Will auld acquaintance be forgot as Scots go it alone?

The Times (London, UK) ^ | March 31, 2007 | Martin Fletcher

[GMMAC]

Will auld acquaintance be forgot as Scots go it alone?
30 years ago Gordon Brown was the toast of student radicals in Edinburgh. Now he is seen as part of the Establishment — and out of touch with the Scotland’s new direction.

Martin Fletcher
timesonline.co.uk
March 31, 2007

In 1974 Gordon Brown was Rector of Edinburgh University, elected after a campaign that featured the “Brown Sugars” — girls sporting miniskirts and T-shirts emblazoned “Gordon for Me”.

I was a first-year student, and remember him as a striking figure with long black hair and trenchcoat, surrounded by acolytes. He was intense and ambitious, but he also lived with Princess Margarita of Romania, threw celebrated parties and enjoyed an almost glamorous reputation.

As editor of Student, besides filling the pages with bare flesh, his great scoop was to catch the university lying about its investments in apartheid South Africa. He used the rectorship — traditionally a ceremonial post — to flay a fusty university establishment. When Sir Michael Swann, the principal, sought to stop him chairing meetings of the University Court, the Duke of Edinburgh, the university’s chancellor, intervened: Princess Margarita was the Duke’s goddaughter.

While the young firebrand was shaking up Edinburgh, another movement was shaking up Scotland. Buoyed by the discovery of North Sea oil, the Scottish Nationalist Party won 11 Westminster seats that October, and forced Harold Wilson’s weak and panicky Labour Government to concede a referendum on devolution in 1979 that only narrowly failed.

Three decades on, Mr Brown will shortly become my prime minister, not rector, and the SNP is surging again. A poll for The Times this week suggested that the party was heading for a victory in the Scottish Parliament elections on May 3, paving the way for a referendum on independence by 2010. But today it is Mr Brown who represents an unpopular Establishment in distant London, Mr Brown who looks out of step with Scottish public opinion, and Mr Brown who faces the prospect — albeit remote — of finding himself prime minister of a foreign country. How the wheel has turned.

Back in the 1970s Edinburgh was an austere place that even the Bay City Rollers struggled to enliven. Pubs shut at 10pm and never opened on Sundays. Staid life assurance companies pottered along in genteel Charlotte Square. The economy was wretched. The city felt cut off from the world. It was an uncomfortable place to be an English student. The Scottish nationalism of those days was angry, confrontational and fiercely antiEnglish, as summed up by the SNP slogan: “It’s Scotland’s oil”.

The theatrical sensation of 1974 was John McGrath’s play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, which charted the exploitation of Scotland from the 19th-century Highland clearances to the plundering of North Sea oil. English students were resented, and regularly told that we were taking Scottish students’ places.

Today, behind its immutable granite face, Edinburgh is a city transformed. It is cosmopolitan and fun. Dismal bars and corner shops selling that peculiarly disgusting Scottish invention, the bridie, have been replaced by fancy pubs and classy alfresco restaurants. The Grassmarket, Seventies refuge of down-and-outs, is now hip. The breweries, whose sickly smell blanketed the city, have gone. You hear foreign accents everywhere, and can fly directly to Europe and America without changing in London.

Edinburgh has become Europe’s fifth biggest financial centre, employing 135,000 people. The Royal Bank of Scotland is a world top-ten bank with a market capitalisation larger than Coca-Cola. Elegant New Town houses sell for a million or two.

Gavin Don, a Scot who returned from London to set up a corporate finance business in 1994, says that as an Edinburgh student in the 1970s he used to play Porsche-spotting. “You could go a whole year and not see one. Now they are two a penny. Bentleys are pretty commonplace, and Rolls-Royces are not unheard of.” There is a cultural revival, too. The Scottish executive is pouring money into the arts. The bestselling authors Iain Rankin, Iain Banks, Alexander McCall Smith, Irvine Welsh and J.K. Rowling all live in or near the city. Its once-proud publishing industry is booming again.

Where Edinburgh leads, the rest of Scotland is slowly following. The country still has pockets of intense poverty, but its unemployment rate has fallen below the UK average, its per capita GDP is higher than most English regions, and two decades of steady population decline have been reversed.

