Debate: Scotlandandtheageof JamesConnolly,colonialismand ... · “Celticcommunism”page14 Debate: Scotlandandtheageof radicalismafter“theleft” page7 MAGAZINEOFSCOTLAND’SDEMOCRATICLEFT

James Connolly, colonialism and“Celtic communism” page 14

Debate: Scotland and the age ofradicalism after “the left” page 7

MAGAZINEOF SCOTLAND’SDEMOCRATIC LEFT

radical feminist green

No 28 / WINTER 2010-11 / £2

01

9 772041 362003

ISSN 2041-3629

TWOCHEERSREFERENDUM – UK PARLIAMENT

VOTING SYSTEM

Place in order of preference (1, 2, 3 etc) your choice of

voting system for elections to the UK Parliament.

ALTERNATIVE VOTE

FIRST PAST THE POST

PROPORTIONAL

REPRESENTATION

231

AVFOR

PLUS REVIEWS AND THE LAND LAY STILLTHE MODERN SNP: FROM PROTEST TOPOWER NEOLIBERAL SCOTLAND: CLASSAND SOCIETY IN A STATELESS NATION

… well it’s betterthan the waywe elect theUK Parliamentat the moment!

2 / WINTER 2010-11 / PERSPECTIVES 28

Contents� Perspectives

No 28, winter 2010-11

EDITORIAL

FROMAVTOAYEWRITE!

� Letters andcontributions(which we mayedit) arewelcome andshould be sentto the editor –contact detailsbelow.

One of the concessions theLiberal Democrats got fromthe Conservatives as part of

the agreement to form a coalitiongovernment was a referendum tochange the voting system forWestminster elections. However,the option for change will notinclude proportional representa-tion (PR), the Lib Dems’ preferredmethod. Instead we will, depend-ing on how the skirmishingbetween the House of Lords andthe government develops, beoffered the option of replacing thecurrent first-past-the-post (FPTP)system with the alternative vote(AV). AV is better than FPTP, andshould be supported, but falls farshort of PR. To complicate thematter further there are otherstrings attached. All is explainedon page 5.

Since the days of Thatcherismand the rise of neo-liberalism, theleft in Scotland, Britain and indeedmuch of Europe has lost its bal-ance. The question of how toarrest this decline in fortunes iscontroversial and reflected in con-tributions by Gerry Hassan, whobelieves that we need to movebeyond the historical categories ofleft and right, and Doug Bain, whoargues for the continuing rele-vance of left-wing thought andactivity, and against notions ofthere being a “third way”.

The theme of neo-liberalism andthe left response is also taken up bya new book, NeoLiberal Scotland,reviewed on page 22.

Continuing the look at bookswe have a historian’s view ofJames Robertson’s acclaimed Andthe Land Lay Still, and a review ofa collection charting the SNP’s riseto power.

Aye Write!, running from 4th to12th March, is Glasgow’s bookfestival, now in its sixth year.Democratic Left Scotland, with theinvaluable assistance of ScottishLeft Review and political commen-tator and writer, Gerry Hassan,has become an Event Partner, andhas organised as a strand withinthe festival a series of discussionson the theme of ReimaginingScotland. Details of these events,how to get tickets and full infor-mation on the festival are on page4 of this issue.

To coincide with Aye Write!,which includes a 30th anniversaryexhibition dedicated to the publi-cation of Alasdair Gray’s Lanark,the next issue of Perspectiveswill bepublished at the beginning ofMarch. It will include material ofrelevance to the book festival andalso the launch of a new series ofsix articles by writer and broadcast-er Lesley Riddoch, on the people.places and politics of Scotland.

To ensure you get your copy ofPerspectives, why not take out asubscription? See the back cover ofthis issue for details.

And, if you are within strikingdistance of Glasgow, why not joinus at some of the Aye Write! events?Sean FeenyEditor

Perspectives is published four times a year byDemocratic Left Scotland, Number Ten, 10 Constitution Road, Dundee DD1 1LLTel: 01382 819641 / e: [email protected] / www.democraticleftscotland.org.uk

ISSN 2041-3629

Editor: Sean Feeny / Depute editor: Davie Laing / Circulation and promotions manager: David Purdy

Articles in Perspectives are copyright. Requests to reproduce any part of the magazine should beaddressed to the editor.

Copy deadline for issue 29 is Friday 18th February 2011.

For further information on Perspectives or to submit articles or letters, contact: The Editor,Perspectives, Democratic Left Scotland, Number Ten, 10 Constitution Road, Dundee DD1 1LLe: [email protected]

Printed by Hampden Advertising Ltd, 70 Stanley Street, Glasgow G41 1JB.

3Sketches from a smallworldEurig Scandrett

5Two cheers for AVStuart Fairweather, PeterMcColl and David Purdy

7The age of radicalismafter “the left”Gerry Hassan

9The dangers of thethird wayDoug Bain

11The lie of the landCatriona MMMacdonald

14James Connolly,colonialism and“celticcommunism”Willy Maley

19Book review – Themodern SNPMichael Gardiner

22Book review –NeoLiberalScotlandDavid Purdy

26DiaryMaire McCormack isThe Hat

I’m writing this immediately after the Westminsterparliamentary vote on raising tuition fees inEngland, and the media coverage of the

“violence”. I wasn’t in London for the protest (I wasat the Edinburgh protest – no violence so very littlemedia interest) so I only have the media to go on, butit is clear that coverage and comment is in danger oflosing any sense of proportion.

Actually there seemed to be very little violence atthe student demonstrations. There was some damageof property, some smashed windows at the treasury (alegitimate target by anybody’s calculus) and an attackon a royal car (opportunistic, and although notrelevant to the student fees debate, at least alegitimate target in terms of gaining publicity). Therewere a fair number of protestors who were spoilingfor a fight with police, and a lot of police inflamingthe situation with their kettlings and cordons directlyconfronting marchers and using batons and horses asweapons, largely against sticks and paint bombs.There was one serious injury of a protestor, caused bya violent attack by police.

Violence is of course a traditional part ofdemonstrations – regrettable, but almost inevitable.A confrontation at this level will attract people onboth sides who are looking for a fight. Despiteviolence being almost predictable, the media treat itas newsworthy so that violence guarantees newscoverage where a peaceful demonstration usually getsnone. The paint bomb attack on the car of PrinceCharles and Camilla, who have nothing to do withvote on tuition fees and were merely going abouttheir normal business of decadence at taxpayers’expense, ensured that publicity reached the frontpage of most newspapers. The Metropolitan PoliceCommissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said armedpolice had shown “enormous restraint”,presumably because they didn’t gun downunarmed protesters.

The Metropolitan Police are clearly out ofcontrol and their political masters have lost any senseof their purpose. The point of police ondemonstrations is to protect the right of citizensto protest. There is always a minority ofpeople who attend protests in order tofight the police, so the job of the policeshould be to defuse the violence, notinflame it. There’s nothing professionalabout hitting out with a truncheon –most young men can do that withouttraining. We should expect morefrom a trained, accountable andprofessional police force. To tackle

undisciplined outbreaks of window smashing withsystematic thuggery simply recruits more people tothe ranks of those looking for a fight with the police.The next time the violent contingent on thedemonstrators’ side will probably be better armed,and even worse, there may be many people put offfrom demonstrating.

Now that Cameron and Clegg have got into theirstride of inflicting violence on the country surpassingwhat Thatcher achieved, I’ve been wondering what itwould have taken for people of my generation tostop Thatcher in her tracks. Not more violence.There was plenty of fighting and police malpracticethen, whether in the black youth ghettos of Londonor the coalfields throughout the country – althougheventually “riots” did finish off the poll tax. Even theIRA bomb in Brighton didn’t succeed. Violence getspublicity but is unlikely to get results. But Cameronand Clegg need to be stopped before they do toomuch more damage. As Sir Hugh Orde, President ofthe Association of Chief Police Officers (not a knownradical) has noted, just like in Thatcher’s time, we’realready seeing a politicisation of the police with theforce being used to facilitate the imposition ofgovernment policy against those who will sufferfrom it.

The outcome of the climate talks in Cancun isdisastrous again, just like Copenhagen. UnlikeCopenhagen, which ended with no agreement,Cancun has ended with an agreement thatgreenhouse gases need to be reduced, but not bywhom, by how much or when. The decision totransfer money to the global South to deal with theclimate disaster which we seem to be unable to stop,is as likely to be fulfilled as the Global Climate Fundestablished with Kyoto, or the Global EnvironmentFund set up at the Earth Summit in 1992 – none ofwhich reached anywhere near their original targets.There is still no recognition that we – the richcountries – have already used up more than our shareof the atmosphere. On the contrary, capitalists cankeep making money from a wrecked climate, and it is

the poor who will be the victims.But one interesting development is that thetalks were attended by the Jewish NationalFund which is increasingly portrayingitself in an environmental frame. Untilvery recently I knew nothing about theJNF and could have been fooled intobelieving that they were a legitimateenvironmental NGO. Havingrecently been to Palestine however

and been well briefed by the Palestine

EURIG SCANDRETT

PrinceCharles andCamilla weremerely goingabout theirnormalbusiness ofdecadence attaxpayers’expense.

PERSPECTIVES 28 / WINTER 2010-11 / 3

SKETCHES FROM A SMALL W RLD


Solidarity Campaign among others, theenvironmentalism of the JNF looks considerablymore sinister. For readers who don’t know, the JNF isa Zionist organisation which, for 100 years has beenacquiring land from which Palestinians have beendriven out (militarily or by legal trickery), andmaking it available only to Jews. Since well beforethe state of Israel was established, the JNF has playeda significant role in the colonial project of ethniccleansing. Its environmental interest seems to have

come from the fact that it has planted trees over thetop of a number of destroyed Palestinian villages andturned them into nature parks – and of course as aveil to draw over its crimes. An alliance of Palestiniansolidarity groups have launched a campaign againstthe JNF in the UK. See www.monabaker.com/documents/JNFeBookVol1ed2x.pdf.

� Eurig Scandrett is a Green activist and member ofDemocratic Left Scotland.

SKETCHES FROM A SMALL WORLD

RE-IMAGINING SCOTLANDA series of discussions looking at issues and debates for Scotland’s future

Monday March 7 / 18.00-19.15 / £4Where is the Public in Public Health?Glasgow has the record as ‘the sick man of Europe’, but has areputation for innovative thinking about public health alongsidecommunity-driven models for change. What is the overall pictureof public health in the city, and how can we best aid and supportlong lasting and fundamental change both in individual attitudesand at the level of society? Speakers are: Professor Phil Hanlon,Dept of Public Health, University of Glasgow; Fiona Crawford,Glasgow Centre for Population Health; Dr Gerry McCartney, NHSHealth Scotland; Isabella Goldie, Mental Health FoundationScotland.

Tuesday March 8 / 18.00–19.15 / £4Radical Scotland No More:Beyond the Politics of CautionDevolution has been a disappointment to many – characterisedby caution, conservatism and continuity. Join this high profilepanel discussion to discuss and debate not what went wrong, buthow a radical Scottish politics can address issues of power, voicesand public conversation? Speakers include Gerry Hassan, writerand broadcaster; Andy Wightman, author, The Poor Had NoLawyers; Joan McAlpine, journalist and Scotsman columnist.

Wednesday March 9 / 18.00–19.15 / £4Bread and RosesWhat is the state of the arts and culture in Scotland today? Is itstill relevant or meaningful to talk of an artistic renaissance, and ifso, what does it mean culturally and politically? And what does itmean to be an artist in contemporary Scotland? How does onefind ways, spaces and places to express oneself and gain support?Speakers include Neil Mulholland, Edinburgh College of Art; NickHiggins, film maker; Sarah Munro, Tramway.

Thursday March 10 / 18.00–19.15 / £4False Economies: Restoration and RecoveryWhat is the future of the economy in Scotland and wider afield?After the global crash and bankers’ crisis, what are the potentialprospects for the economy? Do we still remain wedded to apolitics of restoration and prioritising economic growth? And ifwe increasingly question the conventional truths of the last fewdecades, why is there no real sign or emergence of any coherent

and radical alternative? Speakers include Alf Young, journalist andcommentator; David Purdy, co-author, Feelbad Britain; AilsaMcKay, Glasgow Caledonian University.

Friday March 11 / 18.00–19.15Whose Public Services?The public sector faces challenges and constraints unprecedentedin modern times. What is the best way to respond – whichprotects the public and is in keeping with progressive values?How will the cuts impact on Scotland? How can the dominantmodel of public sector reform and modernisation – which is topdown and centred on marketisation be challenged? Speakersinclude Professor Allyson Pollock, Edinburgh University Centre forInternational Public Health Policy and John McLaren, Centre forPublic Policy for Regions, Glasgow University.

Saturday March 12 / 19.00–21.00 / £8/£6Jimmy Reid TributeJimmy Reid’s death in 2010 bought to an end a remarkablepolitical life. His work for Glasgow and Scotland was remarkableas was his ability to move a crowd to tears and action. His famousalienation speech was rightly regarded as on a par with theGettysburg address by the New York Times. Aye Write! paystribute to Jimmy Reid with the reading of his classic speech byDavid Hayman. Then a panel, made up of Ruth Wishart, ProfessorTom Devine, Gerry Hassan and others will discuss his work andimpact and the future of Scotland.

� Re-imagining Scotland is a strand within this year’sAye Write! Glasgow Book Festival, from 4–12 March 2011,organised by Glasgow Libraries. Democratic Left Scotland is anevent partner. All events are held at the Mitchell Library,201 North Street, Glasgow G3 7DN.

The full programme is available online at www.ayewrite.com,where tickets can be booked, or alternatively phone the bookinghotline on 0141 353 8000.

