What happens after the demise of ‘the Holy Trinity’ of Britishness? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, August 17th 2013 It has been a week of momentous events. The unfolding Egyptian tragedy, the restarting of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, and in our corner of the world, the first Scotland v. England match in over a decade. It feels inappropriate and insensitive to mention a mere football match in the company of such historic events. Yet, I think with that caveat the game mattered because it offered a glimpse of future possible arrangements. Two neighbours and friends with a rich, shared history, but who

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Unionists, come out and declare your ‘nationalism’ Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, August 10th 2013 The story is familiar: there is a pesky, partisan, immature nationalism out and about influencing our body politic. This is the account of Scottish nationalism put forward by a range of commentators and public figures. Yet it could as easily be articulated about the ideas of unionism because unionism is at its heart a form of nationalism - British state nationalism. Scottish nationalism has its faults and limitations. It is cautious, conservative and shaped by the characteristics of the society from which it was born. It

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The missing stories and, for some, the pain of growing up Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, August 8th 2013 On Saturday the Scottish football season opened in earnest with the first weekend programme of the new Scottish Premiership. There has been little excitement amongst fans, followers and media, despite the final reincorporation of the league authorities into one body, the Scottish Professional Football League, and the ending of football as a closed shop with the agreement of play-offs in and out of the lower league. But it all seems to most the status quo by another name, aided by the continuation

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Who is the Real Gordon Brown and Why It Matters? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, August 3rd 2013 Gordon Brown dominated Scottish politics for several decades. Now gone from the stage, he has only left memories and the issue of his legacy. Brown is a fascinating figure - a very public person, but private; moral in his deliberations yet filled with caution; supposedly radical but profoundly conservative. Kevin Toolis’s new play ‘Confessions of Gordon Brown’ (on at the Pleasance during the Festival) attempts to get inside the mind and psyche of Brown. This is a potent idea and something writers

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Labour and Independence: The Power of the Past Gerry Hassan National Collective, August 2nd 2013 Beyond the posturing, allegations and counter-allegations of recent days on the vexed subject of Labour for Independence, there are a series of important and often unexplored questions which tell us much about Scottish politics. Why does Labour, ostensibly ‘a non-nationalist, non-unionist party’ in the words of Lallands Peat Worrier’s reflective blog (1), so preclude not only any consideration of independence, but so firmly, trenchantly and aggressively, a rejection of it? The answer is complex, and can be found deep in the history and evolution of

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Britain – no longer the land of the future, but one living in the past Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 27th 2013 Once upon a time many years ago, like many other Scots, I believed in Britain. Britain seemed the future: it had appeal, appeared modern, progressive and full of promise. That now seems a world away from the Britain of today: one which looks to have given up on the future and instead appears content to live permanently in a fictitious past. This is the fantasyland Britain we see before us this week - of a society, culture and

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The Limits of Labour and Nationalist Scotland Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 20th 2013 The Scotland of the present is a product of how we understand our past; and the past is always been made, remade and contested. It is not then too surprising that in recent weeks Labour figures such as Brian Wilson and Maria Fyfe in this paper have laid into what they have seen as the over-promotion of the Nationalist tradition – with both criticising visitScotland for profiling Robert McIntyre’s election as SNP MP for Motherwell in 1945. What people like Wilson and others are asserting is

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Britain has become an Unequal and Unfair Society Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 13th 2013 Britain has been mired by scandal this week: MPs proposed pay rise, BBC Executive payouts, and the controversy of G4S and Serco engaging in corporate abuse of power. Yet through all this people tell themselves that one of the central characteristics of being a civilised country is progressive taxation and the degree to which we successfully redistribute resources from those who have the most to those who have the least. This week the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures which showed what many have

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Saying It Loud – Principled, Equal and Proud Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 6th 2013 The Scotland of today is a land vastly changed and different from that of even a few decades ago. Curiously, Scots whether in politics, public life or private conversation, often don’t recognise this. People understand that the Empire has gone, the rise and fall of the welfare state, and that the ‘Sunday Post’ isn’t the force in the land it once was. But there is so much more that we don’t seem to understand including the scale of transformation and its consequences. The Kirk,

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Living on an Island: Scotland and the London Question Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, June 29th 2013 May 2015: Boris Johnson wins the UK general election and declares London de facto independent from the rest of the UK, stating that it will from now on keep the taxes it raises and spend most of the money it needs itself. Rewind to today. On a regular basis plaintive pro-union voices can be heard asking when Scotland’s constitutional debate will ever end. The answer is that it won’t, because it will never fully reach a final destination. That is because a large part

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