Scotland E-Book

Paul Henderson Scott

• Herausgeber: Luath Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 351

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

After more than 300 years of union with its larger and wealthier neighbour, Scotland has the opportunity to be independent. It is a chance that well-known Scottish cultural and political commentator Paul Henderson Scott firmly believes should be taken. In Scotland: A Creative Past, An Independent Future, he looks to Scotland's vibrant literary and cultural heritage to envisage an independent nation. Revisiting aspects of Scotland's political and cultural past, from the Union of 1707 to literary figures including Robert Louis Stevenson and Alasdair Gray, this is a passionate and eloquent exploration of Scotland's past, and its potential future - a future where national confidence, culture and identity can flourish. Scott's provocative book persuasively argues the case for Independence, considering a variety of topics, both historic and current, cultural and political. But in every case, the benefits of Independence are clear. Scotland has the opportunity to become more confident, prosperous and contented - an opportunity that even the most sceptical reader will be persuaded that they should take.

Leseprobe

PAUL HENDERSON SCOTT was born in Edinburgh and educated at the Royal High School and Edinburgh University. He was in 52nd (Lowland) and 7th Armed Divisions during the war and then joined the Diplomatic Service. He was in Berlin during the whole of the Soviet blockade and in Cuba during the Missile Crisis. In 1980 he returned to Edinburgh. Since then he has been Rector of Dundee University, President of both the Saltire Society and Scottish PEN, and Vice-President of the SNP and its Spokesman on Culture and International Affairs as well as writing more than a dozen books and editing another dozen or so. His books include: Walter Scott and Scotland, John Galt, Towards Independence, Andrew Fletcher and the Treaty of Union, Still in Bed with an Elephant, Defoe in Edinburgh and Other Papers, The Boasted Advantages, A 20th Century Life (his autobiography), Scotland Resurgent, The Union of 1707: Why and How, The Age of Liberation and The New Scotland.

Scotland: A Creative Past,An Independent Future

PAUL HENDERSON SCOTT

LuathPress Limited

EDINBURGH

www.luath.co.uk

First published 2014

ISBN (print): 978-1-908373-94-6

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-909912-68-7

The publishers acknowledge the support of Creative Scotland towards the publication of this volume.

The author’s right to be identified as author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.

© Paul Henderson Scott

Contents

PREFACE My View of Scotland

Introduction

CHAPTER 1 Cultural Issues

Introduction

1.1 Is Scotland a Cultural Force or a Desert?

1.2 The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature

1.3 A History of Scottish Philosophy

1.4 ‘The Greatest Cultural Disaster’