Democratic Left Scotlandna Deamocrataich Chli an Alba

TWOCHEERS FOR

Stuart Fairweather, Peter McColland David Purdy examine the meritsof the coalition’s proposal for achange to the voting system for theWestminster Parliament.


REFERENDUM – UK PARLIAMENT

VOTING SYSTEM

Place in order of preference (1, 2, 3 etc) your choice of

voting system for elections to the UK Parliament.

ALTERNATIVE VOTE

FIRST PAST THE POST

PROPORTIONAL

REPRESENTATION

231

AVIn May Britain is almost certain

to hold a referendum on thealternative vote (AV). No one

loves AV. The Lib-Dems see it as apoor substitute for proportionalrepresentation. They prefer it tofirst past the post, but their heartsare not in it. At the last election,Labour promised a referendum onAV, hoping to do a deal with theLib-Dems in the event of a hungparliament, but now they too havegone off the idea. Meanwhile, theConservatives, who only concededthe referendum as the price forgetting the Lib-Dems to join thecoalition, are overwhelmingly hos-tile to AV and will campaignactively for a no vote.

Under the coalition agreement,the bill authorising a referendumon AV has been bundled togetherwith Conservative-inspired pro-posals to reduce the size of theHouse of Commons from 650 to600 and, except in Orkney andShetland and the Western Isles, toredraw electoral boundaries. It isintended that by the time of thenext general election, no con-stituency shall be more than five

per cent larger or smaller than anorm of 76,000 voters. The coali-tion claims that what wouldamount to the biggest boundaryreview since the 1920s is necessaryto correct the pro-Labour bias thathas crept into the existing systemowing to population movements.However, the proposed timetablemeans that the review will bebased on the 2010 electoral regis-ter and the Electoral Commissionestimates that across the UK as awhole there is a lost army of about3.5 million people, mainly poor,who are entitled to vote, but areunregistered. More than half of18–24 year olds are unregisteredand the overall problem is greatestin inner city areas, which tend tovote Labour. In Glasgow, forexample, some 100,000 voters arethought to be missing from theregister, more than enough to justi-fy retaining the city’s six seatsrather than taking one away.

The case against partisan hastein redrawing the UK’s electoralmap is sound, but it has no bearingon the case for AV. On the otherhand, if AV is lost and the next

election is fought under first pastthe post with fewer constituenciesand revised boundaries, the legiti-macy of our political system willbe further damaged. Some LabourMPs fear that if AV is approved, itwill strengthen the coalition andconsign them to another term inopposition. A group of the party’s“big beasts”, consisting ofMargaret Beckett and LordsBlunkett, Falconer, Prescott andReid, have agreed to front the nocampaign, alongside leading Toriessuch as Kenneth Clarke, WilliamHague and Lady Warsi. TheLabour leadership, like the Lib-Dems, would prefer a yes to a no,but has indicated that the referen-dum is not a priority and that theparty plans to concentrate ondefeating the SNP in Scotland,strengthening Labour’s base inWales and regaining seats in theEnglish councils.

So at the moment, a no votelooks the most probable outcome.The turnout is likely to be low too.But defeat is not inevitable. Mostpeople have not yet thought aboutthe issue and public opinion is splitrather than opposed. In August aGuardian/ICM poll found 45%would vote yes and 45% no. Public

Across theUK as awhole thereis a lost armyof about 3.5millionpeople,mainly poor,who areentitled tovote, but areunregistered.

Above: the referendum ballot paperwe won’t be gettiing.


backing for AV has slipped sincethen, but if AV’s supporters makemore of an effort, the battle canstill be won.

THE CASE FOR AVWhy campaign for a second-bestvoting system? Because the first-best option is not available: thechoice lies between AV and first-past-the-post. Would AV be animprovement? Certainly. AVretains single-member constituen-cies, but allows voters to rank can-didates in order of preference.This gives people a chance to votefor the party that best representstheir views, yet still have a say indeciding who gets elected. Underfirst past the post, supporters ofparties that stand no chance ofwinning have to choose betweenwasting their vote, voting tactical-ly and not voting at all.

AV requires every MP to win thesupport of at least half their con-stituents. Few MPs pass this testnow and fewer still would win amajority of first-preference votesunder AV. Parties would thus beforced to compete actively forsecond-preference votes, bringinga welcome revival of local cam-paigning. At the moment, generalelections are fought largely on theairwaves, with the two big partiesusing hi-tech polling techniques,telephone canvassing and e-mailshots to target swing voters in mar-ginal seats. The number of seatswhere the winner’s lead is less thanten per cent of the vote cast for thetwo front runners fell from around160 in the 1950s and 1960s – aquarter of all seats in Great Britain– to 80 in 1983. Thereafter, therewas a limited recovery, but in Maythis year the number fell back to85.

The reason for this change isthat compared with the 1950s,Labour’s vote is now much moreconcentrated in the northern halfof the country, while theConservatives have become a partyof the south. The divergent swingto Labour in Scotland in May wasonly the latest manifestation of along-term trend. And as Britainhas pulled apart politically, so the

number of constituencies whereboth Labour and theConservatives do well has fallen.As a result, voters who live in safeseats – most of the electorate –rarely encounter political parties.Under AV, provided they raise theirlocal game, the two big partiesstand to win seats in regions wherethey are currently under-repre-sented – the Conservatives inScotland, Labour in the south ofEngland – while the Lib-Demsstand to win more seats overall,reducing the handicap they sufferunder first past the post because,by comparison with the other two,their support is spread moreevenly throughout the country.

AV is better suited to a democra-cy that is no longer dominated bytwo big parties. In 1951, only 3%of votes were cast for parties otherthan Labour and Conservative; in2010, the figure was 35%, thehighest since 1918. So first past thepost no longer guarantees a two-horse race. It is also less effective atpreventing third parties from con-verting votes into seats. In 1983,for example, the Liberal-SDPAlliance won 25% of the vote, butonly 23 seats, whereas in 2010, theLib-Dems won 23% of the votes,but 57 seats. This weakens one ofmain arguments for first past thepost: that it produces conclusiveelection results and stable, one-party governments. At the lastelection, the Conservative leadover Labour was 7 percentagepoints, exactly the same as in1979. But whereas Mrs Thatcherwon an overall majority of 44seats, David Cameron fell 20 seatsshort, forcing him to choosebetween forming a minority gov-ernment and doing a deal with theLib-Dems.

PARTIAL REMEDYFor all these reasons – because itgives voters more choice, revitalis-es local campaigning and is morein tune with long-term electoraltrends – AV offers at least a partialremedy for the ills that have over-taken our democracy under firstpast the post: public distrust ofpoliticians, cynicism about politics,

declining electoral turnout and abelief that government is the causenot the solution to the country’sproblems: in short, a festeringcrisis of legitimacy. Barely coher-ent, but deeply felt antipathy tothe tax-and-spend state aids thecoalition in its drive to cut publicspending, privatise public servicesand reduce social security to asafety net. Perverse as it may seem,Labour’s willingness to embracedeficit financing in order to count-er recession and hasten recovery iswidely blamed for the financial“disaster” that the coalition is nowengaged in clearing up. As long asthis view prevails, the new Labourleadership will struggle to put theNew Labour era firmly behind itand to convince first itself and thenthe general public that we need astrong state to regulate markets,stabilise capitalism and protectsociety.

Though it has its drawbacks –what voting system does not? – AVis better than the system we have.And quite apart from its impact onthe next general election, a victoryfor the yes campaign would bringimmediate political gains. It wouldgive a boost to the centre-left andget the Herculean task of repairingBritain’s democracy and restoringfaith in government off to a goodstart, making it easier to challengefiscal conservatism and put thecase for recasting the welfare staterather than dismantling it. The“centre-left”, it should be stressed,extends well beyond the LabourParty, encompassing greens,Scottish and Welsh nationalists,dissident Liberal Democrats, socialdemocrats and all who are happyto be known as the democratic left.Is it too much to hope that theexperience of working together inthe AV campaign might suggest thewisdom of joining forces on otherfronts, where common goals canbe agreed?

� This article is the product of adiscussion between Stuart Fair-weather, Peter McColl and DavidPurdy, who are all members ofDemocratic Left Scotland’s nation-al council.

In 1951, only3% of voteswere cast forparties otherthan LabourandConservative;in 2010, thefigure was35%, thehighest since1918.

TWO CHEERS FOR AV


THE AGE OFRADICALISMAFTER “THE LEFT”

Scotland sees itself as a centre-left country. We haven’t votedfor the Tories since the 1950s,

didn’t like Mrs Thatcher and herism, and are supposedly morecomfortable with collectivism thanindividualism.

The Scottish left has a rich andproud history – standing againstexploitation and discrimination,for social justice and democracy,and filled with struggles, battlesand personalities. There have beennegatives: the lack of originalthinkers and ideas, alongside aprofound insularity and conser-vatism (for all the professed inter-nationalism).

Such negatives are often putdown to the dominance of theLabour Party and a certain kind oflabourism, but the wider tradeunion movement and numerousother centre-left institutions andparties have shown similar charac-teristics.

The only real exception to thiswas the Independent Labour Partywhich until the 1930s was a hot-house of ideas and activities –

political and social. And theCommunist Party at points provid-ed political education and anemphasis on building broad cam-paigns which Labour didn’t. Bothof these groups were small innumber – but given the inert stateof Labour for much of its history,had influence way beyond theirsize.

LACK OF EMPATHYThe left, whether in Scotland orthe UK, has over time shown littlereal interest or understanding ofhow it appears outside the left.This is because left-wingers havealways felt that their rationale andlogic was so strong that no onewho was open minded could resist.The left has always historically hada sense of denial and lack of empa-thy about how it is seen by themajority of humanity, who rightlyor wrongly, remain immune to itscharms.

The left saw the world in binaryterms – “left” and “right”, “pro-gressive” and “conservative”,“them” and “us”. This was a world

shaped by deep class divisions, butin its retort, “which side are youon?”, there was impatience andintolerance. The left invoked thelanguage of universal humanitybut never really practised it, show-ing instead a deep, distorting trib-alism.

For large parts of its history,most of the left never bothered tothink seriously about its oppo-nents. Tories or SNP “tartanTories” were vilified or ignored,and were never deemed worthy ofserious, considered debate.

CLASS ENEMYPrior to Thatcher, the left neverundertook a serious study ofConservative history or thought.They were “the class enemy” rep-resenting the forces of privilegeand reaction. At the same time noconsidered Labour engagementhas ever taken place with Scottishnationalism – with the exceptionof J.P. Macintosh and StephenMaxwell over thirty years ago.

It took until relatively late in theday and the experience of

An article by Gerry Hassan last year on the need for a radicalpolitics that transcends left and right caused Doug Bain to seered (or not … if Gerry has his way). We reproduce Gerry’spiece below and Doug’s response on page 9.

The left,whether inScotland orthe UK, hasover timeshown littlereal interestor under-standing ofhow itappearsoutside theleft.


Thatcherism before left-wingersstudied the Tories, and by then itwas all too little, too late. Andeven more strangely, while Labourhas abandoned so much of what itstands for, on one traditional prin-ciple it has remained constant – itsdenigration of Scottish national-ism, to the point that it still contin-ues to disable Labour thinking.

MORAL ABSOLUTISMSome of this comes from charac-teristics which are ever more pro-nounced in the Scottish left thanelsewhere, such as a sense of moralabsolutism and certainty – whichcome over to many as unappeal-ing, dogmatic and inflexible. Thisis linked to black and white think-ing which has been prevalent inmuch of our culture, and whichhas been aided by elements of thePresbyterian tradition.

This tradition has producedmany heroes and villains, somemixing both, such as TommySheridan, George Galloway andthe late Jimmy Reid; cultural fig-ures such as William McIlvanneyand James Kelman have spoken insimilar voices of granite male cer-tainty.

Thatcherism was both themaking and breaking of this tradi-tion. Writers like McIlvanneymade a name for themselves byseeing Thatcher as a threat to thevery existence of our nation, andclaimed that she would eradicateScottish values if she had a chance.It was over-exaggerated then, andwith the passage of time, faintlyembarrassing and ridiculous now.

At a debate last year on theimpact of Thatcherism in Scotlandbetween David McLetchie andMalcolm Rifkind on the pro-sideand Brian Wilson and Jim Sillarson the anti-side, the latter pairtalked about Thatcherism as if itwere in the here and now. In par-ticular, they railed against councilhouse sales as if they happenedyesterday.

FIGHTING LOST BATTLESThis is another of the Scottish left’scharacteristics: going over thepast, fighting lost battles, attempt-

ing to rewrite history. The anger ofWilson and Sillars on councilhouse sales camouflages theirempty prospectuses, the fact thatThatcher changed hundreds ofthousands of working class lives,claimed the cause of “freedom”,and that Labour and left-wingershad little positive to say then ornow.

When did the left in Scotlandlast have an original, interestingidea? Wendy Alexander oncefamously said that Scottish Labourhadn’t had an original idea since1906. This is a bit harsh; the partyhad some ideas in the 1920s, butAlexander is broadly right.

And this holds for the wider left.All of the revealing emotionsaround the death of Jimmy Reid,point not only to the Scots love ofa dead hero, but the passing of anera. Upper Clyde Shipbuilderswasn’t just a false dawn of radical-ism, but the last spasm of creativethinking by the left on economicdemocracy, the meaning of workand ideas around socially usefulproduction. These issues still needto be addressed in a world ofhyper-consumption and grotesqueinequality, but the left in Scotlandhas said nothing on these fornearly forty years.

WHAT DOES THE LEFT STANDFOR?For several decades it has becomeincreasingly unclear what the leftstands for – beyond the defence ofpublic services, public spending,and the welfare state. This has itsplace, but what the left hasn’t doneis develop a positive vision of whatit supports – a different model ofpublic services from the old pater-nalist style or new managerialism,different ways of organising thestate, and how you challenge pro-ducer capture of institutions with-out being blind to the dangers ofcorporate capture and marketisa-tion.

