More pledges to Scotland and Wales: Wider democracy in New Britain
Labour talks of the House of Lords having powers restricted.
Only talk.
***
1970: ‘Let’s make Britain Great’
By ‘spreading prosperity and opportunities more evenly’.
Repeats House of Lords must be reformed.
Industries and jobs ‘drain out of Scotland’.
Growing discontent in Scotland and Wales.
Proposal for devolution for Wales, Scotland and English regions.
Up to a point. ‘Preserve the union’.
Scottish Labour reject a Scottish legislative assembly.
***
1974: February. ‘Labour’s Way out of the Crisis’
What crisis?
North Sea oil revenues.
Labour welcomes opportunity for extra tax from oil company profits.
Promises assemblies in Scotland and Wales.
***
1974: October. ‘Britain will win with Labour’
Oil in Scottish waters welcomed as ‘transformatory’ for the economic future of the UK.
Labour pledges to ‘remove the House of Lords’ in the ‘first session of a new parliament’.
Talks of assemblies in Scotland, Wales and English regions.
***
1979: ‘The Better Way’
Labour will increase England’s regional powers.
Act of 1978 for referendum for a Scottish Assembly to go ahead
But with stipulation to succeed at least 40% Scottish electorate vote yes (not 40% who vote).
Labour stresses how North Sea oil offers a ‘golden prospect for wealth’ for the UK.
Labour pledges to ‘review the Honours system’.
And ‘restrict the power of the House of Lords’.
***
1983: ‘Britain back to work. Rebuild shattered industries’
Labour will ‘introduce an early Bill to abolish the House of Lords’.
Another plan for Scotland.
North Sea oil riches Labour complains are being ‘poured down the drain’.
Labour complains that ‘unprecedented advantage of North Sea oil and gas’ are squandered.
***
1987: ‘Britain will win with Labour’
Pledges to ‘create a British Industrial Investment Bank’
With ‘strong base in Scotland, Wales and English regions’.
Talks of Scottish Assembly for Edinburgh.
Vast oil revenues still being wasted.
***
1992: ‘Time to get Britain working again’
Perpetual problem of unemployment in the UK.
Repeal Thatcher’s poll tax in Scotland.
***
1997: ‘New Labour because Britain deserves better’
Pledges to ‘end the hereditary principle in the House of Lords’
Pledges to ‘create a modern House of Lords’.
With party appointees as life peers. Not at all cronyism.
Devolution not federation.
Westminster parliament must be ‘sovereign’ power in UK.
The ‘Union strengthened’. ‘Separatism’ to be ‘banished’.
***
2001: ‘Ambitions for Britain’
Five pledges: economic, schools, health, crime, families. (Four out of Five England only)
Separate Scottish manifesto: increase role of PFI (that left Scotland shelling out £bns to private companies)
Pledges to ‘half child poverty by 2010’.
No word of abolishing the House of Lords.
***
2005 ‘Britain Forward Not Back’
‘Decentralise power’.
‘Strengthen’ Welsh Assembly.
Complete ‘reform of the House of Lords’.
***
2010: ‘A Future Fair for All’
Pledges high speed rail ‘London to Scotland’.
‘Union will be protected’ at all cost.
‘Fairer partnerships’.
‘New Second Chamber to replace House of Lords.’
‘Fully elected’. ‘Senate of the Nations and Regions’.
***
2015: ‘Britain Can Be Better’
Labour/Tory/Libdems agree Smith Commission proposals and Gordon Brown Vow for greater powers to Scotland.
Labour vows to implement the Vow in full.
Greater powers for Scotland.
‘Safeguard the future’ of offshore oil and gas.
Scotland will ‘continue benefitting’ from the UK.
Wales will ‘have devolved powers similar to Scotland’.
‘Unless specifically reserved’.
Commitment to ‘replace the House of Lords with elected Senate’ – see 2010.
***
2017: ‘For the Many not the Few’
Labour opposes a second Scottish independence referendum.
Labour will ‘establish a Scottish Investment Bank’.
Pledges to ‘reduce size of the House of Lords’. To ‘abolish’ it.
Repeats pledge to run ‘HS2 as far as Scotland’.
‘Protect North Sea assets’ .
***
2019: ‘Real Change’
Labour will give referendum on Brexit.
HS2 will run to Scotland.
Increase pay to workers in Scotland.
Jobs for Wales.
Tax oil companies.
Pledge to ‘abolish House of Lords in favour of Senate’ – see 2010/2015/2017.
***
2022:
Labour ‘backs Brexit’.
Vow Mark II to Scotland
Labour promises ‘biggest ever transfer of power from Westminster’.
House of Lords to be ‘abolished’ – see 1910.
Labour ‘will consult’ on abolition of House of Lords.
Denies majority independence government in Scotland is a mandate for an independence referendum.
Labour still sends members to the House of Lords. Currently there are about 200 Labour members there. Labour continues to claim to speak for Scotland although it has not been in power there for twelve years, is the third party in the Scottish parliament and repeatedly goes into power sharing with Tories in councils across Scotland. Labour supports Brexit.
British Air Force man Derek Neilson, who was fined £5 for throwing a tyre lever through a shop window stocked with British Coronation emblems. Following his court appearance he was locked up overnight at army barracks in Edinburgh for refusing to stand up during the playing of “God Save the Queen.” And his tie emblazoned with Elizabeth I, was confiscated.
Neilson was the extreme end of protest across Scotland from Benbecula to Auchtermuchty in the early 1950s over the naming of the queen. Reminiscent of the women’s suffrage movement protests, poster campaigns, petitions signed, windows were smashed and a pillar box in Edinburgh bearing the insignia, E.R. II, was blown up.
Back in 1901 similar protests had taken place in Scotland when Edward VII was named since there had been no Scottish kings called Edward, only English, how could he be Edward VI of the United Kingdom? Didn’t do any good then. Scots were told to just swallow it.
Then in 1953 a petition lodged with the Court of Session by the Scottish Covenant Association to veto the imposition of Elizabeth II as the queen’s title on grounds the United Kingdom of Great Britain that came into being in 1707 had no queen called Elizabeth since that time and as she was said to be queen of the Union she could not possibly be called Elizabeth II.
Dr. John MacCormick
The petition was rejected on grounds it was up to her what she called herself. This was challenged by Dr John M. MacCormick, chairman of the Scottish Covenant Association on grounds that the numeral was not a description of her Crown but of her, a person. He referred to an Act of Parliament on the subject –
Nowhere in the Act of 1953 has any authority been given to Her Majesty or her Ministers to adopt in her personal name a numeral which is contrary to the provisions of the Act of Union.
That it is well understood in England the numeral is to convey her as Elizabeth of England . . .
It cut no ice. Scotland was then fairly solidly unionist. At least those in senior roles in Scotland were solidly unionist and pleased themselves about constitutional matters irrespective of popular opinion.
Names do matter. And names do change. Place names tend to be changed to underline domination. The British Empire was famous for doing that but it’s a common practice among powers replacing traditional native names with ones honouring political, military or royal figures. Think of Volgograd becoming Stalingrad in honour of the Soviet leader or Maryburgh that became Gordonsburgh then Duncansburgh and finally, Fort William, in Scotland. The William being the bloody butcher Duke of Cumberland, himself. I hope in a future independent Scotland someone with a morsel of decency will arrange a competition to rename the place. There are 26 towns called Independence in the US alone and that has a certain ring about it.
Names matter or else place names wouldn’t be altered. Names mattered a great deal in 1953 when Princess Elizabeth came to the throne. Which ordinal number should be added to the new queen’s name, I or II, was debated in Westminster. It used to be that a description was good enough to differentiate monarchs of the same name – descriptive term like Alfred the Wimp, Margaret the Cow or such. Then they began to number them, like farm stock.
It is not compulsory for a monarch to be known by his or her given first name. Usually with royal types they have several to choose from. Queen Elizabeth’s own father chose to be George VI even though George was the last of his many names and he was Albert or Bertie before his coronation. Elizabeth might have chosen to be Queen Alexandra or Queen Mary (both her names.) Mary would was been an interesting choice, and legitimate since she was becoming the monarch of a union formed only since 1707. If it is, as was stated then, the UK was a successor state to England then equally the UK is a successor state to Scotland. But that was/is assuming the UK is an equal union and nobody but a dissembler would say it has ever been that. It was most definitely not regarded this way in London, where it mattered.
In the event Elizabeth Windsor – now there’s another example of changing identities for the House of Windsor and other similar wings of the family took their name from royal castles when their own names became too embarrassingly German during war with Germany. So Saxe Coburg Gotha was dispensed with in favour of Windsor. It could so easily have been the House of Balmoral. But wasn’t. It’s an English/Scottish thing. Again.
As I was saying, in the event Princess Elizabeth and parliament decided she should present herself as a successor to Elizabeth Tudor of England – which she isn’t. Okay, let’s stop there for a minute. Elizabeth of England had no children. The English line of Tudors therefore died out with her. However, in that way that royals are inter-bred she is kind of related, wait for it, through the Scottish House of Stuart. So, no direct link with Elizabeth of the rotten teeth. Cut to the chase, Lena. The Tudors line ran dry. The Stuarts in the form of Mary Queen of Scot’s son, James VI, took up the English as well as the Scottish throne – Scotland and England were separate nations in 1603. A bit of cut and pasting heads and the Stuarts were replaced by the German cousins, the Hanovers – and hey presto we have the Saxe Coburg and Gotha dynasty that was renamed, Windsor. Hope that’s clear.
It won’t have escaped the notice of those of you paying attention that James VI is never referred to by the big 6 in England but the wee I since England had never had a King James previously. Sounding familiar? Rules are there to be broken, as they say in Westminster. Talking of Westminster the debates over the royal name chuntered on.
3 March 1953 –
After the passage of all this various legislation through the Parliaments of the Commonwealth the Queen will be as much the Queen of India and of Ceylon as she is of England or of the United Kingdom,” said Gordon Walker, Labour MP.
His conflation of England with the UK did not go unnoticed. Walker, continued
I think one is still entitled to talk about the “Queen’s English” and the “Queen of England.”
Labour MP, John Rankin, representing Glasgow, wanted to know who advised the choice of title pointing out it was incorrect in reference to Ireland and equally wrong in its reference to Scotland,
We in Scotland have always recognised the English as a very kindly and generous people” to which M. McGovern of Glasgow Shettleston piped up, “Who circulated that?”
Rankin ignored the comment. Referring to the man who was the accepted authority on all things coronation, Lawrence Tanner, Keeper of Muniments and Library, Westminster Abbey, who described the new queen as Queen Elizabeth II the sixth Queen Regnant of England. Rankin said this was
phrase that gives offence to many people in Scotland … where does Scotland come in? Does it mean that she is not Queen Elizabeth II of Scotland? If so then what is the position of Scotland in regard the proposed style and title?
