Is the only guaranteed alternative to English domination Scottish independence? This is certainly a card the SNP likes to play, evoking the Scottish heroes of the late 13th and early 14th century wars of independence, William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. But historically there was another alternative to English empire, and that was the idea of Anglo-Scottish union. Unionism is in fact a Scottish invention – the original ‘third way’ – and not, as might be imagined, an English idea.