Ken Macleod, from 'Unstated: Writers on Scottish Independence' edited by Scott Hames

• Independence would mean, in the first instance, a loss. Having hitherto enjoyed certain inalienable rights as British citizens, we would overnight find ourselves citizens of a new state, one without so much as a constitution, let alone a tradition of legal respect for individual rights. Scotland has no Magna Carta, no Bill of Rights, no proud tradition of awkward precedent. It has the Declaration of Arbroath, the Covenants, and the Claim of Right - claims of freedom and sovereignty to be sure, but in the name of the nation, the church and the people, not the person. In its empire the British state - with the enthusiastic participation of its Scottish soldiers and servants, from Ireland to Iraq - has trampled on every one of the rights it proclaims for freeborn Englishmen. It still does. But it has, by and large, been held to its promises at home - except when the wars (from Ireland to Iraq, again) come home.

The left-wing hankering, whether tactical or sincere, for a Scottish capitalist state strikes me as a consequence of defeat and a guarantee of future defeats. The success of nationalism is a consequence of the failure of the Left, whether broad or narrow. […]

The notion that Scotland is a more left-wing or progressive country than England is a delusion, arising solely from its recent decades of dependence on state funding: first in industrial subsidy, then in covering the cracks with post-industrial plaster and paint after the industrial installations were ripped out. The world of 2014 is likely to be less stable, and more fraught, than the world of 2012. Economic crisis, institutional paralysis, and military adventure are its predictable features. In a new state thrown from birth into this sadly probable maelstrom, any who dared put the working-class interest before 'the national interest' would get short shrift.

Writers should think, and think hard, about the consequences for them of being mobilised by - at a minimum - moral coercion into the service of a newly confident nation. Being British as well as Scottish may put some of us in a divided mind, but it can't prevent us from putting our minds to any use we like. We should take a jealous care not to mistake the nation's independence for our own.

Ken Macleod, from 'Unstated: Writers on Scottish Independence' edited by Scott Hames

Published December 14, 2012 by Word Power Books / ISBN 9780956628398 (pp128-132)