The right honourable Gentleman the Prime Minister, dealing with the Coronation Oath, in a statement to the House on 25th February, said that the change to which he was referring was introduced “as a result of the act of Union with Scotland. Then he went on to point out that in the Oath Scottish religion was preserved as a right guaranteed under the Act of Union. But the right hon. Gentleman did not tell the whole story. There were more than Scottish religious rights defended as the result of the Act of Union. As a result of that Act, Scotland and England ceased to be independent countries. The Act of Union was not a merging of Scot-land into England. We are not a satellite of England. I am no Nationalist – I want to make that perfectly clear – but the Act of Union did away with England and Scotland as independent units. It substituted a new name, a new flag and a new Great Seal.
These are the things which have been consistently ignored, not merely in the attitude of England – and I forgive them for that – but time and again in this House. People look on us as taking a rather narrow attitude, but our attitude is defended by a treaty which established that Act of Union between two equals, not between one who was dependent and another who was a great Power.
Welsh member, Cledwyn Hughes, for Anglesey, reminded him there were three great nations in the Union.
It became clear that little consultation had taken place with any of the three other members of the Union and all consideration of the event was based solely on what suited England and conformed to English history and heritage or a cobbled-up version of that.
A.C. Manuel, MP for Central Ayrshire –
At election time, the Prime Minister always likes to go to Scotland …to parade at huge meetings in big football stadiums…give pledges…he doesn’t appear to have consulted on this.
The second reading of the Bill took place on 11 March. Viscount Swinton prattled on about how inclusive the monarchy was and how it was based on what was contained in Bagehot’s English Constitution. The tunnel vision was and still is, stark.
There was ridicule over Scots getting hot under the collar about the royal title from people who openly admitted they knew little about Scottish history.
“Lawlessness and violence” that greeted the appearance of pillar boxes bearing ER II in Scotland was condemned. Representing the Scottish National Party’s view was Lord Saltoun though he was not a member. He explained that people in Scotland were angry at the country continued in being sidelined and not taken as an equal partner in the Union. He suggested that when Prince Charles (then a baby) came to reign he could choose a Scottish title such as David III or Robert IV, to demonstrate the UK was an equal union.
On the 15th April Commons debate on Royal Style and Title, Lieut.-Colonel Elliot asked the Prime Minister whether,
. . . in advising the Sovereign to assume the title of Elizabeth II, he took into consideration the desirability of adopting the principle of using whichever numeral in the English or Scottish lines of Kings and Queens happens to be the higher.”
Notice what he did there? The principle he referred to had never taken Scottish monarchs into account – didn’t happen with James VI then I (by which he is universally known) and with Edward VII it was never contemplated he would be known as Edward I of the UK. Westminster’s love of tradition was/is its love of English tradition. It can’t handle unions because of something it calls the importance of its sovereignty. England doesn’t do compromise. Don’t mention the EU and Brexit.
The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was quick to share out responsibility for this obvious stitch up, with the Accession Council. The Accession Council is a group comprising privy counsellors, members of the Lords, the Lord Mayor of London, aldermen of the City of London, high commissioners of Commonwealth realms and assorted civil servants – top heavy with south east England interests. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland – less so. This was their speel back in the day –
WE, therefore, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of this Realm, being here assisted with these His late Majesty’s Privy Council, with representatives of other Members of the Commonwealth, with other Principal Gentlemen of Quality, with the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of London, do now hereby with one voice and Consent of Tongue and Heart publish and proclaim that the High and Mighty Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary is now, by the death of our late Sovereign of happy memory, become Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of this Realm and of all Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, to whom Her lieges do acknowledge all Faith and constant Obedience with hearty and humble Affection, beseeching God by whom Kings and Queens do reign, to bless the Royal Princess Elizabeth the Second with long and happy Years to reign over us.
There was unease among many Scots at having a right royal rug pulled out from under them. Churchill (despised by much of Scotland for very good reasons and the feeling probably mutual) toyed with Scots when he suggested that a future monarch might choose a regnal number that represented past Scottish monarchs, such as a Robert.
. . . thereby emphasising that our Royal Family traces its descent through the English royal line from William the Conqueror and beyond, and through the Scottish Royal line from Robert the Bruce and Malcolm Canmore and still further back.
Still further back! All those references to tracing monarchs back to 1066 England and all that is just an arbitrary stab into the past. It is meaningless gibberish in terms of tradition. Why not go back to the 10th or the 9th century? Why the reference to the Norman Conquest? Why not a reference to the great Kenneth MacAlpin? We know why – a) it was likely Churchill, schooled in ancient and European histories knew next to nothing about Scotland and b) MacAlpin wasn’t English. Of course neither was William the Conqueror but back then people arriving in boats from France were able to settle in England, especially when equipped with a mighty bow and plenty of arrows. It’s pretty hilarious that accepted English constitutional rigmarolling stems from a French takeover of the land previously run by Denmark, Norway and rump England? Plenty shared sovereignty back then.
Churchill was pressed to to formalise his remark about considering Scottish monarchs in the future but he declined to have any such policy written down because it was all just so much hot air. He was at it. What about the difficulties in issuing Scottish currency given this was the first Elizabeth of Scotland? he was asked. Nothing.
As usual Wales was omitted from the conversation. A Welsh MP, Gower, piped up,
. . . what course will be followed if a future British monarch should bear the name Llewellyn?”
The PM prevaricated. As he did on many concerns of the union of equals.
Sir William Darling, MP for South Edinburgh, handed into the Commons police what looked like a bomb but was a machine gun cartridge sent to him by someone from Glasgow in response to a speech he made in support of the title Queen Elizabeth II. A Darling doesn’t change its spots.
Nobody listened to Scottish or Welsh objections over the monarch’s title but irritation over the high-handed behaviour of the Westminster clique has never faded which might help explain the greater support for republicanism in Scotland and Wales than in England. Will Charlie do a Robert? We’ll soon know. Oh, and the Queen got to keep her choice of title but the ER II post boxes got the heave-ho out of Scotland to be replaced by ones bearing the Scottish Crown. They tried it on again with an ER II post box in Dunoon in 2018. Still at it.
Let us end with a song, once very popular in Scottish folksong circles.
The Scottish Breakaway (Coronation Coronach)
Chorus: Nae Liz the Twa, nae Lilibet the One Nae Liz will ever dae We’ll mak’ oor land Republican In a Scottish breakaway
Noo Scotland hasnae got a King And she hasnae got a Queen How can ye hae the Second Liz When the First yin’s never been
Her man he’s cried the Duke o’ Edinburgh He’s wan o’ the kiltie Greeks Och dinnae blaw ma kilt awa’ For it’s Lizzie wears the breeks
He’s a handsome man and he looks like Don Juan He’s beloved by the weaker sex But it disnae really matter at a’ ‘Cause it’s Lizzie that signs the cheques
Noo her sister Meg’s got a bonny pair o’ legs But she didnae want a German or a Greek Poor aul’ Peter was her choice but he didnae suit the boys So they sellt him up the creek
But Meg was fly an’ she beat them by an’ by Wi’ Tony hyphenated Armstrong Behind the pomp and play the question o’ the day Wis, Who did Suzie Wong
Sae here’s tae the lion, the bonnie rampant lion, An’ a lang streitch tae his paw Gie a Hampden roar an’ it’s oot the door Ta-ta tae Chairlie’s maw
I’m listening to the elderly Johnny Cash while writing week four’s book selection so forgive me if I get maudlin.
Think I might be stretching credulity to its extreme if I try to link first up author and book, Hugh MacDiarmid and Songschaw, to Cash in any way but that won’t stop me trying. MacDiarmid, a major Scottish poet, made an enormous contribution to Scottish culture while American culture has been enriched by singer-songwriter Cash, a man who had good Fife blood flowing through his veins. And as culture has no barriers so everyone can appreciate both men and their talents.
Enough of this distraction. MacDiarmid might have been an awkward beggar in life but his role in the restoration of Scottish literature from the trough of its inferiority complex cannot be denied though I bear a grudge for his bloody-minded one-time dismissal of Doric, the rich dialect widely spoken in Aberdeenshire and Angus, possibly through his unfamiliarity with it though if my memory serves me correctly he became a good friend of that wonderful poetess, Helen Cruickshank, whose works are written in the Doric – they were near exact contemporaries.
The young Christopher Murray Grieve was bibliophile; his massive head stuffed full of knowledge from the time he was a boy. Political too, the teenager joined the Independent Labour Party and after the Great War in which he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps he married and lived for a time in Angus where, under the pseudonym MacDiarmid, he began to write poetry so lighting the touch paper of a new Scottish literary movement that expressed itself through the language spoken by Scots and not some affected airy-fairy literary construct. Vernacular Scots writing shamed into silence with the Act of Union has not shrunk out of a sense of inadequacy since the 1920s, thanks largely to MacDiarmid.
MacDiarmid’s best works were arguably his early poems, before he grew into an irascible grouch – and masculine. A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle is masterly in any language in any time – described by Kenneth Buthlay in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as –
without quite bursting at the seams, is able to hold all or almost all of MacDiarmid—which is to say that it is crammed full of fine lyrics, satire, flyting, parody, burlesque, occasional verse, Rabelaisian jokes, metaphysical conceits, translations and adaptations, sustained meditations and speculations on philosophical and religious problems, elemental symbols, and allusions recondite and otherwise.
Lallans, the synthetic Scots, most associated with MacDiarmid’s writings was dispensed with towards the end of his life for English although he expressed the view that Scots was a greater medium for descriptive language than English.
Sangschaw he dedicated to his mother. This is from the preface by the author John Buchan.
Once upon a time the Scots vernacular was a national speech, and men like Henryson and Dunbar used it for the highest matters of poetry. But at the Reformation it was rusticated from court and college, and by the eighteenth century it had become a tongue only for familiar conversation, and in literature it was confined strictly to the homlier humours and affections. It was still capable, as Burns showed, of heights and profundities, but its lateral range was narrow . . .
And Buchan added that MacDiarmid – and Robert Burns – did not confine the language they used in their works to a single dialect but selected words as appropriate from the Doric of Aberdeen in the north and all dialects south the Cheviots.
D. Cleghorn Thomson of The London Mercury wrote this of MacDiarmid in November 1924 –
Mr Hugh MacDiarmid’s little snatch of eight lines, The Bonnie Broukit Bairn is the rarest of things, a poem not to be measured by its length – humour, wit, magic, and revelation mingled as in an April rainbow.
The poet is looking up into the night sky to Mars, the red planet, green Venus and the golden moon. The broukit bairn is Earth – not considered to be in the same illustrious company as the grander Mars, Venus and Moon yet the poet’s concern is with Earth and not the din coming from the three more acclaimed celestial celebrities. Earth where humanity is found – in us.
MacDiarmid was a Scottish nationalist who longed to live in a Scotland that was better than the place it became after the Union. As with his politics, MacDiarmid’s poetry was filled with certainty. No mere pretty verses satisfied him, they were vehicles for ideas in pursuit of the political and social equality he yearned for.
