ON MY walk into work every morning I pass a wall on which someone has scrawled in large white letters: "SCOTTISH NOT BRITISH". Everywhere I turn there seems to be someone telling me Britishness is dead.
Alex Salmond is on record as saying he does not feel British in the slightest.
Not one bit of him belongs to Blighty. His former MSP colleague, the ferociously bright Duncan Hamilton, recently wrote in an article: "The truth is that no-one in Scotland has affection for the Union. Supporting the Union is now what voting for Mrs Thatcher used to be - something quite a few people did, but no-one ever owned up to.
"
Scotland's finest historian has added his weight to the argument that Britain is a Python parrot, nailed to its perch. Professor Tom Devine of Edinburgh University says the pillars that have supported the Union down the past three centuries have all but crumbled away. These include the power of the monarchy; the hold of Protestantism; the need for a stable market for trade; and the self-interest of Scotland's professional elite.
It is now hard, says Devine, to put a credible historical case for the Union's survival.
The Labour Party seems to agree. Labour has been woefully ill-prepared to counter the Nationalists' arguments, seemingly lacking the necessary language.
I remember a few years ago being cornered by Douglas Alexander, now Secretary of State for Scotland, and given a ticking-off for being obsessed with what he dismissively called "identity politics". With Labour staring defeat in the face on May 3, I assume Alexander has come to understand that all politics is identity politics. It is the values and ideas we identify with, that chime with who we are.
Anyone who thinks our nationality and what is says about us is a distraction from the real business of politics is deluding themselves.
When Labour politicians try to make a case for the survival of Britain, their arguments are leaden and whiskery. They rely heavily on the politics of the 1950s - the folk memory of the shared British efforts in the Second World War, and the social cement of the British welfare state and the NHS.
Half a century on, do they really believe these holy relics can halt the break-up of the UK?
The truth is that both Labour and the SNP have badly underestimated the power of Britishness and its unifying force in these islands. They have misread its true nature because, for the most part, politicians are almost entirely bereft of an appreciation of the vitality and vibrancy of popular culture, where Britishness has its true expression.
In the real word where the rest of us live, British culture - especially British popular music - has had a powerful role in shaping our identities for the past 40 years. Unless you're the kind of rarified individual who has spent your life listening only to Bach fugues and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, the biggest cultural force in your life is likely to have been the British music tribe to which you pledged your allegiance at an impressionable age.
Depending on the number of your grey hairs, this could be The Beatles/Stones era of 1960s and early 1970s, the punk/new wave movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s, or the Britpop explosion of the 1990s.
Naturally, the influence of these movements is much more than musical. Music shapes lives and minds and attitudes - our identities, if you will.
We know instinctively that British popular music is the finest in the world.
The best Scottish bands are successful because they are thoroughly a part of the world's most vital musical culture.
The signs were always there, if you were prepared to look. What music awards are held in highest esteem by Scottish musicians and music fans?
They are called The Brits. It was the Union flag that was adopted by the Mods in the Sixties and Paul Weller in the Seventies; the Union flag that Morrissey controversially draped over his shoulders when he sang in the early Nineties; the Union flag that Noel Gallagher had emblazoned on his guitar. Even the Sex Pistols' use of the flag was a reclaiming of it from the far-right rather than a rejection of it.
Yet the SNP insists Britishness is now a defunct concept with no meaning and nothing positive to contribute to Scotland's wellbeing. They are wrong. At best their position is wishful thinking, at worst it is blind ignorance.
The SNP is in denial about Britishness and their stance does not ring true with the majority of Scots, who share countless national mannerisms with fellow Britons, from a love of fish and chips to an instinctive dislike of jumping the queue. Can the SNP successfully decouple British politics from British culture? I'm not at all convinced that this is as easy as they seem to believe.
I once asked Salmond what his favourite English football team was. He looked at me like I was daft. Then I asked him if, when watching the Olympics, he cheered on members of the UK team, even when they weren't Scottish.
Again, that same look. No, he said. What?
