Gerry Hassan

Open Democracy, May 19th 2013

This is an age of uncertainty, crisis and doubt. The UK is experiencing multiple crises: political, constitutional and economic, of the UK in Europe and of Europe itself as an idea and project. And underneath all of this is a deep-seated Western fear, of loss of confidence in Western modernity and anxiety about the future.

The lack of sureness now being displayed in Britain’s political elites is one manifestation, as is the rise of Nigel Farage’s UKIP. The Westminster village has been talking of little else since UKIP burst through in the English local elections winning 23% of the vote, humiliating the mainstream parties.

Cut then this week to the beautiful setting of Edinburgh’s High Street, its castle at one end, Holyrood Palace at the other, tartan tourist tat in between. This was the improbable setting for Nigel Farage’s northern sojourn and face off with Radical Independence supporters.

Insults flew back and forth; the protestors called Farage ‘racist scum’; he retorted by calling them ‘fascist scum’ and then attempted to taint the broad church of Scottish nationalism and the SNP by claiming the former had a ‘fascist side’; the next day in a combative interview on ‘BBC Radio Scotland’ Farage accused the interviewer David Miller of the same ‘hatred’ as the protestors and hung up (1).

There is more to this than appears at first glance: a student protest or a populist leader caught making political opportunities. UKIP have been the political flavor of the month, and Farage is trying all he can to remake the political weather, with Cameron on the run in retreat and the Tory Eurosceptics sensing that their dream is within close reach.

Who Does UKIP Give Voice To?

Farage is aiming to reposition UKIP, given its appeal at the moment is nearly entirely English, although it has small Welsh and Northern Irish representation. But it has no Scottish base, winning 1% in the last Scottish Parliament elections in 2011 and 5% in the last Euro elections of 2009. Farage, even if he doesn’t win much support north of the border, benefits by taking on Scottish nationalists with their ‘ridiculous’ idea of independence in Europe. He gains in that it plays well back in England, allows him to pose as a national leader, and cannot do him any harm in Scotland. It is possible that with little Scottish support UKIP could win representation in next year’s Euro elections and 2016 Scottish Parliament elections, but it wouldn’t fundamentally alter UKIP’s core appeal.

UKIP are predominantly an English voice: a force for English self-government and English nationalism. In part this is a reactionary movement, born of fear, loss and anxiety that the country is no longer what it once was namely, white, homogeneous, contained and ordered, and a place of certainty with an implicit social compact between the classes. There is a part of England which feels that this is no longer their country, and this is due to a mix of influences: class, welfare, immigration and Europe, alongside the failure and sheer deceit and deception of a large swathe of our political classes to deal with and understand popular anxieties.

To parts of the British mainstream political establishment UKIP are beyond the pale – ‘a cancer’ as Labour MEP David Martin called them (2) – racists, xenophobes and demagogues to others. But this is too dismissive of a powerful political phenomenon and seemingly uninterested in why such a potent force could win such widespread support across England.

Then there is the dynamics of UKIP and Scottish politics. Some such as the political commentator David Torrance have identified what they see as similarities between UKIP and the SNP, emphasising a convergence of language in how they wish to reclaim independence from their respective unions, Europe and the UK (3).

This misses profound differences. UKIP are nearly entirely a one man elemental force remade by Farage; look for example at the farce of leadership which was Lord Pearson’s brief stint as leader in the 2010 UK election. The SNP for all Salmond’s dominance are far from a one-man band with a powerful sense of collective leadership and mission. The differences don’t stop there. UKIP have had huge organisational problems with candidates, elected representatives and elements of their membership. The SNP have none of these characteristics and are a professional political party. It is also relevant that UKIP policies, when they had them, were hardly well thought out, and are now nearly entirely under review, whereas the SNP have policies on every aspect of Scottish life which whether you like them or not have been considered and researched.

The Farage northern trip says something about the state of Scotland and the UK. For one the UK media as they do once they have built someone up, were looking to take Farage down a peg or two and start the backlash or at least scrutiny of his and his party’s activities. Then there was the theatre of the occasion with media, Farage and the leftist Radical Independence forces (whose core activist base is a breakaway from the SWP) all using the occasion to grandstand.

A secondary story was the attempt by former Salmond admirer and now anti-Scottish nationalist Tom Gallagher to paint the whole episode as part of the liberal conspiracy running Scottish media and institutions, talking of a ‘left wing media mafia’ (4). He will find little traction for such an assessment beyond the Daily Telegraph given Scotland is a land which postures and preens with radicalism but which is deeply cautious and conservative.

More relevant is that UKIP’s core appeal of being anti-politics, populist and posing as outsiders against the failed establishment, should not be immune to Scottish voters. But somehow it mostly is because of the tone and colour of UKIP’s appeal – which is predominantly an English democratic voice.

The wider story of this is the crises of Britain, the shifting sands of ‘the conservative nation’ of England in Andrew Gamble’s use of the term (5), and its divisions between Tory and UKIP voices, and the long term failure of progressive Britain: the latter a land of disappointed elite liberals.

At the recent Prague Press Forum whilst debating with British journalist John Lloyd on the future of the UK and Scottish independence, Lloyd made the claim that numerous European conversations were inhabited by ‘a cosmopolitan elite which was at best 3% of the population’. The vast majority of Europe could be found represented by the anxieties of ‘Mrs. Duffy who collared Gordon Brown at the last UK election’. That is a ridiculously stark view: cossetted Eurocrats versus worried women from Rochdale with nothing in between!

At one point Lloyd put forward a defence of the UK against Scottish independence based on five points: techy comradeship, natural mixing, pooling of resources, economic security, and being a sort of significant world power. Martin Woollacott of The Guardian asked if both the Czechs and Slovaks voted on their ‘divorce’, why shouldn’t the English vote on Scottish independence. Lloyd in a supposedly critical remark on Scottish independence railed against its ‘small nation coziness’ as an obvious negative. But isn’t that a positive virtue versus the preposterous, grandiose over-reach and hyperbole of the Great British power project and its related delusions? Such is the pessimism of a whole generation of liberal, supposedly enlightened English opinion.

What Future for a Progressive, European Britain?

Something is dramatically changing. A British political elite which used to detest and dismiss the idea of referenda is suddenly in favour of them all over the place in defence of the shibboleth of parliamentary sovereignty. This is about the challenges of political disconnect, lack of trust and legitimacy, and a desperate attempt to rewin political consent.

It is also about an unreformed, atrophying British state and set of elites: a venal, feral political class as Peter Oborne (6) powerfully pointed out this week still despite the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009, going back to their old ways of outrageous claims, bullying parliamentary authorities, and thinking they are entitled to live the good life at our expense.

Yet even more at stake. For all Cameron’s cautious maneuverings and weak leadership, the vision of the UK that he is beginning to outline could not be a starker one. It is based on a defence of the power and privilege of the City of London and its related tax havens, deregulation, and uncodified human rights.

This is what the once powerful and even at times progressive politics of ‘the conservative nation’ of England have been reduced to. It is a narrow, dogmatic, fantasyland politics of near dystopian proportions, and yet this agenda is like a political tsunami sweeping through the Conservatives, right wing media and giving rise to UKIP’s new found appeal.

What does this say about Britain’s future as a progressive and European country? Namely that the story of progressive Britain which once was a popular people’s story founded in the Labour and Liberal Parties as well as trade union movement is in irreversible decline (7). And that there isn’t any feasible way that Britain’s elites somehow come to their senses snap out of their fixation with making the country into some Atlanticist tiger pointing towards Asia. The consequences of this are that there is no real possible future where the UK re-embraces the European project and identifies itself as a European country.

This is the moving of tectonic plates: in Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, across the UK and Europe, representing an existential crisis of what the UK is and what it stands for. UKIP are a profound manifestation of this, as are Cameron and the Eurosceptics desire to geo-politically shift the UK, and in a different way, the appeal of Alex Salmond and the SNP.

