COLLECTIVE ignorance of our own great writers is self-evidently shameful, as Saturday’s Long Letter by Alastair Mcleish maintains. It was painfully accurate and hard to disagree with. Most of us have but a narrow awareness of our own literature and history and while we can take some individual responsibility for this, we all need an educational framework to work within.
I remember, as a student at St Andrews in the 1960s, having to give a short seminar paper on David Daiches’s trenchant little book The Paradox of Scottish Culture. I said then, as a nascent nationalist, that if the SNP really wanted to change our perception of ourselves, it needed to start with awakening our awareness of our own history and literature; this in the days, mark you, of Rintoul and Skinner.
Not much seems to have changed, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. In other words, we still haven’t had the political or cultural courage to tackle the fundamental issues head-on, feeling somehow embarrassed to raise the matter of our national distinctiveness.
English, French, Icelandic, Irish people etc take it as axiomatic that they will teach their children about who they are and how they came to be that way. Resistance to this in our own wee country – not least in the media in its race to the bottom right-hand corner, so to speak – seems almost a duty to some; it keeps us in our place and we had plenty examples of that in indyref1.
It has always seemed to me that if generations of Scots had learned in school of figures such as Admiral Cochrane (Napoleon’s Sea Wolf), of political heroes such as John Maclean, of the scale of Scotland’s contribution to medicine and physics etc, of the barbarity of the Clearances, of the depth of our influence abroad and so on, our country might well have been independent long ago. Readers will provide their own examples, of course. Things have improved in some respects, often through the inspiring work of individuals such as Billy Kay, but less often through central agencies charged with the job. A National Theatre locus? National Opera House? Scottish Cinema Studio? Institutions other countries take for granted and part of being a country confident in itself. We’ve a bit to go yet.
Cameron Donaldson
Aberdeen
THIS weekend, at a family-friendly “festival of ideas” in London, New Scientist was helping to profile weapons manufacturer BAE Systems. New Scientist Live is a “celebration of science” which promised to “touch on all areas of human life” yet it lent legitimacy to a company whose warplanes are currently tearing apart human life in Yemen.
BAE Systems sponsored the festival’s Engineering Zone, with the cost of sponsorship a small price to pay for the opportunity to present itself as a force for good in the world.
Meanwhile, with no hint of irony, oil corporation Shell sponsored the Earth Zone, despite its record of contaminating the environment and funding attempts to undermine climate science. These sponsorship deals are portrayed as harmless acts of charity, but in fact they are “an integral part of strategic business plans”, aimed at neutralising public opposition to these companies’ toxic business, and maintaining the government support and subsidy that is essential to their operation.
It’s vital that we challenge this. Earlier in September BAE was among hundreds of arms companies exhibiting at the ExCeL Centre when it played host to DSEI, one of the world’s largest arms fairs. This was one event the arms industry wanted to go unnoticed by the public: it took place behind high fences and tight security and wasn’t even listed on the ExCeL Centre’s events calendar.
Instead of building homes, saving the NHS, ending poverty etc, we invest in companies that build death, save their shareholders and cause poverty.
B McKenna
Dumbarton
NOW that Ofsted has singled out a Birmingham school and dragged it through the courts for segregating boys and girls (even though stats show us that girls do better in single-sex schools) I presume the ban will extend to all? Including Eton? I’d hate to think we live in a society where it’s OK to ban something in a state Muslim school but not in a school patronised by the wealthy elite.
Amanda Baker
Edinburgh
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