ChrisHarvie137

Tessa Ransford

Works of art are not good
for anything. They are
an end in themselves

Rear Window

Springburn diary

16.06.11
No. 418

Alan Fisher

 Thousands went on strike. Thousands came to protest. This was the Greek people telling their government – enough.
     When we arrived early in the morning, the atmosphere seemed calm, although there was an underlying air of menace as people approached us and told us to leave. The suggested destinations ranged from a nearby hotel to my native Scotland.
      I saw them getting ready. Dressed in black, they pulled goggles and scarves from their bags, they talked and pointed.  Perhaps no more than 10, but organised and clearly determined. I watched as they made their way to the front of the crowd. In front of them, police guarding the parliament building, a long protective line with white helmets and riot shields. 
     First they threw stones. One or two to begin with, then more. The police fired back with thunder flashes – loud and frightening. Then tear gas. The thick white choking smoke hanging in the air, biting into the eyes and the throat. The ones in black, men and women, knew what to do.  They tried to kick the capsules back, push them away. Some even wore gasmasks.  
     Flares were thrown, quickly followed by petrol bombs. Only two or three, but it proved to the police the violence was pre-meditated and designed to cause damage. Some of the crowd didn’t want their message tainted.  They confronted the troublemakers, but that only succeeded in starting fights in a number of places. The police tried to gain control, but ended up dealing with running battles around the main square. They would advance and clear an area, step back and watch it fill again.
     A few people started hammering at the paving stones, the roads and even a fountain, chipping off pieces of rock to be used as weapons. In one corner, police grabbed a man in a red t-shirt who had been near the front of the trouble. He raised his hands in surrender but their frustration after a few hours chasing shadows clearly boiled over and they threw kicks and punches, some connecting, some not.
     As his friends realised he hadn’t made it back when they ran, they started to throw stones and rocks at the police, who simply pushed him out from behind their shields and dragged him along. Eventually calm was restored. Where people had appeared with hammers, they now appeared with brushes and bags to clear the debris.
     One year ago Greece was struggling to repay its debts so asked for a bail-out. A year later the debt is even bigger. The recession has hit harder and deeper here than anywhere else – and to meet the terms of the bail-out, the government needs more tax rises, more cuts in public spending and more pain. The prime minister asked opposition parties to join the government. He offered to stand down if that would help.  They said no.  
     In the square in front of his office – they stood in their thousands waiting for a sign of where things were going. The violence may be over for now, the anger remains.

Alan Fisher is an Al Jazeera correspondent

Whit thochts

anent oor

ain time?

Christopher Harvie

This was the opening talk at an event to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Saltire Society

A day, 22 April 1936, an a photo: Harwood House in Teviot, no a mile frae Bishop William Turnbull’s land, him that foundit Glasgow University in 1451. Fower suspects in thon Border gairden whaes scope still gars ye gasp: Walter and Katherine Elliot, James Bridie, John Grierson. I use the auld tung, cause that was hoo they’d speak. An auld wife in Crown Court Kirk, London, minded John Buchan himsel loupin in the ane sentence oot o RP intae Peebles doric.

     And the tung has the poo’er. Efter oor parliament cam back, in April, an deith claimit Donald Dewar an Cardinal Winning, forbye Maisterbuilder Miralles, I mindit William Dunbar an his ‘Lament for the Makars’:

Down to the deid gang all estaitis,
Princes, prelatis, an potestatis.
Now dansand merry, now like to die,
Timor mortis conturbat me.

     Whit ither tung could pit glory and grimness gleich afore us? Elliot, Tory secretary of state, was the political makar – o the Empire Exhibition o 1938. The chiel wis gleg that shiftit the Scottish depairtments frae London to Tommy Tait’s grand St Andrews House, stertit Films o Scotland an Hillington estate wi its Spitfire-engine works – no to speak of seein’ the Queen Mary aff an the Queen Elizabeth laid doon. Bridie the playwright o ‘Mr Bolfry’ an ‘The Baikie Charivari’, Elliot’s freen frae daft days at Glasgow College, perjink an’ gallus: couldna thole bein a ‘man o letters’: keep yir wark o engineer or doctor for real…Grierson jumped in 1920 frae agitating John MacLean’s Glasgow – wheech! – to spierin oot whit made DW Griffith’s and Charlie Chaplin’s Hollywood tick.
     Scotland had tholed 15 year it could hae dune wi’oot.
     If the twenties were bad the thirties were worse, because ye couldnae flee tae America. Even though Patrick Geddes helped faither the New Deal an lang Kenneth Galbraith, frae Iona County, Ontario an John Galt’s Guelph College, helped carry it oot – him that said ‘Financial forecasting is what gives astrology its good name’.
     Auld Ramsay Mac kissed the magic Duchess an turned intae a puddock. He foondit the national government in August 1931 an lost his pairty: only seven socialist MPs were left in Scotland, an nane o them liked him. He wis fell lonesome an John Buchan tried to bring him back tae his first love: the idea o a Scottish Parliament, wi a braw speech in 1932.
     Which didnae please the unionists, whae let fly wi the Ragman’s Roll: hunners o’ well-set, well-scrievit names, heidit by prominente frae the banks an’ chambers o commerce, aboot as useful to depressed Scotland as Peter Pan. Work endit on the Queen Mary an there cam oot No Mean City – an ye dinnae hit a lower bottom than that.
     Few folk noo emigrated, though some spirits were absent:

O wae’s me o the weary days
When it is scarce grey licht at noon
It must be a the stupid folk
Diffusin’ dullness roon an roon
Like soot,
That keeps the sunlicht oot.

