Ian Hamilton QC

by Mike MacKenzie

I find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to disagree with Ian. Uncomfortable because, formidable advocate that he is, I suspect I will have difficulty in making a superior case. Not wishing though to risk losing my status as a Braveheart I will plunge on before I lose my courage.

Firstly I must state that there is no such thing as Britain nor ever has been. It is merely an accident of geography and a loose term loosely applied by the Romans to describe an island and its inhabitants who at that time they knew next to nothing of. They knew then little of the different tribes and peoples on these islands and the synthesis that had been wrought between each and its lands over long time.

It takes long, long time to make an Eskimo people, a Kalahari Bushman, an Apache or a Scot. There was never enough time to make a people called the British. Peoples and Nations aren’t forged by decree or treaty or Acts of parliament but by time. The Roman name Briton may have been recognised in Rome but it was not recognised by the people they described although some as a matter of convenience became Romans.

The Roman principle is worth pursuing. All over their Empire conquered people became citizens and just as quickly reverted when the empire fell. The label was just that, a name which carried with it certain convenient privileges.

The British name went largely unused until it was reinvigorated by the Acts of Union. Undoubtedly there were advantages in being a citizen at the heart of this new British Empire. Being British carried all the privileges of empire and the name had this convenience and this only. The Scots that helped carve out this empire did it in their own Scottish way plying their Scottish talents. The co-operation with English talents was undoubtedly effective. In some ways they were complimentary.

We tried this British name on like a new suit and wore it until the empire fell, when it no longer conferred much benefit, and went out of style. The clothes though do not really maketh the man and wearing them for a while changed us not one bit. Three hundred years of Union is a mere blink in the eye of history.
I recognise Empire and imperialism as a phenomenon of history, unfortunately not quite dead. I am not indifferent to it. It is always easier to steal wealth than it is to create it. It is easier to make slaves of people or exploit them than it is to work yourself. I cannot condone these basic principles of imperialism. I do not believe Ian does.

It is perhaps worth reflecting on our own Scottish attempt at establishing a colony and our ill fated but brilliant Darien adventure. This was an enterprise that would have solved one of the great problems of the age and in doing so would have added value and conferred on us a legitimate profit. It was not the imperial plundering of other peoples resources that typified most empires.

The best that can be said in excuse for those who practised imperialism was that they were in the unthinking grip of great historical tides but it is a poor reason. I have some sympathy for those sorry souls who were driven to do the empires bidding as the only alternative to abject poverty. I have no sympathy for the establishment, the British establishment, who drove this process. We Scots share the guilt of this but it does not make us British.

That great British establishment thought itself very clever at the height of empire. The unfortunate symptom of this success was a sense of innate superiority which persists to this day, despite all evidence to the contrary. Those who still subscribe to this delusion are those who profit from it. It is often those at the very heart of empire, the last remnants of the establishment, whose hold on the damaging delusion of former grandeur and glory persists longest.

The Scots and English are no better and no worse than people elsewhere and in this new world order will have to sink or swim by their own merits and endeavours. The sooner this is recognised, and the British establishment and name is consigned to history, the better will be the fortunes of both my English and my Scottish friends.

 

 

by Ian Hamilton

Braveheart Warriors are easily recognised. ‘I’m not British, I’m Scots,’ they say as though being British were a crime. That they can be both Scots and British is beyond their comprehension. They don’t know who they are without a label.

They reject the label Bitish although it is ancient and honourable. It describes these Islands and all who live in them, except the Southern Irish. It describes the British Empire. Of course the Braveheart Warriors will have none of the Empire. For my part I can look at it without any great feeling one way or the other. It is a happening of history like anything else. To suggest that it had nothing to do with Scotland is grotesque. While singing, ‘A man’s a man for a’ that the Warriors try to wash their hands of the whole thing. They forget that but for the success of the Kilmarnock edition Burns himself would have been a slave master. What else was he going to Jamaica for? A package holiday?