1.5 A New Cultural Policy

1.6 She’s Jinkit Again. The Future of the Scots Language

1.7 The Anti-Scottish Lobby

1.8 Arts of Resistance: Poets, Portraits and Landscapes of Modern Scotland

1.9 The Tortuous History of the National Theatre of Scotland

1.10 National Theatre Event, Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

1.11 The Scottish National Portrait Gallery: A National Treasure Nearly Lost, but Now Enhanced

1.12 Can Creative Scotland avoid the mistakes of the past?

1.13 Proposal for a Museum of Scottish Literature

1.14 A Strange Attack on Alasdair Gray

1.15 Life with the Saltire Society

CHAPTER 2 Scottish Literature from Robert Henryson to Alasdair Gray

Introduction

2.1 Robert Henryson Today

2.2 David Hume in his Private Correspondence

2.3 Boswell and Johnson in St Andrews

2.4 James Hogg: A Life

2.5 The Heart of Midlothian

2.6 The Three Robins: Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson

2.7 After Waterloo

2.8 Weir of Hermiston

2.9 Eric Linklater’s Scotland

2.10 The Correspondence between Hugh MacDiarmid and Sorley MacLean

2.11 Belief in Ourselves

2.12 The Phenomenal Alasdair Gray

CHAPTER 3 The Union of 1707

Introduction

3.1 The Declaration of Arbroath: ‘For Freedom Alone’

3.2 The Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nationsby Douglas Watt (Luath Press)

3.3 Caledonia Darien at the Edinburgh Festival

3.4 The 300 Years’ Debate

3.5 A Reply to Christopher Whatley

3.6 The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History

CHAPTER 4 Towards Independence

Introduction

4.1 Stone of Destiny

4.2 Gordon Brown: Bard of Britishness

4.3 England and Scotland: A New Relationship?

4.4 The Age of Liberation

4.5 McLeish Sees the Light

4.6 Why Scotland Needs Independence

4.7 No place for the adversarial politics of Westminster

4.8 Whaur Extremes Meet: Scotland’s Twentieth Century

4.9 The Disunited Kingdom

4.10 Salmond: Against the Odds

4.11 Small is Beautiful

4.12 Why Scottish Independence will be good for Scotland (and for England too)

4.13 Is Independence the Next Step?

4.14 Why do the British Parties oppose Scottish Independence?

4.15 The Strange Death of Labour Scotland

4.16 Arguing for Independence: Evidence, Risk and the Wicked Issues

4.17 Scottish Writers Join the Debate

4.18 Scotland in the Modern World

4.19 Was Scotland ‘extinguished’ in 1707?

4.20 The Referendum and Beyond

4.21 Should we leave Foreign Affairs and Defenceto Westminster?

4.22 Road to Referendum

Other Books by Paul Henderson Scott

Preface

My View of Scotland

I HAVE SPENT about 40 years of my life abroad, first as a soldier and then as a diplomat, but Scotland was never far from my mind. Scottish books went everywhere with me and I came back to Edinburgh as often as possible. I was there for part of the first Edinburgh Festival in 1947 and I returned for at least a few days to almost every one since then. I have found a great deal to admire and enjoy in all the countries where I have lived, but I never had any doubt that Scotland was where I was most content and to which I was determined to return permanently as soon as I could.

Why? It is not the scenery, although much of it is very beautiful and there are views in Edinburgh which I enjoy more than in any other city I know. It is not the climate, although it suits me very well because I do not like heat. Perhaps it is partly the associations because you constantly encounter reminders of old friends and of people and events from history and literature. It is natural enough to have a special fondness for your place of origin. But I have no doubt that the main reason why I feel more at home in Scotland than anywhere else is quite simply the character of the people. Of course there are exceptions, but nearly always they are sensible and friendly and free of arrogance or pretension. They say what they think and it is very often well worth hearing.

In his essay Of National Characters, David Hume said that ‘each nation had a peculiar set of manners’, although there were always exceptions, and they were subject to considerable change from one age to another. Now we are living in an age of more rapid and drastic change than anything which could be imagined in the 18th Century. We are living in a shrinking and globalised world of instant communication, rapid travel and vast movements of populations. Even the climate is changing. Does this mean that national characters will change out of all recognition or even that the whole population of the world will eventually become a uniform and indistinguishable mass?

Presumably that is a possibility, but at present the opposite seems to be happening. Certainly in Europe, and perhaps elsewhere in the world, people are reacting against imposed uniformity by asserting their independence and their own character. The empires and the multi-national states all over Europe are resolving into their component parts. It is their independence and distinctiveness which encourage their contentment, prosperity and ambition. We are moving in that direction as well. Montenegro today; Scotland tomorrow.

Also, it is remarkable how the effects of shared historical experience last long after the events. Scottish sturdiness and readiness to help one another is perhaps the consequence of centuries of hard experience in the long war against a larger and wealthier neighbour. The influence of John Knox’sFirst Book of Disciplineis, I think, still visible in our concern for morality, respect for education, egalitarianism, belief in effort and distrust of ostentation and self-indulgence. It is because of these qualities that Scotland has made such a remarkable contribution to the world. There have been many other religions in Scotland for more than a Century and there is now increasing scepticism and indifference to religious influences. Also many people have succumbed to the contemporary pressures for consumerism, the tolerance of debt and indifference to ideas. Even so, my impression is that many Scots, perhaps most of them, are still influenced by the old values.

We have many serious problems to face in Scotland, even if most of them are hidden away in the deprived areas of our towns, poor education, addiction to drugs and alcohol, violence, poverty and hopelessness. They are a denial of our traditional Scottish values and we must confront them.

So far, this is a copy of a paper which I wrote shortly after I retired from the Diplomatic Service and returned to live in Edinburgh. Since then the Scottish Parliament has been restored, but with very restricted powers. We shall have the opportunity to vote in the Referendum in 2014 to recover our Independence and a Parliament with the power to make Scotland a more contented, prosperous and civilised country.

Introduction

IN THE LAST20 years I have published five collections of my essays, reviews, lectures and miscellaneous papers. This is a similar book, but recent events have given it a distinct theme. The first two chapters are concerned with some of the events and the literature which have contributed over centuries to the evolution of the distinctive character of Scotland. Chapter three deals with the loss of Scottish independence by the Union of 1707, and the next one with the events in the opposite direction of the last few years.

