My Trip to Scotland

I'm nearing the end of this short trip - I catch the train this afternoon for London where I get to see my grandson for the first time in almost 3 years - and will fly out of Gatwick for Bucharest on Wednesday. It's been a useful, if rather strenuous, trip - with flat viewing in Kirkcaldy the first week and stay in my Edinburgh sister-in-law's house the second. She's guided me to good bookshops and, yesterday, to the Scottish Parliament where I picked up one of four books I've been reading since I got here.

The first was Rory Stewart's "Politics on the Edge" - a devastating picture of the state of the contemporary political system in the UK as seen by a centrist traditional Tory.

The second is Warring Fictions – left populism and its myths by Chris Clarke (2019) who is the son of Charles, a Cabinet Minister in Bliar's government with the book exploring the divisions in the Labour party between the "left populists" and the "left pluralists" - making some very intriguing constrasts.

The third book is by a working class Glaswegian - The Social Distance Between us - how remote politics wrecked Britain which adds the class dimension to Stewart’s picture. It's really challenging and made me realise how predictably bourgeois I am in my perceptions and attitudes.

The final book is by one of Scotland's very rare public intellectuals, Gerry Hassan (Tom Nairn was another and Mark Blyth has the makings of a third) - Scotland Rising (2022) which strikes a rare note of moderation in the bitter divide between nationalists and unionists in the country.

Is the UK becoming a failed State?

How quickly a country can collapse – socially and economically. Lebanon and Sri Lanka are the latest examples.

Mark Blyth is a political economist highly respected across the political spectrum for the clarity and bluntness of his dissection of complex issues. On a 2021 podcast he had expressed the view, in his typically succinct way, that Brexit had been a turning point for the British economy – with the past year in particular suggesting that little was left except an enormous “Rentier Class” living off hundreds of billions of profits of privatised companies. The social media is full of the amazing profits being made by the shareholders and bosses of these companies - which add insult to injury by failing to undertake basic investment in infrastructure. There’s been quite a spate of books recently about “Rentier Capitalism” of which this looks the most interesting

As far as action is concerned, Richard Murphy has been a rare voice pushing in the past decade for tax justice and probably has the most detailed programme. His brief outline is here – and the 30 page detailed programme is here

But forgive me for wanting to focus on the part of the UK I know best – Scotland, from which Mark Blyth also happens to hail. Having been against the idea of Scotland separating in 2014 from the UK, he was “outed” recently on Twitter as having changed his mind – although he has subsequently confessed to finding it difficult “to make a positive case for independence” and has apparently just been axed from the Advisory group he joined a year ago. The Scottish Government last month decided to make a bid for a second referendum on the issue (for October 2023) – with the 2 candidates for the Conservative party leadership both strongly opposed to allowing it.

It’s not easy to find a good discussion on the internet about the issues involved in the idea of Scotland separating – but I’ve just come across a fantastic one superbly chaired by a young trade union woman. All the participants are Scottish and the tone is respectful;

Common Weal is an important Scottish Foundation which has run a podcast for quite some time and here features Richard Murphy to take us back to the UK economy.

The social media are having a great time with such fake ads as this one for the UK government 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1561657960819937282

update; and lo, 2 days later, James O'Brien was also talking of "the failed state" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPduUCpjkNE

26 August - How Chris Grey's latest post put it -

Domestically, that means a rapidly worsening cost of living crisis. Inflation is at its highest since the early 1980s and still rising, with households facing their largest ever recorded fall in living standards, and the Bank of England predicts five continuous quarters of economic recession. There are multiple strikes in the rail network, the docks, the courts, the postal service and elsewhere, and more to come. With a growing ‘Don’t Pay’ campaign in the face of what for many will be impossible energy bills, talk of civil unrest and disobedience does not seem hyperbolic.