Two independence referendums – one on Scottish independence, the other on UK withdrawal from the EU will bring up the question of what kind of British and European union and co-operation are desirable in the future. The difference between the two is that the Scottish independence campaign while it is labeled by opponents, ‘separatists’ and ‘separation’ is informed by a modern post-nationalism of sharing sovereignty which is very comfortable with the EU. The UK withdrawal campaign talks the moderate language of ‘renegotiation’ and ‘a new relationship’ with Europe but is actually an old-fashioned politics of absolutism, parliamentary sovereignty and British nationalism.

This is where Cameron is being dragged by his Eurosceptics and the rise of UKIP, and it seems to be a vision which progressive Britain has lost the nerve, political intelligence or popular touch, to successfully resist. Whether the two votes end in two divorces remains to be seen, but turbulence, uncertainty and very different and looser unions for Scotland and the UK/post-UK and for Britain and Europe are the shape of the next few decades to come.

Notes

1. BBC Scotland, ‘Nigel Farage blasts ‘anti-English’ protestors’, May 17^th 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22566180

2. ‘Brian Taylor’s Big Debate’, BBC Scotland, May 17^th 2013.

3. David Torrance, ‘May the best nationalist win …’, Think Scotland, May 6^th 2013, http://www.thinkscotland.org/todays-thinking/articles.html?read_full=12133&article=www.thinkscotland.org

4. Tom Gallagher, ‘Nigel Farage and Scotland’s Left Wing Media Mafia’, Daily Telegraph, May 18^th 2013, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomgallagher/100217573/nigel-farage-and-scotlands-left-wing-media-mafia/

5. Andrew Gamble, The Conservative Nation, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1974.

6. Peter Oborne, ‘Have MPs learned a thing since 2009? Their greed suggests not’, Daily Telegraph, May 15^th 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/10059243/Have-MPs-learnt-a-thing-since-2009-Their-greed-suggests-not.html

7. See on the Labour people’s story of Britain and its decline: Arthur Aughey, Nationalism, Devolution and the Challenge to the United Kingdom State, Pluto Press 2001, Ch. 5, ‘The Labour Nation’.

Gerry Hassan

The Scotsman, May 18th 2013

Prague Spring. Two words which evoke a certain feeling, the hopes of a generation, European idealism and the past.

Today Europe could not be in a more different place and frame of mind, the brief optimism of 1968 and 1989 long gone.

All across the continent, European political, elite and civic conversations are underway about ‘whither Europe?’ and ‘what future for the eurozone?’

In the last two weeks I have participated in two of these, attending the Prague Press Forum and before that speaking to ministers, officials and advisers of the Irish Government in Dublin.

Europe is worried about itself, its future, the European project and Britain – with in many places Euro-realism falling over into a deep-seated pessimism. German broadcaster, Jurgen Kronig, believes part of the problem is the ambiguous nature of German leadership.

Germany he argues is an ‘unwilling hegemon’, a ‘late nation’ which wasn’t fully formed until 1871 and which has never fully adapted in its post-war expression to doing great diplomacy, foreign policy and the subtleties of geo-political positioning. Kronig believes that Henry Kissinger got it right when he said, ‘Germany is too big for Europe, and too small for the world’.

There is still amongst some the influence of Euro idealism, of the attraction of a Europe without barriers. This was the view of Austrian broadcaster Cornelia Vospernik who stated that ‘Europe should not just be a supermarket’ based on consumer goods and picking what you want: long the British vision.

Yet this came back to the hard realities of what kind of integration is attainable and the impossibility of a common defence and foreign policy. What would happen to the UN Security Council seats of the UK and France? Who would get their hands on the nuclear deterrents of these countries? Is it really possible to imagine some kind of Euro nuke?

Karel Schwarzenberg, Czech Foreign Minister and one of the giants of Czech post-Communist politics told us that it would be a ‘gigantic catastrophe’ if the UK left the EU and that ‘Europe will not be Europe without Britain’.

There is a commonplace British conceit that only the UK debates these issues or worries about the European ‘democratic deficit’. Instead, all across the continent, politicians and experts recognise the absence of a European demos, identity and politics, and that the European project has been artificially created by elites.

While the eurozone crisis captures headlines, people ignore what Hungary says about our democracies and Europe. The current Hungarian Government has passed a draconian constitution in just over a month with little to no consultation curbing human rights. As one Hungarian observed, there has arisen due to the experience of free market capitalism, ‘a romance for the last 20 years of Hungarian Communism’ and the idea of ‘the good dictator’.

What has the EU done in response to this attack on human rights in Hungary? It has written a report and done nothing, when what should being discussed is suspending Hungary from the EU. The EU club is one with criterion for getting in, but once in you can do what you like.

Dublin officials and advisers, as illustrated by former Irish Taoiseach John Bruton, are unfazed by the idea of Scottish independence. What worries them is where the UK is heading and its implications for them. They identify three Irish approaches: distancing themselves from the UK, move with the UK to exit or near-exit, or ‘the third way’ of attempting to explain the UK’s concerns to European audiences and act as a bridge builder. Like many across the world, they feel a little bemused by the current turn of British Eurosceptism.

There is a continental pessimism about Britain and the European project. Most European elite conversations involve trying to balance the desire and perceived need for greater integration, particularly in the incomplete eurozone project, federalism and different degrees of union (or ‘renationalisation’ as its called in Euro speak).

British sensibilities are in a very different place. British journalist John Lloyd noted that European conversations were filled by ‘a cosmopolitan elite which was at best 3% of the population’. The majority of Europe was better reflected in the anxieties of ‘Mrs. Duffy who collared Gordon Brown at the last UK election’. That does seem a ridiculously stark view: Eurocrats versus worried women from Rochdale with nothing inbetween!

Lloyd launched a defence of the UK against Scottish independence based on five points: techy comradeship, natural mixing, pooling of resources, economic security, and being a sort of significant world power. Martin Woollacott of ‘The Guardian’ asked if both the Czechs and Slovaks voted on their ‘divorce’, why shouldn’t the English vote on Scottish independence.

The British contributions to Prague were imbued with a conservative pessimism from the most liberal voices: Britain and Europe haven’t turned out the way they wanted. Lloyd at one point in a supposedly critical remark on Scottish independence railed against its ‘small nation coziness’. Isn’t that a positive virtue versus the preposterous, grandiose over-reach and hyperbole of the Great British power project?

Scotland, the UK and Europe involve two marriages and relationships which if they aren’t heading for the divorce courts are shifting in terms of how they live with each other; maybe more cohabitation or open relationship in each?

Two debates and two votes, interconnected and intertwined at a Scottish level, whereas in the Westminster bubble, the obsession is solely on Europe, parliamentary sovereignty, and a misplaced belief that the UK can shift itself into some Atlanticist or ‘Anglosphere’ orbit. This despite Obama’s gentle protestations.

This moment is a threat to the independence debate, with more uncertainty and risk, yet it is also an opportunity. Scotland is whatever the small differences in public opinion between us and the rest of the UK, a European nation which aspires to be part of the mainstream of the continent.

The union Cameron and the Eurosceptics are defending is a deeply unappealing one: defence of the City of London, deregulation, tax havens, and uncodified human rights. It says something about the deep crisis of progressive Britain and Labour that such a mix should be able to seize the political agenda, but it has.

This isn’t our union. It isn’t the union most Scots want and we should be thankful amid all the uncertainty and fluidity that Cameron has begun to make it clear what kind of European and British union he wants.

Gerry Hassan

Bella Caledonia, May 15th 2013

Two independence campaigns are now running in the UK: one on Scottish independence; the other which has become more public in the last week, on the UK’s possible exit from the European Union. Strangely they operate in near complete isolation of each other, with the Euro referendum being talked about as if we still lived in the high days of untrammelled Westminster parliamentary sovereignty.

