Law at a crawl (1)
Colin McEachran and
Clare Donaldson
Law at a crawl (2)
Bruce Gardner
Crawford, as the dust jacket of his recent volume notes, ‘dares to bring both cities to life between the covers of one book’ and ‘On Glasgow and Edinburgh’ is certainly an ambitious work. Discussing the multifaceted nature of any city will naturally require many hats and Crawford doesn’t necessarily suit all of them. Nevertheless, the book has much to commend it. The first thing worth reflecting on is that it didn’t exist before now.
There are numerous books, some with eminent authors and editors, which deal with each city in isolation but a serious study of both was surely long overdue. It might be suggested that this absence was the result of the distinct places they occupy in the Scottish imagination and the keen rivalry that is commonly believed to exist between the two.
Any partisanship is well founded. Both cities have much for their inhabitants to boast about but this shouldn’t preclude inquisitiveness where the other is concerned. It is remarkable that, for some at least, getting on the train at either Waverley or Queen Street seems to exist on the same level as international travel. This defiant localism is a more general characteristic of Scottish life. In the case of Glasgow and Edinburgh, the fact it sometimes finds expression in the form of competition is actually a subconscious acknowledgement of the clout of the other.
It is only really Crawford’s prelude ‘A Treasured Rivalry’ that possesses a true sense of the sibling rivalry. The book, thereafter, reads east to west, with Edinburgh and Glasgow seemingly needing to be segregated even in the pages of a book. Each chapter does not advance a chronological history but takes as its focus a geographical area of the city before providing a mixture of history and contemporary sight-seeing highlights. Art galleries and museums compete for attention with tales of debauchery, intolerance, vice and filth.
Some will object that Crawford’s Glasgow and Edinburgh are not those of their inhabitants but the tourist and visitor both so unashamedly covet. There is an element of truth in such a complaint: this is not the Glasgow of Easterhouse or the Edinburgh of Wester Hailes, peripherals in more ways than one. But Crawford concedes this early, thus taking some of the sting out of the lament. It is also worth remembering, however, that many of these art galleries and museums, before they were guidebook fodder, were the products of a focused civic pride and belief in the value of education and culture for the people of each city.
Attempting to capture the essence of something as complex as a city or its inhabitants is impossible. Stereotypes are robust things and if they contain a grain of truth then Crawford captures them as well as anyone. Glasgow, he writes, displays ‘a generosity of spirit that comes from shared endurance of often adverse urban predicament’.
He also has a keen eye for the built environment and the skill to convey his obvious passions in the most readable way: discussing the work of William MacTaggart he claims, ‘If wild Scottish weather could paint, it would paint like this’. Professor of modern Scottish literature at St Andrews University, he has an easy command of both the literary products and representations of the two places.
This mastery of the subject can, however, manifest itself in unnecessary ways. On too many occasions, for example, he feels the need to chaperone historical dates with a reference to an event in the life of Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott or Robert Louis Stevenson. In his political assessments, both historical and contemporary, he demonstrates less sophistication but his nationalist sympathies come through clearly enough.
In one section he writes of ‘a British empire led by England but with Scotland contributing administrative nous and expendable fighting force’. This is a confusing and complacent assessment of Scotland’s enthusiastic embrace of empire that has been challenged in the past decade by Tom Devine and others. A corrective is offered later when he writes of Glaswegians being ‘in thrall to their dreams of empire’.
Reading the book, it is possible to conclude that Glasgow and Edinburgh are at different stages in the lifecycle of the city. Glasgow, with the relatively recent disappearance of the industry that gave it such prominence and dirty prestige, holds the most traumatic process in its history within the collective living memory. Edinburgh, on the other hand, has long since dealt with the loss of royal court and parliament. It was rejuvenated by becoming, in Crawford’s words, a ‘wonderful museum of itself’ from the 19th century onwards. Intellectually it had been revitalised in the previous century by becoming the furnace of the Scottish Enlightenment. The return of the parliament and the festival(s) give it both national and international significance.
Glasgow, like a person made redundant, is still trying to find a satisfying new direction. These are cities that have exerted a disproportionate influence for centuries now and it is still possible to detect a belief in their ability to overachieve, despite having a combined population roughly equal to Calgary.
Crawford concludes proceedings with a coda at the Falkirk Wheel which he describes, in the final sentence of the book, as ‘a thoroughgoing, lasting and utterly compelling handshake between Glasgow and Edinburgh’. Call it a draw I suppose. Books about cities can be achievements in two different ways. First, for the person reading of the city in which they reside, they make the mundane worthy of new appreciation. Second, they impress themselves upon the outsider to such an extent that they simply have to visit.
‘On Glasgow and Edinburgh’ is a book not without its flaws but it largely manages to do both. It commands us to appreciate the history and contemporary richness of two great cities, just across the road from each other, in one relatively small country.
Alasdair McKillop is a writer based in Edinburgh
