After 300 years, Scotland may seek a divorce

KINGHORN, Scotland — It was on the low cliffs looming over the white-capped Firth of Forth here that Alexander III, the last of Scotland's Celtic kings, plunged from his horse to his death one inky night 721 years ago.

England backed a successor and ultimately invaded, touching off the wars of Scottish independence that inspired medieval verses about refusing to submit to "the bonds of slavery entwined" and opulently tragic films like "Braveheart."

These days, Scotland's independence movement is still playing out on the Kinghorn uplands.

Here George Kay is making his way, house by house, to a succession of doors ringed by pansy pots and "no milk today" signs. Kay is running on the Scottish National Party (SNP) ticket in elections today that could set Scotland on a course to break away from the United Kingdom.

"I was just wonderin' if you were considerin' castin' your vote for the SNP," Kay says diffidently, and he often elicits a stern nod in the affirmative.

"Give us the next three, four years to show we can run things. And then people may have the confidence to go forward with independence."

This week, Scotland and England celebrate the 300th anniversary of their union under the treaty that ultimately created the United Kingdom.

But the SNP, capitalizing on widespread dissatisfaction with the 10-year-old Labor government in London and overwhelming opposition to the war in Iraq, is vowing to try to end the union if it wins, pledging to seek a referendum on independence by 2010.

Party leaders are waving the prospect of seizing billions of dollars of North Sea oil revenues and turning this hilly country of 5 million into a prosperous and independent northern European state, like Norway and Finland, with England as a fellow neighbor within the European Union.

Enough Scots are buying it — the recent polls show the SNP ahead — that both Labor and Conservative Party leaders are pulling out the stops and combing Scotland to convince voters that they are citizens of Britain first.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has called the election "a defining moment for Scotland," just made his fifth trip to the north during the campaign.

(The Scotsman newspaper said the prime minister "sounded like an ailing emperor paying a last visit to one of his satrapies.")

Blair's likely successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who grew up a few miles from here, has been warning fellow Scots of dire economic consequences if they listen to the siren song of the SNP, hailing his own Britishness and cheering for the English football team.

Unionists argue that the 300-year-old marriage has been a resounding success not just for Britain, but for Scotland.

The country's employment rate and wage earnings have been above the British average for most of the past four years; it has a booming financial services industry, joined at the hip with England.

The Labor-led government in Edinburgh was elected as part of the limited autonomy given Scotland under its "devolved" government since 1999.

Scotland's proportional election laws make it nearly impossible for any party to grab a strong majority. More likely, the winning party will have to govern in coalition with another.

The SNP promises that it will, if given the chance, seek more control over taxes and services for the Scottish parliament, and will ask for a review of the billions of dollars in North Sea oil revenues that flow out of Scotland into the British treasury.

Many of the English, it seems, are ready to be persuaded, fed up with perceived subsidies pouring from the Westminster treasury into Scotland and increasingly suspicious of the substantial number of Scots in the cabinet, including Brown.

Londoners periodically grumble that they don't want to be "ruled by Scots." Indeed, in some polls, England is more enthusiastic about Scottish independence than Scotland.

The SNP, which has 25 seats in the present Scottish parliament to Labor's 50, has picked up seat after seat on the local councils across Scotland in by-elections since 2005.

Kay, the nationalists' candidate here in Kinghorn, took a seat that year that with a brief hiatus had been held by a Laborite for more than 20 years. Now, he's running for a full term.