ON IDENTITY
This piece appeared yesterday in the Scottish Review. Soon it will appear in Newsnet Scotland.
The extravagant headings, and footage, were not mine. Here is how I would have it.
I am 86. Thus I have lived in the United Kingdom for more than a quarter of its existence. My observations on its identity and mine may be of value.
Even in the 1920s and 1930s I always knew I was a Scot. So sure was I of my identity that I never minded being called British or English. If called the latter I just thought they were wrong.
During the war we were all called English. As I grew up I discovered that my petit bourgeois contemporaries thought that there was no Scotland. It had been absorbed into its greater neighbour. Looking back this is not surprising. The union gave us the chance to expand into the great free trade area that became the British empire. We seized that chance. Glasgow was the empire’s second city. We were the workshop of the world.
Seventy years ago it seemed that the price we had paid for the wealth of empire was the loss of our identity as Scots. To be ignorant of who you are is profoundly disturbing. England suffers from it badly today. The England of the shires, of Puck of Pook’s Hill, has gone. England is now London.
We have been luckier. We are still us. We blame the loss of our industries on successive English governments not on ourselves. We did nothing. We continued to vote unionist. The enterprise that built the great forges has been lacking. I can tell you where it went. It went to schools like Fettes and Loretto where the enterprise was whipped out of them and they were squeezed into the mould of English gentlemen. They live on in their great-grandfather’s
country estates here in Argyll. The enterprise has gone elsewhere.
We lost our confidence when we lost our empire. Don’t worry. It’s coming back. Even Fred Goodwin, is a sign. Better to gamble and topple a great bank than to live in the suburban inanity of Bearsden. The 1878 failure of the City of Glasgow Bank led to the founding of the great law firm of McGrigor Donald and to the Industrial Exhibition of 1888. McGrigors, as it was laterally called, has now joined up with a great London firm. We Scots are true internationalists and there is no border to our abilities. Failure is the manure of success. The loss of empire followed by the loss of our industries has caused us Scots to look round. Even the great landlords are affronted to think their estates end at the salt seashore. The solum of the seabed to beyond the furthest horizon is still held by England. That is where the next great development will come. We have three quarters of the tidal power of Europe. Oil is pocket money compared to the tides.
Even in a nation’s history 86 years is a long time. I remember the salient points of the change from British to Scottish. None of them was political. We never got the jail for the Stone. The people cheered us. There was public support for our ‘no numeral’ campaign when Elizabeth the ‘Second’ came to the throne. Scotland had had no ‘First’ Elizabeth. Our coronation souvenirs without the numeral were wildly popular. The newspapers backed us in their news columns but refused to take our paid advertisements. They were feart as they still are.
Then one day I went into a pub and found a group gathered round a TV set cheering wildly. Someone had scored a goal against England. The affectionate anti-Englishness of the general public is far more proof of the independent vitality of the Scottish nation than any vote. There is more racial abuse towards us in the English papers than we would ever think of using towards England. It is a much loved foreign country but it is recognized as foreign.
And now we are to have a referendum. Mr Cameron, the near-illiterate occupier of the post of Disraeli and Gladstone and Churchill, steals a word from Quebec and refers to it as a neverendum. Is there a better definition of democracy than a neverendum? He will face a neverendum at the end of his five years if not sooner. In the long history of Scotland our referendum’s only significance is that we feel unhappy and we want change. Whatever the result that feeling will remain.
Recently I spoke on the same platform with a Tory and a Liberal. They said they would abide by the result of the referendum. I said I wouldn’t. I would always listen to any argument for the continuation of the union if one can be found. I have heard none except that change is bad. I asserted a principle. That Scotland is a nation. Nations should govern themselves. Can anything be clearer?
We have different values, we and London. No clearer example can be found than in our belief that education is everyone’s right. ‘Til the rocks melt wi the sun’ said our first minister on the right to a free university education.
I have lived through the last quarter of a union which brought great benefit to many countries including Scotland. I wish I was in my first year of university instead of being 86. Soon I will die. To die will be an awfully big adventure. But not as big an adventure as being young in our newly awakened Scotland.
February 15th, 2012 at 9:26 pm
An interesting piece, based wholly on emotion rather than reason, to my mind. I don’t complain; my nationalism is wholly emotional, based on my Primary school history of Wallace & Bruce (of which I got taught nothing in secondary school, of course).
Yes we have different values to others; that’s what makes us a culture, as well as a country.
In one of his greatest speeches, Churchill uses the words “…but if we fail, then…”
So if we don’t grasp the thistle of opportunity, time will pass this country by.
And whilst the opportunity may come again, in 20, 50, or a hundred years. It will not be the Scotland we crave, I suspect.
If the UK indeed exists then.
February 15th, 2012 at 10:07 pm
“I asserted a principle. That Scotland is a nation.”
.
“nation”…Is in truth a manmade reality, it came about by way of an instinct for/off survival, strength and safety in numbers. It happens in nature, monkeys have their own families and territories and woe betide any other group who dare to venture into it. We have come no distance at all in our evolutionary biology!. The true reality is that we are all just human beings existing on a round thing that spins around another round thing that is very hot, which is as I grow older and older how I see it. Yet, I am still forced to exist in the manmade reality!, I would much prefer the true one…I dream on!.