In the last week, the front page of the Scottish edition of The Times reported a fall in support for Scottish independence of 3% as, ‘’Yes’ vote hits trouble as support crumbles’ (May 9^th 2013). The same week it began its campaign for the UK to embark on EU withdrawal, lining up a chorus line of Tory grandees to declare their support for exit; successive front pages declared, ‘Lawson: It’s time to quit EU’ (May 7^th 2013) and ‘Voters tell Cameron to cut Europe down to size’ (May 8^th 2013); and were followed by Michael Portillo coming out of support of withdrawal, ‘We don’t share Europe’s vision. So I want out’ (May 9^th 2013). The front page of the Scottish edition on the day of the Lawson announcement also included a headline stating, ‘Independent Scotland may struggle to keep lights on’ (May 7^th 2013).

One has the language of ‘separatism’, ‘separation’ and is filled with risk and negativity; the other the language of ‘a new relationship’, ‘renegotiation’ and greater choice and flexibility; the first about Scottish independence, the second British withdrawal from the EU. When I asked Angus Macleod, editor of The Times Scottish edition why he used pejorative language on Scotland in one of the pieces cited above he answered, ‘Independence is in in the intro and elsewhere. Separation is used for variety. It’s called journalism’ (twitter, May 9^th 2013).

How to Shape and Define A Debate

The long term framing of the cause of Scottish independence is aided by the absence of a single newspaper supporting independence; a very different picture from that on UK withdrawal from the EU. Despite the decline of mainstream newspaper sales and doubts about how they influence voter decisions, there can be little doubt that over a long period they shape and frame the political environment – as Europe has proven and the Scottish debate is showing.

Day in day out the press profile negative stories about Scottish independence; the Scottish and UK Governments are portrayed very differently even when undertaking similar actions; while anti-independence coverage in international media is used to vindicate and validate anti-independence angles.

Ever since the SNP won office in May 2011 there has been a slow drip of anti-independence stories in the ‘quality’ and ‘tabloid’ press. A few examples from last year include: ‘Independent Scotland a ‘terror risk’’ (Scotland on Sunday, April 29^th 2012), ‘Scotland would become like Greece after independence says academic’ (The Times Scotland Edition April 23^rd 2012), ‘MPs Press Scots Separatists for Answers’ (Reuters, February 15^th 2012). And that is before we get to the Daily Record.

The Herald gave a good example of how parts of the media portray the Scots and UK Governments very differently. Kate Devlin wrote on the UK Treasury led programme on independence, ‘The Treasury is spearheading the co-ordinated push’ (January 3^rd 2013), while Paul Hutcheon in the same paper described similar moves by the Scottish Government, ‘The SNP Government has been under severe pressure’ (November 5^th 2012). The UK Government was described as ‘spearheading’, ‘co-ordinated’ and ‘flexible’; the Scottish Government with the terms, ‘pressure’, ‘criticised’ and ‘scrutinised’; the first seen as in charge and acting in good faith, the latter having its sincerity challenged and being forced by external pressures to reluctantly act.

The press and wider media regularly swallow uncritically the UK Government’s PR operation. This could be seen earlier this year when the UK Government’s document on Scottish independence was published, with BBC News declaring, ‘Scottish independence: Scotland would be ‘separate state’’ (February 11^th 2013) and The Herald, ‘Legal experts in warning over Scots independence’ (February 11^th 2013). Recently Alice Thomson in The Times declared of any independence negotiations that, ‘Westminster would veto sharing foreign embassies, art collections and the Armed Forces’ (April 24^th 2013).

International coverage which is anti-independence becomes news to report back home. The New York Times in an editorial pronounced, ‘Scottish voters may want to think twice about going it alone’ (March 27^th 2013). This allowed the Daily Telegraph to declare, ‘New York Times warns Scots to ‘think twice’ about independence’ (March 28^th 2013).

Even respected US academic and specialist journals such as Foreign Affairs cover independence in a partisan way. An article by Prof. Charles King of Georgetown University stated, ‘it would be a shame if the Scottish model [became] a handbook for transferring muscular regionalism into territorial separatism’ (1).

Misreporting and Misrepresenting Scotland

Then there is the Andrew Neil/Fraser Nelson view of Scotland – which has legitimacy down south, is seen as authorative and informed about Scotland, and has blowback up north in certain circles. Neil has frequently pronounced his view of Scotland as a land of subsidy junkies, welfare and public sector dependency, and anti-enterprise; a mindset of prejudice and small mindedness which is an ill-informed caricature but which people like himself and Nelson repeat without being challenged. This is Neil, not as a commentator, but as the anchor of the BBC Sunday Politics show, ‘This is the land of the big state. One think tank recently suggested the state was more important than in any country in the world, bar Cuba, North Korea or Iraq’ (April 3^rd 2011).

A related issue is the general ignorance of all things Scottish by the Westminster village and even parts of the Scottish media. A good example of this was the reaction to the Scottish Government’s decision to release al-Megrahi in August 2009. This led to numerous calls from Westminster politicians, academics and commentators for the UK Government to stop this happening – invoking what they thought was parliamentary sovereignty to supercede Scottish law. Of course such a view is constitutional illiteracy; English and Scottish law are equal, but that didn’t stop the likes of Prof. John Curtice of Strathclyde University validating such inaccurate views and declaring, ‘that because Holyrood was not sovereign but accountable to Westminster, the British Government could have rushed through legislation to prevent Megrahi’s release’ (Sunday Times, August 1^st 2010). It just happens to be completely and utterly wrong.

Another example comes from last year when I participated in The Spectator debate on Scottish independence, and found myself beforehand speaking to the former editor of The Sun Kelvin Mackenzie, who was backing Scottish independence in the debate, under the logic that it aided English independence. Before we went into the debating hall, I said to Mackenzie that there was a good chance the Scots would not vote for independence, and thus bring about the sequence of events he desired. He looked at me for a second with an air of incredulity and then said, ‘Really, is that right’. The point I took from this was that he was about to stand in front of 400 people and pontificate on a subject he had no real knowledge or insight on – and indeed had close to a near complete ignorance of. Such is much of the world of right wing populist punditry; and they think Scotland is fair game.

The coverage of Scotland and Scottish independence is very different from that of UK withdrawal from the EU. The first has gone from being seen as eccentric and marginal to being perceived as a potential threat to the territorial integrity of the political union that is the UK by the British political establishment; the second has gone from being seen as the preserve of fringe and maverick opinion to representing the mainstream of English politics.

There are a number of lessons from this – not just about media, but politics, media and politics and long-term strategy. Here are a few of them: which could form a checklist of how to win an independence referendum:

1. Slowly permeate and capture the senior positions of a mainstream political party; make sure it isn’t perceived as ‘nationalist’ but in its positioning about defending ‘the national interest’.

2. Win over key media outlets, voices and owners; make sure there are sizeable media platforms prepared to act as advocates for your case.

3. Gradually over time change the terms of debate – so that what once seen as impossible and marginal – becomes mainstream.

4. Pose your strategy as one of reasonableness and gradualism and not about independence at any costs. Instead it is centred on the moderate and mild proposition of renegotiation of an ever-encroaching, stifling union.

5. Time a campaign of significant public figures converting and coming ‘over’ to your side – giving the impression of momentum and greater respect.

6. Make sure in all your coverage – positive, neutral and negative – that people talk of ‘independence’ and never ‘seperatism’ and ‘separation’.

I am talking about the European withdrawal campaign; but equally it has lessons for Scottish independence.

Notes

1. Charles King, ‘The Scottish Play: Edinburgh’s Quest for Independence and the Future of Separatism’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2012, p. 124.

Gerry Hassan

The Scotsman, May 11th 2013

These are baffling times – of big issues and challenges, but of a politics and political conversations which are increasingly problematic, not just in Scotland but across much of the world.

How many times have we been told that the independence debate is a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ or ‘a historic moment’?

Funny that, because it doesn’t feel like that too many people outside the ‘bubble Scotland’ that lives and breathes politics. There have been comedy wars, twitter spats, stupid interventions, and a politics shaped by ‘fans with typewriters’ and worse. There hasn’t been much insight and light so far.

Douglas Alexander’s recent speech was something rare: an interesting, original rumination on many of the important issues. Whatever you think of Labour and Alexander, he is trying to raise the level of debate, and that is surely, desperately needed.

