scottish literature: an open

SCOTTISHLITERATURE:AN OPENCANON

James RobertsononWriters, artists and the independence debateLesley RiddochonBig is beautiful in the best wee country in the world?

radical feminist green

No 34 / AUTUMN 2012 / £2

PLUS IN FRANCE, WILL CHANGE BE NOW OR NEVER? THE CROWD INHISTORY LINDA COLLEY AND THE STRANGE DEATH OF NORTHBRITAIN BSL: MORE THAN A LANGUAGEAMERICAN SENATE CANDIDATE EXCLUSIVEINTERVIEWTHEHATANDBOOKS ON THE SNPWOMEN TALKING TO WOMENTHE NEW FEWTHE STORY OF LEADERSHIP

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9 772041 362003

ISSN 2041-3629

MAGAZINE OF SCOTLAND’S DEMOCRATIC LEFT

171 WRITERSAND MAJORWORKS

2 / AUTUMN 2012 / PERSPECTIVES 34

Contents� Perspectives

No 34, autumn 2012

EDITORIAL

CULTURE AND BRITAIN

� Letters andcontributions(which we mayedit) arewelcome andshould be sentto the editor –contact detailsbelow.

It’s official. The UK and Sottishgovernments have now reachedagreement that the independ-

ence referendum will be held bythe end of 2014, and that theScottish parliament will decide if16- and 17-year-olds should get tovote. However, the trade-off isthat the vital question will be inde-pendence, yes or no. Seemingly atthe Unionist camp’s insistence, thepossibility of another option onthe ballot paper, for which thereseems to be a large consensus inScotland, that the Scottish parlia-ment take increased powers shortof independence, has (to coin aphrase) been scotched.

This is a bad decision: it leavesmany in Scotland with the feelingthat this referendum is to be run tosuit the convenience of politiciansand not the electorate, and will dolittle to decrease voter disengage-ment with politics and cynicismtowards the so-called political class.

However the debate must go onand this issue of Perspectives high-lights two inter-twined themes:culture and Britain.

On the facing page JamesRobertson (pictured especially forPerspectives by Sandy Moffat)offers his view on what writers andartists may contribute to the inde-pendence debate. He argues thatimagination is what they can bringto the table and that this maycounter “the soporific reassurance

that ‘everything will be the same,nothing will change’” after inde-pendence.

Alan Riach’s article on Scottishliterature observes that, in ourschools, the teaching of “English”literature has often meant just that:the study of English (and maybeAmerican, Irish etc) works, butoften to the exclusion of Scottishtexts. The making of Scottish litera-ture a required (as opposed tooptional) subject in our schools sug-gests that a canon is needed andAlan makes the argument for thisand proposes his list on pages 24and 25.

The question of Britishness istackled by George Kerevan in hispiece reflecting on the impact ofLinda Colley’s pathbreaking bookof 20 years ago. We all know thecommonplace that the London-based press (particularly in sport)likes to characterise Scots as Britishwhen they win and as Scots whenthey lose, but there are seriousissues here about how the notionof Britishness might more properlybe called Anglo-Britishness, andwhat that means for Scotland inthe context of the independencedebate.

There is much more in this issue,but we should particularly thankLesley Riddoch whose piece con-cludes her 6-part take on Scotland.Sean FeenyEditor

Perspectives is published four times a year byDemocratic Left Scotland, Number Ten, 10 Constitution Road, Dundee DD1 1LLTel: 01382 819641 / e: [email protected] / www.democraticleftscotland.org.uk

ISSN 2041-3629

Editor: Sean Feeny / Depute editor: Davie Laing / Circulation and promotions manager: David Purdy

Articles in Perspectives are copyright. Requests to reproduce any part of the magazine should beaddressed to the editor.

Copy deadline for issue 35 is Friday 30 November 2012.

For further information on Perspectives or to submit articles or letters, contact: The Editor,Perspectives, Democratic Left Scotland, Number Ten, 10 Constitution Road, Dundee DD1 1LLe: [email protected]

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3Writers, artists and theindependence debateJames Robertson

7In France, will changebe now or never? Gavin Bowd

11Big is beautiful inthe best weecountry?Lesley Riddoch

17The crowd inhistoryWillie Thompson

21Scottish literature:An open canonAlan Riach

26Linda Colley andthe strange deathof North BritainGeorge Kerevan

30BSL: More than alanguagePaul Belmonte

33Book review:SNP: The road toelectoral successPeter Lynch

36Book review:Women talking towomenUna McCormack

38Book review:The new fewDavid Purdy

41Book review:The story ofleadershipTim Haigh

42Senatorial can -did ate interviewTim Haigh

43DiaryMaire McCormackis The Hat

The teachingof “English”literature hasoften meantjust that: thestudy ofEnglish (andmaybeAmerican,Irish etc)works, butoften to theexclusion ofScottish texts

� Writers illustrated on the front cover are (left to right): Muriel Spark (© Sandy Moffat), RobertLouis Stevenson, Irvine Welsh (pic: Mariusz Kubik), Walter Scott, J. M. Barrie and A. L. Kennedy

PERSPECTIVES 34 / AUTUMN 2012 / 3

WRITERS, ARTISTSAND THEINDEPENDENCEDEBATE

Author James Robertson argues that imagination is the great giftthat writers and artists can bring to the independence debate.


Back in the early 1980s, a poster was producedby a campaigning group – established, I think,by the author Joan Lingard and others – called

Scottish Writers Against the Bomb. I was just begin-ning to get poems published in small magazines, andI had a copy of the poster on my wall. It showed apersonified map of Scotland vomiting missiles andnuclear submarines out of its mouth, the Firth ofClyde, and dozens of writers’ names were printedunder this image. In what felt like – and was – a sin-cere act of solidarity, I added my own name to thelist.

It was a powerful poster with an apparentlyunequivocal message, but I remember it caused somesoul-searching among those on the left who were notat ease with the “Scottish question”. I fictionalised thisin my novel And the Land Lay Still. The scene is a con-ference in Glasgow posing the question “Which waynow for the Scottish Left?” (this event actually tookplace in July 1983, in the wake of the hugeConservative General Election victory of that year).Some of those attending are unhappy about the phrase“Scottish Left”, feeling that “the adjective somehowbetrayed the spirit of the noun it described”. Theposter then becomes the focus of division:

An argument started. “Oh, you can’t say that.”“Can’t say what?” “If you say ‘Scottish writers’you’re excluding other writers who are alsoagainst the Bomb. That’s parochial, that is.”“Who are you calling parochial? We’re just sayingwe don’t want nuclear missiles here.” “You’repandering to nationalism.” “We’re pandering tonationalism?” A fight almost broke out.

It seems – and is – a long time ago now. On the onehand, we have come so far, but on the other hand itsometimes feels as if we haven’t come very far at all.Those arguments, albeit modified or updated for the21st century, still go on. The suspicions and hatredsare still around, even if the ideological ground hasshifted massively towards a positive recognition ofScottish cultural and political identity.

The role of writers, and of artists generally, in thebroad-based campaign for self-determination in the1980s and 1990s, was substantial and highly visible.In these years, in magazines like Chapman, Cencrastusand Radical Scotland (in which I was involved editori-ally), and in more mainstream outlets, a wholesaleevaluation of who we were, what we wanted political-ly and why we wanted it, took place. I believe that thiscultural groundwork was not merely an adjunct but anecessary precursor to the stirring of popular opinionand the engagement of party politicians in a co-opera-tive movement which led, eventually, to theConvention (boycotted, ironically, by the SNP) andthus to the re-establishment of the ScottishParliament.

Just as it would have been hard back then to find aScottish writer not willing to express their opposition

to nuclear weapons, so it was almost impossible tofind one not in favour of some measure of Scottishself-government. Allan Massie, an intelligent and finenovelist, was effectively the only Scottish literaryvoice advocating the status quo, but even he recog-nised that the status quo was a time-limited option.“The question for Scottish Unionists now,” he wrotein the Scotsman in June 1994, “is whether to die in thelast ditch … I expect the last ditch to be a crowdedplace, littered with Unionist corpses, honourably deadof course, but very dead.” And so indeed it proved.The Scottish Conservatives have never recoveredfrom the Thatcher regime’s determination to make noconcessions on this front.

On the other side of that particular divide, therewas a general consensus among writers supportingself-determination that an assembly/parliament wasonly a first step, which might lead to further devolu-tion of power, or even to independence. Even the firststep, however, seemed for some years such a distantprospect that there was no need among non-partypolitical animals for much disagreement about whatmight follow. Now, in 2012, we are in different terri-tory.

In the course of the fascinating conversation betweenpainters Ken Currie and Sandy Moffat reproduced

in Perspectives 32 (Spring 2012), one exchange in par-ticular made a big impression on me. Sandy Moffatwas lamenting that few of the visual artists currentlyfavoured by the “curatorial classes” seemed at all con-nected to the debate taking place about Scotland’sfuture. They appeared, he said, to be in discussion“only with themselves” while “all our leading writers,poets, academics and intellectuals from varied disci-plines and standpoints” were already engaged in thequestion of Scotland’s constitutional, economic andpolitical direction.

Ken Currie responded that “many of Scotland’smost successful international artists see themselvesabove such things as talking about the political situa-tion in their own country. They would probablyregard such talk as fatally provincial.” Concurringwith Moffat’s views, he suggested that the dialoguethat interested these artists was entirely self-referentialand took place between themselves, critics, curators,dealers and collectors. “Our writers are lauded andcelebrated and invited to join all the great nationaldebates, they are treated almost like sages, whereasvisual artists generate bemusement mostly, some of itwholly justified …”

I don’t know enough about the art world to com-ment on what conversations take place within it, but itcertainly seems the case that visual artists are almostcompletely – Moffat and Currie being exceptions –absent from the independence debate, and indeedseem to have been largely absent from public debatefor years. Scottish writers on the other hand are every-where, voicing their opinions on many things, includ-ing – though not perhaps as often as the

The portrait ofJames Robertsonis by SandyMoffat. © SandyMoffat, 2012.

WRITERS, ARTISTS AND THE INDEPENDENCE DEBATE

On the onehand, wehave come sofar, but onthe otherhand itsometimesfeels as if wehaven’t comevery farat all.


Moffat-Currie dialogue suggests – politics andScotland’s political future. And yes, these opinions aresometimes accorded “sage” or “oracle” status. Why?Logically there is no reason for ascribing greaterwisdom to a poet or novelist than to, say, a plumber,farmer, nurse or teacher. Yet to be a writer, especiallyone with the tag “literary”, is in some quarters to be aphilosopher.

Such reverence is suspect, as reverence often is.There is probably as much humbug and self-referenc-ing in the discourse of writers as there is in the dis-course of visual artists. For this to be perceived assagacity is, in large part, a by-product of the publicitymachinery of publishers and book festivals. But it alsohas something to do with a genuine hunger for publicdiscussion of ideas, meaning and purpose – and morethan this, discussion with some depth to it. Theincreasing irrelevance, to huge swathes of the popula-tion, of both organised religion and party politics, andthe dumbed-down banality or artificially manufac-tured confrontation of discourse as presented onQuestion Time or Newsnight or radio phone-ins, havecombined to leave a vacuum. If you’re not gettingyour thought for the day or week from a faith repre-sentative, or your mission statement or message of sol-idarity from a politician, you may turn elsewhere. Ifyou’re looking for the Word, books and those whoproduce them – especially in a country that has longheld books in high esteem – are obvious sources to try.And, words being what they do, writers are wellplaced to respond to such a hunger.

This is one big difference between writers andvisual artists. A newspaper can commission an essay orshort story or poem, or ask for a comment from awriter, in the knowledge that its sub-editors will knowhow to manage the form if not the content of thework delivered. A politician can quote a writer andnot (unless they choose something complicated, whichit is not in their interest to do) have to bring along aninterpreter. So, for example, Alex Salmond is fond ofquoting the maxim, “Work as if you were living in theearly days of a better nation” (a line from theCanadian writer Dennis Lee, although most peoplethink it originates from Alasdair Gray – who hasalways tried to correct that impression). I’m notknocking Mr Salmond’s choice. It’s a good quotationat a surface level, and it says a great deal more if youcare to analyse the syntax. Mr Salmond or anybodyelse inclined to push the notion of Scotland entering anew era can trot it out on almost any occasion andthere’s going to be little argument about its meaning.It’s a signpost. It’s much more difficult for a politicianto point to a painting or sculpture, let alone a piece ofconceptual art, and say, “This is what I mean, here,now, politically and culturally.”

In other respects, writers and visual artists sharemuch common ground when it comes to participationin public discourse. They can inform through, as itwere, misinformation. Fiction can sometimes tellmore profound truths about the way people live than

a book of social history or a piece of journalism. Apainting can have depths unreachable through newsfilm footage. Alasdair Gray – significantly, both awriter and an artist – articulated what art can do forthe reality we occupy in a now famous bit of dialoguein his 1981 novel Lanark:

“Glasgow is a magnificent city,” said McAlpin.“Why do we hardly ever notice that?” “Becausenobody imagines living here,” said Thaw.McAlpin lit a cigarette and said, “If you want toexplain that I’ll certainly listen.”

“Then think of Florence, Paris, London, NewYork. Nobody visiting them for the first time is astranger because he’s already visited them inpaintings, novels, history books and films. But if acity hasn’t been used by an artist not even theinhabitants live there imaginatively. What isGlasgow to most of us? A house, the place wework, a football park or golf course, some pubsand connecting streets. That’s all. No, I’m wrong,there’s also the cinema and the library. And whenour imagination needs exercise we use these tovisit London, Paris, Rome under the Caesars, theAmerican West at the turn of the century,anywhere but here and now. ImaginativelyGlasgow exists as a music-hall song and a few badnovels. That’s all we’ve given to the worldoutside. It’s all we’ve given to ourselves.”

Partly because of the work of Gray and others,Glasgow is no longer unimagined. It has been repos-sessed imaginatively, and so, more generally, hasScotland. This is the great gift that writers and artistscan give to the independence debate: imagination. Or,as Sandy Moffat puts it, “they have the means todevelop the idea of Scotland as a nation of the imagi-nation, to connect hope with story and our future.”One of the strange ironies of the first year of the SNP’ssecond administration is that there seems to have beena conscious effort to dampen expectations, to curbimagination. Everything will be the same, we are told,nothing much will change. Presumably this is to makefolk relax and say to themselves, “Ach, why not?” Butit is more likely to trigger the default response, “Ach,why bother?”

What else, in the next couple of years, are writersand artists going to be for? That is to say, how

should they contribute to the independence debate?First, and most obviously, it’s important to slay thenotion that to participate is somehow provincial. Thisis an opportunity to engage in a conversation aboutthe long-term wellbeing of a country, a society of 5.25million people. Provincial? I don’t think so. In athoughtful interview with Glen Campbell of BBCScotland the former leader of the Canadian LiberalParty Michael Ignatieff made some useful, unhysteri-cal observations: “Everyone is watching Scotland,” hesaid. “It’s crucial that … there’s a proper national

This is thegreat giftthat writersand artistscan give totheindependencedebate:imagination.


debate, so people look each other in the eye and say“What do I really want?” Politics doesn’t often offerpeople that kind of wonderful moment of choice. Thisis a once in a 200-year-opportunity for two peoples todecide if they want to live together. And that’s why theworld is watching.”

This debate is too big to be left in the sole posses-sion of the political parties, which is where the voicesof writers and artists can make challenging and inde-pendent interventions. The contribution of JamesKelman, who has already said he’ll be voting forindependence but for a range of reasons that havenothing to do with the SNP or nationalism, is anearly and excellent model. Because this stuff matters.The independence debate isn’t really about inde-pendence. It’s about what independence is for. Whatkind of country do we want to live in, and can thatcountry be better achieved through the existing con-stitutional arrangements or by changing them?However the vote goes in 2014, the result will not bea conclusion, any more than the 1997 referendumvote was a conclusion. It will be an opportunity, abeginning.

The debate will – or should – touch on such topicsas how to effect a fairer distribution of wealth; howto democratise ownership of the land and of themeans of production without inducing inefficiency orideological myopia; how to build a sustainable econo-my with maximum employment, predicated on prin-ciples of environmental and social justice rather thanon the delusional goal of growth based on endlessmaterial acquisition; how to rid ourselves of nuclearweapons; what our relationship should be withNATO; how to ensure that our education, health andjustice systems function for the benefit of people anddo so as well as they possibly can; all this and more,and – a necessary parallel topic – what sort of peopleare we?

What are writers for? Primarily for making their artand challenging people’s assumptions and prejudicesand preconceptions through that art. A writer likeKelman has done that with every book he’s published,and his comments about independence, for anyonefamiliar with his work, came as no real surprise. Inthat sense writers who are already engaged simplyneed to keep doing what they’ve always done. Dopoets, playwrights and novelists capture in their workall the hopes and realities of the society out of whichthey write? Of course not. But their writings representwhat might be called a history of articulation, a conti-nuity of narrative – something akin to – indeed, con-nected to – the “carrying stream” of the folk traditiondescribed by Hamish Henderson. This is as true todayas it was true of the great writers of the 20th centuryScottish Renaissance – MacDiarmid, Gunn, Gibbon,Muir, Mitchison, MacLean and others. Politically andculturally these figures both revived, continued andbroke an inherited tradition. To break tradition,understanding what it is you break, is the means ofpreserving it.

Writers are definitely not for articulating a partyline or uncritically affirming a particular political posi-tion: if a writer doesn’t, or can’t, maintain an inde-pendent, critical stance – one that may result indisunity and dissent, and rejects conformism – thenshe or he may be a good entertainer but will havenothing to say that is more than cheerleading. I’mwriting this on the final day of the royal jubilee cele-brations, and the nauseating spectacle of so many per-forming sycophants should be a salutary warning tothose of us who want to debate the future of our coun-try: let’s try not to take leave of our senses betweennow and 2014, whichever camp – for or against inde-pendence – we pitch our tents in.

And yet, sometimes, a wee bit of madness is no badthing. As MacDiarmid wrote in his late poem “Talkingwith Five Thousand People in Edinburgh”:

For I am like Zamyatin. I must be a BolshevikBefore the Revolution, but I’ll cease to be one quickWhen Communism comes to rule the roost,For real literature can exist only when it’s producedBy madmen, hermits, heretics,Dreamers, rebels, sceptics …

The monarchy is a good example of an issue that willnot be properly aired without the input of independ-ent voices. Alex Salmond may have decreed “Thereshall be a Scottish monarchy” after IndependenceDay, but, well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?While tactically he may be right not to want to handlive ammunition to the machine-gunners of themedia, that’s a problem for the SNP, not for the restof us. Let’s not pretend that the independence andmonarchy questions aren’t connected and that thelatter doesn’t need to be addressed. Similarly, onrecent form, don’t look to the Scottish Governmentif you want answers to the huge and deeply disturb-ing questions surrounding the conviction ofAbdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bomb-ing. It is just not good enough to believe that theScottish justice system will be in prime condition theday after independence – if only we believe in itenough. Some folk have warned of “sleepwalking”into independence. It’s that other kind of sleepwalk-ing – brought on by the soporific reassurance that“everything will be the same, nothing will change” –that worries me more.

On these and other matters, writers are well placedto offer alternative points of view to those of main-stream politicians. Sages, madmen, hermits, heretics,dreamers, rebels or sceptics – whatever we are, weshouldn’t miss the opportunity to do so.

� James Robertson is author of several short story andpoetry collections and has had four novels published.The Testament of Gideon Mackwas long-listed for the2006 Man Booker Prize and his most recent book, Andthe Land Lay Still, won the Saltire Society’s 2010Scottish Book of the Year award.

WRITERS, ARTISTS AND THE INDEPENDENCE DEBATE

WhiletacticallySalmondmay be rightnot to wantto hand liveammunitionto themachine-gunners ofthe media,that’s aproblem forthe SNP, notthe restof us.

IN FRANCE,WILL CHANGE BENOWOR NEVER?

In May 1981, FrançoisMitterrand became the firstSocialist President of the French

Fifth Republic. His two electoralslogans, “Change Life” (inspiredby vagabond poet ArthurRimbaud), and “Calm Strength”,managed to inspire hopes of radi-cal change while allaying fears ofSoviet tanks parked beneath theEiffel Tower. His triumph was fol-lowed a month later by a “pinkwave” that gave a thumping major-ity to the Socialists. There then fol-lowed a modernising governmentthat included ministers from aCommunist Party in sharp decline.Within three years, in the face ofdeep recession, the governmenthad turned to monetarist “rigour”and “restructuring” and theCommunists had regained ashrinking ghetto.

CHANGE IS NOWIn May 2012, one of Mitterrand’spolitical children, FrançoisHollande, managed at last to put asocialist back in the Elysée Palace.His campaign slogan, “Change isnow”, appealed to those sickenedby Sarkozyst “bling-bling”, brokenpromises and inability to deal withthe deepest post-war recession. Atthe same time, presenting himselfas the “normal president”,

Hollande seemed to break with thevulgar excesses of the outgoing“omnipresident” as well as the pri-apic outrages of the previousfavourite for the Socialist candida-cy, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Following the logic of the insti-tutions of the French Republic, thedynamic for the parliamentaryelections now lay with the party ofthe elected President. Those whowent to the polls were bothseduced and reassured by a gov-ernment which pressed progres-sive buttons – a rise in theminimum wage, a return to retire-ment at sixty for certain cate-gories, rent controls, a growth pactfor the eurozone, tougher laws onsexual harassment – while avoid-ing the radical adventurism thatmight drag France further into thefinancial maelstrom. Hollande’sparty, of which he had beennational secretary for many years,enjoyed a victory beyond itsexpectations: a clear majority forthe Socialists and their allies. Theecologists would be included in thenew coalition government, butthere was no need to compromisewith the Communist-dominatedLeft Front, reduced to a mere tenseats.

At least in terms of electoral rep-resentation, France has never been

so left-wing. The left has won thepresidency, the National Assemblyand the Senate. In the country, itcontrols 21 out of 22 regions andsix in 10 departments. And yet, in2012, what “change” is truly possi-ble now? What can all-conqueringFrench social democracy meaning-fully do in a European Union dom-inated by the right and in the gripsof an international crisis?

