Claire Breniaux – University of Burgundy, France
Keywords
National Identity, Political Ideology, Young Party Members, Nationalism, Scotland
Abstract
Scotland’s constitutional future as a part of the United Kingdom seems to be more than ever at stake. Since the campaign for the independence referendum and the referendum itself in 2014, several pro-independence demonstrations have taken place on Scottish streets. Each march is an opportunity for Scottish people to claim their demands for independence while flooding the streets with thousands of Scottish Saltires. As a nation’s flag is a symbol that clearly refers to national identity, these demonstrations may be seen as a way of highlighting signs of Scottishness in the public sphere. Such “flaggings” (Billig, 1995) of Scotland may be viewed in different ways by scholars on the one hand and society as a whole on the other, as a gap is often identified between prevailing discourses about national identity within academia and those spread in society at large.Given that political actors play a part in the way in which national identity is seen in the public sphere, in order to reduce that gap it is necessary to try and identify politicians’ understanding of the notion of national identity. As politicians were often involved in political parties when they were young and given that self-identification is part of the various processes that take place in youth, it may be useful to analyse how the members of youth and student wings of political parties see their identity and talk about it. This paper thus introduces an analysis of young Scottish National Party (SNP) members, Scottish Young Conservatives and Scottish Young Labour members’ views of their national identity. More precisely, it sheds light on their definitions of the notion of national identity on the one hand and their understanding of Scottishness, Britishness and European identity on the other. Through empirical research that was recently conducted, this paper shows that young SNP members and, to a lesser extent, young Labour members, see Scottishness, Britishness and European identity through a socio-political lens (Leith, 2008, 2012), whereas young Scottish Conservatives tend to base their definitions on cultural views and arguments. Notably, it points out that Scottishness is treated by young nationalists as a kind of socio-political identity, based on civic values and socio-economic arguments, while young Conservatives tend to view it as a cultural identity. Through the identification of differences between the members of these youth and student wings of Scottish political parties with regard to national identity, this paper originally suggests that a link can be made between young party members’ political ideology and their discourses about national identity.
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