. The situation envisaged by our opponents is not very different from our present colonial status, devoid of any legislature at all. Only the SNP stands for a National Assembly with wide-ranging and effective powers” (Wolfe, 1975). Similarly, in the SNP’s 1979 manifesto, Wolfe’s previously-quoted claim that “the kingdom of Scotland is being treated as a colony” was preceded by the cry that “[w]e are a nation, not a region of England” (Wolfe, 1979). As made obvious in these examples, colonial rhetoric was not always meant to be taken literally, and Scotland was compared to a colony as often as it was called one, as when Wolfe claimed that “[t]he Labour Government’s attitude of discrimination against the people of Scotland is reminiscent of the way in which British Governments used to treat their colonies” (Wolfe, 1974). The main point was to underscore lack of independence and the economic exploitation that went with it.
13A third feature of the SNP’s colonial rhetoric confirms that nationalists were well aware, even then, that applying the word colony to the Scottish case was problematic. Indeed, claims to colonial status were repeatedly followed by questions on the model of how else can one call/define/describe/refer to a country which, themselves followed by a list of reasons why describing Scotland as a colony was justified. Here is for instance what chairman Gordon Wilson told party delegates at the SNP’s annual conference of 1985:
In this last year, the whole structure of the Scottish economy has been undermined. The so‑called “Tartan ring fence” round Scottish companies has been dismantled. […] [I]s that not the plight of a colony? How else can one define a country which has been used as a site for two series of germ warfare experiments and which was selected as a possible location for tests on explosive nuclear devices? How else can one describe a country which is the fourth largest oil producer in the world but which allows all the revenues to go to the imperial capital? How else can one refer to a nation which allows expensive electricity to be exported to England at knock-down prices? How else could we possibly describe a nation which sanctions a death sentence to be passed on its most important single industrial complex at Ravenscraig and Gartcosh? How else would one allow the warm South of England to enjoy extra fuel allowances while our own old people and babies are allowed to freeze to death in our Scottish winters? […] We must, therefore, dismiss our colonial role and reach out to a future in which we can pursue our own economic, social and cultural development. (Wilson, 1985b)
Here the words colony/colonial are used to indicate economic exploitation and under-development, with Scotland’s resources being exploited in the interests of the “imperial capital” rather than in her own interests, as well as political dependence, with Scotland being (among other things) used as a testing ground for dangerous experiments and unable to do anything about it.
14In 1988, on the occasion of the first House of Commons debate on an SNP motion, one which concluded on a reference to Scotland’s “continued colonial status within the United Kingdom”, three SNP MPs endeavoured to justify the claim that Scotland was a colony. Margaret Ewing started by stating that what gave Scotland “colonial status” was the then Conservative Government’s “lack of a moral as well as a political mandate” to govern it (UK House of Commons, 1988, col. 1084). Andrew Welsh then went on to ask, in answer to the Government’s objection to the description of colonial status, “how else [one could] describe the present Scottish situation”, before completing his previously-started list of all the ways in which the country lacked political independence (UK House of Commons, 1988, col. 1109). Alex Salmond similarly acknowledged that “[t]he Government rejects our claim that Scotland is a colony and has colonial status”, which he countered by providing the following list of colonial characteristics:
When a country is ruled by a Government that it does not elect, when that Government make a comprehensive attack on Scottish values and institutions, when that country is denied the right of self-determination through referendum or constitutional convention, and when that Government are engaged in the pillaging of Scottish assets—I am talking about £70,000 millions of oil revenues since 1979—that looks to me like a colonial position. (UK House of Commons, 1988, col. 1115)
In other words, Scotland could justifiably be called a colony, not only because she suffered from both lack of self‑government and economic exploitation, but also because her national specificities (her specific “values and institutions”) were being erased.
