Who is the real
Romney? We have
still to find out
Stalinism is alive
and well on the
Glasgow underground
SR’s remarkable growth as an independent magazine is based largely on word of mouth. Here are examples of our journalism:
* SR played a leading role in the successful campaign to save St Margaret of Scotland Hospice
* SR campaigned for greater transparency in Scottish public life and won a landmark judgement from the Scottish information commissioner which has led to a transformation in the information available about executive salaries and pensions in public bodies
* Having discovered elderly people still living in a near-derelict block of flats in Glasgow, sometimes without a water supply, SR campaigned to have them decently re-housed. With the help of Scotland’s housing minister, Alex Neil, we succeeded
* SR continues to campaign – so far without success – to broaden the range of appointments to national organisations beyond a self-perpetuating elite
Unlike many publications SR doesn’t have an online comment facility – we prefer a more considered approach. The Cafe is our readers’ forum. If you would like to contribute to it, please email islay@scottishreview.net
Is Scotland to be
regarded as a feeble
child in the playground?
Anne Keenan
Dear heavens, I had no idea that Tessa Ransford (28 February) had powers of transubstantiation and could sit on my shoulder, like some avenging guardian angel, recording my growls as I wrote my piece for the Scottish Review (24 February) . I can assure her that I wasn’t growling. Indeed, I was suffused with a sweet nostalgia for my youth and a nagging worry about my future. No growling involved at all.
I wasn’t a student at Edinburgh University in the 1950s; I was a student at Stirling University in the 1970s. We were worlds apart. I applied to Edinburgh but was rejected as I didn’t have Higher Latin. As a mature student studying at night school and a small Lanarkshire college, Latin teachers were hard to find.
Just because she is one of the nationalist great and good of Scotland and clearly had the whole world at her feet in Edinburgh doesn’t mean that her opinions are any more valid than mine. Anyway, I am in good company. As early as March 2003, The Policy Institute’s paper ‘What Future for Scotland’ opened with these words from Bill Jamieson:
All the contributors to this publication would regard themselves as passionately in favour of Scotland and would be deeply resentful of the charge that in being critical of how devolution has worked out, they are somehow being anti-Scottish.
Some of the contributors were leading nationalists and some were not.
Some years later , the charge of being anti-Scottish or doing down Scotland is still being levelled by Mike Russell, Joan McAlpine and…Tessa Ransford.
Her comments about my relationship with my professor are beneath contempt. I have not seen him for over 30 years and am unlikely to do so. Our meeting, via the internet, was a little serendipity which caused me to think about the changes in Scotland. I have always resisted saying this in print but since those heady days in the 1970s, I have voted for the SNP. In 2010, for the first time, I cast my vote elsewhere. It had nothing to do with my country and belief in independence but everything to do with the party in power and my fears for the future. It is an insult to intelligent people across Scotland to assume that if they do not agree with the SNP, they are against Scotland. It is also a deeply worrying trend which has gone on for too long.
Are we to regard Scotland as some feeble child in a playground requiring protection from a bully who would do Scotland down? Or as a proud and vibrant nation capable of looking itself in the face and asking the difficult questions?
Ignorant and condescending? I think not.
Anne Keenan lives in a remote part of the West Highlands. She writes for pleasure and to remind herself that there is a big world out there
Angus Skinner writes:
Tessa Ransford writes movingly and with energy for independence and freedom, with a fabulous quote from John Macmurray that is worth reading several times. An article to treasure.
Though I hold her in the highest regard, and with much affection, on this matter we take differing views. So to the matter of the referendum. Only George Osborne has made boredom into a political art form. The SNP with Bruce Crawford may seek to energise debate. As a beautiful young woman said to me decades ago, forget it chum, it ain’t going to happen. Even if Donald Trump’s hair made a leap for independence from his brain (you can imagine why it might – and today is the 29th) that would not, in the end, defeat Osborne’s strategy of boredom. He knows it. He has been planning it for years. He could not have predicted the SNP victory at the last Holyrood election but when all is boiled down how much difference does that really make?
Boredom is a good strategy. The question about devolution for decades was how many people cared. How many would actually vote? It fell short, regrouped, just, and staggered over the crossing line. Staggering over the crossing line is probably the best the SNP can hope for. Is that freedom? Of all the things we need to discuss this pre-occupation with a north-south divide will surely return to its back-burner position. Are there not equally important questions to ask about east-west differences, within Scotland and firth?
Historically surely other divisions have been as important? How much empathy did our editor find existed between Ayr and Aberdeen during his journeys in a small country? The west coast and the northern isles and Highland beaches experienced Norse invasion (Skinner is a Norse name – see Inverskinnerton in Cromarty) whereas surely south of Aberdeen the east was more sheltered? The Atlantic batters the west, carving glorious sea fronts – and endangering lives; the east lies generally softer. The west takes the bulk of the rain as clouds break against sullen mountains. To what extent should we attribute Iain Gray’s lack of support to the fact that he represented the gentle East Lothian diluvian plane?
And south of the border surely the history is equally driven by east-west. The wars of the roses? How much empathy do we perceive between Liverpool and Norfolk? Essex and Blackburn? At the very south (Cornwall) we have more unity and a folk almost as inclined to independence as many Scots. And I am intrigued that the liberals (who I trust are all democratic) seem to have strongholds in the north-east of Scotland and the south-west of England.
Historians have become key figures in national debate. But has the academic practice of history, driven by getting numbers through courses, dissertations and doctoral theses, been biased to documentary evidence? Whilst thinking wider, not least about geography, has been downgraded? If history is fettled by curricular demands, if it cannot think wider, we are doomed. Hobsbaum will be proven right – we are all on a handcart to hell.
Yet stay. In the kaleidoscopes of modern knowledge, systems of knowledge and even political maelstroms it always remains possible to stand back and think. As Tessa does so well. Yes, we disagree. The security I seek is engagement, full on with the world. If independence meant that, I might vote for it. I fear any utopian views. Decades back that was the danger, though there were windows of opportunity – now gone. As framed it means only freedom from England. I will have none of it. And for 1,000 days we will pay to raise the engagement. The biggest problem the SNP have is getting turnout on the day. Boredom will win.
For folk have better things to do.
Angus Skinner is a former chief social work inspector for Scotland