It is worse than that. The leftonce had big banners to fly at itsmarches. As the left slowly human-ised capitalism, first, the vision of asocialist society – which was neversketched out – fell by the wayside,

and then people began to talkabout social democracy and even“market socialism”. Yet with therise of Thatcherism and Reaganismand demise of the Soviet bloc, eventhis weakened, until after Blair andClinton, people were left clingingto the wreckage of “progres-sivism”.

The journey from the glorious,admittedly over-confident days ofthe forward march of organisedlabour, to the slow, painful retreatof the left, has seen a shift fromcertainties to vague ideas. What onearth is “progressivism”, otherthan some ill-defined conceptwhich everyone can lay claim to,including Cameroon Tories andLib Dems?

ROOT AND BRANCHTRANSFORMATIONIt is no use hoping that an ener-gised Miliband Labour Party willrefind its purpose, and renewsocial democracy. The pattern wecan predict, which Ralph Milibandanalysed at length, is that Labourwill swing to the rhetoric of a morebold social democracy in opposi-tion, but the crisis created by NewLabour is so profound and deepseated that it cannot be addressedwithout root and branch transfor-mation. Things are not fundamen-tally different in Scottish Labour.

Scotland desperately needs radi-cal ideas, pluralism and openminded imagination. It will notcome from the mainstream of theScottish left – who have long agoshifted from being forward think-ing heretics to defending whatexists and the status quo.

The story of the British left overthe last century has been one offirst hope, then the rise ofFabianism and the power of theexpert, followed by the falsepromise of modernisation, whichproved even more problematicthan the old vision it replaced.

Even more profoundly both theold left and new revolutionariesare imbued with a belief in themodernist utopia – one of plan-ning and the other of the market.Both see people as instrumentalplaythings. Neither has come to

THE AGE OF RADICALISM AFTER THE LEFT

What onearth is“progressiv-ism”, otherthan someill-definedconceptwhicheveryone canlay claim to,includingCameroonTories andLib Dems?


terms with the crisis of mod-ernism, or the limits to growth onour fragile earth.

What comes after the appeal,vision and hopes of the left is a fas-cinating question. The left offereda journey, a destination and ananchor – which gave generations away of looking at the world.Modern Scotland could becomethe country which was one of thefirst to embrace socialist ortho-doxy, and if not the first out, thenperhaps the first to explicitlyembrace the new post-socialist ageand map out a new direction.

RISING GENERATIONThat requires a rising generationto take up the challenge, not justburying what remains of the left,but the recent revolutionaries ofthe market, who have made muchof the world in their image, andproduced anxiety, insecurity andpowerlessness.

I am optimistic for the long-term future of Scotland. This is forlots of reasons: the innate hope myparents gave me about the world,the fact that we finally got “our”Parliament, and because the longstory of Britain is in decline andcrisis north and south of theborder.

A Scotland which has exhaustedthe old traditions of the left, andshown itself sceptical to the neworthodoxies of the Anglo-American model, could be ideallyplaced for the politics of the 21stcentury. This would entail embrac-ing shared sovereignty, decentral-ism, a diplomacy of makingalliances rather than “great Britishpowerism”, and the ideas of gen-uine self-government and self-determination which go waybeyond devolution.

This is a politics which tran-scends left and right, those oldtribal distinctions which are theproduct of the 19th and 20th cen-tury. Let’s leave them where theybelong in the past.

� Gerry Hassan is a writer, com-mentator and thinker aboutScotland, the UK, politics andideas. www.gerryhassan.com

Read your article with interest.However I have to say I don’treally agree with its main

thrust. You detail quite a long listof criticisms of the left – some jus-tified and others not. You end byhailing a new politics which willtranscend the old left-rightdichotomy. Why then do youdevote 99.9% of your article to theleft with only a few throw-awaylines at the very end about thepost-left project? Why is your arti-cle not all about the “new poli-tics”? From the few lines youdevote to this, the defining ele-ments would seem to be:� Embracing shared sovereignty;� Decentralism;� Replacing “great British pow-

erism” with constructingalliances;

� Genuine self-government andself-determination.

I’m not sure what you mean by“embracing shared sovereignty”but it sounds like we will remain inthe Union – presumably in somekind of federal structure. I find itdifficult to equate that with gen-uine self-government and self-determination – but perhaps I’vemisunderstood you. However, mymain reaction to reading thesedefining features is that there isnothing particularly new here – allof these concepts are a fairly famil-iar part of a left lexicon. And, evenif some have not been exploredsufficiently, there is no ideologicalor philosophical barrier to thembeing added to the “to be done”list. Your recent work on self-determination would be read by

most as a contribution to thedebate on democratic renewal –but there is nothing in what youare saying which lies outwith theparameters of left politics.

URGENT AND VALID MISSIONWriting in yesterday’s Guardian,Polly Toynbee observes: “Facingan Osborne spending review morerightwing than Thatcher everdared, the left-right chasm hasrarely been starker. In every cornerof the globe the tussle persistsbetween progressive and regressiveforces.” The fact is that, at thebeginning of the 21st century, halfthe world still makes sense of poli-tics in terms of right and left. Eventhe SNP and the Green Party, nei-ther of which spring from a lefttradition, have very quickly beenlocated on the left/right spectrumas left-of-centre parties. This is notbecause of some kind of politicalfixation; the left-right dynamic is aproduct of, and response to, capi-talism and to the myriad ways inwhich it distorts and corruptshuman relationships. In thisregard, there is nothing whatsoev-er that has happened in the pasthalf century which has renderedthat mission any less urgent orvalid. As long as finance capitalismholds sway we will have a left andright.

Embarking on a project of defin-ing a “third way” beyond left andright is not for the faint-hearted.Precedent is not encouraging.Mussolini was in fact one of thefirst to coin the phrase “neither leftnor right!” Anthony Giddens’s

THE DANGERS OF THETHIRDWAYDoug Bain takes Gerry Hassan to task for his callfor a politics which transcends left and right.


Beyond Left and Right was written16 years ago and has not, to put itmildly, inspired a new post-leftvision. The terrain of third-waypolitics has remained pretty barrenintellectually.

BANKRUPT OF NEW IDEASSo why go there? Your argumentseems to be that the left is bank-rupt of new ideas, locked into ablack-and-white, modernist, deter-minist mode of thinking. I justdon’t recognise that left. The cri-tique of modernism is now closeon 50 years old and the post-mod-ernist thesis has been thoroughlydebated and explored over severaldecades – for example WillieThompson’s Postmodernism andHistory. I think there is now a con-sensus that while post-modernismprovides valuable insights in thefield of aesthetics, its contributionto social theory is much more lim-ited and, as a philosophy to informa post-left political project, it is anon-starter. If Jacques Derrida’shelp was enlisted in campaigningfor improved postal services, theopening paragraph of his cam-paigning leaflet would read: “Notthat the letter never arrives at itsdestination, but it belongs to itsstructure that it is always possiblefor it not to arrive there … A letterdoes not always arrive at its desti-

nation and since that belongs to itsstructure, it can be said that itnever arrives there truly, that whenit arrives the fact that it is capableof not arriving afflicts it with thetorment of an internal misdirec-tion” (quote from Willie’s book).

I think it is becoming clearernow that, politically, post-mod-ernism was a turn to the right andeven people like Frederic Jamesonare conceding that its days may benumbered and that the challengeis, in fact, to re-define modernism.As someone wrote somewhere, ifyou live in the slums of Mumbai,modernism probably sounds quitea good idea. Beyond post-mod-ernism, the only other recent post-left articulation I can think of isEtzioni’s communitarianism –which Blair and Clinton brieflyflirted with but which has run intothe sand.

Far from being moribund, theleft continues to generate a richand diverse intellectual output sus-taining influential journals such asSoundings and New Left Review(not to mention Perspectives andScottish Left Review). Far frombeing stuck in the past, the centreof gravity of thinking is very muchpost-Marxist. The left has a longand rich history of theory andstruggle and has continually adapt-ed and changed to accommodate

new circumstances. To argue thatwe should turn our backs on thistradition and attempt to invent anew discourse seems to me to befoolhardy in the extreme. Andquite unnecessary.

The Scottish left is not going todissolve and disappear. It findsexpression in the Labour Party, theSNP, the Greens and in the leftgroupings such as Democratic LeftScotland and Scottish Left Review.It seems to me the prospects forbringing these elements togetherand beginning to articulate acommon vision for the future ofScotland are very good.

I think you really need to con-sider carefully where this line ofargument is taking you. Your reac-tion to this brief critique will prob-ably be to counter with an evensharper criticism of the left. Thedanger with opting for a “thirdway” is that you could find your-self being drawn into an increas-ingly anti-left stance and I thinkthat is beginning to find expressionin your article.

Hope this is of someinterest/value.

� Doug Bain was a member ofDemocratic Left Scotland and acontributor to Perspectives. Hewrote this piece not long before hissudden death last September.

THE DANGERS OF THE THIRD WAY

Far frombeingmoribund,the leftcontinues togenerate arich anddiverseintellectualoutput.

RIDDOCH’S SCOTLANDA series of six articles by journalistand broadcaster Lesley Riddochabout the people, places andpolitics of Scotland commencesin the spring issue of Perspectives.The spring issue (no 29) will be available at the beginning of March.To subscribe complete and return the form on the back cover of this issue.


On 25 September 2010 ayoung man (at least youngerthan me) with a lap-top (no

drink, no food) sits in the CeilidhPlace in Ullapool with a copy ofthe Locum Doctor’s SurvivalGuide to one side.

The next morning, around7.30am, from a second floorwindow in Inchnadamph, aScottish historian (41, female)looked out on sun-blushed moun-tains as the birch trees lining thedrive-way to the old manseclenched the golden leaves theearly frost was seeking to claim.My son slept.

I suggest no connection betweenthese two scenes except themanner in which they both figurein the narrative of the life of thisreview. I offer no comfortablechronology – no consistency oftense. I offer no unitary narrator,except the me that was readingAnd the Land Lay Still inSeptember in order to write whatyou are reading now, and themother who was stealing time inAssynt in search of the view ofKirkaig Bay that enlivens my/herdining room wall in Glasgow. (Me,she, her, we … it.)

Earlier reviews of this novelhave typically moved from theobvious – its scale (674 pages), itsambition (“a searching journeyinto the heart of a country”according to the jacket blurb) – tothe particular – the characters(Angus, Mike, Jean, Don, Jack,James Bond – yes, you read cor-rectly – Ellen …), the politics –with a clarity of direction notmatched in the novel itself. Not

THE LIEOF THE LAND

matched, because, in a way, that isthe point (well, at least one ofthem).

This review – if that is indeedwhat it is – foregoes the privilegeof paraphrasing plot and essential-ising narrative intent. The lengthand reach of this book would inany case make that an exercise inwhimsical personal selection tosuch an extent that Robertson’smore profound achievements inthis work would be lost. Instead,this is an attempt to offer oneunderstanding (mine) of the waysin which this novel offers animportant contribution to modernScottish history by challenging as itdoes the singularity of nationalnarratives and the impulses of con-ventional Scottish literary criti-cism. By problematising how wecome to know the past, and plac-ing the individual/individuals andthe abstractions of identity to thefore in his treatment of the nationRobertson offers us a Scotland thatis at once more and less than thesum of its parts and the power ofits imaginings.

PREGNANT WITH POSSIBILITIESIndeed, the decisions taken inshaping Robertson’s narrative areto the fore from the beginning: weare made aware of what Robertsonmight have written, as much aswhat he has. “What if, what if? Ifonly, if only, if only”, Robertsonwrites. “Those phrases sit likecrows on the passage of the years.They settle on politics, they settleon love, they settle on life.”Robertson’s text is as pregnantwith the possibilities of other pasts

as it is alive to the vitality of how itwas. Each of the six parts of thenovel, for example, begins withwhat appears to be a false start – anitalicised sometimes breathlessencounter with the land and thecharacter closest to it – beforeturning to the narratives of thelives that contribute to the book’scentral concerns. (Only much lateris the defining purpose of theseprologues apparent. Robertsonhere self-consciously plays withhindsight – ours and his, perhaps.)We are also alert to the fact thatthis novel is the outcome of aseries (no, maybe not that ordered)… of decisions – some taken withconfidence, some only half-acknowledged risks. Yet, nothingappears to be left to chance. In amost fundamental sense, the writ-ing process is the novel, and in itsstarkest manifestation, it is clearestat the level of genre itself. Read forthe first time, you could beexcused for wondering if thisreally is a novel. You might evenget angry with a text that is notcontent to remain for long in anyconventional literary tradition.History leaves an indelible markon just about every page, and thelevel of detail at times points evenfurther to chronicle, at worst tojobbing journalese. Yet dramaticdialogues, extracts from fictitiousnewspapers, art and photographytransposed and refracted intowords, and song rhythms pulsingin the responses of characters indi-cate that this is a work of the imag-ination, call it what you will. Mike– the first protagonist to spin a nar-rative thread in Part One – would

This is anattempt tooffer oneunderstand-ing of theways inwhich thisnovel offersan importantcontributiontomodernScottishhistory.

And the LandLay StillJames Robertson(HamishHamilton, 2010)

History leaves an indelible mark on just about every page, saysCatriona MMMacdonald as she surveys the terrain of JamesRobertson’s acclaimed novel, And the Land Lay Still.


understand. When attempting towrite the introduction to an exhi-bition catalogue honouring hisfather’s work in the art of photog-raphy, he “has another look at theintroduction, essay, memoir, what-ever it is he’s trying to write.That’s the problem, he doesn’tknow.” In a recent Scotsman inter-view, Robertson said much thesame of his own novel: “The diffi-culty was not knowing exactlywhat the story was.” (27 July 2010)It’s surely not coincidental.