This is has been a period of rapid transformation in the mood and expectation of the Scottish people. The restitution of the Scottish Parliament in May 1999 with very limited powers naturally stimulated a demand that they should be increased. That was not the intention of Blair’s Labour Government. They expected that the Scottish people would now be content and make no further demands. One of their senior ministers, George Robertson, famously said that ‘the new change will kill the SNP stone-dead’. Gordon Wilson of the SNP said the opposite. He predicted that the fact that the new body was called a Parliament, and not an Assembly, would provoke expectations that it would have to acquire all the appropriate powers implied by the name. The election of the SNP as the party of Government in 2007, with Alex Salmond as First Minister, had similar implications. So had the Westminster parliamentary election in 2010. The emergence of the Conservatives as the largest party in England with 306 seats, but with only one in Scotland, was widely interpreted as an indication that the United Kingdom was now disunited. Then the overwhelming victory of the SNP in the Scottish election in May 2011 strongly suggests that a major constitutional change is now inevitable.

The first chapter,Cultural Issues, includes articles on two importantevents which are examples of the problem which are likely to arise whenpeople with no previous knowledge of the Scottish tradition are appointed to lead Scottish cultural organisations. They were Vicky Featherstone, the first Director of the National Theatre of Scotland, and the Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, Timothy Clifford. I felt obliged to organise campaigns, which were successful against the policies of both. Vicky Featherstone for years refused to include Scottish plays in the repertoire of the National Theatre and Timothy Clifford proposed to close the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and remove the Scottish paintings from the National Gallery.

In the course of these campaigns I got to know both of them quite well and found them intelligent and friendly. I used to encounter Clifford frequently in the New Club, of which we were both members. He congratulated me on the success of my campaign. I had many public discussions with Vicky Featherstone. In the end she came to visit me in Edinburgh to tell me that she now agreed with me about the need to include many Scottish plays in the productions of the National Theatre. When she retired from the National Theatre she gave an interview to the Scottish press in which she said:

In terms of the Scottish scene, I think boards are often not very confident about appointing people whose main experience is in Scotland. I often ask myself why so many boards in Scotland seem to assume that a person from England knows better?

In that statement, she hits the nail on the head. Many of the problems which have arisen over the administration of the arts in Scotland have been the consequence of the appointment of people to senior positions in official organisations for the support of Scottish arts who have no previous knowledge of the Scottish tradition. They tend to assume that anything which is not English is wrong. It is remarkable that two ancient nations which have shared the same government for more than 300 years are still so distinct in their cultures.

Paul Henderson Scott

Edinburgh, September 2013

Previous volumes in this series:

Towards Independence, Essays on Scotland (Polygon, 1991 and 1996)

Defoe in Edinburgh and Other Papers (Tuckwell press, 1995)

Still in Bed with an Elephant (Saltire Society, 1998)

Scotland Resurgent (Saltire Society, 2003)

The Age of Liberation (Saltire Society, 2008)

CHAPTER 1

Cultural Issues

Introduction

CULTURAL OBJECTIVES FOR which many Scots have campaigned for decades have at last been achieved in recent years. The most contentious of them has been the National Theatre which was finally approved by the Scottish Parliament in 2003. To persuade this National Theatre to produce some Scottish plays has taken longer. The campaign for Gaelic in schools and for a broadcasting service in it has been successful. So far, less has been achieved for the Scots language, although it is still more widely understood and spoken than Gaelic. A new Director of the National Galleries, appointed from England as usual, attempted to close the Portrait Gallery and to remove Scottish paintings from the National Gallery on the Mound but was frustrated by a strong popular campaign.

1.1 Is Scotland a Cultural Force or a Desert?

There is a strange contradiction between different ideas about Scotland. Many historians, and especially Americans, have been eloquent in praising us as an important cultural and intellectual influence. Harold Orel, for instance, in his book,The Scottish World: ‘The record is rich; when seen as an entirety, almost unbelievably so. No nation its size has contributed so much to world culture.’ And Arthur Herman inScottish Enlightenment: The Scots Invention of the Modern World:‘As the first modern nation and culture, the Scots have by and large made the world a better place.’ Scottish achievement has usually been attributed to our education. In the middle of the 19th Century Lord Macaulay wrote in hisHistory of Englandabout the effect of the Scottish Education Act of 1695:

It began to be evident that the common people of Scotland were superior in intelligence to the common people of any country in Europe….Scotland made good progress in all that constitutes civilisation, as the Old World had never seen equalled, and even the New World has scarcely seen surpassed. This wonderful change is to be attributed, not indeed solely, but principally, to the national system of education.