He cited Canadian thinker Michael Ignatieff’s idea of ‘standing’ as being increasingly crucial in public life. Alexander said that ‘when politics has less authority, legitimacy and respect than ever, modern political debate all too often descends into simply a battle for standing’. This is the Manichean world of ‘us’ and ‘them’, enemies rather than opponents.

Alexander recalled the legacy of Thatcher and ‘the brokenness of relationships’ and ‘disempowerment’ of so many people as a result of that era, but also through the intensity of support or opposition the time provoked. In an important passage for our current debate, he championed the role of empathy, referencing the work of Scotland’s Anti-Violence Unit which has reduced Glasgow gang violence by 50%. Kartyn McCluskey, its head was quoted approvingly by Alexander saying, ‘Empathy is what keeps us together. It’s all really about people getting on with other people’.

The cyberwars are as far removed from this as possible. This week Labour activist Ian Smart made offensive comments on twitter, stating that, ‘Better 100 years of the Tories’ than a Scotland which turns ‘on the Poles and the Pakis’ after independence has failed. He didn’t apologise and nor was he condemned by Labour.

In the previous week, comedian Susan Calman faced an avalanche of hate email for some innocuous remarks; a couple of weeks before that academic Gavin Bowd faced all sorts of threats for having the audacity to write a book entitled ‘Fascist Scotland’ mostly about events in the 1930s and 1940s; and there was a ‘Scotland on Sunday’ cover with a swastika which upset lots of people. So no side or strand of Scotland is immune.

What underlines all of this is who feels they are entitled to speak, who thinks they can claim Scotland, what kind of nation and culture does this gave validation to, and who is missing and silenced?

We have to be able to stop and reflect on the silence of many Scots; everywhere, across all aspects of public life and exchange, people have withdrawn or feel diminished and disempowered. And even in our august public spaces, too many Scots are scared to find voice and express themselves, having an inner inferiority complex which limits them, and allows fear and doubt to govern their actions.

Then look at the narrow part of Scotland engaging – the tiny group of the politically motivated. Too many of them lack empathy, respect for others and display a damaging hyper-partisanship.

This is partly about William Mackenzie’s concept of ‘the community of the communicators’ – about who is speaking, has voice and legitimacy, but noticing who isn’t and the gaps in public life.

What terrain are we now defining as legitimate to undertake this historic debate? It is all centred it seems on who can most effectively speak for ‘anti-Tory Scotland’, for the stories of anti-Thatcherism, and for social democracy, as long as all three of these stay in our comfort zones. And that we don’t get into too detailed discussions on values and philosophy, or assess too closely versus reality.

We do have to ask is this really us? Is this enough, adequate or who we want to be? Do we recognise ourselves in these modern stories of Scotland?

The land we live in has at least three very different political cultures. There is the world of fight and flight, of name calling and labeling, which draws upon the hyper-committed. Then there are the polite and respectable conversations of parts of the public sector, government and business, with its belief in enlightenment, good authority and the power of reason.

The biggest part of our country is the part that we speak of least and which is most silent – disconnected Scotland. In many parts it has been missing from politics, public life and our national consciousness for decades, to the extent that people have stopped believing in themselves, or that they have inside themselves voice and the capacity for bringing change.

It is called ‘learned helplessness’, a concept developed by the psychologist Martin Seligman, and it operates on numerous levels: as a kind of inner psychic disempowering, diminishing and silencing. The tragedy is that most of the other two Scotlands don’t even notice that this part of our nation is missing, or the hurt and loss it entails.

Our anti-Tory, anti-Thatcher, centre-left Scotland is the land where life expectancy between Calton and Lenzie North is 28 years at birth; where our universities are even less socially inclusive and representative than the rest of the UK; and where most of our public services are in the pocket of professional interest groups who talk a faux progressive agenda.

Is all of this good enough apart from the tiny band of the committed? It is time for Nationalist Scotland, Labour Scotland and ‘civic Scotland’ to ask, are we as good as we think we are? Do we live up to the principles we regularly fight over and congratulate ourselves we champion?

We have to find voice as one Scotland to stand down the petty tyrants and despots and challenge the complacent self-congratulators.

We should ask at this point: where are our history makers, our history men and history women? But more importantly, we should dare to ask, where when we most need them are our empathy makers and champions?

Gerry Hassan

The Scotsman, May 4th 2013

It has been another fast-moving week in Scotland’s constitutional conversation even leaving the comedy controversies aside.

There was Denis Canavan, chair of ‘Yes Scotland’, distancing himself from SNP policy in suggesting Scotland that should have its own currency; while the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee made the startling observation that independence will involve shaking things up for the UK.

Then there was Alex Salmond’s announcement that an independent Scotland would not have a central bank. This is part of the ‘don’t frighten the horses’ approach of ‘continuity independence’ which sees the maintenance of the pound sterling as Scotland’s currency, with Treasury and Bank of England oversight, and Scotland remaining in the UK Balance of Payments.

This is proof that Scottish nationalism is a form of unionism; just as unionism is a form of nationalism – British state nationalism – the latter in denial of this. Salmond’s new found unionism has become so pronounced that Scotland will continue in monetary union with the rest of the UK and the unreformed institutions of the British state.

There are several levels of this ongoing debate. There is a superficial appearance in the ‘Yes’/’No’ debate and campaigns that this is a choice of fundamental and opposing absolutes. That this is from the age of high modernity, and of defined, fixed and absolute authority and sovereignty, and of clear, binary choices.

Underneath the ‘Yes’/’No’ debate, and even within parts of the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ campaigns, a completely different set of realities is informing matters shaped by the dynamics of the late modern world. This is an environment of a differentiated global ecology of political and legal capacities, where political authority is split and shared between different levels.

This is a world many of us know and are comfortable with, based on the multi-layering of political identities, institutions and sovereignty. Yet for appearances sake both sides have to pretend that this is some 19^th century duel to the death when it isn’t.

This Janus like set of characteristics of the debate can be witnessed in the contradictions about where an independent Scotland could geo-politically sit. Large parts of Scots opinion aspire to be shaped by the values of Nordic social democracy, informed by an understandable revulsion at the excesses of Thatcherite/Blairite debasing of public goods, life and values.

This Scottish desire to be a bit Nordic is thus based on the desire to reject something we know doesn’t work, and to be positively different. However, it doesn’t take into account the fact that the Nordic nations no longer feel themselves social democratic eldorados but under attack from the same market determinism. And that if we wanted to be a little more Nordic, the Scottish Government have it in their power now to start making some of the intricate networks of collaboration and partnership we see in our friends in the north.

Yet at the very same time, the version of independence on offer from the SNP and elsewhere is about realities beyond the ‘Yes’/’No’ debate: concerning shared authorities, common competencies and a fuzzy, messy sense of sovereignty.

This is the interindependence of the modern world and the SNP which is fine and proper, but when it crosses over into monetary union and the virtual continuation of large parts of the British state, it reduces the options for shifting Scotland geo-politically.

The Salmond strategy is based on making the big vote not about independence but greater self-government. This is tactically probably right, but for many ‘Yes’ supporters there is an illusion or false comfort in believing that only a ‘Yes’ vote brings change and that the ‘Better Together’ parties cannot develop other versions of change. This when Lab, Lib Dems and Tories are all working away on proposals. And, beneath the rhetoric, what this debate boils down to is one version of home rule from the SNP versus others as yet to be determined.

What would contribute to this debate is a more thought out version of interindependence with all the shared bits and sensibleness, but which spoke to Scotland’s desire to be different. That would allow the debate to progress to examine the limits of further devolution which require acquiescence and agreement at a British level (and eventually British reform and democratisation at its centre which we will wait a long time for as things currently stand).

If the next sixteen months are to offer some kind of tangible choice and debate there has to be a challenge to the safety first, minimal choice Scotland found in the conservatives of all hues, supported by the radicals who say nothing substantive can be debated this side of the big vote.