Like Burns the British Empire had its down-side and we are all part of it. Nearly every street in Glasgow’s Merchant City is named after someone in the slave trade. We have much to be ashamed of but we don’t escape it by saying, ‘I’m not British.’ Read James Robertson’s wonderful novel Joseph Knight. It’s about Culloden and the slave trade. Once you’ve read it don’t dare say you’re not British.

Our record in the slave trade was not all bad. In Westminster Abbey lies the body of David Livingstone who also has a Culloden connection, his grandfather having fallen there. The Abbey may be the very heart and centre of Englishry, but it is also the heart and centre of Britain. I do niot find the word offensive. It describes an agglomeration of peoples each with different histories and interests but united by a sort of exasperated affection. There is no reason why we should not remain united in common interest and culture long after each of us has made up our minds to go our own way politically and internationally.

Even when we are politically separate there will be many interests which we have in common. Pragmatism calls for the retention of a British patent office and for a United Kingdom Police National Computer. Are we really going to insist on our own DVLA? I can see many ‘British’ offices that can be shared on joint account and overseen by a committee of all the British countries.

The stumbling block to the hairy kneed nationalists is in that word ‘British’. It sticks in the craw of the Warriors. For my part I could be both British and Scottish without difficulty. I have never felt anything but Scottish but God forbid that such a sentiment enlists me in the Warriors. The essence of loving Scotland is to have affection for our neighbours with whom we have a long and close history.

It is this history which provides the best argument against independence. As stated by a friend it goes like this, ‘I am proud to be both British and Scots so I don’t want separation’. This is a better argument than Labour’s invented black financial holes with their suggestion that we aren’t fit to look after ourselves. I can understand my friend’s argument although it holds a fallacy. We will be both British and Scottish after independence. Many countries in the British Commonwealth are independent and British. Indeed Scotland and Wales are the exceptions. We remain buried in the body of England. People like my friend feel quite wrongly that to be British we must be ruled, and over-ruled as in Trident and the Iraq war, by our big neighbour.

Och let the Braveheart people haver on! It doesn’t do much harm and they have fun. At the same time let it be stated loud and clear that the very essence of being British is to pick up responsibility wherever necessary. This is not done by fighting Scotland’s ancient battles safely at last. We taught the world the duty of democratic responsibility, even if in America they had to fight a stupid English king for the very principles they had learned from us Scots.

Let us now be both British and Scottish and pick up the burden of ruling ourselves. It is absurd that we should not apply to ourselves the principles we have taught the world.

MURRAY RITCHIE argues that the “break-up of the United Kingdom” is a Unionist myth.

How neat it would be if we could reduce the debate on Scottish independence to the ultimate in simplicity. I’d like to think we could explain to voters in a referendum that all we want is the removal of one little sentence in the Treaty of Union of 1707. That’s all – just a minor excision in an otherwise absurd and archaic document that stinks of religious hatred and obsesses about the price of salt at Berwick.

That one sentence is found in Article 111 of the treaty which states: “That the parliament of Great Britain be represented by one and the same parliament to be stiled the parliament of Great Britain.”

Losing those words would set Scotland free. When they were approved by an unrepresentative gentry in the Scottish Parliament the people were betrayed and the nation done for. If democracy had existed in 1707 that sentence would never have survived. But it was to last 300 years and more and ensure that an ancient European nation was annexed by its big neighbour.

I wish Unionist politicians could tell the truth about what striking down that sentence would really mean – or rather not mean. It would not mean “tearing Scotland out of the United Kingdom”. The United Kingdom was born in 1603 by James V1 when he became king of England and united the two Kingdoms. Jamie it was who wanted this new country called Great Britain – and that had nothing to do with parliaments. Scotland and England existed as independent states for another century and more in the new United Kingdom until some clerk put quill to parchment with those dreaded words and parliamentary union – a much more insidious thing – was born. Ending the parliamentary union is not, therefore, the “break-up of Britain”.