RUGGED REALITY EMBRACEDDespite echoes of the heady daysof 1981, the picture for “Socialist”France is much more morose. Ifthe Socialist-Communist coalitionembarked on an exciting andmarkedly left-wing programme of


What canFrench socialdemocracymeaningfullydo in aEuropeanUniondominatedby the rightand in thegrips of aninternationalcrisis?

In terms of electoral representation,France has never been so left-wingbut, wonders Gavin Bowd, is itsSocialist President Hollande up tothe challenges the country faces?

(Pic:

Jean

-Mar

c Ayr

ault)


reforms – including nationalisa-tions, hikes in the minimum wageand benefits, new rights in theworkplace, the abolition of thedeath penalty and a rejuvenatedMinistry of Culture – the presentcoalition embraced “rugged reali-ty” after three weeks rather thanthree years. The minimum wagewas increased by only 0.6% – theequivalent of one baguette perweek – to the protests of theunions. At the same time, unem-ployment increased for the thir-teenth month in succession, whileofficial figures showed a largeshortfall in public finances andpredicted a sharp slowdown inalready feeble economic growth. Itis in such hostile conditions thatthe government aims to reduce thedeficit to 3% by 2013, an austerityplan that Dave Cameron has con-trasted favourably with his own.

BAD HANDTo be fair, it can be said thatFrançois Hollande is trying to playa particularly bad hand in theinterests of progressive politics.His preference of “solidarity” over“austerity” pits him againstGerman Chancellor AngelaMerkel. In Hollande’s Europe,sovereign debt would be pooled,reducing its cost for poorer coun-tries, while protectionist measuresin favour of European manufactur-ers and bidders for public con-tracts would help create a bulwarkagainst the worst ravages of global-isation. It is, however, hard to see“Merkollande” succeeding“Merkozy”: even the “pinks” ofParis, liberated from Communistpressure, seem unlikely to embarkon the kind of radical economicand social reforms carried out bySPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröderin the name of “competitivity”.The German push for tighter polit-ical and fiscal union will grate witha significant section of the SocialistParty, led by the foreign ministerLaurent Fabius who, in 2005, suc-cessfully campaigned against theEuropean constitution.

The new power in Paris couldtherefore be seen by many as offer-ing an alternative to the austere,

neo-liberal “disaster capitalism”being visited on the eurozone andelsewhere. But there are alreadydisturbing signs that “change” maybe never rather than now. Somesymbolic changes indicate impo-tence. The government boastsparity of men and women and asprinkling of members of the “visi-ble minorities”, but there is cer-tainly no parity of social origins:the new ministers have all passedthrough top educational institu-tions and the Socialist or Greenparty apparatuses; there is no-oneof working-class background, forexample from the troubledParisian suburbs, and no represen-tation of those associations whichdeal with the various issues gnaw-ing at France’s social fabric. Theannouncement by one of the freshnew faces, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, Minister for Women’sRights, that she aimed to “abolish”prostitution was very much in linewith this magical political think-ing: media-friendly but ultimatelyunrealistic. The new Minister ofthe Interior, Manuel Valls, orderedhis policemen to cease using thefamiliar tu form during identitychecks, but this hardly addressesthe often execrable relationsbetween the forces of law andorder and those they claim to pro-tect. Other incidents confirmedthe old French adage of “plus çachange …” In the interests ofRepublican “exemplarity”, the“normal” President may havechosen to take the limousinerather than the plane on oneengagement, but his cortege wascaught speeding. At the same time,during the parliamentary elections,his new partner, ValérieTrierweiler, tweeted against hisformer partner, Ségolène Royal, anindiscretion that even the formerpremière dame, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, would never havestooped to make.

AN ALTERNATIVE?For hardened leftists, the “social-traitors” may not have changedtheir spots, but is there an alterna-tive? During the presidential elec-tion, it appeared that the Left

Front, with its charismatic candi-date Jean-Luc Mélenchon, wasreviving the radical traditions thathave taken such a battering sincethe 1980s. GatheringCommunists, dissident socialists,trotskyists, feminists and ecolo-gists, this broad alliance – similarin some respects to Syriza inGreece – offered a programmeputting “the human first”. TheFront’s revivalist meetings, whichcleverly reactivated memories ofthe French Revolution – the fall ofthe Bastille, Phrygian bonnets,Robespierre and Saint-Just – wereamong the highlights of what wasgenerally considered the best pres-idential campaign. And yet,Mélenchon’s score of 11%, if veryhonourable, was below heightenedexpectations. This disappointmentwas confirmed by the Front’s 7%at the parliamentary elections. Ifthe dynamic and visibility of theFront had helped the CommunistParty to pick itself up off the floor,it still faced the Socialist steam-roller: the “Red Belt” aroundParis, which once struck terrorinto the genteel beaux quartiers ofthe capital, is virtually no more. In

IN FRANCE, WILL CHANGE BE NOW OR NEVER?

OutgoingFrenchPresidentSarkozy handsover to FrançoisHollande at theElysée Palace(pic: Cyclotron)


an ironic twist of the dialectic,some of the best scores of theFront were in the heart of laFrance profonde, notably theAuvergne, where rural commu-nism has resisted better the socialchanges of the last decades. Thechallenge to the Communists andthe Left Front will be to articulatea credible left-wing programmethat can challenge the ruling coali-tion and manage what the Redshave singularly failed to do: retakebastions from the Pinks.

NATIONAL FRONT CHALLENGEHowever, it is not simply theSocialist Party which threatens theradical left with oblivion. Indeed,the left as a whole faces the chal-lenge of Marine Le Pen’s NationalFront. The party of the extremeright had suffered in 2007, whenNicolas Sarkozy had successfullyplayed upon the themes of immi-gration and law and order.However, when Sarkozy and hisUMP party adopted again thishard-line approach, it managedonly to alienate centrist voterswhile “de-demonising” a NationalFront which welcomed back votersdisappointed by the President whohad seduced them. If Marine LePen’s score of 17% was in factlower than the combined scores ofher father and Bruno Megret in2002, it nevertheless constitutes atriumph for a party which hadbeen smugly dismissed in the1980s as a political phenomenonthat would evaporate as quickly asPoujadism in the 1950s. The partyhas been consolidated and, underMarine Le Pen’s equally charismat-ic leadership, the unsavoury neo-fascist pond life associated with it –from Vichy nostalgics to SS paganritual enthusiasts to skinheads andcampaigners for a cathedral inMecca – marginalised if not elimi-nated. The discourse of this Frontcleverly plays upon the precepts ofthe French Republic: an attach-ment to “secularism” buttresseshostility to “islamification”, whiledefence of the “French exception”justifies, at the end of party rallies,hearty renditions of the once-sus-pect Marseillaise. The Front may

have won its two parliamentaryseats in the south of France, wherereside a large number of resentfulpieds-noirs repatriated fromFrench Algeria, but it has spread itselectoral influence, albeit not tothe resolutely cosmopolitan Parisregion. Marine Le Pen lost by awhisker in the former mining townof Hénin-Beaumont, Pas-de-Calais. Throughout the “rust belt”,the National Front has madeprogress, showing how bothSocialists and Communists havefailed to reproduce their tradition-al electorates. The crisis of theeurozone – which this Front wantsto quit – threatens to create a per-fect storm for the far Right.

THE FUTURE IS NOWRecent works of literature puttheir finger on the strange anduncertain climate in France today.In 2010, Michel Houellebecq wonthe Prix Goncourt with his novel,The Map and the Territory, whichimagines the future of France as apost-industrial tourist paradise,offering the world an art de vivreof hôtels de charme, perfume andrabbit rillettes. During the presi-

dential campaign of 2012, a newliterary sensation was the debut ofSabri Louatah, The Savages, awork of political fiction whicheerily imagined the assassinationby a disaffected young immigrantof the first French President ofAlgerian descent. The candidatewas a Socialist and his slogan,“The future is now”.

Both books are symptomatic ofthe troubled position of France,externally and internally. How canthe country remain competitiveand prosperous, especially giventhe dearth of French high-techinnovations? After all, the TGVfast trains, the Airbuses and proto-internet of Minitel are fond butdistant memories of theMitterrand years. How also canFrance integrate a restive immi-grant youth that was among therecord numbers that did not votefor anyone in May and June 2012?François Hollande wants to be a“normal” President, but he mayjust not be made for these times.

� Gavin Bowd is senior lecturer inFrench at the University of StAndrews.

How can thecountryremaincompetitiveandprosperous,especiallygiven thedearth ofFrenchhigh-techinnovations?

Visit Democratic Left Scotland’s website for news,views, events listings, articles, blogs and downloads

from Perspectives.

www.democraticleftscotland.org.uk

People and politicsIn Scotland, as in the rest of Britain, there is widespread disillusionment with politics.The mainstream parties have lost touch with ordinary people and issues are trivialisedand distorted by the media.

We are continually told that “there is no alternative” to global capitalism. Yet this isdoing untold damage to our environment, our communities and the quality of ourlives, while millions of people remain poor and powerless because the marketdominates our society and we do too little to protect and empower them.

Democratic Left Scotland is a non-party political organisation that works forprogressive social change through activity in civil society – in community groups,social movements and single-issue campaigns – seeking at all times to promotediscussion and alliances across the lines of party, position and identity.

Political parties remain important, but they need to reconnect with the citizens theyclaim to represent, reject the copycat politics that stifles genuine debate and recognise

that no single group or standpoint holds all the answers tothe problems facing our society.

We are trying to develop a new kind of politics, one thatstarts from popular activity – in workplaces, localities andvoluntary associations – and builds bridges to the world ofparties and government, on the one hand, and the worldof ideas and culture, on the other.

What does Democratic Left add?Our approach to politics is radical, feminist and green.

Radical because we are concerned with the underlying,structural causes of problems such as poverty, inequality,violence and pollution and aspire towards an inclusive,more equal society in which everyone is supported andencouraged to play a full part, within a more just andsustainable world.

Feminist because we seek to abolish the unequaldivision of wealth, work and power between men andwomen and to promote a better understanding of theintimate connections between personal life and politics.

Green because we believe that our present system ofeconomic organisation is socially and environmentallydestructive, and that a more balanced relationshipbetween human activity and nature will be better for us,for our descendants and for the other animal species withwhom we share the planet.

Who can join Democratic LeftScotland?Membership is open to anyone who shares our generaloutlook and commitments. Whilst many of our membersare involved in a range of political parties, others are not.

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There’smoretothanpolitics

parties�

RIDDOCH’SSCOTLAND


BIG IS BEAUTIFUL INTHE BEST WEE COUNTRYIN THE WORLD?

The “best wee country in the world” is too big.How can that be? Scotland has Britain’s highestmountains, deepest lochs, largest number of off-

shore islands, biggest offshore oil and gas deposits andthe best wind, tidal and wave energy resources in thenorthern hemisphere. We host the world’s largest artsfestival. Not bad for a northern nation of just five mil-lion folk.

But Scots are also the Sick Man (and woman) ofEurope, with shorter life expectancies than old Soviet-bloc nations. We imprison (proportionately) morepeople than anywhere else in Europe and drink morethan the English who in turn drink more (to harmfuleffect) than anyone else in the EU.

So much, so familiar.But what’s that got to do with Jack McConnell’s

cringe-making and fortune-tempting boast?There’s another characteristic of Scottish life that

may explain the endless paradox of natural wealthand failing health that together characterise modernScotland.

The vast size of our “local” councils.The average population of a Scottish council is a

whopping 163,000 people. Perhaps that’s the rightscale for strategy formulation – perhaps. Most of ourEuropean neighbours have “county councils” this size– but they also have a far smaller, more loved, morevigorously contested and more vibrant “delivery tier”of community-sized local governance as well.Scotland, along with the rest of the UK – does not

Our 32 enormous councils are trying to do every-thing – the strategic, co-ordination work of a countycouncil and the parish council-sized work of deliveryand empowerment. It’s an impossible task and it’s thetruly local level that’s suffered. Local simply doesn’texist in Scotland beyond a few hard-pressed voluntarygroups.

In a way it’s no surprise. The relationship betweenpeople and surrounding natural resources in Scotlandhas long been dysfunctional. Our land is out of

bounds. Our rivers are privatised and timeshared. Ourdeer and salmon belong to the laird. Our coasts andinland waters belong to the pin-striped gents of theCrown Estates Commission. And to cap it all, ourtowns, villages, islands, massive housing estates, sub-urbs and city areas are run by people we don’t knowan hour’s bus ride distant.

Scots inhabit the least locally empowered society(perhaps) in the developed world and have the mostdamaged relationship between people and place. Andyet, we look elsewhere – higher to national policy andlower to micromanaging the family – for solutions.

This is Scotland’s enduring blind-spot.I sense raised eyebrows.

Perspectives has generously given space over 18months for dissection of four very particular

Scottish places – Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee andEigg. Are they not special, distinct, fiercely defendedby their inhabitants – loved?

Yes they are. And yet most Scots don’t live in a placewhich runs itself. The vast majority of cities also “run”vast hinterlands. Each “hinterland” is run by a largercity or town.

Most Scots live outside the metropolitan centres ofGlasgow and Edinburgh in this “small town” Scotland– and its democratic heart was finally chiselled out in1996 when 32 unitary authorities replaced districtand regional councils. Mind you, the damage hadalready been done. In 1975 large and small burghswere swept away and in 1930 parish councils wereaxed as democratic structures. Community councilswere introduced in 1996 – with an average annualbudget of £400 and no statutory powers they aredeliberately shorn of power.

This is the way the best wee country in the worldoperates – welcome to “big is beautiful”, malfunction-ing Scotland.

It’s a place where a town of 9000 people like Wickis run from Inverness – a three hour rail journey dis-

In the final article of her six-part series, Lesley Riddochwonders why Scotland is one of the least locally empoweredsocieties in the developed world.

The averagepopulation ofa Scottishcouncil is awhopping163,000people.


tant. The mountain village of Crianlarich is over-looked by Munros from whose summits you can lookwest to the Atlantic. Yet it is run by Stirling Council onthe east coast almost lapping the North Sea. The tinyHebridean island of Barra is run by councillors sixislands distant. Massive Easterhouse – which could bethe 19th largest town in Scotland by population size –is just another part of Glasgow Council.

The political and social consequences of distantdemocracy are profound but generally overlooked forthe self-fulfilling reason that local is a diminished,diminutive and dismissed dimension. Left or right,nationalist or unionist, (and indeed north or south ofthe border) local just doesn’t matter in the structure ofour lives.

And the latest Scottish Household Survey proves it.Only 22% of Scots think they can have any impact onthe way their local area functions. That’s a terriblecondemnation of Scottish democracy. The local levelis where every important tax-funded service is deliv-ered – schools, doctors, roads, housing and care. Localis also where Scots should connect with other people– neighbours, clubs, campaigns and projects thatexpand us as citizens and human beings. Local shouldbe the most important dimension in our lives. And yetthe place we need most is malfunctioning – rightunder our noses. Almost four-fifths of Scots thinktheir neck of the woods is run by other people – notfolk like themselves.

And they’re absolutely right.Decisions, action and civic life always happen some-

where else in Scotland and our old town halls are sit-ting empty or derelict.

Take Fife. Between 1894 and 1930 the Kingdom had82 parish councils. Until 1975 it had 33. Now it has

just one. I’m grateful to Andy Wightman, landreformer campaigner and erstwhile co-performer inour Edinburgh Festival Fringe show the Scottish Six,for “doing the maths”. He showed that if Scotlandreturned to its old parish council structure it would sitmid-way in the European league table of local democ-racy between the Norwegians and Germans – not abad place to be.

But instead of 871 parish councils we now have just32.

As a result Scottish life and Scottish political dis-course are lived completely at the polar extremes offamilial particularity and national abstraction. Thevital bit in between where the personal and politicalcould meet in communitarian effort is missing – forone reason.

Scotland has the biggest councils in Europe.As a result politically active Scots migrate (physical-

ly or just psychologically) to the structurally strong(perhaps over-provisioned) worlds of London orEdinburgh to enter “national” debate and think end-lessly about strategy and how the world should be. Orthey stay at home in the sacrosanct and largely apolit-ical world of the family, bring up children, live lives

and maintain their own individual houses. In betweenlies a chasm. In most other European countries this isthe place where community thrives. Where co-opera-tive endeavour begins. Where social enterprise oper-ates. Where services are actually delivered. InScotland the realm of thinking and strategy is super-served while the realm of doing is actually missing.And no-one seems to notice or care.

EUROPEAN COMPARISONSWe are completely out of kilter with Europe in oursuper-sized democracy. The French are almost crazilylocal – their smallest commune has just 89 people. InSpain the average council has 600 people, in Norway4000 and in powerful Germany 7000.

In Scotland the average “local” council has a whop-ping 163 thousand people which puts us right at thebottom of the European localism league table. Thephysical size of Scottish councils is also way out ofkilter with the rest of Europe. The average (median)French council covers 11 square kilometres, theGermans 15 km2, the far flung Norwegians 465 km2

and the median Scottish council almost 1000 km2.No wonder no-one feels connected – and communi-

ty councils don’t and can’t help. Deliberately shorn ofpower they have an average budget of £400 a year.Recently community councils tried to raise interest bylimiting the number of seats and thus prompting elec-tions. The necessary legislation wasn’t authorised byhigher tiers of governance. So it’s true. Communitycouncils are full of virtually self-nominated peoplewith time on their hands. Given deliberate efforts tomake them that way, it’s a miracle any have genuinecommunity clout at all.

No matter what any Scottish politician says aboutthe importance of community, no matter how muchanyone praises “vital voluntary effort”, no matter howmany fetes, roups, fairs, highland games, ridings andcar boot sales are opened by hand-pumping council-lors, MSPs and MPs, no matter how many “planningfor real” “consultation exercises” are conducted with“the grassroots” – remember £400. That’s how muchstructural community democracy in Scotland reallymatters.

WHAT OF IT?I suppose we don’t miss what we haven’t had. So thecontinuing inability of successive Holyrood govern-

ScottishCouncils 2012(left) and 1929

(right)

BIG IS BEAUTIFUL IN THE BEST WEE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD


ments to match lofty ambitions with practical changewill be blamed on many things – never the absence oflocal democracy and structurally supported communi-ty delivery.

A few statistics in the 2012 Scottish HouseholdSurvey should offer food for thought.

Two-thirds of us still drive to work – about the samenumber that drove ten years ago despite oil pricehikes, bus greenways, and endless publicity about theneed for daily exercise, cutting congestion and cuttingemissions.

We’re in the middle of a crippling recession butwe’re also using the bus less than we did a decadeback. Why is that?

Why no big shift to buses, trains, bikes and walk-ing? Four in ten of Scots apparently have bicycles butonly 2% use them to get to work. You might concludethere’s nowt as queer as folk. Or you might concludecar-oriented roads, Europe’s highest rail fares, hard-to-reach out of town workplaces and “hub andspoke” bus services connecting towns through thenearest city don’t help. Almost all of these showpolicy drift at community level. Unless Holyroodtakes over every local function (and with the council-tax freeze and merger of police and fire services it’sclearly a temptation) neither the warm words andlofty ambitions of central government nor the snellwind of recession will be enough to change behav-iour.

Practical change is community-shaped.Radical change happens locally.

TURNOUT AND PARTICIPATIONIf a 38% turnout at the last local government electionis not seen as a mandate to transform local govern-ment – then what is it?

Strangely even Tories (almost) agree. The Tory MEPDaniel Hannan recently made this case for localism:

“Give councils more power and you will attract ahigher calibre of candidate as well as boosting partici-pation at local elections. In Britain, local authoritiesraise 25 per cent of their budgets and turnout is typi-cally around 30 per cent. In France, those figures are,respectively, 50 and 55 per cent; in Switzerland 85and 90 per cent.”

It’s an interesting comparison – and not just becauseFrench councils raise more cash and enjoy highervoter turnout. They also have the tiniest units of localgovernance compared to big, remote, clunky oldScotland.

France has 22 regions, 96 departments and 36,000communes with an average population of just 380.The Swiss have 2,900 communes with an averagepopulation of 2,600. Norway – same population asScotland – has 431 municipalities who run primaryand secondary education, outpatient health, seniorcitizen and social services, unemployment, planning,economic development and roads. We have 32 coun-cils to serve and represent the same size of populationwith many of the same services.

As a result, community politics across mainlandEurope is “normal” – people you know, your friends,your mum or your neighbour routinely contest elec-tions to represent your community. In Scotland “localpolitics” means control by people you don’t know.Could that be why Scots don’t vote?

The recent Silent Crisis report by the Jimmy ReidFoundation puts it powerfully. In Austria, the ratio ofcouncillors to citizens is one councillor per 200people. In Germany it’s one to 400. In Finland one to500. In Scotland it is one councillor per 4,270 people(even England manages one in 2,860 and the Scottishfigure is artificially boosted by council elections before2012 being held on the same day as the Holyroodvote).

Put it another way – in Norway one in 81 peoplestands for election in his or her community. In

Finland it’s one in 140. In Sweden one in 145. InScotland one in 2,071.

Or look at it this way – in Norway 5.5 people con-test each seat. In Sweden it’s 4.4 people. In Finland3.7 people. In Scotland 2.1.

Using every indicator available to identify to showthe health of local democracy, Scotland performsworse than any other comparator. That’s what leadsthe report authors to conclude, “Scotland is the leastdemocratic country in the European Union.”

North or South, Baltic or Mediterranean – mostEuropean states are micro-sized at their local tier,which means more connection, traction, trust, effec-tive service delivery and involvement than the disem-powering and distant “local” government we believeto be normal here in Scotland. In municipal, small-scale, active and co-operative Norway, for example,an expectation of local capacity informs nationalpolicy making. The opposite is true in Holyrood.Politicians of all parties like the sound of involvinglocal people but in practice wouldn’t trust communi-ties to run the proverbial in a brewery.

So we are stuck with the biggest “local” governmentin Europe – too large to connect with people, perhapsstill too small to achieve maximum efficiencies ofscale. Kind of the mummy-sized bowl in Goldilocksand the Three Bears. Betwixt and between, with vitalsocial change going nowhere fast.

A FEW EXAMPLESThis is not to criticise existing councillors. Many makea huge effort to be all things to all people, tacklingstrategy at council HQ and working with communityactivists as well. Some though are obstacles to com-munity growth, and behave defensively if anyone triesto breathe life into “their” ward.