February 15th, 2012 at 10:37 pm
“Soon I will die”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duCXO1tOkkg
February 16th, 2012 at 9:31 am
Sir
It is my heartfelt wish that you are alive to see our nation secede from the Union and to see many more years afterwards.
The argument that we are all just human is true but not complete. We feel a tie to our kith and kin, to our land, our culture and ways.
When this falls into supremacism then I part company with this.
However Scottish Nationalism has fought that battle and at present it stands in a ever-vigilant victory against the poison of supremacism.
The interesting thing is how Britishness has shifted into Scottishness.
I don’t think that Unionism can mount any defence until it gets to grips with this and why it has happened.
Here is my take…
The war led to subsuming Scottishness into a fight for survival. However by the 1950s Scottishness was on the rise.
I think Clem Attlee’s centralisation in Whitehall was the decision that made “Scotland” inevitable. Remove the entrepreneurial and decision making classes to London. Result a population that sees that London is the ONLY road to power, influence and success. Scots see that they are viewed merely as dogs who Westminster throw scraps such as Linwood and Bathgate to. Maggie (aka that Woman) merely had the temerity to stop throwing the scraps our way. Labour misdiagnose the problem and view Maggie/Toryism as being the root cause so just give the same old “tory toff/Labour better union” abuse. The Tories can’t understand why Scotland seems ungrateful. They know full well that the money is spent to keep Scotland as a second class people in the Union but they have not realised that we have worked it out too…
February 16th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
There speaks a man who has and always had Scotland’s best intersts at heart. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I would gladly class you as one of Scotland’s great elders.
I saw what you did there re: Fred Goodwin. How magnanimous, after all you have lost.
Mr. Hamilton I’m sure you will be around to witness the great day of Scotland “being that nation again”. If by chance you’re not, your words and deeds will live on forever in the hearts and minds of the people of this great land.
I salute you
February 16th, 2012 at 10:56 pm
Agree with the above.
February 17th, 2012 at 10:47 pm
Hope your not in a big hurry with the “death threats” Ian. Looking forward to your company and contributions at Changin Scotland.
February 18th, 2012 at 2:43 am
“To die will be an awfully big adventure. But not as big an adventure as being young in our newly awakened Scotland”.
That’s Braw!
You should have a Facebook identity. Some of us are Scots.
Aye
Ben
February 23rd, 2012 at 10:33 pm
super information, bitte mehr davon.
February 25th, 2012 at 9:15 am
Twice I have posted comments and twice they have failed to appear.
February 26th, 2012 at 2:34 am
Ian,
As an Irishman born and bred but living abroad, I wish you well. Thank you for this essay. I will always be Irish. You will always be Scottish. No foreign rule will ever change that, though I hope the referendum goes well.
Best regards,
Michael
[I had mistakenly posted this comment in the wrong section]
March 4th, 2012 at 2:44 pm
If Scottish identity is the issue, and the loss, and theft of it, then the Glasgow Herald, is the the worst offender, in Scotland.
I’ve never known such a English, homophobic, (and I mean that in its literal sense; that the Glasgow Herald has a fear of Scots’ Man), traitorous excuse for a newspaper.
Their effective premise is to degenerate Scots and a race, Scottish as a society, and generally demean us in front of our own selves. God! The Glasgow Herald is a horrible traitorous paper.
What do they think is their right to do this, in the name of Glasgow?
Scots, Scots identity, and Scotland, is under attack from traitorous Westminster-led media outlets in Scotland, and of-course, the traitorous lacky churnalists like Mick Wirter!
March 12th, 2012 at 7:10 am
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/thousands-launch-civil-action-against-goodwin.16996340
Isn’t this what you wanted to do Ian?
March 23rd, 2012 at 9:26 pm
As an Kentishman in Scotland, with a unashamedly chavved moniker, I salute you. You sir, are a diamond.
April 4th, 2012 at 6:29 pm
A national treasure.
April 5th, 2012 at 11:07 am
Well said - 20 years less and left in the early 70’s for economic reasons but never left Scotland in my heart, identity or a desire to see Scotland flourish agian as an Independent Nation.
April 5th, 2012 at 1:39 pm
No time at the moment to write more than EXCELLENT.
April 7th, 2012 at 8:44 am
What is being offered though is not a referendum on independence, but a vote on Scotland adopting “Dominion Status” (as already constitutionally defined in the 1926 Balfour Declaration). Salmond’s rough wooing of the SNP into ensuring Elizabeth Saxe Coburg Gotha the Second remains head of state after a majority yes vote to this referendum will not deliver the ultimate freedom most Scottish nationalists have campaigned for. Perhaps this is what was meant when a “source close to John Swinney” told The Herald in 2003, “Scottish Nationalists will ultimately have to console themselves with something less than full independence.” Supporting something less than full independence is defacto unionism! I am pretty certain though that those who seek actual independence will fight on.
April 12th, 2012 at 11:47 am
So let me fill my children’s hearts
With heroes’ tales, and hope it starts
A fire in them, so deeds are done
With no vain sighs for moments gone
(Stuart Adamson, Big Country)
Slainte, Ian!
April 23rd, 2012 at 2:41 pm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-17814274