Celtic Nationalisms and the Global Break-up of Britain

Abstract

This response to Stuart Ward's Untied Kingdom examines his treatment of Scottish and Welsh nationalisms. This is a crucial part of the book because it is here that Ward completes his narrative arc, which depicts the loss of empire as a fundamentally destabilising force for the UK state and its basis in a shared British identity. So how should we think about the pressure that decolonisation places on British identity within Britain? While admiring much of Ward's treatment of this question, this response suggests that he underestimates the importance of post-war social democracy as a possible alternative basis for British identity and the decay of that social democracy as a causal factor in the rise of Scottish and Welsh nationalisms.