MULTIPLICITY OF VOICESIndeed, there is a self-consciousattempt in the Land to reflect andexamine the artifice and honestyinherent in story-making. Jean –Robertson’s most developedfemale character – exemplifies thistendency. It is at her hiddenEdinburgh flat that the nationalistsympathisers congregate in the1970s to story the nation, to singthe nation, and to drink thenation’s health by sacrificing theirown. One wonders if Jean – a wisebut barren Scotia – and her storiesare to be read as allegory. Yet,while the hostess of the national-ists is in repose, it is obvious thatJean’s voice is but one of many inthe movement. Robertson in thisway rejects a singular national(ist)narrative, and the potential of anyone narrative to accommodate thecontradictions and paradoxes ofthe multiplicity of Scotland’svoices – unionist and nationalist,male and female, historic and con-temporary. Jean’s stories seldomwork towards resolution: “you justthink what you like.”

By thus rejecting the impulse toessentialise a Scottish story,Robertson sets himself in opposi-tion to the tendency in Scottish lit-erary criticism to claim a novel(and novelists) as exemplars of thenation itself. (Recent reviews,regrettably, have often failed togrant him that liberty.)Nevertheless, as Robertson’s fic-tional MacDiarmid advises Bond:“The only thing you need to do …is to be yourself.” Given the wealthof historical detail in this work,Robertson on the surface gets

closer than most to realising thebeguiling promise of realism inunlocking the “truths” of thenation that those seeking a“Scottish voice”, a new GrassicGibbon, or a herald for a newScottish “school” identify as thelitmus test of the arts in Scotland.Yet things are not that simple.Robertson’s characters livethrough the same historical periodand experience it in differentways: contrasting generational,class, gender, sexual, geographicand political identities offer differ-ent lenses through which Scotlandis observed, while character – in allits various manifestations – influ-ences how Scotland is felt. No onevoice is privileged, no collective isallowed to over-ride the personal,and Scotland itself is seen as some-thing often only truly glimpsed infleeting moments of realisation, orthrough chance photographs thatresist narrativisation. The “deci-sive moment”, as Mike reflects,borrowing from Cartier Bresson.

AUTHORITY OF DETACHEDHISTORIANRobertson also rejects a singularnarrative voice. While, for themost part, the novel is written inthe third-person, the prologues areaddressed directly to Jack –Robertson’s everyman who is atonce part of, at odds with,emblematic of, and eventuallyclaimed by the Still land of thebook’s title. These short introitsare also addressed to the reader(“you”) with an immediacyeschewed in the rest of the text.The third-person approach facili-tates the historicising of the text:Robertson acquires the authorityof the detached historian, and hischaracters – as historical subjects –appear to have little choice in thefates that await them. Robertson –as historian – gives them no choic-es, while Robertson – the novelist– makes us achingly aware of howthings could have been very differ-ent. Only Marjory Taylor – theonly English character in thenovel’s core of protagonists –speaks for herself. (I still don’tknow quite why that is.)

So what then of history if evennovelists resist conventional storyand claim the role of chronicler?As a historian whose recent mono-graph, Whaur Extremes Meet, cov-ered much the same period asRobertson’s novel, his treatment ofhistory is of particular interest.Indeed, it was uncanny (if, I sup-pose, predictable) the extent towhich Robertson appears to havegrappled with the same dilemmasas I did in that text. From theoutset, I have to say that whilst histreatment of time and history wasprofound, I found his treatment ofhistorical detail at times clunkingand intrusive, and at others some-what overdone. I am yet to be con-vinced that lives are generally livedin ways so rooted in their contem-porary socio-political context as tobe aligned so meticulously with theperiodisation of the state. WouldMike really have remembered thathe went to see Goldfinger with hisfather the day after the 1964General Election? Is it entirelyplausible that Angus just happenedto be in Arbroath the day the Stoneof Destiny was returned? I can alsosay with some authority that noteven historians of the periodwould be able to offer with suchease the seat count of theConservatives in 1966 as this all-knowing narrator. Regular leapsbetween the lives of characters andhistorical contextual detail werealso jarring at times, and the narra-tive voice – the aspiring historian –often lapses in its pursuit of real-ism. I, for one, am yet to be con-vinced that from 1997,“Everything from then on isanother story. The new parlia-ment, the new country, the person-al and the political.”

TESTAMENT TO QUALITYIn a way, such reservations are tes-tament to the overall quality of thewriting itself. I would not be terri-bly concerned about Mike’s mem-ories, for example, if I was notconvinced by him as a plausiblecharacter. I would have lostpatience with the narrator, if I wasnot convinced that Robertson asnovelist is equal to the task of

THE LIE OF THE LAND

WhilstRobertson’streatment oftime andhistory wasprofound,I found histreatment ofhistoricaldetail attimesclunking andintrusive.


allowing his characterisation andcraft to make the same points withgreater conviction and more origi-nality than he does as Robertsonthe historian.

Robertson’s greatest gift toScottish history in this work, how-ever, is not the detail. Rather, it isin his engagement with a temporalScotland – a Scotland that is asmuch about time, memory, hind-sight and history and how weapproach these ways of knowing,as it is about a physical, politicalScotland and our attempts tomould it. Robertson’s Scotlandexists in “the lee of what was thenthe future” and his characters’“ability to look back on the past,[their] need or desire to makesense of it, is both a blessing and acurse.” “We don’t know what thestory is when we’re in it”, reflectsMike in the concluding pages ofthe novel, “and even after we tell itwe’re not sure.” His conclusion?“Trust the story. That’s all. Trustthe story. Whatever it is these pic-tures tell you, individually or col-lectively, trust the story.”

Robertson, in the very act ofwriting history – or at least in his-toricising the novel – exposes itscontingencies, its limitations andits false promises. Ultimately, thewritten word is unequal to truth.Ellen – Jean’s antagonist, motherto a child conceived in an act ofviolent rape, and a Scotia befittinga new Scotland – affirms: “Don’tbelieve a word you read … All sto-ries are lies … The secret is towork out how big the lie is. That’swhy we keep believing in a thingcalled truth. It doesn’t exist but wecan’t help looking for it. It’s one ofthe most endearing human fail-ings.” Just as literature refuses toharness a singular Scotland, so his-tory fails to deliver on its promiseto offer a benchmark of authentic-ity. In this novel , Robertson pointsto the fact that by knowing morewe need not necessarily under-stand more deeply; that the “tyran-ny of time” does not lead to asingular expression of the past,and that chronological order,while a “sensible” historicalregime, is not necessarily the “nat-

ural way of releasing a narrative”.These are all lessons modernScottish historiography would dowell to take to heart. For what it’sworth, this historian agrees withhim.

MULTIPLICITY OF PERSPECTIVESWhere we depart is in the searchfor a conclusion. Robertson hassuggested elsewhere that the epicproportions of the novel can inpart be explained by the fact that“The story is still going on.” Onthat point we are in agreement.And yet, Robertson makes a veryconscious effort in the novel tobring the narrative threads togeth-er. Mike’s final speech to theassembled guests at the Edinburghexhibition uses as a motif DavidOctavius Hill’s painting of theDisruption of 1843. He reflectsthat while it was not a historicallyaccurate picture it was “a represen-tation of a moment”. The parallelsbetween the Hill painting, hisfather’s photographs and theassembled cast of characters doesnot need spelling out. Yet the sym-bolism here does not have thelightness of touch that marks muchof Robertson’s most successful pas-sages: it is too deliberate, too con-trived, and permissive of apolemical style that to that pointhe has been largely successful inavoiding. There was somethingthat irritated in the partial resolu-tion and weaving together ofstory-lines that to that point hadbeen most successful in highlight-ing the multiplicity of perspectiveson Scotland’s past and their inher-ent discontinuities. The religiousovertones of the painting were alsostrangely out of step with the restof the novel: to that point religionhad not been a major theme. Faithin whatever form we had encoun-tered it had been shown to be false,and the most compelling religiousmotifs had been related to theagents of the state – Croik andCanterbury – who appeared topersonify the secularising tenden-cies of an age marked by theincreasing reach of central govern-ment. There is part of this review-er that would have preferred

Robertson to have been bolder: tohave left the connections betweencharacters unrealised in a physicalsense in the pages of the novel; forthe connections to be left at thelevel of the imagination. Is thatnot, after all, one of his centralthemes?

Robertson’s novel is, however,much much more than this. Hisdepiction of what happens whenthe departure of industry cripplessmall communities and commonappreciations of masculinity; whenmarriages become a force of habit,and then a force of mutual destruc-tion; when sexuality is realised andreleased; when hopes in a newtomorrow reveal a future prettymuch like yesterday, and whenclass and nationhood vie for theradical inheritance all stand inneed of a critical assessment.

I finished reading the novel longafter I had taken photographs ofKirkaig Bay and measured themagainst the abstractions of thewatercolour in the dining room.Indeed, it was weeks after my sonand I had walked to the falls, pass-ing on the way a cairn to NormanMacCaig: a makar whose shortpoems are a useful counterpointand complement to Robertson’sepic. It was as a historian that I satdown to write this in the middle ofGlasgow as snow encrusted thetenement opposite. One book, onereviewer, but read across the con-tradictions of time and space inthis still land. Robertson’s gift toScotland’s literary tradition is tomake the writer’s craft the story, tobring to life the contingencies oflives as they are lived, and to marrythe big questions with the para-doxes of circumstance.

� Dr Catriona MM Macdonald isauthor of Whaur Extremes Meet:Scotland’s Twentieth Century(John Donald, 2009), winner of theSaltire Society Scottish HistoryBook of the Year Award 2010. Sheis also author of The RadicalThread (Tuckwell, 2000), editor ofUnionist Scotland (John Donald,1998), and co-editor of Scotlandand the Great War (Tuckwell,1999).

Robertson, inthe very actof writinghistory – orat least inhistoricisingthe novel –exposes itscontingen-cies, itslimitationsand its falsepromises.


JAMES CONNOLLY, COLONIALISM,AND “CELTIC COMMUNISM”

On 5 June 2009 the Edinburgh Evening Newsreported a “controversial bid … to commemo-rate the Edinburgh-born Irish revolutionary

James Connolly with a statue in the city centre … Sitesunder consideration include the Meadows, whereConnolly gave some of his most famous speeches, theWest Port, where he lived, and the Cowgate, his birth-place and home to the majority of Edinburgh’s Irishimmigrant community until the mid-20th century”.On the other side of the Irish Sea, on the 11th ofOctober 2010, the Scotsman ran an item entitled“Scot in line for top Irish title”. The Scot was ofcourse Connolly, the title that of Ireland’s greatest his-torical figure. Connolly came fourth of the five short-listed candidates, but he did beat Bono. The winner,revealed on the 22nd of October, was not after all aScotsman with an Irish name but an Irishman with aScottish name, John Hume, and not just a Scottishname but a great-grandfather, Willie Hume, from thelowlands of Scotland, who emigrated to Donegalduring the reign of Victoria.

As Owen Dudley Edwards reminds us: “The firstthing to remember about James Connolly and Irishtradition is that he was born outside it. He wasEdinburgh born, his parents were Monaghan emi-grants to Edinburgh … Looking up from the squalidand almost lightless depths of the Cowgate, the youngConnolly could learn Marxism simply by seeing thestately folk walking far above him on the fashionableGeorge IV Bridge which swept above the slums below.He could see he was a proletarian long before hecould hear he was Irish.” Edwards makes fun of theIrish tendency to render invisible Connolly’s Scottishorigins: “In Irish tradition, Connolly was born at theage of 28 in Dublin in 1896, in the manner of Mr.Furriskey in At Swim-Two-Birds, when he was notborn in Clones at the age of 0 in 1870. But in fact, hewas of course born at the age of 0 in Edinburgh in1868, and therefore his view of Irish tradition wasnever wholly Irish.” Edwards insists that Connolly’s“immediate heirs” are to be found “not among theIrish republicans but with such figures as JohnMaclean of Scotland.” Connolly wasn’t just born inEdinburgh – the youngest of three sons. He lived inScotland till he was twenty-eight. Connolly supported

Hibernian Football Club, founded in 1875 by CanonEdward Hannan, an Irish priest based in Edinburgh’sCowgate, known as “Little Ireland”. Connolly didn’tjust support Hibs; he carried the players’ kits and didother odd jobs at the ground. He also worked at theEdinburgh Evening News. His political influences, for-mation and connections were in Scotland. He leftschool at ten and worked in a printer’s, a bakery, and atiling factory. As a radical republican opponent ofphysical force imperialism, Connolly stands in a longScottish tradition stretching from Knox and Burnsthrough to Maclean and MacDiarmid.

JAMES’S COLONY: SCOTLAND AND THE ULSTERPLANTATIONJames Connolly’s Scottish connections go back toJames’s colony, to the Ulster Plantation presided overby King James VI and I in 1609, an event that trans-formed Irish-Scottish relations to the benefit ofEngland and the emerging British state. Connollyexpressed his view on Ulster and the Scots in an essaywritten for Scottish socialist magazine Forward on 12July 1913, where he sympathised with the presbyteri-an planters as victims of English colonial manipulationin a passage that anticipates the views of Alasdair Grayin his pamphlet on Scottish independence to the effectthat the Ulster plantation was designed to divide andrule the Irish and Scottish: “A large body of Englishsettlers might have held Ulster down, but very fewEnglish wanted to settle in a hostile and much poorerland … Jamie did what could only be done by aScottish king ruling Ireland with an English army: hecolonized Ulster.” As Jonathan Githens-Mazer puts it:“Sectarianism blinded Catholic and Protestant tocommon exploitation by English elites who intro-duced or settled outsiders in Ulster to exploit them forpersonal gain.”