*
Next along is John Milton, Selected Prose. That took the smile off yer faces. Or is that the philistine in me surfacing? Likely, because there’s no argument about Milton’s place as a giant of English literature and immense influence in the development of ideas and behaviour in Britain.
I wasn’t however enthusiastic about this book and less so after a quick read through the flowery introduction by Malcolm W. Wallace, Principal Emeritus at University College, Toronto. I had a bed to change and worldly things to get on with so lost patience with Mr Wallace and went straight to the nitty-gritty – ah, Of Reformation Touching Church-discipline in England and the causes that hitherto have hindered it. It’s complex and anti-semitic? I’m thinking about which sheet to use. Turned to his advocacy of press freedom and freedom of speech, Areopagitica – A speech of Mr John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing To the Parliament of England.
This is true Liberty when free-born men
Having to advise the public may speak free,
Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise,
Who neither can, nor will, may hold his peace;
What can be juster in a State than this?
Surely no argument with these sentiments nor
A good Booke is the precious life-blood of a master spririt, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life.
also from Areopagitica which can found above the Main Reading Room of New York Public Library and the work has been frequently referred to in court judgements – including in America restrictions over the rights of members of the US Communist Party to free speech.
The title, Areopagitica is a reference to a speech by the 4th century BC Greek rhetorician, Isocrates, while Areopagus itself is a hill in Athens formerly used as a court for settling disputes.
*
Nestled up along alongside this little World’s Classic volume is its twin from the series of Milton’s work, The English Poems of John Milton. The dust jacket provided me with a biography of the man – son of a scrivener, born in London and educated at St Paul’s school and Christ’s college, Cambridge. Milton was a pamphleteer – his Areopagitica appeared as a pamphlet when first published in 1644 during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (usually abbreviated to the English Civil War.) Milton was a Latin Secretary to Cromwell and arrested at the Restoration (of the monarch.)
A touching piece to his deceased wife took my mind off sheets and pillowcases.
Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave …
…
Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined …
…
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.
He’s best known for Paradise Lost but I’ve selected one or two lines from Death of a Fair infant Dying of a cough
O fairest flower, no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken primrose fading timelessly
…
Then thou, the mother of so sweet a child,
Her false imagined loss cease to lament …
I think it’s fair to say, Milton creeps up on you. That said I was hoping the next book wasn’t another of his. It wasn’t but be careful what you wish for.
*
The Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb is a wee volume packed with all sorts of writing from the English poet and essayist.
First up is The South Sea House followed by a wide range of topics such as Valentine’s Day, The Praise of chimney-Sweepers, a Dissertation upon Roast Pigs and Confessions of a Drunkard.
The South-Sea House is a slow burner and doesn’t get beyond smouldering – for me, at least. Actually, Valentine’s Day isn’t much better though I liked the line
Brush’d with the hiss of rustling wings
And it’s a case of pity the poor postie struggling under the weight of all those Valentine cards
The weary and all forspent twopenny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own.
Onto the Chimney-Sweepers.
I like to meet a sweep – understand me – not a grown sweeper – old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive – but one of those tender novices, blooming through their first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from the cheek – such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes sounding like the peep peep of a young sparrow . . .
Charles does like to go on a bit.
I reverence these young Africans of our own growth – and from their little pulpits [the tops of chimneys], in the nipping air of a December morning, preach a lesson of patience to mankind.
Lamb is amazed at the ability of the home-cultivated Africans to climb a chimney and survive to peep out the top.
*
I was fair longing to get down the sheets after sampling the stodge and expansive wordiness of Lamb but my spirits soared on seeing H.G. Wells was his neighbour. That’s more like it.
Kipps – the story of a simple soul –
Until he was nearly arrived at manhood, it did not become clear to Kipps how it was that he had come into the care of an aunt and uncle instead of having a father and mother like other little boys.
Kipps is a grand read. Apparently Wells’ own favourite. Absorbing, funny it demonstrates Wells’ facility for observation of the human condition. He has such an eye for behaviour and the eloquence of his language carries the reader along on a magic carpet of amusement. I’m currently reading the whole thing. And loving it.
‘Orphan’ – illegitimate Artie (Arthur) Kipps is brought up by an aunt and uncle who run a shop in the south of England. Kipps is educated to a degree below that of anything remotely recognisable as education and subsequently is packed off to learn the trade of draper – when that was a trade and not something intuitively picked up by anyone in off the street.
Kipps is signed up to seven years apprenticeship with Mr Shalford – sufficient time to fill the youth’s head with all that is necessary to know about black elastic, rolls of ribbon and silks – and a type of commercial shorthand that is essential to the drapery trade. But above all Kipps learns servility.
Mr Shalford –
What he put into Kipps was chiefly bread and margarine, infusions of chicory and tea-dust, colonial meat by contract at threepence a pound, potatoes by the sack, and watered beer.
The average late 19th century Briton’s diet to a T.
Not maudlin at all I hope you agree but then lots of different music has passed across my ears since beginning this. Stravinsky’s just packed up and left the CD player and The Doors have stepped up to see this through to the end.
Get vaccinated. Carry out the twice-weekly Covid tests at home – they’re free! Stay safe and keep us all safe.
Look, look, look – here’s a flag. This is who you are. Look. Closer. Can’t see it? Here, I’ve got more. How many flags will it take you to recognise yourself in it? Look. Just bloody look. We’re British. A proud sovereign nation. Look what the union has done for you. See this bit of blue under the cross of St George – that’s you Scotland. This is what 300 years of union has given you, a place behind England on a flag.
Nothing expresses the shoogly peg that’s only just haudin’ up the union than the appointment of a minister for the union in London – a minister plus a union unit, which carelessly lost its first two chairs in double quick time. Perhaps they discovered there really is no case for retention of the union after all.
No such thing as a cooling off period back in 1707. Once the ink was dry on the agreement that was it. A nation sold out in a scandal that makes 2020’s PPE under-the-counter deals appear the embodiment of integrity. Nor was there democracy but that’s another story. Since then there have been reasons/excuses after reasons/excuses as to why Scotland should not be able to pick the lock on the shackles that fetter this outdated and shady merger.
Now is not the time. Now is never the time.
Brexit was to have been the deal breaker. But then there was, um, Brexit shambles – Brexit where sovereignty was everything (except for readers in Scotland.) England was largely in favour of Brexit, Scotland was largely against Brexit for the disastrous impact it would have on our largest trading market. On that 50:50 basis England always wins because – well, England always wins. England sneezes and Scotland gets covered in snot.
Brexit arrived with promise of more powers for Scotland and better trade deals – the best trade deals in the whole wide world, nay, the whole wide universe. It would be FANTASTIC! Win, win, win. Or, in the real world – the removal of powers from Scotland’s parliament and as for trade – well, is this what success looks like?
Scotland’s fish exports down nearly 90%; salmon down 98%; whisky down 40%
Scotland has lost £5.4bn of potential EU funding to recover from Covid-19 while being denied the ability to borrow money to maintain services and plan for the future, unlike Westminster where chancellor Sunak has borrowed, borrowed, borrowed to cover the bare essentials.
With 8.4% of the UK population Scotland outdoes itself in natural wealth for we contribute (or did) 34% of the UK’s natural wealth – renewable power, water, timber, fish, oil and gas and the like. Between 64% – 70% of the UK’s fish and seafood were landed are Scotland.
Make that was – pre-Brexit. Post-Brexit Scotland has been devastated by us being dragged along in England’s wake.
Scotland is home to 40% of the UK’s offshore wind and tidal power, industries which are the future. That’s Scotland that unionists try to tell us is too wee economically to succeed.
Scotland’s whisky exports make up a whopping 21% of the UK’s food and drink exports worth £5bn to the UK annually. That’s a straight £5bn that should come back into the economy of Scotland to fight child poverty and deprivation but is diverted to Sunak’s money chest instead.
Remember Westminster’s promise that Brexit trade would be FANTASTIC for Scotland? Unlike the rest of the UK, Scotland exports a huge amount of its products and services across the world – 100% more than the rest of the UK. Unlike the rest of the UK Scotland exports more goods than we import providing Scotland (2018 figs) with a surplus in international trade in goods in the region of £5bn. The rest of the UK’s deficit stands at £135bn. Put that in your pipe Andra Neil.
Now is not the time for an independence referendum. Now will never be the time. There is no appetite for a referendum in Scotland spouts every other Britnat MP from somewhere south of Hadrian’s Wall and a number from north of the wall who echo whatever is said by their Westminster superiors. Concentrate on your terrible education system, is the cry of the south. Most of those shouting most loudly to condemn Scottish schools know nothing about Scotland’s education system. Here goes.
Scotland’s population is the most highly educated in Europe with 47% having a college, university or vocational qualification. Don’t hear Keir Starmer repeating that stat. I’ll spell it out for him – that’s 5% more than in the rest of the UK. Your bit.
Pre-England’s Brexit Scotland’s GDP was £32,800 per head – £900 higher than the average throughout the UK at £31,900.
Scotland’s potential wealth as an independent nation is obvious. David Phillips of the Institute for Fiscal Studies acknowledges Scotland’s wealth enables her to succeed as an independent state – read behind the headline https://www.ft.com/content/ff6c0f6b-2d65-4a4e-bbba-878e2260cf3e
In addition to her natural resources there are Scotland’s newer and growing sectors including IT, biotech and space. Then there is tourism; Scotland is a magnate for visitors because not only are we smart and talented but we’re richt bonnie, too.
In September 2020 Boris Johnson said in the House of Commons:
“…this House acts to preserve one of the crucial British achievements of the last three centuries: namely our ability to trade freely across the whole of these islands …unfettered access to the rest of the UK” which is a fairly comprehensive definition of insularity further illustrated by his boast that producers can “move Cornish pasties to Scotland, Scottish Beef to Wales…” – is this really a positive case for the union?
Selling to johnnie foreigner is still an ambition. Apparently. It seems an age away since all that talk about Canada-style trade agreements. Is Canada still a thing?
Unable to construct any case of persuasion through reality or reason that the union should be preserved Johnson’s Tories have decided to blitz Scots (and others) with the jack, the union flag. The flag of the empire. It worked once so why not again seems to be the argument.
Look, look, look – here’s a flag. This is who you are. Look. Closer. Can’t see it? Here, I’ve got more. How many flags will it take you to recognise yourself in it? Look. Just bloody look. We’re British. A proud sovereign nation. Look what the union has done for you. See this bit of blue under the cross of St George – that’s you Scotland. This is what 300 years of union has given you, a place behind England on a flag.