The majority of Scottish opinion have consistently indicated that they oppose the Thatcherite/Blairite consensus, but if this is to be meaningful its influence north of the border, unstated, unsaid but everywhere, in the SNP, Labour and public life has to be noted. This would entail stopping the pretence that we can be progressive and cut corporation tax, embrace the Laffer Curve and advance deregulation.

Instead we have to get explicit about how we want to be different: in our public realm, in our ethics of modern life and society and in imagining the ways we could go about economics and business differently from the wreckage of ‘bubble Britain’. That has to be about more than maintaining what we currently have, whether it is free tuition fees or OAP bus passes, but grasping the thistle of what a Scottish ‘good society’ would look like.

There will be many surreal comic moments along the way. This week some of the SNP took umbrage at the Foreign Affairs Committee daring to suggest that independence would lead to ‘reputational damage’ and ‘loss of prestige’ for the UK.  Surely this would be no bad thing given the state of the UK and we can safely say that it isn’t the job of independence to look after the existing union.

Yet we also have to bring centrestage the problem of the power vortex of London and the South East, the character and nature of the British state, and the long term problem of the Treasury and Bank of England which have embedded short-term thinking and economic uneven development at the heart of UK policy making.

There is at the centre of UK politics, from Tory and Lib Dem to Labour and UKIP a desire for restoration: for a return to the certainties of Britain pre-crash with its consumer, property and banking fetishes. It is a myopic worldview that independence should have no truck with and has the courage to take the moral high ground on and challenge the devolutionists to explain how they will change.

Gerry Hassan

The Scotsman, April 27th 2013

Ed Miliband does not have to seek out his troubles and much of it seems to come from his own side rather than from opponents.

This week Len McCluskey, head of Unite laid into Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander claiming that if Miliband listened to them, ‘he’ll be defeated’ and ‘cast into the dustbin of history’. Worse, George Galloway endorsed Miliband for PM, just the sort of thing to scare off marginal voters.

Labour’s poll ratings are on average 9% ahead of the Tories producing a predicted Commons majority of 96 seats, but most people think it should be further ahead at the moment.

The electoral system may aid Labour and hinder the Tories, but underneath the headline figures there is a lack of conviction in Labour. 66% of voters think Miliband isn’t ready to be PM with only 24% feeling that he is ready. Only 12% of the public thinks Labour are the most capable party to take tough decisions, while 48% think this of the Conservatives.

What does Labour stand for now many now ask? Miliband has called time on the New Labour era, but embraced something called ‘One Nation Labour’ which has delivered one brilliant conference speech, but has yet to be fleshed out into policy.

Miliband has time and again expressed his ambition of being an agenda-shifting politician following the example of Thatcher, shifting the centre ground, rather than being defined by it. But any details and staked out positions have been few.

Post-New Labour the party has identified the land Thatcher and Blair built as part of the problem, along with Anglo-American capitalism, but the interest in a more co-operative Germanic capitalism has not resulted in anything more than mood music.

Part of the problem is coming to terms with the legacy of New Labour. To many left-wingers New Labour was the creation of a coup d’état in which a reactionary quasi-Thatcherite elite destroyed the party’s progressive traditions. To some such as former party leader Neil Kinnock, Miliband’s election was a sign that ‘we’ve got our party back’ from such a group.

Yet New Labour’s genesis was a more nuanced one grounded in the long and slow erosion of socialist and social democratic thinking from 1945 onward. More recently, Labour under Kinnock and John Smith moved the party rightwards pre-Blair, focusing on making it respectable and unthreatening to Conservative voters and the City.

Then we come to Miliband’s search for a new mantra and ‘One Nation Labour’. This was clever positioning but translating it into policy and strategy has proven problematic. It seems to be trying to position Labour as a healer and unifier after the division of the coalition, but ‘One Nation Labour’ doesn’t seem to involve being bold and taking on the new vested interests who bust the economy in the first place.

Then there is the disunited kingdom. The UK operates with at least four different political systems, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland marching to an increasingly different beat to Westminster.

It is even more problematic than that for England which is increasingly divided into two nations. In Northern England, the Tories only hold 43 out of 158 seats, while in the South outside London Labour hold a mere ten seats out of 197.

New research from the Policy Exchange think tank ‘Northern Lights’ shows that voters in the south of England are now more worried about insecurity in comparison to aspiration faced as they are with the twin pressures of miniscule to non-existent wage rises and falling living standards; so there is an opportunity for Labour there.

There is behind all of this an even bigger question: who does Labour speak for? And what does it stand for? Previously that question was obvious: it was in the party’s name. Labour saw itself as the people’s party – the organised expression of working people.

That gave the party ballast and strength when trade unions were powerful and represented half the workforce, although it also often gave it headaches when in office as ‘In Place of Strife’ and the winter of discontent showed.

Now trade unions represent seven million, mostly public sector employees, and individual party membership is well under 200,000, it is less clear who the party represent and how it balances its core support with winning enough votes to form an effective government.

On issue after issue, banking reform, welfare, immigration, Trident, the party finds itself caught between its core vote instincts and winning over new more centrist converts; between the memory and lessons of Blair and breaking free from what many see as a fatal embrace.

A recent Lord Ashcroft super poll of 20,000 voters showed that of the top four issues of concern: growth and jobs, welfare, immigration and cutting the deficit, Labour was ahead on only one and by a slender margin, growth and jobs, and behind on the other three by significant margins. This when Labour had a sizeable national lead, and before the coalition upped the temperature on welfare.

It may seem implausible to write this but if the economy improves by 2015 many fear Labour’s lead will prove weak and may vanish leaving Miliband and the party in trouble.

A deeper and longer problem could arise. The next election (which of course could be the last UK election ever) could see three unpopular Westminster mainstream parties face each other with Labour’s core vote of 35% enough with the electoral system to produce a Miliband Premiership.

While Labour supporters would welcome this it would represent a government with a thin mandate and little room for maneouvre to make difficult choices in hard times. It would be a government the forces of right wing England would not trust or see as representing their interests and which they would wage vicious war on from day one.

At the moment Ed Miliband is as far away from a sea-changing politician as one could imagine, with his best prospects being a one term Prime Ministership before the rightward march of English politics continues apace.

The tragedy is that Miliband understands this conundrum: the limits of Labour’s appeal pre-Blair and the downside of the Thatcherite/Blairite consensus. Doing something about it would mean breaking from the caricatures of ‘Steady Ed’ and ‘Red Ed’ and nurturing an inclusive, radical coalition against the current political settlement. He wants to do this, but so far there is little sign that he will embark on such a high-risk strategy.

Gerry Hassan

The Scotsman, April 20th 2013

It seems to be the age of seven questions as Tony Blair once again acts as an uncomfortable sage for Labour and Ed Miliband.

With Labour meeting in Inverness this weekend and the party’s Devolution Commission interim report out, it is time for Scottish Labour to assess where it is and what it needs to do to change and to start shaping the political weather.

Here then are my seven observations and suggestions for you Johann:

1. Careless Talk Costs Political Lives

Your ‘something for nothing’ speech has gone down in political mythology; not quite the ‘Sermon on the Mound’, but cast that way by opponents. There was a point to your argument, but strategically and tactically, it was ineptly executed. There was no preparatory work, of building advance positions, and signing up significant allies prior to the speech.

The language was counter-productive and damaging to Labour. ‘Something for nothing’ might work as a soundbite from your spin-doctor Paul Sinclair or in a ‘Daily Record’ editorial, but it deeply hurts Labour by embracing right wing populist rhetoric.

2. Show You Have Changed

Most people in Scotland still think benignly of Labour – but of the idea of Labour – not the reality. Part of the idea has been nicked by the Nats hence some of your fury at them.

People think they know what Labour says and where you come from; in short they treat Labour like a tired, predictable supermarket product which is long past its sell by date. You have to do something dramatic to win popular attention and show that you have changed. A declaration of Scottish Labour independence from Westminster could be one such act.

3. Devolution is not the answer

Devolution emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as a half-way house to stop the SNP. It is a narrow set of political processes about politicians, parliaments and powers which doesn’t reach out and connect with most people.