Belfast-born Ulster Scot William Walker remindedConnolly in their exchange in Forward in 1911 thatScottish Presbyterianism and Protestantism morebroadly had played a progressive part in modern Irishhistory, including labour history. According to JamesD. Young: “The role of Forward in providingMaclean, Connolly and Larkin with space to expoundtheir views testified to the developing links between

James Connolly is, together with John Maclean, one of themost important Scottish radicals of the modern era, yet hisbrand of socialist republicanism is often overlooked inhistories of Scotland, argues Willy Maley, who goes on toshow that Scottish writers from Hugh MacDiarmid to JamesKelman have admired Connolly’s radical thought.

The firstthing torememberabout JamesConnolly andIrishtradition isthat hewasbornoutside it.


the left of the Scottish and Irish workers’ move-ments.” Walker stood unsuccessfully as Labour candi-date for Leith, close to where Connolly was born, inthe general election of January 1910, so he hadScottish connections in the neighbourhood fromwhich Connolly sprang. In fact, Connolly and Walkerhad both stood for office in Scotland, Connolly unsuc-cessfully contesting elections to Edinburgh Council in1894 and 1895.

RED CLYDESIDE, GREEN CLYDESIDEMany Irish and Scottish socialists had cross-culturalconnections and cross-water connections. Theyincluded Willie Gallacher (1881–1965), born in theIrish ghetto of Sneddon, Paisley in 1881, who playeda key role in founding the Communist Party of GreatBritain in 1920–21; and Ulster Scots Socialists likeWilliam Walker (1871–1918), the Belfast Protestantwho challenged Connolly, and David “Davy” RobbCampbell (1874/5–1934), the Belfast Protestant whosupported Connolly. John Wheatley (1869–1930) isanother key crossover figure. Born in Bonhamon, Co.Waterford, in 1869, his family moved to Bargeddie,near Glasgow, in 1876. Wheatley became a leadingScottish socialist, joining the Independent LabourParty in 1906, and founding the Catholic SocialistSociety in the same year. The Dublin Lock-out of1913 and the Glasgow Rent Strike of 1915 showedsolidarity across the water. Speaking in March 1918,Cathal O’Shannon claimed that: “Glasgow andDublin are the two cities in these countries that leadthe van in the militant army of Labour, and fromthem, if from nowhere else, we may expect a boldlead.”

One of the most radical Scottish socialists of thetime was John Maclean (1879–1923). According toJames Hunter: “Both Connolly and MacLean – thetwo most outstanding Marxist revolutionaries so farproduced in these islands – were born to Gaelic-speak-ing parents. And they devoted no small part of theirconsiderable abilities to reconcile socialism with thenationalisms of their respective countries.” In theaftershock of Easter 1916, and after a spell in prisonfor breaching the Defence of the Realm Act, Macleanmoved closer to Connolly’s views. According to GavinFoster, when Maclean visited Dublin for the first timein July 1919, “he was exposed to the large British mil-itary build-up in Ireland and was forced to confrontseveral of his ideological blind spots on the ‘IrishQuestion’”. As James D. Young remarks: “From 1May, 1919, Maclean was committed to the Irish causeas a part of a worldwide anti-imperialist struggle.When he, John Wheatley, and Countess Markieviczspoke at the Glasgow May Day in the presence of100,000 workers, Irish tricolours were openly carriedamong the crowd and the Soldiers’ Song was sungalong with the Red Flag.”

In 1920, Maclean wrote one of the most forcefulpamphlets on the Irish situation of the period, TheIrish Tragedy: Scotland’s Disgrace (1920), which had a

postscript that read: “Since writing this pamphlet theGlasgow Herald in a leader on Tuesday, June 8, 1920,entitled The Army in Ireland, gloats over the fact thatScots regiments are pouring into Ireland and othersare held in readiness. It seems the Scots are being usedto crush the Irish. Let Labour effectively reply.” In hisGeneral Election Address of 1922, standing in theGorbals, Maclean declared: “When Jim Connolly sawhow things were going in Edinburgh he resolved onthe Easter Rebellion in Dublin, the beginning ofIreland’s new fight for freedom, a fight that can onlyend in an Irish workers’ republic based on commu-nism.” Connolly had spoken in Glasgow on 15thOctober 1910, so he was certainly attuned to eventsthere. Young confirms Maclean’s views on Connolly’sawareness of Scottish developments in the run-up toEaster 1916: “Connolly was aware of what was hap-pening on Red Clydeside. In the 20 November, 1915issue of the Workers’ Republic, he attacked the sup-pression of ‘Free Speech in Scotland’ … At much thesame time, he published an article entitled ‘GlasgowGaels Will Fight’ in which he reported on a meeting inthe Sinn Fein Hall, London Street, Glasgow ... In anarticle on ‘Scots Labour Men and Lloyd George’,Connolly published a report in the Workers’ Republicsaying that the majority of Clydeside workers at thefamous meeting in Glasgow were anti-war.”Connolly’s intimate knowledge of the Scottish scenewas mirrored by the growing activism of other Irish-Scots increasingly exercised by events across thewater.

MARGARET SKINNIDER: FROM COATBRIDGE TOCONNOLLY’S SIDEArguably the most interesting Scottish connectionwith Connolly and the Easter Rising is MargaretSkinnider (1893–1971). According to Iain D.Patterson, “British intelligence sources computed IrishVolunteer membership to be about 3,000 in Glasgowin 1914”. One member of the Irish Volunteers amongthe 200 women who joined the 1400 rebels wasMargaret Skinnider, schoolteacher, suffragist andnationalist born in Coatbridge near Glasgow in 1893.Skinnider joined Cumann na mBan (League ofWomen) and the Irish Volunteers, while in Glasgow.In her account of the Easter Rising – published in NewYork in 1917 as Doing My Bit For Ireland – a title shenever liked but picked by the publisher – Skinnidersays: “I learned to shoot in one of the rifle practiceclubs which the British organized so that womencould help in the defense of the Empire. These clubshad sprung up like mushrooms and died as quickly,but I kept on till I was a good marksman. I believedthe opportunity would soon come to defend my owncountry.” And Skinnider was clear as to which countryshe was talking about: “Scotland is my home, butIreland my country.”

Skinnider was invited to Dublin at the end of 1915to meet Constance Markievicz. She crossed the IrishSea with detonators in her hat, and the wires wrapped

“It seems theScots arebeing usedto crush theIrish. LetLaboureffectivelyreply.”


under her coat. She slept on the detonators and waslater told the pressure could have set them off. Shescouted out a barracks for bombing, and her map ofthe target was passed on to James Connolly, who shethen got to meet. As a maths teacher she could draw amean map. She travelled back to Glasgow on theunderstanding that she’d return for the Rising.“Fortunately”, she said, “Glasgow is two fifths Irish.Indeed, there are as many Irish there as in Dublinitself, and the spirit among the younger generation isperhaps more intense because we are a little to oneside and thus afraid of becoming outsiders.”

Skinnider cross-dressed, passing as one of theGlasgow Fianna, claiming to be able to wrestle andwhistle as well as any boy. She acted as a messengerand sniper in Easter week. She was wounded whilefighting in the uniform of the Irish Volunteers andimprisoned, before going to America and writing hermemoir. She certainly did her bit for Ireland: “Once,on my way back to Liberty Hall with some dynamitewrapped in a neat bundle on the seat beside me, Iheard a queer, buzzing noise. It seemed to come frominside the bundle. ‘Is it going off?’ I asked myself, andsat tight, expecting every moment to be blown to bits.But nothing happened; it was only the cart-wheelscomplaining as we passed over an uneven bit oftrack.” Skinnider was paymaster of the IRA during theIrish Civil War, spent time in prison, during whichNora Connolly took her place, then taught in Dublin.She retired in 1961, and died ten years later, buried inthe republican plot at Glasnevin cemetery.

SCOTTISH WRITERS IN PRAISE OF CONNOLLYAccording to David Lloyd, one of a number of criticsto revisit Connolly’s work in recent years: “There isno doubt that the concept of ‘Celtic communism’lends itself potentially to an idealizing nationalismthat seeks to trace in the past the contours of a benev-olent and undegraded national spirit. But Connolly’sdeployment of the concept in Labour and IrishHistory, The Reconquest of Ireland and elsewhere,though a consistent element of his socialist project, isif anything precisely opposed to such idealizing.”Several Scottish writers have certainly drawn inspira-tion from Connolly as an activist rather than an ideal-ist. According to Chris Harvie, Hugh MacDiarmid“had several streams running through him, one ofthem Ireland and the Easter Rising of 1916, wherepoets had apparently changed a nation.” Harviepoints out that “to younger Scottish socialists likeMacDiarmid, politicised by the war and the industrialstruggles of the ‘Red Clyde’, Connolly became ahero.” Sorley MacLean was another great admirer.His poem on Connolly’s shirt in the NationalMuseum of Ireland – “Ard-Mhusaeum na h-Eireann”(“The National Museum of Ireland”) – testify to hissense of Connolly as a bridging figure between anIreland and Scotland divided by England.

The Scottish reclamation of Connolly can be seen inHibernian FC supporter Irvine Welsh’s novel

Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (2006): “As theywalked in the cold night he talked effusively, seemingfascinated by her green mane, and told her that thispart of town used to be known as Little Ireland … Hepointed over to St Mary’s Church, and told her thatmany years before Celtic in Glasgow, the EdinburghIrishmen had formed the Hibernian Football Club inthese very halls. He grew animated when he pointedup the street, and told her that Hibernian’s mostfamous supporter, James Connolly, was born up thatroad and had went on to lead the Easter Risings inDublin, which culminated in Ireland’s freedom fromBritish imperialism. It seemed important to him thatshe knew that Connolly was a socialist, not an Irishnationalist. – In this city we know nothing about ourreal identity, he said passionately, – it’s all imposed onus.”

It wouldn’t be Irvine Welsh without some scatology,so later in the novel Skinner, searching for his fatheramong the cooks of the world, comes across onecalled Cunningham-Blyth with a story to tell and thescars to prove it. Cunningham-Blyth has literally losthis manhood for his country: “As a young man back inthe sixties, I became interested in politics. Particularlythe national question. I wondered how it was thatmost of Ireland was free, while Scotland was still inservitude under the English Crown. I looked aroundat the New Town, its streets named after English roy-alty due to that toady Scott, while a great, Edinburghnative son and socialist leader like James Connollymerited little more than a plaque on a wall under ashadowy bridge.” Cunningham-Blyth uses his cookingskills in order to hatch a plot: “I was always a recipemaker ... a concocter, I suppose one might say. As agesture, I resolved to fashion a home-made bomb andblow up one of the symbols of British imperialism thatlitter this city. I had my eye on the Duke ofWellington’s statue at the east end. So I made a pipebomb. Unfortunately, I had the device between mythighs as I was packing it with explosive. It went offprematurely. I lost my penis and one of my testicles …It probably wouldn’t even have scratched the IronDuke.” The following year, in the short story collec-tion, If You Liked School, You’ll Love Work (2007),Welsh has another character say of a stirring speechthat it was “Pure James Connolly or John McLean[sic]”, and he alludes to “Willie Gallagher [sic]” andthe “Soviet Socialist People’s Republic” of Fife.

James Kelman is another Scottish writer who hasacknowledged Connolly as a relatively unsungScottish socialist, and has pointed to the lost legacy ofthe left nationalism of the early twentieth-century, anationalism that was thoroughly internationalist inoutlook: “Now it’s just assumed that if you are notparliamentarian, then you have no politics, and that’sa really extraordinary reaction to what started hap-pening about a hundred years ago when the debatewas much more sophisticated politically, and therewas such a great divergence amongst socialists. It wasprobably valid to have a belief in self-determination,

CELTIC COMMUNISM

The Scottishreclamationof Connollycan be seenin HibernianFC supporterIrvineWelsh’snovel“BedroomSecrets of theMasterChefs”.


to have a position like James Connolly or JohnMacLean.” In this regard, Kelman has spoken of theway in which the Irish question has dropped out ofsight in Scottish political culture: “Part of the extraor-dinary thing is the marginalisation of Irish politics inrelation to Scottish radical history. I would say thatyou cannot get an understanding of radical politics,probably throughout the UK, but certainly inScotland, without understanding the significance ofIrish politics as well. Take James Connolly for exam-ple. About twenty years ago when a young refugeeAhmad Shaikh, a boy of twenty-one, was murdered ina racist attack and a protest march was organised,police said it couldn’t take place. The reason why wasbecause one of the groups marching in solidarity wasthe EIS, the teachers’ union. It was the local branch,which carried on their banners a portrait of JamesConnolly, the Irish Republican martyr who was mur-dered by the British government in 1916. The extraor-dinary thing about all of this was that James Connollywas actually an Edinburgh man, he’s Scottish. Hedidn’t go to Ireland until his early twenties. His fatherwas Irish, but he was born less than a mile from wherewe were about to march. You know there are a lot ofironies; a lot of Scottish-Irish people, because of theindoctrination and propaganda, don’t even know thatJames Connolly was Scottish. I’m talking about guyswho are maybe seventy-five years of age who areScottish Catholics. They’re not necessarily Republicanbecause the whole thing’s a kind of mish-mash. Butwhen I speak to them about James Connolly they willknow that type of background – and until that kind ofbackground is known by everyone, there will never bea real understanding of radical politics in this country.These areas are still marginalised or suppressed.”