Boris Johnson rolls over in bed, farts and belches simultaneously, reluctantly removes his hand from beneath the duvet and reaches for the phone. “Govie (Henry Dundas reincarnated), Murray Ross, Alastair Jack – this isn’t working. Dominick – where’s Dominick Raab, the johnnie in charge of foreigners? He must know how to deal with these uppity Scots. Do any of you have Gordon Brown’s number? No wait, that man’s never the answer. Just get me another flag.”
Flagopolis is coming to a UK government building near you. Aberdeen Council Chambers (oh, it already is) and BBC Scotland (sic) at Pacific Quay in Glasgow and other such Westminster mouthpieces will hoist a jack and in direct competition with the Scottish government’s baby boxes Westminster will provide each new born with its very own union jack. Scots will have flags rammed down their throats in a display of how much the UK government cares for its northern outlier. There will be no point in resisting for increasing London’s trade links with China is dependent on flagopolis Britain.
The jack, its name is (probably) a corruption of jacques, Norman French for jacket – the tunic carrying the symbol of whichever authority was being followed, such as the Knights Templars’ red cross from the period of the second Crusade. Anyone who has seen the Netflix Turkish series, Insurrection Ertugrul, will know how bloodthirsty and terrifying those adventurers were. And ugly.
In 1606 following the union of the crowns the red cross of St George was superimposed on the white diagonal of St Andrew on its blue field. The English flag as we’ve seen derives from the 12th century and the Scottish saltire from 832AD, making it the oldest continuously used flag in the world which is neither here nor there but interesting. The diagonal cross of St Andrew is said to have been his decision to distinguish the cross on which he was crucified from that of Christ.
Although English kings controlled Ireland from the 12th century Ireland was not included in the flag flown in England until James VI introduced the Hibernian harp onto his royal standard in 1603. Under the tyrant Cromwell Scotland and Ireland were forced to submit to adopt a different union flag that included the George cross, the saltire and Irish harp with Cromwell’s family badge of a silver lion rampant in its centre.
In 1707 the Scottish and English parliaments were joined, or rather the Scottish parliament ceased and a token representation of Scots was permitted to sit in England’s parliament. Various versions of a union jack were put to a committee comprising the queen, Anne, and her privy council. A design from Scotland had the cross of St Andrew superimposed on England’s St George cross. A far bonnier flag, I think you’ll agree, than the brash and hideous version we have today. However it was decided it was more appropriate that England’s cross dominated the union which in truth was more realistic of the state of this union.
Scottish post-union flag
With the Act of Union of 1800 (so many unions so little sense of union) – this was when the union parliament ( with me?) of England and Scotland (the Kingdom of Great Britain) united with the parliament of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland – hence the UK came into being. This union necessitated a different jack. A red saltire representing St Patrick of Ireland was added and an already busy-looking flag got a whole lot busier. As for Wales, nobody seemed to care that it was omitted altogether.
The union jack has flown across the whole British Empire to stamp Britain’s authority over its colonies and protectorates and leave them in no doubt who was in charge. When India succeeded in freeing itself from the British Raj in the 1940s it replaced the union jack, that symbol of its oppression, with a tricolour displaying the Ashokan wheel to mark the country’s emergence as a democratic and secular nation of different peoples.
India’s flag reflected the country’s battle in shaking off the shackles of a foreign power. Empires don’t usually relinquish power and authority over their subjugated peoples without a fight. The British crown and governments were strongly against Indian independence and fought tooth, nail and dirty to prevent it. Britain used carrot and stick tactics. Well, mainly stick. It dropped forcing India to pay for the British garrison on Indian soil that had been used to impose British control. It used starvation and violence. It used ridicule and racist slurs against the people. Churchill, a man who didn’t mince his racist words, was freely abusive. He derided India’s leaders, men such as Gandhi, for having the temerity to believe they were as good as the average white man.
The India Defence League might be comparable to the Better Together movement that was such a feature of the 2014 Scottish independence campaign. Better Together, a coalition of unionist forces, was intent on preventing Scottish independence while the IDL was similarly a group of British politicians; councillors, MPs and peers along with the usual suspects from the military and law hellbent on stopping Indian independence and retain British control of its milch cow. Churchill was an active member, so, too, was author Rudyard Kipling, he of The Jungle Book and The White Man’s Burden – an overtly racist piece of writing which encouraged ‘superior’ civilisations such as the UK and US to bring ‘inferior ‘peoples out of their darkness towards the light of civilisation. His contention was that imperialism was positive for lesser folk who weren’t capable of governing themselves – thus this burdensome responsibility fell on the shoulders of white people, like him. It is pure evil filth. What Kipling, Churchill and the rest of that unholy alliance fail to mention is that empires exist, not to ‘civilise’ but to exploit and rob through brutality and terror.
Then as now the British press played their own dishonourable part in disseminating jingoistic nonsense aimed at preserving the Empire or in our own case, the UK. It won’t surprise you to know that the owner of the Daily Mail, Lord Rothermere, ensured his own propaganda broadsheet kept up the rant against Indian independence. And so highly did he regard his own bigoted beliefs he issued them as pamphlets, sold at a penny a time. His essential message was India never had it so good once Britain took it over and anything that was good in India came as result of Britain. India’s weakness came from its own feeble native people. Any of that sound familiar in relation to Scotland’s independence struggle? It should.
Rothermere assured gullible and equally bigoted Britishers that it was the British India Defence League that represented the people of India not their own Gandhi and the Indian Congress. Better Together, or was it Rothermere? stressed the dangers of independence on grounds its people didn’t want independence/were too stupid to govern themselves/the economy couldn’t sustain it/the country would go to rack and ruin. Sound familiar? It should.
Churchill was in denial about the support for independence in India. Sound familiar? He was warned that India could not be retained by force. Sound familiar? There were cheers in the Commons when in 1942 Churchill raised the possibility of bombing pro-independence rioters in India.
The truth that could not be told was independence would lose the British government valuable resources and income. Empire building is never altruistic. Empires come about through force – they are imposed; actual violence or threatened. Before the British government took over running India, the British East India Company didn’t take any chances when ransacking India’s industries so maintained an army of 260,000 men to impress its intent.
When the marquess of Salisbury, secretary of state for India, said “India is to be bled” he spoke for politicians, Queen Victoria and thousands of British industrialists. Westminster would take and hold India as long as India proved a major source of revenue. And when Indians sick of this foreign tyrant demanded independence Britons were astonished at her ingratitude.
Britain’s desperate attempts to keep hold of India against the wishes of the majority of India’s population was a masterclass in racism and vindictiveness. Winston (I hate Indians) Churchill was not alone in Westminster to hold these views but then you don’t have to listen very long to voices from the green and red benches today to hear xenophobic and racist slurs. Scottish MPs in the Commons are frequent targets for jeers and accusations of being “subsidy junkies.” An English Tory MP, Lucy Frazer, targeted the Scottish people for a particularly nasty attack when she encouraged her follow Conservatives to laugh at previous generations of Scots sent into exile and sold as slaves to the colonies. Racist filth like this has been a feature of Westminster politics for its whole existence. In the 1930s and 1940s MPs spoke about Indians who dared question the right of London to govern their nation as “a beastly people” “breeding like rabbits” – and of their leader, the pacifist Gandhi, that he should be trampled into the dirt.
In 2003 – 2003 mark you – historian Niall Ferguson in his book Empire was still peddling myths of the 1930s about the positive contribution of British rule to the lives of Indians. These same Indians whose native manufacturing and shipping industries were devastated to enable fortunes for British companies.
Scotland’s growing ambition to return to an independent state has made her a target for attack from government in London and British Radge mouthpieces around the four nations of the UK. In contrast to India and Ireland whose struggles for freedom involved violence Scotland’s independence movements have not turned to armed assaults against British rule. Both India and Ireland indulged in and were subjected to terrible violence and brutality, and in the case of India to enforced starvation that remains an indelible stain on the troubled record of the British Empire. When challenged the UK state will defend itself through its armed wings as well as using deceit and fabrications to undermine those who dare question its oppressive rule.
Westminster has not moved on from that day in 1928 when Tory Home Secretary, Joynson-Hicks, said, “we conquered India by the sword and by the sword we shall hold it.” And by god they did for far too long. Scotland is in for a helluva dirty fight for her right to exist as a sovereign nation, preferably within an economic bloc that values her voice as an equal partner – a society that values the collective voice of a nation in which justice and fairness are prized and where privilege is abolished. That is an ambition worth fighting for and fight it will be because the British Radge will try every dirty trick in the book to scupper our ambition and stuff its jack down our throats in its attempt to keep our country subjugated, as it has done for 300 years.
D I V O R C E sang Tammy Wynette, an expert on the subject.
Divorce, yes divorce. Divorce is in the air. Have you noticed? When the UK filed for divorce from the EU it was complicated because there were four partners in that relationship – five if you count the EU. Two of the partners got their way and three did not. Now it should have been possible in those circumstances for those three unhappy with the breakup to stay in the relationship; being consenting partners. Actually one of the partners has, albeit by quirk rather than design. The remaining one of the original four, hope you’re keeping up, has been told she must cut off all connections with the former fifth partner even though she really wants the relationship to continue because one of the four is less of a partner and more of a tyrant. Isn’t that so like many unhappy marriages – in which one partner is overbearing?
Let’s put some names to the partners. The four are, of course, Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales and the EU that has already been identified as partner number five. It’s a poor sort of marriage in which one partner is controlling but that’s always been the way with the constitutional setup of the UK. Scotland and Northern Ireland did not want this divorce but they’re stuck with it – only NI is being treated with more care and consideration than Scotland and now embarking on a ménage à trois with the EU and UK.
It is not that Scotland is averse to divorce. The majority of Scots would love to divorce the UK and reinstate relations with her Continental suitors. She would not be against rekindling some kind of relationship with the UK but on a more equitable footing – not the current one under the domineering and manipulative partner, let us call him England. England holds all the cards and for three hundred years has been playing with a marked deck.
England and divorce has a troubled history. I’m talking personal relationships now for I think it reasonable to compare how a nation handles its personal relationships with the way it handles constitutional ones. In the case of England marriages have always been unequally skewed with men of power and wealth able to obtain an annulment whereas wives, on the other hand, have struggled to extricate themselves from an obviously failed marriage, even where the husband is controlling and abusive. English laws have been written by men for men. Even from the grave a vindictive rogue of a husband and father could continue to harm his wife and children by omitting them from his will so leaving them penniless and homeless.
Vindictive and controlling are the traits that mark out England’s attitude towards Scotland’s desire for divorce. Okay, so to begin with the attitude was more derisory – to belittle and discredit but the tone has got more shrill and tinged with threat. Only days ago in a debate in the Commons, former Tory minister Liam Fox suggested in the event of divorce between Scotland and the rest of the UK Scotland would be punished by blocks on trade (that is so close to the events in 1707 which led to the Union it’s uncanny.)
