Colin Kidd, UNION AND UNIONISMS: POLITICAL THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND, 1500-2000 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (www.cambridge.org), 2008. ix + 312 pp. ISBN 9780521880572 (hb). £45. ISBN 9780521706803 (pb). £15.99.
| Pages | 151-153 |
| Date | 01 January 2010 |
| DOI | 10.3366/E1364980909001073 |
| Published date | 01 January 2010 |
| Author | Hector MacQueen |
Colin Kidd's lively and provocative (in the best sense) book argues that in a variety of forms unionism – not ever really given a core definition, but seemingly at least involving non-acceptance of a politically independent Scotland – has been the dominant political ideology in Scotland since the 1707 Union. Indeed it has pre-1707 roots, as “a lively minority tradition” (42) from at least 1500 which included lawyers such as Thomas Craig. But the bulk of the book is devoted to analysis of different forms of unionism – or, as Kidd prefers to put it, unionisms – with law and legal discourse playing a prominent part in the discussion. The overall argument is that there is much more to unionism than what (picking up on Michael Billig's famous characterisation of “the low-key, unthreatened nationalisms of established and stable nation states”) Kidd calls its “banal” form, i.e. “inarticulate acceptance of Union” (27), or the aggressive defence of the
Central to this last aspect of Kidd's analysis is the figure of T B Smith. Kidd argues that Smith's “cosmopolitan strain of legal nationalism”, highlighting the mixed character of Scots law and its affinities with the laws of other mixed jurisdictions, was associated with a “frustrated imperialism” (203) that sought “to carve out an imperial role for Scots law on the global stage” (206), or “to create a Scottish legal empire … in which Scots law was the leader of an association of the world's mixed legal systems” (207). Smith “openly espoused legal union, though not within Britain per se” (209), and hence also welcomed the prospect of a new
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