Scotland Days: Evolving Nation and Icons

Abstract

In recent years, we have heard a lot from government and politicians about creating a national British Day. The fact there isn’t one this tells us much about national identities in these islands. The Scots have St. Andrew’s Day on 30^th November; the Welsh St. David’s Day on 1^st March; the Irish — most famously — St. Patrick’s Day on 17^th March; and — least famously — the English have St. George’s Day, on 23^rd April, which also doubles up as Shakespeare’s birthday. All saints’ days. What proponents of a British Day seem to have in mind is not another saint’s day, but something along the lines of the great modern republics, the United States and France. Here is a comment from the Labour politician Gordon Brown: ‘What is our 4^th July? What is our Independence Day? Where is our declaration of rights? What is our equivalent of a flag flying in every garden?’ (Fabian lecture, as reported in The Guardian, 14^th January 2006). There is irony here, presumably unintended. ‘Independence’ was from Britain in 1776, following a war of liberation; a declaration of rights setting in stone the rights and responsibilities of a republican people. The stars and stripes was a rallying point for a settler society, a country largely made up of immigrants, taught daily to salute the flag, and thereby reinforcing their identity as citizens and not subjects.