I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman [Ian Blackford MP]for giving way. Perhaps he could tell us what estimate he has made of the cost to the Scottish economy of losing access to the UK single market through independence. (Liam Fox, Tory MP for North Somerset)
Dissolving the Union –
What? Nonsense! You can’t pull out of it now! Why? Surely not? What have I done? I haven’t done anything wrong! No, I won’t agree to any divorce! I’ll make your life miserable! I’ll punish you in every way I can! You’ll be made to suffer! Divorce me! How dare you even try!
These ridiculing and hostile attitudes have not gone down well with the majority of Scots who are expected to believe the Union is one of equals while experience shows it is nothing of the kind. This Union was always a marriage of convenience that quickly turned into a loveless trial. The dominant partner has never concealed his lack of respect for the other, denigrating and belittling her and keeping a tight hold on the purse strings to prevent her from leaving him. Confiscating the house keys will no doubt come next. Like almost every failing marriage there’s bad contemptuous behaviour, constant criticisms, secrecy, avoiding each other, arguments and the sex is lousy.
Scots attitudes to divorce have always been fairly liberal with both sexes tending to be treated equally and the assumption is this progressive perspective is shared. Far back in the mists of time Scottish marriages could be simply annulled or couples choose to go their own ways and lead separate lives while technically still married. Women as well as men could obtain formal divorces on grounds of adultery or desertion from the 1500s. When a relationship was shown to have irretrievably broken down the Scots were more pragmatic over the hopelessness of the situation and the union terminated. Threats of punishment and coercion were not considered suitable alternative actions.
Women’s standing has always been more robust in Scotland than in England. A Scots woman’s individualism did not get extinguished on her marriage, as was the case in England and you can see the majority of older Scottish gravestones display women’s own last name along with reference to her status as wife or relict of a man. Until relatively recent times that is. Now the English habit of a woman relinquishing her identity to her husband has become common here in Scotland. For a time it was the norm for a married woman to be addressed by her husband’s name – as in Mrs David Macdonald. That piece of nonsense is now hopefully relegated to the misogynist dustbin of the past.
You know why divorces are so expensive? Because they’re worth it.
Scots women and children have always been better protected by the law than their English counterparts. For example a Scottish widow could not be deprived of her jus relictae and the children of a marriage of their legitima – meaning they could not be written out of a husband’s/father’s will. A wife was entitled to one half of the movable assets of a marriage and her children to the other half and in the case of there being no children, the wife’s share comprised one-third. That should tell us about the type of society that operates in this way and the type of society that does not. As we’ve seen above this has never been the case in England.
A marriage in which one partner enjoys more rights than the other so able to restrict the rights and freedoms of the other partner is no worthwhile relationship. A union in which one member nation assumes greater privileges than another nation and gets to impose rules unilaterally is no worthwhile union. Under Scots law this union would have been dissolved long ago. Under English law Scotland remains a chattel of England’s.
The English state does not respect Scotland because Scotland’s status within the Union is so weak. Scratch a unionist and they’ll argue that Scotland’s position within the Union is comparable to an English county. Labour leader, Tony Blair, in 1997 epitomised this view when he described the Scottish parliament as having no more powers than an English parish council because sovereignty would remain “with me” i.e. the prime minister at Westminster. So much for Scotland having an equal voice within the UK. This Union is nothing more than an abusive relationship but mentions pulling out of it and unionists are aghast then angry then more abusive.
Divorce after 300 years!
300 and a bit years. Call that a union?
Here’s a union. France, you know that country that a section of English xenophobes love to describe as their ‘traditional enemy’ (to which the obvious retort is – who isn’t?) has never been on the receiving end of such animosity from Scotland. Quite the reverse for links between Scotland and France are greater than those between Scotland and England.
This is a Union
The Auld Alliance between Scotland and France, established in 1295, has never been formally ended so the Union with England is bigamous. England is the bidie-in. It has been argued the Auld Alliance was wound up in 1560. If this is so it means Scotland’s union with France lasted over 260 years, just 38 years shy of that other union with England.
When Scotland was badgered and blackmailed into the Union in 1707, against the wishes of the people who signed petitions, demonstrated and rioted their disapproval, Scotland lost her legislative powers, many of her public offices to London, with a knock-on impact on Scottish trade and commerce. Resentment within Scotland has simmered ever since with fluctuating degrees of support for independence or Home Rule.
Divorce is a piece of paper
Back in 1890 a piece in the Westminster Review described how the demand for Home Rule for Scotland was gaining popularity on the back of the movement for Irish Home Rule. The article went on to observe –
“But the grievance that impelled her [Scotland] to do it [go for Home Rule] have been long and severely felt. And they have a deeper root than the English people seems yet to understand. It is not only that Scotland has been shabbily and unfairly treated in the matter of Imperial grants; it is not only that the Scottish people have been put to enormous and needless expense, vexation, and trouble in connection with so-called private Bills; it is not only that Scottish affairs have been grossly mismanaged in London; Scottish legislation trifled with by the leaders of both parties, and the verdict of the Scottish constituencies on Scottish questions reversed in Parliament by the overwhelming votes of English members knowing little, caring less, about Scottish affairs, and merely voting as their party leaders bid.”
Those observations could have come from yesterday in parliament at Westminster. In 1890 the two parties in question were the Liberals and Tories. Labour would later traipse along in their wake and with some notable exceptions follow the line of England knows best, back in your box Scotland – that has been the attitude of all the UK parties.
A feature throughout the life of the Union has been the English tendency to deride Scots and Scotland – as the Westminster Review put it – “wrong done thus and otherwise to Scotland’s life and honour and progress as a nation.” And nothing has changed.
“England seems scarcely to know that Scotland remains a nation.” (Westminster Review)
And nothing has changed. That is the position of Johnson, Starmer and their party acolytes. What the English know or think they know about Scotland comes from Anglicized Scots, the Westminster Review tells us. These people rarely represent their own country and so misrepresent the Union.
Divorces are made in heaven
Scottish Secretaries of State at Westminster represent Westminster in Scotland not Scotland at Westminster. Their role is to squeeze the life out of Scotland and ‘denationalise’ her. Scotland’s junior position within the Union has meant from the very start she was being milked for whatever she was worth by London, from the malt taxes to oil and gas.
As an illustration take an example from 1851 when Ireland’s revenue was just over £4 million Westminster took £153,547. About the same time Scotland’s revenue was just over £6 million and of that England took £5,614,847. Astounding. If astounding is another term for theft.
Heavy burdens in the form of taxes and customs duties and making Scotland pay for England’s national debt – if only England wasn’t such a xenophobic country it wouldn’t always be spending money on costly wars against other nations – kept Scotland indebted to England and diminished her freedom as a nation within the Union. Scotland had no national debt when the Union knot was tied and England made sure that she could never have England’s freedom to borrow money. That still applies today with Scotland having to balance her books while England can accrue as much debt as it likes and demand Scotland pays a share. What kind of Scot would have agreed to a contract like that? Not any kind of good one.
Article 15 of the Treaty provided a lump sum – the so-called Equivalent – was paid to Scotland as compensation for having to agree to take on a share of England’s national debt. That and to compensate Scotland for various disadvantages imposed on her by the Union such as a reduction in the value of Scotland’s currency to match that of England’s, winding up the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies so it was not in competition with England’s East India Company. To quell the protests from Scottish businessmen London agreed to provide subsidies as compensation for Scotland’s lost markets for its successful exports such as woollen goods. In keeping with so many promises made to woo the handful of Scots nobles who played fast and loose with Scotland’s independence those subsidies were never paid out. You can see the direction of travel this Union was taking. The Equivalent was paid to 25 commissioners who first and foremost took care of themselves with the cash – and it was mainly cash. So you can imagine how widely this was (not) spread. The Union that England holds so dear was created on a catalogue of lies and deceptions.
In place of promised financial help came an increased tax burden for Scots. Prominent Scots, such as the eminent economist, Adam Smith, tried to prevent Scotland being penalised so heavily by England but to no avail. Why would England’s government aka Westminster relinquish the grip it had on Scotland? It didn’t want to risk having a rival and potential threat to its security on its border. Which reminds us this Union was a marriage of convenience. Time for the bidie-in to sling his hook.
I don’t see divorce as a failure. I see it as the end to a story. In a story, everything has an end and a beginning.
References:
(Julian Hoppit, University College London, Scotland and the British Fiscal State, 1707-1800. )The Westminster Review (19th and 20th centuries)
The Westminster Review (19th and early 20th century editions)
Brexit – England’s Declaration of Independence as penned by Homer (Simpson) – a fish oddity.
Jaculator fishmonger, Pufferfish Johnson, blowing out his well-exercised blowhole that Brexit is destined to lead to a national revival. The great Clownfish spouts blanks whether –
an additional £350m a week to the NHS
40 new hospitals (that’ll be 6 plus some refurbishments)
50,000 new nurses or in the real world 30,000
his ‘do or die’ pledge that Great Brian would be out of the EU by October 2019,
he’d rather be dead in a ditch than extend Article 50
he’d never suspend parliament to force through Brexit – before illegally proroguing it for the longest period in the modern era
squirming u-turns on proxy voting in the Commons
free school meals in England,
the NHS visa surcharge
dodgy NHS appp
face masks in shops
face masks in schools
England’s exam fiasco
England’s national lockdown
extension of the furlough scheme
world beating track and trace
millions of tests every single day
operation moonshot to combat Covid
Those not Zipfish-ed up the back Smelt a Ratfish at being led by the Elephant Nose fish to Flounder as flotsam and jetsam on the seabed of international prosperity. Given Clownfish’s reputation to not give a Dogger Bank about anything, his only Porpoise in life being himself, they Otter have known Betta over his promises of Sea Pie in the sky.
Now we’re in for a Cat and Dog fish fight because a Bighead Carp of a Prime Minister, the Blowfish PM, doesn’t give a Bombay Duck about a Dealfish.
The Chubsucker PM’s Loosejaw Minnows; Moray Eel, Douglas Ross; Parrot fish, Andrew Bowie; chief Toadfish and Hogsucker, Alister Jackfish, are in the Halibut of Swordfish propagandising straight off the John Dory party’s handbook, as crooked as a barrel of fish hooks.
Barracuda done Betta cry the people of Scotland, ye Bass! And when the Britfish and Mudsucker Flounders on the iceberg of destiny the Sturgeon (or Salmond) of Scotland will lead us Herring back to tell the EU we’ve Haddock enough of Batfish Englandshire and leave them Abalone to all their racist, supremacist Pollocks.
So Dab your eyes and open the Dory to a Brill Goldfish Plaice in the sea of opportunity that’s lapping at our shores.
I’ve decided to close my self-isolation diary after this one because I feel so much has changed, and not changed, over past months and the diary is getting stale. We are also moving on in our lives and so I’ll be preoccupied for some time.
