'IT WISNAE ME, AH'M SCOTTISH'
It is passed time Scots took responsibility and stopped seeking to blame our go-to 'other'. It isn't London's fault, nor England...but ours.
Researching and writing these articles takes time, so please consider hitting the subscribe button below. Any support is deeply appreciated
There is something curious about us Scots. We insist to ourselves that we are socially democratic by political habit and caring about the common good by instinct. The land of the Scottish enlightenment, where Hume, Morgan and Burns all walked alongside the inventers of the modern industrial world, Bell, Watt, Baird & Fleming.
Yet, as the nation stares at itself in the mirror, just how distorted is our ability to comprehend our reflection? What exactly is this sort of pride? And how does it manifest itself?
Some might say I am being too cynical, but then I never have been one for nationalism. The romanticism of the happenstance of birth appals me. Scotland is a nation that obsesses over perceived slights by our southern neighbour, ruminating over old grievances - carefully nurtured in the culture. A politics tirelessly in the grasp of a paranoid fear that we’re somehow not receiving our fair share.
It is not for nothing the trifecta of literary Scottish nationalism is constituted by Hugh MacDiarmid, Tom Nairn and James Kelman. These ‘giants’ of our Scottish literary heritage stoked Anglophobic bigotry. The blending of the fears, paranoia, and pathetic tatterdemalion pride all alongside the pretence that we bear no historic responsibilities.
Hugh MacDiarmid himself admitted before his death that he became more anti-English over time as he served in the army medical corps in the first world war. He explained the Irish, Welsh and himself
“didn’t get on with the English at all… and I became more and more anti-English as time went on’”1
The Irish I can understand, the history of British colonialism in the emerald island makes for a brutal historical record. But that is the key point. It is what the British did, not simply the English. The historical record of Scotland in Ireland is far from a clean narrative. But that is the hard truth that men like Hugh MacDiarmid, Tom Nairn and James Kelman dedicate themselves to avoiding. To MacDiarmid’s mind, Scotland should be cast in the same light as the Irish and Welsh - a story of a somehow oppressed Celtic fringe.
His need to parry the blame for all British historical misdeeds through history onto England even drove MacDiarmid to dip into the rhetoric of racial hatred
“the leprous swine in London town/ And their Anglo-Scots accomplices/ Are, as they have always been/ Scotland’s only enemies”2
Leprous swine? The English and their ‘Anglo-Scots’ collaborators? Here we have the language of a racial ‘other’, alongside Scottish quislings. Sounds distinctly fascistic, but then, MacDiarmid was an early admirer of Mussolini.
As John Lloyd explains in his book ‘Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot: the Great Mistake of Scottish Nationalism’, MacDiarmid had something of a love for the authoritarian instinct
“He was attracted to Mussolini, and more distantly to Hitler, in the 1930s, and saw democracy as a barrier to ‘the real will that bides its time’ — that is, of an enlightened dictator.”3
This is hardly the stuff a healthy Scottish literary culture would seek to base itself off. Yet, to too many modern Scottish nationalists he still very much is. This sort of absurd and viciously distorted framing is seen in nationalist rhetoric all too often today.
During the pandemic a small fringe of hardcore nationalists - truly MacDiarmids Neanderthal heirs - took to the border to demand the English “get out of Scotland”; as if the pandemic disease was spread by those “leprous swine” from “London town”.
But even the educated seemingly got in on the act, albeit carefully cloaked in that sort of polite bigotry that the middle class often get away with. Professor Devi Sridhar - an aide to the First Minister - claimed “a stream of incoming infections”4 were flowing in from south of the border. Never mind the highly debatable use of statistics at the time to justify that claim, this came from the same Professor and First Ministerial aide who had to delete tweets branding all Scottish Conservatives “anti-Scottish”. Naturally there was never any apology, just an acknowledgement of inaccuracy.
Looking beyond the dismal scenes of Anglophobia witnessed during the pandemic, current SNP political rhetoric vis-a-vis the looming fiscal nightmare also carries this on. It all increasingly reminds one of Robert Burns ‘Tam O’Shanter’, where his wife ‘nurses her wrath to keep it warm’.
If we examine the First Minister’s claims concerning Scotland’s collapsing fiscal picture we can see the same hollow emptiness. The instinctive urge to blame England is present. Our eternal go-to phantasmal ‘other’- upon whom we lay all our failures is trotted out in the rhetoric.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies have revealed that Scotland is facing a funding gap of £3.5bn (equivalent of eight per cent of the entire budget)5. Put simply, the SNP-Green government is spending too much and living excessively outwit its means.
Naturally, the SNP-Green government in Holyrood have attempted to blame Westminster (London again) for this depressing state of affairs. Nicola Sturgeon claimed that London had cut her devolved budget by more than five per cent this year in real terms. The only problem with that is…it is simply untrue6.