As self-confidence has risen so the nature of Scottish nationalism has changed. It is more positive, less Anglophobic. It emphasises future potential, not past grievances. It asks merely for Scotland to be liberated so it can prosper within the European Union like a dozen other countries as small or smaller. Indeed, the EU allows Scotland to break away from England without condemning itself to isolation on Europe’s northern fringe.

Alex Salmond, the SNP’s wily leader, is still demanding the repatriation of North Sea oil revenues and the removal of nuclear missiles from the Clyde. But as he seeks to portray his party as mainstream, not extreme, he emphasises a desire for cooperation not confrontation with Westminster, and avoids overt England-bashing. He says an independent Scotland would keep the Queen and the pound.

In St Andrew Square I asked a dozen Scots to sum up the English in one word. The answers were not flattering — “pompous”, “egotistical”, “smug”, “arrogant”, “loud”, “pig-headed”. But they were given with smiles, and for all the tales of Scots backing Trinidad and Tobago against England in the football World Cup their antipathy to sassenachs appears more muted. Indeed, Flower of Scotland, the unofficial national anthem, which was written for The Corries in 1967 and celebrates England’s defeat at Bannockburn, seems a little out of tune with the times. “People are a tad embarrassed by it,” one veteran Scottish journalist said.

What has undoubtedly weakened, however, is the Scots’ sense of Britishness. Three hundred years after the Act of Union England and Scotland no longer have a common enemy in France. The British Empire, on which Scotland’s 19th-century prosperity was built, has gone. Memories of Scottish soldiers fighting alongside the English in two world wars have faded. Scottish industries such as shipbuilding and coal that depended on London subsidies have been privatised or closed. Margaret Thatcher’s use of socialist Scotland as a test-bed for hated policies such as the poll tax fuelled Scottish disenchantment with Westminster.

A recent British Social Attitudes Survey found four fifths of Scots consider themselves Scottish first and British second. The Scottish Saltire, flown only by a few wild-eyed radicals in the 1970s, is everywhere in Edinburgh, and the Union Jack has largely disappeared. It does fly outside The Scotsman newspaper — but only at the insistence of Andrew Neil, its former editor-in-chief.

At the same time the much-derided Scottish Parliament, which the Scot George Robertson, a former Defence Secretary, said would kill separatism “stone dead”, appears merely to have fostered a sense of Scottishness. It receives more coverage than Westminster in the Scottish media and The Times poll this week showed 52 per cent of Scots want it to have more power, only 7 per cent less.

The other great change since the 1970s is England’s attitude to Scottish independence. Polls suggest that an idea unthinkable then is today quite popular.

Many English resent Scots receiving £1,500 more per capita in public spending each year, and that the Government requires the support of Scottish MPs to ram through controversial legislation such as university top-up fees and foundation hospitals that do not apply north of the border. They are offended by Scotland’s perceived Anglophobia. The English have yet to back Roger Federer against Andy Murray, but my equally unscientific survey of a dozen English colleagues produced adjectives about the Scots just as unflattering — “difficult”, “chippy”, “aggressive”, “ungrateful”, “angry”, “brooding”.

Few minded if Scotland broke away. As the Saltire flies in Scotland, so the flag of St George has become increasingly common in England. It is as if the Union Jack, like the UK, is breaking down into its constituent parts.

All this leaves Mr Brown in a hole. As a Scot preparing to move into No 10 he needs to reassure the English, and has delivered no fewer than ten speeches or statements on the importance of Britishness since late 2004. He opposes further devolution. The Raith Rovers fan even cited Paul Gascoigne’s goal against Scotland in Euro 96 as a favourite football moment.

But the more Mr Brown champions Britishness, the more out of touch he looks in Scotland — and the more he fuels his compatriots’ disaffection with Labour before next month’s elections.

Scots dislike Tony Blair, whom they consider neo-Thatcherite. They hate his war in Iraq. Today’s equivalent of The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil is The Black Watch, which tells of Scottish soldiers going to fight a pointless war foisted on them by an English Prime Minister. Mr Brown is widely seen in Scotland as the Iraq war’s paymaster.