Herman agrees with him: ‘In no other European country did education count for so much, or enjoy so broad a base.’

On the other hand, those who deplore the present state of Scotland are themselves Scots. Cairns Craig for instance in his book, Out of History says: ‘the consequence of accepting ourselves as parochial has been a profound self-hatred.’ C.G. Watson in Literature of the North speaks ‘of ‘the absence of hope and the lacerating self-contempt which is a marked component in the psyche of colonised peoples.’ Both of these are references to the state of mind of Scots who have been left by their education in ignorance of our history and culture. As Douglas Gifford says in a recent essay: ‘We have for two centuries turned at least one blind eye to our real cultural achievements. The responsibility for this neglect lies with our much vaunted educational system.’ Most of our schools have not only largely ignored Scottish history and literature, but have done their best to stamp out the Scots language in which much of the best of this literature is written.

In the 1990s the Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum carried out an extensive review into this problem in consultation with teachers all over Scotland. They drew up a detailed report precisely to open the blind eye which has done so much damage. This was due for publication in 1998; but one of the first measures of the newly elected Labour Government was to ban the report and replace it with another which proposed no significant change. Labour has always been nervous of anything which might stimulate Scottish self-confidence.

The SNP Government elected in 2007 is now active in promoting the changes which are so badly needed in Scottish education. This will take time to produce results, but in the meantime broadcasting with an adequate Scottish content could do more to correct the past deficiencies of the schools. The Broadcasting Commission was appointed for this purpose. They produced an excellent report, but broadcasting policy is a subject ‘reserved’ to the Westminster Parliament. This is absurd. Many countries in Europe which are smaller than Scotland have control of their own radio and television and so should Scotland. Scottish self-confidence was at its lowest ebb when broadcasting began in 1922 and in no state to resist when London asserted control.

Another urgent need is adequate Government support to stimulate the revival of the Scots language. Scotland has two languages of its own, Gaelic and Scots. Both are an important part of national life and the vehicle of great literatures. Scots is understood by more people than Gaelic and its literature is more extensive; but for years successive governments have given far more support to Gaelic which recently acquired its own TV channel. Is this because the decision makers have taken the ignorant view that Scots is merely bad English? It is true that Scots and English share a common origin, but they developed separately for centuries when the only contact between the two countries was on the battlefield. If we lose Scots, we should not only lose the ability to understand much of our own literature, but a vocabulary which is rich in words to describe our environment and our feelings and ideas. It is one of the pleasures of life in Scotland.

Our schools in the past seem to have assumed that they had to teach English and suppress Scots. They should encourage both, as in the German-speaking part of Switzerland where both Swiss and Hoch Deutsch exist happily together. Bilingualism stimulates the intelligence and encourages the acquisition of other languages. English is a valuable international language. In addition to its other qualities, Scots has the advantage of sharing words, not only with English but with many other languages such as Latin, French, German, Dutch and Norwegian. The dying words of Goethe are said to be ‘mehr licht’. This is good German, but it is also good Scots.

A convincing proof of the surviving power of the Scots tongue was the enthusiastic response of the audiences to the revivals in the Edinburgh Festival of Sir David Lindsay’s play of the mid-16th century, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis. It was produced by Tyrone Guthrie in 1948, by Bill Bryden in 1973 and by Tom Fleming in 1985, when it also won an international award in Warsaw. No other play in the long history of the Edinburgh Festival has had such an enthusiastic response from audiences and critics. As Joyce McMillan said, the reaction was ‘electrifying’. When Brian McMaster was appointed Director of the Festival in 1992 he announced that because of this, and to introduce an element of continuity, he would include the Thrie Estaitis in his programmes every two or three years. In fact, he did not do so even once and there has been no production in the Festival for the last 24 years. I used to remind him about it at the annual press conference to announce the programme and he always gave a rather evasive answer. When the formation of a National Theatre was announced he said, with evident relief, that he could leave it to them ‘because it was bound to be one of their first priorities.’