If Labour continually see the answer for Scotland’s future as devolution, it is posing a closed conversation. Instead, while it must have a forward offer on more powers, Labour should make its modus operandi about a socially just Scotland.

4. Do something about Britain

Another problem with stressing future devolution is that this doesn’t just involve the Scots. More devolution demands British wide debate, solutions and reforms. It brings us to the elephant in the room of the problem of the British state.

This is where Douglas Alexander’s suggestion of a post-2014 second Scottish Convention if Scotland votes ‘no’ is wrong. Scotland cannot continually revisit the processes of the 1980s – Convention, Scotland Act, Scotland only solution. There has to be an acknowledgement of the British dimension and the problem of Britain.

This is where Labour could steal the thunder from the Nats, who by their nature don’t talk or propose British wide solutions. What is to stop Labour openly acknowledging that British government, public institutions and the central state have become a huge part of the problem for Scotland and most working people in the UK? And set up a Commission on the Future of the British State which draws from Scotland and the rest of the UK.

5. Be Careful Who Your Friends Are

Labour unionism has historically been very different from Tory unionism. This is where you need to be very careful about the Tory toxic brand. Labour unionism was always about the union as a means to an end, namely, a fairer, better Scotland in a union working to those ends. Such a politics is no longer plausible in the fourth most unequal country in the rich world.

Where this takes Labour is the terrain of arguing for the union as an end in itself – the cul-de-sac of the ‘Better Together’ coalition. This position is tolerable in the short-term, but even by September 2014 it will cause problems for Labour and has nothing in common with a progressive politics. The union has to be a means for Labour.

6. Differentiate from British Labour

Scottish Labour has to be equal parts of its promise: Scottish and Labour and that sometimes means differentiating yourself from British Labour. Other parties such as the Lib Dems and even Tories do this north of the border, but Labour are wary of this. There are anxieties of playing into Nationalist hands, and concerns about what the Westminster Labour dinosaurs will put up with.

These are not good reasons for not acting. Here is one suggestion: Trident’s replacement. Scottish Labour used to debate defence and foreign policy when party rules allowed it between 1972-98. Now you are not meant to. Overturn that and come out against the militarisation of the Clyde.

7. After Labour Scotland

Once Labour was not just a party of the future, but the party synonymous with an optimistic, generous, future Scotland. Now the party is widely seen outside its ranks as inward looking, and defined by a defensiveness and attachment to the status quo across most of life rather than change.

What would an optimistic, confident Labour Scotland look like? For a start, it would be a party talking in a different tone from now. Maybe you don’t realise it but often you give the impression of wanting to tell people off, and that the people don’t measure up to the way Labour thinks they should behave.

In recent times, you have compared SNP MSPs to school children, and gone on perhaps a bit too long about your days as a school teacher: the reference to the school bells and, this week, the challenges of leading a class in the 1980s.

Labour has to learn to live with the SNP, not be all curmudgeonly about independence and the SNP’s date with history. It makes you sound surly and as if you have a major chip on your shoulder.

So – a different language, stop going on about devolution, challenge the British state, embrace a different unionism, and establish a tartan red wedge between yourself and British Labour.

Finally, whether you still think it wrong that Alex Salmond and the SNP are sitting in seats rightfully yours, change your mindset and start being optimistic and hopeful. This worked for the SNP in 2007 and 2011 and for New Labour in 1997. Learn from the best: copy, imitate and make it your own.

Gerry Hassan

Scottish Review, April 18th 2013

Scottish football matters to lots of us. Its images and halcyon images define many of our lives – the Lisbon Lions in 67, Rangers in Barcelona in 72, Aberdeen in Gothenburg in 83, the Jim Baxter keepie-up and the Archie Gemmell run.

When you think of English football one of the many images that might spring to mind is ‘Match of the Day’ and this may include its current opening credits. You would not say the same of the current BBC Scotland version of ‘Sportscene’.

Once upon a time ‘Sportscene’ and STV’s ‘Scotsport’ were part of our national fabric. There was Archie Macpherson anchoring one and Arthur Montford the other. They became national icons, figures of respect, learnedness and even in some strange way, of a Scottish sense of male style.

Decline has mirrored our national game – long, steep and, looking at the moment, irreversible and without the will or capacity to seriously change.

‘Scotsport’ became so bad in its last run that it was almost near genius. This was the era of Sarah O, Grant Stott and Andy Walker, alongside the fake terraces inhabited by I assume real, rather than fake, fans who would lean against the barriers and give their vox pops on the issues of the day. Lots of us thought this was a low for how our game was represented on TV. How wrong we were.

Then ‘Sportscene’ won the contract to show SPL games and ‘Scotsport’ packed up their bags and folded. Not all of the current ‘Sportscene’ is bad. Rob MacLean does a valiant effort as presenter but that is about all the good that can be said for a programme that doesn’t even tell you who its editor is in the closing titles – which must be illustrative of something.

What then are the main problems with ‘Sportscene’? First, it’s not on Saturday night anymore (cup days excepted). It’s on Sunday before ‘Match of the Day2’. Thus, schedule wise it is between ‘MOTD’ Saturday and ‘MOTD2’. What does that say? Not worthy of Saturday box office. I guess it isn’t shown on Saturday because the contract the BBC has signed is for restricted viewing rights versus SKY Sports, but why is this the case when the Beeb have paid millions for such rights?

Second, there is the length of the highlights. These are embarrassing. Basically it is the goals and a couple of incidents in each game. And it looks and feels terrible, compared to ‘MOTD’ highlights and the ‘Sportscene’ and ‘Scotsport’ of yesteryear. Some dim-witted football fans have actually said the short highlights are due to showing bits of all six SPL games, but ‘MOTD’ can manage longer extracts from up to ten games; so that’s not the reason.

Third, games are shown with no real introduction, no setting up and no team line-ups; a cost cutting exercise I imagine. Then for most games we don’t even get the privilege of a post-match manager interview I possibly because that would involve resources.

Fourth, one of the great things about ‘MOTD’ is the football punditry which has taken understanding and appreciation of the game to a new level. Love or loathe Hansen, Shearer and Lawrenson, and everyone has their pet hates, but they add insight and an intricate knowledge of the game.

What does ‘Sportscene’ give us? It has a complete lack of proper football punditry. Whereas ‘MOTD’ has invested long term in building up an audience rapport with Hansen etc. instead we get inarticulate young footballers in one of the two guest slots. I imagine because they are cheap or don’t ask for a fee. One recent lad from Inverness Caley could barely string a sentence together; the same was true a few months back with Celtic assistant manager Johan Mjällby who clearly didn’t have a thought in his head on anything bar Celtic.

Fifth, the biggest crime of ‘Sportscene’ is that of talking the game down. After watching an Aberdeen v. Motherwell ‘highlights’ a month or two ago, Rob MacLean commented that ‘we struggled to get twenty seconds of highlights out of that’. Similarly the recent Dundee v. Dundee United cup match, which was a good old-fashioned game, saw MacLean declare that ‘it was not a very good match’, something many of the papers disagreed with. ‘MOTD’ does not do that; ‘Sportscene’ as many fans know does it all the time.

Sixth, then there are the awful graphics and opening credits. ‘MOTD’ places itself in a proud history of the game since the BBC started covering domestic English football on TV.

‘Sportscene’ has been going since 1975 but its antecedents go back longer. BBC Scotland started covering football in 1945 with ‘Sportsreel’, but where is BBC Scotland’s sense of its own history? Think of the panoply of glorious and not so glorious images they could choose from, leaving aside the over-exposed images cited at the start of this article.

A ‘Sportscene’ which understood its place as part of the history of the game, and its own role as a curator, would have opening credits reflecting that. Maybe mixing some of the great Hampden nites of olden days, such as a Joe Jordan header, with say a Scottish team in Europe in the 1960s tormenting opponents, such as Dundee or Dunfermline, and a couple of domestic highs which weren’t all about the ‘Old Firm’. You wouldn’t think watching “Sportscene’ that BBC Scotland had a rich, or indeed, any kind of football archive, would you?