15A fourth and final characteristic of SNP colonial discourse was that it generally featured in speeches that also displayed two other properties: first, they were classically nationalist in that they argued that the survival of the nation was at stake, and second, they were typical of what has been termed fundamentalist nationalism, i.e. a form of nationalism that rejected both devolution (i.e. legislative autonomy) in the name of independence and nothing less, and an identification with either the left or the right. This was for instance evidenced in two different speeches given at the SNP’s annual conference of 1980. According to chairman Wilson, the fact that Scotland was being treated as a colony posed a threat to its very survival as a nation:
Can there be an alternative to independence if Scotland is to be saved? […] For Scotland, the writing is now once again clearly on the wall. There can be no future if Westminster, whether under Tory or Labour control, is allowed to run Scotland like a third-rate colony. (Wilson, 1980)
As for Donald Stewart MP, he employed a colonial rhetoric to denounce the exploitation of Scotland’s resources, while also opposing both devolution and an identification of Scottish nationalism with either the left or the right:
[A] broad national movement should not be confined to a specific philosophy of Left and Right. […] Scotland free can take a Left road or a Right road—but it will be a Scottish road. That is the fundamental aim—Scottish independence. On that we are agreed, that there will be no retreat—no surrender. Even in the devolution debate which most now agree was a mistake, none of us in Parliament during the Scotland Act failed to agree when challenged that independence was our ultimate aim. […] The condition of our country is that of a depressed colony while possessing the resources that keeps the UK from bankruptcy. (Stewart, 1980)
Five years later, at another SNP conference, Gordon Wilson once more linked the fact that Scotland suffered “the plight of a colony” with the idea that its very existence as a nation was under threat (“We cannot stand for the very annihilation of our country, indeed of our very name. Go out. Tell our people. There is only one choice before them—Scotland free—or a desert”), while also developing the fundamentalist point that the SNP should steer “well clear of the militant Left or Right” (Wilson, 1985b).
16In conclusion, in pre‑devolution decades, claims to colonial status were generally part of a nationalist discourse characterised by a perception that the survival of the nation was at stake and by a fundamentalist defence of independence and of (supposed) ideological neutrality. As a consequence, while the relative popularity of a colonial rhetoric in Scottish nationalist discourse of the 1970s and 1980s can be partly explained by the international context of decolonisation, it is here argued that it is also emblematic of a pivotal period in the SNP’s internal history, a period marked by tensions between fundamentalist nationalism and a more “gradualist” one both supportive of devolution (as a first step on the road to independence) and tempted by a clear anchoring of the party to the left.
17By way of transition, let us note that analysis of SNP HQ sources of the 1970s and 1980s has unearthed only one instance of nationalist discourse structured around an explicit opposition between Scotland’s status as an internal colony within the borders of the British state, and the status that nationalists believed she should have by dint of the Treaty of Union of 1707, namely that of a partner of England in a Union of equals. In his chairman’s speech to the SNP’s annual conference held in the wake of the 1987 UK general election, Gordon Wilson argued that the re‑election to power of the Conservatives (against the wishes of a majority of Scots) demonstrated that “Scotland is a colony rather than a partner” (Wilson, 1987). By contrast, opposing Scotland’s theoretical status as an equal partner in a voluntary union with her actual status as a colony would become a dominant trope in nationalist discourse of the late 2010s and early 2020s, a period that has seen a revival of colonial language within the independence movement in the wake of the British Governments’ repeated refusals to grant Scotland the right to another independence referendum.
18As a reminder, the research hypothesis that served as a foundation to this article was that, compared to the pre‑devolution period when the SNP political elite (specifically party chairmen and MPs) did not hesitate to compare Scotland to, or even describe it as, a colony, there now exists a gap between nationalist elites and ordinary grassroots nationalists in terms of the acceptability or not of colonial discourse in relation to Scotland. To test this hypothesis, Scottish nationalist reactions to the UK Supreme Court judgment of 23 November 2022 on a Scottish independence referendum were analysed.
19Five kinds of sources were used for this case study. Nationalist elite reactions to the ruling were ascertained through three types of sources: first, the official address made by Nicola Sturgeon, the then SNP leader and Scottish First Minister, on the day of the ruling (Sturgeon, 2022); second, two debates in the UK House of Commons held in response to the ruling—an Urgent Question session held on 23 November and involving SNP MPs, as well as a 30‑minute Westminster Hall debate called on 30 November by Neale Hanvey, an MP from a minor pro‑independence party called Alba, and involving MPs from both the SNP and Alba (UK House of Commons, 2022b and 2022c); third, reactions to the ruling by nationalist representatives on their official Twitter accounts on 23 and 24 November. To establish some of the nationalist grassroots reactions to the ruling, two different types of sources were used: on the one hand, readers’ letters published in The National, the only pro‑independence daily newspaper in Scotland, over a period of two weeks around the date of the ruling (from 15 to 30 November 2022), and on the other hand, Twitter reactions to the ruling by people using the #ScotlandaColony hashtag which trended in its wake.