So, of course, it should be; but since the National Theatre was established in 2004 it has shown no interest in any of the great plays either of the distant or recent past. The only exception is the current tour of Liz Lochhead’s fairly recentMary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off; but that is touring only to small towns. This lack of interest in the past is curious because the long campaign for a National Theatre was mainly based on the urgent need for a company to build up a repertoire precisely of important work of that kind. I am very conscious of this because I started the final phase of this campaign by arranging, as Convener of Advisory Council for the Arts in Scotland, the conference which launched it in 1987. In all the many meetings that followed the emphasis was always on that point. As Joyce McMillan said in a report, Charter for the Arts in Scotland, which she wrote for the Scottish Arts Council in 1993: ‘The case for a national theatre rests on the contention that it is absurd for Scotland, which has little indigenous tradition in ballet and opera, to support major national companies in these area while having no national theatre to protect and express our much richer inheritance of Scots drama and theatrical tradition.’

There was an opportunity to investigate the failure of the National Theatre to show any interest in this function at a conference of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies in May 2008. The Director of the National Theatre, Vicky Featherstone, had been invited as a speaker, but her place was taken by the Executive Producer, Neil Murray. In the discussion after his speech I asked why the company had so far ignored important Scottish plays of the past. His reply was that their ‘remit’ did not include anything of that kind. I was naturally curious to discover what this remit was. So we wrote from the Saltire Society to the Scottish Arts Council to enquire. They sent us a copy of the Funding Agreement of 2004/5 which established the National Theatre. This called on the NToS, as they referred to it, ‘to encourage, stimulate and develop new trends’; but not a word about revivals.

So, was it possible that the Arts Council had ignored the arguments of our long campaign and its own Charter of 1993? This reminded me of their resistance to the whole idea of a National Theatre for years during our campaign and, of course, the final decision to go ahead was taken, not by the Council, but by the Scottish Parliament. When I was thinking about this I came across a passage, which I had forgotten, in my autobiography, A Twentieth Century Life. It may explain both the failure to revive The Thrie Estaitis and the ‘remit’. The passage refers to the campaign for a National Theatre and continues:

Here progress has been much slower and that mainly because of the resistance of the Scottish Arts Council. In May 1986 Willis Pickard, who was on the governing body of the Scottish Arts Council at the time, told me that the atmosphere within the council was unfriendly to Scottish work for the theatre. Both the chairman of the drama committee and the head of the department were, he said, anti-Scottish. Their treatment of the Scottish Theatre Company and of Theatre Alba had been scandalous.

That Pickard was right was very obvious from the Council’s manipulations over the next 15 years.

Is it possible, one might ask, that the very body established to help and encourage the arts in Scotland should in fact do the opposite? Unfortunately this sort of thing is not uncommon. Perhaps the people concerned are Scots of the kind described in my opening paragraphs whose education has given them an inferiority complex about things Scottish. Or they come from outside Scotland with no previous knowledge about Scotland and an assumption that their own place of origin is superior. Strangely enough, people of this kind are not infrequently appointed even to senior posts in official bodies concerned with aspects of Scottish culture. Our new National Theatre is an example. Neil Murray, whom I mentioned, has a Scottish name but is in fact Welsh. Are any of their senior staff Scottish or do they care anything about the Scottish dramatic tradition? Of course we do not want to be narrow-minded or intolerant, but our culture is unlikely to flourish if the people in charge of the official bodies concerned with its support do not know or care about it.

1.2 The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature

The Scotsman · 23 December 2006

It is only 18 years since Cairns Craig edited for Aberdeen University Press a History of Scottish Literature in four volumes. Now we have this new, substantial and ambitious venture The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature(Edinburgh University Press), described by its editors as ‘the most extensive, the most various and the most inclusive history of Scottish literature available to date’. From its high price at £65, it is obviously aimed at university libraries and the like rather than the general reader. Even so, its publication suggests that the appreciation and the study of Scottish literature is now well established. In the quite recent past this could not be taken for granted. As the editors say in the introduction, ‘in the 19th and most of the 20th Century, Scottish literature was not taught in schools and universities in Scotland let alone elsewhere’.

The Preface and Introduction make confident claims about Scottish literature and the subsequent chapters reinforce them. They describe it as ‘a continuous and multi-channelled entity from its beginnings’, which is ‘richly varied and interactive’ and which has made a ‘substantial contribution to the literature of the world’. Cairns Craig in his chapter in Volume 3 says that Scotland has ‘an intellectual history more distinguished than that of any comparable European country’ and that ‘Scots vernacular’ became ‘the ‘second language of the Empire’. He quotes George Saintsbury, Professor of Rhetoric in Edinburgh in the late 19th Century: ‘Scotch, as a language, has grand accommodations; it has richer vowels and more varied and musical arrangements of consonants than English’.

