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Scotland and the Union: 1707-2007

Author: T.m. Devine
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Category: Book

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Sales Rank: 692983

Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.9

ISBN: 0748635416
Dewey Decimal Number: 941.1069
EAN: 9780748635412
ASIN: 0748635416

Publication Date: May 12, 2008
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A PROVINCE IN WANT OF A GRIEVANCE? June 27, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

A PROVINCE IN WANT OF A GRIEVANCE?

By IAIN FRASER GRIGOR

SOMEONE ONCE described the 1707 parliamentary Union of Scotland and England as suggestive of the Union that joins an apple with a small boy. Still, it has lasted for three centuries: 300 years of a Union that witnessed industrial revolution, commercial and military supremacy on a global scale, and the rise and giveaway (or takeaway) of the British Empire.

But Scotland was not always deemed by England to be a fully paid-up member of this Union. There were issues of national interest, enduring issues of national identity to contend with - or as the Frenchman told the Poles, "Vous ne sauriez empecher qu'ils ne vous engloutissent, faites au moins qu'ils ne puissent vous digerer".

And so, in the 19th century, the Scots decided to build a statue at Stirling to the medieval gangster and national hero, William Wallace. This occasioned a very long sneer from London, to the effect that Scotland was a country in want of a grievance, which "laboured under the weariness of attained wishes and the curse of granted prayers".

"Never was a territory north of latitude 55 degrees so favoured before. Good fortune has joined her inseparably to the richest and most enterprising nation of modern times": but nothing would suffice the Scots but to believe that they were ill-treated and in danger from some cause or another.

England bloomed while Scotland withered, for "the more Scotland had striven to be a nation the more she had sunk to be a province": and all this because Englishmen had thrown away "those confined notions of nationality which still prevailed in Scotland".

In Edinburgh the cry was still Scotland for the Scotch: whereas, "we south of the Tweed have risen to the conception of a United Kingdom, nay, more, of a British Empire".

Perhaps understandably, last year's celebration of the Union's tercentenary was understated to the point of silent invisibility. In England, it was barely noticed at all. The Scots, meantime, marked 300 years of Union by giving the SNP its greatest success (to date) in the semi-parliament of Holyrood - and otherwise ignored it too.

So Tom Devine's Scotland and the Union 1707-2007 may go some way to redress this curious indifference. Devine presently enjoys the title of Sir William Fraser Professor of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh. This is the sort of job-description that demands a snappy acronym: something like POTUS, perhaps, though probably not so modest in scope.

In fact, Devine is the editor of (and a substantial contributor to) what is actually a collection of largely-recycled essays by what the publishers describe as "the cream of academic talent in modern Scottish history and politics". This blurb translates to 14 pieces (four of them from Devine himself) by the historians and political "scientists" embedded in Scotland's Central Belt universities. Half of these 14 are from Edinburgh, three from Strathclyde and two from Glasgow: there being no place in the cream, evidently, for the likes of Aberdeen or St. Andrews.

And there is certainly a lot of good stuff to be found here, though oddly enough - or appropriately enough - many of the source-books mentioned are published in England: of university presses cited in footnotes, 53 are for Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester, while just 31 are for Scotland. These essays cover the circumstances of Union itself, the centuries of Empire and industrialisation: and a twentieth century of wars, de-industrialisation and Thatcherism.

In all, Scotland and the Union is a useful contribution to Scotland's ongoing debate with itself about its political future. But it is neither perfect nor complete. There is no literary perspective on offer, for instance (though Scottish academia is not short of those who could offer it): and an opinion on recent Scottish affairs from the perspective of the Baltics or the Balkans might also have been worthwhile.

Nor is there any Gaelic perspective here. One essayist describes as "fragmentary" the evidence for a Gaelic take on Union, which is certainly debatable, and which certainly overlooks the spirit of Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's great lines;

O! `n cullach sin Righ Deors'
Mac na craine Gearmailteach.

An essay on the nationalist intelligentsia of the period 1880 to 1920 would have been a useful addition - but perhaps the doctoral theses have not yet been written, or published, in this particular area. And what about Scotland and the Cold War? After all, the Cold War - and its dissolution - is one of the really huge events of recent European history. Are we to suppose that it has no implication for Scotland? And are we to suppose that Scotland's embedded historians intend to ignore it for ever?

And where is the literary grace that we traditionally expect from historians? After all, it may be the case that the best we can expect from the "scientists" of political affairs is a sort of pompous and turgid journalism: for these are fast-moving trades in parasitic (or symbiotic) relations with each other.

But history is an older humanism: and we expect literacy and opinion, as opposed to the graceless identikit reportage that we so often get. And there is no good reason for this either. After all, history is a very easy intellectual trade: copy out bits of the work of other people, sling it into some sort of coherent order, squirt on some creamy topspin - and off she skips to the printers, virtue entirely intacto.

This is not rocket-science: and the least we expect is some sort of stylistic virtuosity. But there is little sign of that here (unless it be entombed within a slithering silt of conditional clauses). No heights, in short, are Plumbed here.

If shy Lochaber axes are being ground at the back of some burning bothy, then the frequency of that grinding is too refined for the range of the Common Scotch Lug. And polemic that denies itself a taste for blood is hardly deserving of that name. So where is the jugular polemic in this collection of essays?

Of course, to eschew polemic in favour of some notional balance is no more fraudulent a posture than many others: but it is still but a sunlit classroom conceit - and it is terribly boring.

So - worthy and competent, but without enthusiasm or grace or passion. All in all, a bit like the Union itself.

www.iain-fraser-grigor.co.uk