Way back on the 24th March we had just embarked on what was anticipated would be a few short weeks of self-isolation. Six months later we’re not exactly isolating in the same way or with the same intensity but our lives have been turned upside down and normal back then is abnormal today. I wrote then of my final visit to my hairdresser the previous day. I miss our chats as well as having turned into Rapunzel in the meantime but I’m still disinclined to get my hair cut. It can wait.
We did our ‘final’ shop in the village in March. I remember it as an anxious experience with the threat of Covid hanging in the air like some 19th century miasma. We haven’t been back! Shopping for us now is confined to online deliveries. Following a sticky start due to pressure of numbers companies have learnt to cope with vastly increased demand and not driving to the shops has saved us a fortune in petrol. With so little reason to leave the house other than for exercise which we do locally there’s been very little reason to run the car so yet more savings.
Back at the start of all of this we were both displaying symptoms of something – sore throats and coughs – but nothing developed and we both got better. Was this Covid? We have wondered ever since.
Harvesting the barley, buzzard flying, swallows on power lines, our Aberdeenshire, roe deer in the barley
We’re still reading the Saturday edition of the Financial Times online and I print out their crosswords every Friday or Saturday. It’s not so easy reading online and I read less of the paper but my husband reads massive amounts of it as the sub means we have access to the daily editions, too. Drawback is we no longer have any newspapers in the house for all those jobs old newspapers were used for such as putting down a piece of biscuit or chocolate for the cat if he catches us eating our evening square – well we are from Presbyterian backgrounds so one square is sufficient per day.
The garden has been a godsend for us. We’ve grown our vegetables and eaten most of them. Tatties are just about ready now. Most of the gherkins, courgettes, broad beans, runner beans have been eaten. Still got lots of salad stuff in the greenhouse and dependable chard provides our daily green helping. Blackcurrants, rasps, strawberries have come and gone. The cherries are never available to us as the birds take them. Blueberries ripening now and with fewer plums on the tree they are a good size this year. Apples coming in abundance and a few pears but that’s a sign of autumn and every day we are out with shears and secateurs trying to control the jungle.
Politically things have changed. March saw the four nations of the UK working together, after a fashion, to deal with Covid. Since then there have been different policies emerging because the pandemic has highlighted that what works for London doesn’t necessarily work for Belfast or Edinburgh or Cardiff.
Boris Johnson in March was seen as a dilettante fool. Now in September he’s proved himself to be a bone-idle fool. Nicola Sturgeon has grown as a stateswoman demonstrating her hands-on approach to government and ability to stay on top of her health brief during Coronavirus. Ask Johnson a question about it and he’ll divert attention from the fact he knows nothing but squawk Trump-like about how FANTASTIC his government is in coping with the pandemic when the evidence shows otherwise.
September and Covid is still very much with as we hurtle towards winter with the depressing prospect of flu epidemics on top of Coronavirus. It’s hard to see how this won’t mean a return to much tighter restrictions on our behaviour once more. Not that everyone has been modifying their behaviour given the spikes in the spread of the virus in some parts.
Here in the back of beyond we’re still not venturing too far from the old homestead but we can observe activities are far greater than they were a few short weeks ago. Plenty companies are still complaining the economy isn’t opening up fast enough but I’d rather be guided by Nicola Sturgeon and Jason Leach on modes of behaviour than travel firms and airport chiefs driven by what’s in the best interests of their industries – especially a certain vociferous Scottish travel company that drove someone we know up the wall trying to get them to reimburse almost £1000 for a holiday the company cancelled at the start of the pandemic. They weren’t too proactive then. We haven’t seen her since then so don’t know if they ever paid her back. I can’t get myself to sympathise with travel companies and airport managers pushing for more air travel in light of Covid and global warming. It’s as though they live in a bubble where health and well-being are counted only in terms of cash not the nation’s health.
On the topic of health what’s been a pleasure of late is walking our local highways and byways to the accompaniment of the rustling of broom pods, like water trickling over rocks, as the seed pods burst open distributing their seeds. And that wee roe deer has been back bounding through the barley field again, like Theresa May only cute and not at all dangerous. I should have my camera ready when going along that way to get a half-decent photo but I never do and so the results are dismal. Talking of dismal photographs, the heron flew up from one of the burns right over my head as I struggled to take my camera out of my pocket. I did eventually get a picture but it was of a flying M disappearing into the distance so deleted it. Herons and horses always remind me of dinosaurs which makes them magical in a deep-rooted kind of way, having that link with the earth’s distant (near) beginnings.
Our house martins are still with us. Frantically feeding so can’t be long before they say their goodbyes. So many of them proving what a fine summer we’ve had here in northeast Scotland. Had some feedback on whether or not martins, swifts and swallows perch on power lines because I’d mentioned seeing one or other of them last time. I checked up and swallows do, so there are plenty of them round here, not swifts and I don’t know about martins. Swallow they were then strung out along the wires.
Graceful clematis and bold-as-brass marigolds
We haven’t settled into a new series on Netflix/Amazon Prime yet. Did have the unfortunate experience of sitting through a truly dreadful film, A Fall from Grace about a woman accused of murdering her husband. What was murdered was the film production. Surely the director has watched films but that wasn’t apparent in his messy and laughable handling of what could have been an interesting subject. The characters were transparent it was easy to work out the end right at the start. The acting was dodgy and the scene at the end where women walk out of a house is straight out of Michael Jackson’s Thriller while attempting to be empathetic.
Haven’t quite finished Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow yet, the psychology book that explains so much about how we think from automatic responses to more considered and logical ones, and the biases we’re largely unaware of when imagining we’re thinking rationally. Every time I try the experiments in it I fall into a trap. Which I still find funny.
For those of you who’ve been reading this blog over the past six months thank you very much. I might return to self-isolation at some time but then again I might not. Latest book, much delayed publication because of Covid, is eventually coming out on 15 September, you might want to consider buying Aberdeen At Work.
Stay safe and for this sort of blog, that’s all folks.
The British Empire lasted some 300 years; about the same length of time that the United Kingdom has existed. The British Empire has gone. It is time the remnants of colonialism within the UK were also relegated to the past.
Good morning, Scotland. What is it you want?
Please, sir, I want some more.
What! More!
Yes, sir. I want more.
There is disbelief all round.
You already have devolution. What more could you want?
Independence, sir. I want my independence.
Independence? What nonsense is this? Not everyone can be independent. If everyone was independent nobody would appreciate it.
That’s not fair, sir. I want to be independent.
Want! Want! It’s not your place to want! You’ll take what you’re given. Who ever heard of such a thing! There are people who make the rules and people whose duty it is to follow our rules. You are the latter. People who want, don’t deserve independence. And that’s the end of it.
The meaning of empire
The British Empire began as the English Empire although it adopted the name British before the Act of Union. England’s imperial expansion began in the 1500s, enabled by its aggressive navy expanded to break into the slave trade. Union in 1707 was sought by England primarily to remove potential support by Scotland for England’s enemy, France – henceforth Edinburgh was denied decision-making powers over foreign affairs and so has that remained. That the Union gave England control over Scottish trade was an additional, if secondary benefit. The Union of 1707 was not set up to benefit Scotland but to protect England politically and economically. And there was no whiff of democracy anywhere about the agreement struck between a few monied interests in Scotland and England’s parliament.
The Union of 1707 colonised Scotland in much the same way England then the United Kingdom colonised other parts of the world over three hundred years. As with its other colonies the Union parliament never envisaged equality between its heart, in London, and authorities in the peripheral parts of its empire. Power lay with London and there it would remain. That was the intention and nothing changed over three hundred years. Devolution of powers has not altered the conception of hierarchy and subordination within the United Kingdom. Within the United Kingdom – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are subordinates which are not provided with the same levers of power provided to England.
The idea the United Kingdom represents equality between the four nations is a chimera. Power lies with Westminster and in Westminster Scotland’s representatives are outnumbered 10:1. There has never been a time Scotland has been able to influence decisions in Westminster. And there never will be a time Scotland will be able to influence decisions made in Westminster, nor will Northern Ireland and Wales ever be placed on an equal footing with England.
United does not mean equal
Like empires throughout history which have risen and declined so has the British Empire. Empires establish themselves when in a position to wield power against weaker nations and can crumble when their dictum of might is right is questioned by the powerless within their dominions.
When under threat empires tighten their grip on the reins of power through brutality, corruption and threat. Opposition is condemned as treachery – anti-patriotic. In the case of the United Kingdom, loyalty means Britishness and Britishness has always been largely based on Englishness.
Not only does Scotland have no power whatsoever at the heart of England’s rump empire, the United Kingdom, for most of the past 300 years of its existence Scotland has scarcely been considered. Similarly with Wales and Northern Ireland – their representation at Westminster is as tokenistic as Scotland’s. Influence they have none. The populations in the three peripheral areas of the England’s rump empire are demeaned, patronised and the butt of humour as demonstrated in national ‘pet-names’- the equivalent of the racist term ‘boy’ in farther-flung parts of the empire – Scots are Jocks; Irish are Paddies; Welsh are Taffies. Jocks, Paddies and Taffies are invariably depicted as lacking sophistication, feckless, mean, chippy, grievance monkeys – ungrateful for the protection the ‘broad shoulders’ of the empire/UK affords them. Empires evolve cultural myths. Given the hierarchical nature of empires it is the interests and culture of the dominant state that come to embody them. Cultural values of the peripheries are defined as archaic curiosities and sources of derision and humour which tend to be abandoned in favour of those of the dominant power.
Faced with ingratitude/challenge from within the peripheral nations the dominant power tends to act more aggressively. Troops might be sent in/ stationed in the troublesome periphery. We see this across the world and within the Union the population of Scotland was threatened and subdued by General Wade’s army in the 18th century. Empires might impose control through more sophisticated means such as installing bureaucracies into peripheral areas for greater control in parts far away from the centre of power. A recent example of this type of imperious incursion is Queen Elizabeth House in Edinburgh, embedding Westminster-rule into the heart of Scotland in defiance of devolution and meant as a visible reminder to Scotland of who really is in charge; and it is not the Scottish people or their own parliament.
It is an observation often made that the farther away populations are from the centre of power the less the centre represents their interests. Westminster’s Queen Elizabeth House may be a recognition of this but given that Scotland has never figured in its consideration of what is best for the Union as opposed to what suits south-east England it is more likely this hub is the equivalent of General Wade’s force – intimidation and reminder that authority rests with London.
Where threats to empire exist but are less threatening to the dominant power degrees of autonomy are sometimes used to diminish calls for independence. This gives an impression of a benevolent centre of power willingly sharing responsibilities but powers transferred are an illusion for the centre of empire retains the ability to withdraw those same powers whenever it decides. Remember the Union like any empire is a hierarchy in which ultimate authority is retained by the dominant nation; democracy is limited to partial self-government in peripheral areas. Democracy under the Union favours England’s needs and ambitions above those of other parts of the UK through the makeup of the Houses of Parliament and chain of command of government based in London.