In Edinburgh in the Seventies, Mr Brown wrote his doctoral thesis on how Labour established itself as the alternative to the Conservatives in Scotland in the early 20th century. Its battle now is to prevent itself being usurped by the SNP.

The stakes are enormous. Were Scotland to gain independence Labour — shorn of its 39 Scottish MPs — would never win power in England again.

Nationalists head for power

–– A Populus poll for The Times this week put the SNP ahead of Labour in both the first-past-the-post and proportional-representation sections

–– The Nationalists are on track to win 50 seats in the 129-seat Scottish Parliament, seven more than Labour. The Lib Dems would have 18 MSPs, the Conservatives 17 and the Greens one

–– A majority of Scots (52 per cent) are in favour of more devolved powers for their Parliament. Just over one in four (27 per cent) backed full independence

–– On the constituency or first-past-the-post vote, the SNP is on 38 per cent; Labour 28; Lib Dems 15; Tories 14; others 6 In the proportional representation section, the SNP is on 35 per cent; Labour 30; Lib Dems 14; Tories 14

Source: www.populuslimited.com

[Jack_Macca]

My friend, and anyone else reading this, I think calling the present people of Scotland, Ireland and the Ukraine the “dregs” speaks for itself.

It suggests that those who were forced to or decided to emigrate from (which happens in every nation still - even from Canada) as somehow being genetically superior to those who did not travel is racialism.

You are almost certainly NOT a racist, but that is what you are meaning. Don’t get all high and mighty. You insulted first.

Two things:

1. The Scottish “dregs” you mentioned created such things as Penicillin, modern antiseptics, radar, the MRI scanner, TV, pneumatic tyre, pedal bike and the first cloned animal.

2. Don’t think for a minute you are Scottish. I know for a fact that real Scots would laugh at the very suggestion.

[GMMAC]

With their similarly bloody hands, an Englishman (or one of their toadies) has no more moral right to pontificate as to "real" Scots than a Russian has to opine on matters to do with Ukrainians.

Why? Because, quite plainly, both the English & Russians are cut from the same cloth & guilty of committing acts of genocide against their neighbors: not somewhere back in the mists of time but, well within living memory.

Both share the same imagined sense of superiority and related, seemingly compulsive, need to lord it over those around them whom they deem to be their inferiors.

Listing Scots' inventions only confirms the delusion of England's imperial fantasies & attendant rationalizations.

The records of accomplishment of Scottish & Ukrainian expatriates who refused to live under foreign tyranny speak for themselves & stand in marked contrast to the dysfunctional, morally bankrupt, socialistic hellholes which their nations of origin have now become.

Surely the Scots before the Clearances would have given short shift to anti-family (anti-Clan) Marxist claptrap like attempting to outlaw the terms "mother" & "father" and more recent authentic Ukrainian patriots, like Bandera & Sheptytsky, wouldn't now be engaged in the sort of petty squabbles which amount to effectively throwing away hard won independence & putting out a de facto welcome mat for the Russians' return?

[Jack_Macca]

With their similarly bloody hands, an Englishman (or one of their toadies) has no more moral right to pontificate as to "real" Scots than a Russian has to opine on matters to do with Ukrainians.

Who mentioned the English?

Why? Because, quite plainly, both the English & Russians are cut from the same cloth & guilty of committing acts of genocide against their neighbors: not somewhere back in the mists of time but, well within living memory.

I don't particularly care about the Russians, but suggesting the English committed genocide (presumably against the Scots) is so laughable as to be dangerous. Do you even know what genocide is?

Both share the same imagined sense of superiority and related, seemingly compulsive, need to lord it over those around them whom they deem to be their inferiors.

I think you are generalising a bit too much here. From distance and myths come ignorance. The English people are not different from anyone else. Some good, some bad - unless you are getting into your racial and genetic theories again.

Listing Scots' inventions only confirms the delusion of England's imperial fantasies & attendant rationalizations.

Eh? How does showing your Scottish "dregs" creating so much for humanity have anything to do with England?

The records of accomplishment of Scottish & Ukrainian expatriates who refused to live under foreign tyranny speak for themselves & stand in marked contrast to the dysfunctional, morally bankrupt, socialistic hellholes which their nations of origin have now become.