Scottish literature, as these volumes demonstrate, uses many languages, Gaelic, Latin, Norse, Welsh and French as well as Scots and English. From the makars of the 15th Century, Dunbar and Henryson, to Fergusson and Burns in the 18th and MacDiarmid, Smith and Garioch and many others in our own time, much of its most impressive and pleasurable poetry has been in Scots. Strangely enough, I think that this might be at the root of the long neglect of our own literature by our universities and schools. When our universities began the study of what they then called rhetoric it was in the 18th Century, soon after the Union, and their aim was to prepare ambitious Scots for careers in London and the Empire. That meant that they had to learn English, more or less as a foreign, though related, language and therefore to concentrate on English books. There was a resurgence of Scottish literature with Burns and Scott, but a retreat again in the mid-19th Century.

By early in the 20th Century this comparative neglect of Scottish literature has reached the point, as Cairns Craig discusses in Volume 3, where T.S. Elliot wrote a review with the title, ‘Was there a Scottish literature?’ Not long afterwards, Edwin Muir in his book Scott and Scotland predicted that not only the literature but Scotland itself was about to disappear because it had no active centre to hold it together. Craig ends his chapter with an interesting thought: ‘Edwin Muir may have been right when he suggested that: ‘Scotland will probably linger in limbo as long as the British Empire lasts’. He could hardly have foreseen how brief that imperial reign would be.

The recovery of Scottish confidence in our own literature was a slow process. It began at the end of the 19th Century with RL Stevenson and Patrick Geddes. After the interruption of World War Two MacDiarmid was the major influence. He campaigned with formidable persistence and energy to convince the universities and the world at large that Scotland had ‘an independent literary tradition’ and that it should build on it and revive the use of Scots and Gaelic.

Alan Riach, in Volume 3, gives us a splendid account of MacDiarmid’s poetry, of which he says that ‘the scale of his ambition is daunting’. He concludes that: ‘He was the driving force when national self-determination became a cultural priority’. In his historical introduction to this volume Richard Finlay says: ‘Much of their plea for a revitalised Scottish culture fell on deaf ears’. That may have been the impression at first, but as Finlay adds at the end of the chapter, from the late 1960s, ‘changes in culture married with the political climate to prepare the case for home rule’. From the 18th Century onwards there has been a close relationship between the state of Scottish literature and political assertiveness.

In his chapter on modern poetry in Scots Roderick Watson says that ‘Hugh MacDiarmid’s resistance to the hegemony of standard English has been of immense importance to 20th Century Scottish writing’. MacDiarmid’s battle cry in this campaign was ‘back to Dunbar’. Priscilla Bawcutt’s excellent chapter on Dunbar in Volume 1 shows that this was sound advice. As she says, Dunbar is ‘intelligent, if not profoundly intellectual, witty and sardonic’ and admirable for his ‘metrical virtuosity, the energy of his language, and the vividness of his imagination’. After more than 500 years he still has the ‘power ‘to excite, move and occasionally to infuriate’.

The chapters in all three volumes are admirably concise but they generally state the essentials and very often open up fresh ideas about the significance of the writer or tendency concerned. There are many unexpected pleasures. These volumes are a major contribution to the understanding and appreciation of Scottish literature. They deserve to be widely read and not confined to the universities. I hope that it will not be long before a much cheaper paper-back edition is made available.

1.3 A History of Scottish Philosophy

The Herald · October 2009

A History of Scottish Philosophy by Alexander Brodie (Edinburgh University Press)is an important and impressive book; the first substantial account of the history of Scottish philosophy which extends over seven centuries and was written, as Broadie says, ‘by thinkers of the very highest calibre’. Much has been written in recent years about the Scottish Enlightenment, including an excellent book by Broadie himself, but, as he says in the Introduction to this new book, the Enlightenment was not a sudden miracle, but ‘the continuation of a long tradition of Scottish philosophy’. He argues too that it continues to the present: ‘What became of the Scottish Enlightenment? It just kept on running’. He ends with the last sentence: ‘Scottish philosophy is unfinished business and this book is perforce an interim report.’

