(Inter)Nationalism

I had a recent encounter with a young, new labour, political student on the subject of independence. He was at pains to tell me that we were better together and that while he agreed that Scotland would probably be better off under independence he could not support it because he was an internationalist.

I did have a moment of wry amusement at this earnest young man lecturing me on my political awareness given that he wasn’t yet born when I was suffering from the worst effects of Thatcherism; lying on the road outside Faslane nuclear base; surrounding the base at Greenham Common; defying the poll tax; helping to feed the families of striking miners and so on....His youth however is not his fault  and  it is for each new generation to set its own agendas based on their own life experiences. 

I was compelled, however, to ask him to define internationalism; did he mean that he wanted a one world government; was he campaigning for a European super state? Well apparently not, what he was actually expounding was (his nationalism of choice) namely British nationalism. 

I put it to him that the nation state ( like it or not ) is the natural state of being in the world and that  my preference was to be the citizen of a self governing country with a sense  of social justice and an open , welcoming relationship with the wider world.

He after all, has allied himself to the Westminster parliament where politicians from all the Westminster parties are falling over each other in the rush to be the most narrow, parochial, anti foreign, anti European, border controlling bunch of xenophobes that we have encountered in post war western Europe .

Not my idea of internationalism. I wonder what James Keir Hardie would make of it all? I doubt we could stop him spinning in his grave long enough to ask.