He didn't cheer on athletes such as Mary Peters or Daley Thompson? Only if he liked them personally, he replied, not simply because they were British. This is surely a curious position.
I presume that, during the Ryder Cup, Salmond supports Europe against America. Why, then, can he not support Britain?
The ties that bind Britain cannot be so casually dismissed.
If nationalists want to inhabit the real world, they need to face up to the fact that Scotland, under whatever form of government, is part of the geographical, cultural, social entity that is the British Isles. We may be Scottish first and foremost, but we are still British.
The Labour Party seems to agree.
Labour has been woefully ill-prepared to counter the Nationalists' arguments, seemingly lacking the necessary language. I remember a few years ago being cornered by Douglas Alexander, now Secretary of State for Scotland, and given a ticking-off for being obsessed with what he dismissively called identity politics . quote.
The Labour party doesn't like identity politics. Unfortunately for them the Scottish electorate now identify them with lies, lies, lies and more lies. I don't think it matters anymore how much propaganda you and your paper churn out on their behalf.
If they lie about reasons for going to war they'll lie about anything. They've had their day and been rumbled for what they are. Trough swilling political liars and nonentities.
I'm really not sure about a tribal analysis of British popular music as being a meaningful or adequate basis of understanding britishness. To locate myself, it was Talking Heads, B52's (first album) Lou Reed, Blondie, Bob Marley, Nirvana that inspired me. By your logic that would make me American.
Similarly, why stop at music. The best things on TV have been House, CSI, Frasier, West Wing, Sex in the City etc.
Ok, I like Life on Mars and plenty of British bands as well, but when they drape themselves in the Union Flag, I've always thought they were taking the p***, or just didn't feel able to use the St.
George cross cos their record company people told them not to, rather than because they were commenting on the Act of Union. Certainly, the epitomy of your argument would be encapsulated in Tarty Spice's Union flag mini-dress, but it had never crossed my mind that this was an act of subliminal political message which taught me about my own identity. I always thought Geri was just having a laugh.
Amazing what you learn.
Desperate attempts now by the unionist community - scaremongering doesnt work any more, 'breaking up family ties' is a non-starter, lets try popular culture?
We are no longer fooled by the establishment, the only people who ever gained from the Union, and who can blame you for trying to save your own interests?
Good luck with it but the game appears to be up, my friend.
Why would anyone believe the unionist community now when Freedom of Information revealed the FACT of the Government cover-up in the 1970s about the benefits of north sea oil?
You lied then, you are lieing now.
Good thing is, we no longer believe you.
Talk about clutching at straws!
More importantly, the writer undermines his own case.
A Scottish preference for English/Britsh pop culture is taken as implicit support for the Union and then the writer affects bafflement at why nationalists are reluctant to express preferences for English/British popular culture. Since British pop culture is highly centralised their sis also a question of how volunrtary our involvement in it is.
BTW Does this mean apreciaition of English culture a unionist?
I don't support any English football team, is this a thought crime now?
Utterly bizarre. Clutching at straws.
Most of my family are Irish...
they hate queue jumpers and love fish and chips...
does this make them British?! No, again unionists cannot come up with any truely specific 'British' thing.
..Britishness has died a death.
..these things may be ghosts of the Imperial past, but they do not equal modern Britishness.
..which doesn't in actaul fact exist.
..
I'm sorry, Kenny Farquharson does his argument no good when he says Oasis are a reason to keep the Union together!
Nearly all the bands he mentions are woeful; perhaps we should apply to be the 51st state of the USA, on the grounds that the MC5, Stooges and Ramones were American.
The Beatles were so popular because of their un-Englishmess. They came from a city with a large number of Irish and Welsh immigrants - Lennon and McCartney are Irish surnames - and their music has a Celtic feel to it:
The Beatles frequently use the technique of suppressed notes, due to their tendency to compose pentatonic melodies, which leave ‘holes’ in the diatonic scale ( )
This is music which is readily identified with around the world.
But as for their music, and the rest of US-inspired British pop being the glue to hold together a clapped-out economic and political system...
. well, it gave me a good laugh.
News RSS