There are now chronic labour shortages in almost every occupation, so that even as food prices rise to a 40-year high there is food rotting in fields for lack of people to pick or harvest it. The NHS, and especially the ambulance service, is at breaking point, as, not unrelatedly, is the social care system. In fact it is hard to find any part of the public or private sector which is not, in some way or other, under alarming strain. The beaches are awash with sewage, like a metaphor. And, though you’d hardly know it, we are still living with the effects of a pandemic, including an estimated 1.6 million people in England alone living with Long Covid, and presumably the possibility of a new wave to come.

Throughout all this, the leadership contest means there has been, in effect, no functioning government. The notional Prime Minister, rather than acting as a responsible caretaker, has spent the summer alternating between sulking, holidaying and squeezing the last drop out of the perks of his office. Any chance Boris Johnson had of a final period of dignity to set against the depraved conduct that led to his ejection has been squandered. Most Prime Ministers end up being judged less harshly by history than they are at the time of their departure; I strongly suspect that Johnson will be assessed even more critically in the future than he is now.

Post-Brexit political instability set to continue

When this strange summer ends, it will not herald the end of the period of political instability any more than the events and crises of the summer are peculiar to the season. This isn’t a holiday that has gone horribly wrong, it’s the latest instalment of a reality there is no taking a break from. That political instability began with the 2016 referendum. Having a new Prime Minister is not going to finish, but is a part of, this post-2016 story. I don’t mean that there were no political problems before, but that since then there has been a particular sort of instability and for particular reasons.

It’s not a coincidence that the new Prime Minister will be the fourth in the six years since the referendum, the same number as held office in the thirty-one years between 1979 and 2010. Nor is it a coincidence that within those six years there have also been two general elections, massive churn in the holding of ministerial posts, an illegal prorogation of parliament, a unique judgment that the government was in contempt of parliament, numerous highly unusual constitutional events, a government openly threatening to break international law, massive stresses in the relationship between Westminster and the devolved administrations, significant pressures on the Good Friday Belfast Agreement, and perhaps the most significant rifts between ministers and the civil service in modern history. All these things reflect the way that Brexit has all but overwhelmed the capacity and norms of the UK state and political institutions.

Journeys in Scotland

I owe my readers an apology – in no way have the two previous posts offered any real insights into the Scottish soul. Pointing you in the direction of five books is all very well but my readers deserve better. When I googled “Scotland’s soul” I was directed mainly to musical groups but did unearth an interesting title The Soul of Scotland (2016) by Harry Reid, the erstwhile editor of “The Glasgow Herald” which, like most newspapers these days, has fallen on very sad times. The only decent contemporary writing nowadays comes from the weekly online “The Scottish Review” to which I directed you all in the last post.

But Scottish writers are alive - and very much kicking. My theory is that English writers (Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Iris Murdoch) were so caught up in the class system that they couldn’t kick out. The “thrawn” Scots have a different sensibility – it’s not so much that alienation (although some like Irvine Welsh are) but that the difference they feel from the English gives them the additional, more peripheral, vision this blog tries to celebrate

Maurice Lindsay was, for half a century, a pillar of the Scottish literary establishment and left us this great guide A Century of creative Scottish writing 1900-2000. But one very curious omission from his survey was the name of poet Edwin Muir (1887-1959) who may have been too modernist and cosmopolitan for Lindsay – given his later strong European connections. Originally from Orkney, his family had to move to Glasgow and one of his early books was Scottish Journey (1935) which was nicely reviewed recently here 

Muir, torn as a young boy from his pastoral Orkney and landing in the Glasgow slums, likened this shift to travelling forward in time by a hundred years, or witnessing the fall of mankind before one’s very eyes. Such was the enormous difference between these two places. Industrial life brought to Muir and his family the gravest misfortunes one might predict to befall those living amongst such miserable decay and deprivation. These same circumstances led Muir to socialism, an awakening he readily compared to his religious conversion aged fourteen.

