With the Scottish National Party’s recent election victory in mind, Françoise Boucek suggests there are some important lessons to be learned from the experience of referendums on independence in Quebec.
The Scottish National Party’s astounding election victory feels like Quebec in 1976. The separatist Parti Québécois under the leadership of René Lévesque rattled the Canadian political establishment with a shocking win in provincial elections. Like the SNP, the PQ won on a nationalist platform and the promise of a referendum on independence.
SNP leader Alex Salmond should enjoy this moment now – it may not last. In last week’s Canadian election, the PQ’s federal equivalent, the Bloc Québécois, was nearly wiped out, leaving it with only four seats in the Canadian House of Commons. The PQ itself has been out of power in French-speaking Quebec since 2003.
Both the SNP and the PQ were elected after a gradual mobilisation of nationalist forces, buoyed by their anti-establishment appeal. Like the PQ then, the SNP is now headed by a popular and charismatic leader.
The SNP today faces the same problem as the PQ did – running a government while making uncompromised choices that risk party splits. Nine years after his initial triumph, René Lévesque was forced to resign as PQ leader and Quebec Premier because of party divisions over sovereignty and the economy. Like Salmond now, Lévesque then was grappling with a recession. After two failed referendums and interminable constitutional battles with Ottawa, support for sovereignty in Quebec has dwindled and left the province isolated from the rest of the country.
Scottish opinion polls indicate that less than a third of the people favour full independence. In Quebec, a referendum on independence in 1980 was soundly defeated but another referendum in 1995 almost squeezed through.
Salmond suggests that a referendum might include an extra question on giving Holyrood greater financial freedom while keeping Scotland within the UK. This echoes Quebec’s hazy concept of sovereignty-association. Salmond would be wise to study Quebec’s travels down the road to independence. So far, that road has led nowhere.
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Sovereignty association? Go for it, Salmond. I dare you. As a Canadian I’ve watched the Quebec issue attentively for 35 years, and that bit of mealy-mouthed “have your cake and eat it too” flim-flammery was just as reviled by the committed sovereignists as it was by federalists country-wide. It was a cheat, and everyone knew it. If Salmond and his lot try to pull the same stunt, they’ll end up in the same boat as the PQ. People aren’t stupid, and they can smell a lack of backbone, in either French or Scots. I’m tired of watching people trying to rip my homeland apart, and now to watch another bunch trying to rip my motherland apart as well, is just depressing. I hope deeply they make the same mistakes.
Wait until we boycott Scotland and all it produces …. 5 million people will not be missed by a market containing 55 million south of ther border . I remember when Quebec tried this and all the major Canadian corperations were going to move their headquarters out of Montreal. Wanting to leave is one thing but trying to keep all the oil to better yourselves at the expense of the rest of the UK will only cause hatred and subsequent isolation.
33% of Scotland’s People support independence? I’ve seen this figure quoted a lot but the actual original poll source ranged it from 32% – 42% and 20% of the population undecided. Most of the articles I see go for the bottom figure but potentially with the undecided it could be up to 62% for all we know.
What a poor analysis… Mixing diferent and incomparable times, frightening about a suposed “isolation”, and incomprensibly relationing the actual fall of PQ with the future of SNP in 9 years? XDXD Let the scotish people be what they want to be and keep writting about science fiction without any sense. Maybe unionist sense… But then it is not an objective analysis, it’s a political opinion with a politic objective.