Take Highland Council which covers an area thesize of Belgium with a population the size of Belfast.Councillors drive hundreds of thousands of miles ayear to create a sense of connection through meetings,surgeries and local events. Despite such superhumanefforts, many remote communities still feel excluded –

in Norwayone in 81peoplestands forelection inhis or hercommunity.In Scotlandone in 2,071.


reduced to questioning, suspecting and vetoing what-ever emanates from Inverness. Meanwhile Europe’sfastest growing city also lacks a dedicated council ofits own – although a pilot resurrection of old areacommittees by the newly elected Highland Councilmay help to tackle that.

One size doesn’t fit all – in fact it doesn’t fit verymuch.

Those who run Scotland’s overlarge authorities areon big salaries and a losing wicket. Many strugglevaliantly to keep their ears to the ground. But theground is simply too large. Ironically this just meansmore money spent on consultation where few localpeople respond and councillor confidence in commu-nity capacity is eroded further.

Take the tiny Hebridean island of Barra (pop 1200).It could hardly be further from the hurly burly of

Scottish political life but it’s where political life shouldbegin.

Early in 2012, Barra fishermen accused ScottishNatural Heritage (SNH) of running roughshod overlocal opinion by calling for a Marine Special Area ofConservation (SAC) in the Sound of Barra to protectsandbanks and reefs. SNH recommended the site forconservation status, conducted a consultation processand sent a report to Marine Scotland for delivery tothe Scottish Government. Not quite judge, jury andexecutioner, but not far off it.

Never mind the rights and wrongs of the case inhand. In almost any other European democracy, anisland as distinctive as Barra – remote from all author-ity and populated by capable, self-employed crofters –would be a municipality and quangos like SNH wouldhave to deal with islanders as equal partners. In top-down Scotland though, Barra folk will only see theconsultation written “on their behalf ” after a ministe-rial decision has been made.

If self determination is good enough for Scotlandit’s good enough for Barra. If power and responsibili-ty can renew Scotland, then a democratic stimulus canalso give a leg up to capable, active communities.Instead they are being micro-managed from on highwhile politicians bemoan punter apathy. Wrong-sizedlayers of governance allow power to be hooveredupwards by the nearest quango or distant council, notdevolved downwards to the nearest competent com-munity unit. Scotland needs smaller, more meaningfulunits of organisation – if it happened big policy gainscould follow.

BETTER LIVES AWAITIn the absence of truly local councils, developmenttrusts have become the most effective vehicle for acommunity that wants control of its own destiny.Powerless community councils are currently so tooth-less they can’t legally own an asset. So developmenttrusts have been set up to own and manage orchards,housing, land buyouts, lochs, pubs, libraries, bridges,libraries, community centres, wind turbines, shops,

transport and even a hospital – and in the process avery practical, capable and focused set of people havebeen gathered together.

Development-trust-owned wind farms will soon benetting millions for some communities, whilst othersget next to nothing or “community benefit” paymentsare siphoned off to landowners or councils miles awayto spend on other projects. Already in Fintry nearGlasgow, community wind cash has paid to insulatehomes and replace axed bus services.

It’s a silent revolution. There isn’t a more opti-mistic, can-do, practical bunch of people anywhere inScotland. And yet hardly any are elected councillors.There’s too much to do at the grassroots.

Capable, connected powerful communities couldgenerate energy, supply district heating, find work forunemployed young people, tackle local flooding prob-lems, fix derelict buildings and keep an eye on old folk– helping them stay out of hospital and the personalcare budget stay under control.

It’s already happening on the community buyoutisland of Eigg – and the community of WestWhitlawburn that sits on the southern margins ofGlasgow.

In 1988 £2.2 million of public cash let tenants takeover the ownership, management and renovation of

540 flats to form West Whitlawburn Housing Co-operative. WWHC has paid for itself many times oversince then in reduced emergency hospital admissionsand care provision. Eleven deaths have been directlyaverted thanks to alarms and CCTV monitored roundthe clock by support staff ready to visit an old person’sflat at 2am with a cup of tea or intervene if they seeepileptic fits on camera. Violence and anti-socialbehaviour have been reduced (along with the costlyre-housing budget) and the co-op is tackling drink,dietary and skills problems amongst tenants. “Socialaccounts” produced by WWHC list the multitude ofways in which a well-managed, self-regulating, com-munity can protect human dignity, devise efficient sys-tems – and save cash.

Oxfam’s Humankind Index show the joint top pri-orities of Scots are affordable, safe and decent homesand physical and mental health – closely followed byliving in a neighbourhood where you can enjoy goingoutdoors and a clean and healthy environment. Thepublic intuitively understands the relationship somepublic servants deny or overlook. Health, housing andlocal life are all connected. People and place are con-nected. And just as better health outcomes cannot be“done to” passive, disempowered people, better hous-ing cannot be “done to” them either.

A hundred people-run West Whitlawburns wouldreduce hospital admissions faster than any healthadvertising campaign. A hundred properly fundedWest Whitlawburn Municipal Councils would trans-form Scotland.

There’s a lesson here for the Scottish Government.And yet its current Community Empowerment Bill

If power andresponsibilitycan renewScotland,then ademocraticstimulus canalso give aleg up tocapable,activecommunities.



isn’t planning any radical change to our current dem-ocratic structures.

THE MUNICIPAL NORDICSThe difference in democratic vitality has to be seen tobe believed.

Five summers ago I visited the small town ofSeyðisfjörður in north-east Iceland (pop 668) and wasimpressed to see gangs of youngsters mending fences,mowing grass, and painting walls at the local hospital.“Yes, the municipality decided to pay them a smallamount to fix the town every summer. The older kidsguide the young ones, they don’t get bored, they learnto earn money, work as a team and we get everythingready for the tourist season.”

It made so much sense.“Doesn’t the hospital have to employ unionised

labour for work like that?”“Well the municipality runs the hospital too.”Gobsmacked was too small a word.Three years ago, in snow so deep it would have

brought Scotland grinding to a halt, I visited theMedas Outdoor Kindergarten in Arctic Norway.

The national Norwegian government had called forfarmers to diversify and for children to have at leastone full day outside per week. So the local municipal-ity backed a bright idea by local farmers Jostein andAnita Hunstad – a farm kindergarten where the chil-dren feed and care for the animals, make hay, growvegetables and sell eggs and tomatoes in local villagesat the weekends to raise funds for school trips. Thereare now 100 similar farm kindergartens across north-ern Norway. Do health and safety people have anyconcerns? “No, I think we are all happy here. Whywould outside agencies get involved?”

Two winters ago on the Swedish island of Gotland(population 40,000) I met Development Director

Bertil Klintbom who invited me to the opening of anew pier at Slite. For centuries Gotland was a vitalstepping stone in Baltic trade until the Cold Warended ferry travel and the livelihood of Slite.

So the municipality struck on an ambitious plan – in2008 they controversially gave the Russian govern-ment permission to lay a new trans-continental gaspipeline within Gotland’s territorial waters inexchange for the use of Slite as the Russians’ Balticpipe-laying base, an (upfront) payment for its refur-bishment and a contribution to the cost of a newhydrogen-powered trans-Baltic ferry.

Did the Swedish government have a say?“Why should they?”In fact in Sweden only those earning above £30,000

per annum pay any taxes to central government. Mosttaxes are paid to the relatively tiny municipalitieswhich in turn deliver most of the services used bythose citizens. Only corporation tax and higher earn-ers income tax goes “straight” to the centre. Describethe Scottish system where all taxes are sucked intoWestminster and grudgingly farmed back out again –

and the Swedes are astonished. “Why do you dothat?”

Who knows?People in Nordic communities do grumble, moan

about taxes and support mergers amongst the smallestmunicipalities. But they view councillors as respectedneighbours not ill-informed strangers, and expect thebulk of day-to-day decisions about their lives to betaken by people they know.

Last winter, by contrast, most Scottish villagers andcity neighbours weren’t sufficiently empowered to

even arrange snow-clearing operations.There are 400–500 development trusts in Scotland

– community led, multiple activity, enterprising, part-nership oriented and keen to move away fromreliance on grants. Could they help run Scotland?

They soon will be.Cost-cutting councils are already closing libraries

and village halls as cash, powers and freedom to spendare stripped away. The SNP government does notappear to smile upon our over-large councils. Nordoes it want community-sized councils to take over.Development Trusts may be seen as an ideal “interme-diate solution.” But can this ad hoc solution work?

WHY DOESN’T THE LEFT CARE?In Scotland places are dying because of remote,wrong-sized governance despite being full of humantalent, capacity, problem-solving energy, history andnatural resources.

Of course some say a plethora of small municipalcouncils would cause waste, duplication, jobs for theboys, postcode lotteries, chaos and soaring expensesclaims from second-rate interfering amateurs.Certainly in the old days, local democracy all toooften meant local capture by the landed gentry.

A restart of local democracy is the easiest way toensure those days are gone for good. There would beproblems with radical decentralisation – we’re all outof democratic practice. But the evidence suggests we’dpick up the ropes pretty quickly.

Why is the left generally hesitant to recognise thelocal dimension?

In other social democracies collectivism and com-munitarianism co-exist and new nations have beencreated confidently on the foundations of healthylocal democratic structures.

What is it about place that nationalists applaud butdon’t empower and lefties find mildly embarrassing?Place has baggage, shape, history, limits and a ground-ing particularity. Place means stories instead of theo-ries, personal preferences instead of ideologies,subjectivity instead of objectivity, childish attachmentinstead of adult, professional detachment. Local isbroken pavements and a liberal politics of dog’s dirtand litter. Local and place combine to create nimby-ism. Local is off the pace, behind the times – AlanPartridge stuck forever inflicting the hits of yesteryearon the undemanding listeners of Radio Norwich.

In Scotlandplaces aredyingbecause ofremote,wrong-sizedgovernance.


Local is only where we “stay” in Scotland – likebirds perched nervously always ready to flit elsewhereat the first hint of trouble. Our language gives thegame away. Where do we really live? Or has reallyliving somewhere been put on hold during long cen-turies of private renting, overcrowding, tenancy onthe land, tenancy in the council house and evictionafter improvements as a rural way of life.

For too long in Scotland origins have been held dearbut the local dimension has somehow been despised.

It’s just the most convenient arena for dominationof Scots by more powerful Scots. A place once ruledcompletely by the Laird, the Baron and the Minister.And more recently a series of places run conservative-ly by merchants, businessmen – the great and thegood.

Where is genuine democracy in all this?And yet how can Scots become active citizens when

the area one step beyond the personal domain is stillrun by somebody else. Fenced off, boarded up, rundown, disconnected, bought up, out of bounds.

How likely is it that disempowered Scots willchoose more constitutional responsibility when effec-tive participation in their own immediate society isrestricted to buying a paper? Scots have perhaps theslenderest grasp on local power in Europe. And yetnobody cares.

Perhaps this is the biggest failing of the left.

The inability to embrace, place and with it thepotential for social change can only happen if deliveryis entrusted to people not bureaucracies. Place iswhere people are.

Surveys find professionals have fewer local attach-ments, go less frequently (if at all) to local pubs andshops and socialise less with neighbours. A life lesslocal – that could be the slogan for the class whospend their lives devising services, frameworks, healthmessages and a desirable reality for everyone else. Thepolitical class tends to devalue what everyone elseholds dear. Place.

This series began with the inspiration of EdwinMuir’s A Scottish Journey – ironically written just afew years after Scotland’s old parish councils wereaxed so larger councils could tackle the appallingworking, health and social conditions that killed hisfather and brothers within a year of moving toGlasgow from the tiny Orcadian island of Wyre.

Eighty years later, the Scottish Government mustrestore power to the size of locality in which the Muirfamily blossomed.

Otherwise we must conclude that empowermentand self determination are principles for the Scottishindependence referendum only – not for everydaylife.

� Lesley Riddoch is a broadcaster and journalist.

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The politicalclass tends todevaluewhateveryoneelse holdsdear. Place.



THE CROWD IN HISTORYIn his second and concluding article, Willie Thompson assessesthe role of the crowd in history from the Russian revolution tothe Arab spring.

It was the spontaneous assem-bling of demonstrating crowdsof citizens and strikers, princi-

pally in Petrograd, combined withthe defection of army units, whichoverthrew the Russian monarchyin March 1917. The revolutionarypolitical parties had little to dowith these events – they werelargely taken by surprise, as theyhad been at the beginning of thefailed revolution of 1905, andneeded time to get their act togeth-er. Spontaneous demonstrationscontinued to mark the crises of theProvisional Government, drawnfrom leading personalities of theineffective former Tsarist parlia-ment, the Duma, during the fol-lowing months of continuingchaos and military defeat. Trotskywas to remark that in these daysany street orator had only to getup on a platform to assemble acrowd of listeners.

BRUTALLY SUPPRESSEDThe crowd activity culminated inJuly, with a monster demonstra-tion in the capital demanding thereplacement of the ProvisionalGovernment by the soviets – coun-cils elected from the factories andregiments. Despite the Bolsheviks’conviction that this undertaking,partly initiated by anarchist sol-diers, was premature and the gov-ernment not yet sufficientlydiscredited, they joined it in thehope of controlling it and keepingit peaceful. Instead it was sup-pressed most brutally with manycasualties, and the Bolsheviks tem-porarily driven underground amidaccusations that they were inGerman pay aiming to bring aboutRussia’s military defeat.

The Provisional Government’sincompetence and refusal torespond to popular demands for

peace and land redistributionbrought it still greater unpopulari-ty, and regular re-elections to thePetrograd soviet had by Novemberbrought about a Bolshevik majori-ty. The October Revolution fol-lowed (November 7). This was notbrought about by mass demonstra-tion, let alone a spontaneous one,but by armed units organised bythe Soviet leadership after theBolshevik central committeedecided on it. The crowd scenes inEisenstein’s celebrated filmOctober however are reconstruc-tions, and in particular give a verymisleading picture of the finalassault on the Winter Palace. Thereal crowds nevertheless continuedto express their detestation of theoverthrown government andTrotsky had on one occasion tointervene personally to prevent anarrested minister from beinglynched. However in what IsaacDeutscher describes as a“grotesque sequel” the citizens,with the release of tension, nextwent on a titanic drinking bingewith alcohol from looted cellars,which could have undone the rev-olution there and then, and whichthe new Soviet government onlysucceeded with the greatest diffi-culty in putting an end to.

The origins of the German rev-olution in November 1918 had

many resemblances to its Russianequivalent in March of the previ-ous year. Military defeat andsocial crisis were evident by theautumn of that year. Following thenaval mutiny at Kiel and thespread of sailors’ emissariesthroughout the country sponta-neous mass demonstrations ofworkers forced the abdication ofthe Kaiser and the pettyprincelings, while power more orless fell into the hands of the“respectable” wing of the SocialDemocrats, who were at a loss toknow what to do with it. Theyquickly allowed authority to slipback into the control of the oldelites, with the briefly formedGerman soviets dissolved and thethoroughgoing revolutionariescrushed or murdered by right-wing armed gangs, the Freikorps.

DARKER SIDE OF CROWDMeantime the other principaldefeated power, the HabsburgEmpire, was splitting apart ascrowd activity, driven by the trau-mas of defeat and economic des-peration and animated bynationalist sentiment, pushed orsupported political leaders intodismantling the empire with decla-rations of national independence.(This is a generalised overview, thespecific details from country tocountry are much more complex.)A darker side of crowd activity wasmanifested in the “race riots”occurring extensively in Britainand the USA, especially in 1919.

After the successful conclusionof a supposedly virtuous warfought against tyrannical states likeGermany and Turkey – which werestripped of their colonies on pre-text of the cruel manner, notexcluding deliberate genocide, inwhich they had administered them

Streetdemonstrationon NevskyProspekt inPetrograd inJuly 1917 justafter troops ofthe ProvisionalGovernmentopened fire


– unsurprisingly throughout theBritish Empire, particularly India,urban crowds formed at this timedemanding political and otherreforms suitable for the brave newworld. Such initiatives wererepressed vigorously; most notori-ously in the horrendous massacreof demonstrators at Amritsar innorthern India.

It was to be a large number ofdecades before spontaneouslyassembling crowds of protesterswere again to take on a centralpolitical role. Crowd activity cer-tainly remained very much uponthe scene, but until the 1960s itsmost notable feature is that excepton rare occasions, it was organisedby political movements. Thetwenties to the fifties were the eraof mass political parties andbodies like trade unions, which, ifacting in opposition, brought theirfollowers out onto the streets inan organised fashion. The BritishChartists and their parliamentaryreform predecessors could be saidto have been the pioneers of massorganised political demonstra-tions, and they were followed,consciously or not, by the GermanSocial Democrats of the 1890s,the SPD, once that party waslegalised.

THE INTERWAR YEARSDocumentary film footage fromthis era is full of crowd scenes, andcomprises the first visual evidencewe have in quantity of their behav-iour (in the first decade-and-a-halfof the century such film was con-fined to events like parades andsuchlike). In footage from thepost-1918 years assembled anddirected masses on the right or leftcan be seen marching in forma-tion, applauding platform speak-ers, or on occasions engaged inrioting, fighting and mayhem. Ofcourse such evidence is very selec-tive and the camera, or rather thefilm camera operator, frequentlydoes lie by choosing what torecord and editing the resultingfootage. The most dramaticallynotable example of this is LeniReifenstahl’s notorious Triumph ofthe Will, the film she made of the

Nazis’ Nuremberg Rally of 1934.The massed ranks of well-drilleduniformed Nazis marching in for-mation exert a horrible fascinationon any viewer, regardless of theirpolitics.

In February of the same year theFrench fascists had mobilisedcrowds of rioters in Paris in anattempt to launch a coup, whichresulted in significant fatalities.Their maximum aim was unsuc-cessful, but the (ostensibly left-wing) government’s resignationwas forced: “This was the firsttime, during the tenure of theThird Republic [established in1870] that a government fellbecause of pressures from thestreet”. Two years later massivecrowd celebrations accompaniedby factory occupations greeted theelectoral victory of the PopularFront which was inspired not leastby left-wing reaction to the 1934riots. During the crisis of theSpanish Republic, between itsestablishment in 1931 and theleft’s electoral victory in 1936,right and left wing crowds, organ-ised by their respective politicalparties, battled each other in thestreets, particularly in Madrid.

In the depression years the USAwas not exempt from such scenes.The Bonus Army of 1932 consist-ed of about 43,000 unemployedWorld War I veterans and theirfamilies, who marched onWashington and encamped thereon waste ground, demanding pay-ments due to their status as veter-ans. Widespread public disgust atthe brutal suppression of thedemonstration by military unitsbacked with tanks and inflictingseveral fatalities, is regarded as oneof the developments whichensured Franklin Roosevelt’s elec-tion as President in November thatyear.

A further dramatic example ofcrowd activity occurred in Londonin 1936, when a consciouslymobilised and politically motivat-ed crowd in Cable Street prevent-ed a Blackshirt march through theEast End. This required a violentstruggle, though the fighting wasdone against the police trying to

force a way through rather thanthe fascists, who were kept in thebackground. Although it’s impor-tant to avoid generalisation, it canbe safely said that while the typicalprotesting crowd activity in thepre-industrial era was the hungerriot, in the middle years of thetwentieth century it was the organ-ised political demonstration,whether it took violent or non-vio-lent forms.

POSTWARExamples from every continent arelegion, but in the earlier post-waryears particular mention may bemade of the 1952 demonstrationsin Paris, organised by the Frenchcommunists to protest against theNATO general Ridgeway, believedto have been responsible for bacte-riological warfare in Korea, andwhich led to major rioting withone of the demonstrators dead andhundreds injured. The demonstra-tion, and the strike called toprotest at its suppression, wereboth failures.

Following De Gaulle’s unresist-ed coup of May 1958 and theintensification in ferocity of theAlgerian War raging since 1954,the FLN organised demonstrationsof Algerians in Paris, one of whichin 1961 was crushed with at least200 demonstrators murdered (theexact number remains concealed)under the orders of the fascistpolice chief Maurice Papon – a featwhich he repeated on a lesser scalea few months afterwards, with thepolice killing nine communistswhen suppressing an anti-fascisttrade union demonstration.However it was a mass demonstra-

THE CROWD IN HISTORY

US Bonus Armymarchers weresuject to brutalsuppression


tion at peril of their life byAlgerians in Algiers that finallyconvinced De Gaulle that the FLNwere irrepressible and he shouldstart liquidating the war instead ofthe Algerians. Elsewhere in Europeprotesting crowd activity againstauthoritarian Stalinist regimes inEast Germany in 1953 and inPoland and Hungary in 1956 initi-ated the political processes (inHungary a very bloody one due toSoviet repression) which led totheir modification, though not dis-appearance.

The 1960s however were tomark a shift in the nature ofprotesting crowds. Their politicalcontent did not disappear – quitethe reverse – but they becamemuch less linked to political partiesand more similar to spontaneouspolitical gatherings at the begin-ning of the modern era. Whatcould not be appreciated at thetime was that this signalled thebeginning of the decline of politi-cal parties as organs of mass mobil-isation. British ones had never inany case played such a role, northose in the USA, and it was in thelatter country in that decade thatmass agitation first made itsimpact.

Initially it was the mass demon-strations by African Americansagainst racial discrimination, par-ticularly but not only in the south-ern states, that caught the world’sattention. Especially importantwas the 1963 march onWashington, “one of the largestpolitical rallies for human rights inUnited Stated history” – signifi-cantly for jobs as well as freedom –where to an enormous crowdnumbering in the hundreds ofthousands Martin Luther King,who had denounced the US main-stream political parties for theirtoleration of racism, delivered his“I have a dream” speech. Therewere many similar if less promi-nent events, especially in the segre-gationist states, where theprotestors frequently suffered vio-lent assault. Another Washingtonmarch in 1968 specificallyaddressed poverty and social dep-rivation, and it was in the same

year when King went to supportstrikers in Tennessee that he wasassassinated, almost certainly withFBI complicity.