20Three main conclusions can be drawn from the analysis. First and foremost, it confirmed the existence of a gap between SNP elite discourse and grassroots nationalist discourse. In the sources examined, Scotland was never compared to a colony by SNP representatives, while it was repeatedly described as one by grassroots nationalists, including supporters of some nationalist groups outside the SNP; this was especially true of supporters of Salvo, a radical organisation which presents itself as Scotland’s liberation movement, and for whom spreading the idea that Scotland is an internal colony of England is a priority. To start with SNP elite discourse, it is very striking that neither party leader Nicola Sturgeon or any of the SNP representatives who reacted to the Supreme Court judgment in the House of Commons and on Twitter ever used a colonial rhetoric of the type used by some of their counterparts in the 1970s and 1980s—quite the reverse, with some of them actively distancing themselves from claims to colonial status. Stewart McDonald MP for instance tweeted on 24 November 2022 that: “Scotland is not a colony and our people are not oppressed. We didn’t need the court to tell us this—it was in the Scottish Gov’t white paper in 2013. That fact was correct then and remains correct today.” (McDonald, 2022a)
21By contrast, in grassroots nationalist discourse, colonial rhetoric was rife. Notably, Scotland was described as a colony in at least one reader’s letter (and often several) in every single edition of The National for eight days in a row, between 22 November 2022 (the day before the Supreme Court ruling) and 29 November (a week after it). One example among many could be the following extract from a letter published in the paper’s edition of 24 November: “So it’s official, Scotland is a colony of United Kingdom/England. That’s it—next time I’m passing passport control I’ll put up a poster welcoming people to the Colony of Scotland” (Musgrave, 2022, p. 25). A few days later, another reader similarly bemoaned the fact that Scotland was a colony “where the writ of the UK will always trump the decisions of the devolved Parliament, where the resources of Scotland are siphoned out to the UK exchequer and provision made to fund Scotland at a level that the Scots cannot decide”; notably, however, he chose to put the word colony in‑between inverted commas, which suggests that the claim to colonial status was not meant in a literal sense (Neilson, 2022, p. 26).
22Scotland was also obviously described as a colony by the many ordinary Twitter users who used the #ScotlandaColony hashtag in the wake of the ruling. As noted in the introduction, on the day of the Court ruling, one Scot associated this hashtag with a few lines from the Trainspotting film (“It’s shite being Scottish: We’re the lowest of the low! The scum of the fucking Earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash, that was shat into civilisation!”), followed by the commentary “Seems we must know our place” and an English flag emoji (McGrory, 2022). Here, we see that Mark Renton’s tirade was intended in a literal sense, as indicating the state of Scots as a people colonised by the English (alluded to via the St George’s Cross emoji). The following day, another Scot tweeted: “Most of us grew up believing in a UK of consenting nations. For most of us, today changes everything. #ScotlandaColony #LeaveALightOnForScotland” (Barclay, 2022).
23These examples are evidence of the continuing existence in Scotland of a colonial discourse which resurfaced on the occasion of the Supreme Court’s assessment that Scotland was never a colony. They also testify to the fact that, contrary to what was the case in pre‑devolution decades, the SNP elite now distances itself from such a discourse which is therefore limited to grassroots nationalist circles, as well as to some minor nationalist organisations, most notably Salvo (or its sister organisation Liberation Scotland), but also the minor parties Alba and the Independence for Scotland Party (ISP), as well as the non‑party organisation All Under One Banner (AUOB).
