The Scots language advocate Billy Kay has caused a richt stooshie wi’ his thochts on Unionists and their lawte tae the kintra. The writer and broadcaster mused on a podcast from The National: ‘One strand that has practically disappeared, I think, is Unionists who were patriotic Scots…Because of the rise of modern nationalism I think that brand of Unionism almost has died a death. I don’t know anyone like that nowadays. I knew people personally from some of the old Tory families that I came across when I was interviewing people. They were all very patriotically Scottish, but they were Scottish Unionists, and they belonged to a tradition.’
Some Unionists find today’s Scotland difficult to love and some nationalists feel the same about yesterday’s Scotland
His reflections have not been well-received, with some Unionists objecting to the implication that they are less patriotic than their nationalist brethren. Fraser Nelson writes: ‘I’m not sure I know a single Unionist who doesn’t regard himself or herself as a patriotic Scot,’ before adding: ‘Concentric identities are the beauty of the Union,’ which is a very Fraser thing to say – beguiling yet fluently expressed – but drains all the mystique and majesty from an institution which was the author of world history for much of its three centuries. If the real Union is the pluralism we facilitated along the way, it’s no wonder ever fewer Scots identify with it.
Fraser is right in one sense; almost all Unionists consider themselves patriotic Scots, and Kay’s implication to the contrary is unfortunate for various reasons, but one in particular should concern nationalists. If they hope to achieve independence, and perhaps they might, do they really think they can switch overnight from suggesting that ‘Unionists are unpatriotic’ to ‘Unionists are our compatriots in this new dawn for our nation’? All the love-bombing in the world isn’t going to wipe out years of denigrating their opponents’ loyalties.
Precious time in the early days of the better nation they wish to build will have to be expended overcoming entrenched hostilities and suspicions. It won’t doom independence to failure but it will make things harder than they need be. Several generations after fighting a civil war on the matter, there were still Irishmen who defined themselves by whether their grandfathers or great-grandfathers had been pro- or anti-treaty. Time is short, but memories are long.
That being said, there is some truth to Kay’s hypothesis. Anecdotally, opponents of independence remark to me now and again that they feel alienated by Scottish symbols, in particular the saltire, which they consider the nationalists to have hijacked. But he misunderstands his foes when he suggests that ‘a fear of Scottish identity and Scottish culture among Unionists’ is motivated by anxiety over the inevitability of independence. In my experience, there is no one more complacent over the future of the Union than the average Unionist. Try engaging them some time on long-term polling trends in Scottish identity and constitutional preference. It’s like trying to explain the concept of temperature to a frog in a gently simmering pot.
As a proponent of the Scots leid, Kay appears evidently embittered by the mockery his mither tongue attracts from Unionists, though I think he has always struggled to distinguish between ridicule of the language and ridicule of the minor industry of vaguely political, middle-class graduates who started affecting working-class dialects the minute there were grants to be had for doing so. Where he is onto something is in describing the death of the kind of Tory Unionism which nationalists once mocked as tartanry and the cultural couthiness of the White Heather Club but which, like Kay, they now romanticise as a noble, patriotic tradition.
Even so, what Kay is onto isn’t terribly original. National identities change and so do the cultures that grow around them. At its electoral apex in the 1950s, Scottish Unionism was culturally indistinguishable from Scottish nationalism in that it was mostly Protestant, socially conservative, conversant in Scottish history, and emotionally nationalist in its fierce affinity for Scottish symbols and customs. The conversion of the working classes to the Labour Party, the decline of Orange Scotland, and a growing cultural confidence among Irish-descended Scots transformed the societal landscape. Scottishness was no longer a single, cohesive identity. It is no coincidence that the demographic cohorts which can still remember this change, older boomers and those who remain from the silent generation, are the most heavily Unionist in constitutional outlook.
The Scotland of today is confusing for these Scots, who struggle to comprehend the political success of the SNP when no one they know votes for them, while the Scotland of tomorrow, in which Britishness will seem as quaint and other-worldly as it does to Australians, Canadians and Kiwis, is thoroughly beyond their ken. But before they crow about the decline of old-school Unionism, nationalists might want to do a little cultural audit of their own. Unionism is not alone in having changed in its relationship to Scotland and Scottishness.
Modern nationalism would be unrecognisable to many who were members of the SNP in its first four decades or so. The patriotic Unionists Billy Kay romanticises were contemporaries of nationalists far more confident and unapologetic in their nationalism than the cosmopolitan pseudo-nationalists of 2026. Many would have sympathy with the SNP’s pro-European instincts but most would baulk at the party’s doctrinaire Eurofederalism and its eagerness to liberate Scotland from the diktats of one union only to submit it to the diktats of another.
Similarly, the nationalists of yesteryear would sputter at the suggestion that a Syrian can arrive in Glasgow and instantly become a Scot just as they would the retconning of multiculturalism (‘One Scotland, many cultures’) as the creedal foundation of modern Scotland. Another strand that has practically disappeared is nationalists who prioritise independence. The SNP is happy to burn through political capital to advance gender self-identification, Net Zero, tax rises – everything but national sovereignty. Force the Holyrood group to choose between Scottish and Palestinian statehood and it would be a close-run thing.
Billy Kay is a talented broadcaster who has done yeoman’s work for the Scots language but he errs in thinking that Unionists have lost their patriotism. The truth is that both sides of the constitutional debate have grown uncomfortable with their country. Some Unionists find today’s Scotland difficult to love and some nationalists feel the same about yesterday’s Scotland. When the patria changes patriotism changes with it.
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