05 October 2017

Referendum in Catalonia

How does the upsurge in separatism affect the EU?

By John Watson

It is a pattern we have all seen before.  The authorities are challenged by those who want independence.  They overreact.  Their brutality feeds the very movement they seek to repress.  Remember Dyer at Amritsar in 1919; remember the soldiers firing into the crowd at Croke Park, Dublin, in 1920; and what did their actions achieve in political terms?  They turned those who had not previously been involved into militant supporters for the independence of India and Ireland respectively.

Fortunately, the brutality in Catalonia is not on the same scale.  Rubber bullets and not live rounds have been used and people have been injured rather than killed.  Nonetheless the pictures of unarmed and often elderly voters being forcibly dragged away from the ballot boxes is not a pretty one and can only inflame an already resentful relationship between Catalonia and the Spanish government.

Okay, it wasn’t well-handled, but what should Spain have done?  Catalonia is its richest province.  Should it have just let it go or should it have tried hard to find ways of augmenting its already very considerable autonomy?  No doubt the government considered both courses.  Perhaps neither was viable.

Seen through Spanish eyes the vote for Catalonian independence is a practical problem.  Looked at more broadly, however, it fits into a pattern, a spreading pressure for fragmentation.  Scotland frets over its relationship with the other members of the UK.  The Kurdish ambitions for their new state threaten both Turkey and Iraq.  The Basque country is quiet now but no doubt watching what happens in Catalonia carefully.  Parts of the Ukraine celebrate the cultural identity of their citizens by breaking away and allying with Russia.  Britain walks away from the EU.

There is nothing new in all this.  Provinces have always broken away.  Look at the wars of religion in Europe when protestant areas sought to establish independence from their catholic masters.  Look at William the Silent who led Dutch in their ultimately successful war to throw off the yoke of Habsburg Spain.  Look at Southern Ireland, come to that.  There is nothing new in the conflict between the imperial master and the resentful province but now, as with politics generally, the nature of the conflict is moulded by the new forms of communication which technological advance has made available.

Instant communications have undermined political deference.  In the days when the news was filtered by the media, the public were content to listen to its analysis and views.  Now news apps simply pass on the photographs of those present with direct comments from those on the spot.  This data is raw and often misleading, but those who receive it over their phones are understandably tempted to form their own views on the basis of what they have seen rather than searching around for reliable commentators.  This makes space for a new form of populist politics. The rabble-rouser who can use the new technology sways public opinion whether his views are rational or not.

Politicians are still adapting to this phenomenon and changing the way in which they communicate accordingly.  Nowhere, however, does the new technology create more political opportunities than for those hoping to float their careers on the tide of political fragmentation.

There is no lack of these and it is easy to see why.  Suppose that you fancy a political career but, despite your efforts, you do not feel that you’re on the way to the top.  The rules of populist politics dictate that you need an issue on which you can be said to represent your “constituency” so that you can roar around protesting and attract that all important media attention.  If you are in Catalonia or Scotland, say, the obvious place to focus is on the relationship with the larger unit.  After all, there are bound to be some parts of that relationship which could work better; if you can find a grievance, there is an obvious target which you can complain about, and if there isn’t a grievance now something is bound to come up in the future and if you keep whingeing away at the union you will be in a good place to exploit it.  Yes, separatist politics is fertile ground for the ambitious and unscrupulous.

Now I do not wish to be thought to be giving a view on whether Catalonia has fair grievances against Spain.  Perhaps it does and perhaps it doesn’t.  What I would say, however, is that at the moment the dynamics of politics favour secessionist movements both because they present easy pickings to the demagogue and also because the messages are easy for the public to grasp.  Anyway, separatism is on the up.

It is interesting to consider the future of the EU through this prism.  There, after all, the direction of travel at the official level is in the other direction.  Listen to Mr Macron.  His talk is all of deepening relationships and, prior to the German elections, he probably carried Germany with him.  There is nothing wrong with that in principle and, indeed, commentators are more or less agreed that, having created the Euro, the EU now needs to create new institutions to support it.  The trouble is, rather, that he swims against the tide.  If Catalonia is restive in its relationship with Spain, and Scotland uncertain in its relationship with the rest of the UK, how is he to persuade Europeans from different cultures that they must live together in a single ever-deepening block?

In a sense the EU has made its own problems here.  In an age of division there will be increasing resentment of power exercised from abroad.  The EU bureaucracy is already seen as overpaid and self-serving and it would not take much for it to be regarded as an engine of oppression.  In Britain some already see it like that.  Had they only kept the relationship looser, exercising a practical restraint by only legislating when measures were really necessary to protect the market or some new and exciting venture was in the offing, then the popular talk would be about the need to work together more and the need for more community-wide ventures.

Sadly it has not turned out like that and so the demagogues will work away grubbing for the grievances which will promote their successionist careers. We’ve seen it in the UK and we will see it elsewhere.  Iit will make Mr Macron’s dream of a European State very hard indeed to achieve.

 

 

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