Erm who is the Queen of Canada? This foreign tyranny you talk about is nonsense. If you had any sense of history (real history, not mytholigise tartan rubbish) then you would know that the people of the British Isles have ALWAYS fought each other, English killing Scots, Scots killing English, Irish killing Scots, English killing Irish, Welsh fighting English, Scots and English fighting Scots and English and so on...

Again, your insistence that those who went to another place are somehow genetically superior to the "dregs" is just racialism, but also provably stupid.

I once met a pretty stupid Canadian, who came to Canada from Serbia during the Yugoslavian conflicts. Are you suggesting because he left Serbia to go to Canada that he is morally and genetically superior to those who did not?

Think how ridiculous that sounds? Scientifically there is no genetic difference between the Scots of Wallace or the Scots of today - but you are saying there is.

Maybe your mythology was hiding this from you, but you are claiming that those who left Scotland were genetically superior to those who did not. As if it was a big test and everyone had all the facts laid out. Far from being a rational choice of some ubermensch, it was in fact forced on many. Unless you are telling me every immigrant to the USA, Canada and Britain today are all genetically and morally superior to those in their native homes? A stupid point really now isn't it?

Surely the Scots before the Clearances would have given short shift to anti-family (anti-Clan) Marxist claptrap

I have to cut you short there! "Anti-Clan"? LOL. Only pretend Scots with North American accents who call themselves "Clan leader Mcshuggle" believe in all that nonsense. For example, these clans of yours have tartan right? If you do a bit of research you will find specific tartan for clans was a modern invention, invented by a clever Englishman of all people. The people wore old cloth, that's all that was made a specific way in one area. Stop watching Brigadoon for gawd's sake.

like attempting to outlaw the terms "mother" & "father"

I hope you don't mean this "attempt" happened in Scotland because you are scaring me with how little you know. It would be as laughable to do that in Scotland as in Canada. Where do you get this stuff?

and more recent authentic Ukrainian patriots, like Bandera & Sheptytsky, wouldn't now be engaged in the sort of petty squabbles which amount to effectively throwing away hard won independence & putting out a de facto welcome mat for the Russians' return?

Don't know or care about Russia or the Ukraine so I'll leave that to you.

On a conciliatory note I'll say one thing. There is nothing wrong in being proud of a Scottish ancestry, but if you don't make an attempt to understand Scotland as it is today, without myths of the ignorant and half-a-brained then you also fail to understand the past and who you are.

Have you ever been to Scotland? Do you know that far from being this marxist haven, the Capital city is a financial hub of the UK? That far from being under tyranny the English moan that Scots are running England. The UK cabinet is full of Scots. Tony Blair was born in Scotland and the next PM Gordon Brown is Scottish too. That Glasgow is second only to London in the number of big malls and stores it has. Your wife would love it.

I think your search for identity has led you down this path. Throughout history those scared to lose their identity grasp ever tighter and proclaim they are the chosen ones and the others are not worthy.

Like EVERY country Scotland has it's good and it's bad things, but if you embrace it you will discover an ancient, yet paradoxically, new nation finding it's feet again. You will find a robust yet very friendly people welcoming you. Far from this marxist myth you seem to have you will find an economic society not much different from your own.

Instead of hating a country that does not exist, why not go to it, learn about it and be a part of it. Far from dishonouring your Scottish ancestry you would fulfilling it.

[GMMAC]

First off - as you're new here, in the unlikely event you somehow last and with respect to inadvertent duplicate posts - hitting the "abuse" button below one or the other, explaining briefly you've erred & requesting Admin Mod removal of same is the appropriate remedial action.

Self-evident examples of genocide already alluded to would include in the aftermath of Culloden massacring wounded on the field of battle as well as tracking down & summarily executing legitimate as well as imagined participants for months afterward, the open 'ethnic cleansing' inherent in the Clearances and, more recently, countless events in Ireland including systemic mistreatment of the Catholic minority within still occupied Irish territory & sundry English "war crimes" following the 1916 "Easter Rising".

There are no better examples of English imagined superiority & related openly condescending bigotry & arrogant ingratitude than the first-hand accounts of Canadian, Australian, etc. WW1&2-era Veterans with which 'colonial' history books literally overflow!