     Hugh MacDiarmid wi ‘To Circumjack Cencrastus’ offendit a’body he’d no yet offendit wi the ‘Drunk Man’. He took aff first tae London, then Liverpool, fell aff a bus an’ landit oan his heid – ‘kept his genius but lost his talent’, quo Norman MacCaig. He’d a new ally in Leslie Mitchell, wha cried himsel Grassic Gibbon o the Scots Quair. The pair wrote i thirty-fower The Scottish Scene, oot for hard flytin. MacDiarmid wis exiled on Whalsay an by thirty-six Gibbon was deid, along wi Don Roberto on the far Pampas. J M Barrie went aff on ‘an awfully big adventure’. So nae word frae him. Edwin Muir’s version o Walter Scott in that year o 1936 didnae seem to think that Scots – tung or maybe even folk – had a future at a.
     Somebody had tae dae somethin! Weel, politics was changin – women had equal votes in 1928, though only ane, gleg Jennie Lee, wis electit, tae be thrawn oot in 1931. Folk swung the big burghs to Labour, though damn little progress cam in thirty-five – only twenty electit oot o seventy seats.

I sometimes wonder if I see
A lichter shadow than the neist.
I’m fain to cry the dawn, the dawn
Ah see it brakin’ in the east.

     Thank ye MacDiarmid. Red Square, Moscow, isnae the first place ye’d look for Scottish culture, outside maybe o Burns Nicht. But there, in May thirty-fower Joe Stalin figured oot his Popular Front: Commies as gude democrats, armed agin’ the fascists.
     Fascists in douce Scotland? Quite a few. Cotton-mills in Mussolini’s Italy, run frae Paisley; German dyewarks linked tae ICI; Cooncillor Cormack’s Protestant gorillas in Embro, sae glaikit they beat up Mosley’s Blackshirts as a Catholic plot. Franco had freens at Abbotsford. Ribbentrop met Buccleuch. Forbye, wi the Clyde pickin up the auld battleship trade, there wis a need tae stop gaen back to the auld wrestling match – a’body doon the road aince the ship ran her trials.
     Mind you, some o the gear that Saltire foonders George Malcolm Thomson and Andrew Dewar Gibb brocht wi them wis less than civil: muckle wrath agin sic Irish as came to the fact’ries an pits – tho by takin the heavy, dirty darg, they heaped up the savings that peyed for trainin the skilled chiels. Shame on baith Kirks whae danced tae this tune. But ye sense frae George Bruce’s wee Jubilee buik that women – Alison Sheppard (wreckin Eric Linklater’s typewriter in the cause!) Miss Orr Boyd, Agnes Mure Mackenzie – were the spring o the Saltire, the folk who took on the turmoil o war as a challenge, an raised members, fower hunnert in 1940, tae fower times that by the war’s end.
     The Saltire branched intae buildings, an intae pentin through the rambucktious J D Fergusson, a Scottish Colourist wi’ animal spirits and an eye for fine-lookin women, dansand merry an wearin gey little: ‘Gulley Jimson’ he was, in his freen Joyce Cary’s ‘The Horse’s Mouth’, like that ither thrawn English makar John Arden, learn’d in Embra’s art schule.
     The Saltire wis a means o facin up to sic causes an contradictions. Bein national but no unco political. Reaching oot tae women in a land measured oot by men, fae kirk sessions tae golf clubs. Its sangshaws an buiks an spielin, brocht thegither Tories – mind them? – and home rulers. No the revolution MacDiarmid wantit, mair a means o gettin common wark – whit folk ca’d ‘middle opinion’, an ‘a renewal of the life which made them, such as the Scots themselves experienced in the eighteenth century’.
     George Bruce credits me wi this. No me, but the architect Robert Hurd in ‘Building Scotland’ in 1940. His nephew Douglas wud craft ane o the dafter takes on the Cause in the sixties, ‘Scotch on the Rocks’. The Saltire’s life took twal year tae floo’er, then 1948 brocht ‘The Three Estates’, by David Lindsay madeower by Tyrone Guthrie an Robert Kemp – ‘Noo ah ken whit Brecht really meant’, quo Yorkshireman Arden. Forrard forty-one year an, i the same ha, parliament cam hame.
     At the end, whit thochts anent oor ain time? The warld’s folk are spawnin in billions, an the oil’s rinnin oot. Quo auld MacDiarmid, ‘A miracle’s oor only chance’. But we micht be next tae wan, springing frae oor winds, tides, waves an roosts. Tae ‘foster and enrich’, we maun tell the warld aboot it. The Saltire needs mair members, an younger members. The bairns are skeely wi the digitals, but the likes o Wikipedia are sair thin aboot Scotland. Unco mony ‘stub’ pieces wi only a scatter o fact.
     We want oor own TV. Could we no hae richt awa, in place o London stite an blether, a Scots channel like ‘Yesterday’ o guid auld films, serials, documentaries, like whit Burns clept a ‘museum’: a ‘Scottish Media Museum’ – there an open tae auld folk wi memories an bairns wi hopes? We maun bring remeid – as the Elliots, Bridie an Grierson wad hae dune – an in this the Saltire should tak the leid.

 

Professor Christopher Harvie was SNP MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife and has held senior academic posts in both Germany and Scotland