India was the British Empire’s greatest source of wealth. Britain’s ransacking of it began when England set up the East India Company in 1599 and by the 1700s Britain was imposing taxes on India. By stealth greater and greater controls were imposed until eventually Britain ruled India directly, governing it with a rod of iron and keeping the ‘peace’ through a policy of divide-and-rule in which divisions between Hindus and Muslims were encouraged. A period known as the British Raj, notorious for luxury and moral decay lasted from 1858 to 1947. This was rule from London to benefit London, the heart of empire. Rarely were native authorities and peoples consulted on any matter. When the British prime minister declared war against Germany in 1939, the announcement was made without consultation with Indian ministers although India was expected to provide millions of troops and provisions for the war effort. High-handed, disrespectful, racist and xenophobic – qualities demonstrated by the British Empire.
Sick of centuries of exploitation by the racist empire, Indians demanded self-determination instead of being administered by London. In London this was regarded as outrageous ingratitude. Lord Linlithgow, the Empire’s man-in-charge in India at the time, a staunch British unionist, threatened India by further inflaming the very internal divisions that London had so adeptly used in the past to keep India in its place. He and London were implicated in the deaths of millions from famine in Bengal in 1943 because of Britain’s policy of destroying food supplies and requisitioning of boats and other means of transport that prevented the movement of goods and food within India. Ruthless and heartless government by Westminster encouraged support for the Quit India movement that demanded an end to British rule. It’s spokesman Mahatma Gandhi said,
“I discovered that I had no rights as a man because I was an Indian.”
The Empire struck back. Gandhi and fellow Indian Congress members were arrested and imprisoned. Press censorship intended to silence the independence movement and the Empire’s human rights abuses could not happen now with social media but then lies spread about India’s independence movement were fed to a lackey press.
There are different forms of nationalism just as there are different forms of democracy in the world. Empires exist to benefit a tiny portion of their populations. When people grow sick of being oppressed for the benefit of the few at the heart of empire they try to change the political structure to better reflect their interests and needs. Empires by their nature are parasitic, sucking the life-blood out of the peripheral areas they govern. So nationalist movements emerge offering hope in the shape of government that will take more cognisance of the desires of the affected people. John Maclean the great socialist advocated Scottish nationalism as the path to socialism and a better world for Scots.
As more Indians saw through the desperate dirty tricks employed by the British Empire so the clamour for independence grew – for India to govern itself in its own interests, not those of the Empire/UK. The Empire/UK struck out – 1,000 Indians were killed during protests and movement leaders imprisoned (Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba, died in jail.) The Empire/UK lost the people’s respect. Once that has gone it is a matter of time before any empire falls. For 300 years India had been subjugated by the British Empire/UK. Soon, Pakistan, too became independent.
The British Empire was once the alpha power and London the alpha capital. This is no longer the case. The Empire created through violence and threat declined because of its arrogance, corruption, xenophobia and disrespect for its peripheral areas. Yes, it was Scots who largely ran the British Empire. It has been said this was because Scots were better educated than in other parts of the UK. Perhaps there is truth in that. It may also have been because educated ambitious Scots had few career opportunities available to them within Scotland because of how Scotland’s infrastructure was run down so that the majority of high-powered jobs were created/preserved for the centre of UK power, London, and Etonian Oxbridge friends of friends in the capital. That Scots participated to a high degree in the British Empire is neither here nor there. Scotland as a nation was as much a victim of the imperial motivations of London as other peripheral parts of the Empire. And while other colonies have won their independence, Scotland remains trapped in a Union founded on inequality.
The British Empire’s decline left behind a debtor United Kingdom, pressurised by the USA because of world war debt to open up access to its international markets. The rump of Empire/UK that remains – the union of the UK – still exhibits the predatory characteristics shared by all empires. They are ingrained in it. The alpha power lashes out whenever its authority is challenged. Whereas India and other former Empire nations were subjected to brutal repression in response to their demands for independence Scotland it is supposed will be subjected to a thrashing by propagandists for the UK. Threats of disaster and failure; of ingratitude have been and will increasingly be made.
Empires resist their loss of power. The mythical hand of friendship extended from the centre of empire to the peripheries is always in the end a fist. Threats escalate as an empire defends its authority. The UK built on violence and threats will die issuing still more threats meant to undermine confidence in the subordinate nation’s future success.
But as India proved, lying and threats, corruption and moral decay, far from saving a venal order leads to its demise. Once people stop believing the indoctrination; once they see it for what it is propaganda concocted to preserve inequalities of the Union/empire they have won – by realising they are the means of changing the world.
During week 22 of Covid isolation not a lot happened – other than chaos erupting over exam grades across each of the four nations of the UK.
Ruth Davidson in place as the Scottish (sic) Tories interim leader because their last one, some car dealer bloke, was so peeing bad at the job even the Tories couldn’t stomach him. Talking of stomachs they seem to think Ms Davidson would be somewhat better. She sure can pull a sulky face better than the guy unceremoniously shoved aside in a move Stalin would have been proud to pull off. This week the queen of stunts regal procession shuddered to an inglorious halt when confronting the queen of put-downs. She was given her erse to play with, as we say in Scotland, following an attack on the Education Minister,
“They deserved new leadership in education and John Swinney cannot deliver it, why won’t the First Minister see that?” said Ms Davidson.
To which Nicola Sturgeon retorted, “I’m not sure loyalty to colleagues is a strong suit for Ruth Davidson.”
Davidson who has an unfortunate habit of opening and shutting her mouth throughout replies to her questions giving a misleading impression she is saying anything of consequence while impersonating a drowning fish continued to goad the FM who responded that on the day everyone’s thoughts were on a terrible and tragic train accident (everyone’s except the queen of stunts) she was on her own in pushing constitutional differences.
And Sturgeon continued,
“Just in a few months I will submit myself and my government to the verdict of the Scottish people in an election. That is the ultimate accountability for our record and our leadership. And as we do that, Ruth Davidson will be pulling on her ermine and going to the unelected House of Lords. Can I gently suggest to Ruth Davidson that if it comes to holding to account and scrutinising politicians, she’s really not coming at this from a position of strength. It is not me that is running away from democratic responsibility.”
As put-downs go it was brutal although oddly, that organ of honest journalism, the Daily Express interpreted the gutting and barbecuing of Davidson as her ridiculing the FM.
Badger battles continue with one stand of nuts and seeds having to be taken inside overnight because the badger makes off with the lot. One evening we put on the outside light at the back of the house and were able to watch a huge, and I mean huge, badger attempt to scale the heights of a wooden pole with its bounty of fat balls. The pole was too narrow for Brock and she/he returned to the stand that normally contains nuts and seeds, ignored the tray that sits below to catch seeds dropped by birds during the day and scuttled off to try out other feeding stations in the garden. The sheer bulk of the badger is what you get when you guzzle whole containers of peanuts. Mind you, watching the beastie search in vain for the peanuts tugged at our heart-strings and next evening when taking in the feeders we left some peanuts for her or him. And they were gone by morning. Nice compromise.
New kettle bought this week. We have an unfortunate history with kettles in this house. For some reason they break down far too frequently. A few years back we bought a whistling kettle for the top of the stove. It is a work of art but takes 6- 7 minutes to boil which is fine except when there are visitors and coffee and tea need topping up fast. Anyway, when our last electric kettle left this mortal coil – a pity as it was the exact colour of our painted cupboards – we reverted to smart stove kettle. There’s hardly been a soul crossing the threshold since March so what difference did it make? Not much. The whistle was rarely attached because if I thought the nagging sound of the tumble drier having completed its cycle was annoying (it is) it is nothing on the shrill whistle of a steaming kettle. So the whistle tends to get set aside. All well and good until forgetful me went off on my daily jaunt one day and straight into the garden for a spot of weeding and pruning, eventually wandering into the kitchen to put the kettle on for a cup of tea to discover there was just enough water left in it to stop it melting all over the stove. Straight online and a spanking new electric kettle arrived within days. It isn’t as bonny as the whistling kettle but it’s a helluva lot quieter and does that remarkable thing of switching itself off – safer for forgetful dopes like moi. Oh, it takes 2 minutes to boil. Not that that’s here nor there but maybe one day.
House martins and swallows and swifts appeared in their vast numbers this week like flying dervishes across our evening skies. Usually they pop in and out whenever we walk past the side of the house where their nest is but over the last few days they’ve been visibly absent. What did those great numbers – between 30 and 50 I’d say but it’s impossible to count martins and their cousins while flying – signify? They couldn’t all be ours despite their semi-detached houses and obviously having had a very successful breeding season but then to be no sign of them at all. Had they flown south already? Didn’t seem likely but where had they gone? Nowhere it turns out. Unless some have flown off and left a late brood there are martins still in residence it transpires. And for all you folk stopping martins from sharing your home – there still is no mess after months living with us. And that is always our experience despite having neighbours insisting they make a real mess – neighbours who don’t have any birds. Isn’t it always the way with folk who are so certain in their opinions who have no experience of what they’re talking about?
A powerful thunder storm one morning resulted in a tragic rail accident that has shocked the majority of folk in the northeast. Also shocking has been the irresponsible and hugely offensive sensationalising of it and disgraceful treatment of affected families by The Sun newspaper. It’s hard to understand why anyone would want to work for such a disreputable and offensive organ. But it takes all sorts and they must think it’s perfectly alright or else they would go off and take up alternative jobs.
Aberdeen experienced very dramatic flooding but oddly our son who stays in one of the worst affected areas was oblivious to the drama unfolding outside his window.
The young buzzard has been back out practising her/his call and showing off his/her flying abilities again. A small bird compared with fully grown buzzards and the voice hasn’t yet broken. Unless it’s a soprano.
Another week another virtual quiz controversy. Which pasta means little worms? Well, of course, it’s vermicelli and I had that smug feeling of being assured of one point, at last. Then our beautiful quizzer announced the answer to be linguine. Linguine? What alternative universe do our young people inhabit? Always best to create a fuss in such circumstances and vermicelli was accepted as correct. Didn’t make any difference to the final score. I still lost. Oh, and how many times must I be asked the collective noun for giraffes before remembering it is a tower? Quite a number, I suspect.
My snail banishment scheme appears to be paying off. Numbers definitely down in the garden but too late for the variegated hosta at the front. A poor specimen now riddled with holes and only the energy to send up one pathetic flower head. The angel’s fishing rods in a pot are looking splendid. Love the way they grow into the shape of a 1970s fiber optic lamp. The little pot acer is also looking healthy. The label says it grows about 8 feet by 13 feet. And that, folks, is why we are growing it in a pot.