Citing your Queen - for now - tacitly 'ruling' over Canada only makes my case since, along with your museums filled with German Nazi-like plunder, she's plainly a mere feudal relic and yet another pathetic vestige of a now rightly collapsed Empire.

See: Use of ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ Too “Homophobic”, Scottish Nurses Told ~ as posted on FR 02/16/2007 7:48:03 PM EST

While most Scots expatriates are well aware of the bogus 'histories' of many alleged Tartans, my own happens to be the oldest authenticated one & is well documented as being Clan specific for many centuries prior to the advent of Victorian-era forgeries come marketing scams.

Far from being ignorant of history as you'd contend, I'd refer you to Scotland's magnificent 1320 "Declaration of Arbroath" and it's ringing words foreshadowing Scots-American Patrick Henry's over 4 centuries later: "It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honors that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."
And remind you the histories of the Scots, Irish, Polish & Ukrainian peoples are much alike in the sense all had the misfortune of having an aggressive, relentlessly imperially-minded neighbor which refused to leave them alone or recognize their inherent right to self-determination and all were repeatedly sold-out by Quislings within their own elites.
Yet, somehow all have survived and it will now be quite interesting to see how well the English fare once they too are soon compelled to go it alone.

[Jack_Macca]

I tried to be conciliatory, but you are still rambling on about things you do not understand.

As for a supposed NHS document that says nurses haven’t to say “mom” and dad” well the giveaway should be that Scots don’t say “mom” anyway! :)

I will just say this. I am Scottish. I am in my land. I know my people and history and you as a foreigner do not.

soawayandbileyerheid

[GMMAC]

Dismissing point by point refutation as "rambling" puts us right back to your initial denial.

Further, flying the Union Jack on your FR homepage reveals you as being about as "Scottish" as England's bum-boy Tony Blair.

Incidentally, it continues to quite amaze me how so many self-proclaimed 'conservatives' go on cutting Blair seemingly overall slack solely on account of his - albeit fairly commendable - so far role in the WOT when he & his vile wife are quite plainly doing Marxist societal damage on the home front which would likely make Hillary Clinton proud.

Contrast Blair with expat stock leaders like George WALKER Bush, John Howard & even our own Stephen (Clan Buchanan) Harper.

[Jack_Macca]

Further, flying the Union Jack on your FR homepage reveals you as being about as "Scottish" as England's bum-boy Tony Blair.

Once again you talk about things you do not understand. FR only gives the Union Flag and considering the Union flag is the flag of Scotland, England and Ireland in one I don't see why I shouldn't. You probably didn't know that.

I don't need to prove I am Scottish my Canadian friend. Even if I didn't want to be I am. You are not and never will be.

[GMMAC]

Yawn ... suffice to say, the authentic Scots traditions are far more alive today in the worldwide diaspora than in Scotland:
As examples, there are definitely more pipe bands Stateside and quite likely more Gaelic speakers in the Cape Breton region of Nova Scotia - alone! - than in all of Scotland.

Your on-going assumptions as to my ignorance with respect to everything from FR homepages on down reveals precisely the well-know self-important arrogance of the English & their would-be sycophants.

[Jack_Macca]

Yawn ... suffice to say, the authentic Scots traditions are far more alive today in the worldwide diaspora than in Scotland: As examples, there are definitely more pipe bands Stateside and quite likely more Gaelic speakers in the Cape Breton region of Nova Scotia - alone! - than in all of Scotland.

People not Scottish are more Scottish than the Scots? Yes thats the funny words you just uttered!!! Bwahahaha! Pipe bands? Bwahahaha! You really don't know anything do you? I suppose the true Dutch wear clogs and only real Frenchmen wear Garlic and Berets! :D

Your on-going assumptions as to my ignorance with respect to everything from FR homepages on down reveals precisely the well-know self-important arrogance of the English & their would-be sycophants.

Your obsession with England seems slightly worrying my Canadian friend. You should be proud to be Canadian. Stop pretending to be Scottish. You are not and it's embarrassing. So:

Gonnae no dae that, jist gonnae no. :-D

[GMMAC]

Thought I'd see what you'd been up to - it anything & beyond your tiresome chirping above - while we adults on FR were busy posting articles, other comments, etc.