Those who believe in Scottish independence should defend this simple truth and challenge the deceit of propagandists for the Union. Injecting some honesty into the meaning of independence would be a useful start to Alex Salmond’s conversation with the people of Scotland. If he has his way the two kingdoms will survive for a while yet. Republicans should relax. You can have independence without a republic. But you can’t have a republic without independence. One step at a time, please.

Murray Ritchie is convener of the Scottish Independence Convention (scottishindependenceconvention.com) the umbrella group for individuals, parties and organisations supporting independence.
WE HOPE YOU NOTICE THE EMAIL ADDRESS.

scottishindependenceconvention.com

IAN’S BLOG STRONGLY RECOMMENDS IT

(A little known fact about Murray Ritchie is that he plays a Vega Whyte Laydie banjo, the very Stradivarius of the banjo world. We are not sure that the Convener of the Scottish Independence Convention should play such a lightsome thing as the banjo. However he is taking lessons. We fear Scotland will hear more of this.)    
 

by MHAIRI LIVINGSTONE ROSS

(By the Living God why does no publisher pick up these enchanting stories from Mhairi Livingstone Ross? This is not the Kailyaird. This is telling life as it was, simply and without sentiment. I wish I could write about my own childhood like this.)

Once a week, Ma would take one of the chairs from the kitchen, turn it upside down and lean it against the leg of the table. Then the two-handled wooden tub would be brought from the barn where it lived for the rest of the week and would be placed at an angle into the cross-pieces of the upturned chair. Into that would go hot water from the kettle and our weekly wash would be done using a wooden wash-board. ‘Stubborn stains’, of which there would be many, were attacked and dissolved by vigorous rubbing with knuckles and a bar of red Sunlit soap. Once the ‘wash cycle’ was done, the water was changed and the rinsing began. Excess water was pressed out when the clothes were, one by one, fed through the jaws of the mangle. They were then strung up on a rope or fence to let the elements do the drying.

Most of our clothes didn’t need ironed, but, on the occasion that Annie or Bella had a petticoat or blouse inherited usually from others who had outgrown them, the box iron would be brought out. As the name implies, it was a flat contraption with a box at the end in which iron slugs found a home. There was always a pair of those so that, when one was in use, the other would be in the fire being heated up. The end of the iron had a hinged lid, and by inserting the poker into a hole on the end of the slug, it could easily be lifted in and out without burning the user. Being metal, each retained enough heat to iron a garment or two before being exchanged with the other and this tedious process of heating and reheating continued until all the ironing was finished.

Whites, or the nearest we had to whites, were draped over the whin bushes for the sun to bleach and, when we went to bed, on top of our newly laundered sheet, the sweet smell of the warm outdoors would drift around the room and soothe us to sleep.

In the summer, when it looked like the weather was set fine for a few days, the blankets would be stripped off the beds. The large iron pot, which for most of the year lurked in some dark recess of the barn, providing refuge for hens and cats, was ceremoniously brought out, dusted down and filled with water from the burn. Then it was placed carefully on the fire we had all helped to make. Into the wooden tub, with its brew of Cleansil and peaty water, went each blanket in turn. Ma, or more usually Annie, Bella, Jean, Meg or I would roll up our skirts and climb in and begin trampling. No worker could have felt more content. We were all together for a few, precious hours, our feet warm and clean, blankets revived and de-flea’d, leg muscles exercised and toned, lungs filled with coconut-scented air and hair teased with the warm, Moray breeze. If you had offered me a wad of money then, I would not have taken it in exchange for a day like that— nor would I now.  In turn, each blanket was washed, put through the mangle, rinsed, fed into the rollers again and finally hung over a rope in the field.  A hot, dry day had to be chosen because the blankets had to be put back on the beds that night. We had enough blankets for the three beds and no more.