Finally, and most importantly, ‘MOTD’ makes people feel proud of their game. It talks it up, is filled with a love, enthusiasm and history of the game, and produces insights and decent football packages.

‘Sportscene’ for all our domestic game’s undoubted limitations and problems detracts and diminishes from our game. It cheapens it and makes it seem something to be embarrassed by. Every football fan I know and speak to feels the same, so why has this been allowed to happen?

One of the reasons has to be found in the contract that BBC Scotland signed for SPL highlights. It is so restrictive in terms of what they can show, the length of highlights, and when they can show them. Why has BBC Scotland which is a major financial supporter of the game, agreed to such an awful contract? It has leverage with the football authorities, despite the power of SKY and ESPN.

The bigger issue is the state of BBC Scotland, our ‘national broadcaster’ which has not just in football, but across so many areas, lost its way. This is an organisation suffering financial cuts and staff redundancies, and which is struggling with the independence debate and wider Scots society, to reflect, understand and represent back to us the society we live in. It had lost its way before the current challenges, ‘BBC Scotland’ existing in only name and as one former insider told me, ‘BBC Scotland is a complete fiction’. It is an institution whose senior management look to hold the line, do London’s biding for them, and keep the ‘restless natives’ at bay. STV are hardly any better.

The sad state of Scottish football on our TV screens may seem a marginal issue to many but it is about much more than a game. Instead, our mainstream broadcasters, BBC and STV, have been failing us for years, and delivering second rate, unambitious programmes which don’t come from the best of our culture or inspire us to think we come from the nation of imagination, creativity and invention Scotland still is. That’s why the state of “Sportscene’ matters. And yes it would be good to see some of those Joe Jordan headers some of us remember from our childhood again gracing our TV screens. We can but dream.

Gerry Hassan

The Scotsman, April 15th 2013

The last week has effectively been an elegy on Britain’s recent past and present rolled into one.

This is not just about Thatcher, but the numerous references to the Churchill and Attlee funerals and how we marked these past titans. Is this who we really were, we ask with curiosity? Are we still that same people who dreamed dreams, stood alone against the Nazis, and built a welfare state, we ask, with a hint of anxiety?

Britain seems increasingly a place shaped by the allure of living in the past, by the power of previous generations and the combined cacophonous voices of the dead.

This is not just about the Thatcher moment. In recent years the British state has increasingly marked its numerous military and imperial triumphs and engagements. We have honoured Admiral Nelson’s victory in the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Britain; next year there is the 70^th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Western Europe and the bizarre celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the onset of the First World War.

It is about more than that. Britain is an old country, not so much in terms of years but attitude, embracing the argument put forward by the writer Patrick Wright in the 1980s that Britain developed a culture drawn to a romanticised, recreated, problematic vision of the past.

This increasingly, Wright argued, came to be true, post-1979, as a crisis arose in modernity, progress and a shared national sense of belonging. From this emerged the burgeoning heritage industry, conservation movement, and the rise of Prince Charles as a bulwark against modern architecture and planners.

Simultaneously Britain is showing its crumbling attachment to democracy. This can be witnessed in the potent connection to the Queen as a person and an institution. She embodies in her 61 year ‘selfless’ reign the last connection to the Britain of our wartime spirit and to the collective endeavour which followed.

This can be seen in the appeal of Peter Morgan’s ‘The Audience’ with Helen Mirren playing her constitutional role of Her Majesty which highlights eight of ‘the Dirty Dozen’ Prime Ministers weekly meetings with her. It is as if we are desperate to find in our divided, diminished society some shared threads which link us together.

Something is going on deep in the British national psyche if we can still use this phrase. Britain seems to be shifting into an age and culture of post-democracy where the democratic impulse is weakening by the day. The phrase comes from the academic Colin Crouch who has identified a new alignment of political and business elites who have supplanted the older democratic institutions. But if this is true we also have to understand that Britain has entered this phase having never been a fully fledged political democracy.

Just think of the constitutional elements of the UK. The House of Commons is the only elected part of the British political system at the centre. The House of Lords for centuries was filled with feudal relics and the remnants of monarchial preferment. Now it has become an emblem of Prime Ministerial patronage; so not much of an advance there; while our Head of State is clearly unelected and derives their legitimacy from criteria other than the popular will.

More than that the UK never really even in the post-war years fully embraced modernity, modernisation and being a people’s state. Instead, the Attlees and Wilsons of Labour’s high tide tried to build a social democratic country on top of an unreformed Empire state.

The House of Lords is a good analogy for the whole country; from feudalism to the new class of insider traders in the political system – from pre to post democracy with no pause inbetween. That’s the story of modern Britain.

Within the British political elites there has always been a fear and foreboding at the threat of democracy might pose to their way of life. Yet those anxieties about the popular will are also mirrored in the people themselves.

This is evident in the Scottish debate and how it situates itself in Britain. Once upon a time the Scots were seen and even in part saw themselves as too poor, pathetic and divided to be left running their own affairs. A memory of this still lingers in part of our collective memory, but it has subsided massively, aided by the achievements of the Scottish Parliament and revulsion at some of the actions of Westminster.

That anxiety about the people can also be seen in current English concerns about what happens next year with Scotland’s big vote if England is left by itself. ‘Don’t leave us with a permanent Tory England’, The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee implored an Edinburgh Book Festival audience last year. Now Scottish restraint is seen as essential in preventing the triumph of an over-zealous, populist right wing Thatcherite English politics.

The fragility of the democratic impulse, whether it is measured by political participation, engagement and activism, can also be seen in the narrow bandwidth of subjects debated, or that on the big substantive issues, the power and irresponsibility of bankers, inequality, aiding and supporting people out of poverty, the public increasingly doubt that politicians can deliver.

The UK has always been a country which has never been modern, or a proper fully fledged democracy, but the crises of public values have grown more significant and deep. We now live in a country which looks to the past for its explanations and vision of the future, which is obsessed by previous generations and finding its heroes and heroines in the pantheon of the dead, and which seems when it is not fighting wars to be constantly marking old imperial adventures.

This might all seem harmless and benign to some but reveals something about our loss of faith in ourselves and our collective will. Think of that as Cameron, Miliband and Clegg struggle to explain the challenges of overcoming the deficit and national debt, and connect with voters.

Reflect on that as the country pauses next week for the pomp and grandeur of the Thatcher funeral. What kind of country are we celebrating or mourning? And what kind of atrophied, disconnected people does that imply, and are we really happy and content to play such a restricted role in the body politic of the good ship Britannia?

Gerry Hassan

Open Democracy, April 10th 2013

We live in Thatcher’s Britain, yet that statement is obvious, contentious and deeply divisive. And this is all the more true of Thatcher north of the border.

Thatcher is simultaneously both history and present day. You can hear this in the differing accounts on TV and radio; with conservative figures claiming she remade the modern world from knocking down the Berlin Wall and freeing Eastern Europe, to preventing a future ‘socialist Britain’; while elements of the left wail in pain and agony at how events have turned out and their inability to come to terms with the country and politics she created.

We live in an age as much shaped by Thatcher as the previous political era: the so-called ‘post-war consensus’, a phrase seldom used in that era, and only invoked at its fag end. The date of Thatcher entering office, 1979, is exactly halfway between 1945 and today. Therefore, we are 34 years from Thatcher’s first victory; and 34 years from then to Clement Attlee’s historic mandate. And given that there are detailed studies of ‘the post-war consensus’, we should be able to begin to do the same with Thatcherism, but instead we are still arguing over what it means.

In Scotland, Thatcher’s reign, implications and legacy is even more subject to myth making and misunderstanding. Take popular vote. The Scots Tories were in trouble long before Thatcher (1). The patrician, grouse moor Tories of Macmillan and Home had a resonance and reach in Scotland. The long story of Tory decline from Eden’s 50.1% in 1955 to 24.7% in October 1974, predates Thatcher.