It is Muir the socialist and poet whose observations we read as he navigates Scotland in a borrowed motorcar, one that dances ‘like a high-spirited colt’ when pushed anywhere beyond thirty-five miles-per-hour. Muir convinces us from the outset that he is not looking, as a tourist might, for a Scotland historical or romantic, but rather the Scotland which presents itself ‘to one who is not looking for anything in particular, and is willing to believe what his eyes and ears tell him’.

What then, does Muir see? He sees much about Scotland that he admires, dislikes, and much that can only be of hindrance to anything like progress. He understands and effectively articulates the various contradictions and hypocrisies often found strung together in the identity of a place. 

He is, of course, driving – something which would immediately have marked him off as a “toff”. My father and his own father were at that precise time camping – university graduates both – I have their holiday diaries from 1933/34 still here in my mountain house. 

In Edinburgh, this is poignantly characterised by the ugly divide between rich and poor, and the obsessive keeping-up of appearances, despite glaring sanctimony, by the middle-classes. In the Borders, he visits Abbotsford House in Galashiels, once the home of Sir Walter Scott. Scott, along with Burns, whose house is also visited, was a literary figure seen as the embodiment of the kitsch, sentimental ‘Scottishness’ to which Muir and his generation of Scottish writer were so vehemently opposed. For those baptised as the Scottish Renaissance, Scott and Burns represented the idealised Scotland of the tourist; unblemished, quaint, bonnie, and not the Scotland experienced by the majority of its inhabitants. This rather fictitious Scotland contains little remedy for the large-scale unemployment that Muir sees in Glasgow, a city that once housed such misery for him.

 

Nor does the fine imagery of mist-wrapped hills and mirror-like lochs have anything to say about that stage of industrialism, also seen in Glasgow, that stays jammed at human exploitation on its path towards affordable luxury. In the Highlands, a region that really does accommodate the majestic, natural beauty that many mistake for the whole picture, Muir is no less sympathetic towards the ordinary people living there. They are as much thwarted by a crass romanticism belying genuine struggle as the rest of Scotland is.

At his time of visiting, Muir believed the Scottish Highlands to be in a third stage of its decline, something that had begun with the punishment afflicted upon the Highlanders following Culloden. The second phase of decline would, of course, be the Clearances; the forced eviction of thousands and the installation of landlordism where the clan system had previously existed.

The third stage, Muir argues, is symbolised by ‘the pictures of slaughtered animals that disfigure the walls of Highland hotels.’ This is the Highlands as a sporting playground, for its wealthy estate owners, many with little connection to Scotland other than the land they have inherited, and for those who come from elsewhere to enjoy this version of wild Scotland. The majority of locals, growing smaller in number, serve one of two purposes; to cook and clean for these visitors, or to slaughter animals for them; their own form of non-Industrial subjugation.

 

Was the independence effort of the time, the National Party of Scotland, the answer to any of the problems discussed? From Muir, a resounding no. This movement was to the poet an absurd coalition of political beliefs gathered optimistically beneath the banner of self-government. In Muir’s own words, ‘The National Party has nothing behind it but a desire and nothing before it but an ideal.’ Scottish independence, for Muir, would have to mean socialism – one could not be achieved without the other.

Some things have changed, no doubt, since 1935. Nevertheless, Muir teaches us the importance of going and finding out for ourselves, of taking the responsibility as Scots to understand Scotland and all her people. Also, the poet’s remarks about benign, optimistic nationalism not being enough remain entirely pertinent. Belief in Scottish independence must always extend to something other than simple agreement with the basic argument of the party line. For Muir, this means socialism, for others perhaps not. 

Several decades later a similar journey was undertaken to explore how Scotland had changed but called this time “A Scottish Journey” (2018) and made, this time, by motorbike which made the rider a wee bit more accessible. Although the trip was squeezed into a fortnight’s break between teaching.