BROTHER-IN-ARMSOne aspect of Connolly’s life that is often overlooked– an aspect that might shed an ironic sidelight on therecent protest over the wearing of poppies at CelticPark – is his time in the British Army, which he joinedunder-age in 1882, and from which he deserted in1889, subsequently joining the Scottish SocialistFederation in 1890. Many Irish and Irish-Scottish menand women passed through the ranks of the BritishArmy. Thomas Maley, father of the Celtic managerWillie, was a sergeant in the Royal North BritishFusiliers. Willie Maley himself was born in the bar-racks at Newry in 1868, the same year that JamesConnolly was born in Cowgate. But Connolly’s ownmilitary connections have a particularly bitter twist tothem, as Easter 1916 had another poignant Scottishdimension. Connolly’s eldest brother, John, hadjoined the British army ahead of James, in 1877, agedfifteen, possibly serving in India. While James desert-ed to become a socialist and die fighting for Ireland,John stayed on. When James was speaking in Dundeein 1913, he didn’t appreciate John turning up to hearhim in the uniform of Edinburgh City Artillery.Shortly after James’s execution in Dublin, John died

in Glasgow, and was buried in Edinburgh with fullmilitary honours, as an honourably discharged veter-an corporal. The two brothers who served in theBritish Army met very different ends, but their fatestestify to the ways in which Irish-Scottish relations areskewed by empire and the legacy of plantation.

� Willy Maley is Professor of English Literature at theUniversity of Glasgow. This essay is an extract from akeynote address entitled “Edinburgh Go Bragh:Connolly’s Celtic Connections”, delivered at theEighth Annual Irish Studies Conference organised bythe North East Irish Culture Network (NEICN),University of Sunderland, 12 November 2010.

NOTES1. Paul Routledge, John Hume: A Biography(London: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 20.

2. Owen Dudley Edwards, “Connolly and IrishTradition”, The Furrow 30, 7 (1979), p. 411.

3. Edwards, “Connolly and Irish Tradition”, p. 412.4. Edwards, “Connolly and Irish Tradition”, p. 424.5. Alasdair Gray, Why Scots Should Rule Scotland

1997: A Carnaptious History of Britain fromRoman Times until now (Edinburgh: Canongate,1997), p. 35.

6. Jonathan Githens-Mazer, “Ancient Erin, ModernSocialism: Myths, Memories and Symbols of theIrish Nation in the Writings of James Connolly”,Interventions 10, 1 (2008), p. 98.

7. James D. Young, “John Maclean, Socialism andthe Easter Rising”, Saothar 16 (1990), p. 26.

8. Joan Smith, “Labour Tradition in Glasgow andLiverpool”, History Workshop Journal 17, 1(1984), p. 37.

9. Cathal O’Shannon, “Labour Day”, Voice ofLabour, 30 March 1918, cited in Young, “JohnMaclean, Socialism and the Easter Rising”, p. 30.

10. James Hunter, “The Gaelic Connection: TheHighlands, Ireland and Nationalism, 1873–1922”, The Scottish Historical Review 54, 158(1975), p. 198.

11. Gavin Foster, “‘Scotsmen, Stand by Ireland’: JohnMaclean and the Irish Revolution”, HistoryIreland 16, 1 (2008), p. 34.

12. Young, “John Maclean, Socialism and the EasterRising”, p. 31.

13. John MacLean, The Irish Tragedy: Scotland’sDisgrace (1920), accessed 10 November 2010.

14. John Maclean, General Election Address,November 1922, accessed 10 November 2010.

15. John Maclean, Socialism and the Easter Rising,pp. 26–7.

16. Iain D. Patterson, “The Activities of IrishRepublican Physical Force Organisations inScotland, 1919–21”, The Scottish HistoricalReview 72, 193 (1993), p. 47.

17. Margaret Skinnider, Doing My Bit for Ireland(New York: The Century Co., 1917), p. 6.

18. Skinnider, Doing My Bit for Ireland, p. 3.

One aspectof Connolly’slife that isoftenoverlooked… is his timein the BritishArmy.


19. Skinnider, Doing My Bit for Ireland, pp. 64–5.20. Skinnider, Doing My Bit for Ireland, pp. 79–80.21. David Lloyd, “Rethinking National Marxism:

James Connolly and ‘Celtic Communism’”,Interventions 5, 3 (2003), p. 351.

22. Christopher Harvie, “Ballads of a Nation”, HistoryToday 49, 9 (1999), p. 14.

23. Máire Ní Annracháin, “The HighlandConnection: Scottish Reverberations in IrishLiterary Identity”, Irish University Review 21, 1(1991), pp. 45–6

24. Irvine Welsh, Bedroom Secrets of the MasterChefs (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006), p. 3.

25. Welsh, Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, pp.104–5.

26. Irvine Welsh, If You Liked School, You’ll LoveWork (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007), pp. 371–2.

27. Tom Toremans, “An Interview with Alasdair Grayand James Kelman”, Contemporary Literature44, 4 (2003), pp. 576–7.

28. Roxy Harris, “An Interview with James Kelman”,Wasafiri 24, 2 (2009), p. 23.

29. Austen Morgan, James Connolly: A PoliticalBiography (Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress, 1988), p. 13.

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P28

There’smoretothanpolitics

parties�


BOOK REVIEWS

THERISEOF THESNP:FROMAMATEURGROUP TOPRAGMATIC POLITICAL PARTY

This collection is conceived inlarge part as a response to aperceived need to advance on

the only major previous history ofthe Scottish National Party, PeterLynch’s solo-written 2002 book.And although the comparison ismade unfair by rapid advances inthe field during devolution, this isan incomparably more compre-hensive and sophisticated account.Somewhat interdisciplinary, itmixes Institute of Governance-style tabulated sociological break-downs with the kind of criticalanalysis which Hassan rightlyclaims has been missing fromaccounts over-reliant on Partysources. The ambition is bold, and,despite some contradictionbetween chapters and a slightabsence of cultural-theoreticalinput, this ambition is fulfilledabundantly. The editor has longbeen at the forefront of this com-petitive field of commentary, andhere has collected some of themost celebrated and interestingspecialists in the field. Every con-tribution is erudite, some riveting-ly so; all are highly historicallyinformed and politically subtle,and the whole points to a ground-breaking understanding of theimplications of the SNP’s variousphases of presence. This type ofpublication is always time-sensi-tive, and this collection arrives at aparticularly tricky time after the2007 SNP minority victory butbefore the election of the 2010 UK

coalition, and also shows a slightgap between chapters in terms ofhow much account they take of the2008 financial crisis – though thisis editorially well evened out byHassan and the historical sophisti-cation of the book is untainted.Avoiding becoming sucked in to aBritish history in whichThatcherism is central, the collec-tion is more even, eloquent forexample on the party’s parliamen-tary golden era, the 1974–79period – and James Mitchell inparticular debunks the idea thatthis was primarily oil-driven.Rather, there is more of a sense ofLabour’s mixed record on address-ing (and managing) the urbanScottish working class, and thefading fortunes of the UK.

CRISIS OF BRITISH STATEHassan’s own introduction showsa strong sense of how the fortunesand stances of the SNP have beentied to the international standingof the UK, and sets up a historicalframework for the book: “[t]heroad from Wilson’s humiliationwith the November 1967 devalua-tion, two weeks after WinnieEwing’s victory, takes us directly tothe 1976 IMF crisis, the finalburial of Croslandite social democ-racy, the ascendancy ofThatcherism and the creation ofBlair’s New Labour … The emer-gence of Scottish and Welshnationalism were a product of thecrisis of the British state and econ-

omy and the UK’s place in theglobal economy” (p2). Analysingthe relationship between emotion-al and political nationalism,Hassan also persuasively describeshow the Party have used the fail-ures of New Labour as in a previ-ous era they did with Thatcherism.He charts, as do others here, themovement from amateur group topragmatic political party, and a riseto power despite the lack of a massmembership and a difficult rela-tionship with its intellectual sup-porters such as Tom Nairn andNeal Ascherson. Indeed there issome debate here about how intel-lectual SNP supporters are – theytend to be highly educated, but asStephen Maxwell and others pointout, historically the party has hadan aversion to debate. However,flagging up another general themeof the collection, Hassan showshow the effects of Party’s growthare linked to a rise in a culture ofdemocracy in general. And as hehas done elsewhere, he predictsthe constitutional fallout accompa-nying the end of devolutionary“joined-upness”, in which a (New)Labour administration inWestminster deals with (New)Labour administration inHolyrood. From a civic-nationalstance that defines the collection,Hassan calls for a “national proj-ect” which reconstructs civic socie-ty from the ground up.

After this, the collection properbegins with straight political histo-

The ModernSNP: FromProtest toPowerGerry Hassan (ed)(EdinburghUniversity Press,2009)

Michael Gardiner is impressed by a collection of essays on themodern SNP, especially topical as the party approaches May’sScottish Parliament elections after four years in government.


ry, Richard Finlay’s highly-informed chapter accounting forthe period to Winnie Ewing’s 1967Hamilton victory, an accountwhich is inevitably stretched yetultimately well-balanced in thecontext of the collection, given thedemocratic importance of morerecent changes, and the need forspace for other kinds of analysis.James Mitchell then takes up thepolitical history from 1967 to the2000s, and dates the rise ofmodern Scottish politics as suchfrom this period, again setting atone in which Nationalism’s con-stitutional challenge utterly recon-figures the nature of politicalrepresentation. Like others here,Mitchell charts the SNP’s pragma-tism as well as its ideology, as itmoves from amateur organisationto political player, and historicisesthe problem of balancing the stressbetween the “national” angleversus the “left” angle – largely dis-missing the radicalism of the leftist’79 Group as a somewhat ineffec-tual exercise in student politics.

GENDERING OF SNPFiona Mackay and Meryl Kennythen present a complex picture ofthe gendering of the Party, begin-ning with a sociological break-down of membership and support,with women often being promi-nent at the top but under-repre-sented in the body of the Party,then persuasively criticise a candi-date selection process which oftenfails to get women into winnableseats, and the favouring of “soft”measures such as managerialcourses and rebranding over“hard” measures such as zippingcandidate lists. In all, the Partypresents a gender paradox, having“a long and impressive record ofrecruiting and promoting women,including Nordic-levels of femaleMSPs in the first ScottishParliament, and women have heldhigh-profile leadership positions inboth opposition and government.However, the transition to a majorparty has, after the first elections,been accompanied by an overalldecline in women’s representation.Furthermore, the party at grass-

roots level is disproportionatelymale” (p51).

John Curtice, these days a UK-wide renowned political commen-tator, describes the SNP’shistorical struggle with the first-past-the-post electoral system –showing how “devolution not onlysaw the advent of a new parlia-ment but also a new electoralsystem … the introduction of thenew electoral system is one keyreason why the advent of devolu-tion has provided an electoral life-line to the SNP” (p59). Again,structural electoral changes can belinked to Party history – and therise and fall of devolution move-ments within the Labour Party has,ironically, been instrumental. Likeother contributors, Curtice showshow although voting in theScottish Parliament is a way toconcentrate on national issues, theSNP do not have a monopoly on“national” feeling. There is anincreasing institutional splitbetween Scottish and British iden-tity – though Curtice’s casual useof “identity” here shows howsome cultural theory might beneeded to finesse the political situ-ation to fulfil even furtherHassan’s “analysis” promise. ColinMackay also describes the com-plex link between desire for consti-tutional changes and SNP votes,and how devolution in a sense isthe beginning of the SNP – as itmoves towards stressing personali-ties, pragmatism and professional-ism, and comes to control theterms of the devolution debate.Mitchell, Johns and Bennie look atthe demography of SNP members,traditionally older and male butnow less so, and including thoseborn outside of Scotland, andshows how the SNP has also his-torically been highly socially liber-al – the social analogue of the“Scandinavian economic model”.

LEFT-LEANINGOne emerging critical theme of thebook, stressed by many contribu-tors, is how although the SNP havedemonised Thatcherism and NewLabour, they have also embracedmany aspects of their neo-liberalist

doctrine. Jim and MargaretCuthbert provide an excellentdescription of this (though notfully accounting for the fall-out ofthe 2008 crash), while StephenMaxwell, representing a left posi-tion for which he has been knownsince the 1970s, argues that never-theless the actual performance ofthe SNP in government has typi-cally been left-leaning. In particu-lar, Maxwell historicises long-termSNP thinking on social policy;despite neo-liberal temptationsand gender problems, the ethicalcontest with the big Westminsterparties has crystallised a particularsocial policy position, albeit some-times open to accusation of idealistpopulism. For Maxwell, the SNP’sattitude to inequality is “one of themost radical commitments toredistribution made by any UKpolitical party since the foundingof the welfare state … [and i]ngovernment the SNP has strength-ened rather than diluted its com-mitment to social democracy”(p127). Maxwell’s is clearly a“Nordic” position – “early inter-vention to support and engage themost vulnerable from a baseline ofhigh-quality universal services”(p129) rather than an “Irish” low-tax one. Nevertheless, he providesa wonderfully concise statement ofthe SNP’s social-economic bind,which has not been properlyacknowledged by the Party leader-ship: “Over the last decade as theSNP’s social heart has becomemore attached to social democra-cy, its economic head has inclinedto neo-liberalism” (p131). Ofcourse, the 2008 crisis goes a longway towards vindicating theSwedish social democratic modelover the Irish neo-liberal one – andironically the Edinburgh financialsector which has created problemsfor the SNP actually arose from aunionist cultural moment, andBritish imperial investment. PhilipSchlesinger’s contribution is a veryhighly-informed description ofpublic funding and the growth ofthe (actually anti-creative) idea ofan entrepreneurial “creative econ-omy”, another neo-liberal concep-tion, filtered, again, largely

BOOK REVIEWS

Devolution ina sense is thebeginning ofthe SNP – asit movestowardsstressingpersonalities,pragmatismandprofession-alism, andcomes tocontrol theterms of thedevolutiondebate.


through New Labour. He alsostresses that one result of devolu-tion has been an “Englishing” ofBritish TV, though the SNP havepledged to increase the proportionof UK-wide broadcasting – a par-ticularly important issue since“broadcasting devolution” is close-ly tied to control of the newsagenda. The merging of arts insti-tutions into Creative Scotland,Schlesinger shows, is a bureaucrat-ic attempt to kill this debate, and“[t]he neo-liberal assumptionsembedded in the New Labourproject live on in the SNP’s pro-posed cultural lead body, just asthey have been challenged by ourprofound financial and economiccrisis” (p144).