Bedding consisted of a bottom sheet with a blanket on top, which made coorying under the covers gey rough on our faces. The blankets frequently wore into holes and stayed that way until someone got round to darning them. In the winter, a blanket was never enough to keep out the cold from the permanent winds that whistled constantly through the gaps beneath the doors and down the chimney. Our coats, which normally hung on a nail behind the bedroom door, were used as a second layer of warmth on the beds. And Father’s redundant jackets and any other old clothing were frequently stuffed up the chimney to act as makeshift draught excluder. Cold feet in bed often prevented sleep but could be thawed by the presence of our version of a hot water bottle. A surplus lemonade bottle would be gradually warmed up on the binkies at the side of the fire. Water would then be heated up in the kettle and poured into the container into which a stopper would be driven. The receptacle was then fed into one of father’s socks to protect our feet from burning and up the stairs we would trot, oblivious to any knowledge that our homespun methods were not practised the world over.

Because mattresses were stuffed with the chaff left over when the threshing mill had done its business and pillows were filled with feathers, we were rarely alone in bed. Fleas had a comfortable home and a ready supply of food. Our vests and liberty bodices often bore the bloodied remains of those who did not survive our continual, nocturnal scratchings and rubbings. Sleeping in close proximity to my sisters and always being within head-touching distance of my class-mates, lice were also always tenants in our hair. The weekly Sunday-night delousing followed the same pattern, year in, year out. Paraffin, not needed for the lamp, was applied to each head in turn. Brown paper was spread on the table and, with the thorough raking of the comb loosening the inebriated beasties, we vied with each other to count the most as bodies dropped on to the paper. The whole process had to be repeated every week as re-infection was inevitable.

Home remedies were always employed to counter common ailments and the nurse, and less commonly the doctor, would only be summoned if it was thought we were in acute danger. With an abundant availability of vitamin-packed fruit like rasps, blackcurrants and hips, we were, for the most part, pretty well immune from colds and the like. If we did fall prey to the occasional sore throat or belly-ache, Ma would make up a hot blackcurrant drink and pack us off to bed. If the throat was really sore, one of father’s unwashed sweaty socks was turned inside out and applied to the appropriate place. It was reckoned to have curative properties  -either that or it acted as a placebo comforter to the sick child who would have survived anyway but always felt better after a spot of attention.

Frequently on winter mornings, Ma would have to apply cotton wool dipped in warm water to our rheumy eyes which would have their lashes stuck together with ‘crows’ meat’ from the cold during the night. Eyes, and any matter which exuded from them, were called ‘crows’ meat’, I suppose, because crows would often peck at the eyes of new lambs. At least our sticky eyes could be gradually cleaned and brought back to full working order with a little time and care.  

bY Mike MacKenzie

“The rose of all the world is not for me
I want for my part
Only the little white rose of Scotland
That smells sharp and sweet - and breaks the heart.”
Hugh MacDiarmid.

I am a Scot. Not by choice but by accident of birth. By a trick of fate I was born here (as opposed to anywhere else) and from then breathed in our air and everything contained in it from culture to custom; some good, some bad. I absorbed it all together.

Never under the tender mercies of the Jesuit it took longer than seven years but in a crafty incremental process I became a Scotsman. I had very little to do with it. It just happened. Bit by bit I fell in love with this land of ours.

Mankind has always lived off the land. It is our only resource and it is perhaps in the nature of things that we should look with satisfaction on that piece of land that has served us with the basis of survival.

It is always the things we have to struggle for that we value most. Perhaps this is why Scotland so surely steals our hearts. You can never take anything in Scotland for granted. She is difficult and contrary and so we love her with a furious and jealous passion. She is never the dutiful spouse making life comfortable and being undervalued.

By tricks and turns she keeps us interested and baffled both. Never the same lady two days running, she seduces us one day with sunlit scenery and the next freezes our bleeding hearts with disapproving blizzards. Often we curse her, day after day and week after week as she turns her cold shoulder and then briefly she lifts her eyes and smiles and we are happy fools again.
Yet, are we really fools? Do we not see potential in this long courtship, this long chase through history, and her never yielding up much more than hard labour and heartache? Long weary nights and winters have we struggled to understand this love, this life and all things else. She has sharpened our wits this mistress of ours. We persist for those fleeting moments when she lifts us into her majesty and brings out the bard in us.
If only, if only, we could come to terms with her. In some deep place we recognise that there could be companionship and comfort there for both; a good living, a good life and music enough.