But the journey I really appreciated was Journeys around Unfamiliar Britain (2016) made on a good old bike by JD Taylor who included Scotland in the tour and took 4 months to achieve. His model was the famous William Cobbett’s Rural Rides made (by horse) in the 1820s. This section from an interview the author did gives a good sense of the guy's style - 

Just as I was interested in the vast majority of people left out of London-focused narratives, so I was interested in the places between or behind official narratives of ‘England’, ‘The North’, ‘Scotland’, etc. On a bike call you can pull over at any point on the road to eat some grub, grab the ear of a passer-by.

 

Q: Where there any points in the journey where you thought ‘enough is enough. I’m going home’? What convinced you to continue?

I never felt like giving up, strange as it seems, given the difficulties I encountered. I was compelled by a feeling of necessity and fate. I was going to complete this regardless of what happened, and that perhaps I had even already completed it, and was now reliving it again and documenting it. Even where I was injured by careless drivers, or became exhausted by long nights. Of course it was very unlikely I was going to succeed, and that also energised me.

 

Q: You briefly mention meeting a young British actor,working as a bartender in a northern pub. That was quite shocking moment in the book, to see a talented and well-known young man in such circumstances. What were your own impressions of this?

Tom Turgoose is known for playing Shaun in the film This is England, a troubled young guy who finds friendship and community among a group of disaffected young skinheads in an ex-industrial Northern town, partly based on Nottingham. It was apt to find him pulling cheap pints of bland beer in a rough-and-tumble Grimsby boozer. His situation mirrored that of his character, enduring and not unhappy in a place and position familiar to many born in the late 1980s-early 1990s in Britain. He was sceptical, sharp-humoured and open-minded, and we talked for a bit. He deserves more work and accolades but, in a heartbreaking way, so do so many talented young people whose interests have been abandoned by a reactionary political establishment. I am thinking here of the many musicians, artists, writers, actors, educators and community workers I have had the fortune to call friends. They struggle on, flinty-humoured and hard-bitten, ambivalent about it all, highly educated and prematurely aged. They deserve much more than this.

 

Q: The Raleigh bike you purchased for seventy pounds at times becomes its own, quite sadistic, character within the book. It sometimes feels like the thing is holding you back with its many imperfections. Why didn’t you go with a more expensive, or at the least, more reliable bike?

No, the old Raleigh bike is the hero of the book! It just about held it together over those thousand or so miles. I consciously wanted to distance myself from the lycra-clad, middle-class professionalisation of cycling, just as I sought a similar distance from the professionalisation of politics and political theory. Using a cheap everyday road bike mirrored that of taking and using the stories and language of real individuals, as they are. And of course I was skint, and couldn’t afford much better! But I wanted to show what could be done, and focus on the journey rather than the tedious data of mileage or performance that distract so many cyclists. So I didn’t have a milometer, I wore jeans and a shirt, a cape when it rained (until that fell off the bike too), and just got on with it. And I regret nothing at all. 

Background

The most famous trip in Scotland was undertaken in 1773 by the great Dr Johnson and his biographer James Boswell, resulting in two books – the first written (from memory) a couple of years later by Samuel Johnson and entitled A Journey to the Western Isles (1775)

Boswell was a Scot who memorialised the life of Samuel Johnson so brilliantly that he effectively created the genre of the biography. It took Boswell a decade, however, before he published, from detailed notes he had taken during the journey, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)  

After that, it became fashionable for others to undertake the same journey eg Our Journey to the Hebrides (Pennell 1889) and Footsteps of Dr Johnson (Scotland) GBN Hill (1890)

And this is a nice recent tribute to Boswell which also mentions some of the more recent books which have repeated the journey Out of Johnson’s Shadow – James Boswell as a Travel Writer; Julian M Griffin (2017)

The Scottish Soul – the insiders’ tale

And indeed, the literary did win out in the battle for the Scottish soul – although the non-fiction titles are anything but dull.