Of course, philosophy is international in the range of its interests and the wide exchange of ideas and influences. Our first philosopher, Duns Scotus (c.1266–1308) was born in Duns in the Scottish Borders, but he studied and worked mainly in France, and for centuries other Scottish thinkers were active in universities across Europe. Scottish philosophy has always had a close relationship in both directions with philosophy in other countries. Even so, Broadie has no doubt that it is as appropriate to speak of Scottish philosophy as it is of French, German, American or any other. As he says: ‘Scotland has a rich philosophical tradition, created by many people, and testifying to a deep interest in abstract speculation that has characterised Scottish culture for centuries… The extent to which philosophy has penetrated deeply and widely within Scottish culture means that, in spite of its universality, Scottish philosophy is a citizen of its country.’

Broadie, who is Professor of Logic and Rhetoric at Glasgow University, tells us that he began his study of philosophy at Edinburgh University in the 1960s. Apart from Hume, who was a major subject of study, he was taught almost nothing about Scottish philosophy beforehim or afterwards. ‘No word on the philosophy of Scotus, Ireland, Mair, Hutcheson, Smith, Reid, Kames, Stewart, Ferrier, Seth Pringle-Pattison, Kemp Smith or MacMurray.’ Broadie discusses all of these and others. He gives us a brief account of their lives and a summary and comment of their ideas. The extent of his research and the depth of his erudition is impressive.

There is an obvious parallel between the neglect of Scottish philosophy by our universities and their similar treatment of Scottish literature in the past. Campaigns by Hugh MacDiarmid and many others in the last century have transformed the atmosphere as far as literature is concerned, although Glasgow is still the only University with a department devoted entirely to it. Broadie is in effect launching a new and necessary campaign for a similar transformation towards Scottish philosophy.

Why have our universities and, of course, our schools as well been so reticent about our own contribution to the world? It is particularly strange as it is widely recognised, particularly in America. Scotland, although a small country, has a remarkable record of achievement in ideas and the arts and sciences. It seems that many of our own people not only know nothing about this, but imagine that Scotland is an insignificant back-water which has never produced anything of importance. Our education is presumably largely to blame and so is broadcasting largely controlled by London. The fundamental cause, it seems to me, must be the Union of 1707 which deprived us of our independence in an extremely humiliating manner and undermined our self-confidence. The Union brought some benefits to Scotland as long as the Empire lasted, but that was an additional reason for Scots to keep quiet and accept a subordinate position. Devolution is a major step in the right direction, but we are still dependent on the Parliament in Westminster, where we are outnumbered ten to one, for such important matters as foreign affairs, defence, finance and even broadcasting.

So, even a history of philosophy provokes a political response. This is as it should be because, as I am sure Broadie would agree, philosophy is not remote from human affairs, but an essential guide to understanding them. He ends his book in the 1960s on the grounds that it would be premature to judge current work without a reasonable interval of time. At present the book is only available in hardback, but a paperback is due to be issued next February.

1.4 ‘The Greatest Cultural Disaster’

JM Reid, who was the editor of the Glasgow newspaper, The Bulletin for 12 years, published an important book in 1959, Scotland Past and Present. It dealt with the measures which he thought had to be taken if Scotland was to survive. In the 50 years since then we have taken many of the necessary steps, such as the recovery of the Scottish Parliament, even if its powers are still very limited. So far we have failed to deal with one of the issues he thought most important, the control of broadcasting. He said this about it:

When regular broadcasting began in 1922, Scottish self-confidence was at its lowest ebb. It is impossible to believe that, at any other time, a people who had long had most other cultural media in their own hands – Church, schools, newspapers – would have accepted a monopoly in a new form of communication over which Scots had no sort of control.

Over the years many other people have protested about the external control of broadcasting. Geoffrey Barrow, for instance, in his Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Scottish History in the University of Edinburgh in 1979:

The failure of Scotland to establish its own organisation for public service broadcasting was the greatest cultural disaster which Scotland suffered in the 20th Century.

Campaigns on this issue have included one by the Advisory Council for the Arts in Scotland (AdCAS) which was established in 1981 as the result of an initiative of the Saltire Society. It brought together almost all the organisations concerned with the arts in Scotland, governmental, professional and voluntary, to make recommendations on cultural policy. As Murray Pittock says in his book, The Road to Independence, several of their recommendations ‘were subsequently implemented, including a fully devolved Scottish Arts Council, a separate Scottish Education Funding Council and a National Theatre. Two of these were put in place under a Conservative Government before devolution’.