In fact, if we accurately assess Thatcher’s popularity she inherited that 24.7% in 1974 and saw their vote fall to 24.0% in 1987 which isn’t much of a decline; the Scots Tory number of Westminster seats fell from 16 to 10 over this period while the English vote rose from 38.9% in October 1974 to 46.2% in 1987 (the usual comparison is between 31.4% in 1979 and 17.5% in 1997, the latter with zero seats, but that includes seven years of Major as PM) (2).

We have to consciously remember and recall as accurately as memory will allow the lost Scotland that some think Thatcher took away from us, but which in reality was in deep turmoil and fracture in the 1960s and 1970s. This world is one of a closed, managed society of powerful elites made mostly of professional interest groups which learned to invoke a progressive language and appropriate the values of social democracy and collectivism to ingratiate itself with political culture; and avoid difficult questions and scrutiny.

This was a society of deference, authority and trust in ‘high Scotland’ pre-1979; the world of enlightened council officials, simultaneously caring, judgemental and punitive; of the power of the Kirk and the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland being broadcast live on TV as if it were the Parliament of the nation (something which continued into some point in the 1980s). And of course it matters that most positions of power in public life were held by middle aged men. It isn’t an accident that Margaret Thatcher’s ‘Sermon on the Mound’, the ‘Claim of Right’ and Scottish Constitutional Convention, and first years of the Scottish Parliament, were all held in the same Church of Scotland building.

‘False Memory Syndrome’ Scotland

What we are witnessing is ‘False Memory Syndrome’ Scotland. This forms a set of collective memories which state that Thatcher hated Scotland, set out to destroy us, deliberately inflicted the poll tax on us as an ‘experiment’ and closed the pits, shipyards and steelworks (3). This isn’t about facts but folk stories; it is irrelevant that Ravenscraig was twice saved from closure by the Thatcher Government and shut by Major in 1992.

A Glasgow taxi driver talked to me about the appetite for destruction Thatcher had for all things Scottish and said, ‘When I look at Margaret Thatcher and Adolf Hitler, I know which one I hate most because of what they did to Scotland’. He did mean the first of the two, and with a twinkle in his eyes smiled and said, ‘I know it is wrong’. What excuse did William McIlvanney have when he delivered his ‘Stands Scotland Where It Did?’ lecture in the 1980s, and actually dared to suggest that Thatcher wanted to wipe Scotland as a set of values and ideas off the map, and reduce us to geography (4). The bigger crime is that we listened and believed it at the time.

Institutional establishment Scotland at its core has always done self-importance, certainty and smugness. Elements of public life are happy to declare that our elites aren’t really elites. They are the people’s elites if that isn’t too Blairite. If you think that is just a quip then Magnus Linklater, former editor of ‘The Scotsman’ and the Scottish edition of ‘The Times’ and serial sitter on many of the great and good panels and boards of Scotland, said in a book entitled, ‘Anatomy of Scotland’, that, ‘It would … be very hard to talk about a Scottish ‘establishment’’ (5). Who needs satire or a Scottish ‘Private Eye’ when we have this?

They have good reason for their sense of importance, for they have run Scotland since the union (and before I surmise). Post-1707 as political power moved south they were left to administer the dense set of networks of Scots society; with the added bonus of an absence of political scrutiny and accountability.

Then Thatcher came along and challenged their right. Their response was to invoke the idea of ‘civic Scotland’ which had never much been heard of pre-1979 and throw their weight behind the notion of a Scottish Parliament (which previously they had been suspicious of), to maintain the positions, privileges and the complex negotiated order which they managed.

That’s why ‘civic Scotland’ cannot stand Thatcher to this day; her politics, philosophy and ism were a direct threat to their time honoured way of doing things before. And no one had asked them before to justify what they were doing in the name of the people.

Change was coming. Thatcher went with the grain of economic and social change in Britain at the end of the 1970s and put her emphasis on it. The so-called ‘post-war consensus’ was falling apart. This doesn’t mean that Thatcherism was inevitable, merely that change was coming and political attempts to reverse decline; in the early 1980s there were three political projects on this, Thatcher, Bennism, and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), with the last two dividing and destroying the twin forces of opposition. Thatcher’s ‘modernisation’ to use that discredited Blairite word, gave voice to a whole host of powerful economic and social changes, the rise of empowered individualism, a more questioning view of authority, and a more pro-business, low tax economy, And some may not like this, but in its wake, New Labour and Alex Salmond’s SNP have followed; they are both ‘Thatcher’s children’.

‘Civic Scotland’ still doesn’t understand this. It wants to go back to the Scotland of the past; to talk as Joyce McMillan did on ‘Newsnight Scotland’ about how good the 1970s were. It gets you into all sorts of confusion, for you have to argue as McMillan did that the major root of all public sector problems are coming from the UK and London policy classes; and then ignore that Scotland has been self-governing in most of its public services for over a decade as David Torrance pointed out in the same programme (6). The inconvenient truth is that Scotland’s elites have in time honoured practice chosen accommodation with the corporate orthodoxies of pseudo-marketeerism; and that is something that is our choice and responsibility, not London’s.

Whose Parliament and Scotland is it?

It is often said that Thatcher was the midwife of the Scottish Parliament. In some respects this is true but the Parliament had many parents – Labour, SNP, the unorganised, collective wishes of the Scottish people. And then there is ‘civic Scotland’.

Canon Kenyon Wright writing ostensibly about Thatcher turned the focus back on his own role in history, declaring that some have called him the ‘father’ of the Scottish Parliament (7). It is a presumptive, inaccurate statement, of the entitlement classes, who for generations ran the Empire with the English, and then administered the burgeoning welfare state in their own version of the Scots Empire state.

This group believes that the Parliament is theirs because they think that Scotland is theirs, in the way that Labour claim ownership of the NHS (‘our NHS’). Margaret Thatcher and her ism they state without a shred of irony is ‘not one of us’. It is an instinctual, emotional ‘claim of right’ over the Parliament’s genesis, and we have to say, firmly and politely, no to it.

Scotland cannot go back to its past, to the predictable, caring, suffocating, ordered society that many of us grew up with. In our hearts and hopes, we know the multiple characteristics of that system, compassion and diligence for sure, but orthodoxy and small minded, petty officialdom as well. Its clarion call was ‘planned freedom’, a very Scottish concept if ever there was one, freedom for a purpose if you behave, with the result being ‘learned helplessness’.

We have to finally realise that democratisation, disputation and pluralism are our future. We should embrace and champion them, and answer the question, democratisation for what? We have grown up these last few years as a society, and yes we still have some growing, learning and maturing to do. Margaret Thatcher may have inadvertently contributed to the self-governing Scotland of today, but the time has come for us to stop playing games with shadows, hunting for the pantomime villain to blame all our woes on, and get on with creating a better, fairer nation.

These few days should be a time for reflection and release. We don’t have to be Thatcher’s Scotland if we don’t want to be.

Notes

1.David Seawright, An Important Matter of Principle: The Decline of the Conservative and Unionist Party, Ashgate 1999; James Mitchell, Conservatives and the Union, Edinburgh University Press 1990.

2. All figures from Colin Rallings and Michael Trasher, British Electoral Facts 1832-2012, Biteback Publishing 2012.

3. David Torrance, ‘We in Scotland’: Thatcherism in a Cold Climate, Birlinn 2009; Gerry Hassan, ‘It’s Only a Northern Song: The Constant Smirr of Anti-Thatcherism and Anti-Toryism’, in David Torrance (ed.), Whatever Happened to Tory Scotland?, Edinburgh University Press 2012.

4. William McIlvanney, ‘Stands Scotland Where It Did?’, in Surviving the Shipwreck, Mainstream 1992.

5. Magnus Linklater, ‘Foreword’, to Magnus Linklater and Robin Denniston (eds), Anatomy of Scotland, Chambers 1992.

6. Newsnight Scotland, April 8^th 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rxhwt/Newsnight_Scotland_08_04_2013/

7. The Herald, Letters Page, April 9^th 2013, http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/letters/why-we-should-give-thanks-to-mother-of-scottish-parliament.20740869