I start with a wonderful collection “Who Built Scotland? 25 journeys in search of a nation” (epub 2017) which showcases the local contemporary talent of poet/essayist Kathleen Jamie, writers James Robertson, Alex McCall Smith and Alistair Moffat and broadcaster James Crawford – with their evocations of Scottish architecture, libraries, archaeology and ruins.

My only beef is that their 25 selections are perhaps a trite too obvious – where, for example, is my home town of Greenock which boasts such luminaries as novelists John Galt,  George Blake and Alan Sharp; poet WS Graham and theatre director Bill Bryden ?

Kathleen Jamie was recently named Scotland’s “Makar” and can be seen here reciting a couple of poems here 

My second choice is slightly unusual in that it goes to an online magazine “The Scottish Review” whose anthologies of great short essays can be fully downloaded here. The weekly represents the true spirit of the country – with essays freely contributed by philosophers, historians, journalists, even the odd politician. It was started by journalist Kenneth Roy whose journalism lives on in The Invisible Spirit – a life of post-war Scotland 1945-75 (2013). Even his memorial service gives a certain sense of the society he lived in 

My third choice moves us into the non-fiction and is from a real original – historian Christopher Harvie who spent some 25 years at Tubingen University before returning to Scotland in 2007 to become a SNP member of the new Scottish Parliament (for 4 years only) He writes with extensive allusions and real panache. His Scotland – a short history was originally published in 2002 and later editions don’t really take account of the considerable scholarship which has taken place since.

But it’s still a great read – as is my final choice The Scottish Enlightenment – how Scotland invented the modern world by an American, Arthur Henman (2001) which can be read in full here. Reviewer have been a bit sniffy about this book – with its typically American sub-title – but it is well-crafted and holds the reader. I would love to know what Harvie made of the book - but can't unearth any comment

The Scottish Soul – from the outside

Skimming the books about Scandinavia got me thinking about how contemporary Scotland might look to an outsider. Of course, having lived for more than half of my adult life abroad does make me a bit of an outsider – what visits I’ve made to the country since 1990 have been short, with 2018 being the only time I spent a few weeks in it. I did. however, have the temerity to produce a little E-book after the September 2014 referendum - based on the posts in my blog as it followed the 2 year discussion which took place in Scotland about its future 

The Scandinavians attribute their good fortune to the “folk-school” tradition which started in Denmark in the 1840s and soon spread to their neighbours. And part of that reflected the German concept of “Bildung” – which is much wider than the british understanding of “education” as explained in this short article. The Danish schools were designed to help the rural poor develop the skills which would be useful to them as they developed their agricultural system and was very much about developing their character and identity as Danes. And that same commitment can be seen in contemporary Germany with the strong emphasis on industry and on the training sector which has almost the same status as universities. 

Of course, the Scots have long been proud of their democratic approach to education – with schools and universities having been open to talent for centuries. Indeed in the 15^th century, Scotland had 3 Universities to England’s 2 – and this increased by the end of the 16^th century to a numerical advantage of 5-2. There has been less reason in the last century to celebrate what one important book published in 1961 called “The Democratic Intellect” by Scottish philosopher and historian of ideas, George Davie, who followed up with “The Crisis of the Democratic Intellect” (1986). Broadly speaking, Davie is concerned with the relationship between ‘the experts’ and ‘the people’. He states his overall case towards the end of the second book: 

The words “democratic intellect” offer a twentieth-century formulation of an old problem. Does the control of a group (of whatever kind) belong, as of right, to the few (the experts) exclusively, and not at all to the ignorant many? Or are the many entitled to share the control, because the limited knowledge of the many, when it is pooled and critically restated through mutual discussion, provides a lay consensus capable of revealing certain of the limitations of interest in the experts’ point of view? Or thirdly it may be held that this consensus knowledge of the many entitles them to have full control, excluding the experts.7

This is the first of five books I have chosen to reveal Scotland’s soul. The other four I will unveil tomorrow – although I’ve just realised they are all non-fiction. I’ve actually read more (Scottish – and Irish) fiction than I tend to let on so I may need to let this run longer as one of the blog’s series.  