24In the wake of the ruling, one Salvo supporter for instance wrote a letter to the National in which he compared present-day Scotland to England’s “former colony of America” at the time of its war of independence (Booth, 2022, p. 24). Claims to colonial status are at the heart of the case made by Salvo, a group which has forcefully argued that Scotland is an internal colony of England and which defines its key objectives as the “restoration of the sovereign rights of the people and of the territorial nation of Scotland under international law” by means of “raising public awareness in Scotland and internationally of the true position of Scotland as a de facto colony within the United Kingdom”, as well as of “challenging the British establishment’s colonial narrative which erases or misrepresents Scottish historical, political and social identity” (Liberation Scotland, undated). A typical example of Salvo’s colonial rhetoric could be the following tweet, posted by the group’s Fife branch in the wake of the publication of an SNP government paper on independence in 2023: “Scotland is a colony. Colonisers are experts at lying to preserve their power, and money! The SNP do not speak for independentista, a commentary followed by a dictionary definition of the word colony” (Salvo Fife, 2023).
25It is mainly through the “Yours for Scotland” blog that Salvo has repeatedly made the point that Scotland is the last colony of the British Empire. In this blog run until recently by Salvo founder and former SNP office bearer Iain Lawson (who passed away in August 2024), one could for instance read the claim that “for over 300 years Scots have been ‘represented’ by a majority of MPs from British colonial parties”, “colonial majorities” that have “held Scotland tight and subject to London’s imperial control, exploitation and oppression of our people and land”; as for SNP MPs, they were claimed to have a “colonial mindset” which led them to accept their subordination and salute the oppressor across the HoC [House of Commons] chamber and by doing so enslave the rest of us Scots” (Lawson, 2022). As was the case here, many of the blog posts were influenced by the writings of former academic Alf Baird, who has used postcolonial theory to argue that Scotland “meets all the criteria to be considered a colony”, giving it the right to self-determination by UN standards (Lawson, 2023).
- 4 “Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sit (...)
26However, Salvo is not the only group in the Scottish independence movement to claim that Scotland is an internal colony. Although it did not make such a claim in the tweet it posted in reaction to the Supreme Court ruling (AUOB, 2022b), All Under One Banner, an organisation founded to organise marches for independence, had nonetheless done so on several other occasions, such as when it had parodied one of the best‑known passages in Trainspotting4 in a tweet that called on Scots to “Choose Self Determination, Choose Freedom, Choose Scotland” in the context of the upcoming Scottish Parliament election of 2021, described as either “the Scottish Independence election” or the “Colonial administration election” (AUOB, 2020), or, even more to the point, when it had posted the following tweet two months before the Supreme Court ruling of November 2022: “Soon the English Supreme court will rule that Scotland can’t hold a referendum without UK Govt permission. This will prove that Scotland is a colony, not an equal partner” (AUOB, 2022a).
27What of the minor nationalist parties, most notably Alba and the Independence for Scotland Party? There are few instances of non‑SNP nationalist party discourse in the corpus selected for analysis, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions on these parties based on this corpus only. However, even within the confines of our narrow corpus, there is evidence that Alba is less reluctant than the SNP to spread a colonial vision of Scotland’s place in the UK, with Alba MP Neale Hanvey describing the UK Secretary of State for Scotland as a “territorial viceroy” in the Commons debate which he called on 30 November 2022 (UK House of Commons, 2022c, col. 382WH). This was reminiscent of when, less than a month earlier in the same House of Commons, he had asked the UK Prime Minister: “Is Scotland in a voluntary and respectful union of equals, as was claimed in 2014, or are we hostages in a territorial British colony?” (UK House of Commons, 2022a, col. 863)—a question that had been “met with groans in the Commons as well as laughter from Speaker Lindsay Hoyle” (Learmonth, 2022), and after which SNP MP Pete Wishart had tweeted: “Imagine going round the doors trying to convince the Scottish people that they live in a “colony”. As well as grossly insulting those that have experienced real colonialism you would be laughed down the street. This sort of rubbish does not help our cause” (Wishart, 2022). This example is illustrative both of the modern SNP elite’s desire to distance itself from a colonial rhetoric, and of the gap that exists between SNP and Alba discourse in this regard.