That murder triggered a verydifferent form of crowd activityand protest when in the majorcities across the United Statesimpoverished African Americansrioted with great violence againstproperty (though, like their eigh-teenth century predecessors,seldom against persons) to theslogan of “Burn, baby, burn”.Action to suppress the riots result-

it was especially intense and muchmore violent, with student protes-tors at the Vietnam War being shotdead by the Ohio National Guard.

A contrasting version of crowdactivism (though some romanticsand even otherwise sensible com-mentators saw similarities) was the“Cultural Revolution” in China,where in Mao’s name enormouscrowds of very young people wereencouraged to denounce, attack,torment and sometimes evenmurder public functionaries,Mao’s alleged opponents, particu-larly Communist Party ones.Relentless peer pressure as well asfrustration with bureaucratic ruleno doubt propelled the intensity oftheir rage, but the Red Guards ranout of the control of their initia-tors, temporarily wrecked theeconomy, took to fighting amongthemselves and eventually had tobe militarily suppressed.

AFTER THE SIXTIESA very different approach was tobe seen in one of the most success-ful examples of crowd activityduring these years. The UCS work-in of 1970–71 in Glasgow andClydebank involved crowds oftightly disciplined shipyard work-ers and no less tightly disciplinedmass demonstrations in Glasgow.By these methods and skilful use ofpublicity the campaign won over-whelming support throughoutScotland and achieved its basicaims. The crowds of unorganisedCzechoslovak demonstratorsagainst the Soviet occupation in1968 were less fortunate despitenearly unanimous public support,and the occupation continuedregardless, though at least withoutbloodshed. The shipyard workersof Gdansk in 1981, after apparent-ly even greater achievement thantheir Scottish counterparts, werelikewise overcome by militaryrepression.

Less than a decade later howev-er, politically motivated crowdswere once again on the streets. Inthe UK riots against the poll taxcertainly contributed to forcingThatcher’s resignation and a yearearlier in 1989 crowd activity,

ed in many fatalities, but the over-all result was the dismantling ofinstitutional segregation and theinitiation of an anti-poverty pro-gramme (which was less successfulthan it might have been due to thediversion of resources to theVietnam War).

1968 indeed stood out as theyear of crowd demonstrations andactivism all around the world. Thefamous student riots, combats withpolice, demonstrations and occu-pations in Paris, though with anar-chist, Trotskyist and Maoistinvolvement and backed up bycommunist trade union generalstrike and marches, were essential-ly a spontaneous outburst of dis-sent and disillusion withauthoritarianism and capitalism.The student demonstrations, occu-pations and occasionally riotsspread across Western Europe,including the UK (includingScotland in a mild form). In the US

Vietnam warprotest,Washington DC,1969(Photo: FrankWolfe)


more or less spontaneous, broughtdown the East European regimesof the Soviet bloc, though theywere able to do so only becausethese regimes were in any casedemoralised and ready to fall.Romania was not typical, forCeauçescu’s destruction beganafter the crowd assembled toapplaud him turned against him,and as a result his military did like-wise. Less bloody parallel eventsended the USSR itself in 1991when an attempted coup by Partytraditionalists provoked massdemonstrations against it inMoscow and the military refusedto back the conspirators.

The June 1989 events in Chinaare contrasting and instructive.Political liberalisation in the USSRunder Gorbachev inspired a massdemonstration and occupation ofmainly students in the heart ofBeijing at Tiananmen Squareprotesting, despite impressive eco-nomic progress, against a claustro-phobic and stifling politicalsystem. They were attacked by sol-diers and tanks and a gruesomemassacre ensued – potential politi-cal change was abruptly aborted.Mao’s old aphorism that in the lastanalysis “power grows out of thebarrel of a gun” was underlinedonce more. Without military sup-port, or at least abstention, crowdson their own cannot overthrowmodern regimes.

THE NEW MILLENNIUM AND THE“ARAB SPRING”The protesting crowds that filledthe capitals and major cities ofArab countries in 2011 were notexactly hunger rioters, but eco-nomic pressure thanks to risingpopulation and shrinking realincomes together with the specta-cle of rulers’ massive wealth andobscene corruption are certainlypart of the story. It has essentiallybeen the rich elites against thepoor and excluded – but not alto-gether, for the attitude of the mili-tary, and especially its officer class,has been crucial. Other divisions,of ethnicity, traditions (as betweenpolice and soldiers) and religionhave also been significant.

Three categories of outcome todate can be distinguished. In thosewhere the military leaders, doubt-less with their own futures inmind, have thrown in their lotwith the crowds, there hasoccurred a relatively peaceful tran-sition, as in Tunisia and Egypt –though a tense and unstable one inthe latter case. Where the militaryhas remained loyal or been rein-forced by neighbouring tyrants, asin Bahrain, dissent has beencrushed. Elsewhere, where thearmed forces have been divided,part loyal to the regime and partsupporting the dissidents, civil warhas followed, as happened in Libyaand Yemen. Syria appears to be acombination of the latter two, withthe likely outcome at the time ofwriting being the regime’s victory.

ASSESSMENTInevitably in this relatively briefdiscussion, much has had to be leftout. The Asian subcontinent,Africa, the Philippines andIndonesia, for example, also pro-vide striking examples of crowdactivity.

Certain conclusions can bedrawn nevertheless, the principalone being that throughout themodern era, and not least in thetwentieth century, crowds differ-ently motivated and aiming at dif-ferent purposes have been veryimportant political actors, whoserole has been insufficiently evalu-ated and studied. The present cen-tury seems likely to perpetuate thetradition. A continuation ofGeorge Rudé’s pioneering workinto the present would be extreme-ly valuable.

A second important conclusion,and one that applies right back toantiquity, is that crowd activityerupts when conventional socio-political processes break down,whether they are ancient, feudal ormodern, royal or republican,authoritarian or democratic. Thestorming of the Bastille and theEnglish riots of 2011 may not havemuch else in common, but they dohave that element. The riots didnot spread to Scotland and (unlikenorthern England) nobody expect-ed them to – this country’s politi-cal processes are much sounderand its government more respected.

A further consideration in rela-tion to activist crowds relates tothe communication media of theirtimes. Their impact in recentdecades has been paradoxical. Onthe one hand they tend to priva-tise leisure – in the case of televi-sion notoriously so – but on theother to open up a wider perspec-tive on the world and highlightissues which lead to crowd reac-tions. The Vietnam demonstra-tions, for example, were sparkedby the immediate and dramaticvisual reporting of what wasgoing on. The electronic socialnetworking media of the presentday might in normal circum-stances encourage users to attendto their private communal world,but when political tension is run-ning high they enable crowds toassemble in previously impossiblefashion and are dreaded bytyrants.

Crowd activity of the sort dis-cussed here has characterisedmuch of recorded history, hasassumed a growing profile in themodern world and, taking on con-stantly shifting shapes in the lightof contemporary historical circum-stances, will be with us for theforeseeable future – hopefully withpositive outcomes.

� Willie Thompson is a historianand author of a number of books,most recently Ideologies in the Ageof Extremes: Liberalism, Conser -vatism, Communism, Fascism1914–1991.

THE CROWD IN HISTORY

Crowds ofprotesters fillCairo’s TahrirSquare


SCOTTISH LITERATURE:AN OPEN CANON

On 25 January 2012, the main front page story inthe Herald newspaper in Glasgow told readersthat the Scottish government had decided that

Scottish literature would be a required subject in allschools in Scotland.

It must seem strange that a nation’s literature hasbeen so neglected in that nation’s schools, yet the caseof Scottish literature is singular. After the Union ofCrowns in 1603 and the Union of Parliaments in1707, from the eighteenth century on, establishmentof English literature as a subject for study in educa-tion, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-turies, coincided with the expansion of the BritishEmpire. The central authority of London as economicpower and English as the language of authority prizedEnglish literature, and later American literature, asmost valuable in education. These are broad generali-sations, but they serve to introduce the current condi-tion, which must be unfamiliar and decidedly unusualto readers internationally. Since 2006 I have beeninvolved in numerous meetings with the Scottish gov-ernment, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, theAssociation for Scottish Literary Studies and others, inthe negotiations for the establishment of Scottish liter-ature as a required subject in the curriculum, an enti-tlement to which everyone should gainfully beintroduced.

VEXED NEGOTIATIONSSometimes these negotiations have been vexedbecause of the historical and cultural contexts for thelong-standing relationship between Scottish andEnglish literatures and the institutional silencing ofScottish literature in education. The situation ischanging, but the argument still has to be made. SinceJanuary 2012, two concerns have repeatedly beenraised in formal meetings and casual conversations,and they form a Catch-22 problem. The first concernis: how are teachers to identify what is meant by theterm “Scottish literature”? If you have never studiedthe subject, how do you know what it is or is not?Many schoolteachers of English in Scotland have stud-ied “English” literature in their undergraduate

degrees, and many will have read American, Irish andpost-colonial literatures, and some will have studiedScottish literature. Many, however, will have noacquaintance with Scottish literature whatsoever.Until recently, fine teachers might introduce Scottishliterature to schoolchildren with deep knowledge andcontagious enthusiasm, but the provision in schoolswas entirely optional. Many other teachers mighthave no interest in teaching the literature of the coun-try and have not been required to do so. The new gov-ernment directive could thus be welcomed as awonderful opportunity, or it might be resisted as animposition. The second concern, arising from the ideathat it is an imposition, is the desire to keep theoptions as open as possible, to oppose the very idea ofa defined or prescribed canon of “Major Texts” or a

“Great Tradition of ScottishLiterature”. To exclude the resourceof a canon leaves your options openbut generates self-doubt and a lackof confidence about what is agreed,while to insist upon a canon is coer-cive. Catch 22.

BUILD FROM, NOT REDUCE TOThe canon is always up for debate. Atits most essential, it is something tobuild from, not to be reduced to. Inhis magisterial yet contentious study,The Western Canon (1994), HaroldBloom lists his own selection of majorworks from world literature – as far as

he can – and includes seventeen Scottish authors:William Dunbar (Poems); James Boswell (Life ofJohnson; Journals); Tobias Smollett (The Adventures ofRoderick Random; The Expedition of HumphryClinker); Robert Burns (Poems); Sir Walter Scott(Waverley; Old Mortality; The Heart of Midlothian;Redgauntlet); Lord Byron (Don Juan; Poems); JohnGalt (The Entail); James Hogg (The Private Memoirsand Confessions of a Justified Sinner); Thomas Carlyle(Selected Prose; Sartor Resartus); James Thomson /“Bysshe Vanolis” (The City of Dreadful Night); John

Scotland’s literature has been largely neglected in Scotland’sschools. Alan Riach sets out the arguments for a non-exclusivecanon as a basis for the teaching of the subject and, on pages24 and 25, we publish his list.

The newgovernmentdirectivecould bewelcomed asa wonderfulopportunity,or it might beresisted asanimposition.

John Buchan


Davidson (Ballads andSongs); Robert LouisStevenson (Essays;Kidnapped; Dr Jekylland Mr Hyde; TreasureIsland; The NewArabian Nights; TheMaster of Ballantrae;Weir of Hermiston);George Macdonald(Lilith; At the Back ofthe North Wind);David Lindsay (A

Voyage to Arcturus); EdwinMuir (Collected Poems); Norman Douglas (SouthWind); Hugh MacDiarmid (Complete Poems).

The values that inform this list are clear: these arerecognised classics most English-speaking readerswould acknowledge but it would be wrong to say it issufficient: it does not admit any Gaelic literature andthere are no women.

Nowhere should it be suggested that a canon shouldinclude the only names you need to know. So let meoffer a canon of Scottish literature for the sake ofdebate, paying attention to certain criteria: there mustbe representation (1) of what we could demonstrate asreal literary merit; (2) of the experience of women aswell as that of men; (3) of the three languages inwhich most of Scottish literature has been composed –Gaelic, Scots and English – even if we can onlyapproach the work through translations or with aglossary; (4) of Scottish people, or of Scotland, andthe variety of identities that constitute those terms(geographical, historical, industrial, rural, residentsand travellers, exiles and tradition-bearers); (5) ofaccessiblility and difficulty (some authors presentmore problems than others and contemporary readersmay find the language of Dunbar, the narrativelongeurs of Scott or the political extremism ofMacDiarmid particularly challenging).

CRITERIA UP FOR DEBATEThese criteria are themselves up for debate. Scotlandis a subject many writers deal with directly, and theanthology Scotlands: Poets and the Nation (2004),which I co-edited with Douglas Gifford, gatherspoems which explicitly engage with questions ofnational identity, but there are many Scottish writerswhose work deals with other things, such as JohnHenry Mackay, and many others, such as Walter Scottand MacDiarmid, who write sometimes aboutScotland and sometimes about other things but whoare remembered in Scotland mainly through theirScottish work.

Clearly, there are literary, artistic and cultural valuesthat cannot be constricted to political and religiouspriorities. Secular priorities of free speech and non-violence are reciprocated by works of literature andart. This is true even of literary and artistic works ofpolitical and religious determination and bias. Paradise

Lost may have its intentions in politics and religion,but its literary quality is what keeps it valuable andreadable. The poem still offers challenges and affirma-tions beyond its historical moment.

So, when does the assertion of canonical value actas progressive resistance, rather than reactionary con-striction?

Resistance to the authorities who insist upon acanon is surely necessary when such insistence is lim-iting, distorting or misguided. Yet a counter-proposalintroducing different priorities and preferences iseffectively another canon. Canonicity itself is not dis-solved or removed. The understanding that prioritiesthemselves have their own historical moment mighthelp here, but perhaps the only way to reject any ideaof canonicity would be to surrender the power ofdetermining priorities and preferences altogether.Problematically, this practice always gives power toother decision-makers.

This is exactly what has happened in Scotland forgenerations.

The Americans so often get the marketing right.The texts most familiar in Scottish schools mightinclude The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, To Kill aMockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye. So why notKidnapped, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The ConeGatherers, “The Two Drovers”, “Wandering Willie’sTale”, “Thrawn Janet”, Sunset Song, Bondagers, MaryQueen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, TheCheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, “Clay”,“Smeddum”, “Greenden”, Black Watch, Federer versusMurray (and that’s only a random handful of novels,stories and plays)?

A CANONICAL “SPINE”On the grounds of my experience teaching Scottish lit-erature in New Zealand from 1986 to 2000, anddelivering guest-lectures on the subject in China,India, France, Romania, Australia, Singapore, Ireland,the United States, as well as in Scotland, where I cur-rently hold the established Chair of Scottish Literatureat the University of Glasgow (the only such institu-tionally-established Chair in any of the Scottish uni-versities), I know that a multi-faceted approach toScotland’s literary and cultural history should not neg-lect the definition of a canonical “spine”.

The historical trajectory of this “spine” of the sub-ject, its full articulation and its supple interconnected-ness, may be emphasised at particular points byregenerative moments of revaluation and revivifica-tion of past traditions. Allan Ramsay in the eighteenthcentury and Hugh MacDiarmid in the early twentiethcentury deliberately set out to re-introduce older tra-ditions of Scottish literature to their contemporaries,regenerating a longer view. The resurgence of creativework in the 1980s and 1990s in Scotland coincidedwith a comprehensive revaluation of cultural produc-tion in literature, art and music through the sameperiod. The purpose of having this depth of under-standing is to provide something essential for “verte-

SCOTTISH LITERATURE: AN OPEN CANON

TheAmericans sooften get themarketingright. Thetexts mostfamiliar inScottishschoolsmightinclude TheGreat Gatsby,Of Mice andMen, To Kill aMockingbird,The Catcherin the Rye.


brate” identity – only by such understanding can thesubject be compared and valued alongside other liter-atures.

Carla Sassi concludes her important book, WhyScottish Literature Matters (2005), by affirming thatScottish literature does matter: “this is beyond doubt– but it will have to be explained in other languagesand to other cultures in order to survive.” (p182) Whyhas it not been explained as comprehensively and con-fidently as other literatures – American, Irish, English,Australian or New Zealand literatures, say?

A great deal of work has been done, especially sincethe 1980s, but a great deal more remains to be done.The subject still needs to be more widely known anddiscussed with more confident curiosity. Interviewedon BBC2’s Newsnight programme on 29 November2011, I was asked, “Is there such a thing as Scottishliterature?” Staggered by the inanity of the question,I was grateful when the novelist A. L. Kennedyreplied:

“Is there such a thing as English literature or Irishliterature or American literature? You don’t want toclaim any literature for a country because it’s interna-tional and has to do with the commonality of humanexperience, but Scotland exists, as a cultural entity, asan historical entity … I want somebody to be able tosit in a Scottish school and think, I can succeed, beingmyself from my country, using the language that I use,being the person that I am, and that’s very difficult todo if you don’t see images of your country in movies,if you don’t see them on television in a widespread,meaningful and powerful way, if you’re not readingScottish texts or hearing the Scottish voice as a voiceof success, and if you don’t understand your historyyou’re just going to keep on, as everybody says,repeating your mistakes.”

ESSENTIAL VALUE OF LITERATUREIn education, all literature has an essential value inhelping to understand the various attiutudes towardsexperience people have and have had. So anyone whocan should be encouraged to read authors such asHerman Melville, Wole Soyinka, Emily Bronte,Bertolt Brecht, Gustave Flaubert, George Eliot,Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Rabelais or Dante and as widelyas possible, but nobody should undervalue the litera-ture of their own people, written in languages close totheir own, and with reference to people, places, thingsand events that are familiar and local. In fact, oneshould never undervalue any literature, though ironi-cally, for a long time, Scottish literature may have beenvalued more internationally than by Scots in Scotland.This is the situation that the current Scottish govern-ment and a number of interested parties are attempt-ing to change.

Anecdotes are not evidence but some of the storiesI have heard recently are truly appalling. At one meet-ing of head teachers, the verdict was that there wereno teachable plays by Scottish authors. At anothermeeting, the opinion was that no Scottish literature

was of any quality at all, compared to English, Irish orAmerican literature. These comments go well beyond,“What is Scottish literature?” or “Let’s keep ouroptions open.” If they represent anyone’s true opin-ions, their judgements are surely based on ignorance,prejudice and political hostility – not only to me andthe subject I profess but to every generation ofschoolchidren that comes under their care.

I should put my own cards on the table now.What follows is “An Open Canon of Scottish

Literature” and of course, it’s up for debate. Many ofthe writers and works named here will be well-known,but some will almost certainly be unfamiliar. Each onecould be the subject of deep study and would repay,and indeed have repaid scholarly enquiry, but collec-tively they can open the door for anyone, to a moreextensive, diverse and complex terrain: the authorsnamed all write of things that cannot be found else-where but also, each one might prompt further read-ing that would complement and relativise their owncentrality and status.

In this list, the diversity characteristic of Scottish lit-erature is evident in language (Gaelic, Scots andEnglish), form (poems, plays, fiction), representationof experience of women and men, religious and polit-

ical commitment, regional predilectionand choice, epochal significance in theinternational context (Medieval andRenaissance, Enlightenment,Romanticism, Modernism); differentcultural sensibilities, and so on. Thusthe list is also a demonstration of thespecific agenda that there should be abalance between the representation ofexperiences specific to Scotland andthe literary distinctiveness of their

expression, or “transnational” literary qualities. Thisagenda both confirms and questions conventionalcanon-formation.

A canon is a form of cultural empowerment. Attimes this power can be used badly, closing off optionsand limiting possibilities. At times it can work as effec-tive resistance to such foreclosure and oppression. It istherefore always to some degree both an empower-ment and a limitation. It can give form to identity, andform can give power. Yet power is always negotiatedby position. To agree on co-ordinate points that allowa canon to be a prompt for further exploration andcritical understanding would be to resist monolothic,unchanging authority, but at the same time to affirmqualities and values that should be maintained. Thebalance is crucial. A canonical understanding ofScottish literature ought to help counterbalance threecenturies of institutional neglect, and it should alsoenable confident self-determination in channels of cul-tural transmission, both within and outside ofScotland.

� Alan Riach is professor of Scottish literature at theUniversity of Glasgow.

Nobodyshouldundervaluethe literatureof their ownpeople,written inlanguagesclose to theirown, andwithreference topeople,places,things andevents thatare familiarand local.

MargaretOliphant (topleft) andKennethGrahame(above)


AN OPEN CANON: 171 WRITERS AND MAJOR WORKS OF SCOTTISH LITERATURE

1. Anonymous, “Deirdre’s Farewell to Alba” (and other Celticstories and songs, including the stories of Cuchulain, Deirdreand Naoise, Finn McCoul and Ossian after the Fianna: writtensources are scattered and various)

2. Anieran, The Gododdin3. Saint Columba (c.520–597), “Altus Prosator”4. Adomnan (c.628–704), Life of Columba5. Geoffrey of Monmouth (c.1100–c.1155), The Life of Merlin(Merlin of the Woods: Merlinus Sylvestris or Scottish Merlin:Merlinus Caledonius)

6. Jocelyn of Furness (fl.1175–1214), The Life of St Kentigern(Mungo)

7. Bernard of Arbroath (c.1260–c.1331), The Declaration ofArbroath

8. Anonoymous, “Quhen Alexander oor King was deid …”9. John Barbour (c.1320–95), The Bruce

10. James I (1394–1437), The Kingis Quair11. Blind Harry (1450–93), The Wallace12. Robert Henryson (c.1450–c.1505), Poems, esp. “The

Testament of Cresseid”, “Orpheus and Euridices” andAesop’s Fables

13. William Dunbar (c.1460–c.1513), Poems, esp. “The Thistleand the Rose”, “The Twa Marriet Wemen and the Wedo”,“The Dance of the Seven Deidly Sins”, “Lament for theMakars”

14. Gavin Douglas (c.1476–c.1513), Poems, translation of TheAeneid

15. Anonymous, The Tale of Rauf Coilyear16. Anonymous, The Ballads17. Anonymous, The Friars of Berwick18. Anonymous, The Guid and Godlie Ballatis19. David Lyndsay (1490–1555), Poems, Ane Satyre of the Thrie

Estaits20. Anonymous, Philotus21. George Buchanan (1506–82), Epithalamium for the Dauphin

of France and Mary, Plays22. John Knox (1514–72), The First Blast of the Trumpet Against

the Monstrous Regiment of Women23. Alexander Scott (c.1515–c.1583), Poems24. Mary Queen of Scots (1542–87), Poems25. Arthur Johnston (c.1579–1641), Poems26. James MacGregor (c.1480–1551), The Book of the Dean of

Lismore27. John Stewart of Baldynneis (c.1550–c.1605), Poems, esp.