SCOTUS VIATUS

The “Review of Democracy” website continues to offer great material – this time focusing on RW Seton Watson, a Scottish journalist (using the pseudonym “Scotus Viatus – the travelling Scot”) and historian who had studied at Oxford, Berlin, Sorbonne and Vienna Universities and became passionately committed to the struggle of Czech, Yugoslav and Romanian nations for independence from Austro-Hungary.

I first came across Seton Watson’s trail 30 years ago in Slovakia where I was working and was proud that a fellow-Scot had basically introduced the UK middle-class reading public to the importance of Central and East European nations – initially through the pages of “The Spectator”. Until then, the terrain was known largely through Victorian travelogues and wasn’t taken seriously. He was a friend of Masaryk’s before he became its first modern-day President. And in Bucharest, a few years later, I found a copy of his writings in the library of the British Council. So I was pleased that he’s not forgotten. 

In this episode, historians of the Habsburg Empire and the First World War analyse the fascinating story of Robert William Seton-Watson’s propaganda for the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of a ‘New Europe.’ They explore ideas concerning the ‘balance of power’, European integration, anti-imperialist liberal internationalism, and the making of the post-Habsburg nation-states in Central Europe. The panel argues that while Seton-Watson’s campaign was progressive in its ambition to reconcile ethnic diversity and democracy, it was also rooted in a primordial view of nationhood.  

 For me, the discussion was a bit too academic – but I did enjoy this video presentation one of its participants had done of the man. And this extended article by another discussant  suggests, correctly, that his Scottish background gave him a greater sensitivity than that of English historians. It also offers a critical analysis of what Seton-Watson meant by “nation-building”. He was very much the Timothy Garton-Ash of an earlier generation.   

Seton-Watson’s two sons also became historians and edited this book of their father’s writings The Making of a New Europe; RWS and the last years of Austro-Hungary; by Christopher and Hugh Seton-Watson (1981) 

Further Reading

The Habsburg Empire – a new History; Pieter Judson (2016)

The Habsburg Empire – 1790 -1918; CA Macartney (1968)

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/the-austrian-empire-jonathan-kwan/

The Obliteration of Memories

Googling is so easy – “everything we need is there”. Except it’s simply not true. Google has a gigantic hole which no-one talks about – knowledge of those who acted as role models in the period before Google existed (BG – before google).

I’ve been trying to check my memory of events in the late 1960s and 1970s when I was involved in initiatives which swept across Scotland and had influences further afield. But as far as Google is concerned, these events never took place. 

I google the names of people on whose words I used to hang – like John Mackintosh, who had been an academic tutor of mine and then Professor and Labour MP but found only a couple of references (including a huge list of the articles in his archives). However, thanks to the archives site, I was able to access his The Devolution of Power : local democracy, regionalism and nationalism which came out in 1968.

Geoff Shaw had been an inspiring Glasgow community minister and then, all-too briefly, political leader of Glasgow City and the first Convener of the new Strathclyde Regional Council from 1974-78. A book had been written about him (“Geoff”) and his funeral (at Glasgow Cathedral) attended by the nation’s dignitaries drew overflow crowds. But he gets only a couple of google references – including a short Wikipedia entry.  

And Dick Stewart, the ex-miner and leader of Lanark County Council and of Strathclyde’s Labour Group is virtually impossible to find - despite his funeral actually being attended by a Conservative Cabinet Minister. 

It’s only thanks to an ex-official’s mountain blogs that we have this record of the Region’s achievements – although one of my other senior colleagues was persuaded by one of the Scottish national newspapers to pen this paean on the Region’s demise in 1996. 

So – to offset the Google hegemony – I offer my record of important material about the Scottish condition between the 1960s and 1980s which I know about -

·       Scottish Government Yearbooks !976-1992 A superb website which gives access the archives of every yearbook in this period. Probably the only source which gives a sense of what it was like to be alive during these years – although subject to the usual vagaries and prejudices of the academics (generally) who supplied the material. A couple of my pieces can be found – one from 1983 on the relationships between the Scottish Regions and the Districts.- and a more speculative piece from 1984 called Scottish local government; what future? 