And, lo & behold!, I found this 'gem' :
"Yes Britain fought for two years against tyranny alone. (#19) ~ Jack_Macca

Aside from confirming ignorant liars (your own words: on this & other threads) love to use those terms in regard to others, the above comment more than proves true my earlier observation:

"There are no better examples of English imagined superiority & related openly condescending bigotry & arrogant ingratitude than the first-hand accounts of Canadian, Australian, etc. WW1&2-era Veterans with which 'colonial' history books literally overflow!"

NAILED !!!

[Jack_Macca]

Nailed at what? Again your obsession with England resurfaces. Neither of us are English so why keep bringing them up?

Plus, I don’t remember ever being disrespectful to Canada or the Anzacs ever. I have shown more respect for your country than you have for mine. Nearly every post being an insult against Scotland.

I would never deliberately insult Canada. A country I have more than an affection for. Loyal as ever and warriors never bettered during WW2.

Warriors who fought against a people who thought superiority was genetic. Ring a bell?

[GMMAC]

If there some particular word within your own ridiculous & insulting statement "Britain fought for two years against tyranny alone" that renders you somehow incapable of appreciating it's obvious arrogant slighting of the UK's 'Commonwealth' allies ???

"deliberately" ?
More like liberal-like denial & typical presumptuous British pomposity on autopilot.

[Jack_Macca]

So we have moved away from the fact of your other ramblings to this one now.

For someone who hates the British, you sure want our approval one way or another.

Anyway, as long as we have established you are not Scottish but a proud Canadian I am happy.

SCOTLAND FOREVER!

[fanfan]

Stephen (Clan Buchanan) Harper.

Really?

I didn't know that.

No wonder I love him!

[Constantine XIII]

Well, you are cavalierly throwing off on whole swathes of the globe without much explanation. People are going to be agitated.

And this is the intarweb.

Don't be surprised to hear about it. LOL!

[Constantine XIII]

Sorry, but this whole thread is a nuclear LOLocaust.

[GMMAC]

Apparently, simply ignoring your own slightingly ungrateful statement:

"Britain fought for two years against tyranny alone"

passes for reasoned debate wherever you're from ???

No one possessing a modicum of logic - let alone common decency! - would deem demanding proper acknowledgment of other nation's wartime sacrifices as seeking approval.

Anyone objectively following this thread with even minimal powers of comprehension can plainly determine you haven't established a single "fact" and, beyond engaging repeatedly in liberal-like denial, essentially 'argue' like someone's ex-wife.

[GMMAC]

Suggest you read my comment #37 & engage brain ... unless you've got no problem with this newb blowing off the self-evident fact of 2 years worth of numerous other nations' war dead.

[fanfan]

The biggest load of ignorant and racist rubbish I have ever read in my life.

Persecution of observation dismisses truth.

[Candor7]

People not Scottish are more Scottish than the Scots?>>>>>>>>>>>

A rudimentary understanding of history and a visit to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia ( New Scotland); Maxville,Glengarry County, Ontario;Caledonia County , Vermont and many other locations in America would surprise you into complete and utter denial.

The Scots diaspora is thought to be a myth in England,

" Why, once the Scots left Scotland they transformed impediment, into "non-Scots"?

Most British historians are still in denial over something called the " Highland Clearances" at the hands of the Duke of Cumberland.

The Scots way of life was transferred to the Americas despite Britain's every attempt to stamp it out. The British failed in that, much to the glory of Canada and the United States. Over half of the signers of the Constitution were Scots by culture if not in name.George Washington's mother was a Scot.

If you count the Sottish festivals in the United States and Canada, you will find that Scottish Americans attend them in the millions. And they are not put on for the purpose of attracting tourists, as many are in Scotland today. In America they are a celebration and a preservation of what Scottish Americans hold most dear: their clans and their freedom, for which many still fight and die through military service as their fathers did before them.

More genuine Scots live outside of Scotland than live inside Scotland. It is much the same with the Jews, more of them living outside of Israel than inside it, and a constant travel to the homeland to reconnect.

American Scots would love to see an independent Scotland, according to polls taken at Highland Games across America. And the Brits are still trying to stamp out Scottish culture; witness the drumming down of the Scottish regiments with the new "amalgamation" plan.