Another of their recommendations that ‘funds raised in Scotland in broadcasting fees should be used to finance a broadcasting service under Scottish control’ has so far been ignored. Under the terms of the Devolution Act this now requires a decision by the Westminster Parliament. Since all other cultural functions were transferred under the same Act to the Scottish Parliament this was highly inconsistent. Presumably the British Labour Government at the time wanted to keep control of such a powerful means of influencing Scottish opinion. So we are still left with the ‘cultural disaster’.

Scotland and England have very different histories and both have strong, but different, cultural identities, tastes and habits. Although the English language is now predominant in both countries, Scotland also has Gaelic and Scots. A Gaelic television service has recently been established, but there is no provision for Scots. This is a richly expressive language which is still spoken and understood by many people. It is the language of much of our best poetry, plays and dialogue in novels. One consequence of the English control of the BBC and of broadcasting generally has been a clear decline in the use of Scots in conversation since broadcasting began.

Many of the nations in Europe, including those which have recently recovered their independence, are smaller than Scotland, but all have their own broadcasting service. The BBC provides Scottish programmes on both radio and television, but the overwhelming tone is predominantly English. This is appropriate since they are the great majority of the audience; but it means that most of theBBCprogrammes on cultural, political and economic matters, history, adaptations of novels and plays are English. The major part of the news programmes are from London, including coverage of events in other countries. Some years ago there was a proposal for a Scottish 6 o’clock news service, but it was rejected. We do need to express our own view of the world, and not be restricted to local events.

These views, which are widely held in Scotland, are not anti-English. We naturally need to have friendly relations with our nearest neighbour, but they are at present not promoted, but discouraged, by the English domination of the air-waves. It would assist good relations between us, as well as the adequate expression of our concerns and interests, if broadcasting ceased to be a subject reserved to the Westminster Parliament and we established a Scottish service financed by fees collected in Scotland.

1.5 A New Cultural Policy

The Scotsman · 24 May 2007

On St Andrew’s day 2003 the First Minister at the time, Jack McConnell, said: ‘I believe we can now make the development of our creative drive, our imagination, the next major enterprise for our society’. These encouraging words naturally led to a general expectation that he would launch new proposals to stimulate and support Scottish culture in all its diverse forms. What in fact happened was the appointment of a Cultural Commission, with James Boyle as its Chairman, to make recommendations about the new policies that would be required.

After much deliberation and consultation, at a cost of £600,000 they produced a report of about 300 pages in June 2005. The Executive then launched a Parliamentary Bill which paid little attention to the Report. They invited responses to the draft by 30 March 2007. There have been more than 200 responses from local authorities, universities and arts organisations of all kinds. Their general view seems to be that the Bill is inadequate and a wasted opportunity. So, it looks as if the new SNP administration will have to make a fresh start.

This is just as well because this whole subject, which is vital for a civilised and satisfying way of life, is one where the Labour Party has particular difficulties. They are clearly under the control of the Party bosses in London. The encouragement of Scottish culture means the enhancement of Scottish self-awareness and self-confidence, and that is dangerous ground for Labour. As soon as they begin to think about it, they are afraid that it might encourage support for the SNP. Especially now, after the SNP success in the Scottish election and with Gordon Brown feeling the need to parade his Britishness, this is the last thing they want to do. Labour is committed to keeping Scotland in a permanent state of inferiority and subordination.

So it is now up to Fiona Hyslop as Cabinet Secretary for Education and Linda Fabiani, as Minister for Culture to take the next step. I do not think that there is any great mystery about what is needed as the first steps. The Saltire Society and other organisations have been advocating them for years.

We have to begin with the schools. In most countries it is taken for granted that the national history and the national literature are essential elements of education. In Scotland it is still possible to go through the entire educational system and emerge in complete ignorance of both.Children are left with the impression that Scotland is a back-water where nothing of importance ever happened. This is of course, the opposite of the truth, but ignorance can be very destructive of self-confidence and ambition.

Scottish literature is one of the great literatures of Europe and much of its best poetry, drama and dialogue in the novels is in Scots, one of the most expressive of all languages. Scots should be given the same recognition and support as Gaelic by the Scottish Government and encouraged in the schools. This offers an easy introduction to bilingualism, which stimulates intelligence and assists in the acquisition of other languages. Also the Scots language is an important part of Scottish tradition and if we lose it, we shall lose access to much of our own literature.

Scottish literature is not as well-known as it should be, even in Scotland. The schools are beginning to make good their past neglect and the appointment by UNESCO