LABOUR INSECURITYHassan’s own chapter describes abattle for the heart of Scottishsocial democracy, drawing on wideand deep historical research, andshowing how after 1968 onwardsLabour attempted to smear theSNP as “Tartan Tories” – whichoften backfired in suggesting adegree of Labour insecurity –while the SNP learned to use fear-ful epithets like “London” and“British”. There has been a danger,as Hassan shows, especially duringWinnie Ewing’s post-1967 era, ofa clumsiness in addressing theScottish working class and byextension the labour movement ingeneral. Labour then blamed theSNP for its aid in the 1979 vote ofno-confidence which it claimed ledto Thatcherism, while the SNPnever trusted Labour to deliverdevolution. Hassan also makes thevital point that the New Leftenabled nationalists, for examplethrough CND and direct action,and arrestingly describes the intel-lectual weakness of a certain strainof anti-separatist thought: “[NewLabour policy] stressed the sup-posed unique success story of themulti-cultural, multi-nationalnature of the Union that is the UK… There was an element of vague-ness in this, selective memory anda Whig-like sense of history as theforward March of Britishprogress” (p158).

David Torrance accounts for thestory of the leftist ’79 Group, ofwhich Stephen Maxwell was alynchpin, and which diagnosed the1979 devolution referendum fail-ure as a class problem, feeling vin-dicated with the UK electoralsuccess of Thatcher two monthslater. Torrance describes thegroup’s vague but radical socialand economic policy and traces ahistory which saw the group’sclaiming victory in 1981 thenseeing the resignation or expulsionof key members in 1982, adeptlyhandled by leader Gordon Wilson.Nevertheless, in many ways theGroup did eventually force a cul-tural leftward shift within theParty, as well as a move towardsgradualism rather than independ-ence-fundamentalism. IsobelLindsay tackles the question ofnegotiation with a WestminsterParliament that is by definitionunwanted, a form of exertion ofpressure, returning to the 1974–79era, and describing tensionsbetween party members in and outof power, as well as betweenWestminster MPs and the rest ofthe party, concluding that, despiteand through the drift towards neo-liberalism and professionalism,during devolution the Party hashelped bring Westminster andHolyrood more in touch. This is aconclusion slightly at odds withAlex Wright here, who outlines thegrowing potential for conflict, mis-understanding and confidentialityissues between Westminster andHolyrood, detailing the changingand sometimes confusing shape of“autonomy” via shifting formalarrangements. Wright historicisesthe SNP’s sense of responsibilitytowards the UK and the empire,and examines current possibilitiesand desires for a “federal” UnitedKingdom, as well as other arrange-ments.

FROM FUNDAMENTALISM TOGRADUALISMEve Hepburn begins to focus theend of the collection on a theme of“negotiated sovereignty” bydescribing how the desire for inde-pendence is actually quite unusual

amongst nationalist movements. InScotland the desire to “detach” hasgot stronger but also more compli-cated, and she confirms the movefrom independence fundamental-ism to gradualism. Hepburn dis-cusses the possibility of a pooledsovereignty which neverthelessretains negotiated control (animpossibility in Anglo-British tra-dition), concretised in a certainunderstanding of the EuropeanUnion, with which the SNP is usu-ally keen to engage. This alsoraises the question of “how much”sovereignty is desired by the SNP;devolution has indeed in somesenses acted as a palliative againstindependence, and strongly “nego-tiated sovereignty”, or “devolutionmax”, has commanded muchpublic support in the context ofglobally weakening states.

NATIONALISMMADERESPECTABLEThis has for years been the area ofemphasis of the collection’s finalcontributor, Michael Keating, whohere provides an extremelydetailed and intelligent compara-tive study of the forms and desiresof nationalisms (though since hiscomparison concentrates onWestern and Central Europe andNorth America, it is slightly lessglobal than he implies). Keatingshows how anti-nationalism isoften misguided since it fails to seehow the national inevitably returnsas “a continual argument over thelocus and meaning of politicalauthority that has no end as long ashistory itself has no end” (p204).Scotland is moreover now some-times considered as having a“state” (for example by thesecond, 2001 edition of DavidMcCrone’s celebrated 1992account). Keating stresses hownations are historically and con-textually constructed and recon-structed, as well as, like Hassan,grasping how the late 1960s, theNew Left and decolonisation madenationalism respectable, and con-stituted a real ideological shift:“[f]rom the 1960s, [fundamental-ism and ethnocentrism] began tochange under the ‘small is beauti-

The desireforindependenceis actuallyquiteunusualamongstnationalistmovements.


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NEO-LIBERALSCOTLAND

ful’ philosophy, disillusion withcentralisation, and all the libertari-an leftism of the 1968 generation.Peripheral nationalism and region-alism moved to the left, incorpo-rating new social movements,notably in environmentalism andpacifism” (p212). Nationalism alsobecame bound up with “humanrights” issues, leading to an anti-state undertone and the “negotiat-ed sovereignty” which nowprevails. Like Hepburn, Keatingdescribes the EU in terms of bothextending and limiting autonomy,though clearly sees the pro-EUnegotiated model as the legitimatecivic form of nationalism. And yet,he argues, the “post-sovereignty”model has yet to be publiclyaccepted as political realism – seenin a relative lack of public debateon this in Scotland. He ends opti-mistically by suggesting that thecivic tends to win out – though theSNP has yet to take advantage ofthis new model, neglecting “nationbuilding and fail[ing] to develop anarrative around identity, collec-tive action, economic developmentand social solidarity” (p217). Butthe tone on which the collectionends is very like the one on whichit opens – critical yet optimistic,subtly connecting SNP history andchanges in democratic form, andworking highly intelligentlytowards new, ground-up civic def-initions.

This collection’s importance canhardly be overstated for these rea-sons, and for its consistent erudi-tion and historical awareness. As astudy of civic society’s relationshipto the national, as well as anaccount of a political history, itshould find a large readership bothinside and outside of Scotland.

� Michael Gardiner is AssociateProfessor in the Department ofEnglish and Comparative LiteraryStudies at the University ofWarwick. As well as creative fictionand comparative criticism, he haspublished widely on culture anddevolution, including The CulturalRoots of British Devolution (EUP,2004) and Scottish Critical TheorySince 1960 (2006).

This book combines an impres-sive account of the forces thathave reshaped Scotland’s

economy and society over the pastthirty years, with a hopelesslynarrow, class-based approach tothe problems of strategy andpolicy facing the “vanquished left”– in Scotland, the UK and, indeed,the developed world as a whole.Its central claim, amply supportedby argument and evidence, is thatfar from halting south of theTweed, the neo-liberal policy revo-lution that began in the mid-1970shas been thoroughly assimilated byScotland’s corporate and politicalelite and is now entrenched in itssystem of government.

The first part of the book detailsthe resulting disparities of powerand reward between an interna-tionally networked ruling class anda post-industrial proletariatemployed predominantly in publicand private services. The secondpart explores the impact of thenew regime on selected spheres ofpublic policy: environmental plan-ning, urban regeneration, inwardlabour migration, criminal justiceand the efforts of the “happinessindustry” to improve personalwell-being by prescribing individu-alised remedies for the various psy-chological and social disorderswhich are, at root, the conse-quences of living and workingunder neo-liberal capitalism.

WHAT WAS NEO-LIBERALISM?In a long opening chapter, NeilDavidson seeks to explain whatneo-liberalism was. The use of thepast tense is not intended to sug-gest that the neo-liberal era is over:simply that the crisis triggered bythe financial crash of 2008 marksthe end of one phase and thebeginning of another. By and large,this is a good overview, marredonly by some dodgy economics. Intracing the intellectual antecedentsof neo-liberal ideology, Davidsonconflates the neo-classical schoolof thought, which has dominatedAnglo-American economics sincethe late nineteenth century, withthe Austrian school represented bythinkers such as JosephSchumpeter and Friedrich Hayek.Neo-classical economists depictthe self-regulating market as amachine-like equilibrium system,whereas the Austrians extol therestless dynamism and adaptiveflexibility of capitalism, eschew theconcept of equilibrium and stressthe powerful boost that competi-tive markets give to technologicalinnovation and “creative destruc-tion”.1 The two traditions thusmake uneasy bedfellows, thoughboth are precursors of neo-liberal-ism. A political project, as distinctfrom a scientific theory, need notbe free from contradiction: wit-ness the unresolved (though possi-bly creative) tension between

Whether we like it or not, the neo-liberalism thatbegan in the mid-1970s is now firmly entrenchedin Scotland. David Purdy dissects a book thatably analyses the phenomenon but falls short inits approach to policy and strategy for the left.


economic liberalism and socialconservatism at the heart of MrsThatcher’s project.

Davidson likewise fails to distin-guish the economics of Keynesfrom the bowdlerised version of“Keynesian” economics that wastaught to students and employedby policy makers during the“golden age” of capitalism afterthe Second World War.2 And whenwe are trying to understand eitherthe profitability crisis of the 1970sor the quite different demand-defi-ciency crisis in which we are nowmired, Marx is not much help. Hisattempt, in Capital, to show thatrelative prices and the rate ofprofit are determined by valuesand surplus value (conceived asquantities of embodied labourtime) is logically flawed.3 There is,therefore, no warrant for Marx’sbelief that labour-displacing capi-tal accumulation driven by com-petitive pressure to raise labourproductivity will eventually under-mine capitalism by driving downthe average rate of profit. Nor isthere any need to explain the longpost-war boom by invoking“unproductive” state spending onarmaments as a (temporary) coun-teracting force, though the widerrole of the Keynesian-social demo-cratic state in seeking to regulatemarkets, stabilise capitalism andprotect society is, of course, inte-gral to any satisfactory explana-tion.

More generally, it is impossibleto understand successive phases ofcapitalist development by meansof an abstract model of capitalistcommodity production in whichthe state is merely a backgroundpresence, as distinct from an activeagency responding to problems asthey arise and, at moments ofcrisis, wrestling with the tensionsbetween restoring business confi-dence and maintaining popularlegitimacy. At his best, when hedoes not feel the need to affirm theold religion, Davidson recognisesthis and treats neo-liberal capital-ism, like every other variety of thebeast, as an integrated complex inwhich economy, polity and cultureare inextricably intertwined.

WHO RULES SCOTLAND?Subsequent chapters focus on thespecific case of neo-liberalScotland. David Miller describesthe corporate capture of Scottishgovernance by a ruling class net-work, whose activities and inter-ests transcend national borders. Tospeak of a ruling class, as distinctfrom one that is effortlessly privi-leged or dominant, is to implysome degree of concerted organi-sation, backed up by the self-serv-ing belief that what is good for theclass is good for society.Accordingly, Miller marshals evi-dence on the close working rela-tionships between Scottishbusiness executives, political lead-ers, government officials and apenumbra of intellectuals and pro-fessionals variously located inthink tanks, research institutes, themedia, law firms and consultan-cies. What binds this class togeth-er, he argues, is a commonallegiance to neo-liberal ideas anda common involvement on bothsides of an increasingly blurredboundary between the public andprivate sectors.

Miller builds up a strong case,but to clinch it he needs to gobeyond the institutions and proce-dures of the market state and focuson specific policy issues and out-comes. Only then can we gaugethe influence, if any, of counter-vailing forces, weigh the impor-tance of collective organisationagainst that of conventionalwisdom, and find out what hap-pens in cases when there is dis-agreement within the ruling blocabout what policy or course ofaction is best. The historic declineof organised labour and the with-ering away of the left suggest littleneed to qualify Miller’s generalthesis on the first count. But on therole of ideas, a case study reportedin a later chapter by EurigScandrett shows how a potentiallyradical version of the concept ofenvironmental justice was initiallyembraced by the Labour-Lib Demcoalition government under JackMcConnell, only to be later ren-dered harmless to business inter-ests, thanks not to overt business

pressure, but to the power of anideology that regards any hin-drance to capitalist expansion andthe commodification of the envi-ronment as unthinkable.Elsewhere in the book, the possi-bility of conflict within the rulingclass is mentioned – for instance,about whether the UK should jointhe euro-zone – but is not takenup.

CLASS LOCATION AND CLASSFORMATIONTwo chapters survey class divisionand conflict in contemporaryScotland. Alex Law and GerryMooney argue that de-industriali-sation, the growth of the financialsector and the reconfiguration ofthe public sector have given rise toa simplified and polarised classhierarchy. At the top stand thesuper-rich corporate elite, the coreof the larger ruling bloc. Belowthem are the post-industrial work-ing class, comprising two unequalgroups: the depleted workforceemployed in manufacturing, con-struction, mining and quarrying,who between them accounted for22 per cent of total employment in2001, compared with 35 per centin 1981; and an expanded whitecollar proletariat employed inpublic and private services, mostlyin relatively large establishments.“Neither the small hive of digitalcreativity nor the casualised familybusiness is typical”, while largecorporate supermarkets havelargely replaced independentshopkeepers and traders. (Theclass location of the long-termunemployed, the irregularlyemployed and those who make aliving in the underground econo-my is not discussed.)

