Setting the Scene For The Independence Campaign

[f4f3]

"No Gods And Precious Few Heroes", a song written by Brian McNeill and sung by Dick Gaughan says a lot for me about separating romance from independence, about putting our shoulders to the same wheel instead of dreaming of Bannockburn and crying about Culloden. There's a streak of Celtic mysticism in Scots a mile wide, to go with the Calvinist coldness and the Caledonian Cringe. And there's also a stubborn, bred in the bone insistence on equality of opportunity, and a belief in achievement rather than ascription (or, as Burns put it, "the Rank is but the guinea's stamp, the Man's the gold, for aw that."). My sort of independence sent the Scottish Brigade to the Spanish Civil War, made Westminster send tanks into George Square in the General Strike, for fear of revolution, and ran the Upper Clyde Shipyard as a worker's occupation decades before Solidarity got the idea.

It's a country I want to see independent for the value it can give to the world. Again.


No Gods, And Precious Few Heroes.

I was listening to the news the other day
I heard a fat politician who had the nerve to say
He was proud to be Scottish, by the way
With the glories of our past to remember
"Here's tae us, wha's like us", listen to the cry
No surrender to the truth and here's the reason why
The power and the glory's just another bloody lie
They use to keep us all in line

For there's no gods and there's precious few heroes
But there's plenty on the dole in the land o the leal
And it's time now to sweep the future clear
Of the lies of a past that we know was never real

Farewell to the heather in the glen
They cleared us off once and they'd do it all again
For they still prefer sheep to thinking men
Ah, but men who think like sheep are even better
There's nothing much to choose between the old laird and the new
They still don't give a damn for the likes of me and you
Just mind you pay your rent to the factor when it's due
And mind your bloody manners when you pay!

And tell me will we never hear the end
Of puir bluidy Charlie at Culloden yet again?
Though he ran like a rabbit down the glen
Leavin better folk than him to be butchered
Or are you sittin in your Council house, dreamin o your clan?
Waiting for the Jacobites to come and free the land?
Try going down the broo with your claymore in your hand
And count all the Princes in the queue!

So don't talk to me of Scotland the Brave
For if we don't fight soon there'll be nothing left to save
Or would you rather stand and watch them dig your grave
While you wait for the Tartan Messiah?
He'll lead us to the Promised Land with laughter in his eye
We'll all live on the oil and the whisky by and by
Free heavy beer! Pie suppers in the sky! -
Will we never have the sense to learn?

That there's no gods and there's precious few heroes
But there's plenty on the dole in the land o the leal
And I'm damned sure that there's plenty live in fear
Of the day we stand together with our shoulders at the wheel
Aye there's no Gods

 

Comments

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

If bloody Jacobites come anywhere near this sodding referendum I’m leaving for Australia to make my fortune selling uranium to the Chinese and hang all the rest.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I think they're still out there, somewhere, toasting Pretenders Young and Old - and if you go to Australia I'm coming with you. I hear the weather's good. (Reminds me of the Craig Fergusson song that opens, "My father was a Scotman, and I'm a Scotsman too, my little dog is Scottish, and so's my Kangaroo...")

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I once had a series of conversations with some True Scot from Texas, who pretty much refused to believe that Scotland was firmly a social democracy and would have little truck with Bonnie Prince Charlie if he actually turned up.

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

I am wondering about the identity of the Tartan Messsiah, flinging shortbread to the masses as he walks down Buchanan Street.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Uncle Sean? :)

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

My sort of independence

This is the key, really. You've articulated something in this single sentence that I once spent entire paragraphs on when talking about historical events in my own country. It's that you're exactly right to talk about your sort of independence; the independence movement is in some vital sense everywhere composed of people who have their own sort each.

The straight-up national romantic doesn't think in this way. It's not his independence -- well, it is his sort of independence, but he feels his sort of independence is everyone else's independence by default. He would have you believe that there's an unchanging and eternal Platonic national spirit, which, even if currently comatose, may with sufficient effort be awakened from its mythical sleep to inspire the citizens' minds with political views and opinions inevitably identical to those the romantic in question personally holds.

Like-minded individuals surround the romantic, because that's simply how people congregate, and long talks with those people have imbued him with the unconscious notion that True Scotsmen (or True anything) in some fundamental sense agree with him on what it means to be a True Scotsman (or True anything). But you and I know it's just a whole bunch of people, really, standing face to face with their polity. One may legitimately himself liking the notion of being a part of a cultural and historical tapestry, and fair enough. The continuity is genuine and there's nothing wrong with appreciating it. But none of it is magically essential.

That big bunch of people will never agree with or fit under any single voice, no matter how much its wielder may drape himself in the flag. When the romantic finds this out, he may be disappointed, even dejected: For did he (and specifically he) not have that old spirit beside him? That old spirit he'd spent so much time coming up with? But, of course, there's never been gods, and there's been precious few heroes, and one person's hero is another person's villain.

Edit: You know, I think I still owe you five answers, including one on Scottish independence? I'm not sure I can offer you much that's actually useful, but I guess I should get around to that sooner or later.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Only just saw this, when looking for another entry, and wanted to say, however belatedly, thank you. I agree with all of this.