28If the corpus of the study were extended beyond the specific timeframe selected for the analysis, one would easily find examples pointing to the fact that the minor nationalist parties are willing to use colonial language and spread claims to colonial status. Concerning Alba, one need only mention the U-turn undertaken in this regard by the current party leader Kenny MacAskill. In an article posted on Alba’s website in August 2024 and first published in the Scotsman newspaper, MacAskill (then Alba depute leader) opened on the claim that he had “never been someone who believed Scotland was a colony”, before arguing that he was now being made to “reconsider” by so‑called “muscular unionists” who were “treating us [Scotland] like a colony”, as stated in the very title of the article (MacAskill, 2024). Concerning the ISP, one could for instance mention two blog posts that were published on the party’s website in 2021 and in which Scotland was either directly called a colony, or described as being ruled as one (Barrhead Boy, 2021; Bentley-Steed, 2021). These examples suggest that the minor nationalist parties have been trying to tap into the appeal of colonial claims among some grassroots nationalists.
29The second conclusion that can be established from an analysis of nationalist reactions to the Supreme Court ruling of November 2022 is that colonial discourse was almost always used as part of a dual strategy of, on the one hand, turning the Supreme Court’s case on its head, and on the other hand, justifying the need for more radical forms of action than those engaged in and condoned by SNP elite politicians. As a reminder, the UK Supreme Court judgment, quoting a former judgment by the Supreme Court of Canada, had stated that international law recognises a right to self‑determination in three types of contexts: “in situations of former colonies; where a people is oppressed, as for example under foreign military occupation; or where a definable group is denied meaningful access to government to pursue their political, economic, social and cultural development” (UK Supreme Court, 2022). As Scotland did not fit into any of these categories, it therefore did not have a right to self-determination.
30In the wake of the ruling, however, a common argument among grassroots nationalists was to say that the ruling itself, as a result of which Scotland did not have a right to self-determination, demonstrated Scotland’s colonial status (as well as its status as an oppressed nation), thereby putting it into a category which gave it this right. The National’s edition of 28 November 2022 for instance published a selection of readers’ letters which all made this very point under the heading “Argument we are not a colony is circular”, as illustrated in the following extract: “In the ruling it is noted that Scotland cannot use international law because it does not fall into the definition of a ‘colony’. However, it would appear Scotland has now become a ‘colony’ with no rights of self-determination under the ruling” (Campbell Morrison, 2022, p. 25). The same argument had also been developed in previous editions:
The Supreme Court has made it crystal clear that we are a colony. Given that we are denied the fundamental human right of self-determination, how could we be described as anything other than “oppressed”? (Clarkson, 2022, p. 25)
The British Supreme Court announced its decision that Scotland has no right to have a referendum to decide whether to stay in the UK […] because Scotland is not a colony and is not oppressed. By saying this, the court could not have made it any clearer that we are a colony, and therefore oppressed. (Stevenson, 2022, p. 25)
31This assumed colonial status was then used to justify more radical forms of action than those backed by the SNP leadership. Examples of these included taking Scotland’s case directly to the United Nations, as argued by a reader of the National (Parrott, 2022, p. 25), as well as Scotland making a unilateral declaration of independence, as suggested by a Twitter user of the #ScotlandaColony hashtag (Scott, 2022).
32The third and final conclusion that can be drawn from the analysis is that claims to colonial status were mainly meant to convey two interlinked messages: first, that the Anglo-Scottish Union was no longer a voluntary one or a partnership of equals, and second, that the UK was no longer a democratic state; only very seldom were they used to indicate economic exploitation, as had been common in the 1970s and 1980s. Notably, affirmations of colonial status were now frequently combined with claims that Scotland was a prisoner of the UK or of England, and the #ScotlandaColony hashtag was often accompanied by the #ScotlandUKPrisoner hashtag, backing up Linda Colley’s point that their meaning was to signify that Scotland was trapped in a union with England against its will. Among the many tweets which included both hashtags, one could quote two made on the day after the Supreme Court ruling: one which simply read “Scotland is basically an English colony and prisoner” (Rab Ha, 2022), and the other with the following message: “23rd November 2022. The end of the voluntary union. The birth of the democratic movement” (Barr, 2022). Two days previously, a reader of the National had made the following point:
We, like any other country—Australia, Canada, America, Malta, India, Pakistan—have the right to reject the oppressor. And for this reason alone, we need to know the lawful route to independence. Or do we remain as political prisoners/pawns in a [sic] unequal English colony, where Scotland has little say in the governance of its lands and wealth? (McCaw, 2022, p. 27)
33Just like claims to colonial status, the rhetoric of imprisonment has been rejected by the modern SNP elite, as illustrated in a tweet by Stewart McDonald MP on 24 November 2022 which read:
So although the court has made clear the consent aspect of the union lies with Westminster, we must shun talk of being imprisoned or shackled. Our campaign is not a liberation struggle, but one of democratic, social and economic renewal and empowerment. (McDonald, 2022b)
In a similar vein, it is notable that the same Alex Salmond who had described Scotland as a colony as a young MP in 1988 would, 24 years later and in his capacity as Scottish First Minister, go on to write in his foreword to an SNP government consultation paper that “Scotland is not oppressed and we have no need to be liberated” (Scottish Government, 2012, Foreword).