If we have a gander at the Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC) for example, we discover that the exact opposite is true. Far from a real terms cut to the devolved budget, it is actually being increased - albeit modestly - in real terms. But empirical facts are not buttering any nationalist parsnips, much better to reach for the ‘other’. So much easier to nurture the old Scots paranoia that ‘the English’ are somehow short-changing us.
When Ms Sturgeon insisted that the challenges in the spending review underlined the “very heavy price” paid by Scotland as a result of Westminster decision-making, she is misleading you. The reason Scotland has such a fiscal crisis looming is as a direct result of SNP decisions made in Holyrood.
Again, the Scottish Fiscal Commission explains everything quite clearly. Scotland faces an income tax revenue shortfall projection of £417m by 2026-277.
It is surely reasonable to point out at this point that all taxes have an optimal point; the highest it go where it generates the most revenue with minimal evasion and avoidance. It was the SNP who have chosen to turn Scotland into the highest taxed part of the UK, not Westminster. And it is the SNP who are presiding over 17 years of stagnant productivity and the worst innovation since 2008 alongside ageing Scottish demographics and weak youth labour market participation. The notion that Holyrood bares little or no responsibility for any of this is laughable, but it is also sinister. As that age-old Scots excuse of ‘it wisnae me, ah’m Scottish’ derives from that same Anglophobic place in the national soul.
What is also entirely the responsibility of us Scots and not the English or Westminster has been the chronic addiction to overspending. The SFC makes it abundantly clear that the SNP government has made a choice to spend more on social security than is covered by UK funding. Nothing wrong with deciding to do so, but you must take full responsibility for it and know how you’re paying for it. No blaming the English or London or ‘Westminster cuts’ (which aren’t real).
As the SFC explains in their May 2022 forecasts
See that bit which reads “Spending above this funding must be met from its (ScotGovs) wider budget”8? It sort of gives the game away, the social security spending largesse was a choice made in Holyrood not Westminster. And knowing how to pay for it was equally a responsibility for Holyrood - not Westminster. It’s a pity the SNP have had no clue how to do so, and are thus reduced to outright lies about the devolved budget being cut by five per cent in real terms.
It is long since time Scotland grew up and put away childish things. As the old Scots saying goes, ‘It wisna fur naethin that the cat lickit the steen’. Well, indeed, there really is a reason for everything. But that reason is not the English, it is our collective inability as a country to grow up and cease with the puerility of ducking responsibility for our own national choices now and in the past. Nationalism is not the answer to Scotland’s myriad challenges, it never was or is.
Lloyd, John (2020, April 3), ‘Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot: The Great Mistake of Scottish Independence’, Polity Publishers, Chapter 5, ‘To Be Yersel’, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CyvfDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT158&lpg=PT158&dq=hugh+macdiarmid+didn%E2%80%99t+get+on+with+the+English+at+all%E2%80%A6+and+I+became+more+and+more+anti-English+as+time+went+on&source=bl&ots=DC8JdA0DZK&sig=ACfU3U1ulJvnjTTsWKrbArl9sykOlTXxEA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjOl9iziY_4AhX2QEEAHd29BYcQ6AF6BAgWEAM#v=onepage&q&f=false
Lloyd, John (2020, February 8), ‘The Scottish literary giants who stoked the fires of Anglophobia’, The Spectator, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-scottish-literary-giants-who-stoked-the-fires-of-anglophobia
ibid
Gibbons, Brett (2020, August 17), ‘Sturgeon advisor blames Scotland Covid-19 surge on visitors from England and Wales’, Wales Online, https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/sturgeon-advisor-blames-scotland-covid-18780247
Gordon, Tom (2022, May 27), ‘Scottish Government facing 'very tough decisions' over £3.5bn funding gap, IFS warns’, The Herald, https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20171107.scottish-government-facing-very-tough-decisions-3-5bn-funding-gap-ifs-warns/'
Sanderson, Daniel (2022, June 1), ‘‘Obsessed’ Nicola Sturgeon says £20m for new referendum ‘a good investment’', The Telegraph, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/06/01/obsessed-nicola-sturgeon-says-20m-new-referendum-good-investment/
Scottish Fiscal Commission, (2021, December 9), ‘Scotland’s Economic and Fiscal Forecasts – Summary’, https://www.fiscalcommission.scot/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Scotland_s-Economic-and-Fiscal-Forecasts-December-2021-Summary.pdf
Scottish Fiscal Commission (2022 May), ‘Scotland’s Economic and Fiscal Forecasts - Summary’, https://www.fiscalcommission.scot/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Scotlands-Economic-and-Fiscal-Forecasts-Summary-May-2022.pdf
If only the people that believe her lies would read this. There must be a way to show these people she’s to blame and not Westminster. I’m heartily sick listening to her blaming the Tories. Great article as always Dean.