AS one professional philosopher to another I write to urge Professor Grayling to concentrate on philosophy and not on the politics of Scotland, a country of which he appears ignorant ("Why Alex Salmond is so keen on the Union", Referendum Agenda, the Herald, September 13).
Here are just a few examples: Hadrian's Wall is not the border between Scotland and England. You do not need a passport to travel between EU countries, specifically not between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. There have never been passport controls, not even in the height of the Troubles when it was often easier to travel from Liverpool to Dublin than from Belfast to Newry.
Ireland provides a good counter-example to much of Professor Grayling's article. The Irish Free State formed in 1921 had the King of the UK as head of state and used sterling, then a currency pegged one:one to sterling until 1979. On declaring itself a republic in 1948, the UK responded in 1949 by passing an act specifying that the Republic was not a foreign country and that each of its citizens living in the UK has the same voting, job and welfare rights as any other UK citizen. If the Eastern Ukraine has any analogy here it is with the "separatist" Ulster Unionists in 1912, with Conservative politicians in the UK playing the role of Putin.
Moreover, contrary to Gordon Brown's appalling remarks on this subject, the Republic of Ireland is part of joint organ transplant and donation arrangements with the UK: there is no racist "British organs for British patients" policy by the UK health authorities. Sovereign states have differing degrees of freedom of action, and new states can gradually increase theirs over time. This is not the 1690s: in the 21st century large states can co-operate with smaller ones without insisting on incorporating them.
The English progressive philosopher JS Mill wrote in the 19th century that "the English are the fittest people to rule over barbarous or semibarbarous nations like those of the East". Though Prof Grayling, like other Unionists, waxes lyrical about the benefits GB and the UK allegedly brought to the rest of the world during the Empire, progressive opinion south of the Border has thankfully moved on. But, apart from some noble exceptions such as Billy Bragg, far too many of the condescending, patronising and ignorant comments coming from the Left in England show that many still think that the English are the fittest people to rule over the semibarbarous nation to the north. For that is what the subordination of a Scottish Parliament to a parliament whose electorate is 84 per cent English amounts to.
May I assure readers that not all philosophers who write on current politics are as ignorant of basic matters of fact as Prof Grayling. His own politics seem to be Euronationalist, dreaming of a world which is a benign version of Orwell's 1984, one divided up into giant, competing, superstates, the US, the United States of Europe and so forth. He is entitled to his view. But whatever the result on Thursday, the genie is out the bottle and will not be put back in. Scots will not accept for much longer that their parliament should be inferior to the other national parliaments of Europe.
Professor Alan Weir,
Philosophy, School of Humanities,
University of Glasgow, 1 University Gardens, Glasgow.
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