Roland Furious28. William Fowler (1560–1612), The Tarantula of Love29. Alexander Montgomerie (c.1555–97), Poems, especially The

Cherrie and the Slae, “The Solsequium” and “The night isnear gone”

30. Mark Alexander Boyd (1563–1601), “Cupid and Venus”31. William Alexander (c.1570–1640), Croesus, Darius, The

Alexandrean, Julius Caesar32. William Lithgow (c.1582–after 1645), The Totall Discourse of

The Rare Adventures & Painefull Peregrinations of longNineteene Yeares Travayles from Scotland to the mostfamous Kingdomes in Europe, Asia and Africa

33. William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649), Poems34. Sir Thomas Urquhart (1611–60), The Jewel,

Logopandecteision and the translation of Rabelais,Gargantua and Pantagruel

35. Mary MacLeod (c.1615–c.1706), Poems36. Iain Lom (c.1620–c.1716), Poems, especially “The Day of

Inverlochy”, “To Mackinnon of Strath”37. Allan Ramsay, (1685–1758) The Gentle Shepherd, Poems

and as editor, The Tea-Table Miscellany and The Ever Green38. Alasdair MacMhaigstir Alasdair (c.1695–c.1770), Poems,

esp. “The Birlinn of Clanranald”

39. James Thomson (1700–48), The Seasons and “RuleBritannia” from The Masque of Alfred

40. David Hume (1711–76), An Enquiry Concerning HumanUnderstanding, especially “On Miracles”

41. Dugald Buchanan (1716–68), Poems42. Tobias Smollett (1721–71), Roderick Random, The Expedition

of Humphry Clinker and the translation of Miguel deCervantes, Don Quixote

43. Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), An Essay on the History ofCivil Society

44. Adam Smith (1723–90), The Wealth of Nations45. Duncan Ban MacIntyre (1724–1812), Poems, esp. “Praise of

Ben Dorain”46. James Hutton (1726–97), Theory of the Earth47. Jean Elliot (1727–1805), “The Flowers of the Forest”48. James Macpherson (1736–96), The Poems of Ossian with an

essay by Hugh Blair49. James Boswell (1740–95), Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

with Samuel Johnson and The Life of Samuel Johnson50. Henry Mackenzie (1745–1831), The Man of Feeling51. John Home (1722–1808), Douglas52. Mungo Park (1771–1806), Travels53. William Hamilton of Gilbertfield (c.1665–1751), translation

of Blind Harry’s Wallace54. Robert Fergusson (1750–74), Poems55. Robert Burns (1759–96), Poems, Journals and Letters56. Joanna Baillie (1762–1851), Plays57. William Ross (1762–90), Poems, especially “Another Song”58. Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne (1766–1845), Poems and

Songs59. James Hogg (1770–1835), Poems, esp. “Bonnie Kilmeny”,

The Brownie of Bodsbeck, The Three Perils of Man, The ThreePerils of Woman, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of aJustified Sinner

60. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), The Minstrelsy of the ScottishBorder, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Waverley; or, ’Tis SixtyYears Since, The Tale of Old Mortality, Rob Roy, The Heart ofMid-Lothian, The Bride of Lammermuir, Ivanhoe,Redgauntlet

61. Jane Porter (1776–1850), The Scottish Chiefs62. John Galt (1779–1839), Annals of the Parish, The Entail63. Susan Ferrier (1782–1854), Marriage64. Lord Byron (1788–1824), Poems65. Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), “Signs of the Times”, Sartor

Resartus66. Elizabeth Grant (1797–1885), Memoirs of a Highland Lady67. Hugh Miller (1802–56), Old Red Sandstone68. William Livingstone (1808–70), Poems, especially “Ireland

Weeping”69. Mary Macpherson (1828–97), Poems70. William Alexander, Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk71. George Macdonald (1824–1905), Phantastes, Lilith72. Margaret Oliphant (1828–1905), A Beleaguered City,

Kirsteen73. Radical Renfrew, ed. Tom Leonard74. James Young Geddes (1850–19?), Poems75. James (B.V.) Thomson (1834–82), The City of Dreadful Night76. R. L. Stevenson (1850–94), Treasure Island, Dr Jekyll and

Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, The Master of Ballantrae, Letters,Poems

77. Ian Maclaren (1850–1907), Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush78. R. B. Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936), Scottish Stories,

Thirteen Stories79. J. G. Frazer (1854–1941), The Golden Bough80. William Sharp (1855–1905), Pharais81. John Davidson (1857–1909), Poems. See especially The

Testaments

SCOTTISH LITERATURE: AN OPEN CANON


82. Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), The Sherlock HolmesStories, The Lost World

83. S. R. Crockett (1859–1914), The Raiders84. Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932), The Wind in the Willows85. J. M. Barrie (1860–1937), Sentimental Tommy, Tommy and

Grizel, Auld Licht Idylls, Peter Pan, Farewell Miss Julie Logan86. R. M. Ballantyne (1825–94), The Gorilla Hunters, The Coral

Island87. Neil Munro (1863–1937), The New Road, Para Handy and

The Vital Spark88. Violet Jacob (1863–1946), Flemington, Collected Poems89. Patrick MacGill (1889–1963), The Rat Pit90. Charles Murray (1864–1941), Hamewith91. Marion Angus (1866–1946), Poems92. Norman Douglas (1868–1952), South Wind93. George Douglas Brown (1869–1902), The House with the

Green Shutters94. John Buchan (1875–1940), Prester John, The Thirty-Nine

Steps, Witch Wood, A Prince of the Captivity, Sick Heart River95. David Lindsay (1876–1945), A Voyage to Arcturus96. Catherine Carswell (1879–1946), Open the Door!97. John MacDougall Hay (1880–1919), Gillespie98. Compton Mackenzie (1883–1972), Whisky Galore!99. Edwin Muir (1887–1959), Poems, Autobiography, Scott and

Scotland100. James Bridie (1888–1951), One Way of Living, The Devil to

Stage: Selected Plays101. Willa Muir (1890–1970), Imagined Corners, Mrs Grundy in

Scotland102. Neil M. Gunn (1891–1973), Highland River, The Silver

Darlings103. Hugh MacDiarmid (C. M. Grieve, 1892–1978), Poems (see

especially Sansgschaw, Penny Wheep, A Drunk Man Looks atthe Thistle, Stony Limits [including “On a Raised Beach” and“Lament for the Great Music”] and In Memoriam JamesJoyce), Lucky Poet: A Self-Study in Literature and PoliticalIdeas, The Golden Treasury of Scottish Poetry

104. Nan Shepherd (1893–1981), The Quarry Wood105. George Blake (1893–1961), The Shipbuilders106. Joe Corrie (1894–1968), Plays and Poems107. Edward Gaitens (1897–1966), Dance of the Apprentices108. Naomi Mitchison (1897–1999), The Bull Calves, Lobsters on

the Agenda109. Guy McCrone (1898–1977), The Wax Fruit Trilogy110. William Soutar (1898–1943), Collected Poems, Diaries of a

Dying Man111. Eric Linklater (1899–1974), Juan in America, Magnus

Merriman, The Merry Muse, A Terrible Freedom112. Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell, 1901–35), A

Scots Quair: Sunset Song, Cloud Howe, Grey Granite; threeshort stories (“Clay”, “Smeddum” and “Greenden”),Spartacus, Stained Radiance, Gay Hunter

113. Nancy Brysson Morrison (c.1907–1986), The Gowk Storm114. Alexander McArthur and Herbert Kingsley Long, No Mean

City115. James Barke (1905–58), The Land of the Leal116. Fionn Mac Colla (1906–75), The Albannach, And the Cock

Crew117. Robert McLellan (1907–85), Plays118. Ian Fleming (1908–64), Goldfinger119. Robert Garioch (1909–81), Poems120. Nigel Tranter (1909–2000), Columba121. George Friel (1910–75), Mr Alfred M.A.122. Norman MacCaig (1910–96), Poems123. Sorley MacLean (1911–96), Poems (see especially Dain do

Eimhir, The Cuillin, “Hallaig”, “The Woods of Raasay” and“Screapadal”)

124. Robin Jenkins (1912–2005), The Changeling, TheCone-Gatherers

125. Gavin Maxwell (1914–69), Ring of Bright Water126. George Campbell Hay (1915–84), Poems127. Sydney Goodsir Smith (1915–75), Poems, especially Under

the Eildon Tree, Gowdspink in Reekie and “There is a tide”and the novel (if that’s what to call it), Carotid Cornucopius

128. Jessie Kesson (1916–94), The White Bird Passes129. Muriel Spark (1918–2006), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie130. W. S. Graham (1918–86), Poems131. Hamish Henderson (1919–2002), Poems and Songs132. Edwin Morgan (1920–2010), Poems (see especially

The Second Life, From Glasgow to Saturn,The New Divan, Sonnets from Scotland, Virtual and OtherRealities, Cathures), A.D.: A Trilogy of Plays on the Lifeof Jesus Christ, The Play of Gilgamesh, CollectedTranslations

133. Alexander Scott (1920–89), Poems134. George Mackay Brown (1921–96), Greenvoe, Magnus,

Poems135. Derick Thomson (b.1921), Poems136. William Neill (1922–2010), Poems137. Alastair MacLean (1922–87), Where Eagles Dare138. Alexander Trocchi (1925–84), Young Adam, Cain’s Book139. Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006), Poems140. Archie Hind (1928–2008), The Dear Green Place141. James Kennaway (1928–68), Tunes of Glory142. Iain Crichton Smith (1928–98), Consider the Lilies, Poems143. Neal Ascherson (b.1932), Stone Voices: The Search for

Scotland144. George Macbeth (1932–92),My Scotland: Fragments of a

State of Mind145. Bill Douglas (1934–91), The Trilogy (films)146. Alasdair Gray (b.1934), Lanark147. John McGrath (1935–2002) and 7:84 Theatre Company, The

Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil148. Stewart Conn (b.1936), Poems149. William McIlvanney (b.1936), Docherty, Laidlaw, The Papers

of Tony Veitch150. Donald Campbell (b.1940), Plays151. John Byrne (b.1940), The Slab Boys, Tutti Frutti152. Douglas Dunn (b.1942), Poems153. Aonghas MacNeacaill (b.1942), Poems154. Sue Glover (b.1943), Bondagers155. Tom Leonard (b.1944), Intimate Voices156. Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Collected Poems and Translations157. James Kelman (b.1946), The Bus Conductor Hines, Kieron

Smith, Boy158. Liz Lochhead (b.1947), The Poems and Mary Queen of Scots

Got Her Head Chopped Off159. Janet Paisley (b.1948), Warrior Daughter160. Andrew Greig (b.1951), Men on Ice, Surviving Passages, At

the Loch of the Green Corrie161. Angus Peter Campbell (b.1954), Poems162. Janice Galloway (b.1956), The Trick is to Keep Breathing,

Clara163. Elizabeth Burns, (b.1957), Held164. Iain Banks (b.1958), The Bridge, The Crow Road165. Irvine Welsh (b.1958), Trainspotting166. James Robertson (b.1958), And the Land Lay Still167. Meg Bateman (b.1959), Poems168. Jackie Kay (b.1961), Poems169. Alan Warner (b.1964), The Deadman’s Pedal170. A. L. Kennedy (b.1965), Night Geometry and the Garscadden

Trains, So I Am Glad171. Alan Bissett (b.1975), My Contribution to the Debate on

Scottish Independence


LINDA COLLEYANDTHE STRANGE DEATHOF NORTH BRITAIN

Two decades ago, Britain wasdifferent country. DespiteThatcher’s political demise,

the Tories won a fourth generalelection in a row. Under JohnMajor, the epitome of middleclassEnglishness, the Conservatives gar-nered more absolute votes thanany party, before or since.

In Scotland, while Labourremained the largest party, theTory vote went up, securing 25.6%of the poll – more that the SNP inthird place with 22.1%. Despiteimproving their share of the vote,the Nationalists were humiliated.They had campaigned on theslogan “Free by ’93”. Instead, theman who coined the phrase – JimSillars – lost his Govan seat. He leftactive politics with the infamousquip about Scots being “ninetyminute patriots”.

Labour’s defeat, and the SNP’spoor showing, appeared to kill offthe prospect of Scottish devolutionfor the foreseeable future. As forScotland being “Free in ’93”, orindeed anytime, that seemed thestuff of fantasy. Yet a mere twentyyears on, things are remarkablydifferent. Not only is a referendumon Scottish independence in theoffing, even John Major nowadvocates giving Holyrood allresponsibilities except foreignpolicy and defence – what a previ-

ous generation knew as HomeRule.

The year 1992 was also signifi-cant for the publication of LindaColley’s path-breaking bookBritons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837, unquestionably the mostcited text on Britishness andBritish national identity sinceWorld War Two. The book seeks toexplain how a unifying British

national identity was forged in thecrucial period from the Act ofUnion in 1707 to the accession ofQueen Victoria in 1837.

Colley makes no secret of thefact she is trying to explain ifBritishness can survive past the endof the 20th century. Even as JohnMajor was pontificating from hissoapbox, Colley was suggestingthat the historic pillars of Britishnational identity were collapsing:

“We can understand the natureof the present crisis only if werecognise that the factors that pro-vided for the forging of a Britishnation in the past have largelyceased to operate … How this willresolve itself – whether GreatBritain will break down into sepa-rate Welsh, Scottish and Englishstates … remains to be seen. Whatseems indisputable is that a sub-stantial rethinking of what itmeans to be British can no longerbe evaded” (pp374–375).

Colley’s book won instant plau-dits across the political, intellectu-al and nationalist divide. TomNairn, who is rarely given tohyperbole, hailed its publication as“the most dazzling and compre-hensive study of a national identityyet to appear in any language”.Prophetically, Enoch Powell noted:“A remarkable amount of light isshed upon current and comingevents.”

It was 20 years ago that Linda Colley’s pathbreaking book onBritishness and British national identity was published. But, asGeorge Kerevan observes, the political scene is remarkablydifferent now compared to then.

Title from mapof Scotland (orNorth Britain)dated 1754.


How do these encomia stand upafter two decades? Is Colley’sanalysis still relevant? In a Britainthat has received at least 7.5 mil-lion immigrants since her bookwas published, is a new form ofBritishness emerging to replace theold? Gordon Brown thinks so.While he was in Downing Street,Brown drew consciously onColley’s work in trying to re-define a “modern” form ofBritishness. He also gave her aCBE in 2009.

BRITISHNESS ACCORDING TOCOLLEYLinda Colley (the name is Welsh)was born in provincial Chester in1949 and educated at Cardiff HighSchool for Girls. She did herundergraduate degree at BristolUniversity. That makes her a clas-sic, post-Empire babyboomer whowas at university in the revolution-ary Sixties. Yet her PhD thesis(Cambridge, 1972) was on the18th century Tory Party, arguing indefiance of conventional wisdomthat the Tories of that time weremore radical and progressive thanthe Whigs. Without meaning to bepatronising, one might describeColley as a provincial grammarschool scholar who joined the aca-demic Establishment while the restof her generation were demon-strating against the Vietnam War.She has had a stellar academiccareer, teaching at Cambridge,Yale (where she wrote Britons),LSE, and now Princeton.

Her thesis is that Britishness as awholly new mass identity wasinvented during the 150 yearsafter the Act of Union, overlaying(but definitely not eliminating)English, Scottish and Welsh identi-ties – she tends to ignore Ireland.The cement for this newBritishness was provided by threemain factors: a commonProtestantism that reinforced asense of “British exceptionalism”;the first use of a modern popularmobilisation against exterior ene-mies (chiefly France), whichencouraged the masses to feel theyhad a stake in the new state; andthe creation of a new-style

“middle class” monarchy by theHanoverians, which engendered asense of allegiance.

As represented by Colley, theemergence of Britishness is anorganic process, as much bottom-up as top-down. British patriotismis layered over pre-existing region-al identities, which remain strong.Thus she contends that themodern Britain state, and popularallegiance to it, was not the resultof an English take-over of theCeltic periphery. She writes:“Identities are not like hats.Human beings can and do put onseveral at a time”.

A CRITIQUE OF BRITONSColley’s argument is very seduc-tive, especially when it comespackaged in an attractive, illustrat-ed book, tailored largely for a“Radio 4” audience. However, 20years on, it can be seen as flawed.In retrospect, her analysis is super-ficial and selective. The result is adeeply conservative work that hasengendered a new, deeply conser-vative historiography in its wake.

Colley is correct to argue thatthe construction of Britishness wasnot the result of some crude inter-nal colonialism (except in Irelandand the Highlands). But neitherwas it a benign process in which acommon British patriotism, andshared sense of values, bubbled upfrom below to defeat Bonaparteand Hitler, invent parliamentarydemocracy and establish theWelfare State.

Rather, the construction of whatis better termed Anglo-Britishnesswas a conscious political projectthat served the self-interest of anessentially English, London-cen-tred capitalist class. However,while ultimately successful, thatproject was contested along theway on many levels. CertainlyColley is correct to doubt thatnational identity is simply imposedfrom the top down in a mechanis-tic fashion. But it is precisely in theunfolding contest between rulerand ruled – in the riots, strikes,wars and intellectual struggles, andin the various victories and defeatsalong the way – that identity is cre-

ated and destroyed. It is anythingbut a benign process.

Many on the nationalist left,including Tom Nairn, were initial-ly attracted to Colley’s thesisbecause she seemed to be comingfrom a perspective pioneered byradical thinkers such as ErnestGellner and Benedict Anderson,the brother of Perry Anderson,editor of New Left Review. Indeed,Colley makes a passing referenceto Benedict Arnold’s seminal workImagined Communities (Verso,1983), in which he advanced theidea that nations are politicalinventions.

However, the core argumentadvanced by Ernest Gellner andBenedict Anderson is that nationalallegiance is invented as a mobilis-ing force to aid “modernisation”,i.e. capitalist industrialisation.Such modernisation requires thecreation of an enabling state formled by a bourgeoisie. This inventednationality is necessary to mobilisepopular support for the new stateagainst internal and external ene-mies, and against old allegiances –feudal, religious, political or cul-tural. The cultural homogeneitysynonymous with national con-sciousness is also necessary to runa successful capitalist economybased on voluntary wage labourrather than the coercion used inearlier modes of production. Theintelligentsia plays a crucial role informing and disseminating theideas and national myths that thatcreate allegiance to this new state.

Colley, as a typical Britishempiricist historian fromOxbridge, and one with an obvi-ous underlying romantic attach-ment to 18th-century Britishness,implicitly rejects the Gellner-Anderson theoretical framework.Her references to nationality being“invented” are an intellectualsmokescreen. Only someone whostill believes in the Divine Right ofKings, or who is a fascist believingin ethnic determination, can possi-ble argue that nationality is any-thing other than a cultural andpolitical invention. The real ques-tion is: invented by whom and forwhat political end?

She contendsthat themodernBritain state,and popularallegiance toit, was notthe result ofan Englishtake-over ofthe Celticperiphery.


Colley ignores the fact that“imagined communities” havehierarchies of social allegiance.Witness her hat metaphor:“Identities are not like hats.Human beings can and do put onseveral at a time”. This bogus soci-ology lets her posit the existence ofa benign British meta-identityoverlaying Scottishness andEnglishness – a meta-identity towhich the masses subscribe volun-tarily. This, in turn, lets her dis-avow the Anglo-centric nature ofthe British state and its ruling elite.

Colley’s “hat stand” approachto the construction of Britishnessresults from a series of method-ological absences in the book.First, as Bernard Crick pointed outwhen Britons was first published,the work is devoid of politics.Second, it is devoid of economics.The industrial revolution and therise of capitalism hardly figures.Thus it is history without a plot.Third, dissent – of class, of theJacobites, of the Irish – is down-played. This is national identity asa pure cultural phenomenondevoid of any real historic anchor-age.

THE CASE OF NORTHBRITISHNESSWhat then are we to make of theemergence of a self-styled “NorthBritish” patriotism among Scottishintellectuals and bourgeoisie afterthe Jacobite Rising? Enlighten -ment Scots showed uncriticalenthusiasm for English institu-tions, liberties and values, to thepoint of wanting Scottish civil soci-ety anglicised. For Colley, thisdevelopment represents the forma-tion of a joint “British” rulingclass: “Scotland was coming to beseen by those in power as useful,loyal and British” (p119).

This view is rejected byProfessor Colin Kidd, formerly ofGlasgow University, whose under-rated book Subverting Scotland’sPast: Scottish Whig historians andthe Creation of an Anglo-BritishIdentity covers a lot of Colley’sterritory but with very differentresults. A noted expert on the 18thcentury, Kidd contends that

Britishness in this period was, inreality, “couched in predominantlyEnglish terms”.

Kidd argues – rightly – thatNorth Britishness should not beread as the emergence of a “pan-Britannic national identity”. It wasactually the emergent Scottishbourgeoisie believing that anEnglish-style political order andbourgeois values were central tomodernising “backward”, feudalScotland. After all, England wasthe first genuine capitalist forma-tion to emerge.

This process fits well with theGellner-Anderson view of nation-alism as a modernising ideology. InKidd’s view, it also explains themarked absence of a classic roman-tic nationalist myth in Scotland,then or now, despite the bestefforts of Sir Walter Scott. NorthBritons – and they still exist today– see the institutions and liberalvalues of the Anglo-British state asa guarantee against allegedScottish “parochialism”.

However, just because the 18thCentury Scots bourgeoisie andintelligentsia called themselvesNorth British, and participatedwillingly in the Union, does notmean they were equal partners, orthat Anglo-Britishness existed torepresent their interests. The appa-ratus of the British state remainedpolitically in the hands of theEnglish landed aristocracy till thestart of the 20th century, while themercantile and financial class inthe City of London has remainedthe dominant fraction of capitalarguably down to the present day.

The Scots magnates signed theTreaty of Union primarily becausethey thought it would guaranteetheir remaining feudal rights – ahope that turned out groundlesswhen those privileges wererevoked by Westminster after1745, in a predictable movetowards political centralisation fol-lowing the failed Jacobite rising.(This period is covered brilliantlyby Neil Davidson in hisDiscovering the ScottishRevolution.)

