To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (107578 ) 9/18/2014 3:13:04 AM From: Snowshoe Respond to The ties of empire no longer bind ...Scotland's Decision bbc.co.uk By Allan Littlewhile the English may have ruled the Empire, the Scots, for sure, had run it . It was a trading system based on protective tariffs and trade barriers known as Imperial Preference. Britain chose to trade with the old “kith and kin” territories of the English-speaking world rather than with its European neighbours.The Empire, the powerful, binding economic force of it, had, for generations, given Britons a common purpose, an enormous shared enterprise. It gave Scottish merchants access to trade with all the continents. The city of Glasgow, before its days as an industrial powerhouse, was built on trade - sugar and tobacco in particular. Walk along the banks of the Clyde and the ghosts of that past are written into the place names: India Quay, Jamaica Street, Durban Avenue. Pacific Quay, where BBC Scotland now has its headquarters, was once Plantation Quay, a name that recalls a past that Scotland prefers to forget - its role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But by 1974 the Empire was gone. Imperial Preference was gone. When Britain joined the European Economic Community in 1973, many of its old trading partners around the world - especially Australia and New Zealand - regarded it as a betrayal. The former British dominions and colonies had to seek new markets and new trading partners, as Britain turned its face away from them to embrace a new European identity.
