World will think us mad to rip up Union

It is sad, though, if Britain's Union cannot stand for anything of value.

As many people in England have simply forgotten about it, the nationalists in Scotland stand ready to finish it for good.

Nationalism is a simple political ideology. By itself it does not do much more than demand "one nation for one state".

The politics of right and left are icing and decoration, not the basis of the nationalist cake.

"Patriotism" is thought of as synonymous with nationalism, but it is something different.

It need not refer to a particular people, but a belief in ideas or principles associated with particular places and times, as in "constitutional patriotism".

During the heyday of empire there was talk of a "British nation". Arguably such a thing has never existed. The Union was forged by four distinct nations: Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland.

The internal logic of the Union of Great Britain thus actually runs contrary to the idea of nationalism, and has done for the better part of 300 years.

So is it possible to abjure nationalism but to be "patriotic" about the Union and the ideals it represents, that nations can co-exist and even inter-mingle reasonably happily in a single state?

I was named after one of the founding members of the Irish Republican Army, a man who won Ireland's independence in 1922 at the barrel of a gun.

Before him, one William Ewart Gladstone, son of Leith and Liverpool, wanted "Home Rule" for Ireland within the Union.

Much peace and prosperity might have come of that. But the insistence on full independence for Ireland, which the Scottish and English settlers in the north opposed, made Ireland's 20th century a deeply troubled one.

Eventually the IRA gave up arms for politics.

Northern Ireland remains part of the Union and there is relative peace. Unfinished business though it may be, this is a credit to the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic, and to the political flexibility of the Union.

In fact the Union has been very good at accommodating hybrid, multi-layered identities.

Many of us have felt comfortable being British and Scottish, Welsh and British, Anglo-Irish or other combinations.

As a seafaring, free-trading and imperial people, the history of the "Britishness" that grew out of the Union now also comprises the lives of millions of people from around the world.

Today, those who trace their ancestry in one way or another through empire feel overwhelmingly that only a British identity includes them, hence the compounds "British-Indian" or "Jamaican-British".

It has never been perfect, but in bringing people together on the basis of liberty and tolerance, the Union has shown that the narrow path of nationalism is not the only one.

There is a more open and inclusive way to live. Over time the everyday folk of these islands have often set aside a long and bloody history of conflict and have become friends, lovers, mothers and fathers.

Great Britain's history has many dark days. Yes, the empire gave Scotland and England common cause.

But that is not the whole story, and should not entirely obscure the fact that there are alternative, competing and perhaps more positive histories of unionism and British identity.

It is easier to destroy than to build. If Scotland votes to put an artificial border between us, the very fabric of our lives will change forever, and an honourable idea will have taken a beating.

A Scottish poet of some considerable talent and wisdom, one Robert Burns, once pleaded, "O, wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!"

Tear down this old Union in a fit of absent-mindedness, and much of the world will look at us and think us mad.

The Union may need new life and purpose, but it does not deserve a death like this.

Michael Collins is a lecturer in British and imperial history at University College, London