The importance of wording: ‘nationalism’ vs ‘unionism’ and ‘welfare’ vs ‘social security’

Language is important, and the choices we make with words can have an important and even decisive influence on how we understand and perceive a topic. As a linguist and a lover of words and language I am acutely aware of how important it is to choose the correct words when discussing an issue, although I’d be the first to admit that I don’t always get it right.

The choice of words was crucial in how the independence referendum debate of 2014 was framed. The No campaign was very successful in presenting that debate in the false framing of a contest between the “nationalism” of independence supporters and the “non-nationalism” or “anti-nationalism” of those who opposed independence and supported Scotland remaining a part of the British state. In reality, as later events such as Brexit and the descent of the Labour and Conservative parties into orgiastic British flag-shagging amply demonstrate, the independence debate was never and is still not a debate between nationalism and non-nationalism, it’s a debate between two competing nationalisms, Scottish nationalism, which is a nationalism of the civic variety, and Anglo-British nationalism, which was once regarded as the model of civic nationalism but which in recent years has grown increasingly ethno-centric, inward looking, xenophobic, marked by exceptionalism and triumphalism.

This is why I do not refer to the political parties which are opposed to Scottish independence as Unionist, firstly because the use of the term Unionist is a convenient fig leaf which disguises their support for Anglo-British nationalism, but also, and just as importantly the term Unionist perpetuates the anti-independence fairy story that the United Kingdom is a union. This is why I call them Anglo-British nationalist parties. It’s not my job as a supporter of Scottish independence to collude in the self-serving myths of the Labour, Lib-Dem and Conservative parties.

Scotland is not a partner in a union as the trashing of the promises made to secure a No vote in 2014 amply demonstrates. This has been exacerbated by the hollowing out of the devolution settlement since the Brexit vote, despite, or more likely because, Scotland voted against Brexit. The United Kingdom is an incorporating and highly centralised state which grudgingly conceded to Scottish and Welsh parliaments in the late 1990s in an attempt to head off growing demand in Scotland for meaningful self-government. However the Westminster Parliament, which fetishises its belief in its own absolute and indivisible sovereignty, could only allow those new elected bodies by coming up with the fiction of “devolution” in which Westminster tells itself that the authority of Holyrood and the Senedd does not flow upwards from the people of Scotland and Wales, but flows downwards as loan of partial authority from Westminster itself, and what Westminster is prepared to loan, Westminster can just as easily claw back.

Another disturbing linguistic reframing has become entrenched in British politics and in the British media in recent years. It was not so long ago that politicians referred to the payments to which the poor, the disabled, and the unemployed were entitled as social security. Social security implies that there is a social contract, a system into which we all contribute when we are able and from which we are all entitled to benefit when we are in need.

The word welfare was an Americanism, used particularly by right wing politicians. It has a dark racist past, first coming to prominence during Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign in the late 1970s when the US Republicans campaigned heavily against the so-called “welfare queens”, the trans people and migrants of 1970s politics, who were typically depicted as African-American single mothers who would rather bilk the government out of money than get a job and refrain from producing children that they could not support. Prior to this, American politicians generally used terms like “unemployment insurance”or “assistance programs” rather than welfare, which carried connotations of a handout being given as a form of charity, a framing which legitimises taking it away.

The reframing of social security and unemployment insurance as welfare made it easier for politicians to cut programmes and provision while using the money that was saved to give to the better off in the form of tax cuts. It also made it easier for politicians to divide the less well off into the deserving and the undeserving poor. When you frame social security as welfare it becomes much easier to talk about an unsustainable bill for “welfare” instead of talking about the problem of the rich and the super-rich not contributing their fair share into a system which is a vital underpinning of societal cohesion.

From its origins as a racist dog whistle of the American right, the term welfare made its inevitable way across the Atlantic and was enthusiastically adopted by Thatcher and her minions in the 1980s. As the Labour party has pivoted to the right it has now become entrenched in the Labour party too. Starmer’s bill to slash benefits for disabled people is called the Welfare Reform bill, a disturbingly Orwellian turn of phrase for throwing hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable in society into poverty.

The British media and political parties now routinely talk about welfare and talk about the necessity of bringing down a ballooning welfare bill. There is scarcely a mention of the fact that as the number of people in need rises, the wealth that is concentrated in the hands of the richest continues to increase. Yet public impoverishment is a direct consequence of private greed. According to Oxfam, the richest 1% of people in the UK own as much as the bottom 70% combined. Globally, the richest 1% have pocketed $26 trillion (£21 trillion) in new wealth since 2020, nearly twice as much as the other 99 per cent of the world’s population.

However Keir Starmer and the Labour party want to balance the books on the backs of the disabled. The framing of social security as welfare helps them to do it, just as it helps the likes of Jeff Bezos escape paying his fair share in taxes. Our choice of words is important. That’s why it’s a small but important victory that the new Scottish benefits agency is called Social Security Scotland. It’s not welfare, it’s not a charitable hand out, it’s a system of social cohesion which we all can benefit from in a time of need and which we all contribute to and pay our fair share – even the likes of Jeff Bezos. If Bezos can afford to buy Venice for his wedding he can afford to pay his fair share in tax and pay his workers a decent wage. The word welfare portrays the poor as the problem when the real problem is the parasitical super-rich.

My mum’s funeral has been organised for Tuesday 8 July. Naturally  I won’t be about around that date or the day before or after. Thank you very much to everyone who left messages of love and support on my previous post. My family read your messages and were very touched by them.

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