Will auld acquaintance be forgot as Scots go it alone?

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

the Brits are still trying to stamp out Scottish culture

I cannot take you seriously when you say things like that. Scotland is part of Great Britain. Scots are the Brits as much as the English. Great Britain only exists because of the union of Scotland and England.

That is like saying Americans are trying to stamp out the culture of Florida/Kansas/New York. It's a logical fallacy.

Anyway, Scots are free to do what they want. I should know, I am one. If there is anything I cannot do please let me know.

You really are a rambler aren’t you. Firstly, you insult the people of Scotland, Ireland and the Ukraine by calling them the “dregs”. Then you you search all my posts like an obsessive stalker to get offended (even when I state how much I love Canada).

Maybe you are too used to wearing a kilt at your “let’s pretend I am Scottish” meetings and have forgotten it’s not a skirt.

Nemo me impune lacessit

You've really got this thing with dismissive nonsense like "rambler" don't you? ... but then, that's how liberals, ex-wives, and presumably newbies with no manners and/or debating skills operate.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised someone who announced their presence on the thread with insulting arrogant nay-saying would eventually 'progress' to a hysterically girlie-man accusation like calling me an "obsessive stalker" - SHEESH !!!

Let's see: I employed a commonly-used - at least to those not brand new around here - search tool to access your so far under 20 comments & no posted articles.
Surely, you can't possibly be contending that required picking up a magnifying glass & donning the ol' deerstalker cap ???
Funny how, with such a 'massive' posting history, a little thing like you cavalierly, to date unapologetically & Trollishly blowing off 2 years worth of Allied WW2 casualties somehow stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb !!!

I see you are desperately looking to change the subject from me objecting to you calling the Irish, Scottish and Ukrainians the “dregs” to some hysterical offence at something I didn’t say! LOL

As well as embarrassingly looking for help from others. Poor wee thing.

According to you, you.... Don't know or care about Russia or the Ukraine

Now you are offended on their behalf?

Try to keep your story straight around here Jack.

Scotland won’t be “going it alone”. They’ll quietly be submerged willingly into the dark underbelly of the European Union. England might have a good shot at remaining indepedent without the Socialist Scots acting like a millstone tied around their neck.
BTW, I (Scots-Irish here) agree with your assessment of the present day Scots. The best left long ago.

As well as embarrassingly looking for help from others

Oh, I don't think GMMAC ever needs any help. He does eventually get to the point even with his tendency to be a bit long winded .:)

I do think dregs is a bit over the top . Those that stayed put found accommodation to do so and there is nothing wrong with that although by staying put I know they missed the boat in more ways than one. Their loss.

The Scottish nationalism of those days was angry, confrontational and fiercely anti-English

Gee, it's not like the English had abused them for centuries or anything.

I disagree with the last bit, but that is a fair point. That is all I am looking for.

I love my country the same way you love yours, and this “dregs” stuff is nonsense and unnecessarily insulting.

Are you too suggesting like GMMAC that the genetically superior Scots left years ago?

If so, you are suggesting something that is scientifically and philosophically absurd.

When was emigration of the poor - like in Ireland or Scotland of centuries ago - a rational choice of the superior? When was being forced to leave your land because of violence or starvation transformed into the choice of the “best”?

There must be something seriously wrong with Scottish culture that produces such people and comments, when the exact same circumstances of the Irish produces only friendship for modern Ireland.

"... offence at something I didn’t say!"

Oh, you said it all right !!!

It's linked in my comment #30 & I encourage all to give a look to see that's precisely what you said without any question of ambiguous context whatsoever.

Only a Troll would get on his high horse & outright deny such an blatant & churlish slight when it's plainly there in black & white.

Then having the gall to call me a "stalker" for pointing out your offense: a shameless, whining girlie Troll!

When does objecting to something mean the same as being offended?

Objecting is a neutral non-emotive term. Being offended is being emotional and subjective.

If you were at my home and some other guest called you an idiot, I may object out of good manners as you are my guest, but not be offended as you may well be an idiot.

Back in the 1970s Edinburgh was an austere place that even the Bay City Rollers struggled to enliven.

I visited Edinburgh once around this time. It was the only city I have ever been in where the entire sky was brown. There were Scottish bank notes circulating which were brown also.

I visited Edinburgh once around this time. It was the only city I have ever been in where the entire sky was brown. There were Scottish bank notes circulating which were brown also.

That famous Scottish brown sky. A fact that has puzzled meteorologists for the last thousand years. "Why is the sky brown in Scotland, but blue everywhere else on Earth?", they have long asked. Is this the level of debate?

Although the almost certain next UK Prime Minister, a Scot, is called Gordon Brown. Maybe this is a secret conspiratorial symbol of "The Da Vinci Code" proportions! Hehe.

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