British Nationalism

Britain – no longer the land of the future, but one living in the past Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 27th 2013 Once upon a time many years ago, like many other Scots, I believed in Britain. Britain seemed the future: it had appeal, appeared modern, progressive and full of promise. That now seems a world away from the Britain of today: one which looks to have given up on the future and instead appears content to live permanently in a fictitious past. This is the fantasyland Britain we see before us this week - of a society, culture and

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Dreaming of a Different Scotland: Alt Independence and Alt Unionism Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, February 26th 2013 Social justice is everywhere north of the border. It has always been about, but now it has become more explicit, as the debate on Scotland’s independence referendum hots up, the Westminster Government’s welfare plans show their character and the Tory intent at inhumane social engineering, while the market fundamentalist project of the last three decades proposes at the moment of crisis and doubt, to go into over-drive. The last week has seen Anas Sarwar, Deputy Leader of Scottish Labour give an important

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The world after Saddam, Blair and the Iraq invasion Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, February 16th 2013 February 15^th 2003 was a moment in global history: a rare articulation of political connectedness and consciousness. From London to Glasgow to Ullapool to New York, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Tokyo, people took to the streets to protest about the Blair-Bush march to war with Saddam Hussein’s brutal Iraqi dictatorship. Bush and Blair were determined on war; Bush to complete the job his father didn’t in the first Gulf War; Blair as a true believer in liberal intervention and enlightened imperialism investing his political

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Scotland’s Place in the World and the Problem with British Isolationism Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, November 3rd 2012 Europe has been in the headlines in the last two weeks. There was Salmond’s little legal controversy on EU matters, followed by David Cameron’s problems with his backbenchers on Europe, while some Labour politicians charged Ed Miliband with opportunism for siding with Tory Euro-sceptics. If it is possible to rise above Scots insularity and petty partisanship which we have seen in the last week, it would be helpful to note the wider European and international dimension in which the Scottish self-government

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The Continued Legacy of Britain’s South Atlantic Adventure Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, March 31st 2012 The 30^th anniversary of the beginning of the Falklands war is next week, a conflict that matters to this day. Like many at the time, I had to first find the South Atlantic islands on a map, then put them into my leftist anti-Thatcherite view of the world, and then observe the mood of a Britain I barely recognised. The Falklands war raised so many questions then and now. Was this a war of principle or pride? What did this say about Britain’s self-image

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The Twilight of the British State: Alex Salmond, Scottish Independence and the European Question Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, October 28th 2011 This is a fascinating and fast moving period of politics, at a global, European, British and Scottish level, challenging many of the most deep-seated and unexamined assumptions held across the political spectrum. In the last week we have seen the euphoric SNP conference at Inverness showing a party on the crest of a wave which seems to think that the future is within its grasp. Then we have at Westminster the return of the popular bogeyman – Eurosceptism

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The Last Utopia: Thatcher, New Labour and the Cameron Conservatives and the Demise of Social Democratic Britain Gerry Hassan University de Nice-Sophia Antipolis Keynote Lecture January 29th 2011; reprinted by Open Democracy February 28th 2011 The question that hovers above the Iraq inquiry is – since the evidence on Saddam Hussein’s weaponry was so flaky and the post-war planning so atrocious – why on earth Tony Blair did it. One theory, albeit not the one likely to be offered by Mr Blair himself, is that his militarism and messianism, the mix of responsibility and entitlement that he evinced,

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