How should we tame her, this fair and capricious maiden, for her sake and ours? A contract is necessary. An affair of the heart alone will never do. A marriage must be arranged, where this arrangement is recognised in law. Only then can the relationship be fruitful and deliver all its promise.

So must the relationship of this land with its people be sanctified! Only when this land of our hearts is once again legally recognised as a nation can we start building the good lives we should live and land and people come properly together in each others lasting care.

 ……………………………………………………………………………….

This view may contradict much that has gone before. It is none the worst for that. We Scots are all dopplegangers. There is a contradiction in everyone of us. I have never deemed inconsistency to be a fault.

 

In this intriguing essay a lady from Edinburgh examines the history of history in Scotland. I wonder if she is the same Edinburgh lady who takes me to task for tilting at the Braveheart warriors.

Last week I was asked to sign a petition to Downing Street requesting that the study of history be made compulsory for all pupils up to the age of sixteen. My natural  inclination was to decline ; education is a devolved matter and what they teach in England and Wales is their own business, but  I was interested enough to examine the background  to the petition

It was sponsored by Sean Lang, chairman of the History Practitioners Advisory Team, the body which advises the Conservative Party on the teaching of history in schools. He is the  author of “British History for Dummies.”

In addition, Mr Lang is the Honorary Secretary for the Historical Association, “the national voice for history”, which runs on-line debates for schools in order to decide, -e.g - , which was the greatest mediaeval monarch. (Answer: Edward I.) he was responsible  for collating the list  “Twelve Britons which every pupil should know” put forward by senior Conservatives and  published in the Daily Mail last winter. Somewhat to my surprise, the list included James VI. - James VI? Surely some mistake! Indeed there was; Mr Lang had really meant James IV, but “the national voice for history” couldn’t tell the difference between one Scottish monarch and another, and Mr Lang has not seen fit to correct their web site.

It is not clear why anything so crass as this should foster “the sense of internal British cohesion” that the petition assumes desirable; if anything, it seems likely to produce the opposite effect.. Nevertheless, it looks as if compulsory history, on the Lang model, will be written into Conservative Party policy. 

God help the Scottish Tories!

 In some ways, though, I warm to Mr Lang. He is honest enough to admit that “school history has always had a political agenda – there is little point in pretending otherwise.” and “History teaching began in Britain in the nineteenth century with a specific agenda to foster patriotism and a sense of national and imperial identity”. This is how we must understand the notorious advice proffered by an inspector from the (London based) Scotch Education Department in 1879. Since Scottish history  maintained the “sentimental Scotch antipathy to England” and was “a mere chronicle of  uninteresting and barren events”,  it was not worth wasting much time on.

Silly, silly inspector! Even in Victorian days you couldn’t fool all of the people all of the time. One glance at the story of publishing shows that the country  was awash with Scottish history texts, purchased with the  hard earned cash of ordinary Scots. And none of it, I may say, was written for Dummies.

 The Chambers brothers have been rightly described as “Publishers for the People” Understanding the craving for Scottish historical knowledge, they produced a multiplicity of tomes to cater for it. - Domestic Annals of Scotland, Chambers’ Scottish National Histories, Biographical Dictionary of Famous Scotsmen, Ballads of Scotland, - the list goes on and on.  Blackie published a lavishly illustrated six volume History of the Scottish People by Thomas Napier Thomson. Cassell contributed another mammoth - Old and New Edinburgh by James Grant.(now on line,). And William Hole decorated the Scottish National Portrait Gallery with inspirational paintings and a wonderful frieze, which would illustrate countless school text books.