True, Scots served as the admin-istrative and entrepreneurial shock

troops of the Empire. But theywere never allowed into the innersanctum of the state machine inany numbers. Intensified interna-tional competition after the FirstWorld War forced the Scottishindustrial bourgeoisie to seek stateprotection, which paradoxicallyreinforced their support for theUnion. Their reward was national-isation and external take-over thateffectively eliminated them as asocial entity by the end of the1960s.

In this conflicted relationship,North Britishness was never anabject political and cultural sur-render to English institutions andvalues, even for the Scottish rulingclass. The cosmopolitanism inher-ent in the adopted North Britishpersona was a crucial componentin driving the autonomousScottish Enlightenment. As aresult, the Scots intelligentsiafomented a global intellectual rev-olution that in fact provided the“rules” of capitalist modernity –rationality and scientific thinking,the modernist viewpoint that thefuture will be better than the pastas a result of human effort, andAdam Smith’s codification ofmarket economics.

Colley makes only a few, slight,scattered references to theEnlightenment – an amazinglacuna in a work supposedlyabout the process of the forma-tion of national identity in the18th century. We should not besurprised. An autonomousScottish intelligentsia pursuing itsown national project does not fitin with her view of the creation ofBritishness. In fact, the rationalistworld view of the ScottishEnlightenment is in deep conflictwith the concepts of “commonsense” and empiricism that under-lie conservative English politicaland social thinking, even today.But then, Colley’s bias againsttheory in her approach to writinghistory is very English.

COLLEY AND THE CRISIS OFBRITISHNESSThe failings of Britons are clearwhen it comes to her concluding

LINDA COLLEY AND THE STRANGE DEATH OF NORTH BRITAIN

Britishness isan identitypremised onpreservingan old orderrather thancreating anew one.


chapter on the contemporary crisisof Britishness. Colley’s summingup ends with the truism: “… thefactors that provided for the forg-ing of a British nation in the pasthave largely ceased to operate”.(p374) The decline ofProtestantism, the crisis of theWindsor monarchy, and the end ofEmpire, have destroyed the institu-tional foundations of Britishnesswithout putting anything as strongin its place.

Again we have traditional, life-less Oxbridge empiricism. By fail-ing to explain the driver ofBritishness – the need for capitalistmodernisation – Colley cannotexplain its crisis. The erosion ofAnglo-Britishness is not some epi-phenomenon of the decay of theChurch of England, the independ-ence of India and the adultery ofCharles Windsor. It lies in the factthat the project to modernise theold English feudal state into a cap-italist one was never really success-ful. Britain’s institutions, fromParliament to the BBC, remainonly semi-democratic. Its bubbleeconomy is dominated by theinterests of a narrow financial elitein the City – with disastrousresults. The monarchy acts as asmokescreen for rule by a metro-politan oligarchy. In the end,Britishness is an identity premisedon preserving an old order ratherthan creating a new one. The routeto modernisation – north andsouth of the border – lies throughdissolving the Union of 1707 andletting new states emerge.

Or as Tom Nairn has put it suc-cinctly in this journal (though I amless sure about his reference toNorthern Ireland): “Scotland,Wales and Northern Ireland arenot attempting old-style nation-statehood: they are (and indeed,can’t help being) in search of a newmode of distinctive development –post-globalisation self-rule, liberat-ed from the contortions of imperi-alism and warfare, and adapted tocircumstances in which the scale ofstatehood is no longer so impor-tant.”

In discussing the decline ofBritishness, Colley finds herself in

a further contradiction. IfBritishness is based on institu-tions, and those institutions areobsolete, then so is Britishness.Intellectually and emotionally,Colley does not want to go downthis route and argues: “Whatseems indisputable is that a sub-stantial rethinking of what itmeans to be British can no longerbe evaded” (p375).

Others have attempted to solveColley’s intellectual dilemma byarguing she is wrong to defineBritishness in purely material,institutional terms. In this idealis-tic critique, Britishness is some-thing infinitely malleable that canbe reinvented at will in differenthistoric circumstances to protectthe Union. This is the view of PaulWard, professor of modern Britishhistory at Huddersfield, andauthor of several influential workson identity. Ward criticisesColley’s view of Britishness as toostatic. He contends that Britishnesshas been redefined constantly inmodern times: e.g. in the popularassociation with the NHS and theWelfare State.

The problem for pro-Labourintellectuals such as Ward is thatthe Labourist version ofBritishness has coincided exactlywith the rise of Scottish national-ism and a weakening of identifica-tion with Britishness north of theborder. Labour’s post-war versionof Britishness as a social democrat-ic “New Jerusalem” was in factpart of the crisis of the obsoleteImperial state, not its re-defini-tion. Ward contends that the con-tinuing popularity of “welfare”Britishness will eclipse Scottishdemands for independence. But itis the SNP that has retained asocial democratic vision whileLabour is still floundering ideo-logically.

The most interesting figure tograpple with a post-imperial defi-nition of Britishness is GordonBrown. At first, Brown’s solutionseems trivial in the extreme –explicitly abandoning Colley’sinstitutional basis for nationalidentity (Protestantism, monarchy,Empire) and replacing it with the

notion of ageless “shared values”.Reversing Colley’s causation,Brown says these values actuallyshaped British institutions. Andwhat are these transcendental corevalues? Brown suggests, with astraight face: “being creative,adaptable and outward-looking,believing in liberty, duty and fairplay” (Speeches 1997–2006,p354).

It is idealist nonsense to suggestthat values (as in behavioural par-adigms) are encoded in particularcultures over millennia, remain-ing independent of the economic,class and political organisation ofthose communities. At least theempiricist Colley gets this right.Also, Brown’s choice of “shared”British values are anodyne, politi-cally safe, and found in manyother cultures. In what way is cre-ativity unique to Britain, forinstance? However, it is interest-ing that the notions of duty, andfair play are classic idealsespoused by English intellectualsand taught in English publicschools.

CONCLUSIONFor many decades after 1945, thecrisis of British identity – thesocial glue that held decayingBritish industrial capitalismtogether – was ignored or dis-missed by the ruling elite and itsintellectuals. From within the tra-ditional Oxbridge intellectualEstablish ment, Linda Colley pro-vided a “safe” explanation ofwhat was happening. ThusBritons was an early, and brilliant-ly conceived, attempt to lay theintellectual foundations for there-invention of Anglo-Britishness.That, rather than the quality of itsanalysis, will be its legacy. As forthe future of Anglo-Britishness,we must await the referendum in2014.

�George Kerevan is an economist,journalist and member of theScottish National Party. He wasassociate editor of The Scotsmanfrom 2000 to 2009, and is the chiefexecutive of What If Productions(Television) Ltd.

TheLabouristversion ofBritishnesshascoincidedexactly withthe rise ofScottishnationalismand aweakeningofidentificationwithBritishnessnorth of theborder.


BSL: MORE THANA LANGUAGE

Every people has its crownjewels. The Honours ofScotland are kept in

Edinburgh castle; the crown,sword, sceptre and Stone ofDestiny are potent symbols of sov-ereignty, pride and national identi-ty. However, in this country ofdiverse ethnicities and back-grounds, there is a community ofpeople whose symbols are less tan-gible, but even more important.

British Sign Language, or BSL, isthe first or preferred language ofaround 6000 Deaf people inScotland (figure estimated by theScottish Council on Deafness). Aswell as being the means by whichthey communicate with each otherand access information and servic-es in the hearing world, it is also asource of great pride and the primeidentifying mark of its members.To appreciate BSL and to under-stand the people who use it everyday can lead not only to an aware-ness of Britain’s fourth indigenouslanguage, but to the very heart of ahuman rights issue facing Scotlandtoday.

A CULTURAL MINORITYThe idea that Deafness could be asource of pride may come as a sur-prise to many. The vast majority ofdeaf people have suffered a hear-ing loss at some point in their adultlives. Naturally, this causes a rangeof emotions from inconvenience toisolation and trauma. For the esti-mated 1 million people in Scotlandwho have experienced somedegree of hearing loss, its effectscan be truly disabling.

In marked contrast, Scotland isalso home to a community ofpeople who were born deaf, orwho lost their hearing before theacquisition of spoken language.These prelingually Deaf peoplenaturally learned to communicatethrough the visual medium andBSL became their first language.For this reason, many BSL userssee themselves not as disabled, butas a cultural and linguistic minori-ty. Moreover, many (though notall) describe themselves as Deafwith a capital D; if we capitaliseScots, English, Welsh or NorthernIrish, why not “Deaf” too?

As a cultural minority, the Deafcommunity treasure their languageas the most defining marker ofwho they are. And in the righthands, it can be a language of quitebreathtaking beauty. As well asbeing made up of movements andshapes of the hands, it includesfacial expressions and movementsof the eyebrows, cheeks, lips,shoulders and the whole body.

While spoken languages arerestricted to the production ofwords one after the other in lines,signed languages are produced inthree dimensional space, whereseveral facets of meaning can beproduced simultaneously. Deafpoets such as Dot Miles, RichardCarter and Paul Scott prove thatBSL is more than just a communi-cation tool; it is a language thatcan be both beautiful and pro-foundly moving. Deaf artistes suchas Finnish Deaf rapper Signmarkand Ramesh Meyyappan, aSingaporean performer now work-

ing in Glasgow, have showcasedthe striking versatility of signedlanguage to Deaf and hearing audi-ences alike. Thanks to video shar-ing sites like YouTube, it is nowpossible for anyone with an inter-est to experience the artistry ofthese and many other Deaf per-formers.

THE CHALLENGE OF LEARNINGMany people seeing the expres-sive capabilities of a visual lan-guage are inspired to beginlearning it for themselves. Mypersonal journey into“Deafworld” began back in 2001,when I attended my first BSLclass. I soon discovered that I waslearning far more than just a lan-guage; I was finding a whole newcommunity with a culture, a his-tory and a sense of humour thatI’d been quite unaware of before.Thanks to some inspirationalDeaf teachers, I found I wanted tocarry on studying the languageand eventually in 2008, afteryears of study and practical expe-rience in the community I quali-fied as a BSL/English interpreter.Any ideas I may have had about“helping Deaf people” werequickly dispelled. As a learner ofthe language, I will never achievethe fluency of the Deaf communi-ty to whom the language belongs.Furthermore, I was soon workingwith people who had no need ordesire to be helped by me. Manyare far more intelligent and artic-ulate than I am and the onlyreason I am needed at all is toallow them to communicate withhearing people who cannot sign.

The only disability that mostDeaf people experience is linkedto communication, which being bydefinition a bilateral process, raisesthe question: When two peoplecannot communicate with eachother, which of them is disabled?I’ve even seen hearing peopledescribed (in a friendly way ofcourse!) as being “hard of signing”or “signing impaired”. Anyonewho has ever found themselves ina large group of Deaf people willunderstand this. Being surroundedby people who use BSL as their

BSL is alanguagethat can bebothbeautiful andprofoundlymoving.

Paul Belmonte looks at Britain’s fourthindigenous language, used by some 6000 peoplein Scotland, and the steps being taken to raiseawareness of it and get a Bill giving legalrecognition through the Scottish parliament.


natural communication can makeus as hearing people feel like weare the ones with something miss-ing.

As with any language, learningBSL can be challenging and some-times frustrating. New learnersoften expect to be able to learn alist of vocabulary signs and mayrepeatedly ask “what’s the signfor …?” They soon find them-selves facing some troubling prob-lems. Like English, BSL is full ofsynonyms; many concepts havemore than one way to expressthem. Because it is so fundamen-tally different from spoken lan-guage, it is often impossible to saythat one BSL sign will always cor-respond to a single English word.“The sign for” any particular wordusually varies according to thecontext.

Hearing people often seem sur-prised to learn that sign language isnot the same all over the world.Visual languages, like spoken lan-guages, evolve and develop natu-rally, so most countries have theirown discrete sign languages. Thismeans, anyone learning BritishSign Language will find it usefulonly in Britain, although the signlanguages used in Australia andNew Zealand are quite closelyrelated. American Sign Language(ASL) is more closely related toFrench Sign Language and is verydifferent to BSL. Having said that,Deaf people seem to have an envi-able ability to find a way to com-municate, even when they meetsomeone who uses a different signlanguage from theirs.

The situation is further compli-cated for the learner by the factthat, being a naturally evolvinglanguage, BSL also has a rich mixof dialects. Deaf people inGlasgow will sign quite differentlyfrom those in Edinburgh, whileInverness and Aberdeen also havedialects of their own. On one occa-sion, I was interpreting at a confer-ence in Birmingham. For the firstminute or so as I interpreted, Icould see the Deaf audienceasking, “Who’s the Scottish inter-preter?” While challenging for thelearner (and the interpreter!) this

kind of regional variation adds tothe richness of the language.

WE’LL JUST WRITE THINGSDOWNAnother challenge for anyonelearning sign language is that BSLhas its own grammar and struc-ture, which is completely differentfrom that of English. It is possibleto use signs at the same time asspeaking out loud. Most learnersdo, because it feels easy and natu-ral for English speakers. But formany Deaf people, the languageproduced is clunky, inelegant anddifficult to understand. It is verydifferent in structure, word orderand grammar from BSL.

This leads to another issue thatis fundamental to communicationwith Deaf people. It is oftenassumed by service providers thatany information provided in awritten format will be easily acces-sible for those in the Deaf commu-nity. This may well be the case forthose who have lost their hearingafter having learnt spoken English.However, for those who haveacquired their language visually,learning English without beingable to hear it is immensely chal-lenging. Those of us who are hear-ing may remember learninglanguage by relating the letters ona printed page to the sounds wehear. This way of learning lan-guage is close to impossible formost Deaf people, so many have,at best, a limited understanding ofwritten English. So for serviceproviders to expect that their pro-vision of written materials willallow access for Deaf people fallsfar short of what is needed.

I find it quite worrying whenhearing people say to me, “Wedon’t need an interpreter, we canjust write things down.” Often, theonly way a Deaf person can get fullaccess to information that may becritical to their health, wellbeingand human rights is through themedium of BSL. For that reason,responsible service providers in theareas of health, education and gov-ernment now make sure that infor-mation is provided either by meansof a high quality video translation

into sign language or through aqualified interpreter.

DO I REALLY NEED ANINTERPRETER?One area where it is particularlyimportant to provide access to fullinformation is when someoneenters the healthcare system.

For Deaf people to understandand to be understood by clinicianscan be of life and death importance.As an interpreter, I work especiallycarefully in these settings. If a Deafperson were to describe symptomsthat I failed to convey properly to adoctor, or if I were to interpretinstructions for taking medicationin a way the patient couldn’tunderstand, I could be puttingsomeone in clear danger. This illus-trates the importance of using atrained and registered interpreter.Because of our training, we are farmore likely to understand and beunderstood. If communication hasbroken down, we will usually beaware of it and make sure it isrepaired. And if critical mistakeswere to be made, clients have theright to complain to our profes-sional registering body, which inScotland is the Scottish Associationof Sign Language Interpreters.Some interpreters in Scotland areregistered with the UK body,NRCPD. Professionally registeredinterpreters are also bound by aCode of Practice, which includesstrict rules on confidentiality,impartiality and professional stan-dards of behaviour.

Of course, even with all of thesesafeguards, things can still gowrong, which is why interpreterscarry relevant indemnity insur-ance. All professional interpretersshould wear or carry identifica-tion, proving their current regis-tration. When we think of the realneed for these safeguards, it is analarming thought that some serviceproviders feel it is appropriate touse anyone who has a basic knowl-edge of sign language to “inter-pret” in these kinds of settings orget by with writing brief notes.

It is sobering to reflect on recentresearch from Action on HearingLoss, which indicates that 68% of

Deaf peoplein Glasgowwill signquitedifferentlyfrom those inEdinburgh.


BSL users who have asked for aninterpreter have not been providedwith one. Even more worryingly,41% of surveyed people who useBSL as their first language have lefta health appointment feeling con-fused about their medical condi-tion, because the interpretationwas not up to standard. The poten-tial consequences of this situationare truly frightening.

That is not to say interpreterswork solely in healthcare. We canbe found in education, employ-ment, social work, council meet-ings, government, parliament,theatre – in fact, in any situationwhere two or more people mightneed to communicate with eachother. Equality of access is impor-tant in all aspects of daily life.

THE BSL BILLThis is one of the reasons that aBSL Bill is being brought forwardto the Scottish Parliament. The Billaims to raise awareness of BSL as alanguage and give it the legalrecognition it deserves. It wouldattempt to address the fundamen-tal inequalities faced by Deafpeople as they try to access theinformation many of us take forgranted. It is also hoped that legis-lation can address the issue of thelow number of interpreters inScotland. Finland, which has asimilar Deaf population toScotland, has around 750 inter-preters. Here, the Deaf communi-ty is having to make do with only80. This is not a problem that canbe simply and easily solved.

To train interpreters there needto be courses available for them tostudy. Potential students need tolearn the language from qualifiedBSL tutors, preferably themselvesnative users. These tutors them-selves have to be trained to teacheffectively and have a deep under-standing of the linguistic structureof their language. Thankfully,Heriot-Watt University inEdinburgh has recently launched anundergraduate degree inBSL/English interpreting and theScottish government funded twocourses where Deaf people havelearnt to become teachers of BSL

tutors. These are positive first steps;hopefully the BSL Bill can begin totake Scotland onto the next stage.

The Bill was originally broughtforward by Cathie Craigie MSPand went out to consultation. Thisprocess will usually elicit betweenfive and 40 responses from inter-ested parties. The consultation onthe BSL Bill received 850 respons-es; 98% of them in support of theBill. Unfortunately for the Bill,Cathie Craigie lost her seat at thelast election and it became appar-ent that some aspects of the Billtouched on Equalities legislation,which is reserved to Westminster.Thankfully, the Bill was then takenup by Mark Griffin MSP and anew, amended consultation isabout to be launched. After theconsultation, it will require thesupport of a further 18 MSPs totake to committee. Subsequently, itcan be put before parliament tobecome an Act. A BSL Act wouldrequire the government to appointa specific minister to create andtake forward an action plan andreport on progress twice in eachparliamentary session.

A SIGN OF BELONGINGIt is clear then that the effortsbeing made by governmentdemonstrate at least an awarenessof the importance of BSL. After all,communication is fundamental;healthcare and basic human rightsare inaccessible without it. But BSLis far more than just a tool that thepublic sector can use to provideservices to the Deaf community.British Sign Language has alwaysbelonged to Deaf people and italways will. As well as allowingequal access to information, it isrich, dynamic and full of life. Fromthe stories told in the Deaf Club, tothe poetry performed by Deafartists on stage, it is capable of abeauty that the spoken wordwould struggle to describe. BSL inall its facets: the signs, the move-ments and the facial expression, isone of the things that makes Deafpeople Deaf. It is an identifyingmark of Deafhood, the CrownJewels of the Deaf Community.

� Paul Belmonte is an an inter-preter living and working inEdinburgh.

BSL: MORE THAN A LANGUAGE

Finland,which has asimilar Deafpopulationto Scotland,has around750interpreters.Here, theDeafcommunity ishaving tomake dowith only 80.

PERSPECTIVES BOOK OFFERThe era of devolution as we have known it is over. Radical Scotland challengesconventional wisdoms, and poses solutions which encourage us to become moreactive agents of our own destiny.

The editors Gerry Hassan and Rosie Iletthave brought together in one volume some ofthe most original thinkers in our nationmaking the case for a very different politicsand society. This book is a must read for allthose interested in Scotland at this crucialtime, for its future, the Parliament, and forthose who want our politics and public policyto be more effective, imaginative and bold.

We have copies of this timely and importantbook at a special discount price of £10 postfree (RRP £12.99).

To get your copy, please send a cheque(made payable to “Democratic LeftScotland”) along with your name andaddress to Democratic Left Scotland,Radical Scotland book offer,Number Ten, 10 Constitution Road,Dundee DD1 1LL.


BOOK REVIEWS

SNP: THE ROAD TOELECTORAL SUCCESS

Mitchell, Bennie and Johns’sbook on the SNP is a usefulcompanion to the Scottish

election survey volume from the2007 election, Voting for a ScottishGovernment. Each book tells thestory of the SNP’s rise to powerusing data on party members andvoters and each should be read tounderstand not just what happenedthen – and why – but also to get ahandle on what happened next in2011. The road to 2014 also beganwith these elections, traceable tochanges in voter preferences aswell as the capacity to build amodern, professional organisationcapable of winning power.

Though the book is about partymembership – meaning who joins,why and what they do within anorganisation like the SNP – it isalso about setting these develop-ments within the history of theSNP, especially its recent history.The overarching context of thebook is about the effect of devolu-tion – and how it has come to ben-efit the SNP in quite a spectacularfashion. This may not have beenevident in 2003 when the partyslumped at the Scottish election,but it was certainly evident in 2007and even more so now. Morespecifically, the book is about mod-ernisation and growth – meaningthe professionalisation of the party

since 2004 in particular, but alsoits ability to the buck the trend ofpolitical parties in many Westerndemocracies through seeing itsmembership grow. And, not onlyhas membership grown against theprevailing tide but levels ofactivism are actually high withinthe SNP, so it has bucked a trend inanother area too.

DEVOLUTIONLet me start with devolution. Itwould be no exaggeration to saythat devolution has had a revolu-tionary effect on the SNP – not interms of its policies or ideology,but in its impact. Before devolu-tion, the SNP was on the fringes ofScottish and UK politics. Electionresults and political events occa-sionally brought the SNP toprominence – the Hamilton by-election in 1967 and the 1974 gen-eral election are good examples –but the party’s position was severe-ly constrained by the effect of theelectoral system and the absence ofan institutional dimension toScottish politics.

The onset of devolution fromthe referendum of 1997 swept thatsituation aside. Sure enough,Westminster remains importantand the two big parties remaindominant at the UK-level, but thecreation of a Scottish parliament

with a semi-proportional electoralsystem made for a radical newpolitical opportunity structure forthe SNP. In a telling phrase in hisbook After Britain, Tom Nairnreferred to devolution as involving“the return of Scotland” – anational political space was creat-ed that provided oxygen fornationalism and the SNP.Devolution consequently trans-formed the SNP’s political status –first it created a Scottish politicalcentre, second it placed the SNP atits heart by making it a genuineparliamentary party for the firsttime, the official opposition from1999 onwards and then the gov-ernment from 2007.