·         Review of Local Governance (COSLA 2018) A useful overview – starting in 1968 - of what various efforts of reorganisation have achieved

Re  generation and Poverty in Scotland – evidence and policy review; Douglas Robertson (Rowntree Trust 2014) This is an important academic study of how governments from 1968 to the Coalition government dealt with the social and economic aspects of regeneration. A shorter version is available here

·       The making of an empowering profession (Community Learning and Development Council 2002) tells the fascinating story of how Scotland rediscovered its democratic traditions in the last few decades of the 20th century 

·       Case study in Organisational Learning and Political Amnesia (1995) tells the neglected story of how Strathclyde Region came to establish a unique social strategy which influenced the Scottish government - updated this year by  Modernity’s Last Gasp - SRC’’s theory of change

·       Criticism and public rationality – professional rigidity and the search for caring government; Harry Smart (1991) is a rare and riveting account of tensions between education and social work as a political system tried to introduce changes which challenged professional traditions. 

·         Social Strategy for the Eighties (Strathclyde Regional Council 1982) This is the “little Red Book” which was widely distributed within the Region and whose development is described in later posts. I’m seeing it for the first time in 30 years thanks to the valiant efforts of Keith Yates who worked with me on the draft for several months in 1981/82 

·       The Search for Democracy – a guide to and polemic about local government in Scotland (1977); a little book I produced for students and community activists to help demystify a new system of local government 

·       What Sort of Overgovernment?  Chapter in “Red Paper on Scotland” ed G Brown (1975) My earliest published piece about the challenge of democracy – in a famous book edited by someone who was UK Prime Minister 2007-2010.

A model for People Power??

I know that some of my (many) global readers who share my critical/sceptical stance on power structures have had their hopes raised recently by my homeland and will have been hugely encouraged by the electoral landslide in Scotland which wiped out the representatives of the British political system on May 7^th – with all but 3 of the 59 Scottish parliamentary seats in Westminster being taken by the Scottish Nationalists.

For 60 years Labour has been the establishment party in Scotland – on 6^th May they had 40 seats – reduced overnight to one. In many cases, rock-solid Labour majorities of more than 10,000 votes were transformed into Nationalist strongholds with majorities of equivalent size.

If ever there was an example of “people power”, is this not it?

I have been out of Scottish politics for 25 years; was never a “mainstream” labour activist (to put it mildly); and was never disturbed personally or politically by the upsurge of Scottish Nationalism which started in the 1960s with the discovery of North Sea Oil (establishment Labour figures clearly had a better "nous" than me - since they treated them viciously - I treated them as a bit of a joke) . Readers can therefore assume that what follows is as objective an assessment of that question as they are likely to obtain elsewhere…….. The basic facts are –

- Just 8 months ago, a massive 85% of the Scottish electorate voted by a 10% margin to remain in the United Kingdom

- What reputation the Nationalist government which has ruled since 2007 enjoys for “social democracy” it actually owes to the Lab/Lib Coalition which ruled Scotland from 1999

- It was during this time that all the distinctive social democratic policies were developed and implemented such as community land ownership; free care for the elderly; free University tuition fees; and continued public water and health systems

- All supported by the block UK tax transfer which is made to Scotland.