Patricia McCafferty and GerryMooney take this argumentfurther, examining the ways inwhich neo-liberal policies ofprivatisation, outsourcing,PFI/PPP arrangements, theintroduction of quasi-markets andother organisational changespursued in the name of value formoney, cost efficiency and“customer” service, have affectedboth the pay and conditions of

NeoLiberalScotland: Classand Society in aStatelessNationNeil Davidson,PatriciaMcCafferty andDavid Miller (eds)(CambridgeScholarsPublishing, 2010)


public sector workers and theethos of public service.

The economic and social trendsinvoked in these chapters are notin dispute. But as Law andMooney remind us, citingRaymond Williams, in the contextof social theory the word “class” isused in two distinct senses: as adescriptive economic category,commonly – if questionably –framed in accordance with occu-pational criteria and including allwho meet the relevant criteria,regardless of which class theythink they belong to; and todenote a socio-economic forma-tion in which class consciousnessand organisation have developed.But the relationship between classlocation on the one hand, and cul-ture and politics on the other isnotoriously problematic. This ispartly because class is intersectedby gender, race, nationality, reli-gion and other lines of social divi-sion; and partly because socialidentities and interests are notinscribed in the social structure,like parts in a play-script, but arecontinually formed and reformedas people strive to make sense oftheir social experience, itself acommunicative, social activity.

LIFE IN NEO-LIBERAL SCOTLANDThe experience of life in neo-liber-al Scotland is examined in thesecond part of the book. Two con-tributions stand out: KirsteenPaton’s case-study of gentrificationin Partick and Colin Clark’saccount of how migrants fromCentral and Eastern Europe livingand working in Glasgow react toand cope with their new (tempo-rary or permanent) home. Patonsees gentrification as a state-ledpolicy aimed at attracting themiddle class to working classneighbourhoods in the hope thatestablished residents will come toemulate their devotion to owning,earning and shopping. Clark’schapter sounds a more hopefulnote than the others, suggestingthat what he calls “inter-culturaldialogue”, rooted in the informaltransactions of everyday life, canhelp migrants to resist the danger

of social atomisation and to retaintheir cultural identities as Poles,Roma etc., while still acquiringsome sense of belonging toScottish society.

Any account of how peopleexperience profound social changeis bound to be selective.Nevertheless, it is disappointingthat the book focuses entirely onthe Central Belt and has nothing atall to say about gender relations.Moreover, if you always view theworld through the lens of a one-dimensional, class-based model ofsociety, your vision is liable to bedistorted. A small, but tellingexample occurs on page 172 in adiscussion of public sector“reform”, where we find the fol-lowing statement: “With the sectorrepresenting around 25–30 percent of the working population, itis difficult to conclude, as NewLabour do, that there is a cleardivision between workers and cus-tomers [sic] since they and theirfamilies are also customers.”

Three comments are pertinent.First, if you must refer to patients,students, benefit claimants etc. as“customers”, then at least put theword in quotation marks. Second,when the interests of public serviceproducers and users come intoconflict, it is best to focus on thespecific services and relationshipsconcerned: between doctors andpatients, teachers and students etc.Third, such conflicts are not inher-ent features of public provisionand can be avoided or resolvedwithout mimicking the market andturning public services into(quasi-) commodities. But it isabsurd to dismiss or discount thepossibility of conflict on thegrounds that producers and usersare overlapping groups. Car driv-ers and their passengers are (some-times) also pedestrians or cyclists,but this hardly guarantees harmo-nious and equitable patterns ofroad use. Nor does the fact that weall need clean air insure us againstair pollution. In cases like these,what we have is not conflictsbetween the similar interests of dif-ferent groups of people, on theclass model, but conflicts between

variously constituted aspects of thesame body of people. The appro-priate response to is to developsystems of democratic planninginvolving representatives of all therelevant stakeholders, who aretasked with managing public serv-ices, solving problems and resolv-ing conflicts.

POLITICS IN POST-DEVOLUTIONSCOTLANDThe final chapter is a long andclosely reasoned, but original andthoughtful analysis of Scottish pol-itics since devolution by NeilDavidson, whose two contribu-tions fill 40 per cent of the book.Having noted that capitalism andnationhood developed in tandem,he poses two questions: What isthe attitude of the representativesof neo-liberal capitalism to thebreak-up of Britain throughScottish independence? And hasneo-liberalism politicised Scottishnational consciousness sufficientlyto create a mass movement thatmight lead to this outcome?Davidson argues that as long asa post-independence, SNP-ledregime was suitably pliant, the(largely externally owned) Scottishcorporate economy would havenothing to fear, while for Britishand international capital in generalthe question is a tactical one. Inany case, there is no need to decidesince, according to polling evi-dence, support for independencehas not gained momentum since1999, is not consistently expressedby those who sometimes flirt withit, and is generally accorded a lowpriority relative to other issues.

Thus, Davidson concludes, it isnot true that stateless nations nec-essarily seek statehood: there haveto be compelling reasons for state-hood to become a goal. Such rea-sons have not existed for themajority of Scots and still do not.The SNP’s attitude to independ-ence resembles that of the SecondInternational to socialism: an ulti-mate aspiration rhetoricallyinvoked in platform speeches, butotherwise subordinated to achiev-able reforms. The issue, therefore,is the future of devolution, the

The SNP’sattitude toindependenceresemblesthat of theSecondInternationalto socialism:an ultimateaspirationrhetoricallyinvoked inplatformspeeches,butotherwisesubordinatedto achievablereforms.

BOOK REVIEWS


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SNP’s role within it and the scopefor reforms that defy neo-liberalorthodoxy.

Hitherto, thanks to the exigen-cies of inter-party competitionunder a hybrid voting system thateffectively prevents any party fromwinning an overall parliamentarymajority, Scotland has escaped themore extreme neo-liberal policiesintroduced south of the bordersuch as academy schools and foun-dation hospitals, while Scottishgovernments have enacted meas-ures that improve on conditions inEngland – notably, land reformand the right to roam, free person-al care for the elderly, the abolitionof student tuition fees and (fromnext April) free medical prescrip-tions for all. But Scotland has notescaped the decline in electoralparticipation and the popular dis-affection with mainstream politicsfound in all those countries whereneo-liberalism has put down thedeepest roots. This suggests thatdevolution has failed as a strategyof legitimation, even if it has hadmore success as a strategy of dele-gation.

From now on, moreover, fiscalausterity will reduce the headroomavailable to Scottish governments,

of whatever hue, for temperingneo-liberal economic policies withsocial democratic social policies.(The possibility of building a broadcoalition of resistance to fiscal con-servatism based on an alternative,UK-wide programme for promot-ing economic recovery and reduc-ing the budget deficit is notconsidered, though since any suchcoalition would bear a familyresemblance to the popular frontsof the 1930s, which Davidsondenounces, presumably he wouldbe against it.)

At this point, Davidson givesvent to his own heartfelt aspira-tions, insisting that what isrequired to overcome neo-liberal-ism is a party which is fundamen-tally opposed to it, “regardless ofwhether Scotland becomes an inde-pendent state or not.” He warns,however, that: “… before any pro-grammes or policies can even beginto be discussed … the social basisof any reconfiguration of the leftneeds to be established or rather re-established.” In other words, firstrebuild the trade union movement,and then found a new workers’party, as if you could solve theproblems of the twenty-first centu-ry by re-running the history of the

twentieth. Still, we all have ourdreams and whistling in the dark isone way to keep one’s spirits up.

� David Purdy is a regular contrib-utor to Perspectives and a memberof Democratic Left Scotland’snational council.

NOTES1. It is also worth noting that forHayek what ultimately justifiescapitalism is not that it max-imises aggregate happiness,but that it enlarges individualliberty. Neo-classical econom-ics, by contrast, has alwaysbeen wedded to utilitarianethics and is thus more discon-certed by recent evidence ema-nating from the “happinessindustry”, which raises seriousdoubts about the benefits ofcontinuing economic growth insocieties that have alreadypassed the threshold of afflu-ence.

2. This distinction is elaborated inDavid Purdy (2010) “Keywords:Keynesian”, Perspectives 26.

3. For a demonstration, see IanSteedman (1977) Marx AfterSraffa (London: New LeftBooks), pp 13–49.

Scotland hasescaped themoreextremeneo-liberalpoliciesintroducedsouth of theborder.


DIARY

Iwas due to submit this articlejust as I returned from hearingSandra Steingraber address

Members of the EuropeanParliament in Brussels. I expectedthat listening to this remarkablewoman would provide inspirationbut, sadly, the Scottish weatherruined my plans. Instead, I spent aday in Edinburgh Airportabsorbing an updated version ofher book, Living downstream, apersonal investigation of cancerand the environment.

Steingraber, a scientist andinternationally acclaimed expertin environmental links to cancerand human health, also happensto be a cancer survivor. In manyways she has taken up the mantlefrom Rachel Carson. UnlikeCarson, herself a cancer victim,Steingraber speaks from personalexperiences to imbue her sciencewith humanity. Carson feared thatby speaking openly about hercancer, her detractors woulddiscredit her science.

Carson’s legacy was to raiseawareness of the harmful andlong-term effects of pesticides onthe environment, ultimatelybringing about a ban on DDT. Herbook, Silent Spring, was viciouslyattacked by the chemicals industryand those who accused her ofbeing alarmist and unscientific.

Carson also documented whatshe believed to have been the startof a cancer epidemic. Steingrabertakes this further. Both note ourincreased exposure to syntheticchemicals as being a contributor.The industrial revolution and itsconsequences in areas such asenergy, transport, agriculture, foodand health led to the productionand introduction of millions ofman-made chemicals into theenvironment: 100,000 chemicals

are now registered for use in theEU. WHO’s International Agencyfor Research on Cancer have listedseveral hundred known, probableand possible carcinogens and a fewhundred known or suspectedendocrine disrupting substances(EDCs).They permeate everyaspect of our lives – the air webreathe, our food and water, insideour homes and workplaces – downto our personal care products.

Synthetic chemicals have evenbeen found in umbilical cords,placenta, blood, urine and breastmilk.1

Those of most concern arepersistent (they don’t break downin the environment); bio-accumulative (they build up in ourbodies), endocrine disruptors –hormone disrupting chemicals, forexample found in plastics and ptbsand vpvtvbs, (bio-accumulativeand very persistent). Diseaseswhich may be linked to chemicaland radiation exposure includecancers, mental and physical birthdefects and reproductiveproblems. Recent studies highlightthat the timing of exposure is alsovital; for example, the developinghuman foetus is uniquely at risk ofharm from environmentaltoxicants, leading to babies beingborn toxic with heightenedpotential to develop seriousdiseases earlier in life.

Whilst improved treatment hasreduced mortality, the increase inthe prevalence of cancer and otherillnesses has brought hugeeconomic, social andpsychological costs. Lifestylechoices are cited as playing a part,and whilst that may be true foradults, it is hard to blamechildren’s and animals’ cancers onthis – they don’t smoke or drink,nor work in stressful

environments – and they aregenerally more active. Whatchildren receive however areproportionally larger doses ofthose toxins, because pound forpound, they breathe, eat anddrink more than adults do.

I work in the area of children’srights and this is clearly achildren’s rights issue. TheChildren’s Environmental HealthNetwork underlines the dangers ofthe presence of chemicalcompounds in children’s bodies.Amongst their many studies, onestands out. This focused on thehigh levels of Bisphenal A inpremature infants in an intensivecare unit. BPA is found in babybottles and food containers andmany everyday products where itcan leach into food, drink anddust. It is also used in medicaltubing in hospitals. It has manyhormonal effects and is associatedwith an increased risk to malereproduction, obesity and breastcancer as well as damage todeveloping brain tissue.2 TheWHO notes that preventativeinterventions are needed to protectchildren from adverse exposures,i.e. removing cancer-causingsubstances so that the disease doesnot occur in the first place.

In April 2010, the ground-breaking US President’s CancerReport claimed that theenvironmental causes of cancerare hugely underestimated andneglected.3 It emphasised the needfor precautionary action in theface of potential threats to publichealth and made an economic casefor the development ofalternatives, and a human rightscase for focusing not just onreducing deaths but on improvingthe quality of life, particularly forthose disproportionately affectedby environmental contamination.

Readers may be aware of aPetition 1089 on behalf of theWomen’s EnvironmentalMovement (WEN), calling on theScottish Parliament to investigateexposures to hazardous toxins inthe environment and in theworkplace. The petition ran fortwo years, closing in April 2010.

Maire McCormackdons The Hat andreflects on a majorhuman rights issue.

We shouldnot toleratethis tragichuman andeconomictoll, mademoreintolerablebecause it islargelypreventable.


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In the run up to next year’selections, WEN will be remindingpoliticians of their commitment tothe NHS and the treatment of illhealth. We will argue for moreattention to be given topreventing illnesses, not onlythose associated with personal lifechoices but from exposures overwhich we have little or no control.We will urge the Government tofollow through the EU’sdeclaration to ban BPA and tostart a Public Information andRight to Know Campaign in asimilar vein to that used foralcohol and tobacco.

Treatments and survival timeswill continue to improve andnumbers of people living withcancer will continue to rise, butwe should not tolerate this tragichuman and economic toll, mademore intolerable because it islargely preventable. The reader-ship of Perspectives includes thoseengaged in environmental justice,poverty, and human rights. Thismajor human rights issue needs usall to collaborate to create ahealthier society for our children.

� Maire McCormack is a memberof Democratic Left Scotland.

NOTES1. One US study found theumbilical cord blood of 10newborns to contain 287industrial chemicals andpollutants, includingbrominated flame retardantsand pesticides – a chemicalinheritance from time spent inthe womb.

2. In November the EuropeanCommission announced that itwould ban BPA in baby bottlesfrom 2011.

3. The panel was set up in the70s to record and report on allmatters concerning cancer inthe US. It takes evidence froma range of people andorganisations. For the first timethis year, the report dealt withenvironmental andoccupational factors affectingcancer and other serioushealth problems.

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