Now, on the one hand this wasall predictable. Devolution, thenew electoral system and theSNP’s popularity as a Holyroodparty were always likely to see itget into power in Edinburgh atsome time – but not necessarily in2007, or as a minority governmentthat would survive its full 4-yearterm. And, that’s before even con-sidering what happened next inthe shape of the party’s success inoverturning the established elec-toral system to deliver a majorityin 2011. That result was beyondthe scope of the book but you cansee traces of it in some of theanalysis and discussion.

The ScottishNational Party:Transition toPowerJames Mitchell,Lynn Bennieand Rob Johns(OxfordUniversityPress, 2012)

The rise to power of the SNP in Scotland reveals a story thatbucks the trend in contemporary party politics, wheredeclining membership and public cynicism are the order ofthe day. Peter Lynch welcomes a book that analyses thebackground to the nationalists’ electoral success.


BOOK REVIEWS

Devolution changed the SNP inother ways too. Quite simply, itcreated a team of professional,full-time politicians for the firsttime. Most leading figures wereelected to the Scottish parliamentin 1999 and many are still aroundas MSPs now as well as leading thegovernment. The establishment ofthe parliament and then winningpower in 2007 also altered policy-making within the SNP, as annualconference and National Councilbecame less important in policydeterminations.

TRANSITION TO POWERThe transition to power sub-titleof the book is an apt one as theresearch for the book took placeafter the 2007 Scottish election,with a survey of party membersconducted from November 2007to March 2008. The survey col-lected data from 7,112 members intotal, which was 53.9% of the totalmembership at this time. Whatmade this data collection possiblewere the Swinney reforms of theparty from 2000–2004. Thesereforms included the establish-ment of a centralised membershipscheme rather than the ricketysystem run by local brancheswhich may or may not sign orresign party members and collecttheir membership fees. This wasgood for the party – as member-ship, membership fees and dona-tions grew (none of which wasinevitable) – but also for theresearchers as it facilitated massdata collection from the membersfor the first time.

The book also looks at some ofthe ingredients that went into the2007 election victory – the “new”Alex Salmond, the focus on policyand government and also cam-paigning techniques like theActivate computer system.Though, a note of caution herewith that – it only really workswhen you have activists, otherwisethere is no one to collect the datafrom doorstep canvassing let aloneinput it into the Activate pro-gramme – which explains why theSNP’s capacity to recruit moremembers and to make them politi-

cally active has been an importantpart of its recent success. Sureenough, it did establish a call-centre in this period to managetelephone canvassing, but lots ofthe success is down to work on thedoorsteps.

Also, the book focused on the2000–2004 period as one in whichthe party struggled to deal withdevolution and with the creationof a modern party that could chal-lenge for power. In this period twothings combined to cause difficul-ties for the SNP – first, its tempo-rary electoral decline at electionsin 2001, 2003 and 2004 andsecond, the limited role of partymembers in selecting candidatesahead of the 2003 Scottish elec-tion. This might not have beensuch a problem were it not for thefact that the SNP was a “list” partyat this time, with almost all of itsMSPs elected on regional partylists and reliant upon the supportof delegates from branches andconstituencies to be selected highup on the list to maximise theirchances of re-election.

BAD BLOODThese two problems came togetherto cause political instability acrossthe party and particularly for partyleader John Swinney. The 2002–3selections caused a good deal ofbad blood in constituencies andregions as well as between poten-tial candidates. It exposed the factthat some of the party’s localorganisation was in need of repairand that regional selectionprocesses were flawed. The ten-sions created by all of this werehuge problems for John Swinney(which cost him his leadership)though as it turned out, it was hisreforms at a special conference in2004 that laid down the organisa-tional changes that led to the suc-cess of 2007. From 2004 on,OMOV was used for candidateselections and also for election ofthe party’s leader and deputyleader – the latter removing theease by which any party membercould challenge the leader annual-ly with the nomination of only onebranch.

Surveys of political party mem-berships in the academic literatureare actually quite rare. There havebeen some in Scotland and the UKbut these are somewhat dated.Their existence did allow someuseful points of comparison withthe SNP though it would seemobvious that there is a lot of workstill to do on Scotland’s politicalparties. This book provides a verydetailed snapshot of the SNP at avital time – as it faced the chal-lenges of power for the first time.And, these challenges had majorramifications for the membership– would party members cope withgovernment office, policy compro-mises and change? The answers inthe survey, though short-term,were yes.

WHO ARE THE MEMBERS?So, who are the members? Well,here we find the SNP membershipis quite similar to its competitors inhaving a grey and greying member-ship but one that is also very male– 68% of the members in thesurvey were male. In class, educa-tion and employment terms, SNPmembers were fairly similar toother parties, though 40% ofmembers are also retired. Only43% of members felt theybelonged to a social class and in aninteresting demographic, aroundhalf of the party’s members havelived outside Scotland for a mini-mum of six months or were bornoutside Scotland.

When it comes to motives formembership, collective motivesscore highest amongst SNP mem-bers. Rather than career prospects,the compelling reasons for joiningare independence and a generalliking for the party. When askedwhy they joined, 44.3% gave inde-pendence as their first answer.There was also evidence of the net-worked role of many activists, whoreported membership of tradeunions, professional associationsand pressure groups, etc., whilst13.5% of members had previouslybeen members of another party.There is a good range of politicalexperience here beyond the SNP.Significantly, and this plays to

The SNP’scapacity torecruit moremembersand to makethempoliticallyactive hasbeen animportantpart of itsrecentsuccess.


changes in the party’s status plusthe effectiveness of the Swinneyreforms – 20% of members in thesurvey were returning members:those who had rejoined.

In terms of activism, some ofthe patterns of membership activi-ty are impressive. Nearly 20% ofmembers reported attendingmonthly meetings with one thirdof the members reporting them-selves as fairly or very active – andwhen you consider what thatmeans in a party with consistentlygrowing membership (by twothousand each year at times) youget the picture of how this hasworked. The types of activitiesundertaken by party members isfairly traditional, in terms of dis-playing election posters, deliver-ing leaflets and canvassing, but thelevels of activity are strong: 40.6%displayed posters very often,whilst 18.7% did so fairly often.32.4% delivered leaflets veryoften, with 13.8% doing so fairlyoften. When you add these up,you realise more than half themembership is quite active, whilstover 20% are involved in door todoor canvassing. Anyone who haswitnessed the SNP at by-electionswill have witnessed this type ofthing in the flesh. Sure enough,the party has some members whoonly join and donate and are oth-erwise inactive. But, the level ofactivism of the activists is impres-sive.

WHAT DO MEMBERS THINK?Another dimension examined inthe book involves membershipattitudes and opinions. What dothe members think? What are theirpolitical preferences on ideology,independence and political strate-gy? Well, they are fairly pragmaticand realistic about the party’sgoals and strategy – there was littleof the gradualist-fundamentalistdivide compared to the early1980s for example. Party memberssupport independence sureenough, but they were realisticabout how it would be achievedthrough devolution – not surpris-ing given the gradualist ascendan-cy in the party since the 1990s and

the party’s electoral success in2007. The pragmatism extendedto support for co-operation andcoalition with other parties to gainindependence. Of course, thispragmatism is being tested in thecurrent period over the independ-ence referendum and explicitlyover whether the SNP should offerindependence alone or a reformeddevolution option. So, someaspects of the gradualist-funda-mentalist divide are still influentialhere, though it is difficult to gaugetheir importance when the party isso popular and its strategy effec-tive.

MORE MODERATEIdeologically, party membersleaned to the left – more so thanSNP voters and also the Scottishelectorate as a whole – thoughmore recent party recruits weremore moderate, which reflectedthe patterns in the electorate morethan existing members. A goodway to think of this is how it willplay out in debates over issues likeNATO membership. The surveydid ask members about NATOmembership, which is reported inthe appendix, where it asks peoplewhether “membership of NATO isin Scotland’s strategic interest”.Here, the findings are interestingbut remember they come from2007–8. According to the survey13.5% strongly agreed, and 39.2%agreed, whilst 24.3% were neutral,14.7% disagreed and 8.2% strong-ly disagreed. That’s party membersas a whole though, not the activistswho attend conference, so it’s dif-ficult to make any predictions outof this pattern of opinion comeSNP conference in Perth inOctober.

MEMBERS MEAN MONEYFinally, members mean money to apolitical party. The SNP has lackedtrade union and business sponsor-ship to finance its political activi-ties throughout its history. Only inthe last decade has it begun toreceive significant business dona-tions – which came from individu-als not companies. Recentdonations from the Edwin Morgan

estate and the Weir lottery wintook SNP income in 2011 to astaggering £5,030,916 million in ayear in which spending was£3,453,882. However, the party’ssecret isn’t the big donors – thoughthey certainly help – it’s actuallyusing the central membershipdatabase to raise funds. For exam-ple, party members increasinglyjoined online, paid membershipfees by direct debit and also donat-ed money by direct debit. In 2009,the average direct debit was £54 ayear which, when multiplied bythe party membership of 15,644that year, gives some idea of thefunds involved. And, as the SNPhit 21,000 members at the close of2011, you can see out how this hasworked to the party’s benefit.Even the party’s annual confer-ence is a money-spinner, raisinglarge amounts to help run theorganisation as a whole. The sumsinvolved make the SNP seem aquite effective small businessthough one that collectivelyemploys something like 300people when you count up the var-ious staff working for MSPs, MPsand the party centrally after the2011 election.

In conclusion, this book tells usa great deal about the membershipof the SNP at a particular point intime and some of what it tells ushelps explain its electoral success.Organisational reforms after 2004plus professionalisation helped tocreate a much more effectiveorganisation at all levels. And, sig-nificantly, the SNP has increasedits membership and sustainedstrong levels of activism during aperiod in which the academic liter-ature pointed to disengagementwith political parties in favour ofpressure groups and social move-ments.

� Peter Lynch is a senior lecturer inpolitics at the University of Stirling.He is currently working on asecond edition of SNP: TheHistory of the Scottish NationalParty and blogs on the independ-ence referendum at www.wordpress.com/scottishreferendumexperience

Members arefairlypragmaticand realisticabout theparty’s goalsand strategy.


BOOK REVIEWS

WOMENTALKING TOWOMEN

“When I was a girl,”writes Mary Stott, ina 1971 piece which

opens this collection of journalismfrom the women’s pages of theGuardian, “I wished dreadfullythat I had been born earlier so thatI could have been a suffragette.Now I wish I had been born later,to involve myself in the essentiallyyouthful ferment of Women’sLiberation” (p3). One might thinkthat Stott, at this point coming tothe end of her tenure as editor ofthe Guardian’s women’s page, acharge she had executed withintelligence and zest from 1957,would of all people be placed tolook back with satisfaction. Yet hernostalgia for the fervent feminismof the early twentieth century, andher regret that the new wave of thesixties had come a little too late forher fully to participate, is immedi-ately recognisable to third wavefeminists. Growing up in the1970s and 1980s, “Women’s Lib”was a distant (if thrilling) rumourand the dogged activism of theGreenham Women was glimpsedonly briefly on the news. When Ipassed through the corridors of awomen’s college in the early1990s, the purpose and value ofstudying women’s history was a

given, and a new canon –Wollstonecraft, Mill, Daly, Irigiray,Gilligan, Butler – seemed well-established. We perceived our-selves as inheritors, rather thaninitiators, of that seeming contra-diction: a revolutionary tradition.We also had a very strong sense ofhaving missed out on all the fun.

Perhaps the richness of the intel-lectual heritage on offer, and theopportunities granted to explorethis by the economic buffer zoneof the late 1990s and early 2000s,contributed to third wave writerssuch as Natasha Walter (a contrib-utor to the collection) arguing atthe time that sexism was witheringaway (a position she has firmlyretracted). Now it seems tragicthat Caitlin Moran, in her recentand energetic How to Be aWoman, feels the need repeatedlyto state that “feminist” is not aninsult but the only rational posi-tion (phrased considerably moreaccessibly). This past century offeminism teaches us that revolu-tions can have downturns as wellas upswings, that allies can turnsuddenly, and that the transmis-sion to future generations of a rev-olutionary tradition is far frombeing a given and all too easily dis-rupted.

“MAINLY FOR WOMEN”The Guardian women’s pagebegan in 1922 at very short noticewhen C. P. Scott instructed theonly woman on staff, MadelineLinford, to start a women’s fea-ture, three columns long, toappear six days a week. Linford’sreports from a stricken post-warEurope in 1919 had secured herelevation from secretary to jour-nalist – if not with equal pay forequal work. Michael Herbert, ahistorian of radical Manchesterwho has surely done more thanany to keep Linford remembered,describes how she took on thepage single-handedly, answeringall readers’ letters – and still receiv-ing a secretary’s salary of 30shillings a week. The brief for thefeature, Linford recalled in an arti-cle for the Guardian in 1963, was“lucid and firm. The page wouldbe readable, varied, and alwaysaimed at the intelligent woman.”The title was “Mainly forWomen”.

Mary Stott, in an anthology ofpieces from the women’s sectionunder her own and Linford’stenures as editors, shows howLinford marshalled an impressivearray of names. Here is WinifredHoltby, writing in 1930, furious tobe driven out of restaurants andonto the streets because of rulesallowing places of refreshment torefused admittance to womenunaccompanied by men after cer-tain hours, on the grounds of safe-guarding public morality.(Nineteen-thirty!) Vera Brittain, aregular contributor, writes withterse emotion on the hastily-arranged memorial service for MrsPankhurst, and to her young sonon the twentieth anniversary of thestart of the Great War. Writing in1934, Sylvia Pankhurst commemo-rates John Grave, Mayor ofManchester from 1869 to 1871,who, in announcing the election ofLydia Becker to the School Board,was “the first returning officer inthe kingdom to make an officialreturn of a woman by the suffragesof a great popular constituency”(p154). And Miss Ellen WilkinsonMP writes in 1928 in support of

Women of theRevolution:Forty Years ofFeminismKira Cochrane (ed.)(Guardian Books,2012)

Una McCormack finds a collection of writingsfrom the Guardian’s women’s pages bothfascinating and frustrating.


the ordination of women.Feminism has rightly been calledthe long revolution.

The anonymous voices and livesrecorded here are important too:admiration for the wives of strik-ing miners in 1926, and a break-down of the economics of livingon the dole in 1933. I should notoverstate the class empathyexpressed: the Guardian is after allthe paper of comfortable if pro-gressive people. Stott, casting ananalytical eye over earlier features,describes the differences with herown pages as “social rather thanpolitical” (p xvi): liberal-minded,and activist, but concerned to amuch greater degree with theshortcomings of maids and chars,and often speaking with uncon-scious condescension of the work-ing classes. All this alongside a callfrom Winifred Holtby that, whilewritten in 1928, would seem freshand radical now, for “a form ofaddress courteous yet sexless, aneutral but not a neuter form or sirand madam” (p137).

Linford, also a novelist andbiographer of Mary Wollstone -craft, continued in post as editor of“Mainly for Women” until 1935,when the pages were suddenly andunexpectedly axed. Nearly a quar-ter of a century passed before theGuardian’s women’s pages werere-energised under Mary Stott.

CRESTING THE SECOND WAVEThe present volume, edited byKira Cochrane, herself women’seditor of the Guardian from 2006–2010, collects together articles andinterviews from 1971 onwards.The pieces are presented chrono-logically, divided by decade, withparticular emphasis on the 2000s.Mary Stott and Jill Tweedie (whosucceeded Stott as editor) providepoints of continuity with the previ-ous collection. Again, there is astrong set of contributors (BarbaraCastle, Beatrix Campbell) and amore international (or, at least,American) flavour: Erica Jong in1979 on being a woman artist;Elizabeth Wurtzel in 1998 on theemptiness of contemporary cultur-al role models for women; Andrea

Dworkin in 1998 on the impact ofthe Monica Lewinsky affair on themorale of Democrat women. Ofcurrent significant voices, Bidishais present; Caitlin Moran andLaurie Penny are sadly but neces-sarily absent, writing respectivelyfor the Times and the Independent.Subject matter is as broad as onewould expect: healthcare, abor-tion, motherhood, pornography,Thatcher, lesbianism – althoughnot, regrettably, transgenderism.

Most immediately striking is theexplicit commitment to providinga platform for a more diverse set ofwomen’s voices. Amongst the firstpieces is a vigorous interview from1971 with Shirley Chisholm, at thetime the only black woman inCongress and chasing theDemocratic nomination forPresident. The volume closes withvoices from multiple generationsof women living through the ArabSpring: Mona Eltahawy gives afuller account of being assaulted byriot police on the streets of Cairo.Nawal El Saadawi speaks of morethan half a century’s activism onbehalf of Egyptian women. Thesevoices are by no means always cel-ebratory. bell hooks, in a piecefrom 1998, speaks with disap-pointment of the failure of femi-nism to deliver for women of allclasses and colours: the flipside ofNatasha Walters’s confident claimin The New Feminism that sexismwas on its way out. Nonetheless,the collection does genuinelyattempt to shift focus beyond thewhite, comfortably-off, London-centric middle class.

For me, the particular strengthof the volume is the lengthy inter-views, very different, as Stott her-self notes, from the skimpyinterviews that were standardprior to the 1960s. Profiles ofprominent figures such as OprahWinfrey, Camille Paglia and ToniMorrison steer firmly away fromthe cult of the celebrity, and arebalanced by pieces on collectivessuch as the Greenham Women, theeditors of Spare Rib, the legal cam-paigners the Southall Black Sisters,and the Indian vigilante group theGulabi Gang. If I was occasionally

left with a sense of the writersbeing observers rather than initia-tors of the revolution (and thatperhaps the real fight was happen-ing elsewhere), this is perhaps anunfair accusation to level at jour-nalists – whose role, after all, is toreport – but may also be as a resultof more structural issues related tothe selection and presentation ofthe material.

TRANSMISSION ERRORSKira Cochrane, in her introduc-tion, states that her originalthought for the book was to pro-duce something like a textbook: “astrong, straightforward guide tofeminism – a collection that wouldwork as an introduction to all thethinkers, ideas, debates, sister-hood, in-fighting and triumph thathave marked the forty years sincethe first ever women’s liberationconference was held in the UK”(p xvii). At some point, this ambi-tion was replaced with presenting“a patchwork of the shifts inwomen’s lives [...] from the issuesfacing women in the 1970s to theissues facing us today” (p xviii).This is undoubtedly better suitedto the material: an anthology rep-resenting the multiplicity of voicesthat constitute a diverse move-ment. Yet a stronger editorial handand more imagination in theorganisation of the material couldhave made this a more significantcontribution to women’s socialhistory.

In the shift away from textbook,accessibility is favoured at theexpense of utility or even intelligi-bility: contributors and intervie-wees alike would have been betterserved by the inclusion of briefbiographies, as would the reader.An article on the double strugglefaced by black women, written in1985 by Chinyelu Onwurahtwelve years prior to her becomingan MP, includes a brief postscriptfrom the author reflecting on theprogress made by the “equalitiesagenda”. More reflections of thistype would have been welcome,communicating a sense of femi-nism not only as living tradition,but as lived experience.

Profiles ofprominentfigures steerfirmly awayfrom the cultof thecelebrity.


BOOK REVIEWS

The lack of explicit acknowl-edgement of Stott’s precedingvolume is a shame, and in variousways one does not have a sense ofthe two books being in conversa-tion with each other. Cochranedoes not provide any replacementfor Stott’s brisk and lively intro-ductions to her thematicallyorganised sections, and thechronological organisation of thepieces in the later volume does notput them into dialogue in the waythat the earlier does with contribu-tions from both Stott’s andLinford’s eras. Absent too is asense of who is reading the articlesand what they think about whatthey’ve read: a section in Stott’sbook entitled “Slave or Slut?”presents a selection of readers’replies to a series of questionsabout housework posed on thepages in 1970. These responseseasily rival today’s “Comment isFree” sections on the Guardian’sblog for energy, passion, diversity,and outright fury (although, merci-fully, without the kneejerk aggres-sion). Stott, in the introduction to

her volume, describes envisagingher own typical readers as “beingeither teachers or clergymen’swives, very remote and academic”(pp xvii–xviii), and quotesMadeline Linford’s conception ofher own ideal reader, a quarter of acentury earlier: “I saw her as analoof, rigid and highly criticalfigure, a kind of Big Sister, vigilantfor lapses of taste, dignity and liter-ary English” (p xvii). Does thiswoman read the Guardian now?Does she still exist?Women of the Revolution fasci-

nates and frustrates in equal meas-ure. A thematically organisedvolume, with stronger editorialpresence, more contextualisationof contributors, and a selection ofreaders’ responses, would be anexcellent way to mark the cente-nary of women talking to womenthrough the pages of theGuardian.

� Una McCormack is lecturer increative writing at Anglia RuskinUniversity, Cambridge, and hastaught organisational theory at

Judge Business School, Cambridge,for the past fifteen years. She is alsothe author of six science fiction andfantasy novels, and numerousshort stories in those genres.

BIBLIOGRAPHY– Kira Cochrane (ed.), Women ofthe Revolution: Forty Years ofFeminism, Guardian Books,London 2012

– Michael Herbert, “Pioneerwoman journalist recalled innew Manchester walk”, 2012.Available at: http://www.g u a r d i a n . c o . u k / u k / t h e - nor therner /2012/aug/14/women-women. Accessed 6September 2012.

– Caitlin Moran, How to Be aWoman, Ebury Press, London2011.

– Mary Stott (ed.), WomenTalking: An Anthology from theGuardian Women’s Page1922–35, 1957–71, PandoraPress, London 1987.

– Natasha Walter, The NewFeminism, Virago, London1998.