For years we filled our medium-sized garden with BIG dramatic-looking plants. Off to the plant nursery. Oh look, a big and dramatic looking plant. And so it (they) would come home with us and now we live inside a forest. I once counted our trees and the total came to a staggering forty plus and that excludes tall rhododendrons, azaleas and other large shrubs. This year the gunnera has decided to take off like a rocket. That’ll be down to the mild winters we’ve been having. On the veg front gherkins have been brilliant. Eating them fresh and not pickling so struggling to keep up with their output. They tend to weigh down the fragile plants if not picked early hence supporting them against the greenhouse where we can. Remember the snails ate most of our runner bean flowers? Well today I’m harvesting the single bean from one of the plants! To be shared between two. There are a few more plants but I’m not raising my hopes too high – as this year’s school pupils have been saying. Our fig was really hacked back a few months ago so removing most of the summer crop. Today I picked a little ripe one that escaped the purge. A few more have outwitted the secateurs and wood saw and there’s time for them to ripen.
Finished watching Ozark on Netflix. Brats will be brats. Criminals will be criminals and lawyers will get their just deserts. Or do they? I’d have written it differently.
What to watch now? We checked newspaper and website suggestions. A German Netflix series Dark was thrown up. It requires total concentration. No time to check out twitter with having to read super-quick subtitles and try to keep up with generations of characters. Science fiction is not really my thing and the first episode bored me. By the end of episode two I thought I’d stay with it for one more. By episode 4 I was hooked.
What’s the first thing you do when returning to your house after dark? You open the door and switch on a light. It’s not difficult. So why oh why do authors and film directors present us with that trope of about-to-be victim walking into her house and wandering through it in the dark? Not since the 1930s, folks. Not since the 1930s. Or earlier has it been a thing to enter your house in the dark. The same applies to scary forests. If you lived in a village with a reputation for young residents going missing in the local forest the last thing you’d think of doing is walking in the said forest – alone – in the dark. It’s a relatively simple to equate being alone in a spooky dark forest where folk disappear with it being perilous. But wait! Not only walking the forest, alone, in the dark but entering the caves in the forest. Oh no! Not the caves! You’d think it but there they go time and time again. Winden ought to have a signpost signalling WINDEN – SLOW – LEARNERS.
Didn’t have a novel I could decide on for bedtime reading so pored over a couple of thin volumes of poetry by Apollinaire and Hans Enzenberger. I don’t know. Some of the arrangements of words by Apollinaire were novel but my sensitivity to some poetry has been irreversibly damaged by reading too many crime novels. Got a flea in my ear from husband for my flippancy over Enzenberger especially – and to be honest I didn’t give his poetry more than a passing glance so I looked him up and he’s still alive – in his nineties. And he comes from my favourite part of Germany, Bavaria, and was born in little town also the birthplace of Hans Liebherr. Hans was a mason who invented the mobile tower crane. That’s impressive, I’m sure you’ll agree, and they can be seen tootling about the country all the time. But even more exciting for me is that Liebherr make fridges and we have one – it’s huge and fabulous.
A verse from Enzenberger’s poem, Portrait of a House Detective
He’s twenty-nine, Idealistic, Sleeps badly and alone with pamphlets and blackheads, hates the boss and the supermarket, communists, women, landlords, himself and his bitten fingernails full of margarine (because it’s so delicious), under his arty hairstyle mutters to himself like a pensioner.
Decided to try an e-book from the local library via the internet. Didn’t like the library’s website which tends to throw up a lot of rubbish and abandoned the first one I borrowed but this one which I won’t name because although I began liking it, have gone off it. It’s a first novel and a bit over-written, too lush with the adjectives. Ordered something recommended to me on how we think from Amazon, It’s an actual book. Hopefully that’ll be more engaging.
Remember that you are an Englishman and consequently have won first prize in the lottery of life.(Cecil Rhodes)
That modest opinion may well have been shared by the majority of his kin folk but beneath it flowed an undercurrent of resentment that the message wasn’t being shouted loudly enough so the rest of the world could better appreciate it – and, importantly, the rest of Britain.
“Most English people have observed, with discomfort if not alarm, the persistent and united effort made by the Press of this country to stamp out the use of the words ‘England’ and ‘English,’ substituting for them ‘Britain’ and ‘British.’
Such was a claim which to most Scots was surely arresting in its absurdity. It was made in The Era, a British newspaper, in 1937. It claimed this was an attempt to –
‘obliterate the conception of England as a separate entity; to make the English masses, and the world at large, regard the four people of the British Isles as identical in character, temperament, and spiritual gifts.”
While it is undoubtedly true that a definition of Englishness is difficult to pin down, not unconnected with the fudging of English with British since the Act of Union, much of the populations of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales might scratch their heads when England complains of having its identity obliterated knowing the three smaller nations are the ones who have suffered greatest from this phenomenon. The four parts of the UK have lost their distinctiveness – some today even argue there are not four parts to the UK but one single entity. The writer back in the thirties is not so daft or politically devious but still he fails to recognise that when England and English became shorthand for Britain and British all those centuries ago the blurring of distinctions began but England’s greater population kept England at the forefront of the Union and perceptions of it while all but obliterating the unique identities of the three other parts of the Unions.
Blame for the confusion of identities within the Union, according to the writer in The Era, lies with the press and the BBC. His points to the BBC’s celebration of St Andrew’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, St David’s Day but not St George’s Day. I don’t know if the BBC mentioned Burns’ Night in the thirties but that could have been added to his list. I don’t know, either, if there is a Shakespeare Night or morning or afternoon, perhaps there should be. However, Shakespeare does get wall-to-wall coverage in programmes across the BBC so perhaps a Shakespeare afternoon wouldn’t be noticed, is not necessary or would be overload. What really got the author’s dander up was seeing Shakespeare described as a British poet. Gadzooks!
He’s right about Shakespeare. He was English. And pre-Union. At the same time that bad boy of literature, Lord Byron, is invariably referred to as an English poet although he is very much British – having a Scottish mother, was brought up in Scotland and retained his Scottish accent till the end of his days. Double gadzooks! Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes stories is frequently described as English and do we complain? – well, aye, but no-one takes any notice. Worst of all in the commentator’s view was seeing a picture of York Minister in a newspaper with the caption, “This Britain.” Welcome to our world, matey.
Not only England, but every Englishman is an island.
(Novalis, German poet d.1801)
Back to our author who complains that the ‘non-English peoples of Britain’ – ‘these peoples’ he calls us – that’s Scots, Irish and Welsh (whose population, he points out, make up less than Greater London) ‘have been given equitable representation in the English Parliament’ which begs the question – what parliament? English post-Unions? Surely an English parliament doesn’t exist? But it’s as we suspected – Westminster is or isn’t a British or English parliament? And then there’s his use of ‘given’? – the largesse of England towards non-English bits of – uhm, Britain is underwhelming.
The writer ties himself in a right Gordian knot – that has definitely no Aberdeenshire associations – when he writes that one of the four entities making up Britain, let us call it England, has and deserves to have the whip hand and the right to distribute ‘rights’ as it sees fit (and presumably withdraw them as it seems fit.)
In his defence the writer is clearly in support of Home Rule for the non-English parts of the Union for he says that if any wanted Home Rule ‘there would be no opposition from England’ – to which I say, if only.
The political independence lost by Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to England, he claims, has been amply compensated by the economic advantages provided by being in the UK and being raised to a position within the world that would be impossible without being tied to England. You have to admire his gall if not his ignorance of the intellects, discoveries and influence of Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish over time – many simply classified as, uhm – English. Where is Voltaire when you need him? Ah, here he is –
We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation.
(Voltaire)
If we were ever in any doubt that England is the leading entity in the Union our correspondent is on hand to sort us out – ‘if tomorrow Scotland, Ireland and Wales became as independent as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the prestige of England would not be lowered at all in the eyes of the world.’ His England, he claims, suffered 82% of the casualties in the First World War. His reference to casualties is as vague as it is nonsense, plucked out of the air for impact. Untangling English from Scottish, Welsh or Irish casualties who might have lived in England or been in English regiments and were counted as English is a mine field. Sheer fiction.
It is an anathema to the writer that the traditions and culture of the entities of the Union have had their differences flattened out. He deplores that the English, descended from peasants, have been ‘callously and blindly robbed of their ancient rights, not only by the Land Enclosure Acts, but by the whole monetary policy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.’ He’s right you know. Finally he’s got a point.
An Englishman has all the qualities of a poker except its occasional warmth.
(Daniel O’Connell)
And so the debate over the Union, definitions of what comprises Britain and Britishness rumbles on. It began even before the Union was set up and has been defined by England and her interests. For many of us here in Scotland we have grown up in a Britain that is dominated by England and Englishness that are as alien to us as they are to people from other nations. Even the very language we use in Scotland is unacceptable as British and ridiculed if introduced into conversations in England (where we tend to speak a different version of the language spoken at home because we adapt to accommodate the English population of Britain) e.g. listen to SNP MPs rather self-consciously incorporate words that are part of our everyday speech when they debate in parliament and are greeted with smiles and cheers. Why should they be? They wouldn’t be in Scotland which last time I looked was part of Britain. I don’t think many in the Commons laugh at their use any more except possibly Scottish Tories who appear embarrassed by anything that is distinctly Scottish. In previous times it was different and Scottish MPs were frequently and cruelly mocked for the use of Scotticisms in the ‘English parliament.’
The Scotsman newspaper (surely an oxymoron) is a platform for pro-Union views which often touches on Scottishness/ Englishness/Britishness. In an edition in 1947 it was claimed that few English people think of themselves as British only English and for them the Union wasn’t important. The concept of ‘we’ as in we together who make up Britain had little meaning for them. The did not have a sense of being at one with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. What they understood as ‘the nation’ or ‘the country’ was and still is England. They had no notion on what went on elsewhere in the other entities of the UK and presumably imagined people of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales lived lives identical to theirs in England.
By contrast Scots have always understood the difference between Britain/England/Scotland and have had to endure the virtual suppression of Scotland as a partner in the Union. That struggle has not really succeeded and Scotland as a distinctive entity with her own character and needs that became invisible in 1707 is scarcely visible in today’s British press, BBC, Sky, ITN where Scottish events and news don’t figure and at Westminster English MPs outnumber Scots by 10 :1. Scotland’s influence in Britain is virtually nil. Not sure why I included ‘virtually’ – omit as you see fit. Today there are only 74 Scottish MPs who will always be outvoted by England’s 541 MPs who naturally put the interests of England ahead of Scotland’s. When English people talk of the English parliament of Westminster they are spot on. Westminster’s traditions pre-date the Union, references there are to English politics, the built-in majority is English – the monarch in whose name the parliament sits is called Queen Elizabeth II despite there never having been a Queen Elizabeth I of Scotland. But then Scotland is an irrelevance in the union of Britain.
It is not surprising that the period following World War 2 provided an edge to the debate over Britain/England/Scotland for it was a war fought to defend the freedom of sovereign nations across the world from fascism. Scots lives were lost in that war where British soldiers have been described as English and the Union of nations that is Britain was presented to the world as England. It is the cruellest of actions to take someone’s life and deny their identity and existence but that is what happens in a union of unequals.
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