- The Nationalist Government which has ruled Scotland since 2007 (initially a minority one) has never used the powers for marginal tax increases

- And refused to take part in the broad Scottish coalition which pushed (successfully) for the significant devolved powers enjoyed by the Scottish government and Parliament
- Far from articulating a social democratic position, their leaders until recently had policies for marginal taxation for multi-national companies and “entrepreneurs” such as Donald Trump
- The Scottish Nationalist Party (despite its soft leftist image) has never articulated a coherent statement of its political philosophy (the 600 page manifesto for the 2014 referendum published by the Scottish Government was pasted together by civil servants)

- The upsurge in Nationalist support came in the 12 months preceding the September 2014 Independence Referendum and seems to have been due in large measure to a an amazing outburst of independent leftist organisations in Scotland such as  Common Weal  and National Collective 
- the SNP candidates attracted 1.5 million votes on 7 May - compared with Labour's 700,000 - and took 50% of the overall vote  
- this compares with the SNP vote in the 2010 General Election of 491,300; and Labour's 1,035.000
- in 5 years, that is, the SNP vote increased by 300% (1 million); and the Labour vote declined by 300,000   

Let my English friend Boffy spell it out for you -

The SNP argument was that they would be able to blackmail a Labour government -but, the Tories were able to use that threat of blackmail to rally a large enough block of nationalistic sentiment, in England, behind them to win a majority. 

The SNP believed that they could blackmail a Labour government, and instead led their ctiizens into another Tory government, the SNP now have to try to delude them into a belief that this Tory government “must” listen to them.

But, of course, the Tory government has no reason to listen to the SNP at all. In fact, what the one-party SNP regime in Scotland has now created, ironically, is a situation where a Scottish voice in government is pretty much excluded. In conditions where there are a large number of Scottish MP's from Labour or the Tories, there is always a good chance that some of those Scottish MP's will themselves be Ministers. In fact, in the last Labour Government, it was Scottish MP's who occupied the position of Prime Minister, Chancellor and other top jobs.

Because, today there are virtually no Scottish Labour or Tory MP's, the chances of any of them being in government, is thereby automatically excluded! In more ways than one, the delusions of the SNP have led the Scottish people into a dead end that has also excluded them from any voice in government. SNP MP's in Parliament will just be onlookers.  If they really had the courage of their convictions, they would follow the example of Sinn Fein, and refuse to take their seats. 

The fact, that the SNP currently purport to be pro-European, whilst wanting separation from the rest of Britain, simply exposes the illogicality and contradiction of their arguments and position even more. If, as the SNP claim, their problems arise not from capitalism, but from the fact that decisions are made in Westminster rather than Holyrood, how much greater would their problems be if decisions were made in Brussels rather than Holyrood, and under conditions where Scottish representation in the corridors of power would be even smaller than they are now, in Westminster? 

The Tories understood these economic and political realities, which is why Cameron is already rushing to offer the SNP "fiscal autonomy".  Jeremy Hunt let that cat out of the bag on Newsnight, whilst Cameron and other Tories have tried to make out that they do not propose to give Scotland fiscal autonomy.  They intend to make the SNP demand it, so as to give it to them as an apparent concession, so the SNP will have to take the blame.  If the SNP have to raise the finance required to cover Scottish spending, particularly in conditions where North Sea oil revenues are declining, and the ability to use them to bolster state finances are likely to disappear completely, the SNP will have little more scope to actually change anything in Scotland than a sizeable metropolitan council in England. It will have less ability to do so than does London. 

I don't like to be the bearer of bad news - but be prepared for all now to go downhill in Scotland.....unless a serious strategy can be created by those outside the Nationalist ranks who have worked so hard in the last two years.....

Expect nothing from the nationalist MPs................they are an undisciplined rag-bag of troublemakers who simply have naivety in common......The E-book I published last autumn - The Independence Argument – home thoughts from abroad has a detailed list of  the most significant books, websites and blogs on the issue. Only one of the 8 books which might be said to be in the "pro" camp conducts a serious analysis of the issue - and that is "Arguing for Independence - evidence, risk and the wicked issues" by Stephen Maxwell whose voice is sadly no more,,,,,,,

Gerry Hassan is an independent Scottish commentator and reflects here on the possible reasons for Scotland now being a one-party state

The repro is from my copy of Frans Masereel's superb "The City - a vision in woodcuts" (1925)