THE NEW FEW:WEALTHANDPOWER INMODERN BRITAIN

Like so much of our politicalvocabulary, including “poli-tics” itself, “oligarchy” comes

to us from Greek, a compound ofoligoi (few) and arche (rule):hence, the rule of the few. In ThePolitics, Book III, Aristotle arguesthat the proper goal of the state isto secure the common good anddistinguishes three basic types ofconstitution according as the stateis ruled by one person (a monarchor sole ruler), a small number of

citizens or the citizen body as awhole. Each of these arrangementsmay work, but all too often rulersuse political power to further theirown interests or the interests of aparticular class. When this hap-pens, the polity degenerates:monarchy into tyranny, “aristocra-cy” (literally, government by the“best” of the citizens) into oli-garchy, and democracy into therule of the poor, who are many,over the rich, who are few. In the

more common case where the fewrule the many, the few who ruleare the rich. Thus, as Aristotle can-didly acknowledges, oligarchy isvirtually synonymous with plutoc-racy, another word invented by theGreeks.

Aristotle’s world was one ofsmall city-states in which citizen-ship was a privileged status:women, slaves, immigrants and, inmost cases, poor native freemenwere excluded from the body

Women oftheRevolutionfascinatesandfrustrates inequalmeasure.

Where thefew rule themany, thefew who ruleare rich.

While Ferdinand Mount makes some acute observations aboutwealth and power, his dismissal of the role of ideology andantipathy to the state are serious flaws argues David Purdy.


politic. At the same time, economicactivity was integrated with otherspheres of social life and the love ofmoney was considered pathologi-cal (recall the cautionary tale ofKing Midas). Indeed, the Greekword “economy”, from oikos(house or home) and nomos (lawor norm), meant the managementof the household. The emergenceof what we understand by “theeconomy” – a quasi-autonomousrealm set apart from householdsand the public realm, oiled bymoney, fuelled by credit, animatedby the lure of gain or the fear ofloss, and co-ordinated by imper-sonal market forces which govern-ments may variously unleash,support, regulate, mitigate or curb,but which they cannot ignore orsuppress – still lay some two thou-sand years in the future.

In The New Few, FerdinandMount sets out to describe,explain and reflect on three things:the concentration of wealth in thehands of Britain’s business elite;the concentration of power in thehands of its political elite; and thesymbiosis of money and powerthough the interweaving of busi-ness and politics. As one mightexpect from an eminent man ofletters who was head of theDowning Street Policy Unit underMrs Thatcher, the book is wellinformed, elegantly written andforcefully argued. Its scathing ver-dict on the two halves of our rulingclass will come as no surprise toreaders of Perspectives, but when aliberal-minded, small c conserva-tive condemns the extremeinequalities of income that arenow tolerated in Britain, alongsidethe steady erosion of democraticinstitutions, we can be sure thatthe disease of oligarchy is faradvanced, even if we do not shareeither his proposals for curing it orhis enthusiasm for the Lib-Concoalition.

THE GAP BETWEEN RICH ANDPOORFor thirty years after the SecondWorld War, the gap between richand poor in Britain grew narrower– not by much and seldom as the

result of deliberate policy, but nar-rower nevertheless. Over the pastthirty years, the gap has widened.On average, real wages have nearlydoubled, but only 8% of thatgrowth went to earners in thebottom half of the pay distribu-tion. Out of every £100 generatedby the economy, the share going tothe bottom 10% fell from £16 to£12, while the share going to thetop 1% rose from £2 to £5, if weinclude their bonuses, as weshould because these have nowbecome an integral part of theexpected pay package. Matterswere even worse for those at thebottom of the heap in the US,where real wage rates scarcely roseat all in the 1980s and 1990s andfamilies managed to maintain orimprove their living standards onlyby dint of more family membersgoing out to work, working longerhours, taking less holiday or takingon more debt.

Conventional explanations forthese trends do not stand up.Changes to the tax system infavour of top earners mightaccount for the growing inequalityin post-tax incomes. But it is theupsurge in the pre-tax incomes oftop earners that stands out. Overthe past ten years, the average payratio of CEO to employee hasrisen from 47 to 128, and even theonset of the great recession hasfailed to halt or slow down itsascent, let alone reverse it. In 2011the total remuneration of FTSE100 executives rose, on average,by 12%, while the pay of theiremployees rose by 1% at a timewhen consumer prices were risingby almost 5%. Such disparities arewidely attributed to the unevenimpact of globalisation.Managerial talents, it is claimed,can now be marketed internation-ally and command corresponding-ly high rewards, whereas wages atlower levels of the job hierarchyare either depressed by competi-tion from immigrants or undercutby workers in China and Indiawho are willing to work for a pit-tance.

But, Mount asks, why doesglobal competition not bear down

on the pay of managers and pro-fessionals, just as it does for work-ers in call centres and car factories?After all, there are millions of well-educated Indians who can handle aspreadsheet, could easily acquirethose precious managerial skills (ifthey haven’t already), and are will-ing to travel anywhere in search ofbetter opportunities. The runawaygrowth of executive pay over thepast decade looks less like thework of the invisible hand andmore like an abuse of marketpower. The pace was set by the“masters of the universe” in thederegulated financial sector;bosses in the non-financial busi-ness and public sectors followedsuit; and both groups were eggedon by political leaders such as PeterMandelson, who famously pro-fessed himself “intensely relaxedabout those who become filthyrich, as long as they pay theirtaxes.” In short, a self-perpetuat-ing oligarchy has managed tomanipulate the public and privateinstitutions that they control andto scoop the lion’s share of therewards. How has this comeabout?

MANAGERIAL REVOLUTIONSAND THE EROSION OFDEMOCRACYMount argues that Britain’s newoligarchs have exploited opportu-nities for self-aggrandisement cre-ated by long-term changes in theinstitutions of capitalism. Someseparation of ownership from con-trol is bound to occur as businessesgrow in size and the number ofshareholders increases. But theintroduction of limited liability forinvestors in the mid-nineteenthcentury greatly accelerated thistendency and turned the publiccompany – more aptly named inFrench la société anonyme – intothe dominant form of businessorganisation. Investors, for theirpart, began to spread their hold-ings more widely, diminishing therisks they ran, but surrenderingcontrol over the company to theboard of directors and its agents,who for legal purposes were thecompany and enjoyed great lati-

The New Few,or a Very BritishOligarchy:Power andInequality inBritain NowFerdinand Mount(Simon andSchuster, 2012)


BOOK REVIEWS

tude in pursuing their own inter-ests, not least in the matter ofremuneration.

Executive autonomy was furtherenhanced as individual investors,large and small, began to put theirmoney into unit trusts and othercollective funds. In 1963, privateindividuals held 54% of UKshares. By 1981, that figure haddropped to 28%. By 2011 it wasbelow 10%. The fund managerswho now exercise shareholderfunctions have little interest inanything beyond the flux of thestock market and their own per-formance bonuses. Thus, alongsidethe first managerial revolution thataffected the whole economy, therehas been a second inner manageri-al revolution within finance. Nowit is the money managers, not theultimate owners of the money,who rule the roost, routinelythrowing their block votes behindthe company directors with whomthey share the spoils. (The recentspate of shareholder protestsagainst exorbitant executive payand exiguous dividend payouts isnotable for its late arrival, limitedambition and scant success.)

Mount rightly insists that therule of the few is not part of someworld-historical process, pointingout that the gap between rich andpoor is nowhere near as wide inScandinavia or Japan, nor is itwidening at the same pace. And itis perfectly possible to achieve eco-nomic growth without piling upmountains of debt, encouragingreckless speculation and riskingfinancial collapse: during the longpost-war boom, banks were strict-ly regulated and prudently man-aged, the financial sector did notcommand a pay premium over therest of the economy, and therewere no financial crises. If therehas been little opposition to therise of the new few and the preda-tory form of capitalism over whichit presides, it is because Britain’sdemocratic institutions have atro-phied: through the hollowing outof political parties, the fall in elec-toral participation, the emascula-tion of local government, thedemise of Cabinet Government,

the decline of the House ofCommons and the transfer of sov-ereign powers to the EuropeanUnion. The result is a political elitethat resembles and merges with itsbusiness counterpart, much as thepigs in Animal Farm came to looklike and mix with the farmers.

THE UNFINISHED CAREER OFNEO-LIBERALISMThe concept of neo-liberalismdoes not figure in Mount’s argu-ment and he explicitly discountsthe importance of ideologies.Perhaps he thinks that neo-liberal-ism is not an ideology or, alterna-tively, that it was one, but that itswork was done when MrsThatcher had finished dismantlingthe post-war settlement, a projectto which he himself made a smallcontribution. Either way, he wouldbe mistaken. By continually trans-forming itself, neo-liberalism hascontinued to transform our world.Its latest version (neo-liberalism3.0) is still being improvised inresponse to the financial crash of2007–8 and the slump that fol-lowed it.

The nearest Mount gets to a dis-cussion of the role of ideas,whether as guides to policy or asbalm for the soul, is an exposé ofthree “illusions” which, he argues,have variously deceived, desensi-tised or disarmed us: that “themarket is always right”, that “big isbeautiful” and that “complexityequals progress”. Nothing he sayshere is inconsistent with recognis-ing the career of neo-liberalismand its impact on our culture: inlegitimising avarice, delegitimisingthe state and fetishising themarket. Indeed, in some respects,his argument would be strength-

ened: it helps to explain, for exam-ple, why the current generation ofbusiness leaders seems indifferentto the effects of rampant inequali-ty on social cohesion and why ourpolitical leaders are so terrifiedthat footloose capital will relocateif they assert themselves.

In other respects, however, par-ticularly when it comes to policy,Mount’s antipathy to the stateleads him astray. On the issue thathas dominated British politics forthe past four years – how to escapefrom the slump – he merely wringshis hands at “this appallingdeficit”, allowing his aversion to“big government” to trump thecase for fiscal stimulus, as if arecovery based on private borrow-ing had some intrinsic virtue thatwould be denied to one led bypublic borrowing. His attitude tothe European Union is similarlymisdirected. Brussels andFrankfurt may harbour a suprana-tional, empire-building oligarchy,but repatriating powers andresponsibilities to EU memberstates is not going to resolve theunderlying tension between globalcapitalism and national democra-cy. If the EU is part of the problem,it is also part of the solution. Thesame applies to the nation-stateitself. Mount’s remedies for oli-garchy – localism, shareholderaction to regulate executive payand campaigns for a living wage –are all worth pursuing, but areunlikely to succeed in breaking upthe concentration of wealth andpower without sustained supportfrom government. A big societyneeds a strong state.

� David Purdy is a member ofDemocratic Left Scotland.

Back issues ofPerspectives areavailable online to

download inPDF format.

www.democraticleftscotland.org.uk

It is perfectlypossible toachieveeconomicgrowthwithoutpiling upmountains ofdebt,encouragingrecklessspeculationand riskingfinancialcollapse.


TRUTH, AUTHENTICITYAND THE STORY OF LEADERSHIP

Do you know the nameEduardo Sanchez Junco? Ididn’t. He was the man who

took hold of a moderately success-ful Spanish magazine called Hola!and turned it into the epitome ofthe “froth of life” journalism thateventually made celebrity the mostdesirable and bankable commodityin the western world, not to men-tion the principal means of com-munication between those whowould lead us and … well … the usthey would lead. Hola! wentglobal of course as Hello! andspawned a thousand feral childrensuch as OK! magazine, the OprahWinfrey show and theConservative Party Conference.

Alright, it is unfair to single outthe Conservatives – these days allparty conferences are shallowexercises in appealing to ourappetites for celebrity rather thansubstance. Just watch MittRomney entirely failing to discusspolicy options, but instead tryingto present his weirdo Mormonbackground and vast wealth assomehow the archetype of theAmerican everyman: “I was bornin a little log cabin in Salt LakeCity …”

TRUTH AND AUTHENTICITYLeadership of all kinds is depend-ent on “story”. Gavin Esler is lessconcerned here with the merits ofpolicies than how well the story istold. “Truth”, as he says, has yield-ed to “authenticity”. Pictures aremore effective than words. Run anews item about cuts in fundingfor disabled people while showingfootage of government ministersat a centre for disabled children,and the pictures are what sticks.But by the same token, will

anyone ever forget GeorgeOsborne being booed while pre-senting gold medals at theParalympics?

So isn’t this just another way ofsaying that image is everything? Tosome extent, although Esler pres-ents a lively and detailed analysisof the phenomenon and has somefresh things to say about it.

There are two kinds of storyhere: anecdote – and Esler has awealth of journalistic experienceto draw on – and the narrativesthat leaders use to get themselvesacross. A great storyteller, likeTony Blair, can tell a bad story, like“I invaded Iraq on flimsy and pos-sibly illegal grounds”, and riseabove it. A dismal storyteller like,say, Gordon Brown, with a goodstory, (“I saved the world financialsystem”) gets the blame for thecatastrophe. Why?

“I AM JUST LIKE YOU”“As followers or potential follow-ers we tend to care more aboutcharacter, judgement and tempera-ment than we do about the minuti-ae of the decisions our leaderstake” writes Esler. A leader’s storymust say “I am just like you, butstill worth your approval”.

Esler breaks the process downfor us into three parts: Who am I?Who are we? What is our commonpurpose? This is a universal tool. Itworks for David Cameron andBarack Obama, but also forMoses: Who am I? Moses, yourleader. Who are we? The Jews –God’s chosen people. What is ourcommon purpose? To live accord-ing to God’s commandments andreturn to the Promised Land.

It must say a lot more. It mustsay “I am like you in that we share

a background”, even when that isdemonstrably untrue. Esler hasgreat fun presenting a series of fiveanonymous, genuine, biographicalsketches of five very differentAmerican political figures andshowing that the stories theypeddle are more or less inter-changeable. Each tells a story ofbeing born in small-town circum-stances (not necessarily a smalltown – just the impression of asmall town) and being brought upin some kind of deprivation bygood folks who gave the subjecthomely American values, and theneach triumphed over some kind ofadversity to become the man orwoman he is today.

REDEMPTION STORIESRedemption stories, whether it isGeorge W. Bush’s alcoholism orBill Clinton’s satyriasis, go downparticularly well with the elec-torate. But you have to tell themright. Gordon Brown again pro-vides the best counter-example.He had a truly heroic adversitystory in the sporting accident thatcost him the sight in one eye anddamaged the other, rising nonethe-less to the top of the politicalladder. Esler wonders why, debat-ing with Cameron and Clegg,Brown didn’t simply say “I can seebetter with one eye than these fel-lows can with two.”

Focussing on the negative is ashorthand way of making thepoint, but to his credit Esler ismuch more interested in the suc-cessful practice of telling stories.He shows in detail how it is doneand it is a highly engaging seminar.The book has pretensions to beingan instruction manual as much asan overview, but Esler is entertain-ing company and effortlesslybrings this interesting subject intohigh definition. I put the bookdown thinking “I sort of knew allthat”, but actually I now know it alot better than I did before.

� Tim Haigh is a regular contribu-tor to Perspectives. His exclusiveinterview with US congressmanTodd Akin appears overleaf, onpage 42.

Lessons fromthe TopGavin Esler(Profile Books,2012)

Tim Haigh enjoys reading a bookthat tells him things he probablyalready knew.

Turning our attention to the United States, wehave been much entertained by aspiring senatorTodd Akin, who gave an interview which seemed

to suggest that he was an ignorant misogynist whobelieves that even victims of rape should be deniedabortion on the grounds that if it was a real or, as hequaintly put it, “legitimate” rape, pregnancy isimpossible. This thoughtful and trenchant politicaltitan has been somewhat criticised for his innocuousviews. As a public service Tim flew to Missouri andhelpfully conducted the following interview.

Tim: “Congressman, you have controversial viewsabout life, don’t you?”

Congressman Akin: “The Bible teaches us that whena person is killed he doesn’t necessarily die.”

Tim: “He doesn’t?”Congressman Akin: “Not if he has been legitimately

killed. Doctors tell us that if a person islegitimately killed, the body has ways of notbeing dead.”

Tim: “Doctors say this?”Congressman Akin: “When I say doctors, obviously I

mean swivel-eyed theologians with no medicalknowledge. And by the same token, economiststell us that when people have no money, youmake them poorer if you give them some.Furthermore, the more guns people have, thefewer people get shot. Also, when you heatthings up it makes them colder.”

Tim: “Really?”Congressman Akin: “I’m sorry, I misspoke. I meant if

you legitimately heat them up.”Tim: “These are controversial views, Congressman.

Even Sarah Palin has doubts about some ofthem.”

Congressman Akin: “Sarah Palin! Hah! A dangerousrationalist. Did you know that she still thinks

the world is six thousand years old, as taught bythat Archbishop Ussher guy.”

Tim: “You don’t accept that the world is only sixthousand years old?”

Congressman Akin: “Hell, no. Do you know howUssher came up with that figure? He wentthrough the bible counting the generations fromAdam, and simply added them up.”

Tim: “Which is, what? An unreliable method?”Congressman Akin: “It’s scientific! Using actual

evidence is against God’s law.”Tim: “So how old is the earth?”Congressman Akin: “Well, let’s see, now – I am sixty-

five years old. So that would make the Earth …(Congressman Akin counts on his fingers)“… sixty-five years and one day old. And by theway, did you know that black people choose tobe black.”

Tim: “What?”Congressman Akin: “We have programmes to

re-orient their pigmentation. Nobody has to beblack if they don’t want to be. It’s a lifestylechoice. And then they want to be able to getmarried like white folks. Not on my watch,mister. If God had meant people to be blackthey’d have been born that way. I blame themothers. These are all unarguable truths, Tim.Somewhere in Albama there is at least one guywith a mail-order PhD from a Christianuniversity who has confirmed each and everyone of these facts in writing. And one morething: birds fly better if you break their wings.”

Tim: “Thank you, Congressman. I think weunderstand you now.”

� Tim Haigh is a critic, reviewer and broadcaster. Hispodcasts on books and literature are available onlineat http://timhaighreadsbooks.com/

A SENATORIALCANDIDATE ISINTERVIEWED

Tim Haigh goes Stateside to get thedefinitive interview withcongressman Todd Akin (picturedright) who is pitching for the USsenate in November’s elections.


Sarah Palin!Hah! Adangerousrationalist.

DIARY


Icommute daily from Linlithgowto Edinburgh and pass much ofmy time engaged in people

watching. My preference is for the9.06 a.m. train – it’s quicker andgets me a seat.

Recently, I was struck at howone of my fellow commutersreminded me of a former boss, soI paid particular attention. As thetrain drew into the station, westarted making our way to thedoors. This man was clearly in ahurry as was the younger mannext to him; it started with slightpushing, a gentle shove followedby an exchange of angry looks andjust as the train doors opened, theolder man head-butted theyounger one and a brawl ensuedon the platform. As I stepped inand tried to separate them,commuters walked past untilfinally a guard came across tointervene, observing that suchevents are far from unusual:“People are under a lot pressurejust now, tempers are frayed andemotions are bubbling away at thesurface – I guess it’s one way ofclosing down an argument.”

The event left me shaken forthe whole day, a day punctuatedby parents yelling at theirchildren, tired passengerssquabbling over bags on seats andan inspector who lost it with acommuter because she hadforgotten to put the date on herflexi-pass. Following the logic ofthe morning guard, I wondered ifanyone would respond with awhack and have done with it.

In 2007, Sue Bradford, a NewZealand Green Party MPintroduced a member’s bill whichremoved the legal defence of“reasonable force” for parentsprosecuted for assault on theirchildren. The Bill was successfullypassed, but the debate was highlypolarised and resulted in death

threats issued to MsBradford.Last summer, David

Lammy MP called for the lawon smacking to be relaxed inEngland. Apparently hisconstituents had told him that theriots had happened because they’dhad been unable to discipline theirchildren – and he’d agreed, notingthat previous governments hadmade parents “no longersovereign in their own home”,referring to the tightening of thelaw on smacking in 2004 ChildrenAct. Lammy said that the law(which banned unreasonablephysical chastisement beyond“reddening of the skin”) was anonsense, because black parentsmight end up imposing harsherpunishments as their children’sskin might not show bruising. Atthe same time, he called for thelaw to be relaxed, presumably soparents could exert more force.He further noted that it was easierfor middle class parents to controltheir children without smackingthem, but not poor children …confused and insulting.

Scottish parents have thedefence of “justifiable assault”.During the passage of theCriminal Justice (Scotland) Act in2003, the law on physicalpunishment was widely debated.The Scottish parliament voted torestrict the scope of “reasonablechastisement” by setting outcriteria for determining whetheran assault on a child was“justifiable”. We witnessed theunedifying spectacle of MSPsarguing about at what age shakingshould be permitted and whatconstituted an implement (withone MSP suggesting that a sockmight be considered …).

Of course clear and consistentboundaries need to be set forchildren, but the evidenceillustrates that not only issmacking ineffective as apunishment, but the message itgives out is that problems can besolved through violence – moreoften when everything else hasfailed. And when is it OK tosmack? A child who is pre-speech?

A child with a disability? At whatage does one stop? And how doesit make children and youngpeople feel? Does it work, or doesit breed resentment, fear orhumiliation?

Save the Children asked agroup of children who smackschildren. A 5 year old responded:“Their parents or your mummy oryour daddy or your grandad oryour auntie or your grandma orpeople in your house – a bigperson has to hit a little personbecause they’re naughty.”

What is it with big peopleimposing their will on thosesmaller and weaker? Whatmessage does it send out? Whatdoes hitting children teach themabout resolving difficulties?Whacking children to me is a signof failure. It means that at the firstsign of conflict, the temptation isto rely on violence to solve theproblem. Is this what we want?

That the law is confusing onboth sides of the border isobvious, but the best way ofremoving this confusion is to bansmacking altogether. Perhapsthen, parents and others mightfind alternative, more positiveways of disciplining their childrenand maybe they won’t end upwhacking each other when theygrow up to be adult commuters.The Welsh assembly are currentlyworking to encourage thegovernment to introducelegislation that will remove the“reasonable punishment”defence, made easier by the factthat their ministers are bound tohave due regard to therequirements of the Conventionon the Rights of the Child whenpassing legislation.

In short, if you believe thatchildren have rights, that they arenot simply possessions of theirparents, they should receive equalprotection under the law in theway adults do … and if anyone isany doubt that the law needschanging, check out To Train up aChild, by Michael and Debi Pearl.

�Maire McCormack is a memberof Democratic Left Scotland.

Maire McCormackdons The Hat andwitnesses a brawl.

Perhapsparentsmight findalternative,morepositiveways ofdiscipliningtheir childrenand maybethey won’tend upwhackingeach otherwhen theygrow up tobe adultcommuters.

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