34Claims that Scotland was a colony pointed to the fact that not only was the Union no longer voluntary, but the UK had also become undemocratic. As tweeted on the day of the ruling by a user of the #ScotlandaColony and #ScotlandUKPrisoner hashtags: “It is a very dark day for democracy and hopefully the beginning of the end of our ‘voluntary union’” (Anne Marie, 2022); or as noted even more forcefully by two readers of the National:
The so‑called Supreme Court ruling that Holyrood cannot have an independence referendum is an abomination. It has rightly been met with contempt and anger by millions of Scots. It is a shameful landmark in the destruction of democratic rights. It leaves the United Kingdom as a legal, moral and politically bankrupt entity. […] There is no doubt that Scotland now is a colony. Democracy exists here in name only. (Hinnrichs, 2022, p. 26)
[The Supreme Court] has demonstrated itself as little more than an instrument of Westminster’s undemocratic suppression of our fundamental rights and, let’s not pretend otherwise, the actions of fascism rather than the UK’s falsely claimed democracy. Scottish democracy has just been rendered an illusion—this decision confirms our colonial status—and powerless to exercise our democratic right to determine our future. (Taylor, 2022, p. 27)
35This article has sought to establish whether Scotland’s better acceptance of its historical role in the Empire has led to the abandonment of claims to its colonial status in contemporary nationalist discourse, after such claims enjoyed a period of popularity in pre‑devolution decades in nationalist circles and beyond, as illustrated in Trainspotting. The article reveals the extent to which a colonial rhetoric has survived in Scotland thirty years after Trainspotting attempted to destabilise it, at least within certain nationalist circles, despite a shift in nationalist understandings of Scotland’s status from colonised to coloniser. It demonstrates that, although the SNP elite (party leaders and elected representatives) now clearly distances itself from a vision of Scotland as a colony, contrary to what had been the case in the 1970s and 1980s, today a colonial discourse survives in the wider independence movement, among some grassroots nationalists and members of certain nationalist groups, where it is used to back up calls for independence.
36The article has also aimed at identifying the specific uses to which claims to colonial status have been made by Scottish nationalists over the decades. Current colonial discourse shares some characteristics with its counterpart of the 1970s and 1980s, most notably the fact that it is meant to underline Scotland’s lack of independence and self-determination. However, there is one major difference in terms of message, in that current claims to colonial status are rarely made to refer to Scotland’s economic exploitation, as was most common in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, Scottish nationalists mainly use such language in order to make the point that the Anglo-Scottish Union is no longer a voluntary partnership of equals and that the UK is no longer a fully democratic state. This has become Scottish nationalists’ core message across the board, among the elite and grassroots alike, in line with then SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon’s immediate reaction to the Supreme Court ruling of November 2022, when she noted that “the myth that the United Kingdom is a voluntary union of nations has been comprehensively—and permanently—shattered […]. The so‑called partnership of equals is anything but” (Garton-Crosbie, 2022).
37Beyond this common message, however, there now exist clear rhetorical differences between the SNP elite, which no longer finds it acceptable to even compare Scotland to a colony, and grassroots nationalists as well as supporters of some minor nationalist groups, many of whom believe that the fact Scotland does not have the power to organise an independence referendum confirms its colonial status. Consequently, concerning the article’s final aim with relation to the extent to which a colonial understanding of Scotland’s status has been literal, it is suggested that contemporary claims to colonial status are more often intended in a literal, material sense than in previous decades when, as in Trainspotting, they pointed in a more general direction to relations of domination within the UK.