 I have one such text book in my possession.  It was my grandfather’s. “Macdougall’s History for Scottish Schools, (vol I), Scotland as a Separate Nation.” had been issued to primary school children by the Clackmannanshire Education Committee.  My grandfather loved it so much he risked Hellfire, Damnation and a thrashing from a Lochgelly extra heavy - and STOLE it.  He used to read me bedtime stories from it.

For Scots, Scottish history has always mattered.

Unsurprisingly, last year the Scottish Qualifications Authority found 90% of the “stakeholders” teaching history in this country wanted to make Scottish history a compulsory part of the Higher history paper and such, indeed, will be the practice  from 2009 onwards. Once a consensus was established, it was acted upon. There was no need for any self appointed pressure group to petition Downing Street, or promote gimmicky lists of worthies in the Tory Press
 
I shall not sign the petition to Downing Street

Some things we do better on our own.

I have been away making a film. It is called STONE OF DESTINY. It will be released sometime later next year. It is based on my book THE TAKING OF THE STONE OF DESTINY. Usually when a film company takes over a book they don’t want to see the author ever. This has not been the case with me.

Charles Martin Smith (look him up in Google.) wrote the screenplay and directed the film, and we became friends. I could not be more pleased. The film followed my book. The actors were great. At times the hard-bitten crew held their breath, as I believe you will do when you see it. Filming culminated with two days in and around Westminster Abbey and their Parliament Square. Charlie has already filmed in Red Square with the Kremlin as background. That leaves him only the Taj Mahal.

I am not going to write about being on a film set. Nor am I going to write about Westminster Abbey. After filming had finished I was left in it alone with my wife over two nights, entirely unsupervised except for the undertaking, freely given, that we would treat the Abbey with respect. Who would not? Some things are too remarkable to describe, at least until long after they have been experienced. That is why I am silent on detail. 

For the rest the blog goes on. The hit counter was down for a week so any count must be an estimate. Although only one new blog has gone out I expect that we will have beaten last month’s seven and a half thousand separate hits.

What do you see in this blog? You people out there are the real mystery.

by Mike MacKenzie

The union of our two parliaments like some marriages was bound to fail. Marriages can cross cultures and custom only when there are certain qualities in common. On the face of it we have much in common with our English neighbours but somehow the name Great Britain never took. The two countries never really merged. The graft was never properly accepted and it has ever itched and rankled.

It can be difficult to understand quite why this is so. Is there some fundamental difference in the people of these similar but separate nations? The answer can only lie in history. The Romans discerned some difference and built the wall which defines our border. Unfortunately they didn’t much describe the difference between one people and another on either side of this wall.

The dark ages offer little light on the subject and it is only when we get to the declaration of Arbroath that there is at last some suggestion of what defines us as Scots. The declaration suggests two characteristics, democracy and meritocracy, which were unique in that age of divine right. The idea that kingship was earned was unusually meritocratic. The further idea, that if the king did not meet expectations he would be removed, was democratic. The seeds of these ideas have been carried in the souls of Scots ever since.

The English kingdom was always autocratic. The English seemed to like this idea of a strong divine king and this was only briefly challenged with the beheading of the first Charles. The failure of their fledgling republic may have entrenched this view and it is certainly still alive and well today. In England might is always right.

This fundamental difference is reflected in the electoral arrangements of the respective parliaments. The first past the post system allied to the boundary arrangements of the Westminster parliament is designed to give strong government.
The Scottish parliament reflects the Scottish wish to temper and restrain power and the electoral system and boundary arrangements make it very unlikely that any party will achieve an outright majority. Government is more democratic and in theory at least meritocratic. It takes talent of a higher order to make such a system work.

In Scotland sovereignty rests with the people but in Westminster is wielded still in important respects by the Prime Minister. Tony Blair’s use of this sovereign power has rendered this starkly inappropriate and highlighted the basic difference in our two sensibilities.

Such fundamental differences in these two nations could never be reconciled in amalgamation. This difference has always fostered discontent. Such a marriage of convenience could only persist as long as it was convenient and it is quite evidently no longer convenient.